From Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the nearest hotel room to Copenhagen you can get. It also happens to be where I’m doing press for the new Groove Armada album. Coinciding with the climate talks is quite handy as it means I can shift the conversation to that rather than ‘where did you meet’ or ‘so, your new sound, tell me more’.

Yesterday’s opening of the summit had some good points. Gordon Brown doing his bit and pressing the EU to offer 40% emission cuts by 2020, for example, or the confirmation that all the key political leaders are actually going to turn up next week. Obama has played a shrewd hand and got CO2 classified as a danger to human health, allowing him to regulate it without relying on the Senate, where an ugly alliance of oilmen, republicans and alaskans have vowed that Barack won’t pass any legislation, even if it kills them.

On the other hand, the opening day got a bit school playground when the Chairman of the talks had to request that in future the delegates come back more quickly from their lunch.

We also heard that India’s chief negotiator and right hand man have refused to come, which isn’t a great start from the world’s 5th biggest emitter. However, if the Indian press stay at home with them, that might help the organisers of the Copenhagen media zone who are trying to fit 5000 people into 3500 places. 

Day one of the talks saw the Saudi’s coming clean and saying that they doubt warming is man made. I wonder why that is. A bit shortsighted though, coming from the country that is so short of water it’s had to stop growing it’s own grain. Dubai are also sounding strangely sceptical. You would think that a country which is 2mm above sea level would want to sort things out. Having said that, their famous ski area in the 45 degree desert heat is probably not compatible with a low carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, speculation was rife as to who was behind the leak of the emails from the East Anglican research centre. Theories ranged from the Russian secret service to the Canadian tar sands oil barons. The one thing that was agreed was that the timing of the leak and the speed with which it spread around the world were not accidental.

It was a good day for the UK press. The Guardian successfully coordinated a campaign in which 56 of the worlds’ newspapers carried the same editorial urging the need for decisive climate action, a move which Alistair Campbell described as ‘surprisingly impactful’. It’s not so surprising. 56 newspapers from Shanghai to London with a joint circulation of several hundred million, all agreed on the same text.  It’s unlikely that would go unnoticed.

1200 limos and 140 private planes have arrived in Copenhagen. ‘It had better be worth it’ said news presenter Jon Snow, muttering angrily about summit’s carbon footprint.

Before leaving the UK, Environment + Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband had a chat in the newsroom with Nigel Lawson. It’s hard to fathom what Nigel and Co’s agenda is. His arguments are.

1) The man on the street wouldn’t mind things a bit warmer
2) The world isn’t getting hotter at the moment so all this global warming talk is rubbish.
3) Even if it isn’t all rubbish it’s too expensive anyway.

But Nigel knows as well as anyone that;

1) If the world gets 3 degrees hotter, it doesn’t mean we get a nice suntan. It means that the planet goes into a spiral of irreversible warming which will leave it unfit for human habitation.

2) It was fully predicted by the scientific community that before the next burst of warming in 5 or 6 years time, there would be a period of static or even slightly declining temperatures. This is due to different layers of the atmosphere warming up at different rates. Even with this atmospheric breather, we’re still losing glaciers and ice 40% more quickly than the worst case scenario predicted in 2007.

3) To say the switch to renewable energies is too expensive is based on the assumption that we can carry on as we are. But Offgen, the UK energy regulator, predicts that the world’s ongoing reliance on fossil fuels will mean UK price increases of up to 60% over the next few years. These fuels are running out, and the reality of them running out has a massive impact on price long before we reach the bottom of the barrel. That’s on top of the 300 billion a year we spend subsidising fossil fuels at the moment. In contrast, an electric car charged from a windturbine runs at the equivalent of 50p a gallon.

So humanity is on the operating table in Copenhagen, with 13 days left to save it. On one side of the operating theatre there are all the worlds’ experts, united in their call that to save the patient requires decisive, immediate  action.

On the other side, there are the Saudis, the Dubai delegation, Nigel, the new Canadian Oil Barons and Fox News urging us that we’re fine, we haven’t got much of temperature yet so we should go out and enjoy ourselves. And here’s a pack of cigarettes on us.

Holding the scalpel are 110 politicians who are spending too long having lunch.

Watch this space.

Andy Cato.