Day 11: Snowed Under
Jorisna Bonthuys (my intrepid colleague from Die Burger) and I made the grave error of deciding to leave an hour later than normal (6:30am) this morning, and got snarled up in a city snowed under and suffering transport failures.
But we did manage to get to the 12-noon briefing with our president at his hotel, which didn’t produce much “new” to write about South Africa and our position here at Copenhagen. But he did confirm that he was going to meet with Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi to talk about Zenawi announcing yesterday that the African Union would halve its demands for climate money from the developed world. Critics say this is Africa selling out, western state heads say it’s the first move to break the deadlock here. Wonder how we’ll judge this decision in decades to come?
Spent most of the day dashing from one venue to the next, trying to catch up with the president but mostly ended up finding he’d deputised his environment minister Buyelwa Sonjica to stand in his stead.
Today was a total dud.
Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.