Frozen out
Another day in Copenhagen; another day of queues. At least today they were a little more organised … but no more successful, as after two hours of shuffling, the queues came to a halt and did not move again. During that time, secretariat staff paraded up and down the line telling all that anyone with a press pass could make their way to the front of the queue. Many did. Media were now at the front of a queue that did not move. One quipped, “At least we’re travelling first class on the Titanic!” He was mocked; the Titanic was a ship that moved.
Inside the Bella Centre, the climate glitterati were starting to arrive … Prince Charles, Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and so on.
The past few days of negotiations were replaced with the ceremonial opening. Negotiations that did continue were almost all closed to non-government stakeholders.
There was no movement on CCS in the CDM but Saudi Arabia is insisting that this is one issue that needs to be moved from bureaucrats and ministers to Heads of State.
However, the reality is that at this point all the minutiae of any post-2012 agreement is secondary to the bigger picture. Despite global expectations of a success in Copenhagen, developed and developing countries remain well apart and getting any area of agreement between them that can be portrayed as a ‘success’ is the primary and possibly only focus of frantic late night closed meetings.
Back outside the Bella Centre, after two and a half hours of shuffling progress, a message was finally broadcast that the frozen masses could expect to wait at least another five hours before collecting their badges. We had hit rock bottom.
And then it started sleeting.
