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https://theconversation.com/nations-at-cop29-have-emphasised-the-role-culture-can-play-in-climate-recovery-as-a-playwright-im-sceptical-244260>
"For many, the advent of the 29th UN Cop has elicited as much despair as hope –
especially with the long shadow of the US election result darkening
proceedings. Add in the grim irony of its setting in Baku, Azerbaijan – capital
city of a petrostate maxing out on fossil fuel production – and it didn’t take
a no-show by Greta Thunberg to conclude (to paraphrase Kafka) that there’s hope
… but not for us.
Yet there’s a new kid on the block, the GFCBCA – one more acronym to add to
proceedings already blighted by alphabet soup. The Group of Friends of
Culture-Based Climate Action is an initiative by a series of states seeking “a
place at the table” for culture in the final conference statement. Sorry guys,
I’m not holding my breath.
It’s easy to be cynical about Cop-culture. But these summits are the only game
in town for global collective action so the GFCBCA initiative is welcome, even
if its manifesto offers some pretty meagre rallying cries. “Scaling up culture-
and heritage-based strategies for enhancing adaptive capacity” hardly makes the
heart sing.
Nonetheless, this “group of friends” rightly insists that culture rarely plays
a role in Cop deliberations, which are too often left to scientists and
diplomats.
As a playwright, I’ve measured out my life in Cops. In 2009, ahead of the
ill-fated Cop15 in Copenhagen, my double bill of plays
The Contingency Plan
dramatised the void between politics and science. Cop15 inspired the widely
derided play
Greenland at the National Theatre, while the more warmly
received
Kyoto at the Royal Shakespeare Company this year reached back to the
mother of all Cops in 1997.
The revival of my plays in 2022 was too late to catch the damp squib of Cop26
in Glasgow. But watching them convinced me the old strategies of cultural
engagement with the climate emergency had peaked.
I doubt there’s any appetite now for more warnings, patient explanations,
invocations of polar bears or the horrors of 2050. In that 13-year interval
between productions and numerous Cops, climate change had defied schedule, the
future arriving rudely uninvited."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
