Algeria Awarded Climate Action Network’s Fossil of the Day for Sept. 29

30 September 2009

fossil of the day

First Place: Algeria

Algeria suggested in the LCA Contact Group on Adaptation that response measures should be addressed under adaptation. We award Algeria the fossil of the day for blatantly not representing the interests of the African Group. African countries are vulnerable to climate change, not decreasing oil revenues. Cynical, Algeria, cynical!

Second Place: Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

Both countries attempted to further dilute the rules of the CDM in Tuesday’s informal, proposing that a potential CDM ‘positive list’ include “clean fossil fuels” without any further elaboration on what that would include. “Clean fossil fuels” is a pandora’s box including a range of technologies allowing coal, gas and oil production into the CDM. These are non-additional and not sustainable, a key requirement for all CDM projects.

Third Place: United States of America

In yesterday’s contact group on mitigation, the US, supported by a portion of the Umbrella group, the EU, Costa Rica and Columbia, put forth a proposal to create a sub-contact group on common elements of mitigation between developed and developing countries under the Bali Action Plan. Failing formation of the sub-group, the US threatened that if the proposed new groups were not formed, all discussion should revert to the full contact group, putting a halt to work of multiple subgroups. The fossil is being awarded to the US for rolling out demands on the process when they themselves have yet to help build a constructive process by putting forth emissions targets or figures on finance.

The Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of over 450 NGOs worldwide dedicated to limiting climate change to sustainable levels, regularly judges and presents three ‘Fossil of The Day’ awards to the countries who perform the worst during the past day’s negotiations at UN climate change conferences.  The Fossil-of-the-Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, Germany.

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