By Chris Lang, 11th December 2011
The UN climate talks in Durban finished late on Saturday night, almost 36 hours late. Negotiators agreed little more than to start talks next year on a new deal. These talks are supposed to end by 2015 and are to come into effect by 2020.
“The bottom line is that governments got practically nothing done here COP17 and that’s unacceptable,” wrote Sam Smith Leader of the WWF Climate and Energy Initiative in a tweet. World Development Movement put out a press release saying that WDM “slammed the outcome of the UN climate talks in Durban as a ‘spectacular failure’ that will condemn the world’s poorest people to hunger, poverty and ultimately, death.”Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Climate Justice Coordinator of Friends of the Earth International said, “Led by the US, developed nations have reneged on their promises, weakened the rules on climate action and strengthened those that allow their corporations to profit from the climate crisis.”
Washington, however, is happy. “We got the kind of symmetry that we had been focused on since the beginning of the Obama administration. This had all the elements that we were looking for,” U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern told Reuters.
