Day 5 COP15 Before Ethics Press Conference

First mission of the day accomplished: I got into the Bella Center without incident by 8:30 AM. Beside literature, I was handed a tiny, delicious nutrious roll by "Time for Climate Justice" announcing a public event in City Hall Square 11:30 AM Sunday. A little further in, Greenpeace handed me a card for a Climate Demonstration Saturday 1:PM in Christiansborg Slotsplads. Last night, I heard that both Sacha and Oleg had put up installations in the city at various locations. At 8:30 AM the mood seems extremely purposeful and somewhat tense. It's clear in the USA & the conference, the battle lines are shaping up between the well-organized, corporate right and all these faced faced, earnestly lined friendly people working themselves to the bone for survival of the planet as we know and love it. A classic good guys bad guys and there will definitely be some losers.

Day 4 COP15 End of the day

While we worked in the Ethics Committee, we were mostly in a news bubble, drafting, editing and discussing. Tomorrow, back at the Bella Center (if they let us in), we will know more of where the issues are with the islands states and whether COP has resumed. This will all bear on the mood of reporters and how they receive the press kit, which has gone out.

By the evening, I was exhausted and it was pouring rain. I stopped at a hairdresser's to buy some conditioner and got into a long conversation with Eva, who runs the "Haircut," across from Oleg's side street and ended up letting her wash and blow dry my hair, which felt like blissful luxury. We chatted about COP, Bush, her last trip to NYC, where she ran the marathon in about 4.5 hours and outstripped her husband and dog walking. For about an hour, I felt human and relaxed in a way I haven't felt in weeks. When I got back to Oleg's, Suzanne still hadn't gone to the hospital. Oleg cooked us dinner and I helped clean up.

Tomorrow, the press conference begins at 9:30 AM, but because we don't know how they will decide to deal with the overage of observer status participants, we all plan to get there an hour earlier. It's been a long day and I'm headed for bed.

Day 5 Copenhagen Day 4 COP15 in the Ethics Committee at the Gentofle Hotel

In the Ethics Committee meeting I had to struggle with language. As an artist, I was thinking relatively simplistically: art is about human values/ quality of life and that is an ethical issue.

Don Brown, the leader of the group asked, how does "our" message differ than social justice and the thousands of folks talking about it now. And because a press conference is called for tomorrow, it has to be phrased within the text for Document 14. At the 2005 Nairobi COP a whitepaper was produced and now they want to produce another whitepaper. Allocation and trading are 2 of the foci. They asked us to state what struck us so far. I said, the discrepancy between human & corporate values.

Kyoto was about trust, they explained. Now the whole process on trial. So, the question is whether starting all over (framework questions) is the ethical issue. This relates to the Montreal COP (?! about which I know nothing). Environmental diplomacy is up for question. The person next to me has just said that what is in question is whether the market based approach works (in response to my question). Related questions are how does the burden get shared and from what sources and how allocated: "adaptation." So now I understand two words in this new context: allocation and adaptation.

It's very hard for me to follow this conversation. It's a group of about 15 people. Each phrase evokes associations and questions I'm trying to sort out. There's little chance to ask questions because they are under a deadline gun. I'm struggling to recall everything I can pertinent on their terms. So I lose key phrases in between.

Don says the unique hook is responsibilities, ie., as I suggested, to Tuvalu, et al, not narrow economic self-interest. I spent several hours helping to edit the press release and then clarifying adapation at lunch and after- which is really just who gets the $$ to deal with global warming, why and how. The editing process nails down the implications of language, phrasing and clarifying examples. Our final draft of the press release got worked on this afternoon by their PR person. The audience is initially the media to get them in the door and give them a more detailed paper, so every phrase is judged for whether it is both a good story and clear or whether it is backstory data. The pivotal point always comes back to how negotiating language can reflect a just approach to the problems, which then gets broken down into subsections, like water, etc. The reference document was 176 pages and wiggle room was a series of brief phrases in brackets taht mean it hasn't yet been ratified.

How to Be an Effective Part of COP

After the exhileration of demonstrations and the Fossil Awards, I met with Marilyn Averil and Gillian Bowser. Marilyn is a COP veteran. She explained to me how things work. How China didn't offer to cut emissions but rather a percentage of their emissions in relation to their Gross National Product, meaning they can increase their emissions by three times or more. She broke down what each country had offered based on knowing the language and history. It sounded bleak for Tuvalu and Kiribati and all the rest of us.

In the evening I went to dinner with the folks from the Ethics committee and asked them how artists could be part of COP. They asked me back why I thought artists deserved a place at the table? I replied because we are the glue that holds society together. They asked me why it was a COP issue? I answered because culture dissolves in disruption such as global warming will cause. They asked me why artists should be treated as any more disproportionately affected than any other group. I said, because we are the most marginalized and disenfranchised part of society now, but all of human life depends upon us. It is just unaknowledged, as slaves once were and women still are in many countries.

They clarified the legal, polticial and economic arguments to me that had to be made to prove that what I argued about art/the humanities is actually the case, because the United Nations is a legal entity. Artists/ humanists have all the pieces, we just need to put them together. Tomorrow, they invited me to their meeting and I will go and learn more.

Meanwhile, COP is slowly being closed off to NGOs, as we feared, because they permitted too many of us to register (and maybe they didn't enjoy the demonstrations as much as I did?). 34,000 are registered for a 15,000 capacity space. They have instructed us to only shown up if we have essential business. This week is the only week NGOs can participate in meetings. Next week is heads of state and then the meetings will be sealed off, altho side events will continue.

Day 4 Copenhagen, Day 3 COP15 NEWS FLASH!!!!!

To wild applause, from about 250 people who all seemed to have cameras, Tuvalu won the first ever "Ray" Fossil award for being a ray of light and insisting on a specific and binding agreement.

At the end, the Fossil folks did a cancan with the Tuvelo representative.

Haves and have Nots: Due Process at COP15

The African Theatre group last night told a story of a reindeer migrating to Africa because of the changing climate. Along the way, women are encountered, who manage the world very well despite difficulties, inc the difficulty of men who appear as gullible buffoons when offered money by slick corporations.

As I listen to the conference of parties (COP) negotiating about projects that will be jointly supported, I am thinking about a question Suzanne asked me a couple nights ago: how do they decide and negotiate? As I write, they are discussing how to protect forests and that hinges on the definition of forests. I had answered that it was a combination of human relationship, mandates from thier countries, rules and the mood of political opinion. There is no question in my mond that this group is being affected in it's procedures by the latter. The tenor of the conversations ahve changed since the morning. There seems a more conciliatory tone. Presumably it is no accident that delegates haven't yet returned at 5:PM.

Now, the first observer representative is addressing the conference. It is a business group representing, oil, gas, etc. They are asking for representation equivalent to nations. That was something predicted about ten years ago: that corporations would demand and take power equivalent to nations, which covertly, obviously, they already have. So maybe this is about "making (that power) things transparent." One of the interesting side political positioning stories is how various entities are using COP15 to extend individual agendas that have no direct bearing on the rule or issue under consideration but will ultimately have enormous impacts on global warming mitigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/science/earth/09cost.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th

This is a good description of the financial issues at stake. But I have to say the overall mood from poorer countries is anything but calmly accepting of the limited funds suggested. Their dignity, lives and lands are at stake.