Climate Justice Fast

Day 30!

Submitted by Paul Connor on Sun, 06/12/2009
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Today marks day 30 of CJF, one month exactly since 6 people, myself, Anna Keenan, Diane Wilson, Sara Svensson, Michael Morphett and Chuck Cain last took in any nourishment other than water. It's also the eve of the great Copenhagen climate summit, where CJF will be in force (albeit without yours truly), delivering our message of the absolute urgency and moral importance of climate action. I thought I would take this opportunity, then, to offer some brief thoughts about our campaign so far.

If there is one thing that 30 days without food energy of any kind gives you, it is a chance to reflect. I very much doubt that there is any aspect of my 29 years upon this earth that I haven't had a chance to think about while lying in our marquee outside Australia's Parliament House here in Canberra. Misadventures, loves, victories, losses, goals, beliefs, family and friends- all of these have freely circled my mind, unburdened by any urgent need to concentrate on anything much at all.

This has personally been quite pleasurable, and a welcome change from the hectic organising that was my life for the preceding few months. Now, I figure, what's done is done, CJF is what it is, I am who I am, am doing what I'm doing, and it's time to just lie back and fast. All the obsessing over repercussions and effects, the tactical intricacies, and the "messaging" (a word I was completely unaware of six months ago and would dearly love never to hear again) are to me now almost like a strange game we used to play back in some other time, and some other place. 

In their place, when I think about CJF now, is a simple feeling of contentment. Just that it has happened. That we are doing what we said we would, and what we can. And that a vision as audacious as ours can become a reality. Not, perhaps, the grandiose, earth-shattering reality that our youthful imaginations once enticed us with, but a reality nonetheless, humble, pure and true. Woody Allen once said that in life, half the battle is showing up. CJF has shown up, and I'm glad.

Another thing that makes me quite happy when I think about CJF is the fact that we really have no way of quantifying its effects. On Wednesday, for example, Michael and myself were interviewed by a very sympathetic young female journalist from XIN HUA, which is China's main national press agency. Genuinely curious about us, and generous with her time, we ended up having a fantastic conversation about climate justice, China, Australia, and the developed and developing worlds. Before leaving, she told us that she thought what we were doing was admirable. Later on, she returned to our marquee bearing gifts. It was sweet.

Now, I don't know if her story made it to China or not, and if it did, how many people it may have reached. And to be honest, I like not knowing. Our words might have touched millions, or they might have touched only one. But either way, those words represent our effort, and our truth, and once they leave our mouths, we lose control over their effects. This demands that we be content with our action. And this, I think, is what I feel.

So whatever becomes of the great Copenhagen negotiations, and whatever transpires between all those men and women, from all those countries, with all their words, figures and memos over the next two weeks, I will be here, fasting still, and I will be content.

Content, because I will be doing what I feel is right, and what I feel I am meant to be doing. And content, because I truly believe that this world will wake up to climate justice, and that together, we will see it done. In fact, I believe that this awakening has already begun.

And now that it has begun, I do not think it will be stopped.