Take me to Hopenhagen
Barring more news about Tiger Woods’ exploits off the golf course, the topic that should be giving everyone serious pause is the Copenhagen climate summit.
Billed by environmentalists as the most important international meeting in decades, the talks — technically known as the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), often abbreviated to COP15 — bring together delegates from 192 countries for two weeks of discussions aimed at paving the way for a new treaty on global warming.
Go team earth
As tens of thousands of people descend on the Danish capital to attend the event, thousands more are expected to join rallies or attempt to crash the party. If you still can’t wrap your head around the magnitude of this meeting, take the peace-love-and-unicorns vibe of Woodstock, mix in some Comic-Con-style nerdiness and multiply that by Twitter. Team Edward and Team Jacob are so last month; this time it’s all about Team Earth.
While climate activists accept that COP15 will most likely not produce a full, legally-binding treaty, there has been a halo of optimism surrounding the cause. Despite e-mails hacked from a climate research institute disputing the gravity of greenhouse gas emissions — Google “ClimateGate” — the issue has gone mainstream by way of a clever marketing campaign.
Epic challenge
Launched by the United Nations and an international coalition of advertising agencies, “Hopenhagen” aims to raise awareness of the importance of the UN meeting in Denmark. With ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in charge of the strategy, the ads were first rolled out at the Cannes Lions festival in France in June.
“Climate change is one of the epic challenges facing this and future generations. It is time to seal a deal. We need a global movement that mobilizes real change,” UN secretary-
general Ban Ki-moon tells The Guardian. See, even if climate sceptics claim that the money spent on this advertising campaign could have been better spent on the various UN malaria programs — or that Copenhagen is merely another pointless international sideshow — what’s important is that it has caught the attention of the world’s youth.
As part of the British Council’s International Climate Champion’s program, Ruth Villarama has been selected to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The Filipina will interact with other official delegates, voice the concerns of the youth and share her thoughts on confronting climate change. In true millennial fashion, she will be live-blogging from Scandinavia.
Feels so ‘goode’
Created by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill), The Goode Family is an animated sitcom about an American family — together with their vegan dog, Che — struggling with the responsibility of being environmentally conscious. A spoof of modern-day political hypercorrectness, the show was unfortunately axed by ABC due to poor ratings; the producers have announced, however, that reruns of The Goode Family will air on Comedy Central in January 2010.
But back to this week’s hot-button topic. The European Union says that the Copenhagen summit is our last chance to save the world. With such high stakes, it isn’t surprising that so many characters are scrambling on to this colossal green bandwagon. On the one hand, you have people who are genuinely concerned for the future of the world. On the other, you have hordes of conspiracy theorists and alarmists who are now wailing that we’re doomed, unless you pray to Gaia — remember Captain Planet and the Planeteers? — and hand over your savings. In between those two moving targets are big businesses that are hysterically falling over each other to declare their love for the planet they didn’t really care about minutes ago.
Perhaps the best Christmas wish I could make is this: I want this obsession with carbon footprints to become routine. Trend or no trend, it’s really something worth embracing.
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