The chocolate problem ...

I lobbied Hilary Benn earlier this year to stop spending taxpayers money on funding disasterous coal plants in Asia in the name of "development". He didn't budge, but he had his rhetoric justifying tying developing countries further into a carbon-dependent future down to a fine art.
Recently he got shifted to the environment portfolio. You can tell that he has not yet been there very long. At a speech to the local groups conference of Friends of the Earth last night, he was open and direct. But he was not as good in fielding difficult questions as he had become at DfID.
Particularly, he stumbled over the "chocolate problem". Asked whether the UK's government plans to set emission limits without including emissions from flying was like "going on a diet while continuing to eat chocolate", he suggested that that is indeed the government's plans. You can continue to eat chocolate, he claimed, as long as you make sure you do not eat other things so that you do not exceed your calories limit. Brilliant. Just do without all the fruit and potatoes and you can occasionally sneak into the sweets cupboard and gorge yourself. Sounds attractive. Only, this way to solve the "chocolate problem" would make you sick. Very sick. Nutrients and vitamins would be prominent only thourgh their basence in this special Hilary Benn diet ...
Now, I love chocolate and I plan to go on no diet in the forseeable future. But it is fairly obvious that Hilary Benn will have to think of a better excuse to not tackle run away emissions from flying. Let's hope it is better than his excuse for supporting dangerous, expensive and - as far as fighting climate change is concerned - outright useless nuclear power. For all he had to say on that is that "you have to look at all the arguments and then you need to look at the issue again". Sure. And then you need to realize that nuclear power is madness. - Come on, Hilary, you can do better than that!

Think of this next time you fill your tank ...

I took a day off on Saturday (ok, I guess most people take Saturday off anyway ... but hey). I went to the documenta, which I had last been to in 1997. I once again thought it was great. There were some fun and entertaining pieces. There was a nice buzz in a city that was over 90% destroyed after the second world war. There was a really good guide who with distance and irony, and yet,clearly felt commitment to art, explained even some of the less easily understood pieces really well. And there was a lot of unashamedly political art - which I have a soft spot for (if it isn't trite). One of the highlights for me were the pictures of George Osodi. He is documenting what oil consumption really means. He is showing the oil rich Niger Delta as you will not find it in a Shell PR brochure. He is showing the exploitation - of nature and people - that goes along with the production of oil.
I guess we all have moments and issues that grip us at some point and really move us. That change our life. That make us the kind of activists that we are. The death of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1997 and the plight of the Ogoni that he died for was one such struggle and moment for me. It gripped me. It made me unable to not act, to turn away. To forget, what impacts our daily fossil-fueled lives have.
It makes me sad, that ten years on, the destruction in the Delta continues - and only gets noticed in the developed world, when western oil workers are abducted. All the better, though, that Osodi's pictures are on show at the documenta. They certainly inspired me. May they make the plight of the Delta better known once again; and may they shame those who still refuse to admit the real price of oil ...

ECO therapy - with some effect?

It’s not easy to explain plainly what I and other civil society reps actually do for all the long hours we spend at international environmental negotiations. After a week in Vienna, I am not entirely sure where all the time has gone. All I know is that, yet again, I didn’t see Vienna - the metro and the street our hotel was on aside … The world of global climate talks is a world of rumour chasing, coffee drinking, constant huddles and meetings – with country delegations, with other NGOs, with the rest of the Greenpeace crowd. Press releases need to be discussed, drafted and then often enough redrafted as the negotiations have already moved on. People who are not at the talks but in national Greenpeace offices need to be kept informed of what’s going on – and motivated to do something, if it happens to be their government that is acting up. There is a fair amount of sitting in big windowless rooms listening to boring speeches (one country that shall remain nameless this week had the cheek to give the same presentation for the third time in the course of recent negotiations!). The challenge is to wake up again when something really outrageous happens – and to then react quickly. Like yesterday, when Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and Russia suddenly suggested that increasing the globe’s mean temperature by, say, 4 degrees would be acceptable. Mistaking the climate negotiations for a “who can be the most cynical” contest, they insisted that the option of microwaving the world should be alive on the climate negotiating table. Silly me, and I thought these negotiations were about protecting the climate – not killing it.

4 degrees may sound abstract. But the impacts of such a temperature hike are not. A 4 degree warmer world would eliminate most of the glaciers in the Alpine region (Switzerland), virtually destroy the entire Alpine flora of hundreds of species (New Zealand), cause massive degradation of permafrost regions and a major increase in droughts in main agricultural regions (Russia), risk major dislocation and damage due to sea level rise (Japan) and deliver major water resource losses and destruction of the arctic ecosystem and species (Canada). All in all, it wouldn’t be pretty …

One way in which we react to the follies of our governments at these international negotiations is through producing our own newsletter – ECO. ECO has a proud tradition – ECO was first produced at the first Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It is produced overnight for delegates to read in the morning – and a remarkable number of them can be seen doing just. As ECO is for delegates, the language is not that of the tabloids. It’s techy, policy wonkish -but it is always also tongue in cheek … Editing ECO is a licence to be sarcastic and indulge in black humour.

ECO is hard work. The two nights this week that I helped with editing it, I got to bed at 2am. But ECO is also therapy. ECO means sitting around with like-minded people from around the world, trying to find witty ways in which to put across our outrage and anger – and our hopes for what the negotiations could deliver. Editing ECO is a team effort and one that involves a lot of laughs as well as beer (as the above picture of fellow editor Red Constantino shows …). Who knows , may be reading ECO helped. For at least governments made a small step forward in Vienna today.

No time to waste - and see the sun

Vienna is beautiful, but the Austrian Centre Vienna - the conference centre where some 1000 delegates this week are negotiating on climate change - is not. For the rest of this week, I will be stuck inside, in non-descript rooms with no windows. At least this morning the sun was shining as we stood outside to welcome delegates with a balloon, a banner and a chocolate bar. The cholocate was a gift - but also a reminder that real progress on climate change commitments will need to be the result of this week in Vienna - if we are to avoid the Road to Hell. Climate delegates are used to being harassed (and indeed to being given gifts), of course; so the whole thing was a good-natured affair with people stopping for a chat and our 300 chocolates disappearing quickly. Let's hope the delegates remember what they need to do once they have finished their chocolates ...

Space is a battleground ...

I am not feeling great today (fighting a cold) so I was relaxing over a nice slice of pizza on the beautiful street I live in tonight. It was wonderful. The street is lively, yet there is little car traffic, so little noise. The excitement comes from the diverse people passing by. Tonight, for example, there was a cute student couple, a tiny chocolate-coloured girl (proving that Nietzsche was right: mixing races creates the highest beauty). There were teachers discussing their students and tourists enthralled at having found this little gem of a neighbourhood (good on them, but I hope there won't be too many more ;-)). Trees line the street and give the street an 'Allee-character'. So, I was just about to forget my cough and idealize my neighbourhood when the waitress in one of my favourite bars (of all places!), chased away a couple eating pizza - from the new, quirky pizza place that opened recently - on "their bench". How petty. How stupdid. How crap.
But space, of course, is always contested - and increasinly privatized. Whenever I walk through cities I know well, I bore my companions by recounting the mass killings of beautiful spaces that the last few years of rampant urban capitalism have sprung upon us. On Edinburgh, I could write a whole book of obituaries for cafes and pubs that I once loved and that have since been shut down or, perhaps worse, been turned into theme pubs and/or bought up by chains. In Berlin - as a visiting American colleague remarked over lunch yesterday - there are now Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks bloody everywhere. They didn't used to exit 5-10 years ago. (Worse, some of my friends even love them!)
Berlin is also getting more and more malls built. Most people now visiting Potsdamer Platz - including myself, often enough - are not their to marvel at Enzo Piano's architecture or at an urban space created (if in a corporate image) on the most famous 'no man's land' the Cold War era knew. No, they - we - are there to shop at the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden with piped in music and rents that ensure that only big chain stores can offer "choice" to us hapless consumers ...
But space - especially high quality public space - is a good worth fighting for. I was most recently reminded of this in Calgary - where non-corporate space is hard to find (and when you find it, usually run down). I missed it. The lack of places to sit, observe and linger quite simply depressed me!
Democracy needs places where democratic interaction can take place. Democracy - no matter how many lively debates and exchanges happen on the web - needs public space. Let's fight for it. Let's make creating livable, human spaces - our 'war'.
P.S. The picture is a detail of a funky bus at the Edinburgh Festival. The people running it were quite possibly spaced out, but the slogan is still cool.

Come on, murder a pint ...

I love the Caledonian Brewery of Edinburgh. They produce a fine organic ale, called Golden Promise, which is drinkable like a lager but has a pleasant bitter tinge. I love their '80' - probably the beer I drank most 'out on the town' when I was living in Edinburgh. And now, on the occasion of the Inspector Rebus novels turning 20, they have done me and all Rebus fans a favour and produced a special Rebus ale. What a fun idea. If you know Rebus, you will know he loves his pint. So this is a fitting tribute. Even better: After sampling it I can confirm that it is a very nice, fruity ale. I suspect, though, Rebus may find it a little too posh (he would add some whisky!). It's got a gingerly flavour to it - and certainly deserves to not just be an anniversary gimmick, but a long term addition to Caledonian's brewing range!

I am not Potter, but I am grateful for the Harry Potter hype!

It happened in 2005. I walked into the Hong Kong Greenpeace office for the first time and someone said: "Look, it's Harry Potter". I have no idea why. May be it was my glasses. May be it was a case of "all white Europeans looking alike" (just as many Europeans can't quite keep Asians apart). For better, or - in my humble opinion - worse, the name has stuck. In Asian Greenpeace offices, I am now referred to as Potter. I wish I had his magical powers! Aside from wiping out all memories of anyone ever referring to me as Harry, I would save the climate with the stroke of my wand. I could retire to my roof terrace ...
Back in the real world, I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night. I liked it, but I was not impressed with the ending. I expected Harry to survive. But to add a full last chapter about how he lives happily ever after and calls his kids after his parents, Dumbledore and Snape ... May be it's me, but I found it utterly unnecessary and unbearably cheeeeeeeesy. It was proof, if such proof was needed, that Harry Potter is a good read (mostly) - but it's quality can clearly not account for its historically unique popularity.
Despite this disappointing end and my personal grudge against being called Potter ... I am nonetheless a great fan of the Potter phenomenon. Not just because J.K. Rowling is very likeable and seems to have her heart in the right place. Harry Potter, I believe, will ultimately not be remembered for his Quidditch skills or his cute longing for Ginny, but for having introduced part of the internet generation to: the book (and a forest-destruction-free-book at that!).
When I bought the last Potter at Cafe Books in Canmore, I was told that at midnight the night before kids had quequed for hours. In this town of 10,000, over 200 people - mostly parents with kids - came out to give a mere book a pop star treatment (and similar things happened all around the world). I am biased, of course - I am the son of a librarian, after all - but to me books will always be special. Don't get me wrong: I clearly love the Internet. It is not an 'either you are for books or you are for modern technology' kind of dichotomy. But, I suspect, many kids would not have touched a book, if it had not been for the Harry Potter hype. Harry Potter has ensured that a whole generation of 'GameBoy kids' has experienced the wonder that comes from diving into a book for hours. In my book, that is the achievement that the marketing departments behind Harry's phenonmenal success should be most proud of! May more books get the Harry treatment and become pop stars! (And, on a different note, may publishers then have the guts to use those profits to also publish less hype-able material!)
P.S. The picture was taken at the Lego Discovery Centre in Berlin. A corporate space, for sure, but a fun one!