Sun setting alongside Warsaw Stadium in late afternoon of Day 1 of COP19
Scanning through email early this morning before heading out to COP19 ...
From Riseup.net. COP-19 in Warsaw: the issues
I now look forward to a new challenge working to address climate change and sustainability with KPMG and several academic institutions. . . . Having worked on climate change as both a government representative and an international civil servant, I now look forward to engaging on the issue from a business perspective.” — Yvo de Boer, when retiring as head of the UNFCCC, February 2010, quoted by REDD-Monitor; de Boer is now a key adviser of KPMG, the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and Carbon Markets International Association.
Saving the planet, or the carbon market? (see this graph from the World Bank)
“I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now … I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I am talking about the human interactions … I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably.” — Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, UK Independent 29 April 2013
“What has happened in the Philippines [deaths in Halyan, the fourth super-typhoon to strike this year] is a huge tragedy and is just the beginning….COP-19 is a farce, a charade, a scandal. In Warsaw there will be no commitments to increase emission cuts, and the gap until 2020 is huge (emissions should be 44 GT of CO2e in 2020 and with the current pledges in the UNFCCC they will be 57 GT of CO2e). The next COP should be in the affected areas of the Philippines so they can stop playing with the lives of people… and pretending they are doing something when they are just losing irrecoverable time and allowing a mass killing to happen” -- Pablo Solon, former Bolivian climate negotiator, now director of Focus on the Global South, email to Climate Justice Now listserv, 8 Nov 2013
Massive demonstrations on Poland's National Independence Day literally shut down the Center of the City and paralyze public transportation. A long walk home from the COP from re-routed bus takes me smack into the middle of the huge march.
Wagering on Warsaw: COP19 and the Philippines
Yale University Student Reginald Rex Barrer hopes without hope that Typhoon Haiyan will be the game changer to promote action at last in Warsaw.
As I write this, I am literally going through so many updates from different news agencies that have painted a very heartbreaking picture of the deaths , the missing, the devastation , the hopelessness and the chaos that have ensued. Of course your hope for humanity is restored somewhat when you also see the efforts of people who go beyond their role as members of media reporting on the catastrophe, to save even at least one life. Still other stories attempt to show how both the local and national governments have tried to cobble a plan to get the provinces affected, particularly Leyte, get back on their feet. Albeit not too positively. Yet rehabilitation and recovery put together are painstaking processes. Unfortunately, disasters and rehabilitation come as part of a package. Rebuilding only happens after a disaster has struck. Without disasters, we normally call it development.
Coverage by Reporters from Developing Countries
The official UNFCCC site will be compiling and updating on a regular basis news stories written by representatives of the press from the developing countries.
Charmed cafe. No idea that just alongside thousands are chanting and smoke from loud firecrackers scent the air. Police presence extremely heavy.
I'm off!