Kennedy Graham

Copenhagen 6: Screaming into the void

Published: December 17, 2009

by Kennedy Graham

OK so there are 45,000 concerned humans milling around.  Only one-third are getting into the Bella Conference Centre.  Yesterday I arrived at the gates at 7.45.  It is still dark.  And very cold.  A young woman next to me, not yet accredited, had stood in the queue yesterday in zero degrees for 10 hours.  That’s not easy.  And she was unsuccessful.  She was back this morning at 6.20 a.m.  I think it was colder today.

Denmark is a wonderful country.  We all love the Danes, and for good reason.  They are unassuming and whimsical.  And they think ahead.  You will know about their carbon neutral island, Samsǿ.  They have made all public transport – superb as it is – free for all delegates in Copenhagen.  Organic food is the default inside the Centre.  A modern wind turbine spins out a lazy cosmic message behind the conference site.  Momentarily direct your thoughtful gaze out the window, and it caresses your mind.

And, as I travel along the metro to Bella Centre, the dawn breaking red to the east, you look into three giant smokestacks, belching tonnes of coal-smoke into a distraught atmosphere, the billows catching the crimson rays from the ultimate source of renewable energy we should be harvesting.  It’s a metaphor for humanity.  A Biblical sign.  Change your ways, O Israel, or prepare for exile.

The 15,000 of us inside the Centre are all very busy.  Most of us are devoted to trying to make sense of the pace of change – or non-change.  It is not easy.  There are probably 100 who will decide the fate of the Earth.  The other 14,900 are beavering away, making a contribution as best we can.  Yet it is critically important we are here.

That way, the NZ Youth Delegation can attend the NZ ministerial reception at the NZ Consulate and present their sail to Minister Groser.  There is a pregnant pause and he responds.  The words are honeyed but the body language pierces the outer perimeter of the comfort zone.  Minister Smith beams avuncularly.  He claps lightly.  He, too, was young once.  Simon Upton, former ministerial colleague fresh from leading the Kyoto delegation twelve years ago, claps long and loud.  What does this mean?  We need a Kremlinologist.  But one thing is clear. Ministers are between a rock and a hard place.  Yet that is right where they should be. The Youth have had their say.  Their beautiful white sail lies at the ministerial feet on the floor of the NZ Consulate in Denmark, bearing its antipodean message of plight and plea from thousands of young Kiwis.

Now, they wish to meet with the Prime Minister.  I hope our Leader agrees.  If he does, the Youth will give him ‘what-for’, because they are not cowed by pomp-and-ceremony the way our generation was, and because they are terrified of the future.  They see things we do not see.  So the Prime Minister cannot really refuse.  He is between a rock and a hard place.  Right where he should be.  Not because of his Government’s failing policy.  Because he is their Prime Minister and this challenge is not political, it is existential.

And us erstwhile opposition MPs – what are we to be doing?  We are following closely and intently.  We are judging the substance of the NZ policy and attempting the complex task of calibrating it within the twists and turns of the negotiations within the global context to determine a fair share.  At least Jeanette and I are.  We understand that Labour’s Charles Chauvel failed to get entry.  We met him once off-site.  Have not seen him in the precincts.

What more can we do?  Can we make a statement?  No, at least not in the official forum.  Jeanette is on a high-level parliamentarian panel, theoretically with Connie Hedegaard, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and other luminaries.  It is a fitting tribute to her global status as an environmentalist – largely unrecognised back home.  Something about prophets.  I introduced her the other day to a group as the ‘conscience of the nation’.  She embarrasses easily.  I think it comes with the territory – something about mana.

So can I make a statement?  No.  Only Jeanette has that outlet here.  But I did try back home.  I work in the NZ House of Representatives.  It is a debating chamber.  Only last week, just before coming, Jeanette sought an Urgent Debate on climate change.  An international scientific study had just appeared making it clear that current targets by the overdeveloped countries would result in a much higher temperature rise than 2°C.  This, we thought, might place the good work the NZ Cabinet had done in judging its 2020 and 2050 targets in a new light.  It would, after all, not be enough.  At least, this would be debateable.  So we wrote to the Speaker.

According to the Standing Orders, the Speaker gets to decide on an Urgent Debate alone.  He rises to his feet – I think Dr Smith (not to be confused with the other Dr. Smith) is a good Speaker.  What does he have to say?  “There is no ministerial responsibility for the results of the [German] study.”  And anyway, “the continuing issue – the accumulation of evidence concerning the setting of emission reduction targets – cannot give rise to a debate under Standing Order 380.”  There being ‘no particular case of recent occurrence’, the application is declined.

So, we cannot debate the latest twist in this Nordic saga – that the planet is heating up more than worst-case scenarios had judged likely – because it is an ongoing issue.  Nothing new under the Sun, so to speak.

Jeanette and I had prepared for the Debate.  You have to, even though you are not sure if it will go ahead.  My draft languishes in the hard drive.  This happens.

But here it is.  Call it a ‘Scream into the Void’ – (091209 Urgent Debate – Final )-echoing around the planet, catching up with me on the other side of the planet and with my 15,000 colleagues all around me right now, and with the other 30,000 milling disconsolately in the streets of Copenhagen – and for that matter the 6.7 billion of us dwelling on this fragile speck of dust.

Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.

Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured | Society & Culture by Kennedy Graham on Thu, December 17th, 2009   

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