As world leaders arrive at the Copenhagen summit, interest groups remain entrenched.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Now it gets serious.
On Wednesday, the big shots started arriving in Copenhagen, turning the climate change conference from a discussion among environment ministers and technocrats into a mega-summit.
On this rare occasion the leaders of the United States and Iran, China, Russia and India, Britain and Zimbabwe and almost every nation on the planet are supposed to put aside their differences and come up with a deal to stop disastrous global overheating.
That was the plan at least.
With two days to go before the end of the summit, almost two weeks of negotiations were supposed to have produced a draft committing nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions, defend tropical forests, pump billions into supporting clean development of poor nations and other measures to stall the inexorable rise of global temperatures.
Instead, the players seemed as far apart as ever.
China joined developing nations to blast the rich north for trying to wriggle out of commitments; the European Union appealed to the Chinese and Americans to raise their emissions-cutting ambitions; Africans demanded more financial help to cope with the impact of rich nations' pollution; the leftist leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia railed against western imperialism; small island states despaired at the lack of progress as rising sea levels threaten their very existence.
"This is more than just another meeting. This is a matter of life and death," said President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. "We urgently need to move forward."
An aura of gloom hung over the talks as officials acknowledged that failure had become a real possibility.
"I'm disappointed with the slow pace of negotiations in the past days," admitted European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard warned talks were on a "knife's end" before she stepped down as chairman of the talks, handing over to her prime ministers as the arrival of heads of government upgraded the status of the talks.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/global-green/091216/copenhagen-gloom-over-climate-conference
