COP16 Ends In Deadlock

Greenpeace protests at COP16 failure

They are putting a brave face on it, but no matter how they try to dress it up, Chrish Huhne’s car crash has happended at Cancun, after 2 weeks of negotiating they have agreed just 1 paragraph.

It is difficult to see what the future holds for the whole UN negotiating process now, after a failure at Copenhagen followed by the car crash in Cancun, international climate diplomacy is looking to be a pointless exercise.

Even diedhard alamists like Connie Hedegaard sees no way forward:

The future of international climate diplomacy was put into jeopardy today as the UN global warming conference at Cancún entered its final hours with no resolution to the divide between rich and poor countries. “We have very limited time to make a last push,” warned Mexico’s foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa. “No party can lose sight of what is at stake.”

On what should have been the final hours of two weeks of negotiations, Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s climate change commissioner, warned that the UN process was at risk of becoming a never-ending set of meetings unless they reach a positive outcome at Cancún.

“Everyone must realise that if we don’t get things done here in Cancún, it’s very difficult to see how you go from A to B,” she said. “If we leave Cancún without getting anything out of this, I think multilateralism has a problem.“