electric navel

vroom vroom

2008-05-09T01:23:08Z

...that's the sound of the moving van.

As of now, I'm moving to Wordpress. I don't really use the functionality which is specific to LJ any more. Also, I'm kind of pissed off that LJ broke its promise of 'no ads, ever'. Wordpress, on the other hand, has a lot of functionality which I like (stats! categories!) and its flexibility suits my needs. I'm also not sure anyone will mind much that I'm switching, except for the people who read my LJ in their friends page, if you go to the new blog you will find it's super easy to add it as an RSS feed to any reader, or you can even sign up to get an email whenever I post a new entry. yay Feedburner. (This is, also, quietly, a plea to continue reading what I write.)

I suppose, what with the end of my relationship, the move back to the states, the beginning of my PhD, I thought I might toss one more change onto the pile. For future reference, I won't be closing down my LJ. I will, however, be using it as a more 'personal' i.e. not public, friends-only, blog in truly emo LJ stylee. So (!!!!!) if you read this blog, but you are not registered as one of my LJ friends, and you're not bored to tears by the personal stuff, comment below to be added.

So, without further ado, I can now be found at blog.erinamelia.org

pictures from the garden

2008-05-06T19:33:21Z

Today when I got home i went out and took some pictures of the glorious flowers that have been coming up in the back garden of my house here in London. I can't claim any credit for making these gorgeous things come out of the ground, but I'm dedicating myself to enjoying them (and the warm weather which has finally arrived) every possible minute between now and when I leave.

You can find more pictures at my Flickr site

Comparing salt, fat, sugar, and CO2

2008-05-05T22:54:28Z

(This is cross-posted from It's Getting Hot In Here)

Tesco, the UK's largest retailer, has announced a plan to put 'carbon labels' on four categories of its own-brand products: orange juice, potatoes, laundry detergent, and light bulbs. The labels, which were developed with the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling program, show the number of grams of carbon which the product is responsible for during production, packaging, distribution, and disposal.

Tesco CEO Terry Leahy has likened the new carbon labeling scheme to a 'revolution in green consumption' with the intention of bringing together eco-consciousness and the mass market. Consumers, in theory, will then be able to make choices about their products' carbon emissions in the same way they compare calories, salt, sugar, or fat.

Yet already some consumer groups are pointing out that, without a lot of explanation, shoppers may well find themselves even more confused. It does seem a conceptual leap between salt, which is consumed directly, and grams of carbon dioxide emissions.

A bigger concern is that the carbon labelling scheme might take the responsibility for carbon dioxide emission away from the producer and put it onto the consumer, thereby reducing the pressure for systematic carbon dioxide reductions in the production process. It certainly does seem to be a canny way to directly assess Tesco consumers' concern about climate change.

A dubious eco-champion

Admittedly, there are some bigger questions about how much we can trust Tesco's own green credentials. Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco owns and operates 3,200 supermarkets throughout the world, including Fresh and Wild in California. It's estimated that 1 in every 8 pounds spent at a UK retailer is spent in Tesco, and that the company owns more UK real estate than the Queen.

As pointed out by the Guardian, Tesco has been weathering the current credit crunch and downturn in spending by increasing the number of bargains in its stores, including ever-multiplying '2 for 1' deals and goods priced at £1 or less. Tesco, as much or more than other UK retailers (including the Wal-Mart owned Asda) encourages the overconsumption which has landed rich countries into such an ecological mess, and while it may measure the grams of carbon emitted by a carton of orange juice, what I'd really like to see is how much of the company's carbon footprint has been exported to China.

Yet, arguably, Tesco's size makes it a greater ally rather than a greater threat. Carbon labelling, assuming it expands to the rest of Tesco's range and is accompanied by consumer education, could prompt a sea-change in the way shoppers think about their products. It could also encourage the adoption of tools such as full-cost pricing which overcome some of capitalism's ridiculous ecological shortcomings. The trick, it seems to me, is to keep a sharp eye on programs like Tesco's to keep them from being yet another bold example of corporate greenwashing.

(.....although to be perfectly honest I'm HUGELY cynical about the whole thing.)

elections, buffoons, slavery, and survival

2008-05-02T12:40:09Z

I am having a very negative day. First of all, I'm trying my damndest to sit tight and wait for the London Mayoral Election Results, which look grim, which make me ponder whether democracy should in fact be a cultural value, or whether it's a conspiracy of sad liberals setting themselves up to be run by idiots and facists. Particularly because I know two people who didn't vote, one of whom forgot, the other of whom couldn't be bothered. I consider these people my friends, and yet on a very basic level I believe that people who don't vote are only fit to live in a dictatorship. I despise the complacency of it, the casual disregard for the suffragettes, the taking for granted of rights which people in Zimbabwe and Tibet and Burma and China are suffering for - and dying for - right now.

Also, sat through a nice staff briefing presentation today which was a timely reminder that slavery is still endemic in Brazil. China too. Did you know that before? Well, now you do. It should piss you off.

Finally, I'm not sure if this continues the crushing negativity or injects an element of hope into the proceedings, I direct you to an NPR story featuring my friend Juan Hoffmaister. You've got to listen to the audio slide show, which rocked my world with its ability to communicate some powerful truths with JuanPa's usual blend of passion and understatement.

gimme some sugar, google

2008-04-24T22:24:43Z

oh lord in heaven. I think I have food poisoning. The truly pathetic thing is, I spent all evening baking a cake for the CAFOD campaigns team bake-off. It's in the oven at the moment, I'm just waiting for the timer to go off. But the idea of food...urrrgggghhhhh....whingewhingewhingesplat.

BUT two good things are happening.

1) I can turn my computer into a seismometer.

2) Look what Google made!

2 parts melting permafrost, 1 part water.

2008-04-24T14:08:31Z

I've been reading Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe, because I really liked the original series of New Yorker articles it was based on. The book is fantastic. It's wonderfully written (although i would have liked more maps and charts), evocative, and although it's obviously trying to drive home the point that climate change is real, and terrifying, it does so in a subtle way.

The problem is that it's very slow going. I can only read about 5 or 6 pages before I have to put the book down and clutch my head, pondering the fact that humans may well be totally fucked. Seriously, we're so doomed. I contempate the death of our civilization for a few minutes before I pick up the book and start again where I left off. Read, pause, think about doom, repeat.

(Do I really think we're doomed? Not really, or I would be trying to make vast amounts of money and enjoy the last days of hedonism before the sea eats New York. These days I'd say it's about 50/50 doom/hope.)

Anyway, read the book. It's really good.

Pennsylvania flexes its political muscles

2008-04-22T10:07:23Z

Okay, first of all we have a tidbit from the LA Times on what to look for in Pennsylvania, which is a pretty succinct guide. CNN's political ticker is probably a good place to follow things through the day. ukeyouee, I'm looking at you.

And just a couple of things to rant about briefly:

Barack Obama showing that he really is kind of an elitist prig. Not that I think that any of the candidates aren't, but he's REAAAAAALLY not doing himself any favors. Even I was kind of miffed by what he said, and I'm a card-carrying member of the educated white bourgeoisie. Doesn't he think that the white working class (check out this article for a more thorough investigation of what the 'white working class' is, anyway) might have reasons other than plain ol' stupidity and/or fear for voting against their economic interests? I think they do.
Hillary, why are you sticking Osama bin Laden in your ads? (Unless it's to point out that we still can't find him.) Shame on you. Down, FUD, down.
Finally, McCain, no you do not know what it's like to not have health care. This makes me livid. As though someone who has had government provided health care all his life knows the quiet, constant fear that people have when they can't go to the doctor, when a life threatening illness or even a trip to the hospital can bankrupt you for the rest of your life. Fuck you fuck you fuck you. And an extra fuck you for good measure.

Read This

2008-04-11T14:37:16Z

Foreign Policy as Practiced by Seven Year Old Children

WTF

2008-04-09T22:19:14Z

Okay, so at the moment I'm watching BBC news live coverage of the Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco, where they've secretly changed the route of the torch, secretly, with absolutely no notice. It is surrounded by soldiers and police, with media photographers being driven just in front of that in what appears to be a Duck Tours bus. This is one of the most insane things I've ever seen.

Over the weekend a friend of mine informed me in his most dignified tone of left wing irritation that he finds it hypocritical that people in the US and the UK are upset about Tibet when their own countries are occupying Iraq. Which is a point, yes. But the thing that makes the Chinese government so much worse, above Tibet and Burma and Sudan, is the fact that it's a totalitarian, dictatorial regime. It's NOT the same as all of the other imperialistic countries who get the Olympics (not, deep down, that I give a rat's ass about the Olympics), it's worse. People in China can't even use the internet. And this farcical media spectacle/fake torch run really drives it home, the cheerful way in which the Chinese government is happy to lie to paint itself as a legitimate government, to protect its own wizened grip on power. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. What does it mean for the world that one billion people are living under a regime that purposefully misleads them and tries to teach them not to think too deeply about where the power lies?

Also, a voice labelled 'Olympic Historian' has just informed us that the Nazis invented the Olympic flame. Huh. I did not know that.

It's all coming together

2008-04-03T10:51:18Z

I've just gotten an email from the USCA offering me a large single in Hillegass/Parker House for the summer (please god let me keep it in the fall...). So this is where I'll be living, at least for the summer. I have begun online reconnaissance of appropriately sited yarn stores.

Pound Cake

2008-03-27T14:05:53Z

Via Ravelry, I found Phoenix's glorious blog entry on pound cake.

Pound cake was one of my very favorite things as a child, especially home baked. I, too, share her horror that people try to pass of angel cake (or worse, 'diet cake' and variations thereof) as pound cake. This is a sin. Follow her recipe for proper pound cake in all its fabulousness. I might add in a little more vanilla and orange or lemon zest.

“Light” pound cake will never be superior to pound cake. The sun does not rise in the west and set in the east. Fish do not live in the sky and birds do not live in the sea. Bears do not crap in toilets. There are laws and rules and some things just ain’t changing. Pound cake needs a pound of stuff. Call it love if you want. Just so long as you put it in the cake.

Race, class, and country music

2008-03-19T11:44:19Z

The Gristmill today pointed me in the direction of 'One Nation, Under Elvis', an article by Rebecca Solnit. It is, essentially, an article about the current 'culture wars' in the US, which is less a war than a massive childish spat between groups of people who all think they're better than everyone else.

Says Solnit,

"Grubby, furry, childless pseudo-nomads who could screw up all they wanted and live hand to mouth until something went wrong and the long arm of middle-class parents reached out to rescue them scorned the tough economic choices of people with kids, mortgages, and no bail-out plan or white-collar options. Some of them did great things for trees, but their approach wasn’t always, to say the least, coalition-building. It also wasn’t ubiquitous. There were some broad-minded people in the movement, and some who even hailed from these rural and poor cultures, and Earth First! always had a self-proclaimed redneck contingent—but the scorn was widespread enough to be a major problem. And it seemed to be part of the reason why a lot of rural people despise environmentalists."

This is not to say there isn't a lot of narrow-minded hate directed at earnest lefty tree-huggers, which is just as bad as the long-standing joke that everyone in between the coasts is Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel*. But the environmental movement has spent the last 100 years waiting for people to come to us. Time to climb down from the high horses and go to other people for a change. Solnit also points out something that I think ALL justice-minded greenies (particularly in America) need to remember every day:

"The Sierra Club, which Muir cofounded with a group of University of California professors in 1892, saw nature as not where one lived or worked but where one vacationed. And traditional American environmentalism still largely imagines nature as vacationland and as wilderness, ignoring the working landscapes and agricultural lands, whose beauties and meanings are widely celebrated in European art."

In other words, this is fundamentally a class issue. Deep in the American environmental psyche is the idea that people and nature are somehow separate, and that more importantly only 'wild' land is 'natural'. But humans are animals too, and have their part to play in natural cycles of environmental management. The trick is to live in our environment responsibly, to restrain our pine-beetleish tendedncies to overwhelm and exhaust the resources available to us. Responsible ranchers, farmers, and loggers have been doing this for millennia, and we urban environmentalists have a lot to learn from that. As long as people in cities - particularly rich people who drive their Range Rovers to rustic inns in the mountains - see the people who actually work the land, and love it as a livelihood, as unworthy, we're never going to solve our common problems.

* Although I would like to point out that I have actually seen Cletus, but that's another story.

we are now bourgeois capitalists

2008-03-04T12:58:17Z

Last weekend Matt and I cleaned and decluttered the flat from top to bottom, which involved four full days of sorting and packing and scrubbing and moving and recycling. And a trip to Ikea. Why?

We wanted it to look nice for the pictures.

election blues

2008-02-09T23:20:43Z

Okay, so on Tuesday I went to cast my vote in the Democrats Abroad primary at Portchester Hall in London. The problem was, I was having a massive moral crisis. I was an undecided voter, for the first time in my entire life (and yes, this includes casting a vote for Dukakis in my school's mock election in 1988 and crying when Bush won).

Since Edwards dropped out (and this Krugman column made me cry), I've had a hard time getting excited about the Democratic primary. This isn't just out of character, it's out of keeping with the massive turnouts recorded all over the states which (I assume) means that heaps of other people are terribly thrilled. It's a strange combination of disillusionment, apathy, and indecision that I've never experenced before. Between Obamania and the Hillarybot, who the hell am I going to vote for?

Yes, Obama's very charismatic and a spectacular public speaker. But in terms of policies, he's a well-cut empty suit. Without mandates, his healthcare plan is worthless and will leave half the uninsured still out in the cold. Hillary's plan doesn't do this, but she might destroy the Democratic party. Obama seems to be uniting progressives all over the US but at the same time I'm a little bit creeped out and turned off my his cult of personality. On the other hand, my gut feeling tells me he might be more electable, because so many people (irrationally) hate Hillary. My feminist gut tells me that this is because America is more antifeminist than it is racist, and that a lot of people hate her more for being a strong, intelligent woman in politics than because of her policies (many of which I still find uncool, such as her early support for the Iraq war). Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So I voted my conscience: I decided not to decide. I'll obviously fight hard for whomever wins the ~~popularity contest~~ nomination, and until then Edwards has my protest vote.

Sez Bob Herbert: "The presidential candidates don’t seem to be rising to the nation’s many crucial challenges with the sense of urgency and the creative vision that is called for. Not yet, at least."

Meanwhile, I've joined Ravelry and am knitting like a fiend. It's nice to have a second hobby when your first one depresses you. I'm slightly alarmed that I've only been on there three days and i've already caught a very subtle Little Women reference in the forums and queued up more than 10 new patterns I want to try. And, of course, I've already found someone who knitted their own Obama hat.

good people are nice to animals. bad people aren't.

2008-02-07T11:40:08Z

Okay, in the past week I've been running across what seems to be story after story about animal cruelty. Take, for example, today's article about the Ministry of Defence ending goat testing on submarines. WHAT? We've been giving goats the bends? For how long? Why is my taxpayer money funding this?

There was also a great New York Times story about rehabilitating the dogs that were rescued from Michael Vick's pitbull fighting ring. The scale of the abuse is just mind-blowing - including one who had all her teeth pulled out so she could be forcibly mated with other dogs. I just can't imagine how people can do this to other critters; it's such a small step between animal abuse and sociopathy. At least a lot of them have loving new homes with places like Best Friends Shelter and BADRAP.

Finally, in a somewhat perverse example of animals gettin' their own back, a number of workers in a pork processing facility have picked up an obscure and debilitating neurological illness from - you guessed it - aerosolized pig brains. Okay, you probably didn't guess that. Also, you might feel like barfing. I know I do.

ETA: I forgot to add a link to the story of Puddles who rose from the dead as Panchito. Which goes to show that sometimes people love animals a little too much.

oh my goodness.

2008-01-29T18:47:15Z

I GOT INTO BERKELEY!!!!!!!

When I have my PhD, all y'alls have to call me Doctor Erin. Maybe.

bagsnatcher part II

2008-01-29T11:18:39Z

So, as it happens, my bag was found. The nice dudes working at the train station (next door to the pub where the bag was stolen) called me, and I went to pick it up. The thief had dashed down into a quiet spot in the station, ransacked the bag, grabbed my iPod, and dumped the bag behind a fence in a kitchen midden-y type area covered in trash and used needles (yep, not using that bag again). So, in the end I got my keys back, and my mittens and hat. And the iPod is insured, so in theory I'm getting it back. Yay! And I still have an excuse to buy a shiny new handbag. Here's hoping I find one with similarly excellent pockets.

damn you, bagsnatcher!

2008-01-22T01:18:05Z

So there I was, in the pub, having a wonderfully pleasant dinner with Alison and my friend Ariana who is visiting from Boston, when a dodgy-looking guy brushes past our table. A split second later I check for my bag and it's gone. In the couple of seconds it took me to realize that my bag was, yes, definitely gone, the guy had ducked into the toilets, ducked out, and dashed out the door with my bag. RIchard the barman went after him but it was too late, he was gone. He'd clearly had an eye on the table and my bag for some time. By the super-duper hand of god, I had taken my wallet and phone out and put them on the table, so I still had them and wasn't too upset. I lost my gloves and hat, but Branislava knitted me a gorgeous birthday hat, so once again the gods seemed to be smiling.

All my keys were gone though, and soon enough i realized that I had left a birthday card in my bag with my London address on it. D'oh #1. We've got to change the locks. Now, as I'm going to bed, I've discovered that I can't find my iPod. It's exactly the kind of thing I throw in my bag every morning without thinking, so even though I haven't used it today I've probably been carrying it around with me. And now dodgy trench coat man is carrying it around with him. D'oh #2. And finally, I can't find my USB drive. I'm much more upset about the 'kyoto now' lanyard it used to hang on, because that's a memento from Bali - but there was loads of personal stuff on it. D'oh #3. That's the locks in Oxford need changing, then. And loads of my personal info wandering through the world.

Fucksticks.

bali policy outcomes

2008-01-14T00:03:09Z

Okay, for everyone who said to me "but wasn't Bali just a washout, anyway? Nothing really happened."

Yes, the overall declaration was watered down. But this post from global deal is a really good summary of the policy wins in Bali, showing how promising the Bali groundwork could be.

Huck and Chuck

2008-01-03T15:16:26Z

This article from the the world's most bizarro political rally is so good I have to quote the first two paragraphs in full:

The long days, late nights and constant talk about politics must be getting to me. I had the craziest dream last night -- I was at this old 1930s-era ballroom in Iowa, the kind of place where, like, Duke Ellington would have played in his heyday but that now has to settle for the Tesla reunion tour. I was surrounded by conservative Christians and these weird groups of teenagers who were unusually excited about abolishing the IRS. Chuck Norris was up on stage, talking about putting Marines in headlocks and dancing with his younger, blonder wife. And for some reason, Mike Huckabee was there, playing bass on "Sweet Home Alabama" with a local band called the Boogie-Woogies while MSNBC host/former "Contract With America" revolutionary Joe Scarborough sat in on guitar.

Oh, wait, you're right. That wasn't a dream.

Read the full article. And while you're at it, watch Huckabee's Chuck Norris approved TV ad.

Lest you think the world is going to hell in a wierd-shit-filled handbasket (and I wouldn't blame you if you did), here is the new Radiohead album and a deer strikes back. Go deer.

Iowa caucus! Eep!

2008-01-02T18:14:50Z

I can't believe the Iowa caucuses are tomorrow! Everything's moving so fast!

I'm biting my nails about John Edwards. He's the only viable, progressive candidate, and the polls aren't looking as good as his Iowa campaign director's relentlessly chirpy emails would suggest. Also, Kucinich told his supporters to caucus for Obama. Gnome.

Also...
Christmas sucked. Thanks, mom.
If I get into the PhD program I've applied for, I somehow have to take a college-level statistics course before I start. Fuck!

the future is on its way

2007-12-26T20:08:52Z

Promising new stuff via the Gristmill:

1. Nanosolar is shipping its first panels, which should work out to $0.99 a watt - cheaper than coal! We all knew it was only a matter of time.

2. A new paper has come out showing that wind energy can provide reliable baseload power with a smart grid. To be honest, I don't trust a big grid system (2003 NYC Blackout, anyone?) but it's nice to know that people are looking into it.

As RK Pachauri points out (yes, he gave me a hug in Bali), we already have the ability to cut emissions low enough to stave off catastrophe. What we're missing is political will.

Bali: The end of the beginning

2007-12-22T19:19:39Z

Okay, this is cross-posted from It's Getting Hot in Here, but I thought I might add it here too.

At the moment I'm sitting on a fourteen hour flight, the last leg of my journey home. My round-trip flight from London (where I live and work) emitted about 3 tons of carbon dioxide. When I started a Facebook group to support youth activism at the Bali conference, one of the first comments I got was "Isn't it ironic that you're all flying to Bali for a climate change conference? You're better off spending all that money on local climate change efforts at home." It echoed a sentiment I had heard from a number of people, including my own partner. I wasn't the only one going, of course; I was part of a delegation of 22 young Americans and approximately 150 people under the age of 26 attending the conference. I fully recognize that flying halfway across the world and staying in a big, air-conditioned hotel is hardly the most obvious way of living out my principles. So what possessed me to go? And what did I do when I got there to justify the expense and the emissions?

Although Bali is a fine slice of tropical paradise, I didn't exactly get a beach vacation. I spent most of my time sitting on the floor underneath the conference center's rear stairwell, which the youth delegates had informally occupied as our 'bunker'. I started every day with a 7:30 meeting and usually finished the day around 10:00, after strategizing with other countries' youth delegations, blogging back to supporters at home, lobbying country delegates, organizing actions such as handing out 'climate emergency kits', putting on press conferences, following negotiations, and constantly running back and forth between two conference venues which were about a mile apart. I began by optimistically bringing my swimsuit along with my laptop, but by the third day of negotiations I realized that I was only rarely going to see the clear blue Balinese ocean. There was simply too much work to be done.

As an American, I represented the country Al Gore referred to as "the single biggest obstacle to progress in these climate change negotiations." Yet, growing up in the richest country in the world, I have benefited from the carbon emissions generated by our industrial development; I am already richer than the vast majority of people in the world. Nonetheless it is the poor and vulnerable, particularly in developing countries, who will suffer most from climate change. I can't understand how the current administration can reconcile this injustice - and their criminal inaction - with their purported Christianity and 'compassion'. The official delegation continued to obstruct the process at nearly every turn. This included key agreements to foster the sharing of clean technologies, which will help countries like China and India develop without endangering our future. As the talks dragged into an unexpected extra day of negotiations, I was sure that my country would cause the summit to collapse, wasting even more time as we creep ever closer to catastrophe.

Yet even the State Department couldn't handle the pressure after being booed by 189 countries. "Please, get out of the way," pleaded Papua New Guinea, a small island nation which stands to be washed away by sea level rise. And, astonishingly, they did. They were greeted by cheers of, if not approbation, at least relief. The youth contingent, which had earlier moved delegates to tears with a plenary address begging for action, were nearing tears themselves. This is not to say the outlook is rosy. The US government is already contesting the Bali roadmap, expressing "serious reservations" and returning once again to China and India, the red herrings of US climate change policy. The administration didn't so much turn around as gingerly step to one side, carping and bitching as the world stampedes past toward a binding international agreement which might, hopefully, save us from the world's largest climactic mess. But that's enough for me right now. November 4, 2008 gets closer every day.

So, was it worth it? Did I earn my 3 tons of carbon dioxide? The problem with work like this - which is, essentially, simply a form of high-level nagging - is that you can never really tell what you've achieved. You can count your blog posts, or the number of hours you've spent watching ministers talk, or the number of times that one Reuters photograph of you in a reindeer suit has circled the globe. But it's never just you; in the case of this summit I was surrounded and supported by scores of the most amazing, passionate, intelligent people I have ever met. And we're all working together, not just in Bali but in our own countries, all over the world, to ensure strong, decisive action to protect our future. The agreement in Bali sets the stage for the global solution to the climate crisis, which is a pretty big prize to keep our eye on. We have at least two more years of work to hammer out a new agreement, and then we may spend our lifetimes developing it, protecting it, and implementing it in our own communities. It's going to be a lot of work, but as my friend Karmila said, addressing ministers from all over the world: "The world is watching. The youth are rising. Join us."

(17 December 2007)

Bali: winding down and winding up

2007-12-14T06:17:18Z

Yesterday was crazy - after the usual morning meetings I bolted to the conference centre to catch the beginning of negotiations. i was holding a bag of squishy stress balls shaped like the earth and bearing the words "The other US is with you." The idea was to encourage the other countries to stand strong and ignore the US's obstructionism, as well as thanking them for their work so far. We needed to communicate that the delegation here wasn't representative of the US people, and that we needed strong, decisive action. It was really fun - I squishy balled representatives of Tanzania, Lebanon, the Seychelles, Bangladesh, Angola, Egypt, France, China, and the Prime Minister of Norway.

Once I had run out of squishy balls I went to see my friend (and current head of SustainUS) speak on a Climate Action Network press conference panel with the head of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Carl Pope. There was a great moment when a reporter asked, "Do you feel embarrassed by the way your government is acting in the negotiations?" "Yes," Erin replied. There was a long pause as the obviousness sunk in before she added, "Oh, do you want me to say a few more words about that?"

Afterwards we ran into the US delegation, who were holding their press conference after the US Climate Action Network (the panel Erin was speaking on). They all ignored us until Dominic and I started talking to someone from the International Chamber of Commerce, when they came over to say hello. Just seeing them there made me so angry. They're doing so much to destroy the negotiations - throwing in language that gains them nothing but breaks a consensus that 180 other countries had struggled to reach, insulting other delegations (and the world), and generally acting like a two ton idiot bull in a china shop. In the CAN Press Conference, Carl Pope pointed out (very slowly and clearly) that the administration has accepted the IPCC fourth assessment report, and delegation representatives have given presentations showing that they accept the science and not only that, they recognize the action we need to take to stop disaster. "They cannot be forgiven because they know exactly what they're doing."

Infuriated, I stalked out of the conference centre to eat lunch, only to find that I was sitting opposite Hilary Benn, the UK minister for the Environment. He got a squishy ball too. It made me feel better. So did facilitating a meeting to plan the youth caucus' last few actions, as well as singing our song at the Fossil of the Day presentation.

But the highlight of the day was a speech from Al Gore. He was AMAZING - really honest and emotive and wonderful and prophetic. It's really hard to try to describe the effect it had on me. It's not like he was saying anything particularly new - he was simply speaking from his heart, exhorting the delegates to take action and, more importantly, move around the roadblock of the United States. But I needed it so badly, I needed someone to urge the world to move forward because we don't have time to waste, US government be damned. I needed a champion. I needed the truth.

"In our country's darkest hour, our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, said 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.'"

bali bali bali

2007-12-13T11:24:12Z

So today I wrote a song and we sang it after the US won first place for Fossil of the Day today.

(to the tune of "America the Beautiful")

Oh Nusa Dua, the beautiful
Home of UNF triple C
In plenary and contact groups
Negotiate for you and me
The time has come, we cannot wait
The seas are rising fast
It’s time for action on climate change
An agreement which will last.

As Americans we are ashamed
At our country’s intransigence
Blocking REDD and tech transfer
And adaptation funds
Delegates of other lands
Don’t think they speak for us
We are the youth, we beg of you
Protect our futures now

Harlan Watson, don’t try to stop
International action
Two degrees bring droughts and floods
And tropical disease
America America demonstrate leadership
Commit to binding emissions cuts
From sea to shining sea
----

Also, I'm currently in one of the plenary halls waiting for Al Gore to get up and speak. I got a free teddy bear too!

Me, Josh, and the Climate Cub