Fury Erupts At UN Climate Talks
December 19, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
COPENHAGEN : Fury erupted at the Copenhagen climate talks Saturday over a draft accord agreed by a select group of leaders, with several poor nations saying it amounted to a coup against the United Nations.
“You are going to endorse this coup d’etat against the United Nations,” Venezuela’s representative Claudia Salerno Caldera told Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the conference’s chairman, in a speech from the floor.
“Those of us who wish to speak have to make a point of order by cutting our hands and drawing blood,” she added, before opening a red-stained palm.
Tuvalu’s Ian Fry, whose country is one of the most at risk from global warming, said the agreement amounted to Biblical betrayal.
“It looks like we are being offered 30 pieces of silver to betray our people and our future,” he said to applause in the chamber.
“Our future is not for sale. I regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document.”
Rasmussen, looking uneasy in his chair, faced a barrage of criticism during the highly-charged session which was convened several hours after US President Barack Obama said he had reached a political agreement with around two dozen fellow leaders, including from China and India.
Cuba accused Obama of “behaving like an emperor,” adding that the Havana government would not accept the draft declaration.
The plenary session was then suspended after Costa Rica demanded explanations for key text that had disappeared from a draft resolution while the leaders’ wrangling had unfolded.
That text said countries would strive for a “legally-binding” agreement in Mexico City at the end of 2010 — a position supported especially by Russia, Canada and Japan in order to lock the United States into a treaty.
Green delegates said they suspected the vital words had been deleted as a quid pro quo to placate the United States.
Obama flew out of Copenhagen late Friday before any decision among the 194 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on whether to accept the draft agreement.
The agreement contains a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but did not spell out the important stepping stones — global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 — for getting there.
Fury Erupts At UN Climate Talks was first posted on December 19, 2009 at 3:27 pm.
