Missing 350: Signing up for a catastrophe

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

[Cross-posted from dirtblog]

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed speaking to a crowd in Copenhagen this week

I’ve been sitting all day in an amazing media hub (and bar) that tcktcktck has set up here called the Fresh Air Centre, watching journalists and bloggers and UN spokespeople come in and out. I’ve been editing stories for Project Survival Media and youthclimate.org, trying to get the word out about the events we’ve been locked out of inside the Bella Center. And I was sitting here when someone announced a report had leaked from the UN that says the current commitments are going to put us on track for 3 degrees global temperature rise, and 550 ppm of CO2.

It’s hard to explain how much of a disaster it could be if this is the agreement the leaders sign tomorrow. An NGO delegate from Peru (I think, although it might have been somewhere else in the Andes) sat in here today telling us about the flooding the mountainous regions are receiving from the melting glaciers. And how people’s entire livelihoods are threatened by the rapid disappearing of their water source. This morning I read an interview with two kids from Nunavut, where Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average, and they talked about how permafrost melt in their town has been so bad it’s destroyed the only bridge connecting its two sides. And of course there’s President Nasheed.

Mohamed Nasheed, the president of Maldives, has emerged as one of the true heroes of this conference. The countries arguing for targets based on science and justice here have, not surprisingly, been all from the global south. Not surprising, because while they’re responsible for a fraction of the mess we’re in, they’re suffering, and are going to suffer, the overwhelming majority of the effects. Nasheed has been part of the 350 movement to bring back atmospheric CO2 levels to 350 parts per million, to keep nations like his from literally disappearing. If there are two things you do today, you need to 1) watch the video above and 2) call your MP, and tell them how angry and embarrassed you are that Canada is not doing its part to meet this goal. You can find the text of his talk here.

He talks about being in prison four years ago, fighting for his country’s independence. He talks about how there were times when he felt like the doubters were right, that they would never be free. And how while the dictatorship “had the guns, bombs and tanks… we had no weapons other than the power of our words.” That’s what they have now. (And the moral authority of committing to becoming the first carbon-neutral nation in a decade). It is so important that they win. If sea level rise doesn’t completely drown out the Maldives, ocean flooding might still ruin their freshwater sources. Someone from Bangladesh asked him today what he thought about his people needing to migrate. He said,“In terms of migration… I can move. But you can’t take all the butterflies. You can’t take the language, you can’t take the culture, you can’t take the songs, you can’t take the colour and you can’t take everything that is you.”

Now you know why it matters that the draft agreement commits to completely insufficient goals. It’s great that the US is going to contribute to a $100 billion climate mitigation and adaptation fund by 2020, even if the standoff with China over transparent spending of this money is a distraction here. I was so happy when I heard Hillary say that this morning. But it’s nowhere near enough. According to the Guardian, the UK-commissioned Stern review says these kind of targets mean up to 170 million more people become vulnerable to severe coastal flooding, and over half a billion more at risk of hunger. It’s important that tomorrow our leaders agree not to sign onto a bad deal. I’m convinced now. A bad deal tomorrow, locking us into these kinds of targets, is worse than a good deal in six months or a year.

It’s important to seal the deal. But not this one. We need to talk about what comes after Copenhagen. We need to keep the momentum going.

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Faces for climate justice

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

A slideshow from tonight’s vigil in Copenhagen, urging world leaders to rise to the historic occasion and sign a real deal for climate justice.

(Photo credit: Kris Krug)

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A Concerned and Disappointed Young Canadian

By madelinekovacs on December 17, 2009

stopsignAs a concerned Canadian, I can’t help but feel embarrassed by the Canadian government’s depressing performance in Copenhagen and in climate issues in general.

Canada’s federal target is 3 per cent below 1990’s level by 2020, equivalent to 20 per cent less than 2006’s level, a target wholly inadequate to address the demands of science and justice that the climate crisis now presents. I am sad to say that Canada has also failed to take a leading role at the talks, instead actually presenting one of the major roadblocks to a fair and legally binding deal. (And all of this is not to mention the public shaming the Canadian delegation received at the hands of the Yes Men).

Why is my government’s performance so troublesome to me? Having spent two weeks in the Arctic this summer, I experienced the land, so far distanced from the stereotypical images of the Arctic I had imagined pre-expedition. The image of snow, ice and polar bears is one of rapid decline. With frightening predictions that polar ice will be non-existent within 30 years, this is no longer an issue we can ignore.

On my expedition this summer, the drastic changes occurring in the North became particularly evident during our hike to the Arctic Circle through Auyuittuq National Park – which means “the land that never melts” – (near Pangnirtung). I had mentally prepared myself for snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Although we crossed frozen rivers that were run-off from the glaciers we could barely see at the tops of mountains, this was as close to snow as we could get.

Seeing this beautiful but so unexpected land was a huge wake-up call. Getting sunburned swimming at the Arctic Circle was my breaking point. How can we continue to watch our world melt away? Having talked to the Elders and the children in Pangnirtung, we saw the unbearable effects of climate change, and could see how climate change is no longer just an environmental issue but also an issue of a way of life, of traditions and of culture.

Canada is known as a promoter of cultures, a peaceful and welcoming country, but with our government’s unwillingness to protect its own citizens, can we still live up to this reputation? The people of the North play such a vital role in our country and we should be taking what’s happening in the poles as a warning beacon as to what will happen in the rest of the world.

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Vigil at the Twilight of Copenhagen

By AmyDewan on December 17, 2009

Clayton from the Indigenous caucus performing at vigil, photo by Kris Krug

Clayton from the Indigenous caucus performing at vigil, photo by Kris Krug

I just came back from an earth-shaking vigil tonight in Copenhagen. This is the twilight of my time here– with only one day left in the conference, nothing seemed to come of it. It has seemed to fail. Many of us organizers have also started to lose hope that any fair and binding agreement will come out of this process.

Yesterday, I witnessed my good friend, Joshua Kahn-Russel of the Rainforest Action Network, get bludgeoned in the face by police officers. He, along with the rest of us, weren’t trying to get into the Bella Center. We weren’t compromising the safety of World leaders inside. We just wanted to access the street across the bridge, where those who could not get into the center were waiting for us. Where we would have converged, we were going to hold a “People’s Assembly,” to create the kind of treaty that we would have wanted to come from our leaders.

But, the police would not let us cross that bridge. We attempted to negotiate with them. They told us that if we were to pass, we would risk arrest down the line. We accepted this, and attempted to walk past them. But, they blocked the way, and started beating those they could reach. After a while of scuffling, we started to retreat. As we did, they circled around the activists in the front, trapping them. They started to wail down on them gratuitously.

This is when the conference rules stopped becoming about “protecting the safety of those inside the Bella Center,” but more about preserving power. In a larger sense, I think it showed how scared the elites are of us: They simply would not let us assemble, even though at this point we were far from the center.

After half of the public transportation shut down to impede Copenhagen’s visitors without private limos to access the center, we have escalated our tactics. Not with violence, but with peace.

This is why I fasted today. More generally, like most of those fasting today with me, it was to fast in solidarity with those who can not access food. This is not only due to climate change in itself, but the corrupt food system, which is making it more and more difficult for people on both sides of the equation to find something nourishing to their bodies in the midst of “development.”

But I also fasted because as an “observer” here at Copenhagen, I had run out of ideas. Nothing else seemed important enough or effective enough to do at this juncture.

The police have attempted to take away our rights. The city and the UN process has taken away our access, barring us from the process. But this in itself says something. It shows they are threatened, that they are scared, and that we are a voice to be reckoned with.

The failure of Copenhagen, like what was said at the vigil, is not a complete failure. They have not won. We have succeeded in shifting the power so that those vulnerable to the decisions of the rich and powerful have been elevated: this time their voice was heard by the world, loud and clear. People like President Mohammud Nasheed of the Maldives have helped strengthen the youth movement in this way, by lending us his voice and giving us hope in the possibility of leadership.

Copenhagen may be a failure, but if we can keep our strength up until the end, we will have gained some ground in this battle for humanity. My love and gratitude goes out to everyone that is here with me, and all over the world, striving everyday to make it a better place.

(Photo credit: Kris Krug)

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Charismatic Megafauna

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

by David G Matyas

“I think it might be illegal to have a climate change presentation without a drowning polar bear.” It was day two of the Development and Climate Change side event and behind the young academic from the University of Hawaii, a giant image of a polar bear floating on a tiny chunk of ice materialized on the screen. A “charismatic megafauna,” she called it with irony in her voice. Beside her on the panel, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, calmly made a note.

It was August of 2007 when I first had the privilege of hearing Sheila Watt-Cloutier speak. I was on Baffin Island in the Eastern Canadian Arctic working with youth concerned about climate change and she gave us a keynote address. Set to the backdrop of the Sylvia Grinnell River, where a fisherman pulled Arctic char from the water, the beauty of the landscape was only surpassed by the grandeur of Watt-Cloutier’s words. Though the basement studio at the Copenhagen Koncerthuse was somewhat less majestic than the park in Iqaluit, the words were no less inspiring.

“In the Arctic,” she said, “we don’t talk about the polar bears.” It was a phrase I’d heard her say before and one that moved me then as it does now. “In the Arctic, we talk about the people.”

It’s a message that haunts those who hear it. You see it resounding in each video clip of melting glaciers and each powerpoint presentation with a polar bear image. You hear it in radio programs and podcast and read it in books on climate change and headlines about endangered species. It is the message that the Arctic is not a wild, uninhabited place, with threatened animals, but a lived environment with threatened communities and people. In Kimmirut and Pangnirtung, hunters are facing unpredictable weather and dangerous conditions on the water. Across the Northwest Territories, ice roads, the arteries of Arctic transportation are melting, further isolating remote settlements. In Tuktoyaktuk, the community is being washed away by rising sea levels and an eroding coastline.

This is the face of climate change. This is the species that is affected by a warming planet. We are the charismatic megafauna.

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Facing the future at Development and Climate Days

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

by David G Matyas

Two metro stops from the official COP15 conference, away from the debates over degrees and parts per million, is a side event with a humbler objective. Far from discussions of what an “acceptable” level of warming means on paper, participants in this basement studio at the Copenhagen Koncerthuse are trying to manage what 0.7 degrees already feels like – what 2 degrees will look like on the ground. In these halls, there’s no such thing as “business as usual.” In these halls business is already unusual and even with a “best case scenario,” things are about to get a lot worse. Welcome to the Development and Climate Days.

Founded at COP8 in Delhi, this side event has gained relevance and importance over the years, expanding from one to four days. Bringing together individuals and organizations already attending the official conference, it broaches issues like justice, humanitarian relief and poverty. For the participants at this event, and the people they represent, waiting is not an option: Climate change is here and adaptation is now. In Nepal and Uganda, India and Tuvalu, no scientist is needed to tell the people that their environment is changing. As Atiq Rahman, founder of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, said on the third day of the event, “In Bangladesh, climate change has a taste. It tastes of salt.”

The immediacy of climate change in these regions makes the questions discussed at this side event sharply practical. How do we finance necessary changes? How can Community Based Adaptation be best fostered and supported? How can we involve children in the adaptation process? They are questions that those in the business of development have struggled with for decades, questions that are built on shaky foundations and with weak machinery. But even if we manage to find good answers to these questions, there is still a gap. There is still a space between where adaptation takes us and how far warming requires us to go.

Ideally, with effective adaptation and ambitious reduction targets, the size of this gap can be diminished. The number of people that slip through the cracks can be… minimized. In a poorer situation, however, with weak reduction targets and mis-adaptation, a fissure could emerge of frightening proportions. It is frightening because it will not only be lives that are lost, not only land that disappears. On the last day of the Development and Climate Days, President Nasheed of the Maldives received a question on what he thought of migration. A young man from Bangladesh, amongst the long, complex and at times verbose questions asked quite simply, “What do you think of migration?” President Nasheed gave the following response:

“In terms of migration… I can move. But you can’t take all the butterflies. You can’t take the language, you can’t take the culture, you can’t take the songs, you can’t take the colour and you can’t take everything that is you.”

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Climate change policy has a place in election agendas

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

by Pratik Mandrekar

Developing countries have a number of key issues to deal with in every election, encompassing the basic amenities like drinking water, electricity, public transport, employment opportunities, sanitation and garbage disposal.  Frequent protests against industrial setups like the case of the Tata Nano (the world’s cheapest car) in Singur, West Bengal or the case of a polluting copper recycling plant in Goa are detrimental to the growth of the industry as well as the environment. However, in a democratic setup like India’s, climate change policies can be very well incorporated in election agendas as profitable business models beneficial to citizens, industrial development and the environment.

A domestic garbage dump in town, Margao, India (Photo credit: Pratik Mandrekar)

A domestic garbage dump in town, Margao, India (Photo credit: Pratik Mandrekar)

As has been demonstrated by the proceedings of the COP 15 climate talks, no single state is willing to take responsibility for mitigating climate change. The problem here is in believing the conventional wisdom that climate change control policies will always cost more than existing technologies, and essentially are equivalent to a large scale subsidy that would burden the state exchequer. Conventional wisdom need not always be right.

Consider this: venture capitalists have been investing in green tech companies at a rate which has made it the third largest investment class in India. There are a large number of companies in the private sector who are making (or saving, as you may see it) a lot of money from going green.  Incorporating these changes into everyday lives of citizens is something that our elected representatives can achieve. Several initiatives in this direction, ranging from using >ICT to minimize travel costs and its related environmental offsets to using solar powered musical instruments are not only innovative ways to get attention, but also sound economics. A lot of movement in this direction has taken place in India too, many of it with support from the government. It’s time this moves from being an occasional exception to an everyday phenomenon discussed along the same lines as garbage disposal, unemployment and public transport.

The problems of land sustainability and employment for people living in lands where unpredictable monsoons and other activities have rendered them unsuitable for cultivation can be sorted by using the land for biofuel production. Cleanstar uses women’s groups, idle unsuitable land and technology to grow hardy species of trees to yield inedible oil for biofuel in automobiles and seedcakes for biofertilizers and biogas. The phasing out of CFCs harmful to the ozone layer (which was one of the goals of the Kyoto Protocol) meant new innovative techniques for heating and cooling needed to be invented. Unidyne is a company that now showcases how environmental sustainability can be a very profitable business model, too. ARTI-INDIA has a working project that coverts our country’s usual organic wastes into charcoal, while Ankur Scientific is another leading company in biomass gasification –  using solid wastes to produce gas for electrification and household consumption.  In the transportation sector, several companies like Eko Vehicles are producing excellent vehicles on all scales that are extremely cost efficient and environmental friendly. Water desalination, solar thermal energy generation and using soft power for logistics and automation in efficient grid and energy utility management are growing areas where government can effectively use its capabilities to consult with different industrial sectors.

The policy part of climate change and environmental sustainability has been debated upon, and several frameworks like the Union Government’s National Missions on Climate Change have been adopted.  However the real change will only come when solutions like the ones elaborated in the earlier paragraph are implemented as enablers for the key development issues. Himachal Pradesh, an Indian state in the Himalayas, has adopted and implemented several such measures which include:

  • Banning of plastic carry bags, which have been replaced with local alternatives.
  • Strengthened management of municipal solid wastes.
  • Co-processing of plastic waste in cement kilns and use of plastic waste in road construction.
  • Rain water harvesting in all buildings, energy auditing and harnessing revenues through Carbon credit sales on the Mid-Himalayan Watershed project.

This clearly shows the feasibility of incorporating climate change policy as a solution to existing problems, rather than treating it as an additional burden. Also, e-waste like mobile phones which are exponentially growing in numbers in India can be an excellent opportunity for revenue generation through recycling of the precious metals, retrofitting for use in disaster management or simply reuse. Recycling 1 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 185 million households in the US, save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials including precious metals like (Tantalum-Niobium) whose extraction has led to the exploitation of Congo in Africa.

We need politicians who would think like the managers of the green tech companies and understand both the need and the benefits of incorporating strategies like the ones described here to deal with the everyday problems of their electorate – which, not incidentally, would at the same time ensure long-term environmental and climate sustainability. The discussions of the foremost leaders in the world may not be able to reach a conclusion in Copenhagen. Clearly, though, a distributed global strategy in every part of the world, which accepts climate change as an interesting business opportunity that would bring welfare to its state, would do the world a whole lot of good and help make better use of the funds pledged at the summit.

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How can you decide about us without us?

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

This is an empty room. Why is it empty, and why does it matter? Well, between the coat check and any of the actual meeting rooms in the Bella Center where all the COP15 negotiations are taking place, you have to walk through this arcade. It’s where NGOs and other civil society organizations set up booths with information, where Avaaz gave out the Daily Fossil award, that kind of thing. Not today, though.

Civil society groups have played a crucial role in advocating for a fair, ambitious and binding deal from these talks. As observers, they can be invaluable in making sure our representatives are responding seriously to the gravity of the climate crisis. And now they’re getting shut out almost entirely from the final stages of these negotiations.

Yesterday, youth in the Bella Center staged a sit-in to demand negotiators listen to the more than 11 million voices that have signed the tcktcktck petition to get a real deal. Today, they’re responding the silencing of civil society groups inside. This is what it looks like when our voices are silenced.

Without us from Sébastien Duyck on Vimeo.

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Go Push, Go

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 17, 2009

by Sarabjeet Singh

Yesterday was a lucky day for me at the Bella Center. I met “Push,” or Pushpanath Krishnamurthy, who has walked all the way from his home at Oxford in the UK to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, to show his solidarity and support to the struggle against climate change. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with him and interview him.

Sarabjeet Singh: What do you do and how did this idea come to you?

Pushpanath Krishnamurthy: I am Climate Change Campaigner with Oxfam ,and I strongly believe that this is the time to act and do something about climate change. I was willing to do a direct action and realized that a walk is the most carbon neutral thing one can do. And here I am! It took me about 20 days to reach here and I have thoroughly enjoyed this adventure.

SS: Why climate change?

PK: Well, during my visit to India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and a couple of African countries, I witnessed the number of ecological problems that climate change has caused. In the coastal areas of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in India, the rise in sea levels has made the agricultural land brackish. As a result,, farmers have started shrimp farming which has a lot of bad side effects. Even the paddy cultivation is completely under threat and as you know, we have been witnessing a growing number of farmer suicides in the past few years. The African countries have caused the least problems but are among the first, worst and hardest hit.

SS: What inspires you to work for climate change?

PK: I am a Gandhian follower, and believe the spirit of standing up when you something unjust happening is the most noble thing to do.

SS: Tell us something about how you planned your trip. How did you gather support, and what were the problems that you faced?

PK: I contacted a few colleagues at Oxfam and some friends from India. Since I am not very familiar with using computers, one of my friends helped plan my trip. I got a lot of support from my wife and children, who are also here with me. They too have walked a few legs of the journey with me. I began my journey on November 16th from Oxford along with David Bryer (ex-Director of Oxfam) and a musician. I reached Harwich (140 miles from Oxford) on November 27th , took a ferry, landed on Esberg (on the Danish coast) and walked another 16 days to reach Copenhagen on December 13th. On the way, I was carrying no food with me, to express solidarity with hundreds of people, who have been affected by drought and floods, and I was eating only when I was offered a meal from local people.

SS: Would you like to tell us something else and do you have a message for the youth?

PK: I would like all of you to visit my website, www.gopushgo.com. Another thing I forgot to mention was that my brother, Krishna Raga, recently released a music album called, “Earth Depressed,” dedicated to the environment. As far as a message is concerned, I am really glad that the youth are raising their voice here and I hope that my campaign will help contribute to the global movement against climate change.

(Originally posted on whatswiththeclimate.org)

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Groups take to the streets to protest exclusion from COP15

By Chris Chang-Yen Phillips on December 16, 2009

Protest leaders advance on the Bella Center (Photo credit: Amy Dewan)

Protest leaders advance on the Bella Center (Photo credit: Amy Dewan)

Tensions were rising inside and outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen today, with a demonstration and sit-in to protest the exclusion of developing countries and civil society from COP15 climate negotiations. Demonstrators marched on the conference center, where high-level talks are now beginning, demanding “no decisions about us without us.” They were planning to meet with hundreds of delegates from inside the talks to hold a “People’s Assembly” together outside. Organizers said they were aiming to come up with alternative agreements to those being discussed by negotiators, which many feel are neither ambitious nor inclusive enough. Instead, two NGOs arrived this morning and found their accreditation revoked, leading some inside to stage a dramatic sit-in.

Protesters, mostly NGOs and other civil society members who were previously accredited, were accompanied by police along the march to the Bella Center, but were warned we’d be arrested if they tried to enter. When the crowd pushed forward, police started pepper spray the crowd. When people within the crowd tried to back up, they were beaten with batons from both directions, and several people were arrested and hoisted into vans. At least one person was beaten down after climbing a van. The last I saw, things were at a standoff, with police waiting on either side of the hundreds of protesters that still remained after a foiled attempt to cross the stream in front of the center with an inflatable raft.

On the other side, those few NGO members who were allowed inside staged a walk-out in solidarity. They were to meet with those outside of the Conference, to have a “People’s Assembly.” However, those marching from the Bella Center were barred from entering the street by police. They blocked everyone on a small bridge. As marchers tried to negotiate with them, they seemed to reach an agreement. They told those part of the walk-out that they could advance, but they risked arrest by the police down the line. They decided to take the consequences, but as they attempted to advance through the police barrier, the police failed to move aside and instead bludgeoned the activists. As some in the back realized what had started to happen and retreated, the police created a circle around those still trapped on the bridge. They continued to beat them for a few minutes, and then finally let people go. They continued to block the bridge and the march was forced to find another direction to those standing outside, on public property.

Treehugger has reported that as we were seeing this outside, Friends of the Earth leader Nnimmo Bassey was leading a sit-in in the entrance lobby of the center to protest the revoking of accreditation for his group and Avaaz. No clear explanation has been offered for the revocation, though UN officials reportedly alternately said they presented a security risk and that there was no room.

But it’s important that the meaning of today’s events don’t get lost. As the negotiations move into their final days, many have been frustrated by the huge reductions in the number of badges the UN is giving out to participate inside. As a member of one of the civil society groups frustrated by the move, I joined the march of between 2 and 3000 people one journalist estimated the crowd at. Through thick wet flakes of snow, organizers from the Climate Justice Network and Climate Justice Action groups joined representatives of the Via Campesina landless workers movement to demand their voices be heard, under the banner “Reclaim Power.”

There are definite parallels between the groups’ grievances. Sharon Tan, a youth observer attending with a group named Syinc from Singapore, camped out all through Monday and into Tuesday night without being let in. She says the presence of young civil society members is important for both them and negotiators. “When we attended the plenary last week,” she says, “at least we were aware of developments. My purpose here is mainly for public education back home. But being able to take part in actions on the side in the center helps remind everyone who they’re there for.”

Many countries’ representatives are also feeling like their voices are being ignored. Industrialized countries have not shown a willingness to commit to the deep emissions cuts being demanded by developing nations. Developing countries have shown support for the $10 billion fast-track financing for climate change mitigation and adaption in the, but say it falls far short of the climate debt owed to them by the industrialized countries who have been responsible for most of the carbon emissions contributing to climate change. Small island nations like the Maldives, threatened with being submerged by sea level rise, have been especially vocal in stating that these issues are a matter of survival.

As heads of state and ministers begin to arrive from over 120 countries, it remains to be seen how the gulf between the many different positions being discussed will be resolved.

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