Oil Lovers Win Fossil Award

Today’s Fossil of the Day Award goes to a pair of countries, a gruesome twosome, give it up for…Venezuela and Saudi Arabia! These countries are receiving a fossil for opposing decarbonisation in a crucial contact group, despite supporting the stabilisation of greenhouse gases – a worrying contradiction. Venezuela and Saudi Arabia seem to be reluctant to clean up their economies because they want to protect profits from dirty oil, no matter what the cost. Venezuela doubled down on low ambition when their head of delegation, Claudia Salerno, criticised the long term goal, calling it a slogan in a press conference.

Moving swiftly on we have an honourable mention to Malaysia and the Like Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs) for championing civil society participation in this UNFCCC process. While civil society groups understand the need for closed doors for some stages of the proceedings, it is vital that observer experts are given access to the majority of the negotiations. LMDCs, we salute you.

About CAN: The Climate Action Network (CAN) is a worldwide network of over 950 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 115 working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. www.climatenetwork.org 

About the fossils: The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress in the negotiations in the last days of talks.

This years Fossil of the Day Award ceremony is brought to you by host and comedian Dan Ilic and WoodyTV