Climate Change

Still melting

Juliette in our international office posted this on the Climate Rescue blog and, as similar thoughts have been going through my head in response to the current cold weather, it's worth reposting here.

It cannot be said too often that climate and weather are not the same thing. The first regulates the temperature and weather patterns on a long term basis, the other one is guilty for blocking the traffic with snow this morning, or making the heat today unbearable. NASA puts it better than I could:

Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere "behaves" over relatively long periods of time.

At the mouth of the Ganges River lies the Sundarbans - 20,000 square kilometres of Unesco protected mangrove forest stretching between India and Bangladesh. It is home to 500 endangered Bengali tigers, countless crocodiles and around 4.3 million people.

It's over. The fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties has this afternoon officially drawn to a close (or rather all but collapsed), but what are we left with? Very little is the honest answer and, no matter how the politicians spin it or how the media interprets it, it sucks.

Obama called it a "historic first step" and it's neither historic nor a first step. The Kyoto Protocol was both, yet in the 12 years since it was laid down, we've barely progressed - the increasing severity of climate change impacts and the urgent warnings from scientists should have had leaders scrabbling for solutions. Instead, yesterday a small group of these leaders flew in, claimed the deal was done and flew out again, leaving chaos in their wake – and other leaders outraged.

It's a gut-busting, heart-breaking cop-out and I'm so very, very angry although sadly not very surprised. The exhaustion we're all feeling in the Greenpeace team here in Copenhagen only adds to the appalling sense of frustration - our leaders swanned in and let us all down. The deal isn't fair or ambitious and it certainly isn't legally binding. Even though the agreement, such as it is, has yet to be sealed, they have failed.

I hoped it would be different but the skewed nature of international diplomacy has led the Copenhagen summit through two turbulent weeks into an exercise in arm-twisting and back-room deals. The bullying tactics of the developed countries have ensured they have got what they want, despite the attempts of some developing countries to stand their ground.