Copenhagen Blog - There will be no climate deal

Written by George Lyon and published in the Steamie blog on Fri 18th Dec 2009

I've just come from two separate briefings, one with the EU delegation and one with their Indian counterparts. Different briefings but the same message - there will be no climate deal.

Details are sketchy at the moment but the EU delegation has told me that China is digging its heels in over binding targets and the future inspection of those targets. There is a leaked draft agreement floating around that is ridiculously weak, but China would not even agree to sign up to that.

This is a huge shock. As I have stated in previous posts, it was becoming increasingly unlikely that a legally binding deal could be reached but it was always thought a political agreement would be finalised before world leaders leave Copenhagen.

However, now it looks as though, rather than being in deadlock, the talks are just dead.

World leaders are expected to leave the conference in the next couple of hours. I've just bumped into Ed Miliband, Sarkozy, Merkel and Barroso leaving a meeting, no doubt wondering what to say. Glum does not go far enough to describe the way they looked.

Of course, now the blame game will start. The EU and US are blaming China. Developing nations are blaming developed nations.

The attitude of the developing nations can be summed up by a conversation I've just had with a member of the Indian delegation. Agriculture is India's biggest industry. Limiting the planet to 2C of warming would cut 14 million tonnes of wheat out of their economy.

He told me: "Why would we sign up to something that will restrict our growth. We are not going to pay for the growth of western countries over the last century."

This is what the Copenhagen Climate Conference, heralded by some as the last chance to save the planet, has come to.

UPDATE: 1837 CET

I have a leaked copy of what the Indian delegation has called a 'holding statement' in my hands. It is tentatively called the Copenhagen Accord.

There are no binding targets, it allows developing or non-annex 1 countries to stick to targets set domestically, there is no transparent inspection in place to monitor those targets and it says that a review of this process will be undertaken in 2016 - a full six years after binding targets for all should be in place.

It is staggeringly weak. Can world leaders really pass this off as a substantial agreement? More to follow...