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Countdown to Copenhagen – what happened last week?
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Last week saw a UN meeting in Pittsburgh that we were hoping would break the deadlock between the rich world and developing nations. Did it? No, of course not. I can’t believe you even asked! In true UN meeting style leaders essentially agreed to meet again and discuss it then, a conclusion of every climate meeting since the Bali conference back in 2007.
But baby steps were taken. Most importantly, a vague agreement was made to scrap subsidies for fossil fuels some time in the future. Believe it or not this suggestion came from the US, and if delivered it would be a bold move for such a gas-guzzling country. The consequences will be important for renewables as it will allow them to compete on a more level playing field, financially, with cheap coal and gas.
“The future” is quite a long period of time though, and the closest we got to when “the future”, was the “medium term.”
Leaders also asked their finance ministers to go away and have a think about various climate funding scenarios. Not sure why they didn’t think to do this a few months ago, it seems leaving 70 days until the actual conference is leaving it a little bit late.
Negotiations have moved over to Bangkok (it’s best to keep people flying around the world for climate talks) where they run until October the 9th, the last official meetings before the main event in December. Here’s what Yvo De Boer, the UN Climate Change Secretariat, had to say to delegates: "Time is not just pressing. It has almost run out."
Greenpeace was less gentle: "What we need to see is late nights and fights. We need to see them sit there -- that's what these people do for a living -- they need to smell like sweat and coffee. If they don't do that, they're not actually at work," said Tove Ryding.
A sense of stalemate is hardly surprising considering the 200-page draft agreement is looking like an over complicated, disparate and inconsistent legal bore.
All this as the Met Office predicts catastrophic overheating in our lifetimes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming
So what next? Gordon Brown has agreed to host a last-minute meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) consisting of 17 major world players to cover off some final negotiations. It feels like this will either be a last-ditch attempt to forge agreement, or a meeting to agree to secrety undermine Copenhagen. Let’s hope it’s the former.
In many eyes it’s too late. The United States has certainly stepped up its approach to climate change and its role in global negotiations. This is vital -- as the world’s largest consumer of oil and a dominator of global politics. But its admitted that it cannot commit to reducing emissions until it’s done all the calculations – which won’t be ready for months, way after Copenhagen.
With success riding on the USA perhaps the most sensible thing to do would be to postpone the meeting until it is ready and can accurately discuss targets.
Controversial, yes, but why not? Especially as so many seem to have already given up on the idea of the meeting actually achieving anything. A top European climate official told the Guardian last week: "We've moved on from the idea that we can negotiate on targets. That's naive and just not the way the deal will be done. The best we can get is that countries will put in what they want to commit to."
But baby steps were taken. Most importantly, a vague agreement was made to scrap subsidies for fossil fuels some time in the future. Believe it or not this suggestion came from the US, and if delivered it would be a bold move for such a gas-guzzling country. The consequences will be important for renewables as it will allow them to compete on a more level playing field, financially, with cheap coal and gas.
“The future” is quite a long period of time though, and the closest we got to when “the future”, was the “medium term.”
Leaders also asked their finance ministers to go away and have a think about various climate funding scenarios. Not sure why they didn’t think to do this a few months ago, it seems leaving 70 days until the actual conference is leaving it a little bit late.
Negotiations have moved over to Bangkok (it’s best to keep people flying around the world for climate talks) where they run until October the 9th, the last official meetings before the main event in December. Here’s what Yvo De Boer, the UN Climate Change Secretariat, had to say to delegates: "Time is not just pressing. It has almost run out."
Greenpeace was less gentle: "What we need to see is late nights and fights. We need to see them sit there -- that's what these people do for a living -- they need to smell like sweat and coffee. If they don't do that, they're not actually at work," said Tove Ryding.
A sense of stalemate is hardly surprising considering the 200-page draft agreement is looking like an over complicated, disparate and inconsistent legal bore.
All this as the Met Office predicts catastrophic overheating in our lifetimes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming
So what next? Gordon Brown has agreed to host a last-minute meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) consisting of 17 major world players to cover off some final negotiations. It feels like this will either be a last-ditch attempt to forge agreement, or a meeting to agree to secrety undermine Copenhagen. Let’s hope it’s the former.
In many eyes it’s too late. The United States has certainly stepped up its approach to climate change and its role in global negotiations. This is vital -- as the world’s largest consumer of oil and a dominator of global politics. But its admitted that it cannot commit to reducing emissions until it’s done all the calculations – which won’t be ready for months, way after Copenhagen.
With success riding on the USA perhaps the most sensible thing to do would be to postpone the meeting until it is ready and can accurately discuss targets.
Controversial, yes, but why not? Especially as so many seem to have already given up on the idea of the meeting actually achieving anything. A top European climate official told the Guardian last week: "We've moved on from the idea that we can negotiate on targets. That's naive and just not the way the deal will be done. The best we can get is that countries will put in what they want to commit to."
This not what we were hoping for when we started covering Copenhagen. Delay the meeting? What do you think?
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