Blogs

They prorogued parliament to avoid answering questions about the treatment of Afghani prisoners and then they were found in contempt of parliament for refusing to hand over the documents.

They broke their own fixed date election law.

After refusing to abide by our legally binding Kyoto commitments, Canada twice published revised targets: Turning the Corner in 2007 and the last (unnamed?) in 2010.

The targets in 2010 were "re-calibrated" to align with the US targets. They are now 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. This is 2.5% greater than the 1990 levels which were the basis of our Kyoto commitments.

Our Kyoto target was an average of 6% below our 1990 emissions (592 Mt CO2e) during the period 2008-2012. 6% below 592 is 556 Mt.

The last day was very exhausting and exciting at the same time. The negotiations went on until around 4 am on Saturday but Adriana and I had to leave the Moon Palace at 3 am to be sure of getting to the airport for our 7 am flight.

On Friday there was supposed to be an open "informal meeting" by COP president Patricia Espinosa. She had prepared a draft text for consideration by the parties. That meeting got deferred until around 6 pm. At that time a revised and expanded version of the draft text was introduced. There was a long lineup to get a copy of this text.

It is the beginning of the endgame (if you can call it that.) Only a few hours to go. Some members of the Canadian contingent are running a pool on when the conference will end. Any time from 6 pm tonight (the official closing time, I think) to 6 am tomorrow (or even later.)

If that happens, Adriana and I will miss it since our flight back leaves at 7 am and we need to leave our hotel around 5 am.

After much soul searching, Adriana decided that we should travel as far as possible by land. We originally intended to travel the whole way by land but the Canadian government issued a travel advisory to avoid crossing the US-Mexico border by land due to problems with Mexican drug cartels.

We decided to take the bus to Miami, fly from there to Cancun and back, and then the bus home. Subsequently we decided to return by train.

I didn't do the full calculations at the time but have done so now using calculators.