So that Friday of Fridays I squeezed a lot more living into the one day than I usually do in a week. As a result I’m still trying to make sense of it all, but rather than let my thoughts slowly marinate I’ll throw down what I can onto the blog and direct you to a far more eloquent blogger who still has grip of articulation.

9 am outside the Bella Centre shaving my head in solidarity with those who will lose their lives in what we dubbed “Climate Shame”. The complete lack of justice to those least responsible and the way the voices of the poor in the world were completely closed out of the conference showed that needed to be a new start to the negotiations. To symbolise this over 20 people shaved their head to call on the government officials to feel shame in how they’ve proceeded and take a new look at how their system is run.
I held up a placard saying:

system change not climate change

10 am Back in the warehouse/art gallery Oksnehallen that has been converted to NGO use to write and blog about the event.

11 am Work on the closing speech to plenary from the International Youth Climate Movement

12 pm Work on press releasing the articles from youth inside the Bella Centre. Watching live proceeding from the Bella Centre. Very underwhelmed by Obama’s speech, so wishy-washy and no binding targets

1pm Attended a closing speech of Naomi Klein to the Klimaforum – the alternative “people’s summit”. Here she likened disagreement on tech transfer to the denial of ART medication to HIV/AIDS sufferers in Sub-saharan Africa
I really liked this analogy. Another term that was bandied around was “Benign Genocide” – harsh but fair summing up of how the Minority World is standing by and not doing enough about climate change to save those in the Majority World. One person asked would it be the same if Australia was sinking beneath sea-level rise?

4 pm Held a vigil for climate change – held torches that spelt out Climate Shame – must find the footage and put it up on the net.

5pm Watched the speech I helped write being read out by Juan Carlos a peruvian youth in very impassioned terms. Started feeling a huge level of frustration build in me that hadn’t been there before.

Said goodbye to a few Irish friends who were getting the bus back to Ireland and so departing that day.

Headed back home and came back to Oksnehallen to have a closing party, which turned into more watching plenary and eventually Obama and his woeful speech which is seriously lacking in mainstream media – I wasn’t taking notes so I was hoping there would be a transcript on the net – there probably is by the time you read this, but at the time I write this there was little except the blog linked below.

He basically hummed and hawed through a speech holding up a flimsy piece of paper that he had got through side-lining the UN process and meeting with a few big players and got what amounted to nothing – and then at the end said “See you on the plane!” The irony of this statement cause the crowd gathered around the screen to laugh and boo in equal measure – Obama realised his gaff and started to dig deeper by throwing out statements about non-legally binding and countries appendices, and basically showed he hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

I’m sorry but if the world’s most high handed nation can’t get its act together for the Copenhagen talks and spends all their working time on health care so that they can’t commit to anything before Copenhagen, then shame on them. I found it incredibly hard to swallow that Obama’s hands were tied. We simply don’t have the time for this. As the Papua New Guinean delegate said in Bali and which Obama quoted (misquoted), “if you’re not here to lead then get out of the way”.

Ok-rant over – I just needed to somehow make sense of the lack of anything to come out of what has in effect been a conference on “saving the world” – I can’t put this strongly enough, and yet politicians are treating it like a political football….

Ok – rant really over this time.

On the positive side, I’ve had a huge education in the the far-reaching nature of Climate Justice which will add to my role in Presentation Ireland, and the consolidation of the major NGO’s in their action on this will remain after the conference. In the youth movement alone there’s been a huge level of professionality while still maintaining their role as the moral stakeholders and leading protests, such as the one I was involved in this morning – I’ve carefully chosen my protests though so as to make sure what I do is in line with Presentation Ireland. Also too because my sister ended up in the wrong protest at the wrong time years ago, but that’s a story to relate another day.

In Ireland ten years ago, the environmental and development NGO’s barely knew of eachother, nowadays they sit across tables on coalitions because of climate change’s nature and impacts.

The movement to sort out Climate Change is growing and the grassroots are getting deeper and more far-reaching, so if the governments aren’t willing to act, then like the Papua New Guinea leader said – get out of the way and let community organisations, youth organisations and all the other civil society organisations, whose voices were effectively silenced in the last few days when less than 1.5% of them were allowed in negotiations on Thursday and Friday, show you what they can and are capable of doing to help eachother out. Because as I referred to at the start of my blog on this conference, and to paraphrase the representative of the world’s churches and faiths who spoke to the closing plenary that Friday

It all comes back to love and showing love – love for each other and love for the planet

So here’s the link to a more articulate blog than mine – with pictures!!!

I’m sorry if my post isn’t the most cogent or tends to resemble a rant every now and again but it’s been a rollercoaster ride of two weeks and hopefully with a few days to sort my head I’ll make sense of what happens next, because one thing I’m sure of, is that take home message from Copenhagen isn’t that “we tried and failed, because many weren’t allowed to try and many voices were not heard, so to say we tried and failed is extremely demobilising” instead we should focus on making sure our voices can’t be ignored and raising them higher and leading by example!!!

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