Coffees Vs Coffins as Developing Nations Go In hard on Day 2

Chinese delegations at UNFCCC conferences do not often give press conferences. Yesterday, the head of the Chinese delegation, Su Wei, called one to denigrate the emission reductions offers of Japan, The U.S., and the E.U.

The big news of yesterday, however, was the uproar caused by the circulation of an informal Danish draft for a political agreement at the summit. The draft proposal, leaked to The Guardian, places more power in the hands or rich nations, and sidelines the U.N. and Kyoto. The text proposes radical changes, including handing control of climate financing to the World Bank, creating binding targets for developing nations, and restricting their emissions to 1.44 tonnes per person, a little more than half the proposed rich nation limit of 2.67 tonnes.

Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislas Di Aping, who heads the G77 group of developing nations, criticised the draft and said developing nations would not sign an inequitable deal. This does not bode well for the success of the summit, and African nations have already demonstrated their willingness to walk from proceedings as they did at the previous COP meeting last month in Barcelona.

Di Aping also pithily dismissed currently proposed funds for developing nations, telling Al-Jazeera that ‘”If divided by the world population it is less than $2 per person,” he said, adding that this would not cover a coffee in the rich world or a coffin in poor countries that are at the sharp end of climate changes.’

I have the feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot more from Di Aping as the summit progresses.

Sounds like the Danes have some explaining to do. UN climate supreme Yvo De Boer and E.U negotiators have been busy struggling to hose down the controversy before the conflagration consumes the Bella Centre and derails the talks.

The hose was then passed to use as a water cannon as the U.K. Met Office did its damndest to keep the Climategate-aroused sceptics quiet, releasing data which confirmed the last decade as the warmest in recorded history Reports have also surfaced that two of the climate scientists who have had hacked emails distributed on the internet have subsequently received death threats.

Today’s analysis looks at the stars of the show – who was best-on-park on day 2. Searing and charming G77 head Lumumba Di-Aping, a conciliatory Yvo De Boer and surprise packet Michel Jarraud, the WMO secretary-general, were equal top scorers in the quotations category. In a points decision, person-of the-match goes to the entertainer Di Aping for his well-aimed Sudanese black humour –his ‘coffees and coffins’ line likely had a few E.U negotiators staring guiltily into their morning beverages.

It was also a good day for the activists and scientists across our selected media outlets. A plethora of report and data releases and the Danish draft text uproar provided plenty of space, with the tally being 18 mentions for government actors, 12 for the activists and a heady 16 for the experts, with business and sceptics both failing to get on the scoreboard.

And despite the best efforts of Di-Aping and the Chinese delegation, the ratio of developed nations to developing nation actors was ore or less static in comparison with Day 1.

I hope you’ll join COPVoices tomorrow where we’ll see how Yvo and Co. do making it up to the G77.

Meanwhile, in News, View, Cartoons: Maturbate not procreate and save the Planet