Shoulders slumped, the prime minister of Tuvalu sat alone on Thursday in front of a few scattered brochures explaining how rising seas driven by global warming are drowning his tiny island country.
The image spoke volumes about the 11-day rollercoaster of hope and frustration that has driven negotiators, activists and even journalists at UN climate talks here to the brink of exhaustion.
The honorable Apisai Ielemia had no one to assist him, and no one had come to hear of his country’s woes.
“I am glum,” Ielemia said, adding that he had been reminiscing about the dazzling white beaches of his childhood that have since disappeared under the waves.
The cavernous hall at UN climate talks, packed the day before with thousands of climate activists, had become a ghost town, cleared to make way for ministers and some 120 world leaders descending on Copenhagen to clinch a planet-saving deal.
All told, more than 46,000 people have registered for the 194-nation UN climate body struggles to forge, frame and finalize what is arguable the most horrifically complicated international treaty ever devised.
The Bella Center, site of the talks, can only accommodate 15,000.
Beyond this island of eerie calm, the Center was bristling with nervous energy as wide-eyed participants — powered by adrenaline and caffeine — juggled cellphones, talking and texting as they rushed from meeting to meeting.
Arriving HOGS (heads of government and state) have upped the ante, and brought retinues of experts, advisors and hangers on numbering in the thousands.
Platoons of beefy body guards, wires coiled into one or both ears, scanned the perimeters with narrowed eyes as they blazed a trail for their VIPs through the crowds.
Already on Thursday — a day before what promises to be the biggest climate summit in history — dozens of world leaders boosted the buzz as they criss-crossed the venue: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Brazilian President Lula de Silva among them.
The unprecedented scale of the event has brought in “big foot” journalists as well.
Author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman created his own small scrum when he entered the media center, a football-pitch of a room accommodating the more than 3,500 journalists accredited to cover the event.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Friedman said.
Frayed nerves and sharp elbows were much in evidence as even the most hard-bitten hacks come unwound after nearly two weeks of too little sleep and too much news.
Each day brings a new set of obstacles and barriers, as the UN and Danish police reconfigure the gauntlet of security checks and machines.
Some 22,000 climate activists from 500 non-governmental organizations were conspicuous on Thursday by their absence, with less than one-in-20 even allowed to set foot in the center.
NGOs have historically played a critical role in these talks, participating as observers in closed door sessions, acting in the self-appointed role as environmental watchdogs on behalf of Earth and its most vulnerable denizens.
Outraged by the lockout, they have taken to acts of civil disobedience, triggering hundreds of additional arrests after more than 1,000 protesters were locked up during a massive march last Saturday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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