Paris - Day Five

I'm continuing to innovate as I try to get the most out of the fact that I am in Paris for two weeks on the tax payer's dime. I want to give you all good value for money but, I need some time for me too.

So, as an immediate improvement on what I described in my last post, which was, you recall, the process of taking notes furiously all day, making the trip back to the hotel and then sequestering myself for hours to turn notes I no longer understood into meaningful, insightful prose .... I have decided not to do that anymore.

Instead, I take the notes during the day and then immediately find a quiet spot to turn them into a dispatch. On the strength of a one-day test-drive, I would say this approach works slick as a whistle. I get my homework done, and I still have time to go out in the evening. Plus, folks on the home front are raving about the news. So it's all good.

As for what I did with my free evening tonight ... well, I'm in Paris for heaven's sake, so I went out with my companion the Environmental Commissioner, and the Special Advisor on Climate Change and his charming wife Trish, to enjoy a fine Indian meal.

Just around the corner from us is a place my companion said was in "the top1000 restaurants in Paris."

OK, because it's PARIS, being in the top 1000 is something of a distinction, I suppose, but it didn't make me brace myself for a life-changing meal.

It was a perfectly lovely Indian meal with crispy pakoras, bhaji that were a lot like little oniony pancakes, an interesting tandoori-style salmon appetizer, and quite decent paneer. The way I could tell I wasn't in Toronto was how mildly the food was spiced.

As for my day at work, I stayed away from the negotiations for the first half of the day. I absorbed the Environment and Climate Change briefing, talked shop and compared notes with my counterparts from BC and Alberta, filed my first dispatch, went to a press conference by the Climate Action Network, filed a dispatch about that, and then went to Environment and Climate Change Canada's mid-day public briefing where the same people have asked the same questions for three days running. I filed a dispatch about that, too.

Then I supported my Minister at a meeting with an enthusiastic Harvard academic who likes the idea of provinces sending money to less developed countries to make up for the money that is not being sent by national governments. He got a chilly reception.

Braced by my negotiation-free day AND a double espresso, I found a seat in an "overflow" room to listen to a conversation among all the members of the Convention. They had agreed to spend some time talking about the seven things they hate the most about each other.

It was an interesting conversation, but not a heartening or inspiring one. It was easy to forget, as the less developed countries complained about just about everything, that, at least so far as the science is concerned, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

The most illuminating moment for me was the long "intervention" by the negotiator from Malaysia, representing a group of countries calling itself the "Like Minded Developing Countries." He went on at great length about the injustice of the countries who have caused climate change now looking to the developing countries, struggling to bring their populations out of poverty, to solve the problem for them. He talked about the historical obligation of the developed world and maybe stretched or ignored some facts a bit to count on his fingers the great betrayals already visited on the vulnerable by the strong. He was, to quote a line from a film perhaps fading from the collective memory, "mad as hell and he wasn't going to take it anymore." When he was done, there was applause in the overflow room. A lot of applause.

I filed a dispatch about that, and then got on the subway to go "home."