Report From Copenhagen

Guest Post from Reading activist Miriam Kennet


The summit is exploding in lots of ways with a resignation of its president yesterday!

No NGOs are allowed in today, except those in with one small organisation RINGO who got all the tickets themselves. I spoke to UN officials who couldnt get in

Oxford University, The World Bank etc couldnt get in. Even the negotiator for Brazil and for India were barred from getting in, and an appeal went from the conference floor in plenary in the middle of the day to let them in allowed them acess!

I was interviewed on the BBC world service news and the journalist interviewing me said he had to wait 8 hours in the snow to get in. The Chief Negotaitor for the Indian Government was so upset with how he was manhandled at the outset at the entry barriers that he said he couldnt think straight and put Indians representations to the conference for about 20 minutes whilst he got his composure back!

Brazil and India are not minor players in this .. arguably Brazils rainforest holds the key to our human survival.....


The RINGO passes - ie research institutes including oxford university etc and think tanks were all given to an organisation called RINGO and only 8 passes have been given today to anyone else .. the rest went to RINGOs friends and supporters -so Oxford University has gone home.

The World Futures council couldnt get in and neither could we today .. even though we have been registered for 5 months on time and the conference is advertising our participation on its own website!

I also heard Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace cant go in.
But most telling of all -
The people from the UNs own think tank representing the states of the Middle East governments - couldnt not get in without a struggle !

The president resigned and the Danish Prime Minister personally took over in plenary yesterday - and was visibly nervous and allowed china to voice its concerns and this delayed the conference for hours.

Many of the smaller island states whose very survival depends on this conferences outcome were really worried and have put forward an alternative add on for limitation to 1.5 degrees but this was not really being discussed....

If this is really how we are going to deal with a megacrisis of climate - a police state where even the police dont seem to agree with what they are being asked to do - who is pulling these strings

The UNFCC secretariat is absolutely and totally out of its depth here ....and the whole organisation needs taking out of its hands and being run properly.. not even its own members seemed to have any grasp of what was going on and many of them couldnt get in either....

The biggest complaint by the delegations, is that the final deal is not being negotiated on the conference floor at all but somewhere else... entirely and will be imposed tomorrow when the bigger state presidents arrive and in a flourish off the deal = a deal already sealed .......

Everyone wants a deal - however its important that this deal comes from a quorate summit.....and that is going to stop climate change - not to simply provide for countries, large and small, developed and developing just to use it to pollute more and to simply to use it pay off their balances of trade ...!





Miriam Kennet
Copenhagen


Also see Naomi Klein on activism's impact on the climate negotiations.

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email Obama and the US ambassador in London now with38 degrees

“The time is past for big capital to make more money,” said Vandama Shiva, a former physicist who quit India’s nuclear program and become a leading voice for the environment. “The earth must make the change. The earth must make the rules. “We will be the change we want to see, and no one is going to stop us.”

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