Elizabeth kicking ass

Another blog from Copenhagen by Victoria Cate:

I just got out of a briefing from the head of the Canadian negotiating team to the NGO representatives. The head of our delegation is a miserable suit who relies on double speak to avoid saying anything substantive and operates his delegative responsibilities as though he were in charge of conducting a Public Relations machine.

So in the mess of political calculations, vested interests in business as usual and power struggles between wealthy and poor, vulnerable and secure, the millions of voices calling for urgent action are not being regarded as authoritative or realistic.

Elizabeth has been kicking ass. During the briefing this morning, she asked the suit to explain how the government could call their target in compliance with science when they hadn't accepted a commitment to reductions of emissions except to say that they will avoid globally reaching 2 C rise in temperature. This is a modest target and the science suggests we aren't out of the woods (these being the region of runaway global warming due to positive feedback loops) unless we hold it to 1.5 C. To do this, global emissions have to stop rising and begin to decline rapidly by at least 2015. Meanwhile the Conservative minister of environment is telling Canadians that we don't need to reach any targets for CO2 reductions until 2050 so no hurry.

The demonstrations outside the conference center are sure to escalate today, such is the feeling of frustration and anger on the parts of activists and civil society participants. I will stay inside the conference center, watching the high level negotiations speeches on a tv broadcast, as hardly any NGO people are being allowed into the plenary room.

That any of this is happening is insane, terrifying and perhaps unfathomably ridiculous.