Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has called the Copenhagen Summit on climate change a farce, undemocratic, exclusive and arbitrary. He said President Obama’s approach was arrogant, cynical and devious, “principally aimed at confusing international public opinion and participants in the Summit, making them believe that it had reached the final document through general agreement”.
He pointed out that Obama had called 16 heads of state to a separate, private meeting, where they adopted their own document. They refused to commit to cutting their CO2 emissions by 40 per cent until 2020, to transfer technologies to poor states, or to aid programmes designed to cut emissions. As Hugo Chavez remarked, “It’s not democratic, it’s not inclusive. Well, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t that the reality of the world?”
Sudan – as president of the Group of 77 – with China, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and other nations from the South blocked Denmark’s efforts to impose a deal that suited the rich.
Obama tried to blame China, slavishly echoed by Climate Secretary Ed Miliband, who accused China and the others of trying to hijack the conference and “hold the world to ransom” to stop a deal being reached. Miliband wrote, “We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way. We will need to have major reform of the UN body overseeing the negotiations and of the way the negotiations are conducted.”
Gordon Brown called for a “global policeman” to monitor countries’ compliance with emissions reduction targets, with the EU taking the lead: “I will work with President Sarkozy for a European organisation that will monitor the transparency that is being achieved … in every country around the world.”
Far from uniting the world against exploitation, pollution, deforestation and debt, the conference seems to have ended in recriminations that may well accelerate the drive to a wider war.