It’s been another day of blogging, lobbying, meeting, eating, greeting, heating and finally: weeping.
Yes, honestly: Last night, I have been close to tears. Not tears of regret, not tears of sadness, but those that you press out of your ears, when you are in anger. I had got my stuff done, gave another two radio interviews, another streaming to German TV, made many phone and skype talls and tried to organise things back home in Berlin, being – quite frankly – too far away to keep an oversight about all those things happening at the same time. It had happened: Tuvalu had come out as the first country belonging to the SIDS (Small Island and Developing States) that would no longer just sit in the plenary and listen to the words of delegates reiterating what they have said over and over again in the past couple of years during all those different intercessionals, COPs, meetings, informals and even more informal informals. Tuvalu stood up, raised its voice and demanded a legally binding treaty – or an interruption of the talks if that was not even considered.
It had been an amazing and eventful day. I came out of the Bella Center, exhausted, but happy. And ran straight into a girl with a huge sign hanging around her neck: “You want a future for this earth? Go nuclear!”. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but thought it actually was a joke, an ironic gesture to lampoon Climatesceptics. But, I was proven wrong: Indeed, she was serious about this. And not only this. She also mentioned all the other typical wannabe arguments of Sceptics… oh gosh, while writing this, I can already anticipate all those possible comments below this blog that I actually don’t want to give the room to.
But on the other hand, it just strikes me 1) how many of these guys still exist and really believe they have a point and 2) how tempting it can be for someone being inside this process for half a year now to at least try to convince them that they are on the wrong track.
Just today, there was another chance to do so… on Facebook, another channel that invites people to comment, well – that’s the good and the bad side of Social Media at the same time, I guess. It took me about 1,5 hours to deliberately answer comments of a friend of friend, who questioned science due to the “Climategate-Scandal” and hence also questioned our ambitions to mobilise people back home to push their respective governments to cut carbon emissions in a more ambitious manner.
Not only would CO2 not be dangerous for us, not only would global warming not be made by humans, but even better than that: Supposedly, there was a huge conspiracy behind all this, trying to force poor countries into even more poverty by making them cut CO2 that they so urgently need to survive (develop, that is).
I have no words for this. I have tried, but I cannot be appreciative of this. I do welcome other viewpoints and constructive criticism. But the way they argue reminds me of all the other conspiracy theories. Those around September 11th, those around cigarettes not causing cancer. It scares me. It scares me that it is actually possible to get attention with this. And above all, it worries me that I have been drawn into wasting my time on this. I will therefore not go into the details once more.
I will not try to disprove anyone here. I will just leave this post as it stands – a personal note about personal feelings that touched my heart and mind when being confronted with this weird species of deniers. In Kopenhagen beraten die Vereinten Nationen derzeit über ein globales Klimaschutzabkommen. Im Rahmen der Aktion Adopt a negotiator bloggt Ole Seidenberg live von den Verhandlungen.
In Kopenhagen beraten die Vereinten Nationen derzeit über ein globales Klimaschutzabkommen. Im Rahmen der Aktion Adopt a negotiator bloggt Ole Seidenberg live von den Verhandlungen. Alle Beiträge von Ole kannst du hier lesen. Du willst dich für ein faires Klimaschutzabkommen stark machen? Bei TckTckTck.org findest du viele Möglichkeiten, wie du dich jetzt engagieren kannst. RESET ist offizieller Partner von TckTckTck.
