Good afternoon from Copenhagen

Game off…. Game on. The big news out of Copenhagen this morning was that talks had been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation - but the stoppage didn’t last long. According to the BBC , the countries that had suspended co-operation are those which make up the G77-China bloc of 130 nations - ranging from wealthy countries such as South Korea, to some of the poorest states in the world. The boycott was a result of developing countries’ demand that rich countries offer deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. According to MSNBC news , “the developing countries want to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which imposed penalties on rich nations if they did not comply with its strict emissions limits but made no such binding demands on developing nations.”  Read NPR’s report HERE.

Copenhagen makes 2009 “the most important year in human history.” If that’s the case, then we are entering the most crucial week.  That’s what Geoffrey Lean writes in his first-week recap of the Copenhagen climate talks.  And as we agree as well, he writes about the first week leaving developing nations and the Third World, “understandably unimpressed.” Lean continues: “One dispute that may go all the way to the top is the objective of the agreement itself. Until recently, this was expected to be to keep global warming beneath two degrees centigrade. That’s still the goal of the big polluters, whether developed countries or industrializing ones like China and India. Science, however, increasingly indicates that this would not save low-lying island nations or other vulnerable countries from devastation, and over 100 delegations -– backed by a fast-growing, worldwide youth movement pressing for concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be brought back to 350 parts per million—is demanding no more than 1.5 degrees.”  Read more of his report HERE .

David Roberts of Grist also recaps the first week - and not surprisngly, he writes in depth about the emerging voice of the youth and poorer nations in what he calls, the “first big public eruption of the simmering tensions between major developing countries and their smaller/poorer brethren.” Roberts continues: “The one significant new feature of this treaty round is the emergence of a distinct voice for small island nations and the poorest states—the folks for whom climate change is an existential, not just economic, problem.”  Read more HERE.