One interesting occurrence associated with this conference is the sympathy that it has inspired within me for the ever-depressed executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo De boer.
His comment in the Youth session yesterday (that the Lawyer posted below) - 'Trust is something you earn and not something you are given. This process has still to earn my trust', really made me appreciate that this is a man who has his feet planted firmly on the fetching blue carpets of the Bella Centre, for better or for worse. The poor man has a hard and unenvious job, but at least he's willing to speak out (albeit indirectly, but I don't think it takes much artistic interpretation of above comment to reach this conclusion) about what we all know deep down inside anyway: the negotiation process is clumsy, biased and flawed; by the nature of the way the UNFCCC works it is almost objectively impossible to reach a fair and binding agreement from the structure of the COP conference.
But we try anyway.
If I was Yvo, i'd probably be walking around with a gloomy expression and a black cloud on top of my head too. Seriously, someone needs to give him a hug though. Does he remind anyone else of a very sad looking bear?
Maybe it's actually just because de Boer sounds a little like 'bear', and there have been a lot of people in polar bear costumes around in the last week. Bears on the brain.
ReplyDeleteHe's my man!))
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