The primary reason why I am in Zagreb this time around is the Franco-Croatian symposium about climate change organized by the French embassy in support of the upcoming climate talks in Paris a couple of months from now. It will start tomorrow morning and come to a close the day after tomorrow in the evening. The first meeting leading up to the symposium took place in the French embassy in the Croatian capital last December (“For Good Measure,” December 16, 2014). Following on that meeting, the Croatian Climate Change Panel was formed, and I took an active part in it. In particular, I lead the team concerned with disaster management, my one and only concern in this context.

The CCCP met several times this year, and some of the meetings made quite a bit of sense. But we have had not a single meeting for a long while now, and the symposium was organized without our participation. In fact, most of us will attend it as mere spectators. Only a few of us will appear on the stage. Not even Vjeran Piršić, who put together the CCCP team, has any visible rôle in the symposium. In addition to a few French luminaries, the majority of speakers on both days will be either from the Croatian government or from a few institutions supported by the government. To put it bluntly, the symposium will be an opportunity for a few people to display their feathers.

So, why am I attending the symposium that is a waste of time in my own mind? Well, just for fun. I will be observing my fellow humans addressing the toughest problem their species has encountered in a hundred-thousand years or so, and all they will do will be preening themselves for all to see. Grandstanding is a good synonym. And so is blowing one’s own horn. And I will be sitting quietly in a back row and grinning at my fellow humans. As well as chuckling and giggling. And guffawing from time to time. Well ahead of time, I am sure the Franco-Croatian symposium about climate change will beat the theater of the absurd by a wide margin. With some imagination on the part of spectators, it will be tragedy and comedy combined in an unprecedented way.