CNN + YouTube: the people ask, the experts answer

The make-up artist is “taking the shine off” of Bjorn Lomborg, but that doesn’t overshadow his skepticism. On the background, the one wearing the suit with a yellow tie is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Climate, Yvo de Boher. They both took part in the debate promoted by CNN and YouTube.

Yesterday here at Cop-15 a debate promoted by CNN and YouTube took place, a result of the project Raise Your Voice, which may be one of the most significant in terms of stimulating regular people to participate in this conference that is meant to decide, at last resort, about everybody’s lives. During the last few months, people from all around the world have been invited to send their questions – written or in video – to specialists on climate changes. The questions would be answered live in a debate, which took place yesterday right after lunch, with live broadcasting by YouTube and, as of today, also broadcasted by CNN. The questions should be sent in English, but a lot of the more than 13 thousand videos posted (and viewed altogether more than 7 million times) have come with subtitles and audio in other languages – in more than 15 different languages. People could vote on their favorite questions. Amongst the most popular were chosen those effectively directed to the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Ivo de Boher, to the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman, to Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book Cool It and known as the king of skeptics for being part of the group criticizing the run against global warming, and to Darryl Hannah, symbol of activist-artists in the USA – to make the event more popular. Directly from Geneva, the ex-general-secretary of UN Kofi Annan took part via TV.

It is worth watching the debate. As it was a TV program recording (also with breaks to for make-up retouches), the debaters had limited time for answering– what can be a relief in a conference in which, in certain meetings, whether a sentence that should go or not on an article is discussed for over 40 minutes only for, in the end, to erase everything. The debate gets heated in some moments, especially between the New York Times columnist and the skeptic – who just wanted to disagree. Pay attention also to the Yvo de Boher’s elegance, who never interrupts anyone, but when called, talks little but says a lot. Pure diplomacy. He gets to speak many times when the host notices that, quietly on his chair, Yvo swings his head as if disagreeing with what is being spoken. Besides going on air today on CNN, the promise is that the show will also be available today on Cop-15’s channel on YouTube. There you will also find all the video-questions submitted, also divided into categories like “most viewed” and “most well quoted”. And right here on this blog, you can watch a short interview with Benjamin Kott, from Google, about this project. Benjamin highlights the importance of the participation by those not inside the Bella Center during Cop-15.