Fiddling with the ‘firewall’ while Earth burns – making sense of COP19

Special blog by Kennedy Graham, New Zealand Green MP. – Elizabeth The 19th conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ended in Warsaw on Saturday.   Last-minute concessions produced a limp agreement.  A Copenhagen-style train-wreck has been avoided. It is 21 years since the Framework Convention undertook to stabilise global emissions ...

The COP that would not die…

As I wrote my Friday blog Saturday morning from the Warsaw airport, it seems only right that my Saturday blog should be written on Sunday on VIA Rail as I complete the last leg of the (too) long trip back to Parliament from Poland. I am sure you know that I would have much rather ...

We are into serious over-time…

I am writing this from the Warsaw airport in the wee hours of almost Saturday morning.  I left the ADP interactive process after 3 AM when the co-chairs adjourned, sending the weary negotiators away for a few hours rest, while the co-chairs and their team prepare a new text. This will be the 5th version. ...

Today’s question: is this the worst COP ever?

Well, that’s not quite a fair question.  Copenhagen, COP15, will, hopefully for all time, represent the low point in the effort to achieve meaningful action to avert disaster, but for in-between COPs, this one is vying for runner-up to Copenhagen. Today is the second to last day of negotiations.  No progress has been made in ...

Hello from Poland and COP19

This week I am in Warsaw, Poland, for what is called the “High Level Segment” of the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP19) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. You can get up-to-date information on all of the events happening at COP 19 by going to greenparty.ca/cop19. The Harper administration continues its outrageous ...

COP19 – Wednesday Blog

I thought the working session I was in last night had run late – after midnight. But in turns out, that was an early COP evening. The buzz in the morning was that the group working on “loss and damage” had gone til 4 AM, abruptly ending when the delegations from developing countries all walked ...

COP19: News for November 19, 2013

Today was the official opening of the High-Level portion of the negotiations.  My day started with a real thrill, meeting the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.  Thanks to being an advisor to the Afghanistan delegation, I was in the room for Mr. Ban’s speech to a closed meeting of the developing countries (the Group of ...

In which I get a pink badge!

I started out early, memories of the appalling arrangements in Copenhagen left me not wanting to take any chances in a cold city. In Copenhagen at COP15, we had to line up and wait outside for hours (day after day) in the bitter cold. Just to be on the safe side, I got to the ...

Warsaw COP19 – Daily Blog

I will be here, in Warsaw over the next seven days, for what is called the “High Level Segment” of the 19th Conference of the Parties under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is not “high level” in relation to the discourse, but in reference to the presence of ministers leading their national ...

University of Victoria Convocation – 2013

One of my constituents, the well-loved and respected writer and poet Patrick Lane, received an Honourary doctorate yesterday at University of Victoria. I asked him if he would allow me to post his speech. It is an extraordinarily powerful condemnation of humanity’s wreckage of our Earth… yet hopeful. Chancellor, President, MP Elizabeth May, Faculty, Honoured ...