December 2008
I saw two people arguing today about whether biofuels could help save humanity from itself in a carbon-constrained world.
Of course, they were both right, both wrong but neither knew it.
if you can get here….. We have all looked forward to this year’s UNFCCC event and hopeful of productive outcomes especially our friends and colleagues from developing countries.
I love working on an exhibition stand at these kind of conferences. I get to meet such a culturally diverse set of people. All of whom have a variety of backgrounds and reasons for being here.
You wouldn’t expect a football team that had never practiced together to play particularly well, would you?
Long before dawn broke over London, I took an early train out to the airport and flight to Poznań. Chill mist was still rising off the fields as we landed, and temperatures below freezing...
So far, the Poznan COP is panning out nicely for memory stick collectors.
Under a bright blue sky, we spent the day perched on lecture hall benches in Poznan’s University. A one-day immersion on everything you need to know and more about forests and climate change. How might we set up a payments mechanism to reward countries that stop deforestation?
Lobbying — the pre- and post-negotiation discussions where much of the real action at global conventions happens — is a key activity for NGOs at the talks. It really can turn that world on its axis, as long as the lobbyist has an intimate knowledge of huddle politics.
Amid the debates swirling round this conference with cyclonic intensity is one very big question: how can the world’s most vulnerable countries adapt to climate change with such a serious shortfall in targeted funding? Oxfam estimates the task as demanding US$50 billion a year — some US$49 billion more than what’s actually available.
Yvo de Boer, who runs the UNFCCC secretariat, laid out clearly where we are with agreement on the text in his inimitable laconic style: ‘We are near to the end of putting things in and near to the beginning of taking things out.’