What Happens in Kyoto Comes to New York

"Three dozen climate negotiators and scientists were at Lincoln Center the other day, in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, to see a performance of "Kyoto," about the landmark 1997 treaty on greenhouse-gas emissions. It was a bittersweet reunion for "Team Climate U.S.A.," as Sue Biniaz, a State Department lawyer for more than thirty years, put it, while addressing the group in the lobby after the show."

"The play stars Stephen Kunken as an oil lobbyist named Don Pearlman, who addresses the audience at the outset. "I think we can all agree on one thing," he says. "The times you live in are fucking awful." Then, with a smile, he adds, "The nineteen-nineties were freakin' glorious!" His cynicism in playing the Saudis against the Tanzanians and the Chinese is matched only by his hunger for cigarettes. (The actual Pearlman died of lung-cancer complications in 2005, at sixty-nine.)"

Three dozen climate negotiators and scientists attended a performance of Kyoto at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre. The gathering served as a reunion for Team Climate U.S.A.; Sue Biniaz, a State Department lawyer for over thirty years, remarked that negotiators usually work in obscurity and that seeing negotiations dramatized felt meaningful. The Trump Administration eliminated the department's climate-negotiation office in April, months after withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The play portrays an oil lobbyist, Don Pearlman, whose cynicism and roguish charisma are emphasized by actor Stephen Kunken, while Biniaz noted that Pearlman's stage charm differed from his real-life demeanor.

Read at The New Yorker