Category: COP17

An appeal to sanity

Nathan Thanki December 10, 2011 0 Comments
by nathan thanki Yesterday, a large group of civil society--mostly youth--took the voice and anger of the street into the halls of the UN. While it could never have been a true #occupy--COP is inherently segregated into those with badges and those without; those with pink badges and those with yellow--the idea was still to say: enough is enough. You have had 20 years to negotiate a fair,...

COP-upy

Nathan Thanki December 10, 2011 0 Comments
by Nathan Thanki and Trudi Zundel Last week the people marched past the UNFCCC meetings with trucks, horns and speakerphones blasting political messages for the delegates inside negotiating over the future of the planet. No one inside blinked an eye. A crowd of maybe 50 people gathered by the gated walkway to see them march, and horsed policemen barred every potential entrance. We were left...

Yields of the Night Vigil

Anjali Appadurai December 10, 2011 0 Comments
by Anjali Appadurai I started this post at 4am, and worked on it intermittently until now - 9:30am. No new LCA text, no sleep. These ministers worked through the night, and through the documents they released from their "indaba" at a couple of different intervals, we have some meagre updates. The indaba high-level consultations convened at midnight and are still going strong, with three draft...

The last night draws on

COA Admin December 9, 2011 0 Comments
by Samuli Sinisalo The texts just presented were not accepted by the Group of 77 and China. Later EU also denounced the documents. Canada had called more ambition from China and India. This was done by name, which is not very politically correct - especially from a country like Canada, which has notoriously low ambition. They were just awarded the fossil of the year award from being the biggest...

BASIC makes Room for an Elephant

Joe Perullo December 9, 2011 0 Comments
by Joe Perullo BASIC (the group of Brazil, South African, India, and China) gave a rather uncomfortable press conference the other day.  China, the leader of the group, started the talk on the defensive, denying the major "rumor" floating around that BASIC is splitting up. The other countries complied and also denied the allegations. An elephant walked into the room. The EU and the US have...