Thom Yorke on Oneclimate

Thom Yorke sits down with Tony Juniper, formerly of Friends of the Earth and now standing for the Green Party in Cambridge, at the Copenhagen climate summit a day before it ends. Yorke is there to observe and perhaps write something, because what is briefed outside and what is happening inside seem to be two different things. The brightest thing he has seen in the building is the Brazilian flag outside Brazil's delegation. The whole place, he says, “is exactly like backstage at a festival”. Indonesia's dressing room is a shoebox. The American one is enormous, with its own lighting rig, snazzy displays and nobody in it, and China's is austere and severe, with a big logo outside.

Juniper explains that the same two questions, how much the rich countries cut and how much they pay, have been on the table since the Rio summit 17 years before, and is not surprised by a leaked draft that adds the pledges up to about three degrees of warming. Yorke has just come from a briefing where it seemed to be dawning on Western governments what their cuts would mean for how their economies work. Artists and musicians have played a part, he thinks, since even a dictator here would admit his people want something done, but “one of the things I find really disgusting is the fact the NGOs have been thrown out”, when they kept the argument going for years.

He favours a fair system, rationing of the kind George Monbiot has written about. Put in place now, it will be manageable, and left another five years it will not. Everyone wants to wake up “from this really long vivid dream” and find none of it is going to happen, he says, and the sooner someone slaps them awake the better.