COP19 part IIII: The little UN thing that could

Imagine you’re trying to disarm a bomb in the basement of the fully occupied high-rise you live in (if you need to add dramatic music, sweaty foreheads and a beeping digital clock, please do so).

The clock is ticking down. There are five of you – each with a specific task to contribute, each with a special skill which is needed to successfully keep the entire block from being turned into meaty rubble.

Now, imagine that one of you suddenly says, “I think I’m going to go back to my apartment and finish the bomb I’ve been working on,” and walks off to the elevator.

And then another person says, “That reminds me, I haven’t cleaned up after last night’s explosion at my place. Would you believe? There’s radioactive debris everywhere,” and heads off to follow the first guy.

Depending on your attitude about life, my guess is your feelings would range from miffed to spit-flying apoplexy. 

That’s pretty much what Australia and Japan did today. Australia, whose newly elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, “The climate change argument is absolute crap,” in reference to the fact that Australia was so totally on fire you could see smoke rising up from the back of his jacket. And Japan, where Tepco – the Stimpy to Prime Minster Abe’s Ren – has managed to turn the entire country into the opening credits of The Simpsons.

If you’ve read my previous entry, you’d know how volatile and fragile things are around here as it is. Not only is the decision-making process totally convoluted and counter-intuitive inside the building, but the COP19 itself appears to be built on solid layer of cheap irony. Alstom, for example, has built 95% all the coal power plants in Poland. ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest mining company. When you consider that the UN climate negotiations here in Warsaw are about reducing the amount of turd-coloured air we breathe, I find it weird that they are proudly displayed as the top two partners of this summit. This, to me, is like the KKK sponsoring a race-relations convention.

Then, you have the Polish ‘Environment Minister’ who is so into coal it could be considered a fetish. He claims that the coal he plans on producing will be done in an ecologically friendly way. The fact is, though, if you have shoes made of dog shit, wiping your feet a couple times on the doormat won’t change much.

So, what we have here is a global summit about reducing carbon emissions to avoid mankind ending up in cockroach fairy tales. It is in a country whose government likes to gnaw on coal for dessert. It is brought to you by the very people who would be pin-cushioned if any emission reduction is passed. And it’s all rendered silly by a screaming-mob-style negotiation technique. 

This house of cards appears to be built in monsoon season, and the knock-on effect of Japan and Australia backing out of their commitments may send the bomb disarmament team scurrying back to their homes. Directly above the explosive they built. 

The lack of defibrillators around here, I feel, will be seen as an oversight.

COP19 part III: The little UN thing that could

“It is the 19^th COP, Mr. President, but we might as well stop counting, because my country refuses to accept that a COP30 or a COP40 will be needed to solve climate change.”

--Yeb Sano, Head of Philippines Delegation. 11/11/13

There are people that spend their lives devoted to the next COP. They have read all the briefs, reports addendums and statements put out by national and international institutions which have been stripped down to their bare acronyms.

They speak legalese, politicese and consider reading things like, “In accordance with the “Guidelines for the preparation of national communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention, Part II: UNFCCC reporting guidelines on national communications”, at a minimum Parties shall report a ‘with measures’ scenario, and may report ‘without measures’ and ‘with additional measures’ scenarios. If a Party chooses to report ‘without measures’ and/or ‘with additional measures’ scenarios they are to use tables 6(b) and/or 6(c), respectively,” a perfectly acceptable way to pass time.

I am not one of these people.

The result is that I never have any idea what anyone is talking about. I recently watched two of my colleagues have a conversation with so many numbers, acronyms and referrals to obscure briefs I started to feel my brain slide down my gullet. That’s when one of them broke off and said to me, “You know, I often have to have someone there to explain to me what’s going on.”

If he doesn’t know what people are talking about, where does that leave me? Post-lobotomy comes to mind.

The halls, galleries, salons and auditoriums are filled with these people. At least, everywhere except the press room. This is where most of us spend our days; either hammering away at a keyboard, staring blankly into the middle distance, or curled in the foetal position under our desks.

Admittedly, I haven’t actually visited a plenary session yet. I’ve only watched them on the large TV in the press room. This alone has firmed my intention to get steaming drunk before I actually do. However, I have asked around for the inside scoop on these things. This is the way a plenary session appears to work:

Anywhere from five to 500 people all sit in an auditorium facing a raised platform. They are the delegates; chosen by their respective country to represent their country’s interest. They have been chosen, not only because they own a suit, but because they have achieved high marks in their respective country’s Stubborn Nitpickers Test. Upon the raised platform are other people in suits who moderate. There are about eight of them. Everyone is there to come to a decision about something.

Are you starting to see a problem here?

Mere mortals, like you and me – and as long as you are NON-GOVERNMENTAL, PRESS or PARTY (see here) – are allowed to attend the open session. This is the time when they “discuss”, let’s say, a proposal made by Brazil (a developed country) about how much cash they’d give to Micronesia (a developing country) if all the islands were sucked into a sinkhole due to ocean-floor mining for minerals. The answer, by the way, would be: None.

After a long introduction by the lead moderator, he offers the floor to anyone who wants to comment on the proposal. Inevitably and unfortunately, someone always does. But before they get into the actual comment they must, by some unspoken agreement, give a long, and often Oscar-worthy thanks to everyone in the room, the organizers, the country they’re in and their home country. If they are following-up on someone else’s comment there is a diplomatic, deeply heartfelt thanks to the previous delegate’s contribution before they proceed to eviscerate them with the same zest as a hyena with an antelope carcass:

“I respect the cherished, esteemed, well-adjusted and highly intelligent delegate from Thailand’s comment concerning the fact that he too comes from a small island with the same challenges, such as being entirely submerged by a tidal-wave, but he is a worthless piece of toilet slime who knows nothing and should be immediately removed from the room for stealing my oxygen.”

When they finally do get around to the actual comment it’s usually some nitpicky stuff about the use of the term “clean water” instead of “potable water” or “life-raft” instead of “life-boat”.

All five to 500 people get to do this, or comment on someone else’s nitpickyness with nitpickyness of their own. Or do both. This is probably why they need so many moderators; five to hold the delegate down, two to pry their mouth open and the last to hold their tongue still.

Whenever someone comments, the image I have in my mind is of throwing a Mexican jumping bean into a packed chicken coup.

After this goes on for a while, the moderators kick everyone out of the room who doesn't have a lanyard with a badge saying “PARTY” hanging from it. Naturally, I have no idea what goes on at this point. I do know that whatever it is, it can go until the wee hours of the morning. Maybe this is when the actual PARTY activates.

It could be just me, but 500 people packed in a room, at three a.m., after nine hours of discussion, with entirely different agendas, trying to work out the details of a single sentence, doesn't really sound like an ideal decision-making process...

COP19 part II: The little UN thing that could

Security is tight here at COP19. The kind of tight you’d get in any European airport – belt off, shoes off, jacket and change into the big tupperware dish on the conveyor belt. It’s not as tight as the cavity searches you get in US airports, and it’s not tight enough to keep the bullshit out.

In fairness though, they did manage to keep some of it out. Directly outside of the circus tent that is the Stadion Narodowy they’ve got an electric car in a big plastic box. It’s pretty much the only symbol that the COP19 might have anything to do with promoting clean energy. The car runs on volts, but as a colleague pointed out, so does the entire country of Poland. 90% of Poland’s electrical grid is powered by coal, the dirtiest of the dirties. This makes that electric car the first ever family sedan which runs mostly on coal power.

Ironies come cheap around here, but this one seems to have escaped everyone’s notice.

The branding of COP19 is hard and fierce around the Stadion, but virtually non-existent anywhere else in the city, and particularly lacking in the airport. In fact, every time I’ve been in an airport there has been some kind of indication of something – anything – happening in the place the airport is in – from the Junior Hockey championships in Ottawa, to Honouring People with Oddly Shaped Heads in Cape Verdi. Here, where they are hosting an international climate summit? Nada.

Not that the branding was thought out with very much imagination anyway. Some words saying that this summit brought to you by ‘COP19’ blah, blah. ‘UN’ is in there somewhere, too. Then, in trendy scrawled writing, what seemed to be: ‘I Cate’. I spent about two minutes wondering who Cate was before I got a closer look and realized it said, ‘I Care’.

They give you badges to indicate who you are here. It’s partly so that people know who to ignore, and partly so the staff know who you are in case you do something weird like laugh, or pee in the paper recycle bin. The badges come in three colours. The press get green ones which say, ‘PRESS’, the NGOs get yellow ones which say, ‘NON-GOVERNMENTAL’, and weirdly, the policy mavens get ones which say, ‘PARTY’.

Not only did it give the impression that the policy-makers were having a good time, but I had to resist the urge to give them two thumbs up and say, “Hell, yeah,” when I passed them.

I stood in a silent vigil this morning with a bunch of other NGOs. A long line of us positioned ourselves along the entrance corridor to the stadium proper. We all either had pictures of the Arctic 30, or signs telling people to take a lead from the 30 and get their shit together. People gawked, news agencies showed up, photographers and videographers showed up. Diplomats looked on. Some smirked, some didn’t. Some people didn’t know what we were doing, others gave a us a raised-fist salute.

But right in the final minutes of the hour-long vigil, a small figure went by. His hand was on his heart and he gave us each a nod of thanks as he passed along the long line of silent protestors. It was Yeb Sano, the head of Philippines delegation. The guy who gave the only speech worth listening to on the first day of the summit – pleading with the world to not let his islands and people drown. I held a few different signs for the hour I was there, but at that moment I was at the end of the long line holding a sign which said, “Do you have their courage?” I made eye-contact with Sano for a split second, and I deflated like a balloon. This would be the third day of his fast to try to get policy-makers to get moving on mitigating climate change.

In that moment, I thought to myself, “Christ, he must be so hungry right now.”

COP19 part I: The little UN thing that could

On the way to the Stadion Narodowy – the national stadium in Warsaw hosting the COP 19 UN Climate Talks – I pointed out to a colleague that the building looked like the cup part of a cupcake. She said it looked like a circus tent.

From a metaphorical point of view, she’s mostly right. The spectacle element is definitely there. You have an audience raptly caught up in the chattering of overly-dressed Masters of Ceremony. You have the thrill of listening to high-wire phrases like, “You know very well that no-one expects us all contribute the same level of effort in this quest for better tomorrow [SIC],” and, “We are all aware of the role of the Kyoto Protocol in the mitigation effects deployed by parties listed in Annex I and the importance of maintaining the continuity of the mitigation procedures adopted by those parties.”

The circus animals would be the beleaguered whipped journalists. They are forced to walk circles around a stadium the size of a large city block, hoping to get statements from officials which carry slightly more meaning than the types of things you get from athletes: “We played hard and we’ll continue to play hard and keep up the offence and try to keep it in the zone and maybe stop climate change. Thanks Bob.”

It’s worth noting that the journalists, the most reliable source for the rest of the world to know what’s going on, are kept in a room which is so far away from where anything is actually happening, they may as well be in Gdansk.

I asked another colleague if the other COPs were like this – with the great distance between the press and the plenary rooms. She said, “Yes.”

I said, “Okay, next time we’re all bringing bicycles.”

And like most circuses, or any place with a captive audience, you even have ridiculously overpriced ‘sandwiches’ which contain nothing but a leaf of lettuce.

With head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, considering speaking at a concurrently running ‘Coal Summit’ in Warsaw, and the hastily pulled blog post by Polish COP 19 organizers which said a melting arctic is an opportunity to “save time and energy” – it seems the circus might have bled out onto the streets.

Frankly, considering the fact that a ‘Coal summit’ is even allowed to happen during COP19, or that certified morons are organizing the thing in the first place, suggest the Polish Government is inhaling its own fumes.

The circus metaphor pretty much ends there, though.

You see, at a circus, even if it’s a clown shot out of a cannon, things actually get done. Right now, listening to long droning platitudes as everyone thanks everyone else for showing up, and for being in Poland, and for being themselves, and for being themselves while in Poland, the whole thing strikes me as going nowhere.

This is largely because everybody is pretty much saying the same thing: Something bad is happening to the planet, something needs to be done, that something needs a plan, but first we need to plan how we’re going to plan that something. Let’s all agree to plan to make a plan to deal with that something.

Truth is, the only person that said anything worth listening to was the head of Philippines delegation. You see, his brother is pulling bodies out of the rubble after a mega-Typhoon (“mega” being the new addition to anything which is, apparently, not bad enough) turned vast parts of his island into wet debris. He’s pretty sure that climate change is the cause of it. And he’s pretty sure the people making plans to make a plan about something are complicit by sitting around squabbling about minutia and personal responsibility.

Granted, it is early days. Something long and sausage-shaped may come out of all of this glad-handing and platitude-wielding. Who knows, maybe they’ll fire a delegate out of a cannon up into the coal-choked Warsaw sky.

Maybe, but I doubt it.