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Tim Kasser was recently in Totnes giving a talk, and the good folks at nu-project were there with their cameras. While Tim was in Totnes I also did an interview with him which I will be posting here over the next couple of days.
So Copenhagen has been and gone, with no meaningful agreement being reached, and now the politicians and lobbyists have headed home having failed to do anything meaningful to address this staggeringly pressing challenge. Hugo Chavez came up with the quote of the fortnight when he observed “if the climate was a bank, they would already have saved it”. The gathering of the environmental/climate change movement in the Klimaforum with its dedicated bringing together of green luminaries and activists failed to have any meaningful impact on the proceedings, as did the mass street protests, designed to shame delegates into meaningful action and to draw a line in the sand. In short, the responses that the alternative movement/protest culture/social justice movement usually rolls into action when such events take place, didn’t work. So, might we do things differently next time?
A Copenhagen Christmas Present: December 15th 2009. Copenhagen.
Coca Cola ads on billboards around Copenhagen
As many have now written, the Cop15 conference, which is focussed on creating a treaty that will prevent our climate from undergoing a systems state change and re-establishing itself in a new stable state that much less conductive to human survival, seems certain to fall far short of what is needed or fail completely. In describing what the treaty has to do I am calling attention to the meta narrative in the story of these negotiations. That is we have a self referential system, our economic and politic systems which takes little account of the ecology of our planet. We think in terms that ignore the basis of life.
The road from here. Copenhagen 10.12.09. Naresh Giangrande
Klimaforum the people’s conference has started slowly. Maybe a 1000-2000 of us in many different locations feeling our way into perhaps the defining moment of our life and times which this conference represents and reflect the hopes an fears of our generation in a way that no other I have even been to does. There is a tension and an intensity that I have never felt before. Even though the first day felt a bit like a party conference, people wandering in and out of speeches that went on too long.
While in West Cork last week, as well as renewing acquaintances with many old friends, I also renewed the acquaintances of some trees I planted or worked with in some way, and it was fascinating to see how they have grown. If you ever want a clear and powerful indicator of how time passes, plant a tree, wait a few years, and then pop back to say hello. You suddenly feel very old, and also like you have, even if nothing else you ever do amounts to very much, left something good for those that follow you. I’d like to introduce you to some of the trees I visited during my stay.
