Tuvalu's ambassador, Ian Fry, pleaded with the UN assembly to save his country this weekend. He said it was "an irony of the modern world that the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. Congress," noting that climate change is the "greatest threat to humanity, ... the greatest threat to security." He got no response when the US ambassador spoke soon after:
The fifteenth Conference of the Parties, as many other very important gatherings are, should be known for what it is: just another place where the poor have to come begging for their lives while the wealthy make a big show of having been generous enough of their time to be present for this grimly polite supplication.
"We [are] here in Copenhagen to fight for our identity, for our culture, and for our very right to exist," she said tearfully. "All the hopes and dreams of my generation rest on Copenhagen."
As that Guardian article goes on to note, Wickham's comments were followed by very important people talking about the many reasons why nothing can be done to answer her. Hedegaard's response to the arrest of a small anachist contigent among the 100,000 or so peaceful protestors, was fascinating, saying that they didn't "have to use that kind of violence to be heard."
Well, fine. Granted. Maybe she should tell it to her own country's police forces, who detained hundreds of peaceful marchers on the ground for hours on a day when it started snowing not too long after sunset.
But seriously, wtf will it take to be heard? I don't know whether everyone's fresh out of ideas or if the jerks in power are just that deaf.
Will Hedegaard really listen to the 10 million people who signed the petition Wickham delivered to her, or the 99,000 people, give or take, who showed up peacefully with candles and signs and chants and a burning sense of urgency that brought them to Copenhagen in December where they were outside for hours in the freezing cold? Will the eminences of the G20 hear the church bells that rang 350 times today to call the world to climate justice? Will Gordon Brown and Barack Obama listen? Will the media listen? Will the haughty finance leaders who tell these presidents and ministers when they're allowed to sit down, stand up and break to scratch their bums listen to the people whose lives and futures they're destroying?
What will it take?
Because we're never going to get anywhere if industrialized and wealthy nations keep playing a destructive game of trying to get the other person to give more, first. Each nation must commit to do what's right, and they should stick to that because it would shame them to look back on this time and say that they did nothing to prevent all the suffering that's only at its beginning. They must look to find their national honor in the greatness of their souls and the depths of their humanity instead of the heights of their office towers.
If they won't do what's right, their citizens had better break through our creativity blocks to figure out a way to convince them that they can't ignore. Time is fleeting. Physics is unforgiving.
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