{"id":109510,"date":"2009-12-17T13:56:02","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T18:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.climatechangeinsights.com\/2009\/12\/articles\/cop15-copenhagen\/cop15-day-11-snow-money-gore-and-more\/"},"modified":"2009-12-17T13:56:02","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T18:56:02","slug":"cop-15-day-11-snow-money-gore-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/109510","title":{"rendered":"COP-15 Day 11: Snow, Money, Gore and More!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">It seems as though the moods of optimism and pessimism with respect to reaching a deal in Copenhagen change by the hour. &nbsp;Last evening, there was supreme doubt a deal could get done with many observers beginning to retrench to old positions of blaming US intransigence.&nbsp; The US, familiar to the villain role in climate proceedings, was viewed as having a weak target with little assurance it can deliver on anything back in the Senate, yet strong demands of developing countries particularly of China and little finance to provide poorer countries as promised in the Bali Action Plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Yet when I awoke before dawn, a fresh blanket of snow had covered the streets of Copenhagen and a new sense of optimism was in the air.&nbsp;&nbsp;I had an early morning breakfast with a senior member of the US delegation who promised big news in just a few hours.&nbsp; When I emerged from speaking on a panel at a side event on climate finance, the &ldquo;big news&rdquo; had emerged.&nbsp; Upon her arrival at the Bella Center, Secretary of State Hillary <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jBwLlAbl5zw\">Clinton announced<\/a> that the US now supports a $100 billion annual climate finance fund for developing countries by 2020.&nbsp; This proposal mirrors one previously put forward by the UK Prime Minister Brown and then endorsed in a breakthrough moment by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia on behalf of the African Union yesterday as reported in this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.climatechangeinsights.com\/2009\/12\/articles\/cop15-copenhagen\/cop15-day-10-copenhagen-moving-from-rhetoric-to-reality\/\">blog<\/a>&nbsp;yesterday. &nbsp;The spin today is that this new proposal from the US, which is subject to reaching the broader political agreement, reflects a new level of good faith in the negotiations.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eenews.net\/tv\/video_guide\/1082\">Climate finance<\/a> is a lynchpin of these negotiations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">With Bella Center access now denied to most due to security, there are more people on the streets and&nbsp;impromptu meetings around town today.&nbsp; I trudged through the snow to the old Imperial Theatre and was lucky to get into a packed audience of mostly Danish citizens to see none other than Al Gore.&nbsp; The Vice President was fresh from the negotiation halls to both promote his new book &ldquo;<a href=\"http:\/\/ourchoicethebook.com\/\">Our Choice<\/a>&rdquo; and to reflect on the importance of the Copenhagen negotiations.&nbsp; The crowd was electric and Gore delivered a substantive and passionate overview of the climate challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Vice President Gore provided the following insight on the key issues for resolution:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Significant progress in last 3-4 hours in the negotiations.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">US-Africa-EU convergence on the $100 billion annual fund by 2020 is a big breakthrough.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Resolution on the role of Kyoto Protocol going forward remains a sticking point.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Agreement by China and other developing countries to submit to international accountability measures on their intensity target commitments and national mitigation action plans remains another sticking point.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Reducing forest emissions will need to be part of the final agreement.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Notably he did not mention US emission reduction targets as a key sticking point.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">Whatever outcome here in Copenhagen, the next step will be quick momentum towards a binding treaty.<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">The US domestic goal should be to deliver legislation out of the Senate and on President Obama&rsquo;s desk by Earth Day 2010 (April 22<sup>nd<\/sup>)<\/span><br \/>\n    &nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">The timing of COP-16 in Mexico next fall and mid-terms in November is a formula for diminished expectations.&nbsp; Gore would like to see the Mexico meeting moved up to next July in Mexico, the week after the football World Cup in South Africa.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">So we are heading towards the final 24 hours.&nbsp; There are swings in expectations by the hour and still much bracketed text.&nbsp; The US bottom-line demand is clearly transparency and accountability from China on their commitments.&nbsp; The question is will China and others trust President Obama to deliver his own reduction targets from the Senate, enough to sign on the dotted line.&nbsp;It is a tough sell in both directions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/ClimateChangeInsights\/~4\/jJe2AqHbgqs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems as though the moods of optimism and pessimism with respect to reaching a deal in Copenhagen change by the hour. &nbsp;Last evening, there was supreme doubt a deal could get done with many observers beginning to retrench to old positions of blaming US intransigence.&nbsp; The US, familiar to the villain role in climate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":819,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/819"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}