What's it like to attend the UN Climate Conference, aka COP? Learn over dinner

Ever wonder what it's like to attend the United Nations climate conference, aka, the COP? Join us for an attendee's take on this yearly event, which is the biggest event on each year's climate calendar and serves as one barometer of the world's progress on confronting climate change.

Learn about what it's like to be on the ground during a COP from Beibei Yin, who attended this year's event, COP30, in Belém, Brazil, and one prior COP. Beibei, who works at the intersection of climate and nature, will give an informal presentation on her reflections and lessons. An additional speaker (who is yet to be confirmed) will also share their thoughts on the conference. Co-organizer Michael Kavate will moderate.

This free gathering will be hosted by Çukor, a candy kitchen in the Gótico. A light vegetarian dinner, consisting of a soup and a slice of quiche, made of recovered eco ingredients from Espigadoras Urbanas, will be available for 10 euros by prior reservation. Please message Michael via Meetup to reserve. (Half of all related proceeds will go to editing a book about how to organize food recovery communities.) Please also consider supporting the shop by buying of the artisanal candies. To cover Meetup fees and other costs, we also encourage a €1 donation per attendee.

For those unfamiliar with the COP (which stands for 'conference of the parties'), this week-long meeting brings together diplomats, scientists, activists, lobbyists (including many from oil and gas companies), business leaders, Indigenous groups, and many others from across the climate spectrum. There have been great victories, like the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set a pathway to limiting warming to 1.5C degrees. And yet the meetings are almost always disappointing because they are the stage where the lack of international political will to act on climate is made apparent.

About this community

Are you new to the meetup group Let’s Talk About Climate Change or our WhatsApp group Mobilizing Hope? We work to bring together English-speaking people in Barcelona and beyond for climate education and action, and also community. We welcome speakers of Catalan, Castellano and other languages, but most of our events are in English because most of our organizers and attendees are more comfortable in English than other languages. We created this group because we could not find any community like it. We range from degrowthers to startup founders, from artists to data scientists. We may not agree on everything, but we all want to move in the same direction. If you do too, you’re welcome to make it your home.