Susi’s Great Unleashing

When you have two of the largest NGOs in the world, sitting round the table together talking about consicous collaboration on climate change campaigning, you know governments will sit up and take notice.

I wanted to slap the young climate change activist, as full of herself as this planet is of greenhouse gases.  She was making a climate fool of herself and needed to shut up.  The thing is with these green greenies, who come into a multi-national NGO in the media spotlight, it all goes to their heads.   The founding mothers and fathers of these global movements were never paid a cent for the work they did, we weren’t on designer clothing salary.  Our sweat and tears enabled this young upstart to mouth off, to show off, and it made me cringe.  I noticed her handmade leather boots and the tailored jacket, the salon hair cut and the manicured nails.  I felt mischevious and couldn’t resist throwing a curly one her way about A1 aggregate reduction targets in global effort sharing.  I knew she wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  Hehehe.  That shut her up!

This collaboration, this decision to unite to combat climate change, has been a long time coming.  It makes  common sense to join forces.  Add up the membership of these NGOs here in New Zealand and it would probably represent more than a quarter of our population.  That’s a lot of people putting pressure on the government to do the deal at the climate change conference in Copenhagen!

The former Prime Minister accepted a packet of sausages from Peter, The Mad Butcher, on stage at her farewell last weekend.  She’s off to head the United Nations Development Programme and climate change is on her mind.  She had told me so when we interviewed her for the film the day before.  She handed the plastic bag to her husband, Peter, who was sitting behind her on stage.  “What the hell are we going to do with these?” he whispered to her in front of a crowded hall.  They were flying out within 2 hours.  He was going with her for a week, to prove that she did indeed have a husband, and probably help her unpack.

The sausages will be in the freezer when he returns, but he’ll be eating them on his own.  Outside the venue a wall of tv cameras where waiting for Helen and entourage to exit.  They were not allowed inside, but our cameras were.  They glared at us as we came out filming the departure.  Eat your heart out TVNZ!

I was confused at the writing on the envelope in my mailbox the following Monday.  It looked like mine.  I couldn’t remember writing myself a letter, but I do a few strange things from time to time, like putting my glasses in the fridge.  I opened the envelope and saw the signature.  Helen had obviously been clearing her desk in preparation for the move to New York and had filled in her personal release form for our her interview in the ‘bombs and scones’  film.  I looked at the e-mail address.  It was simply her first name, no fanfare – not like the climate change activist -  the humility and understatement of a true world leader.

We  asked her about makeovers and hair styles.  “I do my own” she answered “I had to be taught how!”  I can imagine her in front of the mirror, trying to get it right with the blow dryer, not smudging the lipstick.

There’s more than Mad Butcher sausages awaiting her return to Aotearoa/New Zealand.  The queues of cross-cultural representatives stretched across the hall, patiently waiting their opportunity to say goodbye, thank you, and to pass on gifts, revealed the dimensions to her popularity.   She is a dearly loved by this tiny nation at the bottom of the world, this farmer’s daughter who enjoys a good read in a bunk in a frozen hut several thousands feet up on some faraway mountain.  Voted the most popular Kiwi, beating Sir Ed, one can feel the void already.  Come back soon!

They don’t do barbies in New York and they would probably cringe at the thought of Mad Butcher saussies.  But that’s who we were are, and she is one of us.   You can have her for a while America, but remember, she’s ours and we want her back.

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got my tits in a tangle over Twitter.  I feel a right twit, or should that be twot, or indeed twat, but I just can’t seem to get the tweeting thing going.  I feel inadequate.   Everyone, it seems, is happily tweeting away – except me – MPs in the House, a famous British actor tweeted  “arse, poos and widdle” when stuck in a lift, even someone’s dog twoofed  “I got a ball, I got a ball, I got a ball”.  Try as I may, I can’t figure it out.  I am condemned to a world of twilence.  Consequently, no-one is following me and I am following no-one. It’s a lonely place. Contrast this with Britney Spears who has upwards of 700.000 followers.   Maybe there’s something to be said for wearing no undies in public.

Facebook has 175 million members, My Space 100 million, Bebo 40 million, Flickr 44 million visitors a month, LinkedIn and Plaxo around 20 million members each, Twitter 6 million, Cafemom 1 million, and there are an estimated 200 million blogs in the world, of which this is only one.   Not a great unleashing by any stretch of the imagination. – more a petit plop in the great ocean of virtual verbosity. I feel even more inadequate.

The nights are getting longer and colder and the blankets are being aired in the noonday sun.  The dog has taken my sheepskin slippers under the house and has added them to a pile of cherished canon bones, a chewed Bart Simpson doll and a couple of old toothbrushes.  Everyone is preparing to hunker down and hibernate, collect firewood, clean chimneys, bottle fruit and knit jumpers.  “If you can survive a Waiheke winter” the refrain goes “you can survive anything”.  I quite like the unexpected element of power cuts and rough seas, torrential rain and the ever-present Winter request “please remove muddy boots before entering”.  There’s nothing quite like the smell of baking bread, or a fortifying broth,  when you’re wrapped around a pot belly darning socks.  Piping hot water from the wet back allows for extra soaking in well deserved baths.  If only I knew how to tweet, I would have 140 characters in which to say “in bath, alone with candle, reading Tolstoy, listening to Wagner, eating feijoas, cutting toenails, blowing bubbles, scratching my…”

That won’t make the Top Ten Tweets, but this did, from a TV host at this year’s academy awards.  “Ever wonder what happens if someone has to do go the bathroom on the carpet?  There’s a portapotty behind the fan stands.  Now you know.”

Bless.

The clocks go back tonight but it still feels like summer with the scorching sun and the parched land.  I watched a movie about bush fires in Australia last night, the Christmas fires they were called, that took the lives of over 500 people around Sydney.  A deal had been done between the Premier and the largest energy company in the state, for a lot of money, and so when the fires came, the water just wasn’t there.  Makes me think the world needs a lot more than just an Earth Hour, it needs something to get inside the heads of the greedy to flick that switch off too.

From my desk in the chaotic office in downtown Auckland I read hundreds of e-mails about what is happening to the climate and I feel sick.  People walk the streets here oblivious to the implications of what we are doing to future generations and our Prime Minister drinks expensive Waiheke wine while Gaia burns.

Someone should tell Flight of the Concords that we (New Zealand) won third place in the Fossil of the Day Award at the climate change conference in Bonn.  They could incorporate that into one of their deadpan songs.  A government representative had shown a picture of a sheep in a discussion on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions to the assembled international elite in Germany.  Everyone knows that Killer Farts (well, actually it’s their burps) come from cows.  How embarrassing is that? In front of all those intelligent people!  Not only is the Prime Minister of New Zealand a climate skeptic,  he risks making a fool of us all at the General Assembly in September.  ‘Clean green New Zealand’ is a load of bullshit, and to keep with the fecal analogy, why aren’t people creating a stink about climate change?

What is it that will propel a mass movement in this country to take to the streets, in the same way they do in Paris,  or in South America, over an issue like climate change?  Anger at injustice is the emotion which has altered the course of history over the ages, with uprisings and huge popular mobilisation. Are New Zealanders just too complacent, too timid, maybe not angry enough, too comfortable?   It is far easier to stay at home and sign online petitions than rally in the thousands.  In the 80′s Kiwis had guts.  Look at what happened with the Springbok Tour, and the huge marches down Queen Street for nuclear disarmament.  We were an example to the world. Now we have been crowned fossil fool.

Kit and Maynie did it all without computers or mobiles, even an electric typewriter, even a typewriter.  They started in the days when protest marches had to be two abreast, on the pavement.

Both veteran peace activists are now revitalised from celebrating their 90 birthdays in such a fanfare of media attention and are planning to walk the first mile of the Global Peace March which kicks off in Auckland in September.  They want to resurrect the local peace group on the island, they are on a roll.  Every time I see Kit, she gives me a great big hug.  It makes me feel so happy to know that the film has given them a new lease on life.  My job is done.

Helen has got one of the top jobs at the United Nations.  Good on her.  Hubby will stay at home and tend the hearth.  I can imagine him doing that.  Baking scones for when she comes home on leave. We will be filming her at the goodbye party at her electorate office in Mount Albert in a couple of weeks  We will be working with Chris,  one of the best cinematographers in the country.  I think we all feel  honoured to have been chosen for this role, to have been asked to make this film about her life.

Each day at sunrise, when I am on the ferry home, I sit on the deck with my feet on the railings sipping on a Captain’s Club beer watching the Sky Tower disappear and the Gulf open to reveal her beauty.  I feel contaminated by the city, by the hum of the busy activist computers, all in close proximity, in the heat, fans blowing the papers around.  I feed my beloved colleagues feijoas from my trees “picked off the ground”, I hasten to add.  They must fall, ripened by the sun, guarded by the kereru.   We communicate silently, from one electronic pod to the other, with the blinds closed to avoid the glare on the screen.   With the kereru, I just plain talk.  When the pair are having a domestic, I try to counsel better behaviour.  Yes, kereru really do have domestics!

This afternoon I watched my daugher feed ham to a praying mantis who has been preparing to birth on the frangipani outside the front door.  I am keeping an eye on her because she has been there for a few days now – it must be a long labour.  Naawie and I stared at this wondrous creature feeding off a slither of meat, balanced on a toothpick, balanced on a branch.  Every now and then, she’d turn her head around, checking her load.  She was crouched on her front legs, facing down.  Good birthing position I thought.

The idea that we will lose over 40% of our species with the increase of  global temperature,  is horrifying.   The 2800 scientists from 80 countries who met in March have shown that the IPPC predictions were way off mark.  They are putting together a report, out in June.  They will send it to all the governments.   That will be our global doomsday book.  We will be put on notice,  and we will be as unprepared as those poor people in that film I saw last night. There will have been deals done among the rich to save their sorry ass – in fact, deals are being done as we speak.

Until we find that switch within,  it doesn’t matter how many Earth Hours we have.   We have to be the change ourselves and that takes courage.

In the meantime, I am scheming with the genius guys at WETA, for a holocaust of immense proportions to be visited on the powers that be, bigger than Killer Farts, bigger than King Kong.   Watch this space!