(This post is part of Friend's of the Earth sponsoring Open Left. Please check out the Friend's of the Earth website here--promoted by Chris Bowers - promoted by Chris Bowers)
 Hi – I’m writing from Barcelona, where the final round of negotiations prior to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen came to a close on Friday. It’s been a tense five days here, with time running out for world leaders to get their act together. I want to share some of my reactions to what’s going on here—and in Congress back in the U.S. This week, two very different types of stand-offs marked political negotiations over solutions to global warming, one cowardly and one courageous. U.S. Senators Back Away from Real Action In the U.S. Senate, Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted the scheduled mark-up of the climate and energy bill, complaining that Chairwoman Boxer (D-CA) was not giving them enough time to assess the economic impacts of the legislation. This came after Sen. Boxer had already given tardy Republican committee members an extension to offer amendments to the bill. The Republican ploy was childish, and almost certainly was an attempt to further weaken a bill that, as passed out of the committee Thursday, is already too weak to protect our climate. African Delegates Stand Up for Real Action Across the Atlantic in Barcelona, negotiators from African countries initiated a different sort of boycott — one with a much more constructive aim and a very urgent plea. Monday, the first of five days of talks in Barcelona, African negotiators announced that they would not continue with formal discussions on other topics until rich countries made some real progress with their own emissions reduction targets. (These targets refer to the reductions in greenhouse gas pollution that rich (Annex I) countries commit to make by 2020.) Millions of people in developing countries are already being affected by climate change impacts such as floods and droughts. Developing countries and communities have historically had practically no fault in the creation of climate change, yet they already face devastating impacts. The African delegation’s action was a strategic and brave move, designed to pressure rich countries to finally step up and commit to new, deep emissions reductions targets under an internationally binding agreement. With so few formal negotiating days left before Copenhagen, time is running out for rich countries to start cooperating. Rich countries’ continued shirking of their legal and moral responsibility to set new, strong and binding targets drove developing countries to this dramatic action. More on how it all played out in Barcelona in the extended version.
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