Our brand new website has just launched! Poke around and see what you think. Don’t be too alarmed if things change a bit over the next few weeks and the site is optimized. Enjoy!
Oh, and large quantities of old posts from past delegations will be added soon – so if you’re sad there isn’t much to read, FEAR NOT! You’ll have plenty soon.
If you can’t wait and want to read what happened in Copenhagen last year, click here.
[Earth in Brackets] will be transitioning back to College of the Atlantic (where it originated) in the near future. Stay tuned…
COP14 is over, but what exactly does that mean?
It means we are way behind.
The most recent milestone of international climate negotiations was the development of the “Bali Action Plan” at COP13 last year. This document established a framework from which climate negotiations would proceed during the following 24 months leading up to Copenhagen.
Not much has happened since then.
We are no nearer a strong Copenhagen agreement than we were a year ago and are beginning to see the sweat on foreheads as negotiators begin to lower the level of ambition as they fight for any outcome in Copenhagen.
An overview of the current state of play by negotiating bloc:
(negotiating bloc = groups that work together pushing a common position)
Sitting here in the plenary hall – about 30 people in the room. Not much going on. It’s 9pm and we haven’t even started the substantive work that was supposed to happen today. Just speeches. The COP and CMP decisions still need to be approved. I doubt this will be finalized tonight, but will anybody care enough to come back in the morning? The talks in Poznan have ended with a resounding “thud”.
UPDATE:
10pm and still nothing. Apparently there are informal negotiations going on. This could be a long night. One the upside, I had a good conversation with a U.S. State Department civil servant. It’s always nice to know there are geniunely good folks who are a part of the delegation, even if I don’t agree with what they are doing.
UPDATE 2:
Well, looks like they are trying to power through everything tonight. Probably a good thing given the low level of interest. Having to come back tomorrow would just be frustrating. I’ll keep you all updated on what comes out of this.
UPDATE 3:
Well, it’s almost 3am and it looks like things are going to be done soon. That isn’t necessarily a good thing though. Unfortuneatly I fell asleep for a little while (I’m super sick right now with a bad cold) and woke up to the developing countries speaking one after another completely venting their frustration with the process (rightfully so). Most of this has been total shit. Essentially, certain countries (specifically the EU) are more concerned about having any outcome then having a good outcome. This completely defeats the purpose when the most vulnerable among us are left without any support in the face of what developed countries have caused. I’ll get into more specifics soon once I recover a bit (both physically and emotionally).
