Skill Share, Bangkok

30/04/07
I can talk about the things i learnt at the skillshare; I'm giving you'll the updates about the IPCC conference and the activities of tomorrow.
We are launching a renewable energy mobile unit, with a solar panel and wind turbine to demonstrate the use of renewable energy. We have named it the future carrier and inside the unit there will be a display of photographs about impacts, renewable energy etc.
Tomorrow morning before IPCC meet starts, Mr. R.K.Pachouri will be meeting the members of solar generation for fifteen minutes. The team leader for climate and energy campaign Shailendra and Tara, the energy campaigner from Thailand escort him from his office to the venue outside the UN conferance centre where our "future carrier stands with all the messages... There are three main messages we want to convey here.

- That climate change is a global issue and that the only solutions to it is renewable energy and energy efficiency
- We DO NOT want Nuclear power plants
- and its unsafe and stupid to talk about unproven technologies such as Carbon Capture and storage (CSS)as solutions.

So Mr. P as everyone calls him here willl meet seven representatives from the seven countries and each of us have 30 seconds to introduce ourselves and give our message. We have arranged the order in which the representatives speak in such a way so that one message leads to the other and it is like as if each of us are speaking about the same global issue but at the same time talking about it from our country's point of view... Thailand is the host so the rep recieves him and brings him to us, Philipines being a climate change hot spot talks of climate change and how its affecting them, India (I'm representing India) follows by telling him that we are a developing country and for "development" we need renewables and energy efficiency then china emphasises that they are a developing nation that has actually had large Scale renewable energy projects and how it has worked for them, then Indonesia pleads ( The fifteen year old doing it sounds really cute when she says "pleeeease") that they need development without Nuclear powerplant, (Since Indonesia has big plans for 'Nukes') folloew by a developed nation, france that him how wrong they have gone while turning to Nuclear power plants and finally Germany mentions that they are going in the wrong path of CSS and leads him to the giant thermometer...

Its a little hard to explian how that works but i'll try. Basically its this giant Thermometer with a high temperature and the mercury has on it all the causes of climate change like coal, oil etc and when Mr. P cuts a thread, The mercury drops bringing down and with it all the causes and behind it one can see a pictoric representation of a clean world with renewables etc which was hidden earlier....

then hopefully he will have a look at our 'future carrier" and give his comments before leaving. All this is covered well by press and hopefully it will send the message we want to

We have to remember that the report of the IPCC is not 'prescriptive', that is they do not take any decisions and is supposed to be unbiased (we all know how far that works), yet we also know that the things they say in that report is going to help some major decision makers take very important decisions... So its absolutely imperative that the solutions proposed are right and they don't resort to saying that Nuclear and css and other unproven and unsafe technologies are the answers to mitigate climate change...

It was shocking for us to see that todays Thai newspaper had avery big article on the first page titled "The message is clear, GO nuclear"!!! Thai Govt are actually seriously considering nuclear as the solution to climate change and they are doing so in a big way... We had to hence change the message of the 'future carrier' that was initially "here is our solution, where is yours?" since we couldn'tleave loose ends... Like Shai said it should have been "here is our solution, Fuck/up yours"... heheh... do edit this part...

We are also branching out in two groups and meeting the ministry of Environment and The Energy minister tomorrow.. The latter is the hifi graduate from london school of economics who doesn't like being told he is wrong and is also one of the main people pushing for the nuclear power plant. The Thai students will do most of the talking and you can only imagine how important this is...

Im almost out of time and we begin at six tom... I hope everything goes well tomorrow... It will! With the passion, energy and enthusiasm that people work with out here, it cant not go right...

Oh, thought i would also mention what i'll be mailing tom...
- The presentations of different countries and what we learnt from each other
- Importance of effective communication and bringing forth a message effectively
- Information on IPCC, ADB and Nuclear power plant (Deepa, the Information on ADB is the same as the one that was mailed to us)
- Lobbying
- Media
- The fun ways in which we learnt so much and also the materials we prepared for ADB and IPCC events
- Preparations for a Hot spot visit to a place where a community has moved out because of climate change and their feeble attemts to save their temple with crude bamboo walls...