We’ve heard from lots of environmental pundits about the outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks, with reactions ranging from cautiously optimistic to bitterly disappointed and downright betrayed. So what do the rock stars think?
I’m being only partly facetious, because at least one rock star, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, is very passionate about the issues in play, fairly well informed about them, and he actually attended the talks for a few days.
“i felt compelled to come to find some hope from these talks. for our kids and theirs. judge that as you will,” Yorke wrote on the band’s Dead Air Space blog shortly after arriving in Copenhagen last week. “i came with a friend of mine, Tony Juniper. (he was previously head of Friends of the Earth when I was involved with them to get the climate bill passed in the UK. a framed copy of which I have on my wall at home.)”
Suffice to say that Yorke did not come away impressed with the forthrightness, the selflessness, the brilliance of the negotiators. His postmodern capitalization and punctuation only add to the rawness of his rants. Here are some excerpts:
… the negotiations had an obvious G8 vibe about them. the West dictating terms and bizarrely assuming that the science could be bartered.. !!! arguing about who cuts what??? that somehow the amount we have to cut our emissions is negotiable?? what a crock of shit. may I humbly suggest that we remove the professional negotiators who seem to relish the negotiations for their own sake.
i pray something. i pray that something comes of this process. that all these people for all these years, all these flights to copenhagen all this hot air has some meaning. and in the midst of it all i take to bbc radio 1 and am asked ‘yeah but is climate change really real’ etc etc. oh for gods sake. what am i doing here??
and as i wrote the previous entry my battery goes dead and obama walks past with a very grim expression, everyone thought he was storming out but no he’d just been in talks with the chinese. just now a french delegate tells me that brazil has stormed out of the talks. this is all so sad. still peace and goodwill to all men. love and understanding. just no more business as usual ok?? this is all starting to really feel like some enormous vaguely pointless corporate expo.
well … i am truly disgusted about the way things have ended here. … we have no international agreement. this is all too too late. i feel deeply traumatized by the whole experience. if you’d been there you would also have been.
Source: Dead Air Space
Image via Dead Air Space.
