Don't go in there!

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Today was day 2 of our “Gracias Por Nada” campaign with the Canadian Youth Delegation to pose as the mock “Canadian Alliance of Petroleum Peddlers” to thank delegates at COP 16 for doing nothing to tackle climate change. (www.graciaspornada.org)

As a loyal member of the Alliance attending COP 16 in Cancun I was stationed outside the entrance to Moon Palace this morning urging delegates not to go inside.  After all I, as a member of the Alliance, have billions of tonnes of carbon I would like to dig up from the tar sands and dump into the atmosphere, so any action taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions I would find ¡Muy inconveniente! .  “Let’s all just go to the beach!” I said, “It’s so sunny and nice outside, let’s not waste the day inside working on an agreement.”  I mean after all in Canada our GHG emissions are 24% higher now than they were in 1990 despite  signing the Kyoto protocol  and we currently have no strategy at all to reduce our emissions, so why would we want to start working on a plan now when we are surrounded by such beautiful beaches we could be enjoying?

For the most part everyone I have spoken to has understood that this is a tongue-in-cheek performance aimed at drawing attention to the Canadian federal government’s pandering to the oil industry and inaction on climate change.  Every so often though there is a person who I can tell isn’t totally sure if I’m serious or not.  One person I spoke with today from Bangladesh seemed to be unsure about my level of sincerity. 

“You don’t want us to work towards an agreement?” He asked me with a half smile, probably still trying to figure out what I was up to.

“Not at all!” I responded, “ Any agreement that would prevent my industry from extracting the dirtiest source of oil on the planet would be most unfortunate for me.  So what do you say you ditch these meetings and help me start a delegates-only beach volleyball tournament? Wouldn’t that be more fun?”

Perhaps it was my last comment, or perhaps it was the fact that I was wearing the top half of a suit, swim shorts and flip flops but he did manage to figure out I’m not really the high level oil executive I was claiming to be.  We laughed for a moment and then I gave him a T-shirt that read “I came to Cancun for a climate deal and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

In Ottawa and Cancun we are using humor to draw attention to what is a serious issue.  The world urgently needs to tackle the climate crisis and the opportunity to work towards an international climate agreement is here in Cancun over the next two weeks.  Despite what members of the Canadian Alliance of Petroleum Peddlers might have us believe, this is not the time to hang out on the beach.

Ian Carey, Environmental Defence