December 2009
10 posts
Endings, beginnings, and missed opportunities
Copenhagen’s ended. So what have we got? The “Copenhagen Accord”, a 2-and-a-half-page document of vague commitments (the BBC does a good job of explaining the key points here). Not a legally-binding treaty – and they haven’t even set a date for creating one.
Crucially, there are no numbers and no dates mentioned in the document. Not even a global target of how much the planet should reduce...
Ups and downs and still no agreement
I’m mid-way through packing up ready to leave uni tonight - but there’s so much going on in Copenhagen, I thought I’d write a really quick one anyway.
First up, check out this rap by the incredible Josh from the UK Youth Delegation on the streets of chilly Copenhagen.
Second up, some news. Apologies for the conciseness - I’ve got to go catch a train soon, but I’ll...
A reminder of what this is about
Last night, I went to listen to a guy called Dan Box talk about his journey to the Carteret Islands. Before arriving, I had no idea where these islands were or how he could possibly fill an hour chatting about them. By the time he’d finished talking, I was left with a complex cocktail of thoughts – one of those cocktails that tastes exotic, a bit strange, but hits your taste buds with...
On the eve of the last week of negotiations
We’re about to hit the final week of negotiations.
Can’t help but feel pretty powerless right now. I’m typing away in my student room. I’ve been trying to plan a week of studying - my dissertation and I haven’t really bonded recently. I keep getting distracted, organising global days of action and the like. And it’s hard to sit studiously still in a library whilst knowing that across the...
Action Day!
Today was a Global Day of Action on climate change, with thousands of events taking place across the planet.
For a start, there was an enormous march through the streets of Copenhagen, with an estimated 100,000 people braving the chilly Danish air. There’s a first-hand account of the march on Grist which, unlike most of the big media outlets, doesn’t focus exclusively on the tiny...
Ready for "the final push"? We are, Ed.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s Climate Change Minister, has now landed in Copenhagen and he says he is prepared for “the final push”. I should think so too. The United Nations have been having these negotiations since I was 4 years old. You would think they might just about be prepared to get a sensible global deal on climate change by now.
After a lot of discussion, the European...
Stopping and starting
The impression I get is that the world still hasn’t been saved. Day Four of the conference has just come to an end, and suddenly two weeks does not seem like a very long time to build a global deal on climate change.
I’ve just been chatting with a UK Youth Delegate, who’s not feeling very up-beat about the way the negotiations are going. The negotiations aren’t looking...
Day 1: Copenhagen kicks off
So, the conference has begun! With much fanfare and pages of newspaper coverage. Not much in the way of discussion happens on the first day - there’s just a lot of speeches as countries outline their starting positions. The Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (who write reports on the latest climate science) reminded everyone about all the scary stuff going on - melting...
Day 0: the world's youth unite nations
Yes, I know today is technically Day 1 of Copenhagen, but this blog is going to lag realtime by about one day, so that I’ve got time to get to grips with what’s happened. So today I am writing about yesterday.
Yesterday, on the eve of the official conference, more than 1500 young people held a conference of their own, to do two things (Dave, a youth delegate from the UK, gives a...
Why read this blog?
Hi! Welcome to my blog, a young person’s perspective on the Copenhagen climate conference. I’ll be posting here throughout the two weeks of United Nations talks, which start tomorrow (Monday) and last until Friday 18th December.
Stories in the news about climate change can all get a bit baffling - for two reasons:
1) The changes happening to our climate, weather patterns, and the...