UN Averts Climate Collapse by 'Noting' New Deal
THE INDEPENDENT: UN climate talks avoided a total collapse today by skirting bitter opposition from several nations to a deal championed by the US President Barack Obama and five emerging economies including China.

"Finally we sealed a deal," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The 'Copenhagen Accord' may not be everything everyone had hoped for, but this decision...is an important beginning."

But a decision at marathon 193-nation talks merely took note of the new accord, a non-binding deal for combating global warming led by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. >>> David Fogarty and Alister Doyle, Reuters | Saturday, December 19, 2009

Copenhagen Climate Summit: Confusion as 'Historic Deal' Descends into Chaos
THE TELEGRAPH: The “historic” climate change deal at the Copenhagen climate summit has descended into chaos after some developing nations rejected the plan for fighting global warming championed by US President Barack Obama.

(From Left) European Commission President Barroso, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US President Barack Obama and British PM Gordon Brown. Photo: The Telegraph
An agreement to limit global warming to a 3.6F (2C) temperature rise, alongside a $100 billion (£62bn) a year in aid from 2020, were condemned as inadequate by some delegates and appeared to be in danger of unravelling.

Developing nations, including Venezuela, said they could not accept a text originally agreed by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa as the blueprint of a wider United Nations plan to fight climate change.

Tempers flared during an all-night plenary session, held after most of 120 visiting world leaders had left.

Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese negotiator, said the draft text asked “Africa to sign a suicide pact”.

One Saudi delegate said it was without doubt “the worst plenary I have ever attended.” >>> David Barrett and Louise Gray, in Copenhagen | Saturday, December 19, 2009

Obama's Climate Accord Fails the Test
THE INDEPENDENT: Watered-down agreement follows day of bitter wrangling in Copenhagen

World leaders late last night agreed a hugely watered-down version of a new global pact on climate change, after an astonishing day of deadlock, disagreement, misunderstandings, walkouts and insults at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The agreement, patched together after massive and rancorous divisions between the rich nations and the developing countries, especially America and China, was described as a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" by the US President Barack Obama. However, a senior American official openly admitted it was not enough to combat the threat of a warming planet, saying merely: "It is a first step."

Known as the Copenhagen Accord, the new agreement falls massively short of the ambitions many people had centred on the two-week meeting in the Danish capital, in the hope of a major new effort to combat the global warming threat. Although in principle it commits – for the first time – all the countries of the world, including the developing countries, to cut their emissions of the greenhouse gases which are causing climate change, the accord is not legally binding, merely a political statement. >>> Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, in Copenhagen | Saturday, December 19, 2009