{"id":50133,"date":"2025-11-24T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T11:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/50133\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T11:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T11:19:09","slug":"what-happens-in-kyoto-comes-to-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/50133\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens in Kyoto Comes to New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three dozen climate negotiators and scientists were at Lincoln Center the other day, in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, to see a performance of \u201cKyoto,\u201d about the landmark 1997 treaty on greenhouse-gas emissions. It was a bittersweet reunion for \u201cTeam Climate U.S.A.,\u201d as Sue Biniaz, a State Department lawyer for more than thirty years, put it, while addressing the group in the lobby after the show. On the one hand, \u201cwe usually work in total obscurity,\u201d she said. \u201cSo to make it the subject of an incredible play is really, really nice for us.\u201d On the other hand, \u201cwe are no longer in that business.\u201d The Trump Administration eliminated the department\u2019s climate-negotiation office in April, a few months after announcing its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.<\/p>\n

The play stars Stephen Kunken as an oil lobbyist named Don Pearlman, who addresses the audience at the outset. \u201cI think we can all agree on one thing,\u201d he says. \u201cThe times you live in are fucking awful.\u201d Then, with a smile, he adds, \u201cThe nineteen-nineties were freakin\u2019 glorious!\u201d 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.) Yet Kunken gives the character a roguish charisma, in his tireless defense of American freedom, that Biniaz couldn\u2019t help observing was arguably fictional. \u201cDon was not nearly as charming in real life,\u201d she said, to knowing laughter.<\/p>\n

Our Far-Flung Correspondents: A Centenary Issue
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\"Image<\/p>\n

The cast and the forlorn climateers mingled. Biniaz remarked that she was struck by how well something as ostensibly dry and technical as multilateral negotiation translated to the stage. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain performative aspect to the negotiations where you might have to appear more frustrated or angry than you actually are,\u201d she granted. \u201cThere\u2019s also kind of an onstage-offstage aspect. It\u2019s, like, \u2018Oh, So-and-So is just so annoying.\u2019 You\u2019ll say, \u2018Yeah, but offstage he\u2019s really a nice guy.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunken, for his part, felt that the core theme of the story\u2014arriving at consensus\u2014was an apt metaphor for live theatre. \u201cDoing a play is coming to an agreement,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery actor wants to tell their character\u2019s story: this is my moment. And another actor says, \u2018I know, but, if you do that, then you\u2019re missing this set of beats for me.\u2019 You\u2019re in front of an audience, and any single person on any given night can pull the focus by doing something extraneous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim Lattimer, a former deputy office director at the State Department, and a longtime environmentalist, asked Kunken if he was familiar with the Scott Freeman studio, an acting school. \u201cOh, sure,\u201d Kunken said.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott and I did high-school theatre together,\u201d Lattimer said. \u201cI\u2019ve had people say I shouldn\u2019t have been a scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n

A memorable scene in the play depicts the various international delegations arguing over punctuation marks in a singsong cadence. The real-life negotiators praised this as an illustration of the art of \u201cconstructive ambiguity,\u201d allowing each country to declare slightly differing interpretations of victory. \u201cThe Chinese negotiator, my counterpart there, was named Su,\u201d Biniaz recalled, referring to Su Wei. \u201cWe were the two Sues. We one time had something without commas, which is how I wanted it. And he said, \u2018I accept that, if we add a comma,\u2019 because his English was so amazing that he knew that that would give him a slight advantage. It was like playing tennis with someone who\u2019s better than you\u2014forces you to up your game. And every time I was with Su, even though this was not his native language, I felt like I had to be completely in the zone.\u201d She added, \u201cOne of our major principles is called common but differentiated responsibilities. So I wrote an article called \u2018Comma but Differentiated Responsibilities.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the playwrights, Joe Robertson, mentioned another Chinese negotiator, an academic named Shukong Zhong, whose command of English was such that he translated Charles Dickens in his spare time. \u201cDickens was viewed as sort of the epitome of the terrors and excesses of Western capitalism,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cSo he was very popular in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Zhong was amazing,\u201d Biniaz agreed. \u201cHe would always argue for principles before you could start negotiating. He would talk about \u2018In China, when a housewife makes a rice meal, she starts with rice.\u2019 Our guy was Dan Reifsnyder at the time, and he would have some other metaphor, about how, when he cooks, he usually starts with a recipe. The whole room was just watching the two of them go back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA duel of metaphors,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll about the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joking, one of the ex-negotiators asked Joe Murphy, the other playwright, if they were going to tackle the Paris agreement next. \u201cThis is the first of a trilogy!\u201d Murphy replied. \u201cYeah, the next one\u2019s like \u2018The Empire Strikes Back.\u2019 Copenhagen: everything collapses and it\u2019s a disaster.\u201d Then would come Paris, as \u201cReturn of the Jedi,\u201d a bit of optimism before, well, the fucking-awful present. Tim Lattimer raised his hand. \u201cCan I just say thank you for doing it in this theatre and not the Koch Theatre?\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three dozen climate negotiators and scientists were at Lincoln Center the other day, in the Mitzi E. Newhouse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1472,9,24,55,54,56,11004,17020],"class_list":{"0":"post-50133","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-magazine","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-splitscreenimageleftinset","15":"tag-the-boards"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}