Stuck

Copenhagen, Denmark

December 15, 2009

Today is our first day of exile from the Bella Center, so we decided to return to the craze and spectacle of Klimaforum, on which I have written before.  I would write on it again, but I have run out of words.  I’m not in the Bella Center.  I don’t even have internet access to follow what is happening there.  I am in Copenhagen, in the middle of the most important environmental debate of my time, and my friends in Texas have better access to the things that are being decided.

I have been gone for almost two weeks now.  My goal in coming here is now moot.  So I feel stuck.  I have outstayed my purpose, but I am still here.  I am a decorative typewriter.  I am the Prince of Denmark.  As much as I love this place, as much as I love seeing new things and talking to new people, it is December 15^th.  It’s time to go home for Christmas, to sit in warm lamplight with the people I love, to hang ornaments on trees, to sleep in a quiet room under soft, clean-smelling covers.  But here I am instead at Klimaforum, the “people’s climate event,” pretending I am doing something important.  At least when I was at COP 15, it was easier to pretend.

I wish I could comment on what is going on in the talks, but I can’t.  I don’t know when I will be able to upload this post.  There are words to describe the speeches I’ve heard today.  Insipid, inane, banal come to mind fairly easily.  But I must say I am discouraged.  I cannot approach the level of writing I am used to.  Images and symbols choose not to reveal themselves to me  Nothing speaks today.  Things want to be written about, but they remain obstinately silent, glaring expectantly at me.  All I can do is shrug in return, and tell them I’m sorry.  Today is not the day.

Tomorrow will be better.  Tomorrow has to be better.  Tomorrow I’ll be going to Kronborg Castle, the one-time home of Prince Hamlet.  I’ll be going to the Louisiana, one of the finest modern art museums in Europe.  Maybe tomorrow, I’ll lose the sense of unfulfilled obligation, of unchannelable urgency.  The feeling that there is something important that I should be doing.  Maybe I’ll stop tapping my foot and glancing around, maybe I’ll be able to sit comfortably in my chair.  One can only hope.

I want to be philosophical but I’m out of thoughts.  I want to be literary but I’m out of words.  I want to do something important but I’m out of time.  If I were working at the conference, I wouldn’t miss home.  If I were at home, I wouldn’t miss the conference.  But stuck in between, I want everything and have nothing.  On Thursday, I go back to COP 15 for a few hours.  On Friday, I leave Copenhagen.  But until then, I’m stuck.  All I can do is think about tomorrow, Wednesday, and hope things will be easier.  That is the only option I have.

Announcement

Copenhagen, Denmark
December 14, 2009

Today I take a break from my general philosophic tone to make an announcement. I am now officially out of the loop.

Apparently, for reasons known only to the United Nations, several thousand more people were accepted as delegates than can actually fit inside Bella Center. So I will not be allowed to attend the conference tomorrow. Or the next day. I will be attending from 9 until 2:30 on Thursday. And then the conference will be over.

All delegations have suffered cuts, especially the bigger ones that are not directly influential. The groups of youth are the ones who have felt this the hardest. But, everyone, young and old, influential or not, has had their access limited. More than ten thousand people who came here to make their voices heard have been told that space is just too restrictive.

I’m not sure what will be going on over the next two days. I have been wishing for a chance to do some more sightseeing, and now I have my opportunity. I’m sure I’ll be doing some writing on whatever I see. It is hard not to be extremely disappointed in the way this conference is being conducted, but I’ll do my best to keep everyone informed.

-Josh

Sunshine

Copenhagen, Denmark

December 13, 2009

Today when I woke up, the sun was shining. This is the first time I have seen sunshine since Paris over a week ago. Walking outside, the morning is fresh and crisp and pure as a Christmas apple, with spiderwebs of frost veining the parked cars along the street. My breath steams and rises in front of me as I walk, rises straight up undisturbed by wind until I can’t see where I’m going. So I breathe from my nose instead, the mist now falling behind me in twin streams on each side of my face, like the wake from the bow of a ship. The city is still and silent at 9:30 on Sunday morning. I tie my scarf around my neck as I wait for the bus to arrive.

Nobody else is waiting at this stop – there is no reason to. The temperature is precisely freezing. There are no meetings on Sunday, no work to be done. COP 15 resumes tomorrow morning. In the distance, church bells ring. This is a morning to enjoy from a chair behind a big window, with a newspaper and a cup of hot coffee. This is a morning like art – much nicer to observe than to be a part of. All is quiet, all is rest.

Four hours later, I find myself in line stretching for blocks and blocks outside the largest cathedral in Copenhagen. The Ecumenical Celebration for Creation has announced that there will be a few hundred seats open for this afternoon’s service, presided over by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Slowly, the line enters the church. I am seated in the very, very back of the very, very top of the highest balcony. From there, I can see nothing without standing on my tiptoes. I can only hear, but hearing was enough. Prayers were made as bleached coral from a dying reef the Pacific Ocean, shriveled corn from a failed crop in Africa, and smooth rocks from under a retreating glacier in Greenland were sanctified and placed upon the altar. Scriptures were read about creation, about oneness, about healing. Hymns were lifted up in English, Danish, Zulu, and Greenlandic. And the Archbishop of Canterbury stood up to deliver the sermon.

Fear, he said, is not what is needed today. Even though there is much to be afraid of. Even though, sometimes, we harshly say to ourselves that people are not yet afraid enough. Our actions in this process of deliberation must not be driven by fear. Instead, he said, in each action we take, we must be motivated by love. Everything we do, everything we say, everything we buy, everything we consume, we must ask ourselves – does this express the love I have for creation? Does this express the love I have for my fellow man?

And his words are true. This entire conference has been steeped in fear for our planet and fear for our future. A vague and unmentionable dread walks the halls of the Bella Center. What if nothing is decided? What if it is too late? But this morning, I didn’t go to the Center. No one did. We rested. We walked in the sunshine. We drank coffee. Today is a breath after coming up from dark waters. Today is a gap in grey clouds. Today is about love, and warmth, and peace. And maybe tomorrow will be more of the same.

-Josh

Action and Contemplation

Copenhagen, Denmark

December 11, 2009

Wednesday I spent the morning at Klimaforum.  It presents itself as “the people’s climate event,” and it is open for anyone to attend.

Klimaforum is to COP 15 as the Island of Misfit Toys is to Santa’s workshop.  Held in a sports center downtown, it is a collection of people who are here for COP 15 wandering around uncomfortably in a crowd of people they wouldn’t let into COP 15.  Everywhere you look there are yarmulkes, monk’s robes, headdresses, and burqas, attending lectures like “Indigenous Voices on Climate Change” and “Capitalism and the Climate Crisis: Radical Leftist Alternatives.”  It is an experience, certainly, just walking in the door.  But the people here are just as sincere and honest and vaguely frightened as those with UN badges.

My badge is on, but it continually disappears in my three-piece suit.  Only the UNFCCC lanyard shows, and my ensemble (the lanyard and the suit) causes people to frequently mistake me for an actual negotiator.  “Where is our deal?” they ask me.  They tell me all about their pet projects and panacean plans.  I listen attentively and patiently, not wanting to be rude and interrupt.  They plea with various degrees of passion in varying degrees of English, yet all of them want basically the same thing.  They want me to get things moving, they want me to get my nation to offer more ambitious reductions, they want me to understand the urgency of the situation.  But I’m just a nineteen year old kid dressed up for the big city.  How was I supposed to know that youth delegates here wear blue jeans and Converse?

Sometimes, I don’t even tell them, I just say I’ll bring it up with my delegation for discussion at next morning’s plenary.  That way they feel like the process still works.  It is dishonest, perhaps.  But I can’t stand to watch people’s faces fall when you explain to them that, not only do they have no real power, but they are so far away from the people who do that they actually cannot even recognize them as they walk down the hallway.  So I say that I respect what they have to say.  That’s true.  I say we will debate on the issue soon.  And that’s true.  And I say that our negotiators are working as hard as they can.  All I can do is hope that one’s true, too.  Then I shake their hands and bustle off as if I were on my way to some important meeting.  How do they not know?  How can they not tell?

At Klimaforum, I went to a presentation called  “Sacred Activism: mobilizing spiritual communities to fight climate change.”  On the panel of distinguished lecturers to address us that morning were representatives of every major world religion.  Each had ten minutes to speak.  Some said there is time to mobilize.  Some said we must be ready to deal with the crisis when it inevitably hits.  But the greatest speaker of the day by far was a frail and ancient Hindu holy man named Sant Balbir Singh Ji.  He spoke from a wheelchair with a stand to hold his microphone.  He was fasting until a just international agreement could be reached.  His face was gentle behind thick, black rimmed glasses and a grey-white moustache, framed by a perfectly bald head, an immensely fragile neck, and coarse orange robes.  His words came softly and slowly, rhythmically like the breathing of an immense ocean or the heartbeat of a mountain.  I wrote some of them down.  “Sacred activism,” he said, “is not loud.  Sacred activism does not include shouting slogans in the street.  Sacred activism does not involve confrontation, because confrontation leads to conflict, and conflict leads to the loss of all we fight for.  Sacred activism is like the martial arts.  One’s whole being must be silent and still.  And from that stillness, all proceeds.”  Stillness and quiet.  Contemplation.  “Contemplation is not the enemy of action.  Contemplation is action, and action is contemplation.”

It has been perhaps a week since I have sat in silent contemplation.  During that week, I have shouted slogans, I have instigated confrontations, I have filled my days completely.  And where has it gotten me?  Burned out, sitting in my hostel at 10:30 on a Friday night, writing, forcing myself into the contemplation which I have been fleeing.

Tonight I didn’t take the train straight back to bed.  I took a bus to Burger King and had my first bite of American food in more than a week.  And on the bus from the Bella center, an old Indian man came to sit next to me.  He looked a lot like Sant Balbir Singh Ji, and the two of them both looked like Mohandas Gandhi.  Same glasses, same moustache, but different people.  This man sitting next to me was a real power in COP15, one of India’s climate negotiators.  He and his colleagues sat unpresupposingly in the back of the bus to town hall.  “We don’t know what happened to the cars,” he told me quietly, so quietly I could barely hear him over the growl of the tires.  “This is an adventure.”

So we talked about Texas and we talked about India, we talked about University and we talked about Government.  But mostly we talked about the treaty.  He said it was going slowly.  But he said it was going.  I told him my hopes, told him my generation was counting on this, told him the urgency of the situation.  He sat quietly and nodded.  “Yes,” he said.  “We are doing as best we can.”

And he got off the bus in front of a nice hotel and I stayed on in quiet contemplation all the way to the restaurant.  Because I recognized the look he had given me in response to my concerns.  It was the look of a nineteen year old kid in a three piece suit, wondering how he got mistaken for someone with the power to make change.

Butterflies

Copenhagen, Denmark
December 11, 2009

Yesterday was “Youth and Future Generations Day” here at COP 15. The vast majority of side events were dedicated to student action, education issues, justice for children, and so forth. I, along with hundreds of other youth delegates from all over the world, wore a bright orange t-shirt which asked all passers-by “How old will you be in 2050?”

I’ll allow you a moment for the mental math.

For those at the conference who would be older than, say, 75 in 2050, bright orange scarves were given out to show solidarity with the needs and desires of the youth movement. For one day, the whole conference underwent a metamorphosis from shades of formal black to brilliant orange. Everything looked young and new.

The highlight of this event, which I was lucky enough to find a seat for, was a discussion between key climate negotiators and 3 youth leaders chosen by their international peers. Speaking were several UN officials, the climate ministers of Mexico and Maldives, and Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In other words, the President of COP 15.

There were at least 200 people in a room meant to seat maybe seventy five. Cameras rolled over every angle. Men and women in business attire sat on the floor watching, listening. The pure density of orange-clad onlookers made the room swelter. The speeches began, and they were astounding. A young woman from India told us her road to environmental activism through the flooded streets of her city. She waded through waist-high water in Mumbai for five days before she found her family, and in those five days made the solemn decision to give up her new career in advertising to fight global climate change. Thunderous standing applause met her impassioned plea for help to Mr. De Boer. “I put my trust in you. We all put our trust in you. Please do not let us down.”

The minister of the environment in the Republic of Maldives talked about his small nation – a disparate collection of 1,000 islands and 300,000 people in the Indian Ocean. The average island there is the size of a football field, and sea levels are rising. If current trends continue, his homeland will be no more in less than a century. “We are a people with 2,000 years of history,” he said. “There is where I was born. There is where I want to die. There is where our children our born. There is where we want our children to be buried.” The room wept.

But somewhere in the midst of these speeches, perhaps born from the live trees reaching to the top of the atrium indoors in the Bella Center, a single black and orange butterfly began gliding around the room. Some were startled as it landed on their laptops, others smiled as it orbited their heads. Photographers, knowing that this butterfly is itself as much a story as anything else in the conference, followed it with their camera lenses until it seemed like they were sure to fall over, but none managed to capture it. It was far too fleeting, too elusive in its spontaneity. From whence this poor, lost creature came is still a matter of speculation. The day outside was cold and bitten with teeth of rain, no day for a butterfly to live. A UN administrator jokingly suggested in his speech that it was, finally, the incontrovertible evidence for climate change, but I like to imagine that it is a refugee, an immigrant. It stumbled into someone’s bag or briefcase in the summer of the southern hemisphere, chilled by the travel, waking up groggily in a strange land. But whatever the origin of the poor, beautiful insect, it fluttered throughout the ensuing speeches, tracing lazy curves and leafy spirals through the air charged with emotion and lit for cameras. It listened, I am sure, to all the speakers as they all called in their own ways for help, for action. Each speech was a cry for help. Each was a statement of trust and hope.

It was Mr. De Boer’s turn to respond. The Executive Secretary of UNFCCC. The person leading and moderating the negotiations at this conference. With great reluctance, he turned on the microphone in front of him. He stared wearily at the cameras, at the audience, at the youth seated at the table beside him. Absentmindedly, he fiddled with his bright orange scarf. Slowly, haltingly, he spoke. I will paraphrase as exactly as I can.

“Your speeches were excellent. Thank you so very much. But there is one problem.” Here he paused for a long time, not dramatically, not rhetorically. He was truly overcome. “You speak of trust, and putting your trust in this process. But be careful with your trust. It should not be given. It must be earned.” And then, as if in afterthought, he added “and this process has yet to earn mine.”

The audience was stunned. Some clapped reluctantly. Some quietly nodded agreement. A camera flashed and whirred. The room was dead.

What does one say to that? The head of climate change negotiations, a tireless worker and great figure, a man who we all depend on, who future generations depend on. How does one respond when he looks you in the eye and admits he no longer believes that the job can be done? There is no response but silence.

Awkwardly, strangled, the meeting continued with the next speaker. Mr. De Boer was called to another meeting. The cameras packed up and left. The crowd thinned. I retained my seat until the end, when the last panelist had spoken with bravado that fell hollow on the room. As I left, I looked around for one more glimpse of the butterfly. But it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps it found its way out into the cold and rain, to be chilled. Perhaps it was crushed accidently, a reflex from some negotiator seeing it in the corner of his eye. Or perhaps it never truly existed in the first place. All seem just as likely. But there is also the chance that it is still here in the Bella Center, hidden and fragile, waiting to show up again. That is my sincerest hope.

-Josh

I am a Hooligan

Copenhagen

December 9, 2009

Ok everybody. This was me. Heck yes.

Americans for Prosperity had their enormous worldwide live broadcast on “hot air,” featuring live Q&A from Copenhagen. But the US Youth had other plans… 90 percent of people in the cheering section were undercover youth. So awesome.

Also, prominent climate change skeptic Lord Monckton was at the event.  Apparently, he is not a huge fan of nonviolent youth demonstrations, since he verbally attacked us, repeatedly  calling us “Nazis” and “crazed Hitler Youth.”  So that seems pretty classy of him.

-Josh

Faces

Copenhagen, Denmark
December 8, 2009

I have now been in Copenhagen for a day. It has taken me this long to collect my luggage, my hostel key, my UN delegate identification badge, and my thoughts.

The first thing one sees upon exiting the plane in Copenhagen is a massively coordinated environmental advertising campaign. Posters for products meet you before you even enter the terminal – large, glossy, and harshly green. Coca-Cola has signs everywhere declaring “Hopehagen,” featuring modern interpretations of stems and leaves growing from coke bottles. The WWF has advertisements with the archetypal lonely polar bear. And every Danish business would like the thousands of international visitors for this conference to know how well and how long they have been environmentally conscious. But probably the most interesting campaign is a series of politicians’ faces, black and white, enlarged to the point of repulsiveness. In their huge, staring visages, thick cheeks and fleshy noses and dully gleaming eyes, somehow there is displayed all human greed and selfishness. It is grotesque.

I don’t know how to do it, what trick of photoshop or a digital camera can dehumanize a face so, make it so monstrous, but these images scattered throughout the airport are perfectly manipulated to express a concept that people despise. Maybe there is a way to draw out the pouting self-assuredness in the lips, or a technique to make the skin pale and glossy like fat. World leaders all over the airport, their names inscribed beside them in case you can’t recognize them. And by each face is something along the lines of “Sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic environmental change. But we didn’t.”

Those portraits and those words flash in my mind each time I blink my eyes. These men (for they are exclusively men) seem utterly evil. Perhaps, I thought, I need to enter the field of environmental policy, to pit myself against such dangerous and heartless forces. With that in mind, I attended my first meeting of the UN. Now to be clear, this was not a UN side event, the lectures and discussions which will fill the majority of my time here. This was the opening, plenary session of the UN Climate Change Conference. Leadership was elected. Opening remarks were made. Coalitions began to form. And I began to fall asleep. It was like watching curling, or an underwater fight scene. I knew something was going on, and that important moves were being made, but I wasn’t quire sure how or when. Everything was slow and calculated, prepared and choreographed. It was alien and impractical, and gave the feeling of a complete lack of motion. Sudan would like to state its agenda on behalf of the Group 77 nations. Sierra Leone would like to endorse those sentiments, but add that additional consideration be given to funding for reforestation programs. And so on, and so forth. I couldn’t stand more than an hour of it. I had to leave

My muscles are sore. I ache from stored-up energy, from carrying luggage for days and days, from airplane seats and hostel beds. I am still unfocused, still find myself constantly on the edge of nodding off. Even as I write, if I close my eyes for a few seconds, start to sway, then jerk suddenly back up to keep from falling out of my chair. I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Now it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the sun has already set. The sky beyond the glass roof of the Bella Center is absolutely black. I look out at the sea of humanity that has showed up for this conference, over 15,000 delegates from dozens of countries all wandering around, checking emails, talking and laughing, preparing presentations, eating local organic apples sold by a man who rides through the hallways on a bicycle. I see their faces through dirty glasses and squinted eyes. But from here, from this green, carpeted bench under the transplanted trees filling the main hall, here in the most important spot in the world right now, here where I am told evil men hold my very future in their soft, stubby hands, they all seem beautiful.

The people I have met in the last twenty four hours have all had very different faces. Volunteers and students, scientists and politicians, CEOs, lobbyists, and activists. Faces passing by are of every color and shape. Some are lined with worry, others shining with optimism. Their laughter is genuine, their frowns are thoughtful. Nowhere do I find the looming, terrifying face of the men on the posters, the face of Machiavelli or Ebenezer Scrooge. I find human beings, with human thoughts and human motivations. They have greed, yes. And lust. And hatred. But there is selflessness, too. The desire to do good permeates this place – it flows through the hallways and washes over the faces of all who come here. Perhaps that is what is so horrible, so inhuman about those black and white giants. Nowhere in their eyes is there the dimmest bit of hope, which is the single most alienating thing imaginable.

I am so glad such monsters do not exist, or if they do exist, they are not here. The sheer weight of humanity in this city, in this world has pushed them out. Those faces, the evil ones that spring so easily to our minds, are nothing more than excuses and scapegoats. If we cannot achieve change, it simply must be because of a powerful man in a back room whose power and lack of caring are infinite. I no longer believe in that. If there is failure in Copenhagen, will not be because of soulless leaders and policymakers. No, the face of that failure will be mine and yours.

-Josh

Holland

Zutphen, Netherlands
December 5, 2009

The only memories I have of the past forty eight hours are mists and blurs. Impressions rather than things of substance, cracked shells of sensation reflecting the shape of missing events. The dark cramp of the nighttime plane, the cold bite of Dutch rain, the warmth of coffee with the fire of liquor, the dense, sexual smell of boiled eggs. All mists. All shells.

We are spending the weekend in the Netherlands with Saskia’s grandmother. As I write, she is making lunch and singing Dutch Christmas songs. I look out the window at the city of Zutphen, which I have a hollow memory of exploring this afternoon. It is very old and very European. Cars here seem distinctly out of place. It is a town which has not lost the memory of carriages bumping down its red brick streets, of men with top hats and moustaches, of snuff boxes, of mesmerism, and of chandeliers. Bicycles are everywhere. An itinerant accordionist squeezes jigs outside the department store, someone else hammers a dulcimer by the supermarket. It is raining, but it doesn’t seem like rain when you stand in it. It doesn’t make you feel wet. There is an ancient warmth hidden in the dull, grey day, some form of pervading cheer. Surely it is the holiday.

In two days we will be in Copenhagen for the start of the conference. It’s all over the news, on the front page of papers in Spanish, French, English, German, Danish. Not like the coverage stateside. Everyone knows about it in Europe. Sometime in the mist of the last few days, I rode on a plane between two engineers, a Swedish fellow who is increasing fuel efficiency in diesel engines and Frenchman who works with oil pumps In the Canadian tar sands. Both were following the conference, it involved both of them directly. The Swedish engineer worked for a university, and was hoping that a strong climate agreement would increase interest in his work, increase his funding. The French engineer, on the other hand, is involved in what some people say is currently the greatest environmental travesty in the northern hemisphere. Naturally, he is hoping for a different outcome. He is just trying to make a living, he says. He should not have to choose between the welfare of the environment and the welfare of his daughter.

Because what choice is there? Given the two options, the immediate needs of a family always outweigh the very distant needs, even if they are just as dire. As long as the public holds the perception that such a choice is what is offered them, there will be no real progress on the environmental front. From that point of view, the green choice is always the wrong one. We must focus on coming to an agreement in Copenhagen which does not offer this dilemma to the world. There must be, instead of a “protect my family or protect the Earth” mindset, a theme of “protect my family by protecting the earth.”

This is an aspect of the new catchphrase floating around the COP 15 literature – Environmental Justice. Environmental Justice is the excellent idea that there should never be a dichotomy drawn between traditional issues of global justice (fighting poverty, hunger, and disease) and modern environmental concerns. I think I am attending every official UN event involving the concept, plus a few unofficial ones. Because it would be a fine day indeed if nobody had to choose between following anti-pollution regulations and laying off employees. Or between the destruction of wild places and proliferation of poverty. Or between monocultures of genetically engineered crops and allowing children to continue to starve to death in our nation and our world. Because those are all choices we face at this conference, in our lives. And they none of them can be answered with a clear conscience.

I hope to God that the concept of Environmental Justice is more than just an ideal, more than a mist or an empty shell. I hope there is substance, I hope there will be action. But as I currently sit, jetlagged and thunderstruck in a storybook city, I cannot tell what is real and what is not. But we will know soon. Our first lecture will be Tuesday, the second day of the conference. There will be countless others in the next two weeks. If there truly is a third way, if there are solutions that work for the good of all and the detriment of none, we will know. Maybe there are. And maybe I will hear them soon. But even if I don’t, even if there are no real ideas shown at the conference, that doesn’t mean none will ever come. Justice, environmental or otherwise, has a way of showing up in its own time for those who do not lose hope.

And hope is something that is never just a shell.

-Josh

Before we Leave



Dallas, Texas – December 3, 2009

Today we leave.  Saskia and I have finished all our finals, and everything is packed except this computer.  I write hurriedly to create my first entry.  Before we leave.

The name of this blog is Modern Hope, because hope is an issue I struggle with in this age.  Which hopes are reasonable, and which are unfounded.  The first issue to be addressed is that of the environment.

Modern Hope, initially at least, is a chronicling of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from the perspective of two young delegates.  It will be words, ideas, and pictures, both journalistic and personal, to examine the concept of environmentalism in years to come.

My next post will be from a different continent.  I look forward to it.

Josh