THE CARBON WAR

A minimum of sleep 307
Both sides use film, of course, and the propaganda against Big Energy is
vicious in that medium. A leading British pop musician has produced a video
story of his own for the Paris summit. This film aims higher than YouTube. It
can be viewed on the website of a national newspaper. In it, an undercover agent
of some sort, a woman played by a well-known actress, shoots footage with a
concealed camera at a drug-fuelled party overlooking the Eiffel tower. Using
facial recognition software, her film identifies fictional Big Energy executives
and spin doctors, plus their supporters in government departments, many of
whom are committing gross acts as they feed their shared addiction. In one
memorable scene, another well-known actress plays a woman the software
reveals to be Emilia Knight, a fictional Vice President for Corporate Strategic
Planning at ExxonMobil. She is licking a syringe we must assume is filled with
heroin, before injecting it into the willing arm of Sam Johnson, a fictional
official from the US Department of Energy.
The title of the film is “La Fête est Finie”: The Party is Over.
Back in Le Bourget it is still not clear that fossil fuel addiction is threatened
by the summiteers. The negotiators continue to struggle. There is opposition
to a 2˚C target for the global-warming ceiling, never mind the 1.5˚C proposal.
Behind the closed doors of their bargaining sessions, we can only imagine the
scenes, and the roles the real-world Emilia Knights and Sam Johnsons are
trying – minus syringes, no doubt – to play in them.
Meanwhile, the news from civil society participants continues to be uplifting.
A thousand mayors announce that their cities are now intent on going
100% renewable by 2050. They hand a declaration to Ban Ki-moon supporting
“ambitious long-term climate goals such as a transition to 100% renewables
in our communities, or an 80% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2050.”
The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, led this charge. The Mayor of Sydney,
Clover Moore, wants more. “We’ve developed a master plan to power the city
of Sydney with 100% renewable energy by 2030”, she tells the press. “We’re
building this transition from the ground up, showing negotiators here in Paris
that they can and must commit to 100% clean energy and an end to fossil fuels
as soon as possible.”
Let’s hope the negotiators are listening.
I ask Tom Carnac for a frank appraisal of the state of play. There will need
to be a coming-together moment on finance, he says.
He is being diplomatic. French energy and environment minister Ségolène
Royal spells it out more graphically for the press: “The fate of the United Nations