Monday, December 14, 2009

Copenhagen Calamity

News this morning from the Copenhagen climate talks is that a large group of African nations has simply walked out of the talks, leaving them in limbo at this hour.
The Australian news site, News.com.au reports more on the walkout:
The G77, a group which represents 130 developing countries, walked out because it is concerned the existing Kyoto protocol will be abandoned.
Australia's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong confirmed that organisers were trying to fix the problem and coax back the developing world.
Many countries at the UN climate summit want a brand new treaty to tackle climate change, but the developing world wants the Kyoto protocol to continue as well.
The bottom line is the world's developing nations are demanding that Kyoto continues as a minimum, and the US and China are going to cut a deal at Copenhagen that represents a reduction for those two countries, but a backslide from Kyoto compared to the rest of the world.

We'll see how this turns out, but this is pretty bad news.

2 comments:

  1. Well, I don't know how on earth anything done by China, India, Brazil or the US could "represents a reduction for those countries". The US didn't sign the treaty, and developing countries didn't have to make any cuts under the Kyoto set up.

    Africa has every right to a louder voice though, they stand to suffer the worse.

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  2. From what I've read, the deal is that the countries that didn't do anything under Kyoto will fail to meet the Kyoto standards that the rest of the world signed on to under the Copenhagen deal.

    Can't really blame Africa here.

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