Her brother, Jose Maria Figueres, was then the President of Costa Rica, and he announced wanted to start a constructive collaboration with the US government on climate change. My friend Aimee Christensen and I, both young and wonderfully naive, sat down and decided to write a bilateral agreement. Since we weren't lawyers and had never written an agreement before, we looked at previous agreements for language hints.
"Look, each paragraph starts with whereas. Let's start each paragraph with whereas."
From this inauspicious beginning we drafted a statement of intent that was eventually signed by President Figueres and then-Vice President Al Gore, at the White House.
A couple of years later Christiana and I were both in Chile for a conference we had organized for the pilot carbon offsets program.
It was also my birthday, and Christiana took me to her favorite Chilean fortune-teller. My Spanish still wasn't good enough for me to really understand her, but I SO appreciated Christiana's intention to share something special with me. She also gave me a small stone box with a dove carved on the front that I still use to hold earrings.
I liked Christiana because she was real. You could feel that she was real. She had passion and also compassion.
I thought we would be working together, one way or another, for years. I thought we would both do Big Things.
If you've read any of this blog, you know this was not to be.
Christiana is now the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which means she is in charge of the ENTIRE international negotiations process. WOW.
I have been working to accept that I am not like Christiana, that I am not doing, nor will I be doing, Big Things on the same scale. Or in the same way. I cry sometimes, I want so badly to still be part of that world. I wish we were colleagues still. I miss it.
Today I cried because SHE cried, while talking to a group of young women activists at the negotiations in Cancun. I can't believe what a hard job she has, and I'm so thankful she is doing it. Regardless of the outcome, over which she has little control, I am thankful she is there. Someone who can still cry for what our leaders are unwilling to do.
The blog wonkroom reported on the meeting. Here is what Christiana said:
"It’s you. It’s the next generation. Look: We’re doing this but this has nothing to do with us. It’s all about you. It’s all about you. We’re the ones that have caused the problem but you’re the ones that are going to have to pay for it, right? The fact is, I’m the mother of two women about your age, and I realized many years ago that I had inherited a planet that was a diminished planet. And that if I didn’t do something about it, my daughters would grow up in a planet that had been severely diminished by what we’re doing. And I just can’t look at my daughters in the eyes and not do whatever I can.
So, it’s you. It’s about the kind of planet that you’re going to have. It’s honestly not my planet. It’s yours, okay? We borrowed it from you for a few minutes. But you will take it over very soon, because it’s yours. And you’re going to have to give it over to your children.
Honestly, there’s no perfect job here, okay? Nothing that we are going to do in Cancun is going to be perfect. Don’t expect perfection. Nothing is going to be highly ambitious. Nothing. Everything here is going to be one step, and everything is going to be insufficient. But it is the best that this group of people in these circumstances, with these political constraints, in this economic environment, can do for the time being. And as soon as this finishes we have to start pushing for the next step. And so it goes. But each one of us that is here has the moral responsibility to do the absolute best that we can at that moment under those circumstances. So what inspires me? It’s you."
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