I was in Bali some weeks ago with a small group taking part in the Global Day of Action rally on Dec. 8, during the UN climate change conference (UNFCCC).
Two of us were past the half-century mark; the last time we had been part of anything remotely protest-like was some three decades earlier, during our University days of peace, love and barefoot rebellion. The others, being much younger, were blase'; they couldn't quite see why we were flipping off the walls like a couple of flubber balls on steroids.
While the rally itself was disappointing, with around 2000 protesters stuck in a heavily policed quadrangle abutting the Governor's office due to security concerns, there was some media coverage. For me personally, the high point was when somebody mistook me for Vandana Shiva, India's foremost crusader for biodiversity and inspired opponent of Monsantification (genetic engineering).
But back to the real reason we were there: the rally. We wore costumes designed by Ann Wizer of XSProject, made from non-biodegradable plastic packaging; the sort used for washing-up liquid and detergent pouches, which end up clogging landfills forever -- because plastic never dies. We made a wildly colorful statement on that broiling Bali afternoon as we proceeded to march, or rather, shuffle and wilt, melting into plastic-covered puddles. We were in good company; the group ahead of us was Greenpeace. Their flagship, the SV Rainbow Warrior, had sailed into Benoa Harbor the previous day, to a rousing reception by a flotilla of Balinese fishing boats.
While we're on the subject of plastic, however, can anyone tell me why everything manmade is designed to outlive us by at least four or five lifetimes? Plastic is immortal; it simply does not decompose. Not now, not ever. Why haven't we taken a lesson from nature (which is full of inspired examples of sterile and hygienic 100% organic packaging) and developed bio-degradable alternatives yet? Take bananas, the original single-serve natural snack food. You eat the banana, you compost the peel. How cool is that? I mean, if we can shoot satellites into the zorgosphere, surely we can devise intelligent packaging that's safe for humans and the environment, instead of littering the planet with plastic, aluminum cans and Styrofoam, all of which will outlive us by several centuries?
To get back to the UNFCC; alas, we left Bali on the 14th, the very day talks were deadlocked and the Bali Roadmap was practically derailed. Not that we were attending the conference itself, but just being there and hearing from delegates we ran into kept us pretty much in the loop. I was back in Jakarta, holding my breath as the drama unfolded, with tensions rising and meetings going into extra time on Saturday the 15th. The US continued to stonewall, as deadline after deadline whipped by. Typical.
The impasse caused total chaos. UN chief negotiator, Yvo de Boer, exited the podium close to tears. In a desperate attempt to get negotiations back on track, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged delegates to "compromise", while Indonesian host, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, delivered a deeply moving and impassioned plea: "The world is watching anxiously and I beg you not to let them down".
Their words "electrified the room", to quote de Boer. They certainly had that effect on me; I had goose bumps.
And still, the US stonewalled. Under-Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky stood firm, uncompromising amid all the booing and jeering. And then, into the fray stepped my newest hero: Kevin Conrad, delegate from Papua New Guinea. "We seek your leadership," he said, addressing the US delegation. "But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way." Wow. You tell 'em, Kevin!
So there is finally a roadmap, albeit without emissions targets. There's consensus, in a dramatic departure from the prevailing 8-year stand-off. And there are heroes, the ones who saved the day.
Here's my personal Hero's Roll of Honor for the UNFCCC, Bali 2007:
I salute Al Gore, the one-man phenomenon who has catalyzed a global groundswell of public opinion; Kevin Rudd, for his post-Howard alignment with the Kyoto Protocol; Ban Ki-moon, for his rallying cry, "compromise!"; Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his words from the heart, and Kevin Conrad, for kicking ass on behalf of us all.
And in conclusion, I'd like to leave you with the Native American-Indian prophecy from the Hopi tribe: "When the earth is weeping and the animals are dying, a tribe of all people will come, who care. They will be called Warriors of the Rainbow".
They were all there, in Bali, just like the prophecy said. My heroes, the Warriors of the Rainbow.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Friday, 15 June 2007
How good a Global Citizen are you?
A couple of weekends ago, on a short break from my customary practice of picking the lint out of my navel, I switched to another favourite pastime for a bit of excitement…making checklists.
Like most people, I am totally non-functional without a checklist or five. I do them for everything; grocery shopping, work scheduling, to-do lists for today/this week/ this month/next year, worst natural disasters, world’s best coffees, books to read, movies to watch, people to avoid, things to procrastinate over…you name it, I’ve got a checklist for it.
The weekend in question, I embarked on a different sort of checklist. This one was part honest personal evaluation, part feel-good-factor boost: How good a Global Citizen am I, really? Here’s what I came up with:
No car.
I don’t own one. Not that I didn’t have the standard Yuppie BMW Roadster Owner dream; I just woke up before I got the Beamer. And now, instead, I’m contributing to keeping Jakarta’s taxi drivers in work, thereby indirectly helping support their families, their children’s education and of course, their insidious kretek habit. Besides, by using public transport, I’ve already shrunk my carbon footprint to a petite size 4.
No kids.
By not adding my allotted average of 2.5 kids to the world’s burgeoning mega-population, I have successfully reduced the global carbon footprint by xxx x 2.5. Of course, according to the Universal Law of Empty Spaces, I have also made it possible for someone else’s 2.5 kids to use that free spot.
No incandescent bulbs.
I’ve switched almost entirely from the cheaper, energy-guzzling incandescents to the heck-of-a-lot-more-expensive Energy Saver bulbs, which supposedly last forever. Mine don’t, due to the resident tikus causing recurring chewed-out-cable-damn-the-bulb’s-fused-again problems. So around mid-month, I usually run out of lights and switch to candles. Which is all highly romantic, but a serious fire hazard when you have as many cats leaping about the place as I do.
No eating beans.
Methane, apart from being highly odiferous, is also the big noisy reality responsible for ripping a great big hole in the ozone layer. Beans are notoriously methane-producing, as is evidenced by the all-time favourite kiddie rhyme I stole from a six-year-old (you have to produce the requisite sound effects to appreciate it best): “Beans, beans, good for the heart! The more you eat, the more you *art! The more you *art, the better you feel, let’s have beans for EVERY meal!” Not a particularly socially or environmentally friendly sentiment, that. So just to be contrary, I decided to abstain, and have now been on the bean-free bandwagon for nearly three whole days.
No throwing stuff out!
Old magazines? I roll mine up and use them to swat mosquitoes and irritating houseguests. Gel pens? I regularly drive the salesgirls nuts at the stationery department, looking for refills for my vast collection of vari-sized pens. Old lighters? Where I come from, even disposable lighters could be refilled at the local bazaar. They had devised an ingenious method of injecting the lighter fluid in through the base of the lighter with a hypodermic syringe, then snapping the needle off to seal it. So in fact, your throwaway lighter was good for several lifetimes beyond the original allotment, until the base couldn’t take any more pinpricks.
So you tell me, how good a Global Citizen am I? Here’s how I see it: I’m so good I should have a Lifetime Platinum Member card and Preferred Citizen Status on the planet. I should be showered with freebies and held up as a shining example of exemplary personal restraint. I should have enough Frequent Flyer miles with Bluebird/ Silverbird to circumnavigate the globe at least 3 times, via the long scenic toll-road route. I should be crowned Rainbow Warrior Emeritus and please keep the Frenchies away or they’ll torpedo me, we’re close enough to Moruroa and they couldn’t have forgotten yet.
Now, consider this:
A 50 mph national speed limit would reduce transport emissions of CO2 by 20%. (Source: http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/news/blair_juniper/comments_26.html )
In Jakarta traffic, of course, that is a non sequitur. Nobody drives over 50mph in a macet. Nobody drives at ALL in a macet. So I would like to add my feeble quavery voice to that silent chorus that really ought to be loud enough by now to take 50% of Jakarta’s cars off the roads each day: ENOUGH CARS!
Most rubbish comes from food and other packaging. Recycle glass, paper, cardboard, plastics, cans. For every kilogram of waste you throw out, you produce 1 kg of CO2. An average household throwing out 1 dustbin's worth of waste every week emits 1400kg of CO2 a year. You can cut this figure by 30% if you recycle all paper, glass, metal and plastic (apart from plastic bags). (Source: Quaker Green Action, 2006.)
tikus: 'rat' in Bahasa Indonesia
macet: pronounced ‘machet’; a bumper-to-bumper Jakarta traffic jam, which redefines the term in a way that you’ll never joke about it ever again. Seriously road-rage inducing. *&^%$#$%^&!!!
Like most people, I am totally non-functional without a checklist or five. I do them for everything; grocery shopping, work scheduling, to-do lists for today/this week/ this month/next year, worst natural disasters, world’s best coffees, books to read, movies to watch, people to avoid, things to procrastinate over…you name it, I’ve got a checklist for it.
The weekend in question, I embarked on a different sort of checklist. This one was part honest personal evaluation, part feel-good-factor boost: How good a Global Citizen am I, really? Here’s what I came up with:
No car.
I don’t own one. Not that I didn’t have the standard Yuppie BMW Roadster Owner dream; I just woke up before I got the Beamer. And now, instead, I’m contributing to keeping Jakarta’s taxi drivers in work, thereby indirectly helping support their families, their children’s education and of course, their insidious kretek habit. Besides, by using public transport, I’ve already shrunk my carbon footprint to a petite size 4.
No kids.
By not adding my allotted average of 2.5 kids to the world’s burgeoning mega-population, I have successfully reduced the global carbon footprint by xxx x 2.5. Of course, according to the Universal Law of Empty Spaces, I have also made it possible for someone else’s 2.5 kids to use that free spot.
No incandescent bulbs.
I’ve switched almost entirely from the cheaper, energy-guzzling incandescents to the heck-of-a-lot-more-expensive Energy Saver bulbs, which supposedly last forever. Mine don’t, due to the resident tikus causing recurring chewed-out-cable-damn-the-bulb’s-fused-again problems. So around mid-month, I usually run out of lights and switch to candles. Which is all highly romantic, but a serious fire hazard when you have as many cats leaping about the place as I do.
No eating beans.
Methane, apart from being highly odiferous, is also the big noisy reality responsible for ripping a great big hole in the ozone layer. Beans are notoriously methane-producing, as is evidenced by the all-time favourite kiddie rhyme I stole from a six-year-old (you have to produce the requisite sound effects to appreciate it best): “Beans, beans, good for the heart! The more you eat, the more you *art! The more you *art, the better you feel, let’s have beans for EVERY meal!” Not a particularly socially or environmentally friendly sentiment, that. So just to be contrary, I decided to abstain, and have now been on the bean-free bandwagon for nearly three whole days.
No throwing stuff out!
Old magazines? I roll mine up and use them to swat mosquitoes and irritating houseguests. Gel pens? I regularly drive the salesgirls nuts at the stationery department, looking for refills for my vast collection of vari-sized pens. Old lighters? Where I come from, even disposable lighters could be refilled at the local bazaar. They had devised an ingenious method of injecting the lighter fluid in through the base of the lighter with a hypodermic syringe, then snapping the needle off to seal it. So in fact, your throwaway lighter was good for several lifetimes beyond the original allotment, until the base couldn’t take any more pinpricks.
So you tell me, how good a Global Citizen am I? Here’s how I see it: I’m so good I should have a Lifetime Platinum Member card and Preferred Citizen Status on the planet. I should be showered with freebies and held up as a shining example of exemplary personal restraint. I should have enough Frequent Flyer miles with Bluebird/ Silverbird to circumnavigate the globe at least 3 times, via the long scenic toll-road route. I should be crowned Rainbow Warrior Emeritus and please keep the Frenchies away or they’ll torpedo me, we’re close enough to Moruroa and they couldn’t have forgotten yet.
Now, consider this:
A 50 mph national speed limit would reduce transport emissions of CO2 by 20%. (Source: http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/news/blair_juniper/comments_26.html )
In Jakarta traffic, of course, that is a non sequitur. Nobody drives over 50mph in a macet. Nobody drives at ALL in a macet. So I would like to add my feeble quavery voice to that silent chorus that really ought to be loud enough by now to take 50% of Jakarta’s cars off the roads each day: ENOUGH CARS!
Most rubbish comes from food and other packaging. Recycle glass, paper, cardboard, plastics, cans. For every kilogram of waste you throw out, you produce 1 kg of CO2. An average household throwing out 1 dustbin's worth of waste every week emits 1400kg of CO2 a year. You can cut this figure by 30% if you recycle all paper, glass, metal and plastic (apart from plastic bags). (Source: Quaker Green Action, 2006.)
tikus: 'rat' in Bahasa Indonesia
macet: pronounced ‘machet’; a bumper-to-bumper Jakarta traffic jam, which redefines the term in a way that you’ll never joke about it ever again. Seriously road-rage inducing. *&^%$#$%^&!!!
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