Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Virtual Durban: Tuvalu, PNG, and Elizabeth May

Today I urge you to watch the full thirteen minutes of Elizabeth May's news conference on leaving for Durban. It captures the banality of the fall of democracy in Canada, how small administrative details have enormous consequences for the nature of governance, how delicate a structure our democracy really is. I know I'm not selling it, but it really is a fascinating insight into the internal workings of government and the subtle way that democratic principles can be quietly smothered.

Click the link here to watch the video on CBC.

The video also captures some of the flavour of a COP with the different levels of badges granting access to different levels of meetings. The almighty 'pink' badge of the delegate trumps all.

And the punchline to the story is that May was finally given delegate status upon arrival in Durban. The nation of Papua New Guineau embraced her as part of their delegation and granted May one of the coveted pink badges. Sounds like my kind of country!

Photo courtesy of UNFCCC

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