Copenhagen: Climate tyranny

The thread is being pulled on the climate talks here in Copenhagen. The whole show is beginning to unravel, revealing what is really happening -- a climate tyranny not an international negotiation.

Since last week, the heat has been turned up between the Developing world and the Industrialized, with divisions exploding today in a walkout by the G77 and a suspension of the negotiations. Poorer nations say they are being sidelined in the climate-talks, as their demands for survival (as opposed to the weak "suicidal" deal on the table) and safeguarding the Kyoto Protocol (the only legally binding climate treaty we have) are being ignored [2].

"Things are not going well [3]," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aiping, chairman of the G77 in the Politiken newspaper on Friday. "This conference will probably be wrecked by the bad intentions of some people."

Divisions began in the conference last Tuesday when The Guardian leaked [4] a document, called the "Danish Text," that virtually back-rooms the climate summit to the rich and powerful. The documents, that is perceived to have been a draft floating around strictly G8 countries by the Danish government, takes two steps backwards in Industrialized nations obligations to the developing world and sidelines the entire UN process.

In response to this, The Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) on Friday protested inside the conference demanding their own draft treaty -- a survival pact, not a suicide pact. They say that the two degrees being agreed upon by the Industrialized world would submerge [5] many of the world's Small Islands States this century and that instead one and a half degrees needs to be the target.

"We are facing an emergency, a planetary emergency that affects everyone but first and foremost affects AOSIS," said Dessima Williams, Chair of the AOSIS from Grenada.

Some say that the developing world are one the ones holding up the show now. But if that show is leading us off a cliff, some like NASA's James Hansen argue [6] it's better to have no deal than a suicidal one, so at least we can save time working towards the right one than waiting another 12 years like Kyoto.

The message was clear that in Copenhagen we wanted a binding, ambitious and fair deal. We are not getting any one of those demands, but a "shit-show" of a climate deal, as one activist expressed to me. Perhaps it would be better to have no deal than legalized climate tyranny.

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