The morning air off the Mojave in late winter is as clean and crisp as you'll ever breathe in Los Angeles County. It carries the taste of promise on it. When it starts blowing in like that I like to keep a window open in my office. There are a few people who know this routine of mine, people like Fernando Valenzuela. The bondman, not the baseball pitcher. He called me as I was coming into Lancaster for a nine o'clock calendar call. He must have heard the wind whistling in my cell phone.
"Mick," he said, "you up north this morning?"
The Lincoln Lawyer. Michael Connelly.
Well well, if it wasn't the dwarf skating out in front of the giant wave. He was shattered and yet inept. Curly haired, in the frame, lost, lost, and laughter full-tilt. Giant boxes, almost on legs, groaned across the geometric landscape. Stop writing that fantasy stuff that doesn't make any money and do the stuff that does, his daughter said. He grimaced at his own disengagement from everything. Speculation about Thai islands just promoted fears from his teenage children that he would return with a Thai prostitute for a wife. He laughed at the odd stage of it all. It must be good for your mental health, the beach, his daughter said and he looked up, perhaps surprised at the perceptiveness of it all.
Everything had come to an end; and that's what amazed him; one door shuts and another opens. It was cruel, what had been suffered; but indeed his own head had turned his life into agony; every day a trudge up Mount Everest; anything to justify the most indulgent of behaviour; life is so terrible, I must get drunk. There in the holy citadels. The women he met spoke dismissively of bars; the way they smelled of stale beer and stale cigarettes and everyone in them was a moron. But he had loved them; from the first wintry light in the morning to the last ramshackle moment as the patrons struggled home. He had done his sociology thesis on bars; towards an ethnography of the bars of Adelaide; participant observation being a big thing in the 70s, and it never occurred to him he might have a problem with alcohol.
It wasn't right, what had happened. He wanted to say goodbye to everybody. He wanted to gather every good person he had ever worked with in the last quarter of a century together in one great farewell; and shudder, shudder, at the anguish and embarrassment of the corpse; an identity that was rapidly vanishing; a toe-hold in a community which would soon be gone. He was fabulous. He was convinced. And then it all disappeared; disappeared; and he was left as a tiny little worm; an old man waiting outside the cake shop for a young woman who he thought was ignoring him; there in the smart streets of Double Bay. It turned out she couldn't see for looking. And everything came together. And they laughed. Briefly. Before the zealotry set in.
Why did they have to be so fervent? Why did they have to be so successful? Her magic face. Her hands as they touched him. Her friendly texts. Her exotic looks. He could see her working through the glass and was proud to be meeting such a beautiful woman. There amongst the wealth; the Porsche's, the BMWs, the Lexus. It was all too cruel; his diminishing flesh; his crummy old car. He methodically cleaned out the clutter as he waited for her; the garbage which had built up inside; while outside it was filthy. He wanted to be pleased with himself. He wanted to be proud. Instead doubt plagued every circle and every moment; and the children clung more than ever, even though they were teenagers now.
There had been so many strange fantasies, such long walks; there in the unhappy morning hours when he paced down the street fleeing his own shadow; frightened of the party goers lurking on steps and in doorways, the tinkle of broken glass; the mist; the sleeping houses; the fear and the evil, the malignancy which crept through the fabric of the streets towards him. He had walked faster and faster, trying to escape, and these momentous things, the collapsing world, kept trying to catch up with him, to imprison him, there in the cold shadows before the dawn when he was truly himself, a fleeing animal. All of it changed when they moved. Their whole world collapsed and he was trying to catch up, looping rapidly back through the past in recycling circles; trying to catch the threads of distress and memory; of the darkest times.
Everything fell apart and he couldn't understand the driving force. Those who try their best are on the road with all the rest. It's not good enough just to do your best. It's not enough to be here in the shadows calling, calling, the sentinel that said we were doomed, and yet smiled as if there was more over the horizon, a sunlit town, a safe haven, a place where they could be human and triumphant and bring up their children in peace; not this lonely wastrel in the dark passages high in the mountains, not the lone voice of common sense and decency on a crowded political stage; not a denier in a sea of believers; not someone who would never fit in, not here, not now, not ever. Oh how cruel it was. He walked around the Newtown cemetery at least five times; more like ten; and the sun set in a polluted orange blaze and the dog owners gathered on the green. And he walked and he walked: waiting for the decision to hit him, waiting for the future to happen.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,1,26507801-952,00.html
GREENIES have chained themselves to a coal train and rail tracks near Newcastle Harbour in NSW in protest against the outcome of Copenhagen's climate talks.
The 25 activists marched onto the tracks at the Kooragang coal export terminal about 10am today, stopping a train and occupying a bridge.
The action, organised by the environmental group Rising Tide, aims to shut down coal exports from Newcastle, the world's busiest coal terminal.
Spokesman for the group Steve Phillips said the protest is an act of desperation after the UN climate talks in Copenhagen failed to produce a just, effective and legally binding treaty.
"People are tired of seeing our leaders fail to address to problem of climate change - we want to undertake bold and long-lasting action."
Police had begun removing and arresting those sitting on the tracks about noon, he said.
Copenhagen fails to nut out agreement
Meanwhile, questions are being asked about whether the summit was a waste of time.
A "frustrated" Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night joined US President Barack Obama in putting the most positive spin on the outcome of the conference, but the final "deal" was condemned across the political spectrum.
Poor countries and green groups were outraged by the three-page "political statement" brokered by Mr Obama – and four other national leaders – in the dying hours.
Greenhouse 2011 in Cairns
Mr Obama called the outline of the agreement – yet to be endorsed by most other countries last night – a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough", but admitted "this progress is not enough".
Mr Rudd was not in the inner group which finalised the statement.
After 10 days of talks among delegates from 193 countries, the leaders failed to agree on any firm commitments. They proposed limiting global warming to 2C, but failed to get a legally binding agreement or certify specific targets to reduce greenhouse emissions.
They also agreed to provide $A33.7 billion to help poorer countries reduce emissions between 2010 and 2012. The cash handouts will rise to $112.4 billion a year by 2020.
Political commitment
Mr Rudd described the outcome as a political commitment to act, rather than a legally binding agreement, and said it was the best possible outcome in the circumstances because it was the first time the whole world had agreed to the 2C maximum warming limit.
"It's a huge sense of frustration, which is: You push as hard as you can, you give it everything you've got, to produce the biggest outcome for Australia possible," he told The Sunday Mail.
"But what's equally the case is just how frustrated you get when you feel that people don't see sense."
The overly optimistic analysis by Mr Rudd and Mr Obama was matched by the blistering critique by poor nations and environmental activists.
Chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries, Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping, said: "Gross violations have been committed today against the poor.
"This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states."
- with AAP
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/20/2776768.htm
The Australian Government has slammed "radical nations" which refused to back a new international deal on climate change, after the Copenhagen summit wrapped up without a legally binding agreement.
Negotiators failed to get consensus on the new international deal brokered by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, with several countries railing against it.
Venezuela's delegate called the deal a coup d'etat and complained his country had been left out of the process. Sudan called it a suicide pact and compared it to the Holocaust.
The opposition meant the conference could not formally adopt the accord, so it opted to simply take note of it instead.
Australia's Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, has criticised the critics.
"There are a few radical nations, a few radical states seeking to block action on climate change internationally, seeking to derail this process," she said.
Many said the deal fell far short of UN ambitions, but Senator Wong welcomed the outcome of the talks.
"Of course there is a lot to do," she said.
"Of course we would have wanted more, but this is a significant step and what is important now is pressing on."
The Copenhagen Accord sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of $US100 billion in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations.
It sets a January 2010 deadline for all nations to submit plans for curbs on emissions to the United Nations, but does not specify the cuts needed to achieve the 2C goal.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-fails-on-climate-change-abbott-20091220-l73s.html
'A disappointing result'
The Federal Opposition says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must admit the results from the Copenhagen climate talks are disappointing.
Climate change spokesman Greg Hunt says the lack of a global framework means claims that Australia needed an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in place before the talks are false.
"Mr Rudd, for his own purposes, is trying to present it as more than it is," he said.
"There are no targets, there's no treaty, there are no binding agreements, there's not even a commitment on a timetable.
"Mr Rudd should be honest with the Australian people that it's a disappointing result, and that it puts to rest his claims that he needed an ETS before Copenhagen."
The Copenhagen conference on climate change has been a "comprehensive failure" for the prime minister, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.
After 13 days of tortuous talks, the representatives of 192 nations on Sunday set a goal of limiting warming to 2C and earmarked $US10 billion ($A11.28 billion) in early funding for poor countries most at risk from climate change.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd threw his support behind the deal as "a significant global agreement on climate change action", but said much more remained to be done.
"Some will be disappointed by the amount of progress, the alternative was frankly catastrophic collapse," he told reporters on Saturday at the troubled summit.
However, Mr Abbott said the result was a rebuff to the prime minister.
"Intentions are better than nothing, but Mr Rudd has failed his own test," Mr Abbott told Sky News on Sunday.
"He said a few years ago that what we wanted to get were real targets against real time lines ... and certainly by that standard it's been a comprehensive failure."
He said such agreement as was reached by world leaders was too unspecific to be of value.
"We can all say let's get temperature increases down, but they haven't said what they would do to bring that about ... They've said let's not let the temperature go up by more than two degrees but they haven't said how they're going to achieve it.
"No country at Copenhagen has committed to any particular way forward. That's why I think it's very disappointing and that's why I think it's very hard for the prime minister, who always said real progress meant real targets against real time lines, it's very hard for him to claim any kind of a victory."
Mr Abbott added: "What this shows is that Kevin Rudd was very unwise to rush Australia into prematurely adopting a commitment in the absence of similar commitments from the rest of the world, and I think it certainly entirely vindicates the opposition's stance in rejecting Mr Rudd's great big new tax on everything when parliament was sitting earlier this month."
Greens leader Bob Brown described the outcome of the Copenhagen conference as a disaster and said it was time for the federal government to start "serious negotiations" with his party in the Senate.
"I think it's a very big setback for the planet and that means all Australians as well," Senator Brown told Sky News on Sunday.
"It (Copenhagen) isn't a deal - it's an agreement that's been noted by the conference but it has no target, no binding mechanism and it really gives no hope... It has simply left the board vacant when it comes to a commitment by any country on Earth to do anything in particular."
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