Kyoto
A July 2024 highlight for me was attending the play ‘Kyoto’ at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play is a dramatic account of the critical negotiations at the 1997 Kyoto Climate Conference ‘COP3’ which led to the agreement on 11 December 1997 of the Kyoto Protocol and the first legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, which were recognised even then to be impacting the world’s climate.
The Swan Theatre in Stratford-apon-Avon. Photo by Tony Hisgett
Kyoto is a co-production by Good Chance and the Royal Shakespeare Company, written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.
The play is a political thriller, a compressed, dramatic account of the negotiations, which pits national negotiators working through gruelling international sessions against the machinations of relentless political lobbying and opposition from the oil and gas industry.
Audience members were issued with ‘COP Delegate’ passes specifying the country they were ‘representing’ – I was apparently part of the Marshal Islands delegation – and some of the audience were mixed in with cast members around the circular stage representing the plenary sessions.
It was strange seeing this dramatic representation of such well-known political figures as Angela Merkel of Germany, John Prescott of the UK, then also negotiating for the EU, and the interactions between the major powers and blocs, China, the USA, the EU, the G77 group of developing nations. The play brought home how the same text could be seen from very different perspective, from the oil producing Saudi Arabia to Tanzania, and the threatened island of Kiribati and the Alliance of Small Island States ‘AOSIS’.
In the end, I found the takeaways from a dramatic evening fundamentally optimistic.
Agreements can be reached on issues that matter to the survival of the human race, even in the face of intense, determined lobbying and opposition and at times of great geopolitical tension. And if climate change is on a worldwide scale that is going to affect all of our lives, then it follows that everyone’s skills are relevant in addressing it. The science is irreplaceable, the politics is essential, the law matters, and the skills of artists and actors and playwrights can communicate key messages in new and powerful ways. Individuals can make a real difference to outcomes.
In an extraordinary programme note to the play John Prescott, Labour Deputy Prime Minister and the leading European negotiator, said:
“We just kept going, 48 hours without sleep, finding compromise and wearing down opposition. But we got there in the end. You could call it ‘diplomacy by exhaustion’.
It wasn’t everything we hoped for, but Kyoto created the platform for future action. I hope that by keeping alive the spirit of Kyoto, this production will highlight that the fight to save the planet is never over. But it’s a fight we cannot afford to lose.”
John Prescott. Photo by Steve Punter.