FEAST OR FAMINE

From 30 November to 11 December 2015, Paris aims to continue their plans to hold the 21 st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21/CMP11). It is also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference. The conference aims to result in an international climate agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (compared with the pre-industrial era – about 1850). There are 196 signatories (195 country States plus the European Union) will be attending. France will facilitate the debate between country States to adopt an agreement. Before the conference each country was required to publish its national contribution on their efforts to achieve progress towards mitigating global warming. Each countries’ efforts are called intended national determined contributions (iNDC). Another essential goal in Paris is to mobilize 100 billion dollars (78 billion euros) each year – contributed by all country States, the pri...

How the Trouble Started (2012) begins in the small town of Clifton. Donald Bailey is 16 years old, but remembering when he was eight. He can’t forget how the trouble started – the bottom of the road, the accident, the police, his mother’s distress, questions about his ‘intent’, his careful responses, his withdrawal from people, the psychotherapy, the taunts by older boys, the painted message on their front door, and finally his mother packing up and re-starting their lives in Rathswaite. People, including his mother, said he lacked compassion, that he was a ‘cold fish.’ Donald speaks in the first person: ‘I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to do anything at all – that I was just playing outside and it went wrong.’ But even he can’t remember everything. Donald withdraws by reading books and ‘vanishing’ – daydreaming about a better life, which usually included him with a wife, a good job, and in a place he wants to be: ‘and then you’re back to reality with a thump, and ...