Ö÷²¥´óÐã

2037 CET: Time to dust off the sporting cliches.

More than half of the teams travelling to next year's World Cup in South Africa are going to offset the emissions created as they fly to the rainbow nation, , which has a longstanding interest in the "greening" of sport.

This allowed UNEP chief Achim Steiner to hope that "the remaining nations participating in South Africa will want to come on-side for the climate in order to score their own green goals in 2010".

But according to , which regards offsetting in the same way that England supporters view the prospects of a penalty shoot-out against Germany, this is very much - yes, you guessed it - an "own goal".

"These proposals should be left sitting firmly on the bench," the groan (sorry, green) group continued. "Rich countries need to set an example and lead in cutting their emissions by 40% by 2020, without carbon offsetting."

My solution? A play-off between teams representing UNEP and FoE to decide the matter.

UNEP can offset their goalposts from the centre of their goal-line towards the corner of the pitch, while FoE reduces the size of theirs by 40%, and we'll see which is the more effective at cutting the scoring rate.

1846 CET: There's been a fair bit of debate on whether the issue of whether will play into discussions here - how much influence the response to their publication will have on negotiations and outcomes.

Saudi Arabia's lead negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban brought it up in his opening speech, saying it had "shaken trust" in the (IPCC) and its work.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was having none of it.

"The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC.
Ìý
"The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these e-mail exchanges, many of whom have dedicated their time and effort to develop those findings."

Later, US negotiator Jonathan Pershing was in more combative mood, referring to the "enormous multitude of different strands of evidence that support the urgency and the severity of the problem that have been managed in multiple places around the world":

"What I think is unfortunate, and in fact shameful, is the way that some scientists who have devoted their lives are being pilloried in the press without regard to the process. The science is incredibly robust."

1517 CET: Despite some seductive mood music this morning, sombre notes were also sounded in the opening bars of this two-week conference.

Host cities always try to give delegates a sense of their history and culture. Mercifully (I say this having sat through many), Denmark's choice was from a harpist and a youthful-looking choir, closed by a soulful and elegiac trumpet.

Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen then ran through a speech with no surprises at all. In a nutshell: a deal can be done this fortnight; it won't be easy; there are lots of challenges; but if everyone pulls together, it can be done.

His minister for the climate summit Connie Hedegaard - who acts as president of the conference and who will shortly become the EU's new climate commissioner - continued in a similar vein: Copenhagen meant "C for constructiveness, C for co-operation and hopefully C for consensus - let's get it done."

Within minutes of C for Connie finishing her speech and asking delegates to approve the order of play, however, signs of cracks began to appear.

First, a few developing countries, with Papua New Guinea in the vanguard, disputed attempts to go through some elements of text without what they saw as proper consultation. Ms Hedegaard's body language spoke to a determination to avoid long drawn-out talks and discussions and - as she put it - "get it done", but not everyone is keen to go at such a pace when they feel their interests are at stake.

Later in the opening session came the first formal sign of a discord between various parties.

The head of the Grenadan delegation, Dessima Williams, said the would "consider their options" if a legally-binding deal did not materialise here.

Deconstructing this afterwards, it appears that this bloc of 43 countries may simply not sign a deal that they believe votes their nations out of existence.

As of now, it's not a full-scale threat to walk out. But it is a shot across the bows to the industrial powers, both developed and developing, saying: give us a process that puts the world on course to a warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, or we're not signing the deal you so desperately want.

Some people here raise the point that small countries can be easily "bought off" by aid money or trade - or bullied into conformity - by their larger brethren.

Surely history indicates that is true - but if you perceive that the end of your nation is in sight as sea levels rise, perhaps that changes the usual terms of business.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?