this week our media is probably going to go crazy all across the plant. Why? Well, wikileaks, the famous whistleblower plattform released a few hours ago more than 90.000 secret documents of the US army. Three big newspapers, namely the New York Times, the Guardian and the German Der Spiegel got the information weeks ago and compiled a complex set of articles that try to reflect the most interesting informations within this huge amount of leaked documents. It’s a MUST-read for everybody (and I highly recommend using the Guardian), cause this is probably the most detailed, most unspinned and correct information you will ever get about the war in Afghanistan. Funny though, while I write “war in Afghanistan” I’ve to think of our politicians in Germany refusing to call it a “war”. Well, welcome to reality! I’ve just skimmed through the articles but from what I get so far is that a) the Germans went in without a real idea/plan of what they were getting into b) the US has a “killing-list”, c) Pakistan’s ISI (secret service) is supporting the Taliban quite heavily and d) that the media has failed to report what actually is going on down there! Yes, no real new insights, though before, most of it was guesswork, now we got proof. It’ll be interesting to see the political fallout – especially here in Germany.

Just to make it clear, unlike many others, I don’t agree with the reasoning that we should get out there as fast as possible. We went in there – like it or not – and we cannot leave these people alone in the dust who are struggling to get their country back running. No, I don’t like us fighting there, I would love to see our guys back home and neither do I approve the current strategy nor do I have “the solution” how to “win the war” – I even doubt there will be a “win” in the end. Still my point is that if we leave it to the Taliban, our men and women fought for nothing and we would have another cruel “failed state”. Is there progress in the society that’s worth fighting for? Sure. Is the security situation rather getting worse? Unfortunately yes. Will we win? Who knows. My point is that at least for some people in some regions the life is better than before and we can only hope that it will get better for more and more people in more and more regions. Remember, the Afghans suffer under war and continuous fighting since more than 40 years now, so let’s give them some time to try getting their country back on track. Moreover I really believe that if we would spend as much money on infrastructure, rebuilding and capacity building as we do on military, the place would look a whole lot better – you know why (not all, but many) people fight for the Taliban? Because they pay better! As a police officer you get 100$ a month, the Taliban pay you 200$ – Job’s the same, only the side you’re fighting on is different. It’s as simple as that: Money – tragically – has, does and will rule the world – even in Afghanistan!

Der Spiegel — Die Afghanistan-Protokolle
The Guardian – Afghanistan The War Logs
New York Times – The War Logs
Wikileaks — Afghan War Diary, 2004–2010

Take your time and read it.

Strothi

Update 27.07.10:

I would like to point all my german readers to a post by Chris who describes very well, why the journalistic work of the Guardian rules and the Spiegel sucked big time:

Die Artikel im Netz [des Spiegel] sind eine Peinlichkeit sondergleichen, der Inhalt der knapp 100.000 Dokumente wird kurz angerissen – da ist nichts, was dazu verleiten würde, den Print-Spiegel zu erwerben. In jedem Artikel, in jeder Zeile ist die Bettelei offensichtlich, «kauft den aktuellen Spiegel.»

it has been quite a while since I posted something. I would like to use this post to explain to some extent what kept me so busy over the last couple of weeks and thank some wonderful people that I had the pleasure to work with.

G8/G20 Youth Summit

The project that dominated my life over the last couple of weeks was certainly the G8/G20 Youth Summit. I already told you about the project in some older blog posts so I’m not going to do it again. In brief: The summit is the youth equivalent to the real G8/G20 Summit and seeks to give our generation a voice in the process that is hopefully going to be heard.

In Germany, Model G8 Germany e.V. is responsible for the entire organization, preparation and coordination of the German delegation’s participation to the summit. As discussed in my last entry, we went through a pretty straight forward selection process that led us to three highly qualified candidates per position. The impartial jury had the difficult task to find the best delegation possible.

Early February the selected candidates began their preparation. Being the Head of Summit Organization, I started together with a friend of mine to prepare them. The delegates had to come up with a variety of tasks and each monday a telephone conference call would bring all of them together.

Aside from preparing the delegation, a huge amount of time went into organizational stuff around the summit itself and the workshop we organized in Berlin last weekend. In order to prepare our delegates as best as possible, we arranged for them to meet not only representatives from the real ministries, but as well from the Sherpa-Office in the chancellery. Moreover, we managed to organize within 4 weeks a pretty well-received public event, where we presented our delegation to the public and had a panel discussion about the topic “G8, G20 or UN – Who’s going to rule the world?”. The panel encompassed a variety of distinguished panelists such as Prof. Dr. Hüfner (DGVN), Dr. Christian Humborg (Transparency International), Vincent Klassen (Canadian Embassy) and of course “our” chancellor, Nicole Bogott. Andre Wilkens (Stiftung Mercator) moderated the discussion and afterwards a reception gave everybody the possibility to get in touch with the delegates.

The public event – as well as the workshop for the delegation – took place in the HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA School of Governance, which we won 5 weeks ago as a partner. The school provides us not only with an office and facilities for purposes such as the workshop but has been a outstanding partner in every aspect. Only the cooperation gave us the opportunity to create such a great time not only for our delegates, but as well for our guests.

Both, workshop and event, went really well and happy faces were all around. However, basically Flo and I did the entire organizational part and I have to admit, I really really underestimated the workload. Managing the contacts with the school, the ministries, the chancellery, the delegates and others that were involved really challenged me and my time management to an extent that my “hobby” turned into a full-time job. To that aspect you’ve to know that we’re a very small team that is trying to prepare the delegation as best as we can – but we really lack personal. Over the last couple of weeks it was normal for me to start working for the workshop/event/delegation at 9am up to 12pm with a minor lunch break. Afterwards I would research and write for another 2-3 hours on the India report…

The India Report

Many of you know that I spend three month in India last year and conducted a research project on e-waste. While the presentation in class took place in late January, the report, jointly written by three friends of mine and me, was due this Friday. Having been buried with all the work described above, I used nearly every free minute I got to read through studies and reports to add substance to the interviews I conducted back in Delhi. By the time I started writing, I was way behind my schedule and thus ran into really big time problems. Not only did I start to sleep only a few hours per day, but as well the quality of my (english) written work suffered a lot due to working under constant time-pressure. For the report, the US, EU and India were analyzed and while I focussed on India, we had to come up with a joint report. While working together with the others was really awesome, it’s always a challenge to coordinate the work of four people into one coherent report. Accordingly we had set ourselves deadlines that I unfortunately did not make. Thus, as being the responsible person to do the final touches on the report in terms of layout, I ran into huge trouble by the end of last week. The only way to keep the deadline on Friday for me was to reduce my sleeping time again down to three hours… I did not eat anything throughout the entire day, left my room only once for taking a shower and was basically nailed onto my desk for 15 hours. Somehow I made it but when I finally left my room to get something to eat and drink I was shivering for quite some time…

My Internship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Well, on top of all the mentioned things I’m currently doing an internship at the PIK. When I started back in January I already made an agreement with my boss that I would only work half of the week to be able to do the above mentioned stuff. However, as you probably figured by now that did not work out at all. While I tried hard to make it work, it was just not feasible to come up with the paper I was expected to write for the PIK. To this end I have to say that I’m really really lucky to have a very nice boss that agreed to the “output counts” way of doing it and gave me huge leeway. While I managed to research for the paper and read through a lot of reports and studies (I’m going to write about China’s domestic climate policies) I did not manage to write a single word until now. While my internship would normally end in two days, I’m very happy that I got an extension over a month so I’m now going to spend all my time on China… – well not all, the summit is in May in Vancouver, so I will still be busy with the preparation too, but not as much as in the past.

Conclusion

Well, I think you agree with me when I say that I was way to optimistic in terms of what I can do in three month, really underestimated the work that I would have to do and thus reached my absolute limit. I have not seen friends “just for a beer” in weeks and probably some of you already wondered why they haven’t heard from me for such a long time. I’m very sorry for that and I promise that I will get in touch with you anytime soon

Moreover there are a few people that deserve a big thank you as well as an apology. First of, Alex, Alex and Yvonne, you are just awesome! I could not have wished for a better team to do the project report and I think we did an awesome job. Moreover, the Model G8 Team needs to be congratulated for what we achieved. The biggest credit goes to Flo who saved my ass more than a thousand times and was the best co-worker I’ve ever worked with! Just as much Flo did, everybody else of the team rocked over the last few weeks, especially Jessi, Nick, Dana, Mareike and Inken. Guys, you are just as crazy as I am and I love you for that!

Having said that I have to apologize to the before mentioned people. Having been that stressed, I somehow arrived at a point where I lost my normally diplomatic way of communicating. I know that I may have given you the feeling to be condescending (which I never intended to be) or was very dominant (which I certainly was) when I saw the necessity to get stuff done. I already told you that I am very very sorry about that but I wanted to take this opportunity again to say that I know that my behavior was not always appropriate and that there’s no excuse for that. Still I am thankful and really happy to have you all as friends and am always open to constructive criticism and a kick in the ass when necessary

With that, I look forward to further work together with all of you – hopefully under less stressed circumstances

Have a great week and enjoy!

Philip

just a quick entry over a nice way to actually do some good while getting some nice stuff for it. Quite some Indie developers of fine Mac apps have joined together to give all the money they get tomorrow for their apps to organizations that currently try to help the poor people in Haiti. Check out the joint website and get some nice apps while spending money for relief!

I’m in for Clipstart, Default Folder X, Instapaper Pro and Tweety 2 – thus gonna spend about 50€ and get awesome apps I wanted to have for quite some time Great offer, great action, go and help!

Take care, Strothi

I’m real sorry for this redundant excuses of mine for not being able to keep up blogging, but I just and plain simply wasn’t able to or had other things to do… As you know, I came back to Germany on the 16th of December and since then I think I have had only one day, where I did not see anybody in terms of meeting friends or family (though I enjoyed that very much) or worked like nothing good…

New Year…

While I had planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Berlin, my plans changed while being in a little village close to Hamburg at Natasha’s place. As I did not had any real plans on what to do in Berlin, her idea to celebrate the new year together with her and a friend of ours, Fride, was gladly take up. Thus instead of hanging around at some anonymus party in Berlin, I spent some great days with the girls. We prepared a fantastic menu for the last dinner in 2009 and got very relaxed into 2010 – perfect

Getting back into my life…

Since I arrived in Berlin the “real life” hit me quite hard. While my internship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research started off very well (in terms of everybody being nice and pretty laid back), my other activities kept me quite busy… While I’m not going to outline all the stuff going on, I think this weekend is explanatory:

Friday I started the day trying to solve a hell lot of problems connected to the session of the jury, which is going to take place next Friday here in Berlin. As many of you know I’m working for Model G8 Germany being the Head of the Summit Organization. Our deadline for the applications to be part of the delegation2010 was the 31st of December 2009. Until today all the received applications got peer-reviewed and rated by our team, because the independent jury will only get three candidates for each of the nine positions. Thus we had to figure out, which three. Meanwhile on Friday, we neither had a proper jury nor a room to accommodate them. Friday afternoon I attended a workshop organized by 360° – the journal I’m working for – on PR, which was extremely useful. To make it short, after dinner I worked until half past two to transcribe interviews I did in India for my university project.

Saturday me and Marius – the guest I accommodated during the meeting of the members of 360° – got up at seven to be at the venue in time. The first part of the day was dedicated to review what had happened over the last year with 360° and the question, who would candidate for the two open positions in the steering committee besides Marius. I had been asked beforehand to do it but denied due to time-constrains. Still, at the session my name was raised by a lot of people who said a lot of nice stuff about me To make it short, I resisted the temptation and finally, with Tine and Inga, we found two very capable nice girls who are now heading 360° together with Marius After a quite short dinner I got back home in order to work on the interviews again, while my guest went out partying with the other folks…

Sunday morning I finished the last interview before moving over to the breakfast with the crew of 360°, which was followed by an intense but productive round of discussions. I left early in order to power nap for 2 hours and then started again to work on getting all the data of the peer-review process in order. Unfortunately, only half of my team got the deadline right and some didn’t pay attention to my orders on how to do it – resulting in more work. Thus I worked until half past two this morning until I had all things done. A big thank you goes to the ones who helped me during that process and took over the work others should have done!!!

This morning we now finalized the list of candidates for the jury session and already send it off. The jury has now 6 quite qualified members and we’ve a room Moreover I finally got in touch with the office of the chancellor so that I can coordinate my planning with them for the workshop that is supposed to happen in March to prepare the delegates for the real summit in May Afterwards I met with my project group in order to coordinate our presentation which is going to be due in 11 days…

So that’s it. Unfortunately I have not been able to meet a lot friends here in Berlin since I returned and I’m sorry for that, but I hope that if you read this post, you’ll understand why. I hope that I’ll have more time after the jury session on Friday…

I hope you’re doing fine and will get in touch once I find a free minute to do so.

Take care, Strothi

I’m enjoying my time with my family and friends and look forward to some relaxing days at home in Osnabrück Wherever you are, I wish you all a wonderful christmas time! By the way, the pic above was taken here at my mom’s place along with a few other pics which you can find on SmugMug

Enjoy your time with family and friends

over the last weekend I experienced the most intense shock I’ve had for quite some time… While I was visiting the Amber Fort in Jaipur together with Ana I was taking lots of pictures and as the sun was shining, I had my Lens Hood on the objective which turned out to be essential…

Ana and me went through the Fort and at one point we were going down a small stairway when I suddenly lost my balance and crashed full force down onto the stairs… As Ana was in front of me, I guess I did not see the sand on the stairs due to her shadow, thus stepped right on the sand and boom… I had my D90 in my right hand and thus tried not to land on it… Instead I landed with my full weight on both elbows (ouch!) and next thing I heard was a real ugly sound of breaking plastic… Totally in panic I turned around to see that the Lens Hood had broken into two pieces BUT neither the D90 nor the objective seemed to be damaged

Still being under shock, really hurt, I got up to check upon the D90 and focused on the next visible thing: An exit sign. After I had checked that the D90 took the picture as wanted I felt relieved but saw some Indians standing next to the sign who had thought that I was taking pics of them and therefore started to pose for me… Somehow I managed to make a few pics in order to satisfy them and then walked a bit shaky away…

Gosh, I just don’t want to think about the camera being broken and am unbelievably relieved and happy that I used the Lens Hood. I guess when the cam touched ground it did so first with the Lens Hood which, due to its breaking, took most of the energy and thus saved the objective and body

Next item to shop: A new Lens Hood

Take care, Strothi

BTW: I’m fine, got a little scratch and my left elbow is still not entirely alright, but it’ll be soon!

as promised here some impressions of our trip to Jaipur After I had successfully convinced Ana to finally leave Delhi we had to take a train early on Saturday and catch one back to Delhi right the next day as Ana had to work Friday and Monday whereas I’m really flexible in terms of when and where to work… As the train to Jaipur needs 5,5 hours from Delhi, we opted to start on Saturday at half past four in the middle of the night in order to reach Jaipur in the morning.

Catching that train became a little tricky: I had ordered a cab to be at my place at half past three so that we would have enough time to get to the station, but in contrast to all the times before, it just didn’t show up. So I called the driver, but his number wasn’t working. A few minutes later the driver called me and it became clear, that he had no idea where to go due to a severe lack of being able to communicate in english! My Hindi skills didn’t help us much as well so I told Ana that we should just go to the Market. As he wasn’t there I pulled her further to the only open gate in my area and luckily there he was… But that wasn’t the end of the story. On our way to the station I already had a feeling that I should have checked twice for the right station, but the ticket was in my backpacker in the trunk. Guess what, having 25 minutes left I found out shortly after our arrival at New Delhi Train Station (NDLS) that the train would leave from Old Delhi (DLI). Great… But remembering my adventure with Navarun a few weeks back I was sure to still be able to make it. Some lucky driver got hold of me and charged me about ten times the price of the way but at that moment all I wanted was to get us to the station. Sitting in the car, I was a little shocked to see the remaining time and thus prepared myself to not reach the station in time only to find out later that the clock in the car was ten minutes ahead of time…

Finally we reached the station, got into our wagon and started our journey The train had beds to sleep on as you can find them as well in Germany, though I was a bit too long for them… Still, Ana and me did the best out of it When we were supposed to arrive time-wise in Jaipur, I asked a guy whether the next station would be Jaipur. He replied “yes” but didn’t mention, that it was not the “central station” but the one before. As the hotel had said that the walk from the station to the hotel would be a ten minutes walk we opted for doing that, not knowing that a) we were at the wrong station and thus b) the map couldn’t help us. Finally I got that we had gone off at the wrong one and hailed a rickshaw driver who finally brought us to our hotel…

After this kind of stressy/chaotic journey we were very happy to find the hotel to be a great place! Especially the restaurant on the rooftop was a very nice spot to chill and enjoy great food. So in case you’re going to Jaipur, stay at “Hotel Pearl Palace” or stop by at the restaurant! After we finally got into our nice room, we took some rest and then started off to see the “Pink City”. Everybody had told us about “Old Jaipur” and its beauty so we thought that it was a good idea to walk there and grasp a bit of the atmosphere in town – stupid thought!

Walking over to Old Jaipur turned out to be a quite longer walk than expected plus Old Jaipur was kind of really disappointing. We had an Old Jaipur in our minds with calm little streets and nice architecture. Guess what, while indeed everything was “pink”, there was so much noise, traffic and people on the street that caused us to dislike it. The only plus: Within half an hour we met three very nice locals that gave us good hints on what to do and what not and so we decided to drive out of the city to the “Water Palace”.

Well, now you see my pics which look astonishing, still the Water Palace itself was unreachable thus nothing big to do. Luckily I pulled Ana over to some kind of a temple further up the street and that was really great. Over there, the atmosphere was super relaxing, lots of nice people and nice architecture – YEAH As we spend the entire afternoon over there I was lucky enough to take some night shots with my D90 and in these moments I know why I spend that much money for my camera… We ended the day on the rooftop of our hotel enjoying a great dinner and fell pretty much being dead into the bed…

After a very relaxed morning we decided to go to the “Amber Fort” which is a bit outside of Jaipur. The Fort itself was really great to see and we had a great time over there – with a small exception… In order to avoid the chaos from the day before we got back to our hotel in time and went to the right, the central station The way back went flawless and we arrived home safe and sound My personal success story was, that some guy who travelled with us was quite interested into the stuff I was reading and doing (sorting pics/reading german news) while trying to kill the remaining hours on the way back. As he wasn’t speaking any English we had to communicate in Hindi. And what shall I say, with my limited Hindi skills, my little notebook from class and lots of helpful gestures we talked for about one and a half hours over Jaipur, India, Delhi and Germany!!! Kind of strenuous, but really great! In Jaipur one of the guards had told us some details after he had found out that I’m speaking Hindi as well and I actually managed to understand it quite well!

Alright, now we’re back in Delhi, working… Today I send out a few e-mails in order to do some interviews for my project and already got 2 confirmed – great. What starts to bother me more and more is that I have to start of preparing myself to leave Ana, Delhi and India today in two weeks!!! That’s going to be hard, as I really would like to stay here for some time, but that ain’t possible (even though soooo many tell me to just do so). But once being back in Germany right from the first day I’ve each day up to x-mas planned with work/fun stuff and in January I will start working for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while doing all the usual stuff aside from that. Guess once I hit German ground, my “chilling and relaxing-time” I had here in Delhi is going to be over for the following half year. So many things to do, so many things to think about, so many uncertainties… Wait and see. The only thing that is for sure: It’s not going to be boring… (But did it ever get that far anyways…?)

Take care, Strothi

after my very pessimistic post on what can be achieved in Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, today I would like to encourage you to help making our voices – demanding for a real and ambitious agreement – heard by the leaders of the world. If you believe that climate change is a thing to worry about and that we should do something about it, first think about your actions and how you could change your way of living to be more sustainable and climate friendly and then please sign the petition that calls for action of our politicians!

There’s no point in singing the petition while not reflecting about your own way of living! Yes, our politicians have to get things finally on track, but ultimately it is us, the very people on this, our, earth that are responsible. It’s always easy to blame others, so stop blaming, start acting! You don’t know where and how? Well, just google a bit, read a few articles and go and check your Carbon Footprint! Right now I’m in Delhi. Over here at night, it’s really cold but the houses don’t have any heating systems, so we’re sitting here wearing two pullovers. I don’t want you to shut down your heating system, but maybe you could think about turning your system 2 or 3 degrees lower. This does have an impact and even if it’s small, still it will help! And that’s just one minor example. It’s not some document signed by the leaders of the world that will help us fight global warming but it’s us and our actions!

By the way, some might have heard about the “scandal” e-mail messages going forth and back between some quite known climate change researchers. While the messages are certainly not helpful in fighting climate change and gonna be taken up by deniers to mislead people, whatever happened over there, there’s no reason to doubt that climate change is actually happening. The temperature isn’t rising? Well, that’s no argument, as it’s way harder to predict short term developments then long term perspectives due to the very nature of climate! Having even some years that see a cooling is nothing a serious climate scientist would lead into questioning climate change in general. The science is solid and there is no reason to doubt it!

Sit down and think, go and sign the petition and then hope, cause if we stop hoping, we’ve lost!

Take care,

Strothi

I thought I should share again some “Indian Experiences” with you guys As some might have read on twitter or facebook, Ana and me recently went to a wedding! That has been an awesome experience, as Indian weddings are way different then the European ones. Down here, right now it’s “wedding season” and no kidding, never ever I’ve seen so many weddings taken place as right now around me. I actually stopped counting even the ones in my neighborhood, as there are simply way too many Indians that apparently want to get married…

Alright, so when Ana arrived here a couple of weeks ago, she told me: The one thing I really wanna do in India is going to a wedding! While I’m normally known for my organizational skills, I somehow doubted to be able to get my hands on an invitation easily. Guess what, next day I was given one by a good friend of mine! Strike

So before going to the actual wedding, shopping had to be done, as we wanted to be dressed appropriately! While I don’t like shopping that much, it was ok and – considering to be shopping with a girl – a rather fast process Now I think it’s better let pics speak – many of you might have seen them already. This is what we bought:

Isn’t Ana looking just gorgeous? I love my dress as well and look at my shoes… So we went to the wedding fully dressed up Indian style just to find out that a lot of people either didn’t care at all what they were wearing, wore casual stuff or dressed up very well. On top of that, you could see people dressed up in Western, Indian style and somewhat in between…

The whole thing took place at a very nice venue, the Officers Club here in Delhi. Just imagine, they handed out invitations to 1000-1500 people and they all wanted to eat and drink – for free! The food was really good, entirely vegetarian but encompassed a broad variety of Western and Indian dishes So even before the happy couple was on scene, everybody was busy eating…

My friend gave me a call to get out of the venue to see the “Barat”, a tradition where the groom rides to the venue. Well, riding refers only to the “sitting on the horse”, as many people dance in front of him, thus the whole group moves about 10 meter in 5 minutes… When I was about to take some pics I was spotted by a family member of my friend who pulled Ana and me right in front of the whole parade… Now we had to dance Moreover, before entering the venue there’s a ceremony, where the male members of the grooms family give a bloomy neckless to the members of the brides family and vice versa. Guess what, suddenly someone pulled me right into the middle, gave me one of these necklesses and then I gave it to some guy from the brides family… I’d call that “being fully integrated” Later we found out that they probably thought that I was a friend of the groom who had studied in the US, whereas I did not know him but his cousin

After we “survived” the ceremony to enter, we enjoyed the great food and just chilled a bit. To our disappointment, nobody was up for dancing and the whole thing remained pretty calm. But that helped getting to know my friends family…

After another ceremony, where the bride and groom do the “neckless hand-over” themselves, a “photo-show” started, where everybody wanted to have a pic with the couple. Now you might wonder, why the bride looks so sad on all the pic. Well, I was told that a) she has to look “not too happy” (no idea why that though) and b) the whole wedding ceremony started on Monday, the Barat I’m just telling you about on the following Sunday, so I guess she was a bit tired and fed up with everything as well…

To our surprise, the couple wasn’t married by then: The whole wedding process started at around 1:30 am on Monday lasting for at least another two hours. Interestingly, even before the ceremony started, the majority of the guests were gone! It was basically only Ana, me and the family members who were still there to see, so we decided to trust into the couple (that they would actually really get married ) and left the wedding

All in all it was a fantastic experience, just the lack of dancing was a little disappointing. Oh by the way, I love my dress and look forward to the next costume party outside of India…

Take care, Strothi

today the news around the world with regard to climate change are driven by the statements of the Heads of State present at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum. So what is all the fuzz about? Well, let me use a quote:

US Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman said the leaders had reached the conclusion that “it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally-binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days”.

In other words, there ain’t gonna be a successor to the Kyoto Protocol this year and they are only about to set out another “plan” to get things done by 2010. “So what”, some may say, thinking that we got up to 2012 (that’s when the Kyoto Protocol ends) to get a deal done. Well, true and false. Yes, we got that time but normally it takes at least 2 years to get these international treaties actually into reality. Thus we’re running out of time. A few weeks ago I asked Dr. Pachauri, Chair of the International Panel on Climate Change a question that just got very relevant: “What if… Copenhagen fails?”. Back then, he answered to me that he would still be optimistic that an agreement could be achieved in Copenhagen and that even if not, the time to get it done in time would be there in 2010. Well, I was very skeptic back when I posed the question and today’s events confirmed me in my skepticism It’s not only that they don’t think that they gonna be able to come up with the needed agreement at Copenhagen, but another fact:

After a two-day Asia-Pacific summit, they vowed to work towards an “ambitious outcome” in Copenhagen.

But the group dropped a target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which was outlined in an earlier draft.

What strikes me is that they don’t even have the balls to commit themselves to these longterm targets. Bear in mind that even Obama stated that the target for 2050 for the developed countries (including the US) has to be 80% (sadly only based on “current levels”). Setting a longterm target is a rather easy task, but even that was not possible on the APEC Summit! THAT’s really scary, especially as we need short and midterm targets right now in order to get things on track.

Joe Romm over at ClimateProgress.org, the best climate blog I know, sees the developments not as pessimistic as I do and regards it more as a success that the leaders finally recognize the reality of their likely failure in Copenhagen. Moreover he states:

The new plan for Copenhagen makes the prospects for a successful international deal far more likely — and at the same time increases the chance for Senate passage of the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen Lieberman (I-CT) are negotiating with the White House.

Well, I kind of agree, that it might make it more likely, but my point is that what I don’t see so far is the political will that is necessary to achieve what is necessary: To decarbonise our economies! Kyoto was regarded as an historic turning point in international environmental agreements. But taking a look at the reality, its really disappointing. Most countries are far away from reaching the Kyoto targets (or only do so due to the recent economic recession) and real and progressive action is hardly visible. Bearing that in mind and the prospect that we’ve to go far beyond Kyoto, how should I not be that skeptic? In an interview done a few month ago with Prof. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Chair of the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, we talked about Kyoto, Copenhagen, the problems we face and possible solutions. These solutions are not easy to achieve and need a global effort to be accomplished successfully – and that’s where we need the political will.

Romm’s argument that the prospect to achieve a better outcome in 2010 is more likely is correct, but what is better if the basis sucks? It’s the american view that once they have a national legislation on climate change everything on the international scale will run more smoothly. But the figures discussed in the US are embarrassing and not at all sufficient for the challenges we face. Sure, we need the US on board and we need the US to guide. But I don’t see at all that a “better outcome” will help us. Because depending on the basis, better than worse is still bad, and bad is no option! That’s my point.

The question we’ve to answer is whether we as a society (and by that I mean the global society) are willing and capable to cope with the challenge we’re facing. And if so, why our politicians have not seen the necessity and urgency to act on behalf of us in an adequate manner up to now?

I’m hoping. I’m doubting. I’m questioning.

I’m sad. I’m mad.

Why shouldn’t I?

Strothi