I voluntarily handed in my badge today, along with at least 800 others in a civil society walk-out from the climate change negotiations. Just so people don’t think I was silly or being a bit of a douche-bag (I know how hard it was for people to get badges this year) I wanted to make clear why I thought it was important to be part of this action.

I knew right from the outset that expectations were not high for this conference. This conference was just supposed to be one stepping stone on the way the 2015 agreement, and the predictions were that there would not be many headline outcomes. That said - it was an important stepping stone. A draft agreement was scheduled to be put on the table in 2014 and, for that to happen, quite a lot of progress needed to be made in 2013.

Everybody knows that the negotiations are slow and go in circles a lot - but this year was particularly bad in a number of ways and I’m glad some sort of whistle was blown.

All countries’ pledges so far in terms of reducing their emissions have been too low to keep global warming below 2 degrees, and there has been a big push for countries to starts raising their targets in the lead-up to 2015. I had thought that with climate change impacts becoming clearer and clearer (loss and damage looks like it might become a third pillar of the talks, and typhoon Haiyan was only 2 weeks ago) ambition would increase at least a little - but to actually see countries revising their current targets downwards makes me feel panicky. I don’t even know if we’ll get a roadmap to 2015 out of these talks, and former head of the UNFCCC Yvo de Boer stated this week that he doesn’t even think that a 2015 agreement that will keep us below 2 degrees is still possible.

I don’t even actually feel angry. I just feel scared. I think everybody here feels this way. If we already see phenomena like typhoon Haiyan at just 0.8 degrees warming, what does 2 degrees (let alone the 4 degrees we’re on track for) look like?

But I don’t want to keep talking on this note, there’s already enough doom and gloom on the climate change front - so I’ll talk about the action instead. As we were walking away from the de-briefing on the action today, a girl said that this was the first time in the entire COP she had actually seen people smiling. It had been a really successful, really beautiful action. Apparently that many major NGOs all joining together in a single action was unprecedented at a COP.

I have now seen angry protests, and celebratory protests, this was my first sad protest - but I mean that in the best possible way. I think the song that was being sung sums up the mood best - I still believe deep in my heart that we will overcome someday. It also seemed to me to be a mature protest. We weren’t abandoning the UNFCCC process - we recognise that what happens here is just a reflection of the political will back at our respective homes. If countries aren’t setting up the right infrastructure and policies at home, there’s not much they can bring to the negotiation tables in terms of pledges.

So we’re all going to work hard to mobilise even more people back at home, and Peru and Paris are going to see a whole different story. #volveremos - we will be back.