US Wins a First and Second Place Fossil.
Video Production: BunkerFilms.com
Durban, South Africa – It was a dark day for the United States of America, as it took the first and second place Fossil of the Day awards for stalling on legally binding commitments and blocking immediate financing for climate change-vulnerable countries. The Fossils as presented read:
"The United States of America wins the 2nd place Fossil. The U.S. supported the deletion of Fast Start Finance paragraphs (Paragraph 18 and 19) from the updated amalgamated Long-Term Cooperative Action text. This implies that they are not serious about the past commitments made by their head of states on provision of finance to the most vulnerable countries to cope with the impacts of climate change. Not only is it a breach of trust, but also shows lack of leadership from them to take climate action seriously."
"The United States of America earns the 1st place Fossil. The US is in complete denial – other country delegates inside the Indaba could not believe their interventions. Having put forward a proposal for a treaty before Copenhagen, the US now seems to have taken a complete u-turn on the issue of legally binding commitments. We are just at the start of a 'critical decade' (according to a United Nations Environment Programme report) in which we must increase ambition, peak and decline and the USA – the largest historical emitter – turns up with a mandate to only discuss commitments in the next decade. 9 more years of talks? This is completely irresponsible as this is only making other high emitters sit back and do nothing."
____________________________________________________________________
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.