Saturday, December 12 – We have an agreement

Today was my travel day back to the United States. It was also the day that the final draft of the Paris Agreement was to be released — and the day thousands of climate activists had vowed to flood the streets of Paris in defiance of a ban on demonstrations by the French government — both happening around noon.  With my flight from Paris to New York leaving at 10:30 a.m., I was in the air for nine hours, plus an additional six hours due to changes in time zone – putting me out of communication for a crucial 15 hours.

Lots of legroom in business class

Lots of legroom in business class

Fortunately I was able to upgrade to business class for the long flight, which meant I could actually sleep a few hours after staying up very late packing,  But by the time I landed in New York at 8 p.m. Paris time, 2 p.m. local time, I was desperate for information.  My friends on social media were only too happy to supply it.  The negotiators at COP21 had reached an agreement — by most accounts a good one.  The French government at the last minute had issued a permit to climate activists.  My feed was flooded with stories and analysis about the historic Paris Agreement, my email was overflowing with reactions from NGO groups, and my friends were posting photos and videos from the day’s events.

Pics

The photos and videos from the demonstrations organized by 350.org and others are amazing, and remind me of the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City.  I am so glad that the French government finally came to its senses and allowed people to express themselves.  Perhaps they had no choice, as literally tens of thousands of activists were in the streets, and there would be no way to arrest even a small percentage.  Perhaps this chain of events shows people like Naomi Klein know more about activism than I do.  When she urged people to take to the streets in mass numbers, they did, and they won.  I was now sorry that I couldn’t get an extra day at Place to B, but then I’m also glad to be home.

My Paris flight landed 45 minutes late in New York, giving me only half an hour to go through customs, collect my luggage and recheck it, get to the other side of the airport, go back through security, and find my gate.  I got there two minutes before the plane was to take off, but it was already gone.  It took me awhile to rouse up someone at an American Airlines counter to rebook me, and when I did they were incredibly rude.  Air travel has become extremely stressful and unpleasant.  On the other hand, the three-hour wait for the next flight gave me time to get a good dinner and catch up on all the COP 21 news and reactions.  Here is some of what I found.

Paris Agreement

UNFCCC – Final agreement

UNFCCC – Press release

Video – Fabius bangs gavel on COP21

President Obama – Video statement

White House  – Press release

Ban Ki Moon – Statement

Saturday actions

350.org – Video

350.org – Photos

Citizens Voice – Video

Greenpeace – Video

Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben – Facebook live

News stories 

The New York Times – Nations Approve Landmark Climate Accord in Paris, by Coral Davenport

The Washington Post – 196 countries approve history climate agreement, by Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney

Politico – The one word that almost sank the climate talks, by Andrew Restuccia

Think Progress – In Historic Paris Climate Deal, World Unanimously Agrees To Not Burn Most Fossil Fuels, by Joe Romm

Mother Jones – Breaking: World Leaders Just Agreed to a Landmark Deal to Fight Global Warming, by Tim McDonnell and James West

Guardian – Paris climate deal: nearly 200 nations sign in end of fossil fuel era, by Suzanne Goldenberg et al

Al Jazeera – World leaders make history with climate deal in Paris

BBC – COP21 climate change summit reaches deal in Paris

Carbon Brief – Analysis: The Final Paris climate deal

Reactions

Sierra Club – Sierra Club on the Paris Climate Agreement: “A Turning Point For Humanity”

Citizens Climate Lobby – With Paris agreement adopted, climate action begins in earnest

James Hansen – James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’

Bill McKibben – World leaders adopt 1.5 C goal — and we’re damn well going to hold them to it

Climate Action Network –  Civil society responds as final Paris Climate Agreement released

International Council for Science – Top scientists weigh in on current draft of Paris climate agreement

The Conversation – Historic Paris climate pact reached: Experts react

After 22 hours of travel, I am happy to be home.

After 22 hours of travel, I am happy to be home.

Wednesday, December 2 – CCEN launch, Eiffel Tower

I woke up this morning feeling pretty awful.  I’ve had migraines all week, and today’s was bad.  I had hoped to make it to a 10 a.m. presentation by the Healthy Climate Project, a workstream within the Citizens Climate Engagement Network, itself a project of Citizens Climate Lobby and Citizens Climate Education which seeks to engage citizen input into the intergovernmental climate negotiating process.  Healthy Climate Project would be discussing what a healthy climate should look like and how we can get there — but I wasn’t able to get there due to a crippling migraine that only got better with a long breakfast, medication, and shower.  Thank goodness my doctor had gotten the insurance company to pay for extra prescription Imitrex, which is the only thing that helps these headaches.  At the rate I am going through it since coming to Paris, I may run out.

Sarabeth Brockley, global strategy advisor for Citizens Climate Engagement Network, speaks at its launch.

Sarabeth Brockley, global strategy advisor for Citizens Climate Engagement Network, speaks at its launch.

For the afternoon I had two choices: I could go to Naomi Klein’s Leap Manifesto, which was pulling in hundreds of people but somehow still had seats, or to the launch of Citizens Climate Engagement Network.  I chose the latter for three reasons: one, because the Leap Manifesto was centered mainly on Canada; two, because it started earlier than CCEN and I was still dragging; and three, because Joe Robertson, the global strategies director for Citizens Climate Lobby, really wanted everyone to come to the launch of CCEN.  Since I am co-leader of the CCL chapter in Columbus, I felt that if there was one CCL event I needed to attend, it was this.  But for those interested in the Leap Manifesto, you can find more information at Democracy NowHuffington Post, and Guardian, and you can read the 15 Demands and sign the manifesto here.

I did make it to the CCEN launch.  The event ran from 1 until 3:30 p.m. and gave me a chance to connect with more of the CCL people in Paris.  Here is what it included:

  • Review of finalized Governance Strategy for the CCEN.
  • Review of the state of play in global negotiations.
  • Review of perspectives on carbon pricing principles, and strategies to use those principles to build value in any economic environment.
  • Participatory working session among attendees.
  • Insights from partners around the world.
  • Announcement of first organizations and agencies to join the Advisory Coalition.
  • Report from Citizens’ Voice team and first days of COP21 Workstreams.
  • Climate poetry, ethics discussion, and sharing of goals for 2016.

Several of the speakers stood out:

  • Joe Robertson, CCL’s director of global strategy, explained what Citizens Climate Engagement Network is and what it does.
  • Sarabeth Brockley, CCEN’s global strategy advisor who also works at the United Nations as a policy analyst for the sustainable development goals, gave us an outline of negotiations.
  • Peter Joseph of the CCL Marin County chapter, explained how pricing carbon can turn the economy from incentivizing all the wrong things to incentivizing the right ones.
  • Jerome Chladek, a marine biologist from Germany, explained the little-known role of oceans in regulating the climate and how our oceans are in trouble.
  • Peter Fiekowsky explained the Healthy Climate Project, so even though I didn’t make it to the event in the morning, I still got some information.
  • Claire Richer talked about Citizens Voice, a video news site for COP 21 to which many of the people in the room were contributing.
  • Several of the CCEN interns spoke including Isatis Citron, Morgan Wood, and Stephen Stoddard spoke.
  • And finally the event wrapped up with readings by three amazing poets talking about climate justice and the unequal effects of climate change on their families.  Their recitation at first felt like a slap in the face, but as they spoke, I came to realize the true human injustices that climate change entails.

Mindy Ahler and Paul Thompson of the Citizens Voice team streamed the entire CCEN launch live, and you can see their video here.  The volume is a little low at times.  You can also see just the three poets here.  You can also see my video of the event, which is of higher quality but unfortunately does not include the poets – my video camera battery died just before they came on.  You can also read a CCL blog post by Sarabeth Brockley with more information about the event and the poets.

After the CCEN launch, I made plans with several team members to cover panels at the Climate Generations space tomorrow, which is Oceans Day.  Then I went out walking in the neighborhood, which was the beautiful Bastille section of Paris.  There were lots of shops and restaurants, but what I needed at the moment was a place to buy some supplies that I had forgotten to pack.  I looked for a grocery store for about 45 minutes before thinking to check it on google.  It turned out there were several within a few blocks — they were just not well marked, perhaps to maintain the historic flavor of the neighborhood.  Once in the store I found what I needed, then looked for something to eat.  I found a small restaurant serving a fixed price meal with an entree (which in France is the appetizer — the entree to the meal), a main dish called a plat, and a dessert.

The meal gave me a chance to catch up on all the email from the CAN listservs and all the news coming out of the climate conference.  It also gave me a chance to simply rest.  I still was not feeling well, and as a consequence had not been able to contribute to Citizens Voice with much other than some social media posts and tweets.

eiffel1

After a leisurely dinner, I decided that if nothing else in Paris, I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, and I had read that it would host a special light show during COP 21.  So I mapped out how to get there and studied the metro routes.  It looked like I would have to take three separate trains to get there from where I was, including one regional train, which as I had found out yesterday going to the COP 21 conference costs more than the internal city metro ride.  I was up for it.  At each stop I had to figure out where to go to catch the right train and get on it going the right way.  But I did it, and never did I feel unsafe traveling by myself even though it was closing in on 9 p.m.

The Eiffel Tower and its light show did not disappoint.  The tower is breathtaking — and huge.  There were no crowds by that time of night, although there was the ever-present police patrol.  I walked all around the area and underneath the tower.  I can see why it was considered an engineering marvel when it was built for the World’s Fair in 1889, and still is today.  The detail in the lattice work is incredible.  The four legs it rests on are huge, and underneath its belly hangs a large ball.  It has two sets of elevators, one to take you to restaurants and shops on the equivalent of the 17th floor, and one to take you to the top, which is the equivalent of about 81 stories.  You can also take the stairs.

I did not go up the tower, but I did take two videos of the light show, one from right below and one from across the Seine.  I also walked along the bridge across the Seine where there were two long rows of plaques discussing climate change, and watched the riverboats full of tourists cruising up and down.  I got a snack at a food stand across from the tower, then reversed the metro trip to head back to Place to B hostel.  All in all, especially given how I had been feeling, it was a worthwhile day.

Monday, November 30 – Opening Day of COP 21

Members of Climate Action Network watch the opening of COP 21.

Members of Climate Action Network watch the opening of COP 21.

Today was a lot calmer than yesterday but no less busy.  It was the opening day of the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known for short as COP21.  Because of all the security measures, Le Bourget, the converted airport north of the Paris city center where COP21 is taking place, was closed to the public.  So I went with several members of the Citizens Climate Lobby delegation to the hub for the Climate Action Network, or CAN, a network of organizations from around the world working on climate change.  The CAN hub is about a 10-minute walk from my hostel at Place to B, but my phone got confused at an intersection where several streets came together.  Eventually I found it, and several of us congregated in two rooms to watch the ceremonies, which were being livestreamed on the Internet.

After the so-called “family photo” of all the visiting world leaders, more than 150 country presidents, prime ministers, and other heads of state were scheduled to speak at the Leaders Event starting at noon.  Even though each leader was only given three minutes to speak, there were so many of them that speeches ran in two rooms simultaneously and still went on into the evening.

President Obama speaks at COP 21.

President Obama speaks at COP 21.

President Obama spoke about 12:45 and gave what I thought was an excellent speech.  He called the Paris climate conference a “turning point … the moment we finally determined we would save our planet.” “I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it,” Obama said.  He talked about his recent trip to Alaska and called for an ambitious and transparent agreement.  He talked about how this is life or death for island nations and said he was meeting with their leaders tomorrow. He also mentioned the multibillion-dollar investment fund in clean energy research and development to be launched by Bill Gates and others today.

You can see video of Obama’s speech here and read statements by all the world leaders here.

My CCL colleague Chuck Lynd leads the Global Climate March in Columbus.

My CCL colleague Chuck Lynd leads the Global Climate March in Columbus.

While I was listening to the various leaders speak, I was also paging through my social media accounts and saw that my CCL colleague Chuck Lynd had pulled off quite a march for climate in Columbus. As I was trying to avoid arrest at Place de la Republique in Paris, Chuck and others had gotten over 100 people to come out as part of the Global Climate March organized by 350.org.  I was amazed because before I had left, only a handful of people were signed up.  In less than a week, Chuck got the word out to environmental advocates across Central Ohio, and they turned out in droves, resulting in a great photo in the Columbus Dispatch.  That made my heart sing.

See video of the Columbus march from Carolyn Harding and photos from David Roseman via the Sierra Club Central Ohio Group.

On the frustrating side, the keys on my iPad stopped working.  I had planned to live tweet the Leaders Event, and even posted that I would on my Facebook page. but was unable to.  This was a cause for some panic, as I had not brought a laptop to Paris but was relying on the iPad to do the heavy lifting.  I was worried it had crashed even though it was only six months old.  Perhaps the blog posts and photos from yesterday had worked it too hard.  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sent out a query through the CAN-talk listserv asking if anyone had a laptop I could borrow.  Most people recommended that I take the iPad to an Apple store in Paris, which I finally decided to do.  One was about a mile away, which gave me my first chance to truly walk around the city.  Once I got to the Apple store, it took awhile to figure out the system for getting some help, but when I finally did, the technician simply told me to call Apple support.  Well, I could have done that from the CAN hub!  But unfortunately I did not buy international minutes from Verizon.

Then I noticed that the operating system for the iPad needed to be updated.  I prayed that would solve the problem and pressed the button.  It was an entire new install of the IOS operating system and took a long time to work. After that, I sat at the store playing with the keys again for awhile.  Eventually I decided the iPad was indeed fixed, though I considered buying a new laptop in France anyway. Posting blogs and processing photos is so much easier from a laptop, and I will not travel to an event like this again without one.  But not only is the electrical outlet on French laptops different, the keyboard is different — it is not a QWERTY keyboard but AZERTY.  So I decided not to.

Members of the Citizens Climate Lobby delegation meet in Paris.

Members of the Citizens Climate Lobby delegation meet in Paris.

Finally tonight I ended up at the dinner and meeting for Citizens Climate Lobby.  Both took place at apartments that CCL members had rented out for the conference through Air B&B.  I’ve never used Air B&B, but after seeing their apartments, I decided to try it next time I am traveling internationally.  Their setup looked much more comfortable than the hostel, which is basically a dormitory, and they have access to full kitchens so they can cook their own food.  This is cheaper than buying every meal out as I have to do.

The highlight of the CCL meeting was hearing from Joe Robertson, the global strategy director, about the launch today of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.  CCL’s entire platform is carbon pricing, specifically a proposal called carbon fee and dividend that would tax carbon at the source of extraction and return all proceeds to American households.  There is a lot of talk nationally about a carbon tax, but a formal discussion of pricing carbon was taken off the agenda for COP 21 in October.  Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said at the time that countries had too many different carbon pricing schemes for them to be reconciled into one document.

Even so, the launch of the CPLC on the first day of COP 21 put carbon pricing front and center in the conference. Consisting of 15 national governments (including Canada, Germany, and France), five subnational governments (Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and California), and more than 60 businesses (including BP, Enel, and Shell), the CPLC has a goal of adding carbon pricing to all national strategies by 2020 — only five years away!  And they just may be able to do it.  At the launch was a powerhouse of leaders: World Bank President Jim Kim, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Philippines President Benigno Aquino III, and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. Joe saw the entire thing inside the Blue Zone.

CCL has two blog posts about the launch of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Forum, one by Peter Joseph, leader of the Marin County Chapter, and one by Jessica Langerman, a volunteer from Massachusetts.

CCL National Conference

Last month I traveled to Washington, DC, for the 2015 meeting of Citizens Climate Lobby, for which I am a co-leader of the Columbus chapter.  The conference was absolutely inspiring.  The plenary speakers included:

  • Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech and CCL board member
  • James Hansen, former director of Goddard Institute for Space Studies and CCL board member
  • Bob Perkowitz of ecoAmerica, a climate opinion survey and communications group

I met several people in person who I have become friends with through the Global Warming Fact of the Day group on Facebook.  I got to know several of the other leaders of CCL chapters in Ohio.  And most empowering, I got to meet with four different Ohio representatives, all Republicans, to talk about CCL’s proposal for carbon fee and dividend.

Although I have lobbied my state and federal legislators before with other groups, CCL has probably the most effective lobbying strategy I’ve experienced.  People are assigned to groups of five or six for each legislator meeting, and each person in the group gets a role.  I led the group meeting with my representative, Steve Stivers, OH-15, while for other meetings I did time keeping, told a personal story, explained the basics of the proposal, made the ask, or did follow-up.  Assigning each person in the group a role and knowing what your role was allowed you to concentrate on doing that one thing well while not stepping on the toes of others as they did their part.

After I got back, I sent a letter about the meeting to the Dispatch, which I was happy to see given prominent space in a Saturday paper.  Here is the text:

Carbon fee, dividend good for air, economy

Recently I joined a group of Ohioans who, along with 800 volunteers from Citizens Climate Lobby, traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with more than 500 members of Congress. Our 13 volunteers from Columbus, Delaware, Springfield and Cincinnati met with aides for 16 of Ohio’s 18-member Senate and House delegation.

We were there to ask our members of Congress to consider a new proposal for addressing climate change: carbon fee and dividend. The proposal has three parts: first, place a steadily rising fee on the carbon content of fossil fuels, collected at the point of extraction and entry into the economy; second, return 100 percent of the fee equally to American households in the form of a monthly dividend check; and third, enact a border adjustment on goods coming in from countries that do not have a similar carbon fee to discourage U.S. companies from relocating jobs.

A study by the nonpartisan Regional Economic Modeling Inc. finds that by 2035, a carbon fee and dividend would provide $396 a month to a family of four, add 2.8 million jobs, increase gross domestic product by almost $1.4 trillion, lower carbon emissions by 52 percent and prevent 227,000 premature deaths. REMI also found that the Great Lakes region, which includes Ohio, would benefit more than any other in job creation, economic stimulus and cleaner air.

Most congressional offices we met with were Republican, and most of the aides we spoke with had not heard of carbon fee and dividend. Most started off cool to the proposal, but gradually warmed up as we explained its benefits. Everyone knows that something must be done to address climate change. The debate isn’t about the science but about finding a solution acceptable to everyone.

To find out more about carbon fee and dividend, visit citizensclimatelobby.org.

CATHY COWAN BECKER

Co-leader

Columbus chapter

Citizens Climate Lobby

Costa Rica – Day 7 – End of home stay, ecolodge, hot springs

Our group with the Laureles farm family.  From left to right: Becca, Leesha, Fernando, Lidia, Carla, me, and the Laureles grandson in sunglasses in front.

Our group with the Laureles farm family. From left to right: Becca, Leesha, Fernando, Lidia, Carla, me, and the Laureles grandson in sunglasses in front.

My preparations the night before paid off, as I slept really soundly and not worrying about bugs. The whole thing with the dogs must have bothered me more than I thought because I dreamed that I was walking by a busy street in back of the UNC campus (where I did my undergrad) and found two dogs in different places who had been hit by cars and were lying by the road with broken legs. In the dream I scooped them up and was taking them to get medical care when I woke up.

A howler monkey brought her baby out to see us.

A howler monkey brought her baby out to see us.

I got up before dawn, and three of us (Carla, Leesha, and me) went to watch the sun rise over the farm. Just as at the beach at Tortuguero, the sun didn’t come up in a ball like we are used to seeing at home. It just got light. Fernando’s cattle were mostly sitting down (which cattle here seem to do a lot) or grazing peacefully. Leesha tried to make friends with one of their horses in the pasture, but he was shy and didn’t want to get too close. On the way back we stopped by the howler monkey trees again. The monkeys had been very active just before dawn howling to greet it. They were still active getting their breakfast when we stopped by the trees. We probably watched them for a half hour. At first they hid, but after a bit a few came out where we could see them, including a mom with a baby on her back. She sat watching us for a long time, and I got a ton of pics.

Fernando showed Carla how to milk a cow.

Fernando showed Carla how to milk a cow.

Then we went back to the farm where we got to help Fernando milk the cow. That was fun – Leesha was a natural, and I got the hang of it but am glad I don’t have to do it every morning. Fernando put the calf into a separate enclosure while we got a bucket full of milk. When we were done, he let out the calf, who made a beeline for his mom. I’m glad they let the calf stay with the mom.  The mother-offspring bond is the strongest in nature, and to talk the calf away so that we can take the milk does not seem right. It was enough to make me switch mainly to almond milk, though it’s hard to avoid dairy entirely. While we were milking the cow with Fernando, Lidia came out with a glass that we filled up straight from the cow. She then used that to make some of the very best pancakes I have ever eaten, which we had along with eggs, juice, and of course rice and beans.

<Optional thoughts about the book I was reading>

While the rest of the group walked for a swim at a river spot with difficult access, I got some reading done in This Changes Everything. Naomi Klein makes the case that climate change will require us to abandon unregulated free market capitalism to enact the collective solutions needed to address carbon emissions. She thinks it is a great opportunity to reshape human relations to be more just, equitable and fair, to enact protections for workers and poor people around the world.

It’s a compelling argument, but I’ve also read some interesting critiques. Basically the critiques say Klein was anti-capitalism before she started writing about climate change – she wrote about clothing factory workers in South America and about disaster opportunism, in which big companies use the opportunity of a disaster to make a windfall profit. The critiques think her current book is more of the same vein, and that she doesn’t give enough credit to some of the market solutions being proposed such as a price on carbon.

Klein says we need a mass social movement to force governments to take the steps needed to address climate change. I agree with that, but I think we need market solutions too. A carbon tax, preferably with the proceeds being returned equitably to everyone in the form of dividend checks or tax cuts as proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby, is a must. Klein thinks this idea is okay but not nearly enough. I think it’s just a start too, but it’s a vital one. We have to disincentivize fossil fuels and incentivize renewables if we want people to make the switch.

Klein seems to talk mostly about mass movements but decentralized control with communities taking charge of their own energy, transit and food systems. I would love to see that, and mass movements are important. That’s what stopped the Keystone pipeline, which is of huge symbolic value, and having participated with the Sierra Club in the People’s Climate March in New York City, I feel like the march helped provide immediacy and momentum to the UN talks that week.  It was shortly after that when Obama announced the first-ever agreement with China to lower emissions. Of course none of this is enough and the work is not done, but you have to start somewhere.

This year will be huge for climate agreements leading up to the talks in Paris in December where everyone is hoping for the first time to get a binding agreement across all nations. That will be a tall order. Klein is right that social movements will make a huge difference in the climate debates, and she is right that control needs to come down to the local level.

I’m pleased to live in Columbus, which has a very ambitious green plan.  But this leads to my critique of Klein’s focus on social movements.  As important as they are, in the end it is governments, whether local state or national, that will decide if, when, and how we address climate change.  This is why I’m studying public policy. I’m not exactly sure where this course of study will lead, but climate change is the most important issue not just in my lifetime but maybe in of all human civilization, and I want to be in a place where I can help address it.

<End of thoughts about the book and back to the trip>

Becca made friends with a rescued deer fawn.

Becca made friends with a rescued deer fawn.

So most of Friday afternoon was spent on the bus driving to the Villa Finca Tina ecolodge in the mountains, then to the Baldi hot springs. I’m pretty sure this will get changed up next year, since we didn’t make it to the hot springs until after 9 p.m. so had less than an hour. They were absolutely amazing though, as was the lodge which had several rescued orphan deer and even planted special grasses for the deer to eat.

In Ohio it is against the law to rescue orphan deer. I understand about wildlife rehabilitation needing to be licensed, but we should allow people who care – and most people do – to help animals that need help. Even if those orphans go to a sanctuary to live out their lives, that’s better than being killed just because they were unlucky enough to lose their mother. In one case, a police officer and his wife rescued an orphan deer whose mother had been hit by a car.  When the authorities came and take it, the couple claimed the deer had escaped the day before and showed their torn screen door. In reality I’m thinking they probably found a sanctuary out of state to take the deer.

It’s a ways until retirement, but it liked the ecolodge area and hot springs so much, I would give serious consideration to retiring there. The community seemed to have a lot of natural healing practitioners, and as of now it’s affordable. I’ll have to come back with my husband and investigate this idea more thoroughly before making any decisions, but this is now a possibility on the list.