Bottoms

Oh - its a shameless way to get your attention, I know. But I’ve been thinking about bottoms a lot. Must be because I am about to get married, and the wedding diet hasn’t been an outrageous success yet.

In fact, I’ve been thinking about all the less-celebrated parts of the body - the bottom, toes, the intestine, our underarms. Perhaps we don’t celebrate them because they are smelly polluters. We don’t value them as much as the face, breasts, lips and genitals…

And nations are like that too. We essentially outsource the dirty jobs that we don’t want stinking up our beautiful homelands to countries like China and India and then we sort of screw up our noses at their increasing emissions. What is it going to take for us to see China and India and indeed the Continent of Africa and the Islands of the Pacific as parts of a global body - all performing functions within the larger whole?

What would our Climate negotiations look like if we took that perspective? Common but differentiated responsibilities, probably.

What would we then ask of ourselves? Which part of the body will New Zealand be? Will we be the powerful forearms, pulling towards us a future of green technology and social innovation that ensure our ‘thriveability’? Will we be the hands, reaching out to others to collaborate and find common ground? Will we be lips, speaking confidently inspire and move others? Will we be the heart, pumping courage and hope through the veins? Will we be the feet, that put one step carefully after the other? Or will we be the powerful legs that leap enthusiastically into sea of the opportunity? Or are we going to be the middle finger, poking our insult into the air, leaving an indelible impression on the eyes of the world?

You can see where this analogy can go. I’m going to stop there, and leave the rest to your imagination :-)

Suffice to say, each country is playing a role in the world. I really want us to consciously choose our role in the world and bring this approach to our emissions negotiations.

Go John, Go:
The Dear John website is a place that you can add your hopes for the role that New Zealand can play, and read what other people’s aspirations for our Prime Minister in the Copenhagen negotiations are.