EDITORIAL

The climate issue has all the ingredients to be made into a Bollywood masala film. Those who swear by Hollywood might point out that all that the green corridors lack is Agent 007. I am sure that the “green rooms “ , no longer the sole proprietary of grease paint actors , but of actors of another and much shrewder kind, do have amidst them men and women of far greater deceitfulness and craftiness than all generations of Bond put together! Copenhagen. Hopenhagen, Gropenhagen. One is not too sure when to call the climate summit what. Just when we were trying to Hope to Cope with all the arm twisting of big bro and clout and earn few all important brownie points by parrot-talking along with the developed nations , there came a bigger wham –bam from European cousins of Uncle Sam. A secret draft worked out by a group known as “ Circle of Commitments” , understood , as the media reports state, to include UK, Denmark and perhaps, finger-held , spoon-fed and bibbed by who else but USA, leaked a couple of days back. Dan Brown and his circle of Illuminatis might have inspired the conspirators but this plot was yummier and thicker .The text ,which intended to sideline UN negotiations, purported to scrap Kyoto pacts (after all promises are made to be broken and all is fair in you know where and where), climate change funds to be handed over to the World Bank and weaken UN role. The developed countries should be allowed to fart out 2.67 tonnes of carbon per person while developing countries are given a target of not more than1.44 tonnes. Before you can ask what method there is in this madness, you have a new sub-set of “most vulnerable” countries thrust on your face.

The Danish government and other co-conspirators / sorority brothers, depending on where you can be pegged on the latitude and longitude (come on, by now we all know how your bloc decides how bleak your future is climatologically! so let’s not pretend…), have claimed innocence, too fast to sound innocent enough. But there have been some stern reactions to all this. There have been demands that all negotiations must be made in full public glare so that developing nations do not have to turn into peeping Toms to discover what is going on behind the closed doors. The G 77 have categorically demanded transparency, now that the cat is out of bag. Never a munDane moment there, you bet!

While you are taking your time to recover, here is a bit of trivia, as reported by tabloids. It seems that according to the British Daily Telegraph, the 1,200 limousines and 140 private planes, plus caviar wedges, descending on Denmark’s capital city will produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as a medium-sized city. And I am also informed, by the same tabloid, that there is actually a low key but “certainly there” climate change skeptics’ conference also taking place in Copenhagen this week.

I am interested to know if there would be self-flagellation rituals there in protest of those who believe in climate change as real and there. Since none of the sides has cared to invite me to attend I would love it if someone somewhere could send me a first hand report of this one.

So long.