When French president Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Copenhagen, a Greenpeace welcoming committee was there to meet him with the message, “Politicians talk, leaders act.”
We deployed our banner, but it turns out Sarkozy might not have ever seen it. Why? Because, we’ve heard, he might have hid in the airport rather than drive by our big bad banner.
I’ve seen our executive director, Kumi Naidoo, speak several times the past couple weeks (the man is everywhere, it’s as impressive as it must be exhausting!), and he has a line he likes to use about our leaders all suffering from the same medical condition: They’re all hard of hearing, he says. At least, they are when it comes to calls for leadership and climate action.
But I guess in this case that’s not even true. Sarkozy isn’t hard of hearing at all, he’s just sticking his fingers in his ears and going “lalalalala” to avoid hearing us. Which means our message is still reaching him all the same.
