Emma's KlimaForum Wednesday part 2

the continuation of my earlier post entitled "Klima Forum":


Following the talk and discussion on the topic of transportation systems, I attended a larger presentation entitled "Growth is Good" -- a phrase generally taken with a grain of salt when applied to the global climate condition. The speaker was Dr. Michael Braungart, advocate of the cradle to cradle design. His first key point was that the problem we find ourselves faced with is not an energy problem, but a materials management problem, and that the only way to have zero emissions is to not exist. He continued to explain cradle to cradle, as a design practice that, in the production and design of consumer products, considers how integrated recyclables are rendered disposable (from being individually recyclable) when meshed for production, so rather than send what could be recycled to the land fill, cradle-to-cradle keeps plastics segregated from metals and papers enough so that when the product begins to fall apart, the individual components can be extracted and recycled through other products longer than if the materials were integrated. Dr Braungart stressed the idea of cradle-to-cradle as buying the use of the product, because pieces of the (for example) chair that was purchased would b e returned to the producer and reused in another product. He also was careful to point out that through what is widely considered the ecologically responsible habit of buying recycled paper products, for example, if environmental toxins were used to produce the initial product then all the consumer is doing is "up-cycling" -- re-using the toxins. Here I would stop to think critically. I am a student and find it hard to get away from using paper; I'm being told that the 90% post-consumer printer paper I use for class essays is bad -- what's the most ecologically friendly thing I could do? (of course it's always nice when professors allow for Internet submissions, but...). I didn't raise my hand to ask, but an answer I would expect to hear would be-- what? use guilt free paper... does that exist? At this point, where we depend on paper and other materials that are not produced in this cradle-to-cradle manner, I put forth we should just try to reduce our demand for the products (by double siding printing etc), but when possible try to utilize so called "up-cycled" products (over virgin-products) since although they may be re-using toxins and consuming energy to produce, they at least reduce demand for the not recycled version of the product.

Following the talk on cradle-to-cradle, I attended a briefing of the day's activities at the Bella Center. We were initially told that the Danish environmental minister (Connie Hedegaard) had resigned, although at the time that was all we were told. According to news since then, she has hopes for taking on a bigger role in the climate change solution process. Also, since the day was Wednesday, we were briefed on the protest that happened at the Bella Center -- particular groups were banned because of past trouble, police kept people inside the Center from joining those on the outside as planned. However the protest was largely considered a success by those at Klimaforum: it demonstrated how the average citizens felt at the prospect of no results (angry!) and it encouraged repression by the Danish police (it was a big enough action to merit arrest). The briefing then transformed into a time where people who were at or near the protest came up to speak about what they experienced. (I paraphrase what was reported): "The demonstration was labeled as illegal, although it was largely non-violent on the part of the protesters." "It was beautifully organized and executed, we really made a statement." "It was crazy, people getting tear gassed...!". I was hoping that the briefing would be more of an objective summary of the happenings of the day, but I found it to be severely slanted to what the protesters wanted to hear -- only really talking about the protest, not at all the discussions that ensued or even the topics of conversation in the Center. The session ended with an announcement of actions to come.

What's a little troubling to me is that the people of KlimaForum never really seemed to be presenting solutions. There was a lot of anger at the system the U.N. was using, but aside from the actions against that, Klimaforum (to me) didn't seem to be constructively addressing the global issue either. I agree that a "solution" to the climate change problem is in bringing things back to local scales, but now that corporations have gone transnational and pollution etc will always be transboundary, international cooperation is necessary. I'm aware of how idealist it seems, 192 countries working together realizing that they are each a part of the closed system called Earth, but if it were plausible climate change would be less of a problem. I say "solution" in quotes because there have been too many years of exploitation and pollution to ever be able to pretend that climate change is not a constant issue. What Klimaforum did do was to promote awareness about issues related to climate change -- the effects of sea level rise on small island nations, how food waste is associated with green house gasses etc.

Peace&Trees,

~Emma Fujii