Chaos and going carbon negative

It has been a ludicrous day. Having spent the last 5 weeks organising a series of meetings and events today for our team to attend, the chaotic logistics of the UNFCCC meant that most of the people who turned up today got turned away. We (well, my bosses and I) started queuing to get in at 740 am this morning, in sub-zero temperatures. By 1030 the queue had moved about 200m and we gave up. So much for the best laid plans of 5 weeks.

I ran into one former work colleague who now works at Chatham house. He gave up the queue at 3pm having waited since 9am. He was utterly frozen when we met him.

So ... if this is how they run a conference, how do they run a treaty ...

I got in for a little while this afternoon on my own and was told there are now three treaty texts running, but they're not being given to non-govrenment delegates. Rumours are that two of them reject Kyoto, but I've no idea if this is true or not.

Met a senior EU & IPCC climatologist, who turned out to be ex-phd supervisor of a friend. He was quite pessimistic, not on the liklihood of an outcome, but of its utility. He reckons there will be an agreement - you don't round up 110 heads of state for a week for nothing - but the science suggests that we have already passed the threshold at which 2 degrees warming could be prevented. And what we need to be doing to prevent it now is planning for a carbon NEGATIVE society within 4 decades. Jaysus that's hard work.

Am looking forward to my bed. Was up until 2 last night finalising arrangements for today, which were all already redundant by 8am this morning.