At COP, one day you feel powerful, and another day completely hopeless

There are so many shining things fighting for your attention. You blink and hundreds of things happen around you.
Easily someone could lose focus between many stands and pavilions that are trying to portray a possible future that’s not gonna exist with their false promised solutions. Companies and governments would invent anything but do the real emissions reduction needed.

It’s overwhelming to see all these initiatives. Which ones are real? Which ones are getting us closer to our net-zero future? Which ones will actually avert irreversible catastrophic events?
Party delegations and business people in suits smiling; young people like myself mesmerised, as much as conflicted – who to target? Where is best to speak? How to use my little but perhaps sufficient power to convince someone to consider (or desconsider) certain options and decisions?

Tiny steps of climate action in gigantic events – this is what COP is. On the other side, there’s so much to learn from this experience. Starting with meeting activists from around the world to joining briefs and interesting sessions.

But then you go into the plenary room, see many people coming in and out, staying on their phones or even looking extremely bored and you wonder: are these people feeling (because they know) why they came here? Do they feel pressured to achieve agreements and collective action? Or this is just another conference they’ve been sent to by their work? To some extent I understand them, for the moment it’s just procedures happening, but I tend to have the feeling that they’ll move on with the same sense of ease.