My plan to post meaningful insights from the Bangkok climate talks proved a bit too ambitious. 2 weeks of frantic running around, wheelspinning or as a friend put it, the cha-cha-cha – movement with the illusion of progress.
Impressions? Chaotic, insular, rarefied, self involved, frustrating.
Firstly on substance, well, there was little. Most was about mandate and text and consolidation. Was more about playing games and spouting rhetoric. The euphemistic ‘tactics’ which are all predicated on a win-lose dynamic.
Same old rules, same old game being played by the same old people. Like any living system it self perpetuates, has a natural instinct of self preservation, inertia against disturbance.
So the question to me is not what will Copenhagen deliver, but how must our behaviour change to allow a real agreement to be reached? Yes, ministers may come in and bring political will from other fora into the ring, and that may get us something, but nothing will really change without breaking the old habits. That’s the root of my interest in climate change – how can it change our long-established norms of economics, international relations, society and governance? How can it, and i’m shamelessly idealistic in saying this, change our world for the better?