As I walked into “The Last Drop”, heart thumping and mind numb with anticipation to meet someone I have read so much about and harbor such deep respect and admiration for, I didn’t quite know what to expect. What I found, was not a personality, but a person. Kumi is a guy who needs a haircut. A guy who eats in the pub. A guy who will recognize and acknowledge you amidst a crowd after a single meeting. Confident, comfortable, polite, relaxed. Human. The encounter felt surreal. But also, very natural.
Unlike the super-stardom of individuals whose presence one is unable to reconcile with the reality of one’s surroundings, Kumi’s amiability is disarming. It is unnecessary to put on a different persona, reach into the depths of the brain to find appropriate titles, or apply a vernacular of formality that is so often called for in these instances. As soon as we walked in, he shook hands with each and every one of us and took the time to address every person at the table individually, with an availability that is rare in those who occupy such high-profile positions.
Kumi embodies the spirit of Greenpeace. Open, aware, informed, insightful, witty, strong, of and for the people. There is a clarity and perceptiveness evident in his leadership, and an unabashed friendliness in his demeanor. Volunteers seem to occupy the same importance as the Minister of the Environment, and he is as comfortable in international conferences as he is on a speedboat zooming to the base of an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. At his talk later in the day, it became apparent that the lifetime of activism under his belt remains present in his approach, which emphasizes inequality, debt, fairness for the least privileged, and good-humoredly denounces the over-complicated, acronymic bureaucracies that dominate present-day environmental discourse (“Who is LULUCF?!”).
He spoke simply and straightforwardly about climate skepticism (“Even if you choose to drive after x amount of alcohol intake, you know that the legal limit is there because there is a danger - it is there for a reason”), and about the importance of keeping climate targets and ambitions high (“By lowering ambitions COP16 saved the UN negotiating process, but not the climate”). He addressed the frightening strength of the oil industry (“For every member of US Congress there are three oil lobbyists”), and emphasized the calibrated strategy required in demanding companies to change (“Our approach should not be one of ‘capitalism is a problem’, but instead we should find a different way to handle it, where we force companies to change by maintaining no permanent friends or enemies”).
Throughout the talk, as throughout lunch, Kumi constantly related his anecdotes back to the underlying seriousness of the situation at hand, with wisdom and poignancy. “We must have the courage to rise to the occasion,” said Kumi. “We are dancing a political polka. This has got to stop.” But he also kept things simple, light, relevant, funny. Human. And on the way out, he laughed heartily as we complimented him on his new haircut.
By Inês Cardoso, St Andrews Coordinator
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