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President Obama warns leaders over climate summit deal
BBC news
US President Barack Obama has warned world leaders that time is running out to strike a deal at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

President Obama told delegates that the international community's ability to take collective action was in doubt.

But neither the US, the EU or China offered anything new as fears grew that a deal may be slipping away.

There was confusion among delegates as several draft negotiating texts circulated on Friday afternoon.

A draft political agreement drawn up by a small group of countries was rejected during overnight discussions...
(18 Dec 2009)

Obama’s Copenhagen Speech: Some Reactions
Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal
For all the expectations that President Barack Obama’s appearance at the Copenhagen climate conference could part the waters and break the deadlock, his 8-minute speech thrilled nobody.

Granted, he met beforehand with a score of world leaders, and a dozen more at lunch—not to mention an hour-long one-on-one with the Chinese premier in between—but his speech left plenty of frustration inside Copenhagen’s Bella Center and without.

Here’s a smattering of reactions to the speech:

The Guardian (U.K.): “In the absence of any evidence of that commitment the words rang hollow and there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the audience [...] The lacklustre speech proved a huge frustration to a summit that had been looking to Obama to use his stature on the world stage – and his special following among African leaders – to try to come to an ambitious deal.”

The BBC (U.K.): “Around the Bella Center, delegates huddled around TV monitors listening with rapt attention - some, doubtless, hoping that the president would bring a rabbit out of a hat, a conjuror sprinkling some magic dust to create a fairytale deal out of what is at the moment a bottomless morass of texts and tensions. Reactions were mixed…”...
(18 Dec 2009)
The link to the video of the full speech is here.

Copenhagen climate summit: talks to go on overnight
James Kirkup and Louise Gray, in Copenhagen, The Telegraph
Stavros Dimas, the European Union Environment Commissioner said that heads of state will be expected to stay another 24 hours in Copenhagen.

"The Secretary-General of the United Nations (Ban Ki-moon) has asked people not to leave tonight," he said.

But he remained confident that leaders would eventually reach a deal.

"I cannot imagine 120 leaders going back to their countries with empty hands. Everyone expressed commitment to fight climate change. OK, do it," he said.
It is looking increasingly unlikely world leaders will be able to agree a political declaration to stop global warming.

Despite an upbeat speech by President Barack Obama, urging the world to take action on climate change, there are still huge difference between rich and poor countries.

A leaked document shows that there is still no agreement on a numerical target for rich countries to cut emissions.

The document, believed to be a draft agreement for a political declaration, has also watered down any commitment to limiting global warming to a pledge that the world “ought not to exceed 2C (3.6F)"...
(18 Dec 2009)

Copenhagen heading for meltdown as stalemate continues over emission cuts
Suzanne Goldenberg, John Vidal and Jonathan Watts in Copenhagen, The Guardian
The UN's climate summit was heading for meltdown this afternoon with countries unable to agree on emission cuts and blaming each other for the descent towards a humiliating fiasco.

Last-ditch efforts by the UN to get the 120 world leaders to at least commit to hold temperatures to a maximum rise of 2C in the next century were failing, as a series of draft political agreement — each weaker than the last — were circulated among countries.

Versions of the overarching political text seen by the Guardian showed that profound disagreements between countries had not been resolved. Only weak, long-term aspirations for an overall global emissions cut of 50% by 2050 and an 80% cut by 2050 for rich countries. These commitments, and the 2C pledge, were assumed to be givens in any deal.

As the draft text reached its sixth version, there were some glimmers of hope, as some nations put more encouraging language into the agreement, including a reference to a limit of 1.5C being supported by the science. But more versions are expected.

Observers said that all numbers and target dates were likely to change over the night as further draft texts were issued, but that the two most serious stumbling blocks were demands from rich countries that developing country should peak their emissions within a few years, and the Kyoto protocol should be abandoned before a new legal treaty was in place.

...Hopes that Barack Obama would deploy his authority as the leader of the world's largest economy — and his personal political charisma — to try to broker a last-minute deal were also frustrated. A visibly angry Obama told world leaders that it was past time for them to come to an agreement. "The time for talk is over," he said...
(18 Dec 2009)

Obama as White Knight: Naked Ambition at COP15
Tod Brilliant, Postcarbon.org
From Wikipedia: 'Emperor's New Clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. Naomi Wood of Kansas State University wrote, "Perhaps the truth of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is . . . that it recognizes the terrifying possibility that whatever words we may use to clothe our fears, the fabric cannot protect us from them."

Barack Obama’s honeymoon with both the environmental community and greater Europe has come to a end. At Øksnehallen hall in Copenhagen, loud boos fill the room. Hundreds of NGO representatives and media members have responded to a live telecast of the President’s utterly disappointing speech with loudly derisive grunts moans and hisses.

Obama, who descended from the sky in Air Force One a few hours ago to a Copenhagen largely cleared of the nonprofit ‘riff raff’ (in an effort to stifle calls for meaningful progress, access to the proceedings was reduced from 15,000 to just 90 in advance of his arrival), by now must be feeling that his attempt to play the role of white knight has failed. We’ll meet our aggressive reduction goals of 17% by 2020. Boos. The United States is serious about addressing climate change. Hisses. Obama’s delivery was flat, uninspired. Given the chance to ignite the world at what is arguably the most significant moment in history, the man mailed it in. Perhaps he’s over used to talking to his fellow Americans, whose languorous tongues swallow pills and lies with ease. The Europeans here are better informed and saw through his overlong delivery as uninspired rhetoric.
This all "adds up to a significant accord".

The boo birds flutter toward their laptops, readying reports of the U.S. President’s latest failure to step up. As the world watched, Obama’s well-tailored suit jacket and blue tie vanished into thin air. I’ll buy the man a poncho in Mexico City (COP16) next year.
(18 Dec 2009)

Better to have no deal at Copenhagen than one that spells catastrophe
On the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3–3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger", and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people".

Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale … A global goal of about 2C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development."

And yet that is precisely what Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed to do when he stopped off in Paris on his way to Copenhagen: standing with President Nicolas Sarkozy, and claiming to speak on behalf of all of Africa (he is the head of the African climate-negotiating group), he unveiled a plan that includes the dreaded 2C increase and offers developing countries just $10bn a year to help pay for everything climate related, from sea walls to malaria treatment to fighting deforestation.

It's hard to believe this is the same man who only three months ago was saying this: "We will use our numbers to delegitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position … If need be, we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent … What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above the minimum avoidable level."And this: "We will participate in the upcoming negotiations not as supplicants pleading for our case but as negotiators defending our views and interests."...