George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK), 19 December 2009
Copenhagen negotiators bicker and filibuster while the biosphere burns
"Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns."
From Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal:
The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” was pushed by the US and Australia, and sealed in meetings behind closed doors with the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. It was announced by Obama late on the evening of December 18, and presented as “final” even before the COP15 delegates had a chance to vote on it. It does not commit governments to interim 2020 carbon emissions-reduction targets, or to legally binding reductions and only expresses a general aim of limiting the global warming increase to 2 degrees Celsius — well above the 1 degree C-1.5 degree C target most delegations were calling for.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, delegation head of the G77 group of developing countries, rejected the accord and vowed to fight it. “Obama, acting the way he did, definitely established that there’s no difference between him and the Bush tradition,” he told Time magazine.
"The commitment by the G8 to contain global temperatures rises to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, implies concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere of around 450 parts per million(ppm), is woefully inadequate." Dr Mohamed Waheed, Vice President of the Republic of Maldives 21/10/2009 10:05
See the rest of Dr. Waheed's piece, Vulnerability and Adaption to Climate Change in the Maldives: Expectations for COP15