I’m in Copenhagen, Denmark right now for this.
It’s the final day of negotiations, and I don’t think any of us knew what to expect exactly. I know that we certainly didn’t expect that our leaders would magically & suddenly grow a conscience and throw traditional political deal-making protocol to the wind in favor of saving humanity. But maybe we dared to dream a bit . . . maybe we thought that our vigils, our protests, our actions, our pleas, the mountains of emails that have been pouring into our electeds’ inboxes that poor little interns have to sift through . . . maybe we thought some of that would help them aim a little higher, at least pretend to respect human life, no, ALL life, enough to make a real deal and save life on this planet. Maybe we thought the science would convince them.
While the final text has yet to emerge from COP15, all signs (including world leaders’ orations this morning) point to a treaty that will facilitate the impending apocalypse. Most notably, POTUS Barack Obama, once hoped to swoop in as a last-minute game-changer, stood in front of a microphone today to deliver a flat, uninspired speech confirming the US’s laughable carbon emissions targets: 17% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Perhaps out of embarrassment, he didn’t even bother providing the baseline year for those targets, but we’ll assume that it’s consistent with earlier reports – 2005.
For those of you whose eyelids are drooping at the numbers, I’ll sum it up quickly by saying that that we need to commit to reductions of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 to stabilize the climate and not threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.
So, when an hour later I received an email from Organizing for America, the group of dedicated organizers who brought you the Presidency of Barack Obama, I was a bit puzzled. Were they apologizing to me already?
They were not. They were sending me a holiday card. From the President. Who just told me through a live stream from the heavily guarded Bella Center that he’s like, totally okay with displacement, hunger, lack of water, resource wars, and death for millions of people on the planet.
“Happy Holidays, Persian Girl!” was shouted to me by groups of friendly Americans from around the country in a montage, before I was treated to a special appearance by the Big O himself, wishing me Happy Holidays & signing a card made out to me.
Possibly they’re wishing us happy holidays now because they know they may only have a few more years to do so before we’re dead of some climate change related affliction? Happy Holidays indeed.
[ Click here for a more positive take on COP15. ]
They probably had a nice holiday trip to Copenhagen. Whats left anyway with the deal getting no where! They have treated it as a big fat holiday and expect us to do the same!