Signing Out

COP15 is over and I’m back home in New York.  Throughout the conference I tried to remain optimistic about how the conference was going to turn out, but in the end, I could not be any more disappointed with the outcome.  Do not even for a moment believe the mainstream media in the US when they tell you that the conference was a moderate success.  To the contrary, it was an absolute failure.  The agreement that was reached at COP15 is perhaps the weakest UN text ever to be drafted and sets the world back to a time when people still doubted that climate change even existed. Our survival was being negotiated and we pretty much missed the mark.  This video accurately depicts what happened.

In addition to the weak text that was drafted, another major development set the negotiations back: the fact that the public was almost completely excluded from the conference. I was able to obtain a state department pass for part, but most were unable to even get close to the Bella Center for the entire second week of the conference.  This violates the UN’s Aarhus Convention of 1998, which requires entitles the public to participate in environmental conferences.

Despite “Flopenhagen” I am truly blessed to have had this life-changing experience.  I think I learned more about myself these past two weeks than I have in my entire life.  And these were definitely the most emotional two weeks of my life, a daily roller coaster.

This is not intended to depress you, but rather just to tell you what actually occurred at COP15 because I don’t think the press is giving you the full story.  We must take these awful results and use them to motivate us forward in the fight for climate justice.  The climate crisis has this amazing ability to allow civilians, particularly young people, to put aside their differences and really fight for what they believe in.  We’re going to get a positive result on climate change soon, but until then let us rally together and fight not only for our future, but also for the future of generations to come. As my uncle Eric Hertz reminded me, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

In solidarity,

Rob Friedman