 spending in military missions. So the event was well attended. We had about 150 delegates there. And it turned out that there was quite a lot of international media there. So Bloomberg, AFP, The Guardian all ran it across their regional outlets around the world and the coverage was really very good. So just speaking to that event alone where I took away in terms of reflections, mainly concerned my experience inside the blue zone. The first is obviously to make an obvious point that the war in Ukraine has proven to be this terrible tipping point, if you like, on getting military missions, particularly conflict related military missions onto the radar in a way that other missions, other conflicts have not. More widely, the reaction to what we had to say at the side event, and we were speaking very much from a kind of peace, anti-militarism standpoint was incredibly encouraging. There was a queue of people after the talk to come up and say, thank you, can we have copies of the speech, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't quite the reaction I expected on an event presented by Ukraine and within that Russian invasion context. So that was quite encouraging. The media ran with a number of our quotes. So for example, these recent estimates that global military missions are on partial reporting, patchy reporting, as much as five to five and a half percent of global emissions. And the fact that Ukraine is the first country to attempt to assess the carbon burden of war where we didn't have for Afghanistan or Iraq. These things were all quoted. I mean, Bloomberg ran the 5% stat. So the media covered the Ukraine, part of the side event, they very much covered our contribution to that side event. And in the many sort of, and Ramon, people who are there, you just have so many of random conversations with people, so many random conversations that I had with delegates. I would say that every single conversation I had where we got onto why we were there respectively, everybody had heard about the military missions issue. And there's no doubt that the Ukraine Pavilion massively helped in this. So interestingly, in the few days following the event, and I found this, again, I found this very interesting, we had 600 or so downloads of the report that we were there to present. So there was a lot of actual proactive interest. People were paying attention. So kind of specifically on all of that, I would say in spite of COP itself, being an incredibly disappointing COP, and it was, on this issue, I think collectively, all of the effort that had gone in the lead up to COP and various presence at COP, it definitely got traction. A general point about COP, a couple of things, I felt there was a very, very strong presence by the indigenous delegates who were there. It was really strong. I just felt that that agenda was very present across the blue zone. And the other thing to say is that loss and damage, huge amount of energy was around loss and damage. The downside, the shock to me, aside from the unbelievable disgraceful battle that activists had with delegates over getting loss and damage into the final communicate, because right up until the last minute, it wasn't even going to be there. No, it was 1.5 degrees going to be there either. Was the scale of the kind of expo trade show business stuff that gets done at COP, fossil fuel companies, mining companies, businesses, massive country pavilions, everybody beating their chest. That, as a first timer to COP, that was absolutely shocking. And I just came away like so many people saying, oil has no place at COP. And I just, I'd kick out the trade show element and replace that with civil society participation because it's not easy to attend. So I think in terms of next year, I think there's an awful lot to build on. It's definitely out there now. It's definitely out there now. Yes, it's UAE next year, but I think since Glasgow, through Chameau Shake, through to next year, huge progress has been made, huge progress. And I cannot see that being reversed. I can't see that being reversed. So I'll leave it there. That's wonderful. Thank you. And I really appreciate the hopeful notes that you took away from this last COP in terms of military missions and counting those emissions. That's really wonderful for us all to hear. So we'll move on now to our next speaker, Sunjee Berry. Sunjee Berry serves as director of Freedom Forward. Previously, Berry served as advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA, where he lobbied US officials, diplomats, and office holders regarding human rights concerns across the MENA region. He also served as a regional director for the American Civil Liberties Union, where his work included advocacy in post-911 security policies and he worked as a public interest lobbyist on student financial aid issues in Washington DC and as a fundraiser for environmental and human rights organizations. His commentaries on US foreign policy and human rights have appeared in a range of US newspapers and publications. Berry holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Harvard Public Service Fellow. He's a recipient of the 2007 Asian Law Alliance Community Impact Award and has received commendations from the California State Senate and Assembly for his human rights advocacy. So, G, thank you so much for joining us today. You have the floor. Oh, you're on mute. There you go. That's funny. The first thing I said was, can you hear me all right? And I screwed up already. It's great to be here. Thank you so much to Code Pink for organizing this. I think that this is a very critical conversation and it's a unique opportunity to tackle the big question of COP28 at the end of November and the beginning of December, so early in 2023 because so often, as we all know, there's urgency and reactivity when we choose the work that we're gonna do and we have months ahead of us to take advantage of. Before I get started, I just want to, I wanna just make note of the fact that I'm gonna make a specific argument on this call. And I wanna be respectful of my colleagues on this call as well as others in the broader climate movement who may disagree, which is totally fine. And I think that there's a rich strategic conversation that needs to happen within organizations and activist communities and between communities and people. And so I just wanna make note of that because I am an advocate for opposing COP28 in its current formulation as hosted by a major oil dictatorship. And I wanna talk a little bit about that and I recognize that different people and communities and organizations have different approaches to this question. So just first by way of background, Freedom Forward exists to run human rights campaigns and we run human rights campaigns cut from the cloth of targeting and delegitimizing both dictatorships and repressive governments as well as the Western support for those governments. So if you go to freedomforward.org slash results, you'll see some of our past campaigns. We worked with the European Parliament to call for a boycott of the UAE Dubai World Expo last year which was a successful campaign. We've targeted the Saudi G20 a couple of years ago and global mayors boycotted that. And we're opposed to dictatorships that are US backed, dictatorships in general, but especially US backed since Freedom Forward's a US based organization using these sorts of events to sports wash or greenwash or otherwise wash their horrible histories and agendas. So there's a real opportunity here with COP28 and a major problem. The problem is of course that world dictatorship being the host of COP28. The UAE, the Saudi dictatorship, the Qatar dictatorship, all of them use these events to sports wash and greenwash their roles as anti-democratic governments that oppose freedom and that seek to preserve their systems of rule as ruling families with vast oil revenues that give them the power that they have. And for the UAE in particular, there are good reasons in the cynical Machiavellian sense for them to take on this role from the perspective of greenwashing. First, it helps them maintain a fossil fuel economy. If you posture yourself as supporting renewables or that sort of thing, it reduces the pressure you might face for the underlying reality that your entire economy is built on the export of oil and that both the UAE monarchy and the Saudi monarchy have demonstrated in different ways that they have no intention of that changing. They have no intention of reducing the profit curve ahead of them when it comes to continuing to exploit their oil resources and maintaining global dependence on that. So that's the first thing. By the UAE serving as host of COP28, they get to greenwash their underlying goal of maintaining a fossil fuel economy. The second piece of this is that they get to greenwash the fact that they are maintaining dictatorship as a system. Now, the UAE isn't just a repressive government internally. It's also a very problematic actor in the region. Internally, the UAE has massive labor rights violations. The very site of the COP28, the Dubai Expo city, which was built for the purposes of the UAE Dubai Expo, which the European Parliament had previously called for boycott of, that very site has involved significant documented labor violations. So the COP28 is going to be held in a place where workers were abused and in some cases may have even died as a consequence of pretty brutal treatment. So that's one piece of it. There's also massive cybersecurity concerns because the UAE has long demonstrated its use of surveillance to tackle and go after independent thinkers. And there's no reason to believe that people attending the COP28 will be free from this sort of surveillance. And then of course, there's the even bigger issue, which is that the UAE is an exporter of dictatorship. The UAE has, I'm sorry, there's a garbage truck outside. So let me know if there's noise in the background. Cool. And the UAE has opposed democracy in Bahrain. They've backed a warlord in Libya. They are part of the coalition of organizations working to undermine a Tunisian democracy. They've supported a military council in Sudan. So they're a pretty horrible regional actor. And so that's sort of the backdrop of why this is such a problematic thing in addition to the UAE and its massive bloodshed in Yemen. Now, the opportunity here, and I wanna be, I recognize I just have probably about a minute left, the opportunity here is to build climate momentum globally by opposing the UAE oil dictatorship takeover of COP28. And I see this as a win-win for people in the climate movement because given that the UAE's goal is to posture itself as a climate-friendly government, a public posture in the climate movement that says this is illegitimate, the UAE should not be hosting this and a UAE oil executive should not be the head of convening the conference. We'll put pressure on everyone who wants, all of the government elites who want something positive to happen to demonstrate that they are not in fact, participating in a greenwashing exercise. On the other hand, if all of us legitimize the UAE as the COP28 host, then we reduce the pressure for a positive outcome of any sort. And so the argument I wanna make, for us to perhaps talk a little bit more about in the discussion is whether or not flat out opposing the UAE as the COP28 host is a good posture to stake out in January of 2023, if you want to maximize the likelihood that November and December of 2023 aren't a total climate farce in terms of what happens under these circumstances. So I'd probably leave it at that and then pass the mic along and maybe we can have some more discussion about this in the Q and A. Sure, thank you so much, Sunjeev, for that really fascinating proposal. I'm sure we will have a great discussion on that shortly, I'm really excited for that. So now we're gonna move along to Ellie Kinney. Ellie Kinney has worked on campaign since 2015, largely focusing on nuclear weapons with the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. And more recently, a youth movement supporting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. She joined the Conflict and Environment Observatory last year to campaign for better reporting of military missions as part of the project, the Military Emissions Cap. Ellie, thanks. Thank you so much. Can everyone hear me again? Brilliant, good news. Yeah, well, thank you so much for the invitation to be here. And thank you so much to the speakers for your contributions, especially Sunjeev, just then I think that was a really important perspective to hear from. So COP 27 was my first COP. It was definitely eye-opening. So I went to COP on behalf of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, armed with our newly published policy brief about military missions and intention to network, attend events and hear what, if anything, was being said about the intersection between conflict and the environment. As for the content of the conference, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was undoubtedly a really big topic at COP. And it really brought the intersection of conflict and the climate crisis into the spotlight from what happens when a major oil exporter invades an ally to how you build back bombed up cities in a sustainable way. And of course, the amount of emissions caused by the invasion. So this was the COP where we began talking about conflict missions, which was a really important moment. And the events that both Deborah and Raymond put together worked completely vital in this. And I thank them both for their contributions. So while Russia attempted to greenwash its way through the conference essentially, Ukraine used COP to launch their methodology for measuring conflict emissions, which Deborah's already mentioned. And their methodology estimates that the emissions from the first seven months of the invasion is equivalent to what a country like the Netherlands would produce over the same time period, which highlights just how big this elephant in the room is. This is a step in the right direction and we have to keep up this momentum. Conflict emissions are just one piece of a larger quantity of global military emissions. Wars, of course, cause a spike in military emissions by a dramatic spike. And it's right to point the spotlight on that. But it is part of a wider picture and being able to put a number on the scale of the emissions caused by militaries during both war and peace. It's the first step towards accountability for the impact of militaries on the climate and consequently on humanity. And while countries were supportive of Ukraine's presence at COP and I saw US climate envoy John Kerry being shown around Ukraine's pavilion, there is an element of hypocrisy here. Because after years of emissions supporting being voluntary for militaries because of lobbying by the US, the sector is really lagging behind in its emissions reporting. And the fact that Ukraine has had to develop its own methodology to measure the scale of emissions caused by the invasion highlights just that. And how can we truly make meaningful plans to tackle the climate crisis if a whole sector doesn't know the scale of its own emissions? So in a climate in a side event, sorry, with German Foreign Minister Anna-Lina Baubach, panellists were focusing on the realities of the climate crisis as a driver of conflict and stability. And I asked a question on whether Germany would consider addressing its significant under-reporting of military missions. And in her response, she didn't address emissions reporting or emissions reductions, but instead points out how Russia's invasion has led to a dramatic increase in military spending for them. And yes, the climate crisis is a driver of conflict and stability, but increasing militarisation is a driver of the climate crisis, regardless of the country or whether they're actively in conflict. Every pound of dollars spent on military has a cost to the climate. And while it was really great to see valuable progress made on this issue completely, it was disappointing to see certain organisations who have the ability to be a global leader on this to simply to ignore it. So for example, I attended the launch of the UN Environmental Programme's annual emissions gap report. The really useful report outlines the realistic predicted state of greenhouse gas emissions compared to where they need to be to avert the impacts of climate change, taking sort of national pledges and industry commitments and that kind of thing. But there's no mention of the arms trade or of militaries. So again, nice to question at the launch whether UNEP would consider including military emissions in their next report, considering that militaries are estimated to be responsible for 5.5% of global emissions. And the answer was really simply, no, probably not. And that was a no further consideration. So what I take away from that is that I think it's vitally important that campaigners and scientists are in these spaces talking about these issues and pointing out what global institutions won't. Because after I'd asked that question or the delegates came up to talk to me and asked about the research, they wanted to take the policy brief away and really think about it. And interestingly, some of them read from representatives from their country's military and they were more involved with the idea of acknowledging the issue of military emissions than UNEP was. And given that more and more militaries are becoming aware of the operational implications of the climate crisis, it's likely that more and more militaries will be represented at future camps. So it's important that we're there steering the conversation and bringing up these issues and not just allowing space for greenwashing. The main takeaway for me was I really valued the fact that I had the opportunity to ask questions of politicians and leaders who wouldn't normally have access to. And for me, that highlighted why it's so important to have civil society representation at COP to be there asking the difficult questions. So what does this mean for COP 28? Well, COP 27 saw a conference where it seemed like fossil fuel lobbyists had far better access than campaigners or activists. And with the head of an oil company declared COP 28 president, COP 28 does really risk following into the same trap, if not a bigger one. And as one of the world's top 10 crude oil producers and a top five per capita emitter greenhouse gases, I feel pretty certain that greenwashing will be firmly on the agenda. So we do need people there asking the difficult questions and disrupting in whatever way that they can do. And in terms of protests and freedom of speech, the UAE doesn't have a good track record as Sunjee has correctly highlighted and I fully understand and respect his outlook on it. So according to Human Rights Watch, many activists, academics and lawyers are serving time in prison following unfair trials on vague charges. And it was a similar sort of situation in Egypt. So I think the nature of the host country and its approach to freedom of speech did really impact the atmosphere of the conference itself. And I definitely expect the same to happen in Dubai. But I think we need to be ready to stand in solidarity with campaigners who don't have the privilege of platforms or accreditation into the blue zone who will need our amplification to have their voices heard ahead of and during COP 28. So to sum up, COP 27 was a really important moment for this movement and acknowledging the impact that war has had on the environment and on the climate. But we have to make sure that as civil society we continue to push and this has to be the start and not the end of this acknowledgement. War mongers and dictators absolutely must be held accountable for the impact that there was. But there is a whole military sector and governments that lead them that must also be held accountable for their contribution to this crisis. And mandatory reporting, as we've mentioned, as Deborah's mentioned, is where that starts. And overall, I think it feels like COP is moving further and further away from what we need. It's moving towards the kind of glitz and the profit and away from informed decision-making, global good. So yeah, I think we need to really work across movements with our campaigners fighting on loss and damage and colleagues working for a just transition and really keep up the pressure of civil society against greenwashing and for freedom of speech. Thank you so much, Ellie, for your insight on COP 27 and your fantastic work with the military missions gap. Thank you so much. We'll now talk to Ramon Mejia. Ramon Mejia of Dallas, Texas is an anti-war veteran and the anti-militarism national organizer at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance where he supports members organizing to dismantle systems of violence to build healthy thriving communities. Ramon, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thank you for your thoughts. Sweet, good morning, everybody. Thank you for the invitation. It's been a pleasure to be a part of today's panel. Yeah, so I took part in over 60 member, it takes roots frontline delegation which consisted of GGJ, the organization I'm a part of, Climate Justice Alliance, Indigenous and Environmental Network, Indigenous Climate Action, Just Transition Alliance, the Black Hive at the Movement for Black Lives. In addition to the World March of Women and La Via Campesina, we traveled to COP 27 to advance the narrative and the policy interventions on three core policy priorities, demanding climate reparations from global North countries, demanding respect for human rights and Indigenous people's rights, and demanding the end of fossil fuel and false climate solutions. For the last couple of COPs, Marietta takes roots frontline delegation has been focused on challenging the entrenchment of false solutions, in particular the use of market mechanisms and offsets to limit, interrupt, and denounce the formal inclusion of any and all false solutions and market mechanisms within the UNFCCC. At this COP, we saw that there was more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance, more than 25% since last year's conference. And we can only expect more of the same, if not worse, with COP 28 that is taking place in UAE as other panelists have said, when the world's top oil producers, and with the naming of a big oil CEO as the COP 28 president. We see the need to develop and identify viable pathways forward to mitigate the impact of climate change, the need to cut emissions at the source that is causing the pollution directly. For GGJ in particular, one of our objectives at COP, at this COP was to advance a feminist, anti-racist, regenerative economy interventions on the international terrain, demilitarization as a central climate justice demand, and then to strengthen the grassroots feminist movements at the intersection of climate justice and the feminist economy. For the demilitarization, focusing in on the demilitarization as central to climate justice, part of a continued multi-year strategy to address the role of US military as the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels and the role that the US military plays in extractivism and the resource wars globally. At COP 26, we brought this narrative and intervention and we were able to get some movement in the media, but also it was an opportunity to continue to build the consciousness of our members to be able to travel. Oftentimes, they're the voices that are excluded from these international conversations, so they were able to lift up the demands and the plight of their communities and the direct impact that they have as a result of military-impacted and systems-impacted people. For COP 27, we continued on with this focus around raising the opposition to the exclusion of military missions in these climate conversations. We held panels, actions, and an exhibit booth that we had on the inside, the blue zone. Our delegates coming from system and military-impacted peoples made certain that they were able to share the knowledge and experiences that these systems, the destruction that these systems wage on their communities and also the solutions that are being cultivated at the local, national and have conversations with other international communities at this level to be able to push back one of the panels that we had in the blue zone was no war, no warming, demilitarization and climate justice that we had with the Via Campesina were folks from Puerto Rico, Haiti, across Turtle Island, Guam, Palestine, Tunisia, Nigeria, Kenya, all these voices that were speaking to this intersection of militarism and climate change. In addition, we also investigated and strengthened our understanding and articulation around the connection of the climate crisis to the U.S. wars at home, particularly the mass incarceration and criminalization of migration. We came from a country that created the blueprint for sustaining large-scale carceral state and traveling to Egypt, where essentially the U.S. prison system, they have a prison industrial complex that is modeled on the state-sponsored violence that the U.S. has waged in relation to the war on terror and whatnot. So we wanted to bring that intersection as well, bringing a system that packed it and formerly incarcerated folks from our membership to be able to make this connection. Our delegates were able to meet with San Jose, who was a sister of Abdel Fattah, an Egyptian prisoner of conscience who was very central at this cop and made sure that we were able to lift up that narrative and continue to be in solidarity with communities that were being directly impacted by the host country. So it's important that to make clear that we're at a critical juncture in which polluting extractive economies and institutions of harm are producing inter-intersecting material crises. So yeah, I'm definitely like jazzed and excited to continue having this conversation. Looking forward to COP 28, the oil sector is gonna be ever-present. We can expect more greenwashing. And it's during this time that countries are supposed to be reporting on emissions reductions, how far they've come in within their goal. But we know that by excluding military emissions, and that's something that this conversation and the actual impact that these emissions have on our communities are continuing to be left out. So it's important that we continue to center that. And also we understand that in these spaces, what is our impact? More than importantly than anything, we want to be able to be speaking to our base, to the grassroots, to those on the frontline. And we wanted to make sure that these delegations, these efforts, they're creating impact. And that's a conversation that we want to have moving forward when it comes to COP 28 and how we want to strategize in that way of moving forward. All the conversations that we had where folks are very supportive of what we were lifting up. So it's just about how do we continue to articulate our demands and continue to build with the international community because these systems are international and they're destroying all our communities. So how can we collectively fight back against it? And there, thanks. Wonderful, thank you Ramon. And thank you so much for your work at last COP and your continued fight for climate and global social justice. So now we'll hear from Nancy Mencius. She is a doctoral student in anthropology and social change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds an MBA from Dominican University of California and BA in drama from San Francisco State University. She's worked over 15 years in the nonprofit sector, focusing on social services, social justice and theater. She has volunteered and visited the refugee camps in Greece, in Kurdistan, Iraq and provided migrant support on the US Mexico border. As an anti-war advocate, Mencius has been actively trying to bring the troops home from their overseas misadventures. She has also been a part of the movement against torture and a proponent of closing the prison in Guantanamo. Nancy, thank you so much for being here. I'd love to hear from you and I'm sure everyone is excited to hear your reflections on COP 27 and looking ahead to COP 28. Great, thank you so much, Teddy. Hopefully you can hear me. This is Nancy Mencius. I go by she, her pronouns. I'm here on a lonely territory, also known as Berkeley, California. It's great to be here with you all and the panelists and our attendees. And I see your questions in the Q&A box and we will get to those questions. This COP 27, it was the second COP that Code Pink had attended. We were at COP 26 in Glasgow, which was completely, I think Ramon can talk about, can say that it was completely different from the COP 27 that we experienced at Charmel Shake. I was primarily in the green zone, innovation zone and the climate justice space. The green zone was set up for NGOs to participate, but no NGOs were participating. It was primarily, it was just very empty. And the innovation zone was organized by the private sector out of the UK. And this was actually well attended. It gave the private sector one-on-one opportunity to meet with heads of state, Boris Johnson, John Kerry was there. I had the opportunity to observe how important John Kerry is to the private sector, particularly around his private and public initiative that he is creating. So the private sector was there to lobby him to be part of this initiative. But I had to take a step back and realize that this initiative is nothing but an old fashioned neoliberal policy. So John Kerry says that no country has enough money to address climate change and that we have to outreach to the private sector. But when he says that, he's talking about neoliberalism. But he's talking about adaptation but he's not talking about mitigation. And this is what is so important about addressing military emissions is that we need to look at mitigation. I don't wanna take up a lot of time because I wanna get into the discussion. I'm so excited that all the panelists are here and I'm happy that Deborah brings so much hope and joy to this issue. But I'd like to get to the questions and Sanjeev fantastic way of bringing a discourse into the discussion. We are just like Egypt. We have to stand as activists, we have to step back and look at, how do we participate? How do we not validate something that is just set up to greenwash and overtaken by the oil and energy sector? But I hear what Ellie is saying that we have to be there. We have to hold our countries accountable. We have to call them out, we have to disrupt, we have to have these interventions and we see these interventions and the work that Ramon and his organization is doing. So this is a really interesting point where we're at as activists who have brought interventions into the COP. So I'm gonna end it there and I will hand it back over to Teddy for a discussion. Thank you all. Sure, thank you so much Nancy. Thank you to all the panelists for your wonderful reflections and responses. I'm excited to keep this conversation going. At this juncture, I think it makes sense probably to hop right into some questions from our participants on the webinar. We have a few of these questions posted panelists in the chat. I'll read out this first one and whoever would like to take it, just feel free to begin speaking and feel free to make this a discussion amongst yourselves as well. The question is, what would be the next step now that we want, sorry, what would be the next step we would want to make now that we have the topic on the agenda, the topic I assume being military mission COP. And is this best step to make at COP or at ACOP or is there another focal point that could be more effective and less soaked in oil dollars? Cool, yeah. And I think this is also a great opportunity if folks do also want to discuss something what Sanjeev brought up around the effectiveness of a COP and this COP in particular at the UAE. But yeah, I'll send this question out into anyone who might be interested in taking it up. I don't know whether Debra might also want to jump in on this but I guess just as a sort of starter. I think there is, I think when you think within the formalities of UM processes and structures there is a really big difference between something being on the agenda and the starting of talking about something. I mean, it took loss and damage 10 years to get on the agenda in an actual sense. So I think we need to be clear about where we are. And that's not to downplay where we are because big progress was made and that's a fantastic step. But that's not, we're not on the agenda yet. But what this hopefully means, you know, if there's two side events this year that last year that spoke about military missions there'll be more next year and it'll be, we'll keep growing this whilst other things go on because we know there's many different elements to COP. And I guess as well going back to the thing around the sort of structures within the UN that you need to work within to make change. And this is possibly where Debra would be quite good at coming in. It's not just COP, there are different things along the way. There is bond coming up in a few months' time and I know that tipping point north south and complex environment observatory and scientific responsibility are submitting things around that for the global stock take. It's not just COP, there are things that happen before then that build towards this. But unfortunately we're organising within the UN structure and that is limiting in terms of its timelines. Yeah. Yeah, I can pick up a bit on that early. I mean COP is the, so to address this question directly what will be the next step is COP the best way forward? I mean, Ellie's absolutely right. COP is basically the annual end point in processes that go back a year, two years, three years in some cases. So I think certainly what we're all involved with as researchers, academics, and we very much can't come at this as campaigners but is how do we influence the technical processes because it was a technical omission that God is here in this place in the first place, that's the US saying we don't want military missions to be accounted for at the point after Kyoto and it was addressing Iraq. So that's just flowed through every military now. So it's all partial patch you do whatever you fancy doing. So how do we get the UN to pay attention to this? So there are things that we're all working on which is a UNFCCC country submission. It's getting it on the IPCC agenda. It's getting it into this global stop take that culminates what you buy. And that's just all beavering away. And that's talking to and grabbing and getting the attention of a whole range of different players whether they be country delegates, whether they be senior people within these different UN processes. So to address the question is the best step to make a COP it absolutely is not because we're at COP and it's in UAE but because COP is that end process and just to pick up on what Sunjeev was saying. I mean, absolutely 100% on absolutely everything you're saying. And I just was Googling before we came onto this thing. How the hell did UAE? How will we follow in on Egypt to UAE? And I was wondering is this a regional thing? Everything shuffles around regionally. You know, the really depressing thing is that UAE was selected at Glasgow COP by countries. So it's, you know, I think it's a poison chalice. I think we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. But as Vanessa McCarty said, at a session on loss and damage in Shamal Sheikh when Greta Thunberg had come out and said, we should all be boycotting Shamal Sheikh. It's a dictatorship. It's an oil state. It's, she's absolutely right. We should be. Vanessa McCarty sat at a packed room and said, it's all well and good saying we shouldn't be there. We as climate delegates from climate vulnerable countries, we have to be here. We have to be here. And if they hadn't been there, we lost in damage was not going to be on the final communique. Interestingly, nor was 1.5 degrees going to be in the final communique. So it is difficult. I'll leave it there. I'll go ahead and jump in. I mean, I think there's a. Sorry. The sound shorted out for a second. I think there's an interesting tension here that. I think we, it would benefit us on this call and also more broadly as a set of overlapping communities and organizations and movements to figure out, which is. There is the powerful rule that public interest advocates and lobbyists play at an event. You know, I've worked as a lobbyist. I know what it's like to pull the decision maker, the policy maker, the staff member aside to have the relationships that lead to language happening. I mean, the very, the European parliament decision to boycott. The UAE Dubai expo was a result of a private, you know, conversation that I had with key people in the European parliament. So lobbying matters and simultaneously movements matter. And the key, I think, is to figure out how do we call the call the legitimacy question on the cop 28 and simultaneously enable those who feel the need to be there to do the, the on the ground lobbying to happen as well. And I think that's a conversation to figure out pretty quickly, but I don't think we've figured that out yet. And it may be to have a very clear set of demands for what a real cop 28 would look like. That's one thing, right? So that we put, rather than us having to take ownership of whether we should participate in a potentially illegitimate event, the ownership is put for the illegitimacy of the event on its architects and on its promoters, whether it's John Kerry or the UAE government or the, the UN sort of conveners of it. The other thing I just want to point out, because I don't want to take too much time on this is cop 28 is, is not just going to happen in UAE. You know, you could look at the recent Davos conversation that some people may have seen the New York times headlines on where John Kerry said, this is amazing. We got to do this. And then Al Gore said, this is terrible. We shouldn't do this. And Greta Thunberg said, this is terrible. That was part of cop 28. That was a Davos that just happened a few days ago or a few weeks ago. And so we have, and so cop 28 should happen within countries. It should happen in national capitals. In terms of being a point of debate, a point of challenge, members of Congress, members of parliaments can call the question on this ahead of time and create an environment where long before November 30th comes around, there is a lot of pressure on everyone who chooses to go on behalf of governments to deliver something as opposed to a greenwashing event. Yeah, just, oh, sorry. Yeah, Ramon, go ahead. So. So as a details, like around, around the funding mechanisms around loss and damage become to be further developed. You know, it's going to be important for us to make, to be able to make sure, to make sure. To be able to voice that it's unacceptable for any more of the funding mechanisms to be able to reproduce the colonial finance mechanisms that aim to profit off of people suffering, right? So that's conversations going to be continuing to be going ahead. You know, at the end of last, at the end of the year, you know, the appropriations bill here in the US, like it didn't put any additional funds to meet its international like climate aid to, you know, existing commitments, but we did see an increase to the military budget. So it's going to be important that we continue to, to, to, to continue to push the conversation forward. You know, with Egypt, there was conversations around like boycotting Egypt, but we in conversation with Egyptian civil society with comrades in the diaspora, like it was necessary for us to be there to raise the issue about the plight of political prisoners within the country. You know, folks in the comments said or questioned like what about emissions? Does it make sense to all be traveling to this one location? You know, this is a conversation about emissions. And you know, there's this quote or this stat that goes around that's very prominent, you know, in the sense that a B 52 bomber consumes as much fuel in an hour as the average car driver uses in seven years, you know, that's a military plane that's continuously like flying every day in out in day in and day out and then to say someone that's traveling, you know, once or is driving a car to work every single day like hey, you know, you know, take your emissions footprint into account. You know, this isn't an individual solution. This is going to be a systemic reconfiguration of our entire society that needs to be challenged. And we're going to be having, you know, this is a space to challenge it in. And the conversations, both within my organization with our alliance within the international community as far as seeing what's strategically best and most where we're going to get the most impact as it relates to COP 28 so that those conversations are continuing to be had. In the between, you know, we see as a focusing and integrating a divest and best framework into the frameworks of just transition and climate justice to be extremely important, which is why we at GDJ are particularly drawing on the work that we're doing around grassroots feminisms and demilitarization, you know, the divesting from harm and investing in care to center, you know, feminist peace and just and people's autonomy. But yeah, yeah, just wanted to kind of like bring it up there that that's, you know, the conversations are still being had in between the COP that the COP is not going to be our solution. It's just a terrain that we have to continue to push back to make sure that we're not being run over. Yeah, thank you, Ramon. And thank you all for really fleshing out the complexities of, you know, what we are actually hoping to achieve a COP, the realities of the power of the conference and the politics around it as well. We are coming close to the end of the session. And with respect to everyone's time, we probably won't be able to get to everybody's questions. I do see a hand up from the audience. So maybe this is from Teresa Turner. I'm going to hit the allow to talk button if you still got this question and then anyone that wishes to respond or if this is for someone in particular to go for it. So I'll hit that button now. Teresa, you may speak now if you still got that question. Can you hear me? Yes. What are the best and most hopeful global alliances that are being formed by the various social strata, social groups that are being most impacted and are mobilized against that impact of this stage of capitalism and especially its climate chaos? Thank you for that question. Thank you so much. I can let that sit with our panelists. Anyone that wishes to respond to that directly. You have before. I'm cautious that I jumped in first last time, but I just a very I suppose in terms of like groups that I've seen do really good work. I think that the COP 27 coalition was a really, really integral part of getting lost and damaged on the agenda as so many people, but I really think it was really great. And also, I think when we kind of talk about the difficulty of having freedom of speech in Jamal Sheikh, there were kind of like small and creative protests that were allowed, permitted by the UNFCC to be on like within the ground, so it was all very managed. But I know that it was a lot of those organizers who were putting those on in really creative inventive ways and really trying to make the most out of a really difficult situation in terms of what they were permitted to do. Shout out to those campaigners because they did a really good job. Just to add when it came to the COP, the area like demand climate justice, DCJ were the lines of organizations that were doing a lot of organizing within COP. When we're talking about like which international kind of movements we're looking at trying to support. I think it's, there's plenty and there's a plenty of them. There's a lot of folks doing a really amazing work and it just depends on which ways folks want to be able to support the efforts. La Vieja Campesina is the largest peasant movement in the world and they have folks that you should support, movement of people affected by dams in Brazil like there's plenty of folks. I just wanted to pick up there on what Roman was saying there and I'm delighted to have a chance to say to you Roman absolutely hats off for getting your session onto the official side event program. When I saw no war, no warming, demilitarization in the main zone, in the blue zone, in the program there at an Egypt COP I just want to say huge congratulations. I think you getting your event onto the main program was a breakthrough moment. I just want to say that congratulations, Roman. Thank you, Debra. And that's one thing that we really appreciate all the support we've had with the panel and all our members that spoke at that panel. One thing that's unfortunate is that the UNFCCC how they record the YouTube stream the entire panel they recorded the flyer only so they never recorded the entire panel and the audios horrible because just the way the sound system was there so that's one thing that we appreciate and that panel was great and thanks for all the work. So we have come to the end of the hour. I know you didn't get a chance to respond to that last one so if you'd like to you have the floor, if not then wrap things up. Oh, I'm fine, thank you. Sure. Unfortunately we couldn't get to all those questions but thank you so much to all of the participants that did send questions in. This has been a really enlightening discussion. Debra, Ramon, Ali, Sanjeev and Nancy who had to hop off. Thank you all so much for your participation. I for one am given a lot of hope by the work that you all are doing and entering more Oh, there we go. And and yes so very much looking forward to how we developed towards COP28 whether that does look as we expect it to further getting military missions at events and potentially onto the agenda which would be yet another huge breakthrough undergirded by other work that you're doing or whether that does mean to Sanjeev's point a year full of protesting the very presence of this COP in a repressive state that is an oil dictatorship. So thank you all so much for your perspectives. There's so much more to discuss as I'm sure you all will be having these conversations in the months to come. So thank you all so much. If folks have any more questions please feel free to you can email the info at code pink.org email and that will get sent along to me and yeah once again thank you all.