Updates from the Poznan Climate Talks

John Coequyt of the Sierra Club's Energy and Global Warming Program is over in Poznan, Poland, this week for the big climate talks. We've seen in many news articles that the talks aren't going so well, and John's updates are no different.

He's sent us two updates so far, and here they are in one convenient blog post. Enjoy! And if you have any questions for John, submit them in the comments and we'll see if we can get him to answer a few when he's got a spare moment.

Update 1 from Poznan:
I wanted to give you all heads up that things are not going well here.  I worked out some of the potential outcomes with some of the U.S. people here and I am pretty sure that the most we can hope for is very little progress.  Thankfully it does not appear that we will have moved backwards.

The European Union is distracted by their domestic climate debate and it appears that too many countries are content to wait for the U.S.  We should have a talk about how much we want to stress the importance of the U.S. getting its team ready for the international work after watching this slow train wreck.

The ministers have not even arrived and it already seems to be clear that we will not get what we hoped out of this meeting.

All is not lost.  There is still a year to go.  And we should not do what the PEW Center is doing and put hopeless messages out, but we really need leadership.

China and France issued statements of disappointment today with the close of the Kyoto text.  No such statement is forthcoming from the U.S.

Update 2 from Poznan:

No great breakthrough to report.  

The productive proposals from China, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea have been met with silence. Most of the text has been negotiated back to where it was in Bali and there does not apper to be any real initiative to move to real negotiating text.  

Today the US gave its ministerial speech and, as expected, said nothing. There is also growing frustration with the lack of progress on the adaptation fund.  

There is still some hope for a little progress.  The ministers are here and Al Gore will speak tomorrow.  I was part of a group that briefed him today.  He will push the EU.  He said Obama is read to push climate.  Can't happen fast enough.