Sorry to bother you again — I normally only send out a few mailings a year — but this is not a normal time. Anything but. The Paris climate conference is opening before the month is over and, of course, it’s going to take place under extraordinary circumstances.
Still, life goes on. And so will COP21. And so too will the demonstrations, which have be in the works for almost a year, and which — just a few hours ago — the organizing coalition decided, contrary to the wishes of the government, to go ahead with.
We’ll be watching that story, but our focus here is the inside front, the one that takes place witin the conference halls. Here this issue is not terrorism but rather the terror of a future that is becoming all too likely. Unless we decide, together, on a better one.
Click here to read Paris: The End of the Beginning.
I wrote it because I’m already sick of hearing about the “likely success,” and the “inevitable failure,” of the Paris meeting. In fact, Paris will be both a failure and, insofar as a word like “success” has any meaning at all, in this world and in the face of the climate reckoning, it will likely be a success as well. The real question is if Paris will open a door to the future, and what exactly it has to accomplish to do so.
Tom Athanasiou (toma@ecoequity.org)