COPENHAGEN – UN climate talks fell into crisis Saturday, December 19, after developing nations vented anger at a plan worked out by the United States and a group of world countries.
"You are going to endorse this coup d'etat against the United Nations," said Venezuela’s representative Claudia Salerno Caldera, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Caldera held up what appeared to be a bloody palm, saying she had cut her hand in an effort to gain attention as her nation was excluded from US-led, closed-door talks.
Ian Fry of Tuvalu, a tiny Pacific island whose very existence is threatened by climate change, said the agreement amounted to Biblical betrayal.
* Truth About Climate Change (Folder)
"It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future," he said to applause in the chamber.
A US-led group of five countries, including China, announced a last-minute agreement on global warming in the finale of a 12-day UN summit.
"Today we have made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen," US President Barack Obama told reporters.
"For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change."
The agreement set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
However, it fails to spell out the global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050, nor the necessary mechanisms to ensure nations honoured their promises.
"Going forward, we are going to have to build on the momentum we have achieved here in Copenhagen,” Obama said.
“We have come a long way but we have much further to go."
Holocaust
Likened it to the Holocaust, Sudan’s delegate Lumumba Stanislas Dia-ping said the deal meant incineration for Africa.
The pact "is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces," said Dia-ping, who chairs the Group of 77 and China bloc of 130 poor nations.
It “asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries," he said, describing the deal the worst in the history of climate negotiations.
President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives, the Indian Ocean archipelago that is at the risk of being swept up by rising sea levels, said he was unhappy with the deal.
"I beg all nations," he said, "do not let these talks collapse."
The UN climate talks were marred by disagreements between China and the US -- the world's No. 1 and 2 carbon polluters.
China had bristled proposals to cut its carbon emissions, saying that rich nations bore primary responsibility for global warming.
For any deal to become a U.N. pact it would need to be adopted unanimously at the 193-nation talks.
If some nations are opposed, the deal would be adopted only as a less binding document or merely by its supporters – a group representing far more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Abject Failure
Environmental campaigners also denounced the US-championed deal an abject failure.
"By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world's poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates," said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.
"The blame for this disastrous outcome is squarely on the developed nations."
Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, said the deal contained so many loopholes.
"You could fly an airplane through it – Air force One, for example."
"The only thing we can agree on is the science. Everything else is a fudge, everything else is a fraud, and it must be called as such," he said.
Naidoo said the outcome of what was intended as a planet-saving deal should be a "wake-up call" for civil society.
"We have to put our leaders under much more pressure than they have been," he said.
Oxfam was also scornful at the non-binding climate deal.
"It can't even be called a deal,” Antonio Hill of the aid group said.
“It can be called a 'copout' -- It has no deadline for an agreement in 2010, no certainty that it will be legally binding.
"We know that this is going to deliver much anger, much disappointment, much outrage that all these leaders of the world have gathered to deliver just this."
"You are going to endorse this coup d'etat against the United Nations," said Venezuela’s representative Claudia Salerno Caldera, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Caldera held up what appeared to be a bloody palm, saying she had cut her hand in an effort to gain attention as her nation was excluded from US-led, closed-door talks.
Ian Fry of Tuvalu, a tiny Pacific island whose very existence is threatened by climate change, said the agreement amounted to Biblical betrayal.
* Truth About Climate Change (Folder)
"It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future," he said to applause in the chamber.
A US-led group of five countries, including China, announced a last-minute agreement on global warming in the finale of a 12-day UN summit.
"Today we have made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen," US President Barack Obama told reporters.
"For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change."
The agreement set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
However, it fails to spell out the global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050, nor the necessary mechanisms to ensure nations honoured their promises.
"Going forward, we are going to have to build on the momentum we have achieved here in Copenhagen,” Obama said.
“We have come a long way but we have much further to go."
Holocaust
Likened it to the Holocaust, Sudan’s delegate Lumumba Stanislas Dia-ping said the deal meant incineration for Africa.
The pact "is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces," said Dia-ping, who chairs the Group of 77 and China bloc of 130 poor nations.
It “asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries," he said, describing the deal the worst in the history of climate negotiations.
President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives, the Indian Ocean archipelago that is at the risk of being swept up by rising sea levels, said he was unhappy with the deal.
"I beg all nations," he said, "do not let these talks collapse."
The UN climate talks were marred by disagreements between China and the US -- the world's No. 1 and 2 carbon polluters.
China had bristled proposals to cut its carbon emissions, saying that rich nations bore primary responsibility for global warming.
For any deal to become a U.N. pact it would need to be adopted unanimously at the 193-nation talks.
If some nations are opposed, the deal would be adopted only as a less binding document or merely by its supporters – a group representing far more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Abject Failure
Environmental campaigners also denounced the US-championed deal an abject failure.
"By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world's poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates," said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.
"The blame for this disastrous outcome is squarely on the developed nations."
Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, said the deal contained so many loopholes.
"You could fly an airplane through it – Air force One, for example."
"The only thing we can agree on is the science. Everything else is a fudge, everything else is a fraud, and it must be called as such," he said.
Naidoo said the outcome of what was intended as a planet-saving deal should be a "wake-up call" for civil society.
"We have to put our leaders under much more pressure than they have been," he said.
Oxfam was also scornful at the non-binding climate deal.
"It can't even be called a deal,” Antonio Hill of the aid group said.
“It can be called a 'copout' -- It has no deadline for an agreement in 2010, no certainty that it will be legally binding.
"We know that this is going to deliver much anger, much disappointment, much outrage that all these leaders of the world have gathered to deliver just this."
| Home | Daily News | Jzom |We Are On... |
