Katowice COP24 Monday December 3
Today was also a bit slow, but more happening than yesterday and I expect the trend to continue.
Happenings today
Today there were a few key things going on.
First off, the conference had its official opening where the president of Poland, among many others, spoke.
After the opening, many other presidents from around the world were in attendance and spoke about their stance, opinion and ideas in relation to climate change. I got to hear the president of Switzerland, of an island state called Nauru, and of Botswana. Each of their speeches was what you’d expect, pretty political and emphasizing what their countries main goals were. There were tons of president speakers and I didn’t hear other ones, but these guys I felt like were there a bit more for political reasons than to say something super influential. Especially since they only got the chance to talk for about 4 minutes.
Concurrently, there were sessions going on about agriculture as it relates to climate change (livestock alone according to the FAO are 14.5% of emissions).
There was also a big chunk of time being dedicated to both developed and developing countries (characterized through different ways, but based on economy size, resources, poverty, etc) sharing updates on their current efforts.
I got to hear a bit about the EU’s work, a little on France and then Argentina and China talking about their current status, where other countries could also ask them questions.
After that, I went to a session about reducing emissions from ships by the IMO (international maritime org). Ships account for something like 2.3% of total emissions now and they were talking about different energy resources, adopting them, the life cycles of ships (30 years, so have to plan ahead!), and even potential autonomous ships in the future.
I also got to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger on a panel!
Highlights
- Schwarzenegger said something along the likes of ‘I wish I were the terminator in real life so I could go back in time and get rid of fossil fuels — logistically problematic but was funny
- One of the speakers in the intro session was María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the United Nations General Assembly President. Was cool to listen to her speech in Spanish and understand what she was saying, but she was also inspiring. Hard to explain why, but just had tons of energy, made it seem like tackling these massive issues was feasible, and she painted a clear picture of how to do it
- The Polish president walked right past me, also really cool
- Hearing from these big name speakers that were presidents and high up in the UN was inspiring since I was in the same room and they were sharing a vision about how important these issues were, which hopefully sent a big trickle down message
- Argentina and China’s emission status was interesting. China, especially, is overwhelming and scary since they have been reducing their ‘emissions intensity,’ meaning their emissions per unit of GDP, but since their GDP is growing so quickly, their total emissions, which is what really counts in the big picture, are a bit more of a question mark. I get why they measure it that way, and you can’t say that China shouldn’t be prioritizing the economic well-being and development of its people, but still a challenging situation
- The IMO conversation was pretty interesting and showed the ways that tech and collaboration can have a big impact (2% might seem small, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s massive amounts of CO2).
- Many of the countries had up booths to bring people together for conversations and showcase their agenda and ideas, which was both overwhelming since there were so many, but also extremely exciting.
Overall Thoughts
- In many of the sessions today, it was hard to understand what people were saying, either because they weren’t talking very loudly or because of thick accents. It was frustrating to me, but had two thoughts that weren’t necessarily comforting but made me less frustrated at least. First, that the point wasn’t for me to understand what was going on, so it’s not like they should cater to that. Secondly, though, given that I had a hard time understanding as a native English speaker, I imagine many others did as well, which shows how challenging communication can be at this scale.
- Conference is what you make of it — the day was super open ended and there’s lots of energy and buzz, but also very overwhelming with so many people and so much happening. So, it’s sink or swim in some ways which is both good because it means I get to control it, but also bad because it puts a lot of pressure on being high energy, aware, thoughtful, prepared, etc
- Energy is such an important part of the future
- Talking with other people should be priority since so much to learn from those empathies
