Oliver’s Wednesday blog

Caught on camera by Climate Change TV and Anika!

As we approach the climax of the talks the French COP President, Laurent Fabius, has called for a « clean text » of the Agreement by 1 pm today (Wednesday) with the final text to be delivered tomorrow in time to be translated into 5 languages for Friday when all should be wrapped up.
One report says that Minister Fabius is « steering the good ship ‘Le Bourget’ with exceptional skill and diplomacy. Not a single Party or group objected to the way forward proposed by the COP President – a remarkable achievement. Indeed praise for Minister Fabius’ management of the talks was unreserved » The devil , of course, will be in the detail.
On the subject of detail, while attending a side event this morning on Keeping Fossil Fuels in the Ground I received an email from the 350.org organisation, whose founder and director, Bill McKibben happened to be speaking at the time.

This suggested that all was not well at the high level negotiations and that many world governments were drawing back from their ambitious target of limiting warming to 1.5° Celsius. Apparently the draft text currently circulating proposes a global energy transition ‘over the course of the century’which is hopelessly vague and two generations beyond the original aim of 2050.
Recipients of the email were urged to Tweet their government delegation, in my case led by Sergolene Royal, the French Minister for the Environment, so I did ! And in the spirit of ‘For Ever, For Everyone’ I wrote « You must agree to 100% renewables by 2050 to secure a safe future for our children, grandchildren and beyond ». No response as yet!

Visitors to the stand today included Hashim and his daughter, Indra, who kindly gave me a DVD and Flash Drive of a project they are working on in Indonesia – the Sugar Palm Potential for Energy and Reforestation.
There were many others showing great interest in our work and one or two potential members who will be followed up.
Today was the only day this week that the full team has been together. Josh Gilbert spent the first two days at the Sustainability Forum and Cristina Banahan flies back to the States tomorrow. So late
this evening, when we all met up, we thought it appropriate to record the occasion!

I hope to be able to report on positive outcomes of COP 21 in my final blog at the end of the week. For now, fingers crossed!