December 17th

Our last class before the holidays took place on the penultimate day of the Copenhagen summit, which is what we talked about. First, we all wrote what we had heard on that subject in the media. Our pool of intelligence contained various information : China and the USA had critical and hard positions, it was the first time so many countries had to make a commitment on the environment, we heard more about the riots and the arrests than about the talks, probably because they were very unproductive, once the negotiations even stopped because some participants had left the room! We learnt that this summit was paradoxical because it entailed a great emission of greenhouse gases due to the leaders' planes, thanks to Alexis!

Then we compared three articles about the Copenhagen summit excerpt from three different sources : Mail and Guardian Johannesburg (South Africa), Times of London (England) and CBS/AP (USA). They all had different points of view. We noticed that the Mail and Guardian was more about the summit, as opposed to the riots, and especially about the effects it would have on poor countries. It was pessimistic and rather alarmist. The article from the Times of London was written as if it was a story, and was surprisingly funny. A British man had been interviewed about the arrests for the purpose of the article, which shows once again that "All news is local". The subject of Copenhagen had been made interested for the people in the UK. Finally, we noticed that the CBS/AP one was more human in its approach, and maybe less biased.

We eventually came to watch a rather disgusting part of Food.Inc about the chicken mass production! Not very appetizing before lunch…