Friday, February 12, 2010 7:31 AM EST
Can we move the winter Olympics to Rome?
Snow in Rome.
Is it too late to move the winter Olympics to Rome?
On Friday morning, while Vancouver was wet and foggy, I had a snowball fight with my daughter Arianna on the streets of Rome. It was an exceedingly rare treat. The last time the Eternal City had snow was 24 years ago.
Romans were astonished. They ran outside with their umbrellas to see orange trees in full bloom, palm trees and cactuses covered in snow. Kids flooded out of their schools to fling snowballs at each other. The snow was wet – perfect for making projectiles.
The snow started about 8am Rome time, but quickly turn into rain. A couple of hours later we were suprised to see fat, fluffy snowflakes turning the sky white. We ran up the Aventino hill, where we live, for a view of St. Peter’s. But the snow had made the basilica’s dome impossible to see. By about 11:30am, it had stopped snowing and Rome began to return to its usual wet, warmish winter self. Rome had had about three hours of true winter; as a Toronto boy who has had his fill of long, cold, Canadian winters, that was delicious enough.
It’s probably a good thing the snow didn’t last long. Sandra Kennedy, an Australian friend of mine who has lived in Rome since the 1960s, said some of the city’s towering umbrella pines – the ones that look like they were designed by Dr. Seuss – broke under the weight of the 1986 storm. Still, she said, “it’s magic when you see the ancient ruins covered in snow.”
I did see snow in Rome once before, when we lived here in the early 1970s. There was a big snowstorm, the first in more than a decade and the last before the 1986 storm. We lived on the hill behind the Vatican and I remember as a kid seeing the dome of St. Peter’s turned white. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, still do.
Link to this postWednesday, December 16, 2009 6:43 AM EST
Layton, and many others, on the outside wanting in
Ask NDP leader Jack Layton how much he likes the crowds at the Bella Center, the packed-to-the-rafters convention hall that is playing host to the Copenhagen climate change summit. Layton arrived yesterday. He couldn’t get in because of the sheer crush of humanity. He arrived again this morning to face more security madness and appealed for help from the Canadian embassy in Copenhagen. “We’re trying to get him in,” said a Canadian official here.
His story is not unique. A prominent journalist I know came to the summit on Monday. He was accredited; all he had to do was show his passport, pick up his security badge, walk into the Bella convention centre and cover the end of the world while drinking some of the worst coffee known to humanity.
He never got in. The crush of humanity – delegates from 192 countries, several hundred environmental groups, thousands of journalists, armies of campaigners and lobbyists and far too few Danish security officials – kept him waiting for the entire day. He gave up, returned to his hotel and tried to penetrate the Bella fortress again on Tuesday. Hours more of waiting in the chill, damp Copenhagen weather. I don’t know if he got in.
People wait to enter the UN Climate Change Conference at the Bella Center in Copenhagen.
The Bella Center is the size of a big-city airport, but it’s way too small for an event of this size and prominence. On Tuesday, the United Nations, the summit’s sponsor, said it “regrets the long delays.” It had an explanation. Some 45,000 people applied to attend the conference. The Bella’s capacity is 15,000 and fire department officials are in a low-grade panic about fire codes being breached. On Monday alone, the UN accredited 3,500 new delegates. The Brazil delegation alone was said to have 600 people.
So the Danish police swung into action. Most of the NGOs – the non-governmental organizations – were banned from the Bella Center. The Bella Center subway stop was closed. Everyone who could get in had to traipse a kilometre or so from the next station, only to confront a maze of barriers to get anywhere near the actual security line-up. This morning, I left my hotel at 6:30 to avoid the madness. It worked, barely.
The crush of humanity, the chaos, is hard to imagine unless you are here. Think Pearson or JFK airports at Thanksgiving or Christmas. At times, it’s hard to walk in the halls, as vast as they are. It can take 30 minutes to get a coffee. There is no space left in the media centre, which is the size of a soccer pitch. Some 3,500 journalists are accredited. When former U.S. vice-president Al Gore came here the other day, security guards locked their arms together to form a human fence around him just so he could move.
Today – Wednesday – promises to multiply the Bella Center madness. A demonstration is planned that may attract 10,000 people, threatening more chaos. On Thursday, some 115 heads of state and government are due here to sign a new climate change deal. Let’s do some numbers. Canada’s prime minister’s office alone usually travels with 50 people – RCMP, media advisers, staff and the like. Presume that’s the average contingent for the leaders. That’s an extra 5,000 people or more. The Bella Center is going to burst on Thursday and Friday. Maybe I’ll just sleep here tonight.
Sunday, December 13, 2009 9:15 AM EST
Slogans are all to do with climate justice
Josef Sayer and his colleague Nicole Piepenbrink make the trek from the German town of Aachen, on the Belgian border, for Saturday’s massive protest march in Copenhagen as the climate change talks, in obvious stalemate, reached the end of their first week. They were wearing plastic blue parkas and carrying “Climate Justice” signs. Thousands of marchers were wearing blue; the colour, they said, represented the rising seas.
Mr. Sayer is the director of the overseas development agency of the German Catholic church, known as Misereor, which has a front-row seat to the harsh effects of climate change in Africa, where rising temperatures are damaging food production and water supplies.
We asked him what impressed him most about the protest march, beyond the numbers – tens of thousands of marchers, 900 of whom were rounded up by the police. “There were a lot of quite young people at the protest,” he said. “That’s very important because these are the people who will suffer in 2050.”
A protester with the writing 'Act now" on her face takes part in a protest march towards the United Nations Climate Change Conference during the 'Global Day of Climate Action' rally Saturday in Copenhagen.
The year refers to the long-term target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent or more if the planet is to limit its temperature rise to 2 degrees C. It also refers to the most effective slogan of the march. Young people were given orange T-shirts which read: “How old will you be in 2050?”
Mr. Sayer says the slogan is all to do with climate justice. Most of the politicians and industrialists who are making decisions about how much, or how little, carbon will be dumped into the atmosphere won’t be alive in 2050. Their children and grandchildren will. “Justice means all the generations living now have the right to a future life,” he said. “That means those who are responsible for the emissions and the pollution have to take responsibility for the pollution.”
There marchers toted other catchy slogans. “There is no Planet B,” said one. Another read “Bla, bla, bla, Act Now!” But there is no doubt the “2050” slogan was the most arresting of the day.
Saturday, December 12, 2009 5:04 PM EST
Feed the hungry? 'Share the Goldman Sachs’ bonuses!'
Give Jim Rogers, the outspoken boss of Duke Energy, one of the biggest electricity-generating companies in the United States, full marks for brilliant timing in his put-down of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment firm that pays its partners like kings.
James Rogers is the outspoken CEO of Duke Energy, one of the biggest electricity-generating companies in the United States.
The scene was Kronborg Castle, better known as Hamlet’s castle, in Elsinore, about a hour beyond Copenhagen. In the audience were Danish royalty and some of the corporate and environmental world's biggest personalities, including Coca-Cola’s Muthar Kent and Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Norwegian prime minister whose famous Brundtland report gave us the expression “sustainable development.”
Mr. Rogers was on stage with four other top executives, among them Tracy Wolstencroft, Goldman’s head of environmental markets. A woman from the audience asked Wolstencroft what he would do to feed the 1-billion people who go hungry every day.
The Goldman exec hesitated for a second as he tried to formulate a worthy response to the worthy question. It was long enough for Mr. Rogers to blurt out: “Share the Goldman Sachs’ bonuses!”
The audience loved it and Ms. Wolstencroft, graciously, let the audience soak up the moment.
Friday, December 11, 2009 2:09 AM EST
Canada's Copenhagen hero cries out for change
COPENHAGEN -- Taryn McKenzie-Mohr, an 18-year-old University of Toronto student, became the hero of the youth delegates at the Copenhagen climate change summit Thursday morning when she broke down in tears in front of Michael Martin, Canada’s unflappable chief negotiator at the summit.
Taryn, who is from New Brunswick, says she has been emotional since the summit started on Monday. Whenever she meets with fellow youth delegates from Africa and other poor regions of the world, she finds herself apologizing for the developed world’s response to climate change – wholly inadequate, in her opinion. She is particularly upset about the position of Canada, which has offered to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions far less than many rich countries and has made it abundantly clear it will not change its position.
Taryn McKenzie-Mohr
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 9:06 AM EST
Has the era of the electric car finally arrived?
The Renault Fluence Z.E. concept is one of four electric vehicles Renault unveiled at the Frankfurt auto show.
The Copenhagen climate change conference is a negotiating session on a monster scale. It is also, on the sidelines, a global clean tech souk. Green-energy companies, products and concepts are on display everywhere, from hotel lobbies to cafés and everywhere in between. The lobby of my hotel is crammed with all-electric cars built by Renault, the French auto giant that has a partnership with Japan’s Nissan.
To my great surprise, one of the cars on display– the Renault Fluence – was more than a concept. It could be driven by curious reporters. Within minutes of putting in a request for a spin around Copenhagen, I had the keys in my hand.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009 8:36 AM EST
Berlusconi:. On the cover ... and under them
Rock stars have a lot of money. They have a lot of sex with a lot of different women, each more gorgeous than the last. They have ex-wives, private jets and luxurious villas and know how to throw a party. Their every move – clothed or unclothed -- is captured by the paparazzi. They may be talented, or untalented uncouth rogues. Mostly they are famous for their famous lifestyles.
Using these parameters, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s aging billionaire playboy prime minister, is a rock star of the highest order, the king of the party goers, the baron of the bacchanal. Rolling Stone magazine thought the same. On Monday the mag’s Italian edition made him “Rockstar of the Year” for a lifestyle that makes Rod Steward, Brian Jones and Keith Richards look like “greenhorns.”
Monday, September 28, 2009 10:15 AM EDT
Quebec doc shines at Prix Italia awards
Woody Allen said “80 per cent of success is showing up.” Quebec’s ARTV showed up at the Prix Italia, a TV, radio and web programming competition sponsored by the Italian national broadcaster RAI, and walked out Saturday with the top award for “Creativity in high definition.” Canadians and Americans almost never submit programs to the Prix Italia. They should, because the event is at risk of becoming a Euro media-prize ghetto and needs to become more competitive, that is, more international, to survive. The Prix people are thrilled when North Americans enter.
“Flow” was ARTV’s winning program. The 52-minute documentary, directed by Oana Suteu Khintirian, was produced by the Cirque de Soleil and was billed as a “metaphorical musing of human presence on the blue planet.” I was a judge at the Prix, in another category, and only saw a short clip of “Flow.” It was visually stunning.
Even though the Prix Italia is hardly known in North America, ARTV should be proud of its achievement. That’s because the Prix is one of the oldest, and most prestigious awards in the industry. You don’t hear about it because it doesn’t come with Hollywood-style glitz, parties and paparazzi. The delegates and judges who attend the Prix are mostly sober minded media buffs in bad suits who appreciate fine programming and are passionate about public broadcasting. No klieg lights for them. But this being Italy, everyone gets treated to fine, wine-soaked meals.
The Prix started 60 years ago in Capri as a radio-only competition. Europe had just emerged from the Second World War and radio had been used primarily as a propaganda tool. The BBC, RAI, Radiodiffusion Francaise, UNESCO and other media and cultural organizations agreed the time had come to promote radio as a cultural and creative force. The Prix was born. TV was added in 1957. Recently, web and high-definition categories were added. The event is held in a different Italian city every year – it was Torino’s turn this time. Former CBC boss Robert Rabinovitch has been the president of the last two Prix.
There was a time when the Prix had a virtual lock on the high-end programming prize market, at least in Europe. In the early years, programs associated with some of the century’s biggest cultural names were submitted. They included works by Samuel Beck, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, Harold Pinter, Italo Cavino, Igor Stravinskij, Ken Loach and Sidney Pollack. Today, the Prix is lost in the clutter of awards ceremonies and doesn’t attract the big names of previous decades. That doesn’t mean the winners can’t use the Prix to bolster their marketing efforts. It does mean the Prix has to try harder to remain relevant.
I was a judge in the special prize category called “Programs that effect social change,” a hard-to-define category that was largely made up of documentaries. Fine reportage was not the most important criterion. The goal instead was to present a fresh approach to a familiar topic or trigger an emotional response – anger, surprise, joy – that made the viewer want to change the way he or she lives.
In my category, the winner was “Women bear Africa,” a short, elegant film from the Ivory Coast about women bearing the burden of the continent’s development. It was not my favourite submission in the category (the five jury members have to reach a consensus). My fave was “Recipes for Disaster,” from Finland. It was about a family’s humorous and entertaining effort to tackle climate change – out went the car and the plastic. So how do you brush your teeth if you can’t use a plastic toothbrush? In the end, the film shows that substantial carbon reduction can be made without destroying cushy Western lifestyles or ripping apart marriages. If it comes to Canadian television, don’t miss it. And don’t miss “Flow.” Bravo ARTV!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 10:49 AM EDT
Fiat rolls out the talent
We figured it out. Italy’s Fiat and its sister companies – Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo – have a secret, skunk works factory. It does not produce dazzling automotive technology; it produces beautiful women.
That was my conclusion, and the conclusion of roughly 1,000 other reporters, after visiting the vast Fiat exhibition hall Tuesday morning at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Where other car makers employed models who looked like flight attendants, with conservative, below-the-knee skirts and dresses, the Fiat family rolled out the talent. The dozens of girls hired by Fiat looked like they were auditioning for the spring/summer catwalk shows in Paris or Milan. They were universally tall and slim with long hair and provocatively short skirts. Some wore leather dresses, many wore knee-high leather boots, all had 4-5 inch heels.
And they knew how to pout. Point a camera at them, and they immediately went into model mode – hips forward, shoulders back, as they leaned against the sleek Italian cars. When they weren’t being photographed, they looked bored, unapproachable and vaguely pissed off. How perfect.
The girls at the Fiat display attracted the most attention, not because they were more glamorous than their rivals at Ferrari and Alfa, but because of the way they were dressed: Short plaid skirts, white bobby socks, tight green vests over white blouses. You guessed it – Fiat went out of their way to make them look like high school girls with things other than homework on their minds. I guess it was supposed to fit into youthful theme of Fiat’s presentation.
But even some of the most jaded hacks thought Fiat had gone too far with school girl get-up. Eric Mayne, of Wardsauto.com, said “this would never fly in Detroit.” The Italian journalists, of course, barely noticed. To them, it’s impossible to imagine Italian car displays without the sexy women.
For more from the Frankfurt auto show, read Jeremy Cato's blog, Driving It home: Bet on Polo for Canada
Monday, September 14, 2009 7:45 AM EDT
Driving a Trabi is 'real driving'
It is two days before the Frankfurt Auto Show, the premier showcase of rolling industrial art, and I am driving the contender for the worst car ever produced – a Trabant. We rented one to tour Berlin for a couple of hours. I loved it.
The Trabi, as it is affectionately called, was built in East Germany before the Berlin wall was torn down 20 years ago. It was that country’s exceedingly primitive answer to the VW beetle.
A Swiss army knife has more moving parts. The two-cylinder, two-cycle engine is air cooled and has no electronics or computer controls. It has power nothing. There is no gas gauge. That role is fulfilled by inserting a dipstick in the tank under the hood, so placed to ensure maximum pyrotechnics in a front-end collision, and measuring the wet bit.
The body panels are made of cotton soaked in resin – I am not making this up – so the car is very light and cannot rust. In that sense, it would be the ideal car for Canada’s salt-encrusted winter roads.
Driving the Trabi is the equivalent of wrestling a dead sheep. The four-speed shifter, mounted on the steering column, is mush. There is absolutely no feedback, so you can never tell what gear you are in. I would just smash the shifter here and there and hope for the best. When I floored the tiny beast, clouds of foul-smelling blue smoke erupted from the tailpipe as pedestrians held their noses. The time required to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/hr is unknown. No driver has lived that long.
So why did I love driving the Trabi? Because it felt like real driving. It demanded total concentration and physical exertion. Every corner, every stop light was a challenge. It made me realize that modern cars are not cars at all, but mobile living rooms, completely isolated from environment for which they are designed. It also made me realize that modern engines are unnecessarily powerful for city driving. The Trabi’s 26 horsepower is adequate for urban journeys.
About 40,000 Trabis are still on the road and their owners adore them. In a few years, they may get the opportunity to buy a new Trabi – one being engineered to be a technological marvel. It will be an electric car, a true green machine, the polar opposite of the ones that put impoverished East Germans on the road during the Cold War.
A prototype of the new Trabi is to be unveiled at the Frankfurt Auto Show. The company planning the car’s comeback is called Herpa Miniaturmodelle. This is a big leap for Herpa, which makes the German equivalent of Matchbox toy cars. It will be a big leap for Trabi owners too. What is the point of a Trabi that drives like a dream when the nightmare is so much more fun?
Reguly In Europe Contributors
Eric Reguly
Eric Reguly is The Globe's European business correspondent, based in Rome
