Photo: Graeme Cook
Inside the talks today, events took a dramatic turn as the G77 and African nations temporarily walked out as they felt the developed nations were seeking to avoid obligations to cut their emissions (these nations appear to have been coaxed back into talks).
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that if the tough issues are left to global leaders to resolve, the world risks having a weak deal or no deal. Ed Milliband, the UK Climate Change Secretary has agreed with this and urged the Conference to get on with the job in hand, in order to leave only a few things for world leaders to agree when they arrive. Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister will arrive earlier than planned tomorrow, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is in town (California is often described as the 5th biggest economy in the world). Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond is here, and will meet Schwarzenegger at an event elsewhere in Copenhagen tomorrow.
Trying to gain entrance to the official COP-15 talks has proved to be a complete shambles today with hundreds of observers left to queue outside in the freezing cold for hours, only to be refused admission. More importantly, delegates who are supposed to be more actively engaging in the talks have also been left outside. For my part, I queued from 1030 to 1730, and got within 15 yards of accreditation before they closed it down.
The day wasn’t a disaster though. There was a real energy among the crowd, and I got the sense that people just wanted to be inside as they felt they had something positive to offer. I managed to make some interesting contacts just standing in the queue including:
- The Head of Power Up Canada, an environmental organisation.
- Director of the US Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
- A Japanese official there to report on Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions.
- A climate change adviser from the Swedish Parliament.
- Head of urban design programmes at the University of Pennsylvania
- The Welsh schools climate change champion.
- A nuclear lobbyist doing most of his work on Capitol Hill
- A Spanish journalist who was up for leading a revolution against the UN regarding the shambolic arrangements.
None of these people got into the talks either. Whether I try to be at the talks tomorrow at 6am remains to be seen, but that is what will be required to have any chance of getting in. The UN approved 30,000 observers, but the venue only holds 15,000 people. As more world leaders and their entourages arrive, so the number of observers allowed in each day reduces (reportedly to an astonishing 30 on Friday).
The MSPs in the Scottish Parliament party spent most of the day at the events hosted by the Scottish Government, which included a contribution from Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The photo at the top of the blog is from one of tens of exhibitions on show around Copenhagen. This one showing a mock up of a satellite sat in a square next to a show of 100 places to remember before they disappear. Continuing this theme, today’s interesting website is the COP-15 climate visualisation using google earth.
