I eventually went to see the Kyoto play at Soho Place Theatre on the last night even though l’d been promising myself to go since its opening in early January! And it was worth the wait for sure. 

The Kyoto Protocol was the very first agreement between the conference of the parties (COP) of the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) following the Rio Conference in 1992. It was put together in the first three COPs in the late nineties, and if it had been enacted  by the developed world for their 2010 targets, it would have gone along way to reducing the cost of adapting and mitigating climate change today when the situation is far worse.  

The play is based on the actual proceedings of the meeting and highlights well the impact of politicians like the late John Prescott from the UK and Angela Merkel from Germany when the COPs were much less of a circus that it has become with 10,000’s attending now and had politicians negotiating at the very end of the events with suspicious NGOs around as well, lobbying for the Oil & Gas industry.  Both vey ably bashed out an agreement between the developing and developed world which was a moment when the world agreed unanimously.  The play was undertaken in much humour as well for a serious topic of discourse