European Climate and International Cooperation Conference 2024

[BrumBrum]

European Climate and International Cooperation Conference 2024, 6th to 8th July 2024
The European Climate and International Cooperation Conference 2024 was open in Europolis. The first event would be to present the new revised European Green Development Agreement based on Junckers agreement that had been rejected in 2021. The text would be presented after James speech a IAC. Then after climate discussions he would open the floor to hear what European nations wanted out of his premiership. He would listen then try to implement the popular ideas from the convention.

[Leagio]

Environmental Minister Harper Dawson arrived to the conference to put in the input of her government of the revised agreement and make suggestions where needed on various parts and segments that there were issues with. As a Social Unionist and Senator, she believed the agreement should be stricter to ensure a greener world. However, she was given instructions by the United People's Front leader, James Moriarty, to ensure that the agreement was workable enough for it to be possibly ratified and adopted by the current coalition government with the Social-Progressives in time before the up-coming election this year.

[Spain]

The Minister of Environment, Rural Development and Demographic Challenge, Jaime de Olano, arrived in Europolis on time for the second Climate Conference. His presence in the Conference was, however, controversial: some people thought that it was a concession to the Internal Affairs Commissioner the Spanish had not voted for, James Mizrachi-Roscoe. Others thought that sending a Minister showed that there was no will to compromise with the matter and that Spain felt forced to attend -something false as Leagio also sent its Minister- while the remaining ones were concerned about the possibility that Olano ended up signing the agreement.

Only Jaime de Olano knew what the Spanish Government position was, and also Donald Tusk, the Spanish diplomacy's veteran in Europolis. The Spanish Councillor and Speaker of the European Council welcomed the Minister at the airport, and on their way to the Internal Affairs Commission building, he gave the Minister a briefing about what he could expect: «Jaime, the agreement is good. Mostly a copypaste of our Green Plan, to be fair. Nevertheless, -pointed the Councillor- I am eager to know where this will be heading, and you know what I mean...». The Minister then answered: «Yeah, completely agreed. Our signature needs to wait for confirmation a little bit longer, I guess...».

Both then arrived to the building and parted ways, with the Minister entering the building and shaking hands with the Internal Affairs Commissioner and the Leagioan Environmental Minister.

[Istkalen]

to left, Minister of Finance Indras Irakemar; to right, Minister of the Interior Kuldar Loime

Money, Indras Irakemar's education had told her, was perhaps the most important thing there was, the almost magical instrument on which all trade and business, almost every exchange and innovation there had ever been or would ever be, rested, a spell that had brought light to a world once immersed in darkness.

And her work, all those many years spent bent over at a desk, eyes hot and bleary and itchy as her numbers and letters swam around, across the pages and screens, or standing before whatever masses of cackling idiots, jeering and pointing at that which their morality, their dearest and most distorted Liris, denied them any real understanding of, she had to convince of the existence of reality - at calculations, at writing papers, at making presentations, in her party, in her ministry, had proven it to her. Money, indeed, was magic, the practically supernatural force that made the world go round, without which there would be nothing but disease, poverty, and death. It was, as they had said, truly the antidote to all the troubles of the world - an end to famine, an end to exploitation, an end - perhaps - even, some day, to war and all strife.

What a shame it had been that she had never been able to get her own hands on any of it. It was for her to see, for her to study, but never to feel, or to use, or to truly know - its form she was given, but never, ever, its substance. Corrupting! That was the word. Money, savior of humanity, was corrupting, the vector of a greed and moral degradation that would, if she were allowed even the slightest of real contact with it, poison and destroy her, that would leave her no better than a Vard, attracted, like a crow, to the shiny and glittering without thought or regard for anyone or anything else. That was the doctrine of the state, and the doctrine she had for too long been bound to.

But then Elizabeth herself had pressed a card into her palm, and from that point on - though it had been no more than six hours ago - everything had become different. The gray gave way to gold, the bars and walls dissolved away to reveal the open-blue sky; out of hell she, and Kuldar with her, had ascended into a paradise where everything was permitted and so very deliciously possible.

How long she had spent prancing around the streets of Europolis she neither knew nor cared. She was free, free at long, long last, free to dance about, with the throngs of other tourists and shoppers, like a leaf suddenly freed of the tree that kept it responsible to be borne here and there and everywhere by the wind never encumbered by anyone or anything, in a celebration of all the excess she had been denied so unfairly.

She adjusted the heavy, groaning shopping bag, bulging with confections and clothes stuffed together as tightly as she could get them, the bottom distended further than she had thought possible when she had first bought - bought, what a wonderful word, bought, bought, bought, just thinking of it brought her an almost impossible joy - it, trying to push it further up her shoulder as it slid slowly down her arm, and caught a glimpse of Kuldar, a rucksack stuffed to the breaking point with who-knew-what worn across his chest, to her left, licking far too deliberately, with a maddening slowness - she half-wanted to shove the thing into his mouth, so indulgent he was being - at an ice cream cone.

And he was grinning, she thought, like a little boy, the exact expression a small child makes when given something, some treat or toy, everyone knows is far too much, spoiled, that was the word, the expression a small child makes when spoiled by an aunt. Military men, she'd thought - and he was the military man par excellence, Rikkalekist colonel to "young officer" to mutiny leader and, practically, savior of the Istkalenic republic - were serious, no-nonsense, all maturity and gruffness, but that ridiculous smile was anything but, impish, puerile.

Rather like the one that must have been on her own face at the moment, she realized.

"We're here," she said, sighing, trying to get rid of the curve playing on her lips, pointing to the Commission building just beside them. She squatted for a moment, trying to stretch, to relax, closing her eyes, running through the already-prepared lines of comment in her head, before turning to Kuldar.

He looked rather sad, holding his cone, the ice cream already melting down its sides and onto his fingers, his eyes fixed on it with a certain wistfulness. He was entirely still; it was as though all his thoughts and energy were fixed entirely on giving some last, silent homage to the dessert he was now forced to part with too soon. One last smirk, and then, with a slight chuckle, he bit directly into it, once, twice - finishing the whole thing in seven messy mouthfuls.

"Fuck," he said, shaking his hands now drenched with molten cream. He grasped for the napkins he had stuffed into a pocket, managing to extract one before rubbing it, with vigor and desperation, across his fingers, to no avail. "Do you think they have a washroom?"

Indras could only giggle as they proceeded into the building and conference room.

[UK and California]

Ed Miliband always enjoyed coming to Europolis, but he returned to the United Kingdom to take up the Energy, Climate Change and Net Zero. Of all his time in Europolis, he had never been in the Internal Affairs Building. He was flanked by junior ministers and his personal secretary.

[BrumBrum]

John Peter Key slipped in unnassuming after his budget flight to Europolis. He greeted James Mizrachi-Roscoe who was greeting all the guests as they came. He took some of the complimentary canapés and tea and coffee that was going round.He saw Ed Miliband and greeted him and worked his way round the room greeting Indras , Kuldar, Jaime and Harper Dawson.

He was slightly disappointed in the low bar for the targets in the text but he wanted to see if there was appetite to bring those targets forward. For him just having an agreement signed by most of the EU would be great, he didn't want perfect to be the enemy of good so understood James reasoning.

[Duxburian Union]

Nik Asgard amte primo mani, Master-General of Land

Nik Asgard finally arrived in Europolis after sailing across the strait and then taking various public transit to reach the city. It took forever and made him arrive later than other dignitaries, but gotta practice what you preach, right? Of course, he had help from random people who recognized him not as a government official, but as a rare descendant of the first men of Azrekko. There was no hiding his visual heritage - the skin complexion of the greatest of all men who built the ancient Azrekkian world with nothing but their hands. Nik's heritage had already helped him become a huge hit among the rural Duxburians he needed to connect with as the new Master-General of Land, the Duxburian equivalent of a Ministry of Interior. Rural Duxburians, so hard for most government officials to reach and understand, practically revered the first men as the ultimate "masculine tough guys" of the desert, and thus they embraced Nik as one of their own despite being young and pretty ordinary all things considered. He alone could persuade them to do various things that liberal nanny men couldn't make them do, and that is why the government had decided to send him to the environmental conference over other, more well-known Duxburians.

However, Nik was far from any kind of tough guy in Europolis, shivering in the temperate air. Gawd, this place was soooooooooo fucking cold. Nik hailed from one of the hottest places on earth, the Valley of the Sun, which sat well below sea level in far southeastern Azrekko. According to legend, the Sun Kings of Azrekko built a forbidden city in the inhospitable valley for safely storing the gold reserve of their kingdom. While the forbidden city did indeed exist, and continues to exist due to an oasis (the invention of air conditioning helped too), the treasury was lost and never found, remaining one of the great mysteries of the country. Nik's Asgard bloodline never managed to leave this place, thus he was born to tolerate its scorching weather.

Layers, layers! Nik put on another jacket. One of the reasons he was here was concern that the climate was warming too rapidly, but now he wasn't so sure! He also didn't expect much from the conference. He was unlikely to see eye-to-eye with the rest of Europe on things like ICE vehicles (when gasoline still cost less than water), or preventing the spread of agriculture (with some of the largest food-producing regions of anywhere), and especially the continued lack of any real transition plan for workers and skills. However, the modern Duxburian Union wasn't all that far away from the European nanny libs in many categories like energy generation and recycling, so signing a deal was a very real possibility. Either way, it was worth his time. If nobody acted, his home of thousands of years would become uninhabitably hot, the desert could expand, and the food supply could be threatened.

Nik briefed his translator on what he planned to talk about. He could technically speak 4 languages fluently on his own, but his 2 best were ancient ones and his English came with an accent some thousands of years older than English itself that probably made it almost unintelligible to native speakers. Ah, the joys of coming from such an isolated time capsule of a place.

It would soon be time to meet the nanny libs and hear what wild ideas they have this go-around...