2025-11-10
27 分钟This is The Guardian.
This article contains some strong language.
The final warning from a climate diplomat by Peter Betz, read by Andrew McGregor.
Before Peter Betz died in 2023,
he wanted to pass on what he had learned over many years of negotiating at cops,
including how Paris 2015 was saved at the last bell.
On the 15th of March 2022,
I was on a video call with a dear friend when I experienced a twitching on the left hand side of my face and a slurring of my speech.
My wife Fiona took me to hospital
because we both thought I was having a stroke and I spent the journey in the car adjusting to my probable death.
Interestingly, I did not feel fear or anger.
only sadness and disappointment that it was all going to end sooner than I had expected.
I survived,
but six days later we learned that the cause of my condition was a particularly aggressive form of brain tumour called a glioblastoma.
Since then I have read a number of accounts written by cancer sufferers.
Many of them start with an uncertain diagnosis,
often with a reasonable percentage chance of survival.
But unlike these accounts it was absolutely clear that the tumor would kill me.
There was no cure and I was given the median life expectancy of 15 to 18 months.
Of course I hoped to do better than the median but the medical team said that clinging to that possibility would probably be a mistake