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The protestors talked directly with our climbers still on the chimney -- now up there for six days. The only delegation, apart from the environmental groups, which came out to see the protest were the Danish, who have one of the strongest positions within the northern countries at this meeting.
As we left and headed back into the starship, we were reminded of the young people we are representing at the meeting. It is so easy to get drawn into the language and text of such a meeting, and many of us thought how good it would be if the kids outside were allowed past the security cordon and into the secret meetings, to jolt governments back into some sense of understanding of why the climate convention is being negotiated in the first place: to secure a future for our children.
Sunday as we arrived again at the starship, the roads around the centre were closed to cars: instead 70,000 cyclists occupied the fastlanes of the motorways. We still wonder if anybody inside the meeting had any idea of what was going on outside: it seems doubtful.
Monday and the pressure is mounting: the delegates, who have had a week to argue about the text of the convention realise that their ministers will arrive in just two days expecting to be able to discuss a substantive proposal, but that proposal isn't there.
WWF hold a press conference and distribute T-shirts to the delegations with the slogan SAVING THE CLIMATE: THAT'S MY JOB. Ironically, the governments who are trying to get this job done don't accept the offer, preferring to wait until they have finished done something. But the governments blocking progress, but don't want to be blamed, are jumping for the T-shirts. It'll take more than wearing a politically sound slogan to achieve real change here, and the garments are withheld from the Australians, US, Japanese, Canadians and their cohorts. We are considering getting another set printed for this lot: CHANGING THE CLIMATE, THAT'S MY JOB would be more appropriate at this stage.
The rest of the environmental groups hold a press conference, slamming the United States' isolation and blocking of progress at the Summit. The Climate Action Network accuses the US of being isolated in a triangle, along with the fossil fuel industry and the oil producing countries such as Iran.
An article in today's Der Spiegel refers to the fossil fuel lobbyists like Don Pearlman of the "Climate Council", an innocent sounding group, but who is exposed for his company's links to the BCCI, and heavy influence on OPEC countries in both the Climate Convention and meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The delegates from most governments, along with environmentalists, are happy that finally this lobbyist and his interests have been properly exposed to the public.
Meanwhile down in Frimmersdorf the chimney sitters are still there. In the Netherlands climbers go up the biggest chimney in the country, and paint CUT C02 in enormous letters on the side of it. Some are arrested, but released, and we set up phone calls between them and Dan, Erhard and Gero in Frimmersdorf.
The only group focussing on the real issues here is the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). A speech this week by the Ambassador of Samoa and Vice Chairman of AOSIS his excellency T Neroni Slade described AOSIS as the "front line" nations.
"We are being hit first and hardest in the forces of climate change which we had no role in unleashing. Already our people are suffering physically, emotionally and economically from the forces of climate change," he told the meeting.
"We would emphasise that our Draft Protocol addresses a risk faced not just by AOSIS countries, but by all of humanity. Climatic extremes known to characterise climate change are visibel not just in small island states but everywhere on earth."
"Early action by the international community will spare us and our children a later forced choice between two unacceptable but related evils -- a ruined economy or a ruined climate," he said.
Meanwhile the sun came out today in Frimmersdorf where our three activists spent the fourth day 130m up on the smokestack of the brown coal fired power plant. We beamed them in by satellite to our press conference, again to remind delegates of the real source of the problem. The latest impacts of climate change were outlined at the press conference in a report on flooding, which shows that increases of rainfall in northwest Europe have risen considerably in recent decades [see today's press release].
But even though the sun was out, the activists had an unexpected blow. They have a solar panel set up to charge the batteries of their mobile telephones, in order to be able to keep voicing their message to the outside world. But the sunshine hasn't reached the panel -- it has been blocked out by the C02-filled smoke from the chimney next door.
Day two of the Climate Summit and the enormous conference centre in Berlin seems completely separated from the real world. From where the Greenpeace office is, we have no windows; cannot even see the weather. But the reality comes again from our action team in Frimmersdorf, where the three brave activists sit on the smokestack, after having suffered a long night dealing with the German power company RWE's security police.
This evening I talked with with Dan, the American from Seattle who has come all the way from the US to sit on this chimney because of his conviction that something has to be done about the climate. The RWE security commandos stormed the chimney in the middle of the night last night, without informing even the local police, obviously hoping to catch the Greenpeace team off-guard. No such luck. The guards try to prise open the trapdoors in the Greenpeace team's platform from underneath, but don't get far. The subsequent hour-long discussion involves the two German activists, Erhard S. and Gero L. arguing with the guards. The Greenpeacers say if the guard insist on coming to get them, then they will climb up the rungs to the top of the 193m chimney and will lock themselves to the rungs. If the guards want them off, then they'll have to cut them off.
The Greenpeace determination to stay on the chimney to highlight the source of climate change proves too much for the guards, who eventually leave. Dan then finds out the details of the discussion which was held entirely in German which he doesn't speak.
The day in the life of a chimney sitter is extremely busy. Banners go up and get taken down because of the wind; and they spend long hours talking to the increasing number of press around the world.
From Dan in Frimmersdorf, 130m up on the smokestack:
"From where I'm sitting, I can see for 40 miles [65 km] up the valley. Just across from me is a hill which used to be a brown coal mine where trees are now planted. Up the valley, for as far as the eye can see, is nothing but more brown coal mines and power plants. In amongst them are little villages where people have to live in all this pollution. We've had nothing but strong winds for the past three days -- and we're all thinking that this wind could be harnessed to produce energy instead of these global warming factories. We are imagining how beautiful the valley would look if the power plants were windmills.
Late today RWE announced that they are using legal measures to try to get us down. They're saying that we're breaching the peace and security. I can't believe that our sitting here is breaching the peace more than the mess produced by this power station. RWE should be the one sued for threatening the security of the future of our climate and the world as we know it.
Tomorrow the wind will drop, and we expect the sun to make an appearance. I hear that at the conference centre in Berlin, RWE has a photovoltaic exhibition. I don't see any evidence of RWE using the sun as an energy source here. The company is planning to open yet another brown coal mine, Garzweiler II, and will invest 20billion DM (USD 13 billion) in the so-called "modernisation" of its coal fired power plants. Its investment in renewable energy is microscopic and the German government, like other governments around the developed world, is allowing it to happen."
STOP C02! GO SOLAR!
Diary Entry: Day One of the Climate Summit
Tuesday 28 March
It is snowing in Berlin today. We are told it is unusually late to have snow at this time of the year. We wonder if this is yet another harbinger of climate change, but obviously cannot confirm it.
We think of the three Greenpeace activists, Erhard S. and Gero L. from Germany and Dan R. from the United States, on the chimney in Frimmersdorf, spending their second night 193m up on a tiny platform on the smokestack of one of the dirtiest coal-fired power stations in Germany. The activists are there for the next two weeks, to remind the Climate Summit of the source of the climate change problem, fossil fuel power stations from around the world.
Ironically, German electricity utility RWE, which owns the site on which the climbers sit, has a photovoltaic (renewable) technology exhibition at the conference centre. But the same company pours 120 million tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere every year and plans to open a new brown coal mine, Garzweiler II, and plans to invest 20billion DM (USD 13 billion) in the so-called "modernisation" of its coal fired power plants. There is no major solar investment of anything like this scale.
The first day of the Climate Summit started with a speech by the German host and President of the Meeting, German Environment Minister Mrs Angela Merkel. Mrs Merkel stated that she was very concerned at the threat to the small island states (Alliance of Small Island States: AOSIS) from climate change. AOSIS has the most urgent plea to the negotiators of any of the countries at the meeting: if they don't act to cut C02, sea level rise as a result of global warming will literally see the end of their nations as they disappear under the seas.
Mrs Merkel stated that she knows about the effects of climate change, and says that there is no need to wait for further scientific confirmation before governments act on real reductions in C02. But Germany, along with all developed countries must now cut their own C02 emissions by 20% by 2005, as AOSIS has proposed in their Protocol (see Climate press pack). As the chair of the Climate Summit, Mrs Merkel is responsible for ensuring that this meeting adopts the AOSIS proposal.
"The German Government has promised much, done little and, if it wants to take the role of leadership, must act now," Greenpeace campaigner Oliver Worm told a press conference.
Today's opening saw many speeches -- which talked of the "need for reductions" of C02. The United Nations Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organisation, the chair of the meeting Mr Estrada from Argentina all clearly stated that nobody was arguing with the scientific consensus on climate change.
This opened the door for justification for strong steps to be taken by all nations, especially the industrialised countries. However, because of the timing of the meeting, where the draft text needs to be with translators by next Monday in time for consideration by Ministers, and with the weekend in the middle, there are only three working days of real discussion. As Kirsty Hamilton, a Greenpeace campaigner put it, "there is going to have to be a rapid change in gear from what could be described as 'progressive rhetoric' to 'progressive action' ".
A thorny issue at the meeting will be the rules of procedure of the convention. In the face of 40 mile cracks in the Antarctic "rules of procedure" as a real discussion point sound rather incongruous. But the meeting is stuck in this mire. It must decide how the adoption of any Protocol (as suggested by AOSIS) must be done -- either by consensus or by a majority vote (see press pack on the Protocol).
There is still no certainty that the OPEC countries will not do a "hatchet job" on the rules and insist on consensus if they're not getting their way. Indeed, with oil in the family, the OPECs' main interest is in blocking the entire meeting, especially if they're not getting a strong message from the developed world (their clients) that their behaviour is unacceptable. And indeed it is not. The developed countries' inaction is allowing the OPECs to step in to block the meeting. And those developed countries could stop the OPECs blocking their way if they really want to.
In all of this, it is very important to note that European Union countries are the key to the entire climate summit. Germany as president of Summit and the EU as a whole must be strong in supporting AOSIS's proposal for a way out. If you are from one of these countries, send a fax to your government now insisting that the EU must take a leadership role and can offer some hope in the proceedings by leading support for the small island states' protocol.
Or if you live in one of the "JUSCANZ" group countries: Japan, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, along with Switzerland, Iceland, Mexico and Norway we ask you to send an equally strong message that your country is obstructing the whole meeting. It is critical that these countries make real commitments and demonstrate their support for AOSIS and agree to specific commitments from industrialised countries.
The JUSCANZ group is taking a position that any further action by industrialised countries should be linked with developing countries also making commitments on cutting C02. Greenpeace sees this as simply evading responsibilities. The industrialised countries are responsible for 75% of man-made C02 emissions worldwide and simply have no excuse for arguing that they must wait for the developing world.
The best words of this meeting so far comes from our activists sitting on the source of the problem who today said to Governments, through a live satellite linkup to Berlin: "We are up here to bear witness to the source of climate change. You know what the solutions are. You have the power to make the fossil fuels part of history and take us into a solar future. We are staying here until the end of the Summit -- waiting for you to save us from the climate catastrophe."
In response to a question from a journalist about the comfort of the three climbers in their stay on the chimney in freezing weather for the next two weeks Dan said: "We will be fine here for two weeks, but what I'm worried about is having to live on a planet when climate change is really with us, either boiling hot from droughts or freezing from record cold temperatures."
As we left the this evening at 2100 hrs, the "carbon clock" outside the Greenpeace office, counting the amount of C02 issued from power stations worldwide since the meeting began at 1000 hrs local time this morning, reaches 8 million tonnes.
GO SOLAR!!
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