Day 11: Senators, Caesar, and People's Voices
Carolina Franca, Jim Stump, and Linnea Barron
It's been an eventful 24 hours at COP28…
Yesterday, a few of us participated in the March for Climate Justice and Ceasefire Now. It was a beautiful experience, as groups from all over participated in collective action on similar issues. From Indigenous Rights, to Don’t Gas Africa, to Palestinian Rights, you could see the intersections of climate justice all around you. It was a beautiful demonstration of the power of humanity. Today, some of us ended up only a few feet away from the COP President, Sultan Al Jabar, as he gave a press conference. As he came on stage, you could hear the echoes of protestors calling for climate action outside. It is powerful to hear the people calling out their leaders in such a public place. In both of these spaces, we saw the power of a community of like-minded people and prayed that these demonstrations would reach the ears of the negotiators.
Today at COP28 is Agriculture Day. The livestock industry in particular is responsible for an enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In an act of solidarity, our newsletter team decided to have lunch at the Switch for Good food truck which sells only plant-based grilled food. Jim recommends the kabab.
Normally in week two, the high-profile people have gone home and left behind the policy staffers to work out the negotiations. But today the USA pavilion hosted standing-room-only sessions, first with the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and then with seven US senators: Ben Cardin (Maryland), Chris Coons (Delaware), Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Tom Carper (Delaware), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island).
As you might expect with professional politicians, there were lots of smiles and handshakes, and talking points. But several of them said things that stood out to us: Senator Cardin emphasized that climate change is a matter of national security. The Department of Defense recognizes it as a threat multiplier, and all planning and strategy must take it into consideration. And Sen. Shatz gave the most stirring call to action, saying the number one enemy of climate action is the fossil fuel industry, but the number two enemy is despondency. We must turn despondency into anger, and anger into outrage, and then turn our outrage into action.
This should be our response as we deal with the mistrust and a lot of the disheartening things that we hear during our time at COP28. During our team meeting this morning, there was a moment of reflection and discussion on being loud about what we believe in. We talked about what it meant to say that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. What does this mean exactly? Well, in our day and age, it is apparent that governments and other world powers control most of what is passed and acceptable in the world; this is the Caesar in this biblical analogy. There is much outrage and anger that is coming from the decisions being made at COP28 and the past two days here have shown that. So this is where Jesus comes in.
Jesus being our Lord means that above all governments and all other powers such as the fossil fuel industry, God rules and reigns over all of it. Our fates are not placed in the hands of men but in the hands of God. Although it seems like there are very hard hearts in this COP, Jesus has power over that and can soften the hardest hearts. And so through Jesus, we have the power to potentially soften many hardened hearts here at COP28.
