Cherry bomb

Chasing cherry blossoms in Bonn

This is Cherry Blossom Avenue in Bonn (or Heerstraße as it's known locally). Each spring, this street is transformed into a tunnel of puffy, pink cherry blossoms. The trees were in full bloom this week and I headed out after work to take a few pictures.

Cherry blossom season is fast, fleeting and blindingly beautiful. Maybe it's banal to say the cherry blossom is my favourite flower. Maybe it's akin to admitting you like puppies and kittens (who doesn't?). But having a deep appreciation for life's transitory moments is something that resonates with me. And there is no more perfect metaphor for the fleeting nature of life than the pale pink cherry blossom. Blindingly beautiful and then gone.

A tiny trip to little Luxembourg

My quest to visit all nine countries that share a border with Germany continued with a tiny trip to little Luxembourg last weekend. Seven down, two to go.

Luxembourg exceeded all expectations. Which isn't saying much considering that I had no expectations to begin with. It wasn't a place I particularly wanted to visit (apart from the nine-border-country challenge). I knew almost nothing about it (other than the fact that it is one of the smallest countries in Europe). And I had no clue what language people spoke there (Luxembourgish?). Just like watching a movie without first having seen the trailer, I went to Luxembourg without having read anything about it.

The good thing about having no expectations is that it's difficult to be disappointed. Luxembourg had nothing to live up to. It conjured up an ocean of emptiness in my mind. How could I not be pleasantly surprised by the city's pretty valleys, high plateaus, narrow streets and old fortress walls?

Here are a few things I learned about Luxembourg. The default language is French (handy for those of us whose French has lapsed but can still pull a few useful phases like "Un pain au chocolat avec un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait" out of our hats). The city's old quarters and fortifications are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is possible to see everything worth seeing in one day, on foot. And the glass doors inside the National Museum of History and Art are so spotlessly clean that they are rendered invisible (as evidenced by the bump on my forehead after walking full-speed into one of said doors. I'm sure someone has already leaked the security-camera footage to YouTube. Look for me in the 2013 Ultimate Girls Fail Compilation video).

It took about three and a half hours to get to Luxembourg from Bonn by train. We lucked out with cheap tickets that cost 18 euros each way thanks to the fact that the German rail system charges less for tickets the further in advance you book them. This rewards good planning but penalizes spontaneity. The trains ran on time on the way there but were delayed on the way back, which is consistent with my experience that German trains run on time only about 50 per cent of the time (German trains are not reliable or efficient. Do not believe the hype).

The train ride itself was uneventful, expect for the group of drunken soccer fans we met on the Koblenz platform when transferring to Trier. They were drinking beer and screaming soccer chants on their way to a game at 7:45 in the morning. I don't follow soccer but I know when a game is being played in Cologne or Dortmund because those are the days the trains are packed with police officers to keep the hooligans under control. It's not fun sharing a train with drunk soccer fans. They smoke on the train, they drink on the train and they're loud, boorish and aggressive. They block the aisles with cases of beer and they stand ready to fight at the slightest provocation. I always feel like there's about two inches between my face and a wayward fist when there's a soccer game on. Public drunkenness is also pervasive in Japan but it's a quieter, gentler kind of public drunkenness, especially on the trains where the only danger is a salaryman soundlessly falling asleep on your shoulder.

The other thing worth noting is that you don't need a passport while travelling between European countries by train. There are no border control officers because there are no borders. Or at least there are no borders that you can actually see. Not only are there no visible borders, there are no announcements to let you know you've left one country and entered another.

The first time I traveled from Germany to another country by train, I had expected the conductor to make an announcement like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have just left Germany and have now entered Switzerland!" And then all the passengers would applaud and say things like, "Oooh! Awesome!" But this never happens. Europeans are not partial to North American enthusiasm. The only way to know you've crossed a border in Europe is through your cell phone, which immediately receives a text message when you cross a border to let you know how much it costs to make and receive calls in the new country. If you want to know when you've crossed the border, you just have to listen for the symphony of ringtones when everyone receives the same text message at the same time.

And that's all I have to say about Luxembourg (although, technically speaking, only two of the above eight paragraphs are actually about Luxembourg).

You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one

"Today we have not only an ecological crisis, we also have a kind of story crisis. That is to say there's something very wrong about the way that we understand who we are and our relationship with the earth." -- Continuum trailer

This is a film that needs to be made. This is a story that needs to be told. But best of all, this is a film that will be made because people believe it is a story worth telling.

Planetary Collective has spent the past three years working on Continuum, a feature-length documentary that tells the story of our interconnection with each other, the planet and the universe. Back in February, they put the project on Kickstarter in an attempt to raise enough money to fund the final push through crowd funding. I watched the trailer, fell in love with the film and decided I had to back the project. If all that was needed to make Continuum happen was a little bit of money from a lot of people then I wanted to be one of those people.

I don't know what excites me more: the film itself or the way Kickstarter has the potential to revolutionize how creative projects get funded. It gives citizens the power to support projects they like and it gives the filmmakers, artists and musicians complete control over their projects. It's democratic, it's participatory and it's refreshingly real in an era of manufactured pop stars and Hollywood schlock. We get to help make something great happen and, in return, we get to be part of that greatness.

Here's how the filmmakers describe Continuum on their Kickstarter page:

"We are in the midst of an ecological crisis of an unprecedented scale, with implications not only for mankind's social, economic and political spheres, but for the life system of the planet as a whole.

One of the fundamental factors underlying this crisis is our worldview: the way we see the world around us and our relationships to each other, the planet, and the cosmos as a whole. Our worldview informs our values, behaviour, and way of life in such a way that some environmentalists have declared the environmental crisis to actually be a 'crisis of worldview'. One dominant feature of our ordinary worldview is the misperception that we are separate from each other and the greater systems we are embedded within.

CONTINUUM is a feature-length documentary that explores this sense of separation and its roots in language, perception and our evolution. The journey will take us from the first stirrings of life to the emergence of a global brain; from the complexity and wonder of a single plant cell to the emerging biomimetic technologies that are changing the way we build the future; and from the appearance of modern humans to the planetary crisis we face today."

The filmmakers hope the documentary "will change the way we think as a species -- to stop seeing ourselves as separate from each other, from the planet and the cosmos -- and inspire us to work together to transform our planetary crises."

I can't wait to see this film when it's finished. In the meantime, I highly recommend watching Planetary Collective's first short film Overview -- which explores the perspective-altering phenomenon that many astronauts experience after being in space.

Hot off the press

Back when I was a student at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, my professor created a newsletter to highlight some of the impressive work being done by faculty and students in our program.

It was a project I was excited to be a part of because the point of the thing was not to be some sort of self-serving, jargon-laden, grant-justifying puff piece. The point of the thing was to be a place where we could share our stories with the wider world -- to shine a light on action both on campus and in the larger community. It was born of a genuine desire to bring our stories beyond the confines of the conference circuit. To build a bridge between scientists and the public.

The newsletter's third issue is now online. Articles cover a wide range of topics, from a forum on how to green university campuses to the role of young people in international biodiversity negotiations to the growing youth movement against nuclear power in Japan. My professor asked me if she could include a condensed version of my blog post on the UN climate change conference in Doha in the newest issue and I was happy to oblige.

It's not the most scintillating newsletter you'll ever read. But communication is a critical part of creating momentum for change and for that I salute it.

Awesome Austria

I've been in Germany for exactly one year now and the novelty of being transported to another country, climate and/or geographical zone by train still hasn't worn off. The smallness of Europe and the extensiveness of its rail network continue to amaze.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll be here but before I leave I'd like to complete my quest to travel to all nine countries that share a border with Germany, preferably by train. It's not that I have a burning desire to visit Luxembourg or Poland. But I like the sense of accomplishment that comes from making lists and crossing things off them. I also like circuitous challenges. And I like taking the train. Visiting all nine border countries combines the best of all three. The tally so far: Six countries down, three to go. Austria is the latest country scratched off the list.

Not that crossing a conveniently located country off an arbitrary list was the only reason to go to Austria at the end of February. There were other reasons too. Like the Alps, a shitload of snow and a joint birthday celebration.

I had a two-point plan to celebrate my birthday at the end of February. Sergey, who shares the same birthday, had a zero-point plan; he was up for anything. I wanted to trade Bonn's dark, soggy lowlands for somewhere more sunny, snowy and mountainous while, at the same time, setting foot in another German-border-sharing country. Austria was the obvious choice. Having settled on Austria, the next step was to find a place that offered every winter sport you could think of but mostly cross-country skiing. If you type "where in Austria can you find a place that offers every winter sport you can think of but mostly cross-country skiing?" into a Google search, you will not find a match. But if you type "cross-country skiing in Austria" into a Google search, you will find a place called Seefeld in Tirol.

Seefeld in Tirol claims to be the best place for cross-country skiing in all of Europe. Which seems like hyperbole but turns out to be fact. Seefeld in Tirol is located on a high plateau in the Austrian Alps with 279 km of groomed cross-country ski trails (154.3 km of trails for classic skiing and 124.7 km of trails for skate skiing). Basically it was a cross-country-skiing paradise. Which, for reasons I don't understand, seemed to attract a mostly older crowd. Like much older. Like 65+ older. If having an appreciation for silence and solitude on skis makes me old then so be it.

There were five villages within skiing distance so you could leave from Seefeld in the morning, ski all day, stop for lunch at one of the huts along the way, pop out in a different town and take the bus back. (Provided you didn't mind waiting for the bus, which ran only once an hour or sometimes not at all. But being in civilization, you could call a taxi to take you back.)

While skiing in Austria was incredibly beautiful, I wouldn't exactly call it a wilderness experience. The trails weaved in and out of forests but there were huts serving hot food and drinks every five kilometres or so. It was all very civilized. I especially enjoyed the complimentary blankets for coffee drinking.

Next weekend: A little trip to the little country of Luxembourg.

Gone skiing

I'm heading to the Austrian Alps for a birthday bonanza of skiing, skating and snowshoeing! Back online next week.

The end of the backyard ice rink?

This is not a story about hockey. Hockey is a game and this goes deeper than that. Strip hockey of its teams, its salaries, its sticks, its pucks, its rules and its regulations. Take all of that away and you are left with what makes hockey possible in the first place. This is a story about ice.

Ice is a part of our collective Canadian consciousness. When I think about the winters of my childhood, I think about the hours spent skating on the tiny ice rink my dad built in our backyard. It was a simple bit of engineering with magical results.

My dad would wait until mid-December for temperatures to drop. After enough snow had fallen, he would clear an area of the backyard and use the snow to make banks around the rink. He repeatedly sprinkled water on the sides of the banks and on the edge of the grass in order to seal the area around the edges so that the water wouldn't leak out. After it had been cold enough for the ground to freeze, he used a hose to build up a base of ice.

Once we had a couple of inches of ice, he would "Zamboni" it by filling a large pail with warm water and flooding the rink. The warm water melted the surface and filled in all of the cuts from earlier skating. It probably took a week or two, depending on the weather, to create a good surface. Of course, thaws and rain would melt the rink but my dad would rebuild it as soon as it got cold again.

I couldn't get enough of that backyard rink. I would skate every day after school and go back out again after dinner. The sound the edge of the blade makes when it scrapes across the ice is etched into my bones.

The backyard ice rink is part of our narrative. But for how much longer? Will future generations of Canadian children be able to skate on homemade outdoor rinks or will it be a story we tell them about the way things used to be?

Climate change is transforming the world as we know it. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. Research shows that Canada's average winter temperature has increased 2.5 degrees Celsius in the past 70 years. According to Environment Canada, last year was the third-warmest winter in Canadian history.

Scientists in Montreal were the first to connect the dots between climate change and a shorter outdoor skating season. They looked at data from weather stations across Canada during the last 50 years and extrapolated that "at current rates, within four decades there will be very little to no outdoor natural skating in Canada with the exception of Winnipeg."

This prompted a group of geographers at Wilfrid Laurier University to create RinkWatch, a website where users can enter information about their rink's skate-ability and where researchers can track climate change. Associate professor Robert McLeman is hoping this will help people better understand large-scale environmental issues by placing them in their own backyard.

As he told the Ottawa Citizen, "When you talk about climate change and global warming, it's one of those big-picture ideas that people have trouble relating to on a personal or individual basis, so we thought, let's get kids and families to collect data about outdoor skating and use that as a bridge to pull them into citizen-engaged science."

It's great to see scientists who understand the importance of getting the public involved in their work. They're not just working to address climate change, they're working to make it matter to all of us. It's about making us less complacent by making us care.

Cross-country ski porn

A modern twist on the old adage could go like this: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, especially if you found it on the internet.

A search for a place to go cross-country skiing near Bonn last week turned up disappointing results. Most trails were closed because of a lack of snow and the few places that were open didn't rent skis. It wasn't looking good. And then, a few pages into the search results, an obscure website popped up promising snow, trails and rentals a little more than an hour drive southwest of Bonn. Not only that but it claimed to have a hut with a wood-burning stove and volunteer staff serving up hot chocolate and home-made cake. It seemed too good to be true.

We headed out yesterday morning with low expectations -- the website was probably out-of-date, surely there wasn't enough snow to ski on. But the place was close enough that we figured it was worth driving down to check it out and maybe, just maybe, it would turn out to be as good as advertised.

After a white-knuckle ride on the German autobahn (where the "recommended" speed limit is 130 km per hour, which drivers in the left lane interpret as the minimum speed rather than the maximum speed making the whole experience more terrifying than exhilarating) we arrived in a winter wonderland.

Located inside Eifel National Park, it seemed to have its own microclimate. A short hike through a snowy trail brought us to a hut in the middle of the woods where the use of the trails, skis, boots and poles for the day cost a total of nine euros. And taking a break to drink hot chocolate and eat home-made cake in front of the wood-burning stove in the hut? Indescribably good.

The trails went in and out of silent forests, and up, down and around Mt. Ernstberg (which at 698 metres is more of a bump than a mountain). I could tell you more about it but I'll let my photos speak for themselves.

In defense of winter

Poor winter. The least appreciated of the seasons, it is written off as a hardship to endure or something to escape from.

Winter is described in menacing terms -- bleak, desolate, frigid, dark. We are caught in its teeth, in winds that bite and in snow that blinds. I don't deny the accuracy of this description but instead of making my heart sink, it makes it sing. I love winter. Always have, always will. The colder and snowier it is, the happier I am.

I'm talking about real winter, of course. Not this rainy, grey non-season that passes for winter in Bonn. Real winter means months of below-zero temperatures and snow that stays on the ground and piles up higher and higher with every successive snowfall. Real winter turns lakes and canals into skating rinks. Real winter stings the nostrils and fuses eyelashes together.

There is no season more beautiful, more romantic and more magical than winter. I love the way snow softens edges and muffles sound. I love the silence and the solitude. I love the minimalist beauty of a world turned white, so completely still it feels like a painting. I love seeing roads, trees and houses covered in snow while walking home at night. I love warming up frozen toes in front of a fireplace. I love that winter makes it okay to do nothing and go nowhere -- the only season that makes anti-social behavior socially acceptable.

I haven't outgrown the childlike sense of wonder at waking up to see snow outside the window. It still thrills me. It brings back happy memories of building snowmen, barreling down a hill on a toboggan, skating on a square of frozen ice, cross-country skiing out the front door and generally just spending hours outside playing in the snow.

Up until last week, winter in Bonn has been grey, gloomy, rainy and warm. While some people were fantasizing about flying south, I was seriously contemplating a trip to northern Norway to get my fix of real winter. I'd take the aurora borealis over a tropical beach any day.

But then something wonderful happened; it started snowing and it hasn't stopped. The temperatures have been below zero every day since Tuesday. Real winter has finally arrived in Bonn. And I couldn't be happier.

Deconstructing Doha

Two words come to mind when reflecting on the United Nations climate change conference in Doha: cognitive dissonance. We talk about the need to address climate change and yet we continue to burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. This dissonance -- the inconsistency between what we know and how we behave -- was on full display in Doha.

Not that anyone expected Doha to raise ambition on climate change. Before it even began, Doha was only always seen as a "transitional" conference. It was about moving forward on a new agreement by 2015 that will require both developed and developing countries to cut their emissions. It was about making progress on a commitment to channel $100 billion to developing countries every year by 2020 (although no clarity was provided in the end).

It was also about launching a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2020 (when the new agreement comes into force). But without Russia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand on board, the second commitment period covers just 15 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That leaves us with a Kyoto Protocol that is more symbolic than significant.

The negotiations are starting to feel like a car stuck in a snow bank -- the wheels spin and spin but fail to gain traction.

The conference ended with a package of decisions called the Doha Climate Gateway, which at the micro level contains markers of progress but at the macro level reflects the low level of ambition and the lack of real movement that have hampered these talks for the past 20 years.

Despite closing with a weak outcome that all countries decided they could live with but that no countries were particularly happy about, the conference was applauded as a success. Not that "success" means much in international climate change negotiations these days; the word has become as gelatinous as jellyfish. Success no longer means that something monumental was achieved; success now means that the conference didn't collapse.

In the end, the Doha conference achieved what it set out to do. There was progress for the process but action on the ground is happening at a pace far too slow to get us to where we need to go. And so the gap between what countries have promised to do to reduce emissions and the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to widen.

A record-breaking year for climate change

Outside the conference walls, 2012 was a record-breaking year for climate change. November was the 333rd consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The first 10 months of 2012 were the ninth-warmest since records began. The volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high and Arctic sea ice shrank to a record low.

Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast. Typhoon Bopha killed more than 1,000 people in the Philippines and left 300,000 people homeless. And in case this wasn't evidence enough, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that found extreme weather events could become more likely, more frequent and more extreme with worsening climate change.

The climate is changing but politics remains still. Every year that we don't deal with climate change, the problem just gets worse and worse. And at a certain point, it will be too late to fix it. There will be too many emissions in the atmosphere and no way back to a world that isn't buffeted by uncontrollable, catastrophic climate change.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke frankly in Doha: "The danger signs are all around. One-third of the world's population lives in countries with moderate to high water stress; land degradation affects 1.5 billion people. Ice caps are showing unprecedented melting, permafrost is thawing, sea levels are rising. The abnormal is now the new normal."

Two degrees: still possible or too late?

The world's leading scientists have been telling us increases in global temperatures must be kept to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. In order to limit temperature rise to two degrees, the IPCC warns that global emissions have to peak by 2015 and then drop to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

But the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research suggests that two degrees is no longer the threshold between "acceptable" and "dangerous" risks but between "dangerous" and "very dangerous" climate change. Scientists there are looking at 1.5 degrees as a safer target. That means cutting global emissions at least 85 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

We're not making much headway on that front. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the gigatonne gap between where global emissions need to go by 2020 and where they are actually going has widened over the last year. It suggests that annual global emissions should be reduced to at least 44 gigatonnes by 2020 in order to have a good chance of meeting the two-degree target. However, emissions were at about 50 gigatonnes in 2010, and they are projected to rise to about 58 gigatonnes by 2020.

Although Doha launched the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the commitments that have been made are far too weak to actually achieve the target of keeping global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius. The IPCC suggested that developed countries should reduce their emissions by at least 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 but current commitments add up to 18 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- far below the range suggested by the IPCC.

Governments are aware that climate change comes with a time limit and that the window to stabilize global temperatures is closing. The Doha agreements note with "grave concern" the widening gap between what countries have promised to do to reduce emissions and the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Countries also stated an intention to "identify and explore in 2013 options for a range of actions to close the pre-2020 ambition gap."

But several reports seem to be abandoning hope of keeping to the two-degree limit. The UK government's scientific advisor says the target is "out the window." A study published in Nature Geosciences finds temperatures could rise by as much as three degrees Celsius by 2050. (To put it into context, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change predicts that a rise of three degrees would mean 550 million more people would be at risk of hunger, 170 million could suffer coastal flooding and nearly half the world's species could face extinction.)

In November, the World Bank warned the planet is on course to warm four degrees Celsius by 2100 unless urgent action is taken to address climate change. In the report's foreword, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the new leader of the World Bank, writes "It is my hope that this report shocks us into action."

What happens next?

This is the big question: what happens next? Will negotiations during the next three years actually result in real emission reductions or will it be too little, too late?

It's easy to feel pessimistic about international negotiations on climate change. Each meeting seems to follow the same pattern: all talk, no action. World governments have been talking about climate change for 20 years with very little progress. Trying to get 194 countries to move together in the same direction on climate change feels less like building consensus and more like herding cats.

Part of the problem is that negotiations are complicated by fundamental differences of positions, which have yet to be resolved. Countries will have to find a way to work through several key differences, including differences of historical responsibility, differences in development and differences in geographic vulnerability to climate change. International cooperation on deeper emission cuts will be impossible unless these differences can be resolved. After two decades, the split between developed countries and developing countries continues to fracture climate talks.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol enshrined a division between developed countries (which were required to cut emissions) and developing countries (which were not). This principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" compels developed countries, which were historically responsible for pumping the majority of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to take the lead in reducing emissions while providing financial and technological support to developing countries. But the world in 2013 is a much different place than it was when the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated. Back then, China was classified as a developing country. Now it is the world's biggest emitter and will soon overtake the U.S. as the biggest economy. As a result, developed countries are insisting that developing countries take on commitments too.

The changing structure of the world's economy was front and centre at the Durban climate change conference in 2011, where countries agreed "to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties" (to be negotiated by 2015 and come into effect from 2020 onwards). The key sticking point is what applicable to all will mean in the new agreement. In Doha, countries argued about whether or not the Convention principles, especially the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, should be at the core of the new agreement. They will somehow need to resolve this issue within the next three years.

Still, it is impossible to ignore what Lord Nicholas Stern has called the "brutal arithmetic" -- the fact that action by all countries will be necessary to hold global temperature increase below two degrees.

"His new research shows that even if developed countries cut their emissions to zero, that would not be enough to halt runaway climate change -- because emissions from rapidly industrialising economies are now so high. Greenhouse gases from emerging economies -- such as China, South Korea and India, that have industrialised rapidly in the past two decades -- now make up the bulk of the world's carbon emissions," reports the Guardian.

The negotiations leading up to 2015 will likely be complex, difficult and fraught with animosity, especially if developed and developing countries refuse to move beyond their entrenched positions. It's not clear if the 2015 agreement will keep climate change below two degrees Celsius because this would require steep cuts in emissions by both developed and developing countries, starting almost immediately.

The glimmer of hope in all of this is that if governments decide they want to raise the level of ambition on climate change, the new agreement can be a tool to set us on course. Governments can, theoretically, design the new agreement to match up with the deep emission cuts the IPCC indicates are necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The negotiations between now and 2015 will determine if we are serious about solving climate change or not. It's what happens next that really matters.

The unreality of reality

It's worth mentioning what it's actually like to be at one of these United Nations climate change conferences. The Economist described the meetings as a "theatre of the absurd" (an incisive observation that could be equally applied to the opulent Qatar National Convention Centre where Swarovski chandeliers dripped from the ceiling -- all of it paid for by the world's unquenchable thirst for Middle East oil).

Since 1995, representatives of countries from around the world have gathered at the annual Conference of the Parties to hammer out the details of international action on climate change. For two weeks each year, thousands of negotiators, politicians, heads of state, journalists, celebrities, business leaders, academics, youth activists and environmentalists converge in a frenzy of activity.

Because there are so many high-profile people in one place, security is always a concern. Passing your bag through an X-ray machine and walking through a metal detector become as much a part of your daily routine as brushing your teeth. The security checkpoints, scanners, X-ray machines, fences and road closures make you feel as if you are entering a gigantic hermetically sealed bubble when you walk through the conference doors. And, in a way, you are. You are entering a universe unto itself with a language unto itself. Everyone at the conference speaks in abbreviations: CDM, JI, REDD, SBSTA, SBI, AWG-KP, AWG-LCA. The numbingly dull list goes on and on (and we wonder why we're not winning the hearts and minds of the general public).

Comic relief is provided by the small contingent of oddballs that always turns up at these conferences -- like climate skeptic Lord Monckton, whose modus operandi is stopping the Marxists' wet dream of global totalitarian dictatorship. His self-aggrandizing blather has become so legendary that panelists no longer give him the floor during press briefings or at side events. So he decided to don a disguise in Doha, showing up at a press conference wearing an Arabic white gown and head cover. A few days later, he sat at an empty chair in the main plenary, impersonating a delegate from Myanmar to address the conference floor. He managed to give a short speech denying the reality of climate change before the President of the conference realized who he was and cut him off. Lord Monckton was escorted from the building and given a lifetime ban from attending U.N. climate change conferences. (It makes me a little sad to think we'll never see his antics again.)

A surreal location for a climate change conference

Qatar was a surreal location for a climate change conference. Or maybe -- as a living example of what growth at any cost looks like -- it was the perfect place for a climate change conference.

Qatar has the world's highest per capita carbon emissions. Which is not surprising when you consider it burns fuel to desalinate seawater, builds golf courses in the desert and cranks the air-conditioning to the max. Doha is what happens when you build a city in the middle of a desert with no thought to the environment (or human rights, for that matter).

The city is designed for cars. The roads are wide. No one walks anywhere. Sometimes there are sidewalks, sometimes not. Going for a walk is like interval training -- you alternate walking with bursts of sprinting across six lanes of traffic. The only form of public transport is taxis. There's not a cloud in the sky and yet there's not a single solar panel in sight. Doha's half-empty skyscrapers, luxury hotels and vast shopping malls were built by oil wealth -- the same oil that is accelerating the pace of climate change.

Action already underway

There is a tendency to despair after coming home from these climate change conferences. I'm left vacillating between idealism and cynicism. Hearing about action already underway inspires me; seeing the low level of political ambition on display depresses me. But I recognize the importance of staying away from the extreme end of idealism (the naive and infantile kind of thinking that presumes people are inherently good or will choose to do the right thing) and the extreme end of cynicism (the negative and defeatist kind of thinking that constantly says "that's unrealistic").

There's a quote from a speech that keeps me hopeful: "When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse."

I met many people in Doha working hard to make a difference. But the ones who impressed me the most were the young people. They were a reminder that action on climate change is already underway, that young people everywhere are working to reconstitute the world.

I met Reuben Makomere and Kennedy Liti Mbeva -- two Kenyan youth delegates who voluntarily created a jargon-free guide to the UNFCCC process to help young people better understand the negotiations.

I met a group of young women from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts who teamed up with Greenpeace to send a Girl Guide from Ghana and a Girl Scout from Peru to the Arctic on an icebreaker ship. They witnessed new scientific research into ice thinning, and are now asking the world to protect the Arctic region.

I met three Japanese students from Doshisha University who explained how their university has been nationally recognized for its efforts to reduce carbon emissions on campus. Some of these efforts include setting the air conditioning at 28 degrees Celsius in summer and 22 degrees Celsius in winter, replacing energy inefficient light bulbs with LED lights and installing solar panels.

The examples go on and on. If I listed all of the brilliant work young people, NGOs, universities and local governments are doing to curb climate change, I could fill a book.

Conclusion

If we want to shift the level of ambition and political will that countries bring to the international negotiating table, we need to ramp up public concern on climate change. Without public pressure for strong action, countries will be able to continue to push for weak targets at international climate negotiations. Ministers will be able to return home from these meetings and ignore the problem until the next summit. Without this mutual reinforcement, international negotiations will continue to go nowhere and emissions will continue to rise.

Although the U.N. process is the centre of international engagement, "it is not the circumference of action on climate change." The fight to protect the climate doesn't begin and end at these conferences; it happens at home. The more we demand fundamental changes, the more space political and business leaders will have to act.

Or as George Monbiot put it: "Governments care only as much as their citizens force them to care. Nothing changes unless we change."

So how do we change? How do we create a groundswell of support for renewable energy and sustainable growth? I think it's worth repeating what I wrote before about the four things most social movements tend to share in common:

1. Action. If you want to influence other people, you need to back up your words with action. It's not about being dogmatic or demanding. It's about being the change you want to see in the world.

2. Communication. Share your ideas. If 10 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 100 people. If 100 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 1,000 people. If 1,000 people share their idea with 10 other people, they will reach 10,000 people. Ideas can spread exponentially, so start spreading them.

3. Organization. Slavery in America ended because people organized. The Berlin Wall came down because people organized. The Arab Spring spread across the Middle East because people organized. People need to come together to make their voices heard.

4. Long-term commitment. Urgency does not mean panic. It means continuous, patient action to change the world.

It's easy to blame political leaders for the failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the problem goes deeper than that -- there is very little being done to address the root cause of climate change. And while it's true that climate change is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that's only part of the story. The climate crisis is also a crisis of worldview.

We don't live in an infinite world and yet we act as if we do. We act as if the ocean will never run out of fish or as if the ground will never run out of oil. During the past 250 years, human beings have altered the planet more rapidly than any other period in history. We have consumed resources faster than they can regenerate. We have driven thousands of plants and animals to extinction. The science is clear: a major shift in our consumption and production patterns is needed in order to live within the constraints of the natural systems that support us.

It's time to break the cycle of cognitive dissonance that allows us to talk about the need to address climate change while we continue to burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow.


Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UNFCCC.

Merry Christmas (or "Frohe Weihnachten" as it's called in these parts)

I won't be home for Christmas. I'm spending the holidays in Bonn. This is my first Western-style Christmas in four years (Christmas in Japan is all about eating fried chicken and having sex).

Christmas in Germany is almost exactly like Christmas in Canada. There are lights and trees and tinsel and caroling. There are cheesy ads on TV and seasonal songs in all the stores. All that's missing is freezing temperatures and heavy snow. But what rainy Bonn lacks in wintery atmosphere, it makes up for in Glühwein.

Every December, Christmas markets spring up in city centres across Germany for three full weeks. The markets are composed of dozens of wooden huts selling various things. There are a few stalls selling things that could be wrapped and put under a Christmas tree but most of the stalls are geared toward the more hedonistic side of the season -- selling Glühwein (hot, mulled wine) and wurst (I'm not a fan but people here seem to like it. Back home, they'd also sell tofu-dogs alongside the meat variety but that's a trend that hasn't yet caught on in Germany.)

Judging by the amount of vomit on the sidewalks and on the tram, people seem to really enjoy the Glühwein. I had my first taste of Glühwein last weekend and I have to say there is something intensely satisfying about a hot cup of spiced wine on a cold winter night.

Anyway, wishing you a merry Christmas (and a very happy whatever it is you do or don't celebrate this time of year)!

Weekend in Prague

It takes time to really get to know a place. To peel back layer after layer to get to the core of what makes it tick. You have to live there, work there, learn the language and make friends in order to really understand it. Travelling through a place only gives you enough time to explore its first layer -- what the buildings look like, what the food tastes like and what the general atmosphere feels like. But if you only have time to skim the surface then you might as well do it in a place like Prague with its awe-inspiring skyline of castles, cathedrals, towers and domes.

Three days in Prague is exactly enough time to soak in the atmosphere. Simply walking through the city's narrow lanes is a magical experience. There's something inherently romantic about a narrow street with cobblestones underfoot and church spires overhead. A narrow street is cozy and intimate, built for people rather than cars. That it snowed while we were there only served to make an already beautiful city even more beautiful.

Snow makes everything beautiful

Snow on the Charles Bridge

Inside the castle

My feet were warm and dry all weekend thanks to the plastic bags

Of course, Prague also has a sinister side. I came prepared to get ripped off after a Slovakian colleague who lived in Prague for 18 years filled my head with stories about criminals who took over the city after the fall of communism. The switch to a market economy gave rise to an enterprising new industry that existed solely to rip off tourists. Cab drivers, hotel owners, restaurant owners and pickpockets were all in on the scam. (I'm told it's not nearly as bad today as it used to be.)

I'm happy to report that Sergey and I didn't get robbed or ripped off. The only halfway shady thing that happened was when a guy appeared out of thin air, sidled up next to us and asked, "Change?" (Meaning, did we want to exchange our money on the street? We did not.) And we were taken for a bit of a ride when we arrived in Prague to find our hotel reservation had been mysteriously cancelled, forcing us to find last-minute accommodations. We spent our first hour in Prague at an internet cafe where we booked another hotel room online. But when we went to the hotel to check in, we were told it was fully booked. They kept the money and sent us to another hotel under the same management, assuring us the rooms were the same price (they weren't). That was as bad as it got, which wasn't bad at all.

Still, it's easy to see how con artists can thrive in a place like Prague. The city was packed with tourists. We heard people speaking Russian, German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish and English. Every language except Czech. In the historic centre, it seemed every second shop was selling tacky souvenirs (hats stitched with the word Prague, t-shirts stamped with idiotic sayings like "Czech me out!" and all sorts of useless crap). There were so many tour groups that you could join one for a few minutes to listen to the tour guide explain a few interesting facts and then move on. Sometimes you found yourself tacked on to the back end of a tour group whether or not you wanted to be. Although simply following the stream of tourists proved to be helpful in the absence of a guidebook.

Tourists as far as the eye can see

One more tourist in the crowd

Taking the overnight train to Prague was an adventure in itself. It takes about 12 hours to get from Bonn to Prague by overnight train. Much slower than flying but way more glamorous. I love the idea of long-distance train travel. It harkens back to a bygone era of rail travel -- gourmet meals in the wood-paneled dining car, piano music in the gold-trimmed lounge car and white-gloved crew members serving up champagne in plush, private cabins. (I've never actually experienced this kind of train travel but I'm nostalgic for it nonetheless.)

Our train ride was the opposite of that. There was no dining car, no white-glove treatment and the only music we heard was the snoring of other passengers. I was looking forward to being rocked to sleep by the rhythm of the rails in my cozy berth but was kept up all night by people getting off and on the train at different stops.

We booked the second-class couchette car on the City Night Line train. Each compartment on the couchette car is the size of a closet with six bunks stacked three deep on each side.

Our hot and sweaty (but not in a good way) compartment

The train attendants bang on your compartment door 20 minutes before your stop, which is a great way to avoid missing your stop but not so great when you're sharing a compartment with travelers getting off the train at 4 a.m. The compartments were hot and stuffy. The train attendant told us to keep the door to our compartment closed because of the bandits who jump on the train at different stops, steal bags, pull the emergency brake and jump out the window.

Still, it was nice to see the sunrise from inside the train and to arrive in Prague as the city was waking up.

Watching the sun rise from inside the train

Living in Germany: The good, the bad and the weird

Cyclists in Bonn get their own little traffic lights. How cute is that?

There are many things about living in Germany that strike me as weird or wonderful. Here are a few of them.

Naked swimming
Public swimming pools in Bonn are pretty much like public swimming pools in the rest of the world. Except that public swimming pools in Bonn have naked days. The first Sunday of every month is known as Adam and Eve day and wearing a swimsuit is not an option. Go nude or go home.

Panic shopping on Saturday evening
Nothing is open in Bonn on Sunday. All of the shops and all of the supermarkets shut down on Saturday evening and don't open again until Monday morning. So every Saturday evening, just before the stores close, a mad rush of people charge into the supermarkets to stock up on food and drinks for the rest of the weekend. Most supermarkets only have three check-out counters so the lines are long and the aisles are crowded and if you don't get there early enough all of the fresh stuff is long gone by 7 p.m.

White asparagus. What's the point?
White asparagus is mysteriously popular in Germany. When it's in season, grocery stores, restaurants and markets are bursting at the seams with white asparagus. Green asparagus is nowhere to be found. I have no idea why white asparagus is so popular and green asparagus so elusive. White asparagus doesn't taste as good as green asparagus and it's less nutritious (white asparagus is grown under thick mulch. Deprived of sunlight, it can't produce chlorophyll, which is why it is white not green).

Padded coffee
Just like white asparagus, coffee pads are mysteriously popular in Germany. Germans class up their coffee by putting in into a pad and selling a machine whose sole purpose is to brew said pad. I had never heard of coffee pads until I moved to Germany. My apartment came with a coffee-pad machine and my German landlord (a huge, raving fan of coffee pads) taught me how to use it, telling me I'd never go back to freshly ground coffee again. Coffee pads aren't as delicious as fresh coffee but they get the job done quickly and the coffee isn't as bad as you'd think it would be.

Brewing up some coffee pads in my funky coffee-pad machine

Waiting for the little green man
Jaywalking is verboten. People wait for the lights to change, even in the middle of the night with no cars around for miles. If you must jaywalk, make sure there is no one watching you. Otherwise, prepare to get a nasty look or publicly scolded in German. Which, based on personal experience, is way scarier than getting yelled at in English.

Clarity-frei street signs
I don't understand this sign. What does "frei" mean? Does it mean you can bike freely down this street even though it's a one-way street? Or does it mean this street is free of bikes because it's a one-way street? Adding to my confusion is the fact that I got scolded (twice) by a police officer for riding my bike the wrong way down a one-way street. The street in question wasn't marked with a bike-frei sign, which I had originally interpreted to mean no biking (like lactose-frei milk, I assumed the "frei" in bike frei meant "without"). So I figured cyclists were free to ride down any street without a bike-frei sign. But now that I've gotten into trouble with the law for riding freely down a street without a bike-frei sign, I'm having second thoughts. Now I'm starting to think bike frei means to bike freely in any direction. But I'm still not sure. Feel "frei" to clarify in the comments section.

Free of bikes or bike freely? Your guess is as good as mine

Cheese overload
I am officially sick of cheese. I don't want to eat it. I don't want to smell it. I don't want to see it. Even writing about it is making me feel queasy. Eating out in Germany usually means ordering something baked with cheese, covered with cheese, sprinkled with cheese or carved out of cheese. What's with all the cheese? (The bread, on the other hand remains melt-in-your-mouth delicious. I will never get sick of German bread.)

Tap water is taboo
I have never seen so many people guzzle so much sparkling water in my life. Forget beer. Sparking water and Apfelschorle are what everyone really drinks here. If you order water at a restaurant, the waiter will ask if you want sparkling or flat. Flat water does not mean tap water, it means bottled water that isn't bubbly. Don't even bother asking for tap water. No one drinks it, no one orders it and the waiter will probably fight you on it. It's not worth the hassle.

The multi-person beer-drinking bicycle-riding machine
I don't know what the German word is for this contraption. Let's just call it the multi-person beer-drinking bicycle-riding machine. These things are all over the road in Dusseldorf and Berlin. As far as I can tell, a driver (presumably sober but who knows?) steers the thing through traffic while everyone else drinks beer and pedals. It's just like drinking at a bar but with way more people checking you out. (It's illegal for me to ride my bike the wrong way down a one-way street but it's legal for these guys to block traffic with their giant, boozy, 10-seater bicycle?)

Calorie-neutral drinking

Telling time the old-fashioned way
I live across the street from a church that rings its bells four times an hour. They ring on the hour and they ring at a quarter past. They ring on the half-hour mark and again at a quarter to. Sometimes all the bells ring at once in a loud, clanging frenzy for several minutes straight. This happens absurdly early on Sunday morning and carries on most of the afternoon. Is all of this bell ringing really necessary? What's the point? Especially the time-telling function. Is there anyone out there who actually relies on church bells to know what time it is?

Thirty-one flavours of yogurt
Germany has more flavours of yogurt than ice cream. They have the usual flavours, like blueberry, strawberry and mixed berry. But they also have funky flavours, like pear chunks and chocolate flakes, mixed grains, coconut and figs. If you can think of a flavour, there's a yogurt for that.

Huge pillows
Why are the pillows so big? Germans don't have extra-big heads so why do they need extra-big pillows that take up one-third of the bed? These aren't decorative pillows. These are the pillows you're supposed to lay your head on when you go to sleep.

A Canadian-sized pillow on top of a German-sized pillow

Doners: not just a snack after binge drinking
There are doner shops everywhere in Germany. In Canada, I've only seen people eating doners on the street at 3 a.m. after stumbling out of a bar. Here, people eat them for lunch and dinner while sober.

Sidewalk rage is the new road rage
It's not easy being a pedestrian in Bonn. Especially when the sidewalks are overrun with cars. The roads are narrow and the sidewalks are wide, which probably explains why it is perfectly legal for drivers to park their cars all over the sidewalk. This is great for drivers but not so great for the pedestrians and cyclists who have to maneuver around these monstrosities. Cars and sidewalks go together like alcohol and rollercoasters.

Kind of like plaque constricting the flow of blood through an artery

Doors that lock automatically
Here's a lesson I learned the hard way: apartment doors lock automatically when you close them. I'm not talking about the front door of the building but the door to each individual apartment (like a hotel room). This is something the landlord doesn't tell you. Why would he? Everybody knows the doors lock automatically. Except for those of us who come from countries where the doors only lock if you put the key in the hole and turn the deadbolt yourself. Anyway, I found out the door locked automatically when I closed it with my keys still inside the apartment. It was bad enough that I locked myself out, it was even worse that it happened on a long weekend when my landlord was on vacation in the south of France. (It took a few hours but I managed to reach my landlord, who then coerced an intern to go to his office, get his spare key and drive out to my apartment and unlock the door. I have been paranoid about locking myself out ever since.)

Trains that run on time? Not in Germany
Contrary to popular belief, trains in Germany do not run on time all the time. They run on time maybe half the time. The other half of the time, the trains are delayed anywhere from five to 45 minutes (or cancelled altogether). I'm not sure why Germany has a reputation for fast and efficient public transit. I have taken the bus three times in Bonn. The first time the bus driver screamed at me after I didn't pay my fare properly. The second time the bus was 15 minutes late. The third time the bus was one hour late. There has not, and never will be, a fourth time.

Vibrator vending machines
Vending machines that sell tampons and condoms in public washrooms are par for the course. But in Germany, the washroom vending machines go one step further by adding vibrators to the menu. I wonder what they sell in the men's room?

Everything you need for a fun night out