Major Outlets: What just what happened in Copenhagen?
Now What? Reporters in Copenhagen, or who monitored the fog of verbal war from afar, were in full analysis mode over the last few days. With delegations already mostly cleared from Denmark, here is a selection of look-back reports, offerings of what’s coming now, and general context on climate policy. The Tracker selected them largely from some of the weightier outlets in the English speaking world, on what happened and what may be in store for the UN’s and IPCC’s agendas on climate change.
This is hardly the end of it. Put a circle in your calendar for for COP-16 in Mexico City a year from now (and COP-17 a year later in S. Africa, and COP-18 somewhere in Asia a year after that).
* Or not. A new theme arising, as I look (mid-post) through the list below, is that the babbling UN-IPCC forum for discussion may be elbowed aside by old fashioned ad-hoc and iron-fisted diplomacy among a limited set of great powers – chiefly, the US and China. I have added asterisks to such articles.
As for COP-15′s aftermath, We’ll start with the two heaviest-weight wire services, as they have the resources to throw squads of reporters at individual pieces.
- AP :
- Charles Babington, Jennifer Loven : Obama raced clock, chaos, comedy for climate deal ; Convincingly captures the urgency and improvizational footwork of the President’s visit. Portrays him in its opening passages as a man of bold action in the face of a chaotic failure, of closed-door meetings, and of what looks like a calculated snub of the US (or perhaps portrays the president as a man forced into desperate impulsiveness and risk-taking; a man awarded by face-saving if not a lasting payoff). Additional reporting by Seth Borenstein, Michael Casey, and Charles Hutzler in Copenhagen, H. Josef Hebert in DC, and Cara Ana in Beijing.
- Seth Borenstein: Climate Reality: Voluntary efforts not enough ; Instant context. The hed somewhat undermines the strength of a twist in the story – which leads with all the spontaneous ways that local and regional groups and individual citizens are pitching in to lower emissions. It then slaps the reader across the face saying, in essence, That’s Not Enough! Message: the job will take exactly the sort of sovereignty-sapping UN-umbrella covered int’l agreement that conservatives and nationalists here and abroad are so determined to block. Those are my words, not Seth’s, but that’s how it looks.
- Charles J. Hanley: Climate talks end with eye on next year;
- Reuters
- Peter Griffiths : Gordon Brown says ‘handful’ of states wrecked climate talks ; Good, just a handful, huh? The bad news – one of that handful is more than a handful all by itself. Additional reporting by William James.
- Gerard Wynn, Alister Doyle: U.N. climate talks end with bare minimum agreement ; The upshot: This is a letter of intent, not a deal. It gives a tidy summary of what the soft agreement entails, and the bare margin by which even that occurred. Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom, John Acher, Richard Cowan, David Fogarty, Pete Harrison, Emma Graham-Harrison, Alister Bull.
- * Gerard Wynn: Climate deal highlights U.N. flaws ; See also a consonant piece in NYTimes roundup, from Climate Wire. Additional reporting from Richard Cowan, Emma Graham-Harrison, Alister Bull.
- NYTimes
- * E&E Climate Wire (via NYTimes) Lisa Friedman: Some Climate Experts Seek Alternative to U.N. Process ; One of the several insightful, forward-looking pieces surmising the UN’s unsuitability for deciding this issue (and illustration why insiders pay big bucks for Energy & Environment’s slew of daily e-newsletters).
- James Kanter: An Air of Frustration for Europe at Climate Talks ; More good stuff on the frantic last hours, including suspicion that snow in the US drove a lot of it, and suspicions how globalized industries might game the system blurrily taking shape ; Additional reporting from Yasmine Ryan ;
- James Kanter: One Real Accomplishment: Getting Some Money Flowing ; $100 billion per year! Story is mostly on pledges, little on prospects they’ll be honored. Somehow, one suspects, another 60-vote cloture drama in the US Senate will arise over this.
- Andrew C. Revkin (DotEarth blog) : Just go to the blog and scan Revkins’ posts. Inside reports, color, background and, notably, one called “The Missing ‘P’ word – and its recognition that for all its climate policy flaws China has done one big thing via its ethically suspect but stupendously consequential one-child policy. NOTE: Today is Andy’s last day at NYT – he blogs on what’s next. ;
- NYT Climate Talks page for more.
- Times
- * Ben Webster, Francis Elliott: Gordon Brown calls for new group to police global environment issues ; Chasing a solution to the problematic idea that this is not a job for the UN.
- Ben Webster, Sam Coates, Philippe Naughton: deadlock wrapped up as a deal ; One activist calls the statement “like a G8 communique,” and that’s not praise.
- Guardian
- Jonathan Watts: China’s quiet satisfaction at tough tactics and goalless draw ; ie, maybe Obama got the headlines. Wen got what he wanted without a word in public or with anybody outside his posse, other than Obama.
- John Vidal, Jonathan Watts: The last-ditch drama that saved the deal from collapse ; This version gives some credit to Obama, but not as much as AP did, to keeping talks moving. Also a bizarre demand by China that Europe do less.
- Michael White: Copenhagen may go down as a useful fresh start ; A somewhat jumbled assembly of thoughts from a reasonable man, one of the paper’s editors, who knows little science but seems to have a knack for seeing through fog.
- Ailun Yang : China ended up as useful scapegoat ; Almost 180 degrees from Watts’s piece above – China got hit sideways by the politics of Copenhagen, it says here. The writer is not reporter – she works for Greenpeace.
- More from Guardian’s army in Copenhagen here.
- Telegraph
- Geoffrey Lean: Activists who contributed nothing but obstruction ; The Tracker was not there, but can imagine writing exactly such a piece as this after having to negotiate throngs of loons while others (including serious, activist NGOs) were trying to get work done. Nice line about the polar bears in the crowd.
- Andrew Gilligan: Blood, sweat and recrimination… Copenhagen was a disaster ; Exasperation oozes and drips from this piece…
- Geoffrey Lean: A world at war over its future ;
- Louise Gray: Report card ; What the agreements, such as they are, say.
- More from Telegraph here ;
- Washington Post
- * Anthony Faiola, Juliet Eilperin, John Pomfret: Copenhagen climate deal shows new world order may be led by U.S., China ; Hed doesn’t go out on a limb, but the piece may sketch exactly how and why the UN framework may be out of date. One source says “The mark is being stamped on a new political world.”
- Juliet Eilperin, Anthony Faiola: Climate deal falls short of key goals ;
- * LA Times – Jim Tankersley : Climate summit hopes less is more / mandate is muddles but some wonder whether markets won’t save the day ; The story is mostly an impressionistic canvas of the meeting’s contradictions. But tellingly, it reports that most of the semi-productive agreements did not occur strictly within the UN’s purview.
- Time Magazine – Bryan Walsh: In Copenhagen, a Last-Minute Deal That Satisfies Few ;
- BBC
- Roger Harrabin: After Copenhagen / When Titans Collide: Another good news bad news start. Good: world leaders know they have to take fast, difficult steps to corral climate change. Bad: they are “hemmed in by economic and political risks.” Yet, he writes, for all the dashed hopes, some real achievement emerged.
- * Tom Brookes, Tim Nuthall (op-ed, European Climate Foundation): What did the Copenhagen climate summit achieve? ; More on the mixed bag, with a potent observation on how radically, in recent decades, geopolitics have changed when prime movers, along with the US and EU, are China, India, South Africa, and Brazil.
- Copenhagen climate summit held to ransom – Gordon Brown ;
- NPR
- Stu Seidel: A Climate Accord Bitterly Sealed in Copenhagen ;
- Mark Memmott (blog) : Climate Deal Getting Some Bad Reviews ;
- Globe & Mail – Shawn McCarthy: Copenhagen fell victim to a world divided ;
- The Australian:
- Rowan Callick: China and India in no hurry to lift their climate change offers ;
- Lenore Taylor: China’s climate stonewall ;
- * Rowan Callick: Many players at Copenhagen climate summit, but pact was the work of just two ;
- Samantha Maiden: Australia faces 25% cut in greenhouse emissions to meet Copenhagen ; That’s by 2020, and is five times what the gov’t in Canberra now seeks.
.. could do much more (and what I did sure could be better organized). Send me links via “contact us” function at this site’s top to any other particularly strong, original stories from major outlets. Thanks, and apologies to the many additional smaller outlets that threw expensive resources at this challenging, opaque event.
Grist for the Mill:
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Draft Decision, CP.15. ; Convention home page.
- Charlie Petit
