Mr Phrakhrupaladsuathanavachirakhun
The man with the best name at the conference is undoubtedly Mr Phrakhrupaladsuathanavachirakhun. He is a from the Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association in New York. Meanwhile the campaigners are praying for a miracle, and who better than the Guyanan delegate Jesus Smith. Jesus?
Bjørn regales the press
Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish statistician and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has camped out on a sofa in the coffee bar of the media centre, presumably to better pounce on unwary journalists. We could not escape, and were regaled:
This is a wholly failed process. Rio and Kyoto failed so why should this one be any different? To cut to 2C will cost $40 trillion a year by 2100 – 13% of GDP. Every dollar you spend, you do 2 cents worth of climate good.
Thanks for that Bjørn.
Off the map
This morning the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), the association of 43 small island states, came up with its proposal for a massive cut in emissions. Too late, it seems. The vast UN globe right outside the Bella Centre does not include any of the small island states and delegates have taken to drawing in their own countries. Dessima Williams, the Aosis spokeswoman from Grenada, has now made a formal complaint to the UN. “We need to be on that map,” she says.
Protocol problem
Terrible problem for the Danes. It seems that protocol dictates that the head of state who has been in power the longest sits next to the Queen of Denmark at any formal state occasion. At the moment, this appears to be Robert Mugabe, who will clearly come with a plan to publicly embarrass the UK.