State of play.

COP14 is over, but what exactly does that mean? It means we are way behind. The most recent milestone of international climate negotiations was the development of the "Bali Action Plan" at COP13 last year. This document established a framework from which climate negotiations would proceed during the following 24 months leading up to Copenhagen. Not much has happened since then. We are no nearer a...

The waiting game.

Sitting here in the plenary hall - about 30 people in the room. Not much going on. It's 9pm and we haven't even started the substantive work that was supposed to happen today. Just speeches. The COP and CMP decisions still need to be approved. I doubt this will be finalized tonight, but will anybody care enough to come back in the morning? The talks in Poznan have ended with a resounding "thud"....

Hmmm…

Some of these ministerial statements are pretty impressive! I'm feeling a bit better. The worst of the Umbrella Group (Australia, Canada, Japan, US) had me worried and depressed for a bit, but so many other countries get it and are holding the developed countries accountable. To see it all go down, check out: copportal1.man.poznan.pl/ They have live streams as well as archived footage. Pretty...

Hope.

Again, the youth continue to give me hope. Our latest campaign - the Survival Campaign - has exceeded our wildest expectations. Visit 350.org/survival to be a part of it. Essentially we are asking countries to commit to the principle of safeguarding the survival of all countries and peoples. While not all countries have signed on (the US for example), we have received incredible support from...

Sitting in the final few sessions.

Well, I'm sitting here in the high level segments of the Poznan climate negotiations. I have to say, I'm pretty disgusted with many of the developed countries speaking. They are more than happy to say one thing - to talk about how great they are and how much they care - and then block text necessary for the literal survival of entire countries. Pretty fun process. As one minister from a small...