Humanity 0 Stupidity 1

In the end our lovely politicians just couldn’t do it. To many vested interests, to many cares about economic woes, to much hot air, too much posturing, too much talking, and now the promise of the UK’s Copenhagen climate change conference lies broken and discarded in the dust.

Those wise men and women (yes, I am a tad cynical today) did manage to come to some sort of vague agreement on committing to the broad ambition of keeping global temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius, but as there are no mechanisms in place to achieve carbon emission cuts, this is worthless: The ‘good news’: There is a promise to provide up to $30 billion to poorer nations to cope with climate change and a ‘goal’ of $100 billion per year for poorer nations to adapt to climate change and adopt clean energy technology: There is funding to enable forest nations protect  trees from loggers and farmers;  The provisions of the Kyoto Protocol are preserved.  Now the ‘bad news’: There are no targets for greenhouse gas emissions; there is no legally binding treaty and no deadline for a legally binding treaty to cut carbon emissions: and there are no guarantees of where the climate change funding will come from.  However it is hoped that a new meeting in Mexico in December 2010 will seal a legally binding treaty.  

This is what John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, had to say: “Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. It seems there are too few politicians in the world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self interest, let alone caring much for the millions of people facing the threat of climate change”.

A message from Greenpeace

Hi,

It’s all down to these last few days. World leaders have begun arriving in Copenhagen and they have until the end of the week to agree a global treaty that will save our climate.

Billboards like this one appeared around Copenhagen last week. We need your help to make sure this future does not become a reality. Follow our updates online to find out what you can do to help.

We are now more than half way through the two-week UN climate summit and there are three issues that are going to make or break it:

•  
  • Developed countries need to commit to greater emission reductions so that they are in line with what the science demands;
  • We need long term commitments of around £100billion a year to pay for climate action in the developing world and to help end deforestation by 2020;
  • We need a legally binding treaty to ensure the words become action.

This is vital for the survival of millions of people.

There is still time to do the right thing, but unfortunately it seems that some developed nations are more interested in an agreement that can be heralded as a success rather than one that has environmental integrity.

This is where you come in…

Pressure from people like you all over the world has brought the world’s leaders here, and now we need to keep the pressure on to make sure that they follow through with action to reduce green house gas emissions. We cannot allow them to fail.

So, as the summit comes to a close this week we need your help to make sure the truth is told and we hold our leaders to real action on climate change.

Please follow our Twitter, Facebook, or email updates from the summit, and be ready to spread the truth as the summit finishes. Take a minute to spread the outcome via twitter, your facebook status, by mobile – wherever you can to tell as many people as possible.

We cannot let leaders leave Copenhagen without knowing that we want them to take the action that science demands in order to protect our planet and the millions of lives threatened by climate change.

I sincerely hope we will all be celebrating on Friday night, but if not, we must act together to change the future.

Jamie Woolley
16 December 2009

PS. You can also make a vital contribution by joining Greenpeace with a direct debit or making a one-off donation by credit card. Thank you!

COP 15 IN DEADLOCK

The Copenhagen climate change conference is likely to end with two rival agreements, and no clear intention or mechanism for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiators hope that the arrival of several key world leaders next week might put the whole process back on track. As it stands the only agreements so far are ‘in principle’ agreements on global emission cuts to limit global temperature rises to 2C and an intent to commit to a climate fund to help the poorest countries adapt to climate change and reduce CO2 emissions. There remains a big divide between developed countries and developing countries, with the developing countries wanting the rich nations to radically cut emissions, and with the developed nations wanting developing nations like India and China to reduce the rate of the increase in their emissions.

COP 15 UPDATES ONLINE

The critical Copenhagen climate change conference is now well underway. ‘Inside Cop15′ is a WWF Green TV initiative at the conference, producing six podcasts and a live show (at 18:00 GMT; 19:00 CET) every day. ‘Inside Cop15′ will be reporting the highs, lows and everything in-between in the negotiations for a global climate deal. All of this content is available to view on www.Green.tv  as well as via a specially created website created at http://cop15.panda.org/.

if Cop 15 fails, where then with climate change?

It seems that almost all the world now accepts that the chances of a binding legal treaty coming out of the UN’s Copenhagen conference on climate change are practically zero. Unlike the current rise in global temperatures which are well above zero. The best it seems world leaders will manage is a ‘political agreement’ on reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, getting the USA to agree to emission cuts and compensating and aiding developing countries in adapting to climate change. Delegates from 190 countries at a pre-conference meetup in Barcelona are now trying to agree a new timetable for a legally binding treaty but Ed Milliband, the UK’s Climate Change Secretary  told the UK’s House of Commons that little progress was being made with more than 1000 outstanding issues over wording of a possible treaty. Political will and leadership is what is needed now to give next month’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen a ”final push” and ”get us to a result”, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said on the final day of climate talks in Barcelona.

http://en.cop15.dk/frontpage