Copenhagen Day Ten: mayhem breaks out as pressure mounts for a deal
Sue Wheat
16th December 2009
‘Mayhem’ is probably the best word to describe the climate talks in Copenhagen today.
At the Bella Centre, where the UN Summit on Climate Change is being held, the day started with outrage as the entire Friends of the Earth delegation of 90 people were denied access and at 9.48am the Friends of the Earth chair Nnimmo Bassey being escorted out of COP15 by security.
Andy Atkins, executive director or Friends of the Earth UK, said outside the centre after the expulsion: “We have come along with all our passes in order, only to be told we can’t enter – ‘the computer says No’. We are very worried as we are one of the strongest voices calling for a strong and fair agreement – this can’t be good for the climate, civil society or the world. They have given us no reason, we are very worried.”
Activists, meanwhile, took to the streets again and marched to the Bella Centre with the aim of holding a ‘People’s Assembly’ on the negotiations. Many were met and searched by armed police even before they started; 250 were arrested during the march and tear gas was deployed once again.
Before the morning was out Connie Hildegard, Denmark's climate and energy minister, had ‘resigned’ as president of the UN climate talks, although this was pitched as a ‘procedural’ handover to the Danish president for the final stage of the negotiations.
Throughout the day British officials were engaged in last-ditch attempts to persuade the Americans to "push the boat out" and offer higher emissions cuts when President Barack Obama arrives on Friday, although they admit it is "unlikely".
Gordon Brown started on his personal mission to meet and influence as many lead negotiators as he could, including those from Australia, Denmark, Bangladesh, Nepal, East Timor, Lesotho and the President of the Maldives, then African leaders, the UN Secretary General and Al Gore. As he couldn’t actually leave the Bella Centre because of the protests going on outside, he conducted a teleconference with reporters in which he appeared to put on the record that the UK expected the US to step up their commitments.
The US is offering funding towards a global climate protection fund and emissions cuts of four per cent on 1990 levels. This is well short of the 30 per cent cuts the Europeans have pledged if other countries also make ambitious promises.
Just as Gordon Brown may have felt he was making progress, the Bolivian President Evo Morales upped the ante and called on the world leaders to raise their ambitions radically and hold temperature increases over the next century to just 1C.
"Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity,” said the indigenous Bolivian president. “We are here to save mother earth. Our objective is to reduce climate change to [under] 1C. [Above this] many islands will disappear and Africa will suffer a holocaust," he said.
Limiting warming to 1C would need an end to all emissions and billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to be sucked from the air and stored. He may have been heartened to find out that John Prescott announced today that he is “on the side of developing countries.”
Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister said the Kyoto Protocol was in "intensive care" and global negotiations to extend it have stalled.
And in the understatement of the day UK Climate Secretary Ed Miliband admitted that the negotiations are in a "difficult place.”
"It's going in a pretty messy and chaotic direction,” he told Sky News. “Why is it in our interests to try and find some ways of helping the developing world start to cut their own emissions? The reason it’s in our interest is because if we make cuts in our country, in Britain, and nobody else follows, including in the developing world and poorer nations like India, then we’re never going to crack the problem.
“It’s also, frankly, in our economic interest to get an agreement here because if we do the world will send a very big signal about its move to low carbon and there’ll be green jobs in our economy. So it’s in our environmental and our economic interests to get a deal done; we’re a long way away from that at the moment, it has to be said."
Around Copenhagen’s city squares the hotels and bars are full of Bella evictees discussing the day’s madness. Many delegates have left or are leaving as there is little point in staying.
At a side event organised by the UK climate communications think-tank Fair Knowledge, business people from around the world involved in environmental technology and communications on climate change came to discuss the idea that a complete switch in communication was needed to break the deadlock after the talks.