Robbie's week in the Green Zone

This week I was not with the other students, I was in what the UN calls the "green zone." The green zone is called Climat Generations by everyone else and is where the non delegate members or civil society meets. The security is about as strong as in the blue zone, a man dressed as Santa was forced to reveal the contents of his bag to security on the way. We have met some interesting people there, there was a man from Myanmar from the highlands. Apparently Myanmar is another destination that refugees have been fleeing to lately. We also came across a group called "Sustaining All Life" that specialized in peer to peer counseling for activists that also had an interest in stopping sexism and racism. To paraphrase their mission statement we can't work together to stop climate change if we don't address what divides us societally. We also met the ex mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts who has been to a few COPs before this. We (the mayor, my mom and I) met the official UN photographer, Marcel Crozet, who was an extremely humble man. He had portraits of many world leaders including Obama speaking at the opening events specifically for world leaders. He also had what he called natural abstraction, where he would take pictures but develop them on metal but the metal would not soak the light and then be imprinted rather it reflected the light. There is also an organization called Shamengo that works to make villas for engineers and others in the business of developing technology that had an 2 interesting concepts. One was a drone that planted trees with the use of pressurized force and the other was a Lavazza project set to launch in about a month that uses biodegradable coffee pods in Keurig like machine. The coffee pods are then sent back and turned into compost for a new crop of coffee beans or any other crop. . Creating a cycle for the company that reduces waste. 

Some quick little differences I’ve noticed on the culture here in Paris

- They have a much less commercialized version of Christmas (i.e. no Christmas music and almost no sales related to the holiday in stores)

- People tend not to talk to each other on the streets, even on the subway the most I’ve heard is a simple “excuse me”