Four Minutes to Midnight Express Derailed In Two Track Talks

Al Gore looking worried by the idea of an ice free Arctic

The soaring rhetoric of Yvo De Boer, Ban Ki Moon and Connie Hedeggard seemed a distant memory yesterday as the two track talks saw a head on collision between the developing world and the U.S., Japan, Australia block.

The twin track talks – one draft on a continuation of Kyoto, and a non-Kyoto draft pushed by rich nations which imposes cuts on developing nations – were left in serious disarray on Monday after rich nations attempted to force the abandonment of the Kyoto track and rejected deeper emission cuts, ending in an African led developing nation walkout.

Chair of the talks Hedeggard called a time out to remedy the situation, but only ended up aggravating the situation by suggesting a core of 50 ministers work on a compromise treaty.

The Guardian reported some straight shooting by a number of negotiators:

Victor Fodeke (head of the Nigerian special climate change unit) said: "Africa is on death row. It has been sidelined by some countries. If there is any attempt to remove one of the tracks of negotiations, then it's obvious the train will crash."

A senior Asian negotiator: "The disaster has already begun because we have not closed the gap an inch. We are just trying to paste over it with political rhetoric."

U.K. Climate Secretary Ed Milliband: "We have not done a brilliant job today. We are now four minutes to midnight."

After some frantic negotiating developing nations forced a continuation of the two track talks. The Guardian reported G77 head Lumumba Di-Aping as saying, "The developing countries have won this round. Two texts will be presented to heads of state to sign. We won because Africa and other countries stood up."

Time is running out, however, as heads of state and ministers begin to arrive. The official Cop15 site carried a story quoting Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh as saying that two texts must be ready by Tuesday night Danish time, as heads of state cannot do the negotiating.

Al Gore also added to the urgency. He conducted a slide show with a Danish scientist which demonstrated evidence of a much earlier than previously thought melting of the Arctic ice cap, with a 75% chance that the entire ice cap will melt over summer within the next five to seven years.

And an example, to demonstrate what rich nations are actually offering, after Obama’s science czar Steven Chu came through with a ‘free set of steak knives’ deal, offering 350 million over five years for renewables in developing nations - Grist.org’s Geoffrey Lean, writing at The Huffington Post, pointed that much of the 10 billion per year emergency fund being offered by rich nations consists of existing aid.

The media outlets COPVoices is looking at also continued a significant bias towards using sources from developed nations, despite the current activities of developing nations, with more than double the number of sources from the developed world (see first graph below).The Australian, unsurprisingly given its daily airing of Tony Abbot’s latest intransigent stab at the CPRS, leads in the favouring of developed country sources(second graph).