Posts Tagged copenhagen summit

Copenhagen Summit Live – Today’s the Day

December 18, 2009 at 11:05 am · Filed under climate change, Copenhagen Conference, Global Warming ·Tagged , , , ,

copenhagen logo

Copenhagen Summit - Decision day

Well,  it was probably always going to come down to this – todays the day that the Copenhagen Summit will either produce an agreement of some kind or not. President Obama has deemed it worthy enough to warrant an appearance. We will update this post throughout the day with the breaking news as it happens………apologies for the rather rambling nature –  we’ll have a proper summary once the dust has settled……..

Watch live Copenhagen coverage here.

Watch live video from OneClimate on Justin.tv

UK readers can watch live coverage from Copenhagen here.

The Guardian is Live Blogging from the conference as well – probably alot more succinct than we are!

11.40 – China holding up talks, Sarkozy

11.53  – OBAMA ADRESSES COPENHAGEN- FULL TEXT HERE

President Obama at Copenhagen

There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say. Now, I believe that it’s time for the nations and people of the world to come together behind a common purpose.

We must choose action over inaction; the future over the past – with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people, and to the future of our planet. Thank you.

12.26 – Look out Mr President, Indie Hero Thom Yorke is after you!

Radiohead Singer interviewed by The Guradian.

12.45 – Obama’s speech hasn’t exactly went down too well…..

ActionAid’s climate expert, Raman Mehta, said:

Obama has said nothing to save the Copenhagen conference from failure.

The US is the one major player yet to move. Developing countries have come here to negotiate in good faith but feel they have been cheated and it looks like they will leave empty handed.

Greenpeace US’s executive director Phil Radford said:

The world was waiting for the spirit of yes we can, but all we got was my way or the highway.

He said all parties must move, but he offered no movement. He said the decades long split between the rich world and poor needs to end, but his vision of a deal here would give us a 3C temperature rise and devastate Africa and the small island states.

Friends of the Earth is “deeply disappointed” by Obama’s speech.

Andy Atkins, Friends of The Earth

The President is right that the endeavours in Copenhagen will go down in history – but unless we see a massive shift in the US position, it will be for all the wrong reasons.

Obama has deeply disappointed not just those listening to his speech at the UN talks – he has disappointed the whole world.


20.49 – In a similar vein to the negotiations in Copenhagen, we have been sidelined by technical issues today, apologies. Nothing much has happened really – we are now on the fourth draft of the ‘accord’ which you can read here (although there’s probably another one being uploaded as i type). The ‘highlights’ of the deal (ripped shamelessly from Auntie Beeb):

  • “Recognises the scientific view” on keeping temperature rise below 2C (3.6F) but does not set it as a target
  • No date for peaking emissions – just “as soon as possible”
  • Developing countries to monitor and verify their own emissions without international oversight
  • “Support a goal” of raising $100bn per year by 2020, not commit to achieving that goal
  • No date for concluding a detailed agreement, nor whether it should be legally binding

Sounds a bit watery to me.

21.17 – We have a ‘meaningful deal’ apparently

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Copenhagen Off To Stormy Start

December 10, 2009 at 3:35 pm · Filed under climate change, Copenhagen Conference, Global Warming, scottish green energy, scottish-power ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Copenhagen is only officially three days old and has almost managed to draw as much controversy as Tiger Woods private life. Here’s a quick summary of the main stories so far from Copenhagen……

  • Email scandal – even before the conference kicked off we had the leaking of a controversial group of emails from the University of East Anglia which seemed to suggest that academic research from climate change “deniers” should be supressed. This was immediately seized upon by sceptics to paint the entire climate change movement with the same brush, and rubbish the entirity of scientific evidence for man-made Climate Change. Not the best of starts then……….
  • Developing countries have been “outraged” by draft agreement that would see the bulk of decision making powers of the future switch to the developed nations and remove the power of the UN in situations such as these. Not exactly the unified front that was hoped for before the conference began then. Infact, the developing nations have even began to bicker amongst themselves (something that rarely happens at big summits like these, they normally stick together). However, hope may come in the shape of billionaire investor George Soros, who has a proposal the rich countries hand their $150bn (£92bn) of Special Drawing Rights to poor countries for immediate use to combat climate change – will they agree to this?
  • Sarah Palin has produced an editorial denouncing Copenhagen and all it stands for, urging President Obama to forget about it. Is she right?

Quite a first couple of days! and we haven’t even reached the critical point of the conference yet!

What are your thoughts on the first few days of Copenhagen 2009?

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Copenhagen 2009 – Conference Coverage On The Web

November 18, 2009 at 1:56 pm · Filed under climate change, Copenhagen Conference, Energy Policy, Global Warming, UK energy ·Tagged , , , , ,

Copenhagen 2009 - 7th - 18th December

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is just under three weeks away (Dec 7th to Dec 18th) and the last few days have seen some high stakes political games going on behind the scenes. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has described the negiotiations as:

………..the most complex set of international negotiations ever, on any issue

With a conference dealing with such complex issues it can be difficult to track what exactly is going on – opinion on what will actually be achieved at the conference seems to be shifting constantly. There are screeds of  Copenhagen coverage around the web – these are what we will be checking in the run up to and during the conference itself.

Official Pages

News Coverage

Newspapers

The Blogosphere

Hopefully there will be a channel that will provide you with the latest news from Copenhagen to meet your requirements. We are aiming to post on all the major developments as they happen.

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