Archive for 2010 December

Patricia is going to get the President’s new text, just available hot off the press in the Azteca building here at the Moon Palace in Cancun.

Outside, some 50 young people are counting in unison.  Some are crying.  They are counting the dead.  21,000 annual deaths from climate change now, a number destined to climb right along with the temperatures.  We desperately, desperately need some good news.

[Adriana is blogging from the UN climate change negotiations in Cancun, in an attempt to keep the Canadian delegation honest.]

The open meetings have all been delayed as last-minute negotiations continue behind closed doors.  I’m sitting in the Cancunmesse area where displays are being taken down and people are tense and bored.  For anyone following in Canada, now would be a good time to call the Prime Minister’s Office and tell him you want Canada to show some leadership in breaking the logjam by going along with the majority of countries and supporting a second Kyoto period, and urging Japan and Russia to do the same.

[Adriana is blogging from the UN climate change negotiations in Cancun, in an attempt to keep the Canadian delegation honest.]

At this morning’s meeting with Canada’s chief negotiator, the first question of the day was taken by a representative of Canada’s youth delegation.  He delivered a strongly worded rebuke to Canada for failing to show any leadership, for insisting on weak targets and extensive loopholes, for failing to work constructively with countries that took the problem seriously, and for failing to recognize and address the terrible pain they were imposing on succeeding generations who would never benefit from the advantages that Canadian government choices made today.  They demanded that Canada stop kowtowing to the oil industry and take a stand for Canadians and the world.  And then they walked out, all 15 or so of them.     Read more »

[This letter was written for the Green Party newsletter before Adriana left to attend the UN climate change negotiations.]

As this letter goes out to Green Party supporters, I will be part of a five-person delegation from the Green Party of Canada in Cancun, where the 192 countries who are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are working to negotiate a treaty to protect the Earth from catastrophe.

As I write this, I’m concerned not only about the international impasse, but about Canada’s role in encouraging inaction both within Canada and internationally.     Read more »

This morning, a group of 30 Greens from all over the world gathered for breakfast in Cancun.  Most were officeholders in Europe, either in the EU Parliament or in country governments.  But municipal councillor Cathy Oke arrived from Melbourne, Australia, former Santa Monica mayor Mike Feinstein came from the United States, and four Canadian Greens joined in with three Brazilians, including the leader of the Brazilian Greens, Senator Marina Silva, who gathered 20 million votes in the last presidential election, earning 20% of the popular vote, 30% of the urban vote and winning the popular vote outright in Brazil’s capital city of Brasilia.

I had wanted to meet Marina ever since she left Lula’s government over disagreements about dam-building and other environmentally damaging policies and began to consider running for the Greens.     Read more »