By Lowell Bliss
In their new book The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac tell a curious story to start Chapter 8. The two are working in their offices at the Le Bourget conference grounds toward the end of the first week of the COP21 climate summit in Paris in 2015. They hear a knock on the door. It is Kevin O’Hanlan, head of UN Security. “We found a bomb,” he said.
Kevin explained that the bomb had been found in a trash bag in the transportation hub of the Le Bourget subway station, the main train stop to our conference—every single one of the 25, 000 participants streamed through that station all day long. . . . The bomb had been deactivated, but there was no way to determine if there were more explosive devices in the area.
Such a story in itself is not curious, considering the importance of COP21 and considering the heightened security throughout Paris following the famous November 13 terrorist attacks two weeks earlier. What is curious is that I have not yet been able to locate an independent verification of this story. I was in Paris for COP21. More importantly, I was responsible for other people while in Paris. Consequently, the greater curiosity for me is: why, if the incident is true, did not the UNFCCC notify us at the time so that we NGOs could work our own security protocols?
Let me begin with three caveats. First, I do not fancy myself an investigative journalist, though I have reached out to Figueres and Rivett-Carnac for comment. Second, I am a huge fan of Christiana Figueres, and sincerely hope that there is a Nobel Peace Prize in her future. Figueres was appointed Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC immediately following the failed summit in Copenhagen. She proceeded to pull off the seemingly-impossible task of bringing 195 despondent and squabbling countries together for the Paris Agreement. (Rivett-Carnac was her Political Strategist.) Third, I lived in India and Pakistan for 14 years and have personal, family, and in all cases, verifiable experience with bombings and terrorist threats. When I read pages 93-95, my first response was not a heart-fluttering “Oh my gosh, I went through Le Bourget everyday!” Instead it was remembering how hard I had worked on the security protocol for the COP21 Partnership I was co-directing. It was remembering the faces of the young team members I was responsible for.
I’m inclined to believe Figueres and Rivett-Carnac, since I believe in them. In their narration, they also employ the type of concrete detail which lends credibility. They name a name (O’Hanlan). There is a time frame (“towards the end of the first week”) and an exact descriptive moment (“we heard a knock on the door.”) There were other details, such as the bomb being found in a trash bag. Nonetheless, this is the first time--and it’s been four-and-a-half years—that I have ever heard this story. I certainly never heard anything about it during the actual time, December 2015. I’ve quizzed a handful of my colleagues who were with me in Paris; they too have no recollections. Internet searches yield nothing. As I said, I’m no investigative journalist, but I am a reader (and a blogger), I am a climate activist, and I am a UN Observer who regularly brings teams of people to these COPs. My investigation is one of personal responsibility: what if Figueres and Rivett-Carnac are fabricating this story, and what if they are not?
Chapter 8 is entitled “Doing What is Necessary,” which will be lethally ironic if the story of the bomb is false. The chapter begins Part III where Figueres and Rivett-Carnac lay out ten actions to reach the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C targets. The bomb story sets up the actions. “Everything hung in the balance,” they write. Of COP21, they understood: “This was our chance.” And yet: “And now a decision was needed. Should we close down the conference and with it the chance for a global climate agreement, or should we keep it open, with all the risk that this entailed?. . . We had to act—one way or another.” Having set us up, and after a quick section break, the authors turn to us: “You also have a choice ahead of you, and by now you understand the risks.” Will we choose to engage the ten actions, regardless of personal risk? The last thing we read before heading into Action #1 is:
You already know the end of our bomb story. We had to do what was necessary, no matter the cost. We knew the only way to truly protect our own children was to courageously continue the work of protecting all humanity and our planetary home. The metro station stayed open. The conference proceeded. Taking this action was not without risk, but neither of us regrets it. Hopefully, in ten years, we will be able to say the same about our collective action. The time for doing what we can has passed. Each of us must now do what is necessary.
I have both written books and ghost-written books that have involved a lot of personal stories. I know the temptations that arise from wanting to set up a compelling point with an anecdote but not having just-the-right-story on hand to do so. As a writer, you can be tempted to “do what is necessary,” and tweak some things, create some composite characters, or invoke “literary truthfulness.” I have also been a climate activist who for over a decade now have been preaching these ten action steps to an audience who has been slow to take them up. I regularly, but metaphorically, try to “build a fire underneath” my readers, though I never once thought to employ a bomb. While I give Figueres and Rivett-Carnac the benefit of the doubt, nonetheless, I use this occasion to remind myself and my fellow climate colleagues of a responsibility: we must go out of our way to protect our credibility. If ever we are going for explosive effect, then let’s make sure that the shrapnel, powder burns, police reports (or peer reviewed scientific journals) are close at hand to display as evidence. This should be true for us, even if the polluters and climate deniers don’t play by the same rules.
OK, then conversely: what if the story is true, which I believe it is? This, in effect, might pose an even bigger problem. Why didn’t the UNFCCC notify us?
Figueres and Rivett-Carnac don’t do themselves any favours in how they write this up. Immediately after telling us about the bomb in a trash bag at Le Bourget, and of “every single one of the 25, 000 participants [who] streamed through that station all day long,” they write: “Christiana’s two daughters used the station at least twice a day. Tom had two children at home, waiting for him to return. We looked at each other and saw in each other’s eyes the scenes from three weeks earlier in Paris and Saint-Denis. Broken glass. Blood. Dead bodies. Family members weeping.” Of the point of decision, they write: “Christiana was no stranger to making hard choices, but this wasn’t a choice a mother should ever have to make.” And remember when they reflect back on their decision: “We knew the only way to protect our own children was to courageously continue the work of protecting all humanity and our planetary home.” I get it. It’s dramatic and personal (non-fiction) storytelling: let’s bring kids and motherhood into the equation. But Ms. Figueres, you were the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, which is to say more than just that you also had responsibility for the 25,000 of the rest of us. I for one never felt unsafe, so I am not talking about irresponsible or selfish security measures. Neither am I saying you made the incorrect decision. I am saying that you weren’t just leading a conference, you were mobilizing a movement, and you did not empower us to make our own decisions, and run our own risks. Why didn’t the UNFCCC notify of us of this incident at the time? Why didn’t you trust us with this news?
I could invoke my own three children who in 2015 were also waiting for their father back home. I could invoke Dave and Yvonne’s daughter—who was with me as an intern in Paris. I could invoke the A Rocha Lausanne Partnership for COP 21 which I co-directed or the Lausanne Base Camp that Sammi Grieger and I ran. And yet, we had all known the risks of travelling to Paris. After the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, co-director Jean-François Mouhot and I wrote up a multi-page security protocol. We gave teammates and partners the chance to cancel if they wished. Many did. I spent some time on the phone with my intern’s parents and her sponsoring professor at Kansas State University. Everyone who came to Paris for COP21 in 2015 were cognizant of the risks. If you weren’t beforehand, then you certainly were when you disembarked at Charles de Gaulle: there were more French security forces in the streets carrying automatic weapons than there were Parisians toting baguettes.
I’m trying not to let pages 93-95 ruin for me what is otherwise an excellent book, but neither am I writing a book review. The UNFCCC’s relationship to its observers is always a complicated affair—before, during, and after a COP. Figueres and Rivett-Carnac try to send us off into the necessary actions of the Paris Agreement vision with such calls as: “We can no longer afford the indulgence of feeling powerless.” Fair enough, but neither can the UNFCCC any longer afford the indulgence of keeping all the power to themselves. It’s precisely feelings of powerlessness which led officially-credentialed observers to protest at COP25 in Madrid, the first time anything like this had happened INSIDE the COP grounds. We were led by young people and indigenous leaders, many who spend their days on the front-line grounds where climate change-related hurricanes and floods sweep through and leave their lands looking like. . . well, like a bomb had just exploded. They, and we, know the risks of climate action. We have earned the right to be within earshot of Kevin O’Hanlan’s knock at the door, and won’t be mobilized—at least not by you—unless we are in the room where it happens.