Copenhagen Daily

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As rich nations try to pressurise poor and vulnerable countries into accepting a bad deal rather than no deal at all, Phil and Frederika stay up all night and track the end game of the talks as they play out in the wee hours. Along the way you’ll hear from New Internationalist co-editor, Jess Worth; Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director; UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband; Ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping, Chair of the G77+China; and Deepak Rughani of Biofuelwatch and Climate Justice Now!. We also speak to one of the estimated nine people on the planet who genuinely understand the rich country-loophole known as LULUCF – Chris Henschel of Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society and Chair of the Climate Action Network’s working group on LULUCF. Thanks to Dutch reporter Ruben Koops for the use of his Miliband quote. Stop press: Contrary to what you may have heard, read or watched to the contrary, the UN climate summit has neither adopted the “Copenhagen Accords” nor struck an historic deal on climate change. The meeting has agreed to take note of the “Copenhagen Accords” and countries can add their names as supporters to the document. UN climate talks will continue to discuss this proposal along with other approaches. As of now there is no global deal on climate change.

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As we enter the final hours of the conference we get an assessment of progress (or lack thereof) so far from award-winning journalist George Monbiot. Kate Dooley from Fern and the Accra Caucus gives us an update on the forestry text – it’s in constant flux, but there’s still a huge risk that this could end up being a mechanism which gives perverse incentives to the logging industry, offset opportunities for rich nations and tramples over the rights of indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities. Frederika Whitehead gives us an update on the false solutions that corporate lobbyists are pushing for inclusion into the Clean Development Mechanism and Tom Besley interviews an activist who has been at the receiving end of some of the heavy-handed policing that’s been going on here this week.

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On today’s have an audio document of yesterday’s “Reclaim Power” action put together by Tom Besley and Arthur Girling. We also report on the drama inside the negotiations as the Heads of State section of these talks gets underway. Developing countries reject the idea of the Danish chair dropping another draft text into the negotiations. The US & EU effect an apparent coup in replacing the Algerian Chair of the African group with the Ethiopian Prime Minister. In his opening statement PM Zenawi announced that he had struck a deal, would be disappointing his fellow Africans and didn’t want $400bn of annual public finances from rich countries after all. Frederika Whitehead offers her thoughts about the increasing security here at the Bella Centre and Tom Besley sends some streetside audioboos.

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We open today’s programme with Arthur Girling walking round Copenhagen’s squatted district Christiana with Tina Yanam. Tom and Arthur file a report on the Danish police unwarranted and heavy-handed disruption of the party in the Christiana Big Top that was designed to raise people’s spirits in advance of today’s action and where Naomi Klein was one of the speakers. To highlight the malign role of corporate lobbyists at the UN climate talks, a number of NGOs have created the Angry Mermaid Award. We bring you highlights of yesterday’s award ceremony. We have a brief interview with Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN where he reveals that as of two days ago the entire G77+China is now supporting their Climate Debt proposal. The US envoy Todd Stern apparently reacted to this with some disdain in a press conference yesterday and none of the rich have put anything on the table that would go anyway towards meeting this demand. Hence the talks are in crisis. At a joint press conference yesterday the civil society groupings Climate Justice Now! and Climate Justice Action announced today’s day of non-violent civil disobedience which they are calling Reclaim Power. We have an edit of some of the voices from that press conference and we end with an interview by Tom Besley with director of The Third Pole in Tibet.

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Head of the Potsdam Institute and climate change advisor to the German government, Professor John Schellnhuber gives his assessment on how aligned the talks are with science and what might constitue an equitable distribution of our remaining emissions budget. Tom Besley discovers the joys of cycling in Copenhagen and gets down to some axle grinding in preparation for tomorrow’s bike bloc on the Reclaim Power action. Frederika Whitehead lifts the lid on the corporate interests who are trying to designate carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear energy and incineration as clean technologies within the Clean Development Mechanism. Youth deconstruct the draft text on deforestation in a rendering of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Andrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth reminds us that the rich consuming nations need to curb consumption of meat and dairy and put an immediate moratorium on biofuels if we are to stop deforestation. We have a short report from the No Borders action which highlighted the plight of climate refugees. Saleemul Huq makes a plea for rich countries to drop their narrow-focus on the own national interests if we are to make Copenhagen a success. We end with “The Gluts Song” from the Climate Express train chorus.

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We start today’s show with Tom & Arthur’s report on their journey on the Camp for Climate Action coach. We talk to the Rainforest Action Network’s policy and research director, Bill Barclay, on the status of the forestry discussions in the light of the draft text published here on Friday. We’ve got three more testimonials from representatives of the Global South that are here in Copenhagen at the People’s Summit or Klimaforum. We’ve got an extract from the Friends of the Earth press briefing discussing how the EU can make a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without using offsets. And we’ve got a report from yesterday’s the “Hit the Production” action at the port.

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Highlights from the first week of “Copenhagen Daily” broadcasts selected and compiled by Ed Baxter.

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Today’s show features an interview with hunger striker Anna Keenan; we hear the G77&China respond to the derisory EU finance proposal; Frederika shares her adventures on the the climate express; and Canada wins Fossil of the Day AGAIN!

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In today’s show we have an interview with Kassie Siegel from the Center for Biological Diversity on why President Obama doesn’t need to wait for Congress to bring scienced-based targets to the table when he comes to Copenhagen at the end of next week. We’ve an interview with Professor Tim Jackson on why Copenhagen needs to restsructure our economy if it is to be truly successful in combating climate change. Frederika Whitehead takes a trip to the parallel People’s summit that’s happening here in Copenhagen and picks up some testimony. We give the Carbon Town Cryer‘s heart-melting Copenhagen song “The Overflowing” its first airing. But to start things off, on the day that President Obama picked up his Nobel Peace Prize we have a reading of the letter sent by African civil society organisation Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance to President Obama, pleading with him to fulfil the promise of his inauguration speech and to not betray his brothers and sisters in Africa when he comes to Copenhagen.