December 19, 2009

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Accord of Sorts in Copenhagen

Working late into the night, negotiators from the world's nations agreed in principle to attempt to limit the global postindustrial temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. Steve Mirsky reports, with Christina Reed in Copenhagen

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An accord, of sorts, in Copenhagen. UNESCO’s Christina Reed:

“So it got really tense, [Danish prime minister Lars Loekke] Rasmussen had the gavel in the air and said, ‘It looks like we don’t have a consensus, I hate to do this but,’ and as he was about to pound, the U.K.’s Ed Miliband, negotiator, said, ‘I call for an adjournment,’ and so they adjourned, and everyone broke and they adjourned. This short adjournment lasted about two hours, they met off the floor to discuss this a little bit more in person. It was face-to-face arm wringing, it was ‘let’s get this done, let’s move this ahead.’ Ultimately it was Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations working very diligently.”

The world’s nations will try to limit postindustrial temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. [Reed:]“It’s not perfect, it’s not a perfect document, several things that they wanted are left out, but they believe it’s a process that’s going to help them move forward, it’s going to start mobilizing the financial agreements, it’s providing a small architecture that can be built.”

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—Steve Mirsky 

[The above text is an exact transcript of the audio in the podcast.]

The text of the Copenhagen Accord: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf

Nature's coverage of Copenhagen Accord

For additional information, see Copenhagen Accord

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Accord of Sorts in Copenhagen