Burness Global: Stories

Poznan Town Square (credit: Megan Dold)

As the sun began to set around 3 p.m. in Poznan, Poland, where I was attending the 2008 UNFCCC Climate Change Conference, I couldn’t help but wonder why this city was picked to host the huge event. I knew from an earlier Wikipedia search that it was the fifth largest city in Poland and one of the oldest; photographs showed off a beautiful old town square. But I had seen none of that while walking back and forth between my hotel and the enormous conference center. My experience was a place of gray skies and streets lined by gray, boxy buildings.

The conference organizers had prepared for the bleak weather, cheerfully handing out blue hats, scarves, and gloves, as well as jars of local honey, to the 9,000 attendees. Throngs of foreigners stood out around Poznan, all dressed alike with the same scarves and hats. Inside or out, they debated everything from emissions targets to deforestation terms to adaptation and mitigation schemes. All wanted their say, and as the conference continued, prospects for a global deal on emissions targets looked increasingly dismal.

That afternoon, while delegates were deep into their discussions, I decided to walk away from the conference center, in pursuit of the town square shown in the photographs. For a couple of blocks, the buildings looked the same, and I felt disoriented and lost.

But suddenly, at the end of a narrow street, I saw a dazzling light in the distance. As I approached closer, the street opened up and revealed Poznan’s old town square—a magnificent, light-infused place, surrounded by Baroque and Renaissance style buildings. People were everywhere. Christmas music poured out of hidden speakers. Shoppers gathered around outdoor booths around the square, buying everything from toys, souvenirs and candy, to mulled wine and giant loaves of freshly baked bread. The aroma of cooked meat filled the air.

And then I discovered the source of the magnificent light: ice sculptures, placed prominently in the middle of the town square. They were rapidly melting in the afternoon sun. The sculptures had surely once been magnificent creations—reindeer, or a sleigh filled with gifts, perhaps. Now they were so badly disfigured it was impossible to tell their original shapes. They were just globs of ice, their once grandeur lost, now hulks ludicrously illuminated by colorful pink and purple spotlights.

At that moment, Poznan, for me, became the perfect venue for the conference. Across town, thousands of people were working to resolve the complicated issues surrounding global warming, while here, in the old town square, overlooked and out of sight, large blocks of ice melted away.