By Nick Osborne
Hats off to Kevin Rudd, the Australian PM who has recently had a go at organisations and individuals trying to derail 
talks in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. I applaud him for standing up and speaking out against these naysayers, he is taking a viewpoint that is steadily increasing. I have heard David Miliband and Gordon Brown make similar statements.
Australian PM warns of fossil conspiracy
The upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen are threatened by a conglomerate of opponents “driven by vested interests” aiming “to erode just enough political will that action becomes impossible”, says Kevin Rudd.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sees the current UN negotiations on climate hampered by a mixture of “do-nothing skeptics, deniers and a gaggle of conspiracy theorists”, according to Bloomberg.
Australia itself is at a crossroads as the approval of a cap-and-trade scheme suggested by the government has been delayed. According to Kevin Rudd’s analysis, it is a global strategy by forces trying to obstruct climate policy to have action in individual countries delayed.
“Their aim is to erode just enough political will that action becomes impossible. By hampering decisive action at a national level, they aim to make it impossible at an international level (…) it is an endless cycle of delay, and I am sure that with December almost upon us, the eighth excuse cannot be far away, which will be to wait until the next year or the year after until all the rest of the world has acted,” Kevin Rudd says according to Reuters, while adding:
“They are a minority. They are powerful, and invariably they are driven by vested interests. They are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond.”
With a parliament vote due by late November, Australia may still make an approval of the cap-and-trade scheme before the UN conference in Copenhagen this December. Should this not happen, however, “then it will be a failure that will echo through future generations,” Rudd says according to Bloomberg.
Progressive Campaigning 
Will Copenhagen be a failure?
15 NovThoroughly depressing news to wake up to this morning. It looks like our feared about the Copenhagen climate change talks have come true. World leaders have admitted that there is likely to be no final resolution and that the Copenhagen talks are most likely to be a starting point to talks rather than an end point.
At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum leaders including Barack Obama, Hu Jintao and Kevin Rudd, who have all drawn up significant plans for ETS deals and other environmental strategies in their own nations, appear to have given up on uniting world nations’ to come up with a meaningful deal.
This is disappointing, but not unexpected. There has been some intense expectation management over the last few weeks and it seemed almost inevitable that there was to be no lasting strategy to come out of this meeting. The EU has set out strategies to help nations meet their climate change targets, but nothing has been set in stone, especially in regards to money being set-aside. Developing world nations have been consistently threatening to walk out of talks due to the lack of agreed funding from the developed world to help developing nations fund anti-climate change projects.
Personally, I never really had much faith in the COP15 meeting to come up with any large-scale meaningful treaty. The fact is though, Kyoto formally ends at the end of 2011, begining of 2012. This obviously leaves a couple of years to create a meaningful and effective post-Kyoto deal.
The significance of a no-deal result in Copenhagen, is the number of nations that have created emission reduction schemes that will only be meaningful if there is a result in Copenhagen, the EU is one of these nations. Currently the EU has committed to a 20% reduction in carbon emissions, but it would be 30% if a deal was met in COP15.
Therefore, not reaching a result in Copenhagen will obviously be a failure. Hopefully, world leaders have something up their sleeves and will be able to swoop in at the last-minute to come up with something. In my wildest dreams I can imagine Obama, Rudd or Brown flying in at the last moment and saving the day, but realistically, I think we will still be looking forward into 2010 before a post-Kyoto deal is reached.
Thoughts?
Tags: apec, Brown, carbon, carbon emissions, climate change, cop15, copenhagen, Environment, Green, hu jintao, kyoto, obama, rudd, talks