“Destroy humanity” should be Obama’s slogan

Day Eight: 15th September

THIRD: US and Colombia

Colombia and the United States received the 3rd place Fossil of the Day award for moving the process backwards on the REDD text. Instead of deleting and merging text, Colombia and the US added and divided text. In the space of one evening, they expanded a 3 page text on REDD to a 7 page text, which led to a chain reaction of text edits and expansion, preventing the text from reaching ministers. Overall, there was a softening in the text for what had been a fairly positive process on REDD at COP15.

SECOND: Canada

Leaked Cabinet documents from Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, show that Canada has absolutely no intention of meeting its 2020 target. Instead, the government plans to fry Canadians and the planet by letting oil and gas emissions rise another 37% above current levels by 2020. The leaked plan is three times softer on big polluters like the tar sands than the government’s last approach. Canada’s promise of an absolute reduction of 3% below 1990 levels has been revealed as an outright lie.

FIRST: United States

They win for being blocking ‘bunker finance’ — the idea that you could pass measures that cut emissions from international aviation and shipping and in doing so raise revenues to fund adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. It’s a great idea: you tackle the fastest-growing sources of emissions, and turn them into money to help poor countries in the fight against climate change. Not only are they blocking bunker finance, but they are the only industrialized nation to do so.