Derek Leahy's blog

With international climate change negotiations set to begin on December 1^st in Lima, Peru, I decided to unearth an old unpublished story of mine. At the end of last year’s UN climate talks in Warsaw (also known as COP 19) I interviewed an internationally recognized Canadian environmental journalist to get in the inside scoop on what had happened. 

The journalist’s name is Stephen Leahy. Stephen Leahy happens to be my father.

The following interview took place last year on a chilly December night in a dimly lit café in Vienna.

Derek: Lets cut to the chase - did we save the world at the UN climate change negotiations in Warsaw?

OTTAWA - Yesterday marked the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I still lived in Berlin, my favourite November 9^th activity was to go to the bridge where the Wall was first breached in 1989 - the Boesebruecke. I’d sit on the cold damp concrete of the bridge, pop the cork on a mini-bottle sekt (similar to champagne) and just wonder what it was like to be there that night.

In recent years, I have become more curious about how East Germans brought down the Wall and how I can apply those lessons to my own efforts to stop the tar sands. But even after telling the ‘Fall of the Wall’ story for five years as a Berlin tour guide, I still do not fully understand how and why it happened. I know the steps that led to the demise of the Wall though.