Blog
17.December 2007 - 05:13
On Bali and Prada
More greetings from the Bali Conference. I really haven’t had time to read other newspapers than the Jakarta Post, but my impression is that the negotiations are being described, with some reservations, in a positive way: the world moved forward. Especially those actions that will now be directed towards preventing forest depletion are a positive development when looking at the matter from the point of view of combating climate change. Did the EU receive good news regarding the level playing field is, however, a completely different ballgame. For the time being, nothing points to that direction. We will continue alone and bravely.
The treaty does not mean that the US, Russia, Japan and Canada would have promised, through the Bali roadmap, to restrict their absolute emissions. Neither has China, India nor Brazil done so. No quantitative commitments with regard to restrictions have been made. But let’s live in hope that this will happen soon enough.
In Bali, I received a draft of the reviewed version of the guidelines of emissions trading from Jos Delbeke, the architect of the emissions trading system. The new version will demand an acquisition obligation regarding import of emission allowances for imports. So, the Commission has at last acknowledged the worry about carbon leakage to be founded. That is a good thing, as the Bali Roadmap will not undo this idea at least for a while.
I am now on my way home, over Singapore and London back to Helsinki. I am writing this on a plane, sitting in a cramped tourist class, where limbs go numb and prevent one from sleeping soundly. Singapore Airlines, even if it is a renowned company (this is THE company which provides the suite-class with a private suite, and couples or those who claim to be such, with a double bed), has no wireless Internet like Lufthansa. I will have to wait till the morning in London to update my homepage.
I still have to tell another anecdote from Denpasar airport, even though those who have decided that Korhola is a shallow, superficial woman will now receive firm support for their belief. Well, so what, they would not waver from their belief even if I were to write an article on Kant’s theory of knowledge, the effects of the linear concept on the technological revolution, the distorting effects of the emissions trading competition or on early existentialism in Dostoyevsky’s production. Or just simply on suffering, if these that I have previously mentioned are seen as being only a gimmickry of words – which they are naturally not.
It will not help, because I have actually written on these subjects.
But – from this useless whining to the anecdote: There was a Prada store at the airport. I actually do not favour Prada handbags, as there are too many of them and copies of these around the world, but I set my eyes on a very attractive looking black smocked leather bag, light as a feather, and remembered that my youngest daughter had quite a slew of special days coming. The handbag was not very cheap, around 400 US dollars, but my daughter is very dear too. Just to be on a safe side, as I remembered minister Tanja Karpela’s Prada scandal, I started to dig up a certificate of authenticity from the inside of the bag and asked the salesperson where I would find such. “Madam, there is no guarantee about that”, said the salesperson in the Prada authorised shop and bowed, hands together, “this has been manufactured by the Indonesian license. There is no certificate of authenticity.”
I cast the bag aside, as I didn’t want to get in a similar kind of spin as Karpela has been thrown into and I am not even sure what ‘manufactured by a license’ means. You see, I’m not one of these women who would have had the time and energy to delve deeper into the semiotics of these bags. I can’t see any difference between the real and the fake one, like some who can already recognise a fake from afar just by a quick look at the rivets of the logo and I’m not even ashamed of this.
I just told this story out of pure sympathy. It could be quite possible that Karpela was speaking the truth. Maybe she really bought her bag from a shop and not at all from a street peddler, bags set on an African cloth over the asphalt, and perhaps she did pay more than enough for it. If the MEPs have no time to more thoroughly scrutinise the secrets of bag markets, how could a minister have? Therefore; Tanja the brave, I wish you all the best – for everything.
Another anecdote. In my Saturday blog I told you about Yvo de Boer’s strong emotional outburst at the conference. I read in Sunday’s Jakarta Post that de Boer was annoyed by other things as well, apart from just the double-dealings in the technicalities of the negotiations. He fretted that during all this hassle, he had lost his new glasses somewhere within the conference space. We realised that the glasses, which we had found with Atte were most probably Yvo’s. As we had stood outside the conference hall at a coffee stand, Atte picked up a pair of glasses, which were hidden halfway under the table and had lost an earpiece – maybe someone had already stepped on them. We took the glasses to the personnel’s office – hopefully Yvo’s world will soon become clearer.
Published: December17, 2007
http://www.korhola.com/2007/12/balia-ja-pradaa/
More greetings from the Bali Conference. I really haven’t had time to read other newspapers than the Jakarta Post, but my impression is that the negotiations are being described, with some reservations, in a positive way: the world moved forward. Especially those actions that will now be directed towards preventing forest depletion are a positive development when looking at the matter from the point of view of combating climate change. Did the EU receive good news regarding the level playing field is, however, a completely different ballgame. For the time being, nothing points to that direction. We will continue alone and bravely.
The treaty does not mean that the US, Russia, Japan and Canada would have promised, through the Bali roadmap, to restrict their absolute emissions. Neither has China, India nor Brazil done so. No quantitative commitments with regard to restrictions have been made. But let’s live in hope that this will happen soon enough.
In Bali, I received a draft of the reviewed version of the guidelines of emissions trading from Jos Delbeke, the architect of the emissions trading system. The new version will demand an acquisition obligation regarding import of emission allowances for imports. So, the Commission has at last acknowledged the worry about carbon leakage to be founded. That is a good thing, as the Bali Roadmap will not undo this idea at least for a while.
I am now on my way home, over Singapore and London back to Helsinki. I am writing this on a plane, sitting in a cramped tourist class, where limbs go numb and prevent one from sleeping soundly. Singapore Airlines, even if it is a renowned company (this is THE company which provides the suite-class with a private suite, and couples or those who claim to be such, with a double bed), has no wireless Internet like Lufthansa. I will have to wait till the morning in London to update my homepage.
I still have to tell another anecdote from Denpasar airport, even though those who have decided that Korhola is a shallow, superficial woman will now receive firm support for their belief. Well, so what, they would not waver from their belief even if I were to write an article on Kant’s theory of knowledge, the effects of the linear concept on the technological revolution, the distorting effects of the emissions trading competition or on early existentialism in Dostoyevsky’s production. Or just simply on suffering, if these that I have previously mentioned are seen as being only a gimmickry of words – which they are naturally not.
It will not help, because I have actually written on these subjects.
But – from this useless whining to the anecdote: There was a Prada store at the airport. I actually do not favour Prada handbags, as there are too many of them and copies of these around the world, but I set my eyes on a very attractive looking black smocked leather bag, light as a feather, and remembered that my youngest daughter had quite a slew of special days coming. The handbag was not very cheap, around 400 US dollars, but my daughter is very dear too. Just to be on a safe side, as I remembered minister Tanja Karpela’s Prada scandal, I started to dig up a certificate of authenticity from the inside of the bag and asked the salesperson where I would find such. “Madam, there is no guarantee about that”, said the salesperson in the Prada authorised shop and bowed, hands together, “this has been manufactured by the Indonesian license. There is no certificate of authenticity.”
I cast the bag aside, as I didn’t want to get in a similar kind of spin as Karpela has been thrown into and I am not even sure what ‘manufactured by a license’ means. You see, I’m not one of these women who would have had the time and energy to delve deeper into the semiotics of these bags. I can’t see any difference between the real and the fake one, like some who can already recognise a fake from afar just by a quick look at the rivets of the logo and I’m not even ashamed of this.
I just told this story out of pure sympathy. It could be quite possible that Karpela was speaking the truth. Maybe she really bought her bag from a shop and not at all from a street peddler, bags set on an African cloth over the asphalt, and perhaps she did pay more than enough for it. If the MEPs have no time to more thoroughly scrutinise the secrets of bag markets, how could a minister have? Therefore; Tanja the brave, I wish you all the best – for everything.
Another anecdote. In my Saturday blog I told you about Yvo de Boer’s strong emotional outburst at the conference. I read in Sunday’s Jakarta Post that de Boer was annoyed by other things as well, apart from just the double-dealings in the technicalities of the negotiations. He fretted that during all this hassle, he had lost his new glasses somewhere within the conference space. We realised that the glasses, which we had found with Atte were most probably Yvo’s. As we had stood outside the conference hall at a coffee stand, Atte picked up a pair of glasses, which were hidden halfway under the table and had lost an earpiece – maybe someone had already stepped on them. We took the glasses to the personnel’s office – hopefully Yvo’s world will soon become clearer.
Published: December17, 2007
http://www.korhola.com/2007/12/balia-ja-pradaa/