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Arrests, rattled nerves in Copenhagen
Black police vans, with sirens screaming and occupants clutching semiautomatic rifles, barreled past the iconic Marble Church here Sunday, rattling the nerves of climate change conferees trying to enjoy a final break before this week’s intense finale.
That collective flinch — after a weekend of mass protests and arrests — summed up the unsettled mood heading into an unpredictable week of negotiations, demonstrations and speeches by a diverse group of leaders including Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hugo Chavez, Mike Bloomberg, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama.
Nearly every international conference concludes with a flurry of backroom talks and cliffhangers — but the United Nations Climate Change Conference has more than its share of looming drama, making for an anxious final week at the big green summit in the big gray Danish capital.
“There really hasn’t been anything resolved during the first week, so this is the week where everything will happen,” said Nick Berning of the Friends of the Earth, a climate reform group critical of President Obama for not adopting more aggressive climate change targets.
“A lot of times they settle the negotiations behind closed doors and wait for the ministers, Cabinet [members] and heads of state to finalize the deals, but not this time,” added Berning. “They have a lot of unsettled issues to resolve, so there will be real negotiations right up to the end.”
The conference, with its 15,000 delegates and media horde, seems to be built on a foundation of sand, shaking with every lowering and heightening of expectations — exemplified by Obama’s on-again, off-again plans for the two-week confab.
With seven inconclusive days on the books, virtually everything of importance remains up in the air.
There’s no agreement yet on binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, despite productive pre-conference talks among the United States, India and China.
There’s no deal on how much aid the United States is willing to pay poor countries most harmed by global warming, with Obama seeking $1.2 billion from a recalcitrant Congress despite demands for much more.
Even basic logistics remain undecided. As of Sunday night, key members of the House and the Senate, who hold the fate of any deal in their hands, were unable to commit to prying themselves free from the intensifying health care debate on Capitol Hill.
There’s a very real possibility that congressional climate change heavyweights — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) — won’t make it to Denmark or will stay for only a few hours.
Last week, Democratic House members joked that Inhofe’s presence would be more important than their own, in that the world could see what Obama had to deal with.
But European Parliament delegate Dan Joergensen expressed real disappointment when told that key members of the Democratic delegation might not attend, describing Kerry as a “front-runner” on the issue whose presence at previous climate conferences in Bali and Poznan had moved things along.
“He builds momentum by being there,” Joergensen said. “It’s sad [if] he can’t come.”
Still, only one Democrat really matters, and Obama’s decision to attend the talks this week — as opposed to the sleepy kickoff session — “overshadows everything else,” Joergensen added.
And that raises another big question: Will Obama leave Copenhagen with his “American Idol” status among Europeans, Asians and Africans intact, at a time when his approval rating back home is sagging?
“He has a tremendous challenge of managing expectations this week,” said Jason Grumet, a former Obama environmental adviser who runs the Bipartisan Policy Center, a moderate Washington think tank.
“Most other nations don’t appreciate that our legislative process was built for comfort and not for speed,” Grumet said. “They don’t appreciate the razor’s edge he has to walk with the Senate back home, so there’s a real effort under way just to help countries understand the American legislative process.”
Inhofe, a fiery global climate skeptic from oil-pumping Oklahoma, gave the international community a taste of that process on Sunday by questioning Obama’s right to offer the conference a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
“The president can’t do that,” Inhofe told “Fox News Sunday.” “The emissions reductions he has talked about are what you would find in [the bill passed by the House], and that isn’t going to happen. Of course that bill is dead; it will never even be brought up again.”
But Obama’s team, Grumet said, won’t sacrifice its own agenda to answer critics or appease international admirers. At the top of lead negotiator Todd Stern’s wish list is selling China and, to a lesser extent, India on international monitoring of their emissions, regardless of what the agreed-upon targets turn out to be.
“China’s willingness to accept any kind of verification is far more important than the target. ... Creating a long-term process for oversight is in many ways more important than superficial agreements on emissions or funding because it’s something that provides a foundation for future agreements,” he added.
Hovering over the whole conference are the short-term worries about safety and the possibility that disruptions outside the massive Bella Center on the south side of town will overshadow progress inside.
More mass protests are planned during the critical final days of negotiations, and a handful of violent activists on Friday splintered off from a much larger peaceful demonstration, spurring a major crackdown that led to the arrest of more than 1,300 activists.
On Sunday, convoys of Politi vans raced through the narrow cobblestone streets, pinning tourists on sidewalks, as Danish police raided a second residence they said was being used by “troublemakers” to hoard gas masks, stones and paint.
Still, authorities released all but a handful of the 968 protesters detained Friday, sparking complaints by civil libertarians that the overreaction is worse than the threat.
“We have already said that we cannot avoid that some innocent people will be detained,” said Lars Borg, a spokesman for the Copenhagen police, adding: “We are very sorry about that.”
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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Daily Mail, TIME, Google Maps
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