Compelling late night reading – Dec. 15
Posted by Danny Morris on December 15, 2009
This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.
COPENHAGEN — Things started to heat up both inside and outside the Bella Center yesterday as negotiators prepared for the arrival of environmental ministers.
Interior protests – The African countries were true to their word yesterday when they led a boycott of the negotiations and were supposed by all 135 developing countries, including China and India. Their major concern was that the industrialized countries were conspiring to kill the Kyoto Protocol, which the developing countries value due to its many beneficial programs, such as the Clean Development Mechanism. By the end of the end, however, negotiations were back on as the developing countries receive enough assurances that Kyoto would be killed to come back to the table.
Get it together – There were multiple calls for negotiators to get their work done ahead of the arrival of senior government officials and heads of state. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked nations to stop blaming each other and get something done before various heads of state reach the conference. India was more specific, saying that ministers and heads of state can’t negotiate, so something has to be done by Tuesday night. The clock is ticking.
Exterior protests – Protestors continue to swarm Copenhagen, and last night they confronted police with molotov cocktails in the Freetown Christiania area, just north of the COP meeting in the Bella Center. After street barricades were lit on fire and tear gas was used to disperse crowds, nearly 200 protestors were arrested, though most were released by early this morning.
SUPER SPECIAL MID-DAY 12/15 UPDATE: You knew it would come to this – The Chinese are accusing the developed world, namely the United States, of not taking responsibility for historical emissions and stalling on a climate deal. The U.S. and China are at loggerheads about an agreement for monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reduction, something the U.S. views as critical. With time growing shorter, it remains to be seen what a potential deal will look like …
West Serd said
Haha, very nice post. Regards, West – Center Caps