..the floor of the meeting area in Hall B at 9 o'clock at night. Perhaps 200 white chairs are haphazardly scattered amidst small round tables. The floor is littered with papers – magazines, advertisements for session talks, negotiation bulletins, pamphlettes – and garbage, paper cups, plastic cups, a browning apple core, used paper napkins stained with something red, a half eaten plate of food. It is deserted except for a few stragglers glued to their computers, exhausted but doggedly focused. Apparently we are here to save the planet.
...the fake bamboo forest in the centre of the main atrium. The din is incredible. An interview about the involvement of girl scouts in the fight against climate change is being conducted and played over the loudspeaker. Throngs of people with cell phones and blackberries hurry past as they leave one plenary to get to the other. They do not seem to notice the trees. A camera crew have sprawled their equipment across the two tables behind it and have wired themselves into their computers to plan their next scrum. Massive projections of deserts, coral reefs and tundra, perhaps 30 feet across and 20 feet high, move across the back wall while a crowd of people chatter as they wait to buy coffee and chocolate at the cafe. A lone man, a delegate from Thailand, is sitting with his back to it all, facing the bamboo, his socked feet resting on the small enclosure protecting the plastic foliage, his head resting on the back of his plastic chair.
...central Copenhagen at 7:30 am. The sky is bruised black and blue with thin streaky clouds that make it appear lighter than it is. A sickle moon hangs sharply in the cold haze. In front of me are several dozen people on bicycles. From behind all I see are their backs shrouded in grey and black wool, hair peeking out of wool hats. When the bike light turns green they become a constellation of twinkling red lights. Their rear lights are all powered by their pedals and flicker as they glide off down the street in front of me.
...the blond haired pleasant-faced middle-aged woman who sits beside me one morning and offers to buy me a cup of coffee. She works for a major multi-national corporation but used to be a lobbyist. She shows me pictures of her daughter – the one studying massage who emailed this morning to warn her that climate change might be a hoax and was worried her mother might be getting herself into something that was against her principles. We both wish her daughter was here. Apparently she needs to practice massage and we both could use one.
....the canal from the Frederiksborough crossing at night. A ring of blinking red lights encircles the the canal in both directions. They are too low to warn off airplanes, and too high to be traffic signals. If you followed the lights you would discover that they have been wound through the entire city. Copenhagen is tied together with a necklace of small independent blinking red lights at a height of 7 metres. 7 metres is the projected sealevel rise under some of the climate change projections. 7 metres towers over most of the city infrastructure. I stand below a light and feel the weight of 7 metres of water pressing down on me.
....a girl consoling a boy. Her hand is on his shoulder as they walk down the hall. His head is facing down. “It doesn't matter”, she says, “it won't do any good because he doesn't care anyway”. After awhile she adds, “I am realizing he isn't here to represent Canada, just industry”. The two of them are part of Canada's youth delegation and are leaving the morning briefing. The boy has just asked the representative of the Canadian delegation what kind of a world he thinks we would have in 2050 if all countries did what Canada is doing. He has been told that Canada is working co-operatively on a collaborative global effort and that it takes climate change seriously.
....three tall women standing in the wind on the flat marsh just outside Copenhagen. Their thin frames slice the horizon as they soar above me. Each woman is many times my height but is a bare suggestion of substance. They are made of thin metal wrapped in fabric and wind. I see behind them the red glow of a power plant in the distance. Lonely and strong, graceful and intimidatingly vulnerable they stride across the land. They are the dispossessed, ghosts of now, ghosts of the future.
But of course I don't have a camera. And even if I did I would lack the courage and the skill to take these pictures anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment