The city of Copenhagen has been transformed this last week. From a grey, cold and dark place only populated with Christmas shoppers to a boiling pot of people from all over the world and colourful activities all in the name of rescuing our planet.

We have been preparing for this for months now, but seeing it actually happen is far beyond our expectations. All eyes are on Copenhagen – especially the Bella Centre where all the negotiating activity is going on. Everybody here has the sense that we are about to make history.

Today is the Global Day of Action, a day we have really looked forward to here in Copenhagen.

While I'm in the TckTckTck bloggers' hub working on the internets, Mike is marching with thousands of people from the centre of Copenhagen to the Bella Centre where negotiations on a climate deal rumble on. He's been sending photos back via Twitpic which, if you're not following our Copenhagen Twitter list for all the latest updates throughout the summit, here they are.

Organizers and police might not agree on exactly how many people are in the streets in Copenhagen but one thing is for sure, whether there are 30,000 or 100,000 people - it takes a lot of work to pull off a demo of this size. Climate Action visited the activists hard at work in our Copenhagen warehouse last week. The video gives you an inside look at sleeping arrangements for hundreds of activists and shows your messages, gathered from our slogan-generating efforts, being put on thousands of placards being carried in the march today.

Images just in from photographer Kristian Buus who's been following the demonstration and march in Copenhagen all day.

Images are coming in to the Fresh Air bloggers' centre of Real Deal protests happening today around the world and the scale is truly mind-boggling. Over 3,000 events worldwide and the latest images have come from India, South Africa and Japan. To quote Freddie Mercury, one world, one vision.

The crowds in Copenhagen, from ZoeCaron

Michael from our Danish office reports from the massive Real Deal demonstration in Copenhagen.

Taking part in what has been going on in streets of Copenhagen certainly put the last week of events inside the Bella Centre in to perspective. We heard an estimated 100,000 people showed up to demand that leaders make a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate deal in a climate march which stretched in the streets for more than 2km. It almost felt like the whole world was marching towards Bella Centre to turn the negotiations in the right direction.

While tens of thousands of people around the world have been marching, talks have continued in Copenhagen. The Climate Action Network have been producing a daily video summary of what's been happening in the meetings, and yesterday's features our own Tove Ryding. Today's update should be up in a few hours.

Yesterday was the first time I've seen the sun since arriving in Copenhagen over a week ago. Literally. But that was not even close to the most exciting thing about the day.

The Greenpeace contingent of the December 12th "The World Wants a Real Deal" march was huge, lively, and — if you'll allow me to indulge in a bit of hyperbole — damn inspiring. I felt extremely fortunate to be there with so many passionate fellow activists. Despite the exhaustion from averaging 4 hours of sleep a night and the malnourishment from crappy convention center vegetarian food, their energy was so infectious that I was feeling great. And naturally I shot some video to share.

The march kicked off in Copenhagen's Parliament Square, where Kumi Naidoo spoke after the crowd had been warmed up by several other speakers, including "Mr. Green" and Vandana Shiva.

With nearly 7,500 photos from Real Deal events around the world (as collated by TckTckTck), there are an awful lot to wade through. Here, then, is a much shorter summary in slideshow form. Gaze on them and believe that we can achieve a fair, ambitions and legally binding climate deal in the coming week.

With all the headlines about what the world will be like if we don't get a grip on climate change - how hot it will be by 2050, how high the sea levels will rise, that sort of thing - there's always an element of uncertainty. The top line figures you see in the press are usually only one of a range of figures calculated by climate modelling, producing a range of potential outcomes based on possible changes to our behaviour and the environment.

What's often neglected is a risk assessment: comparing the probability of a particular outcome against the effect it will have. Our perception of risk is very skewed - we'll panic about things like swine flu (which the chances of us dying from a very low) but we'll quite happily drive around in cars where the probability of dying in a road accident are comparatively high.

(Thanks to Nick Anderson for the use of his cartoon.)

Like a bad smell, the theft of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) hangs around the Copenhagen conference and threatens to distract people from what really needs to be discussed. Suddenly, everyone seems to be a scientific expert ready to denounce a global conspiracy but you don't have to dig down far to see just how misinformed some people are willing to be.

Many people have strong suspicions that it's no coincidence these emails surfaced a couple of weeks before the UN climate summit, or that the few emails highlighted out of 13 years' worth of data are part of a co-ordinated attempt to damage everyone's trust in the science which is driving these negotiations.

Since the Love Letters To The Future website launched last month, thousands of messages have been pouring in, each one saying something different but all expressing the same wish - that the world in 100 years will be one we would wish to live in. And the way to ensure that is for a FAB - fair, ambitious and legally binding - agreement at the end of the Copenhagen summit this week.

To make sure these messages reach our descendants, last night 100 of the best of them were sealed in a time capsule at a special event at the swanky Vega club in Copenhagen. Danish actor Thure Lindhardt (seen in Angels and Demons and Flame and Citron) read out some of the moving letters and placed the special data cards into the capsule. They've been cunningly stored as barcodes along with instructions on how to decipher them, so unlike floppy disks and 8-track carts they should be future proofed.

And yet something weird happened last night. Not long after the capsule was sealed, the event was interrupted by something - a message - breaking through on the AV system. In it, someone called Maya claimed to be from the future, 2109 possibly, and that the world was a mess. I'm not sure - there was lots of distortion and it was hard to make some of it out.

Now, I'm on the fence as far as the possibility of time travel is concerned. Maybe our perception of travelling forwards is an illusion and we just haven't learned which direction to go in to move around the spacetime superstructure; or maybe the reason we don't see time travellers wandering around is we haven't built a receiver yet. Or maybe quantum entanglement doesn't hold the key and general relativity binds us to the here and now.

But maybe the capsule did make it to 2109 and Maya found it. Maybe it's a timely warning that right now, while the world is here in Copenhagen, we have the power and the opportunity to change the future. It's up to us and even though the capsule has been sealed, you can still send your own love letter to the future and conduct your own investigation into the mystery of Maya's message.

The Four Horsement of the Apocalypse rode through downtown Copenhagen today to remind world leaders of the consequences of inaction on climate change.

I know this sounds especially dour, whereas I think we all like to keep a positive attitude and believe that we can get through to world leaders and impress upon them the urgency of the moment we find ourselves living in, thereby inspiring them to act. That’s why our message isn’t that the arrival of the Four Horsemen is inevitable, but that we can change the future.

I put together this video of behind-the-scenes footage as well as footage of the Horsemen in Copenhagen’s Parliament Square so that you could have a full picture of this direct communication. Greenpeace’s Finnish climate forests campaigner Sini Harkki was kind enough to tell us what was going on.



Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death are especially good harbingers of the future we will face should we fail to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, as these are all likely impacts of runaway climate change.

Day 11 of Ananth's solidarity fast, and here are his impressions of the climate summit proceedings. People around the world are pledging to go without food on Thursday, December 17th in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fast.

11 days on just water. First day of the second week of the Copenhagen summit. Sitting in lounge of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise waiting for a meeting to begin.

Wander through the cold looking for Apocalypse. Four horsemen (3 women and 1 man actually) ride through the city of Copenhagen. Pestilence, Famine, War and Death. (Plenty of that right now. More of it? Much More? I shudder.)

The talks suspended. It is the Africans that are standing up this time. (Good for them. Wait till the leaders get here. Raw power will be on display. Will the meek inherit the earth?)

All of our leaders suffer from a common disease. Thunders Kumi. The 100,000+ people in the cold listen. The politicians are hard of hearing. The crowd roars. (Selective hearing is what they suffer from, I think. They listen and listen pretty hard. To money and vested interests.)

During the march last Saturday here in Copenhagen, I asked a few Greenpeacers — Ananth, who's been fasting for climate justice, and whose blogs you might have read here and here; Uygar, who is also fasting and is the executive director at Greenpeace Mediterranean; and Gavin, head of our climate and energy campaign — to give us their reactions to the day's events. Here they are:

Government negotiators here in Copenhagen were served up a bit of direct communication from our activists along with their breakfast this morning.



We deployed a banner between two of our boats outside of the canal-side Marriott hotel, where we had reason to believe the US delegation is staying. It had a picture of “Uncle Sam” – a character well-known to folks from the States – with a slogan that riffed off of Uncle Sam’s signature phrase: “I want you to save the planet.”



We’re going to continue taking your voice directly to the delegates as the talks approach their climax at the end of this week.

Our activists sent a message to world leaders soon to be arriving in Copenhagen from the roof of one of the most iconic buildings in the world - enough with the political delays, 'Climate Treaty Now!'

Scaling this massive structure was so impressive that local news have bestowed the title of 'ninja' on the activists - not the first time we've been called that. Last week Canadian Member of Parliament Olivia Chow was wondering how 19 of our activists managed to scale the West Block of the Canadian Parliament buildings. So she tweeted about it:

Question: @oliviachow: http://twitpic.com/sjacj - How did the Greenpeace folk get up on the west block? #COP15 #climate
Answer: @attemptress: NINJAS!!

My COP15 badge. Bit useless now

Since early last week, rumours have been flying round the Copenhagen negotiations about what would happen as we got closer to the arrival of the heads of state. Then a couple of days ago it was confirmed: access the conference centre would become more and more restricted for non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace, and today was the start of those restrictions. We only have a few ID badges to go around the team and we'll have fewer with each passing day.

Over-subscription (it's been getting really crowded) and security have been used to justify the move, and I can't deny it's frustrating that our team is split between the Bella Centre and offices in the city centre. But the real concern is what it will allow the world leaders to do (or rather, not do) come the end of the negotiations on Friday.

Restricting access to huge chunks of civil society is not far removed from closing the door on a smoky gentlemen's club, and the transparent negotiation process we've been demanding will become shrouded in secrecy. With a nod, a handshake and a photo call, these guys (and they are mostly guys) could seal a deal which is a long, long way from the fair, ambitions and binding one we need.

Worse would be if they came out of their private rooms and span a great line about the wonderful deal they've struck but in reality, if you read the small print, it does little bits here and there, but the bigger picture will be missing and it'll be pretty much business as usual. If that's the case, they need to know we won't accept their spin and their greenwash will be exposed.

It's a concern but they're on their way to Copenhagen because we demanded they attend. The Global Day of Action at the weekend showed the worldwide support for that FAB deal and we have to keep pushing them for exactly that. We don't need to be inside the Bella Centre to do that.

Geoff Keey is a policy advisor from our New Zealand office and has the questionable honour of keeping tabs on the Annex 1 nations (that's COP-speak for developed countries). On Monday, he took a few minutes out from his frantic schedule to give a briefing to bloggers which was streamed live from the Fresh Air booth in the Bella Centre, where he explains the then-current position and some of his home country's role in negotiations.

Thanks to TckTckTck for the video!

Discussions at these climate talks are often in a highly specialized language that some of us like to call “Alphabet Soup” – because it is conducted almost entirely in acronyms. One such cup o’ soup we’ve been hearing a lot about lately is REDD, which stands for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.” So I thought I’d give you an as-brief-as-possible update on where the negotiations on REDD are at, and what we’re pushing for.

Stopping the deforestation and degradation of tropical forests is one of the quickest and most effective ways to reduce emissions quickly. And REDD can achieve a very substantial amount of emissions reductions.

As much sense as REDD makes, however, there are of course those countries who are undermining efforts aimed at writing a strong and effective REDD program into the climate deal being worked on here at the UN climate summit. And as is unfortunately true on far too many issues, the US is one of the major roadblocks. In fact, the US just won a “Fossil of the Day” award (which it shared with Colombia) for its obstructionist stance on the REDD issue (one of three Fossils it was awarded in the past two days, no less).

Last week, I posted a wrap up email of the first day of the negotiations that I received from a friend. I remember feeling completely overwhelmed at the idea of trying to summarize that first day and relieved to see someone had already done it in a way that was so easy to understand. I found myself in the same position yesterday when the same friend sent an email with his outline of where things stand at the negotiations. I didn't think it possible but this email gives a short account of the very complicated process so far.

As I write this, we are down to three days here at the Copenhagen climate talks. And I am afraid to say that there is little reason to be encouraged. Everybody has card to put on the table but no one is playing.

Actually, not everybody has the same cards. The Least Developed Countries, the poorest of the poor, and the Association of Small Island States, also mostly poor, have less cards to play than the rich industrialized countries. They also cheat less to be honest. Their emissions are so small they can offer little in the way of mitigation. They come asking for help to adapt as weather patterns change, storms grow and seas rise. They are being offered a tiny fraction of what economists say they will need. It might even be the only card they have to play is to pack up and leave, refusing to sign on to a national suicide pact. Their presence here is now on a hair trigger.

Queue for the observers to enter the conference center. NGO observers are drastically being cut down from 22000 people down to 90 people.

As Jamie reported yesterday, nongovernmental organization (NGO) delegations inside the Bella Center may have been dramatically reduced, but that doesn’t mean they can exclude our voice. We’re running lean, mean operations both inside and outside the conference center.

In my post yesterday about REDD, I mentioned that the US and Colombia had received a “Fossil of the Day” award for moving talks backwards. So we put together a little rapid response direct communication outside of the Colombian embassy calling on President Uribe to “Save the forests, don’t kill the climate.”

We also did the direct communication aimed at the US delegation yesterday morning, which I wrote about already.

I’m sure you got enough of the technical details about REDD negotiations in my post yesterday, but I was just reading an update from a member of our political team and thought it was perfectly illustrative of the type of really detailed policy wonk work they’re doing. Allow me to simply quote:

Our Executive Director and chair of the tcktcktck campaign, Kumi Naidoo, writes from the Rainbow Warrior II in Copenhagen. Kumi is pictured above (second from the left) with the ship's captain and crew.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Sitting in the Rainbow Warrior, which is presently anchored in Copenhagen, I am pleased to mark my first month with Greenpeace. I can think of no better place to do it, on board a ship that is synonymous with hope. I feel pleased, proud and privileged to be spending the night onboard with the crew, and earlier this evening I also met and
talked with some 150 dedicated Greenpeace volunteers camped a few metres away from the ‘Warrior’. Tomorrow, I look forward to spending the night with the crew of the Arctic Sunrise, also docked in Copenhagen.

It is a refreshing break from pacing the halls of the Bella Center, an all-too-brief respite and opportunity for reflection.

We are all here to bear witness to the momentous events unfolding at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. The summit has thrown me into the middle of the biggest challenge we face, it has thrown me into a maelstrom: the struggle to avert catastrophic climate change. A baptism of fire, but also an incredible opportunity for me to meet so
many more Greenpeace people, all of you doing what you do best.

We have just passed the halfway mark of the climate negotiations. We now eagerly await the arrival of over 120 Head of States. We have played a central role in getting them to the Summit, to creating the conditions in which they felt compelled to take personal responsibility for the outcome.

Now seems like a good moment to take a breath, to acknowledge all the hard work we’ve done and the things that we’ve achieved so far. The tireless dedication of Greenpeacers - whether staff, activists or volunteers - is amazing and so inspirational. My admiration and gratitude goes out to you all who have worked so hard on achieving the powerful actions, to realising this campaign with all of its tactics coming to a single focused objective.

The outcome is far from certain, and we may not get the fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty we so desperately need. May our energy be sustained for the next few days; they will be a defining moment for the future of our planet. And, we will stand by our core values: confrontation in a peaceful and creative way.

Let’s ensure that our voices continue to be heard loudly and clearly, independently and together with our allies in the tcktcktck campaign.

We must maintain the momentum.

We can, we will, we must continue our campaign for Climate Justice.

-- Kumi

>> Read Kumi's open letter to Barack Obama - delivered just now.

Kumi spoke at a press conference earlier today - play the video below to watch him.

All week long, the Fresh Air Center has been a really valuable place for me and Jamie to come work, especially now that we're not allowed into the conference center. Run by Tcktcktck.org, the FAC is a space for NGO and independent bloggers to work and coordinate messages.

I'm writing this as our executive director, Kumi Naidoo, addresses the crowd (he's also the chairman of Tcktcktck). He got a very warm welcome, and the speaker before him actually said he was glad not to have to follow Kumi on. But I dare say the crowd is really here to see the main event: a panel hosted by Kevin Grandia of Desmog Blog and featuring Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine; Andy Revkin of the New York Times; George Monbiot, author and columnist for The Guardian; and Katherine Goldstein, green editor for the Huffington Post. The panel discussion is about how coverage of the climate talks in the media will effect the final two days of negotiations.

Before the panel took the stage, I asked Naomi Klein (of whom, I freely admit, I am a rabid fan) to tell us what, in her estimation, the impact of activism outside of the conference center can have on the negotiations going on inside. Here's her response:

When French president Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Copenhagen, a Greenpeace welcoming committee was there to meet him with the message, “Politicians talk, leaders act.”

We deployed our banner, but it turns out Sarkozy might not have ever seen it. Why? Because, we’ve heard, he might have hid in the airport rather than drive by our big bad banner.

I’ve seen our executive director, Kumi Naidoo, speak several times the past couple weeks (the man is everywhere, it’s as impressive as it must be exhausting!), and he has a line he likes to use about our leaders all suffering from the same medical condition: They’re all hard of hearing, he says. At least, they are when it comes to calls for leadership and climate action.

But I guess in this case that’s not true. Sarkozy isn’t hard of hearing at all, he’s just sticking his fingers in his ears and going “lalalalala” to avoid hearing us. Which means our message is still reaching him all the same.

Pics of the action coming soon! Delivered!

In what’s being described as “a truly remarkable tour de farce,” the US has earned first place in the Fossil of the Day award for the third day straight.

This time, the award was bestowed upon the esteemed delegation from the US for inserting “X %” as an alternative to the science-based targets currently in the draft text of a climate deal. This “X” is meant to represent voluntary pledges by countries, replacing concrete binding emissions reductions targets.

We’re at a critical point here, and nothing less than concrete, science-based targets will achieve the emissions reductions we need to avert catastrophic global warming. But the US is trying to move us in the direction of letting countries do whatever the hell they feel like, not what’s necessary.

Triggering unpleasant flashbacks of the Bush era, the US is also promoting a plan to abandon science-based targets altogether and instead wants a ‘pledge and review’ system, where everyone puts a voluntary target on the table, those targets are added up, and that number is used as the overall target. So my money says the US can keep the streak alive — but for the sake of us all, let's hope I'm wrong.

If you haven't already signed the petition telling world leaders it's time to sign a real deal now, you can do so here. More than 13 million folks have signed so far — help us get to 15 million!

Greenpeace youth delegate Leah Wickham addresses the crowd at the youth vigil.

The climate talks are on the verge of total collapse. Nothing short of an unprecedented outpouring of public demand for a real deal here in Copenhagen can move world leaders to break the impasse in the negotiations and make the deal that will stop catastrophic climate change.

As those who will have to live in the future world being decided on here in Copenhagen, youth delegates have some of the most powerful messages to send to the world leaders inside the Bella Center. They themselves, of course, have been kicked out of the convention center, but they can still see the truth about what is happening inside.

That's why, in the final hours of the climate talks, youth delegates are holding a candlelight vigil to stand in solidarity across the world. This solemn and powerful event was meant to highlight the urgency and gravity of the moment while uniting civil society in a call for bold climate action from world leaders.

The talks may be looking bleak now, but there is still time to get the deal we need to guarantee these youth delegates have a healthy future to look forward to. You can stand with them by signing this petition calling for a real deal.

Greenpeace teams were out today around Copenhagen, lining various routes from the airport and through the city with a message for heads of state that politicians talk but leaders act. And we've followed them all the way to the parliament building where they're due to have dinner later this evening.

'Don't betray our children's future' was projected on the scaffolding at the top of the Folketing in English, German and Spanish to target many of the key dignitaries in their first or second languages. Because the security is so tight around the parliament building right now, our photographer was only able to get so close to catch this picture but it's something for those leaders to think on as they tuck into their hors d'oeuvres.

With the Copenhagen talks going nowhere fast, a leaked document (pdf) has caused some excitement here in the Greenpeace office and throughout the campaigning fraternity here in the Danish capital. Actually, that's probably an understatement, and Greenpeace ED Kumi is calling this "the single most important piece of paper in the world today".

What's worth such claims? The document, dated this Tuesday 15 December, is a UN memo analysing the pledges made by developed nations and some others in the run-up to Copenhagen. From this information they've calculated that if that's all that comes out of the deal tomorrow, we're on track for global temperatures rises of around 3C.

Bad as that is in itself, it completely rubbishes claims by leaders around the world that they're committed to reducing emissions so temperatures don't exceed 2C. And during the talks, many developing countries have been saying that temperatures should not be allowed to rise by more than 1.5C, requiring an even bigger effort to get emissions down.

So behind closed doors, it looks like the UN is admitting that the deals currently being offered are going to push us straight down the road to catastrophic climate change. But as George Monbiot said to an audience of bloggers and activists last night, the term 'climate change' is like calling a foreign invasion 'receiving unexpected visitors'; maybe 'climate breakdown' is more appropriate and this paper suggests that's the way we're heading.

Unless, that is, the heads of state get a grip on the situation and make it a FAB deal - fair, ambitious and legally binding - tomorrow. More on Desmog and the Guardian.

© Scanpix / Jens Norgaard Larsen

Tomorrow is the last day of the UN climate summit and, by all accounts, the negotiations have descended into complete chaos. The voice of civil society has been increasingly marginalized. There has been no leadership from the developed countries that created the climate crisis. The pleas for survival by developing countries have been ignored. So we've taken action to demand leadership in the final 24 hours in order to save these talks and establish a real deal in Copenhagen.

Just moments ago, Greenpeace’s very own Head of State arrived at the Queen’s gala dinner for real Heads of State, 120 of whom are now here for the climate talks. Our distinguished faux-world leader and her entourage entered the dinner and held up two banners reading “Politicians Talk, Leaders Act.” We're sitting here watching coverage of the action on Danish news as I type. We're still waiting for photos, but you can see a pic on this Danish news site.

>>Great slideshow of the action unfolding inside the gala dinner.

They were there to represent the millions of people around the world who want a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. World leaders risk condemning the world to climate chaos if they don’t take decisive action to steer the climate negotiations in the right direction on the final day of talks.

The climate negotiations are on the verge of massive failure, but Heads of State still have just under twenty-four hours to turn the situation around. The rich world must commit to deeper emissions cuts and funding for developing country to lower their own emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change that are already being experienced. Demand leadership from rich countries by joining the over 13 million people who have already signed this petition calling for a real deal here in Copenhagen.

While our mock head of state was crashing the Queen's dinner party, other Greenpeace volunteers were out on the streets of Copenhagen, climbing lamp posts to carry on our theme of the day - politicians talk, leaders act. Hailing from all over Europe - Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Israel, and the Czech Republic - 24 people hung around with banners before 21 were taken away by police.

Michelle Frey, my colleague at Greenpeace USA, wrote about this fantastic bit of street theater we pulled off in Washington, D.C. at the US Chamber of Commerce. After pulling up in Greenpeace emergency vehicles, several activists dressed as emergency responders proceeded to drape "Climate Crime Scene" tape across the Chamber's building and attempted to negotiate a release of the climate debate that the Chamber and the businesses it represents are holding hostage.

The Department of Commerce was declared a climate crime scene this morning. Greenpeace activists descended on its DC headquarters to try and free the climate talks, which were being held hostage by the Chamber and its clients. Chamber lobbyists work for the very industries that create and profit from criminal climate destruction.

Even if you weren’t in DC to witness the action as it progressed, thousands of people tuned in to Twitter to get updates live from the field as the events unfolded.

The Greenpeace twitter kept followers engaged in all the activities. The Chamber of Commerce decided to use twitter to try to discount everything Greenpeace was saying. This is where things started to heat up.

My favorite reply of the Chamber (@chamberpost) was how the activities disrupted a holiday concert for a local charter school. At first glance, it would seem as if the Chamber really cares for the youth of our country. It’s a clever way for the Chamber to make Greenpeace look like the bad guys. We disrupted a concert. But, let’s take a look at what the Chamber is doing to the future of all the youth in America.

As a parent, I’m very concerned with the effects of global warming on my son’s future. I want him to have a bright future and a healthy planet to live on. And, thanks to the Chamber and all their polluting clients, his future may be tarnished forever.

Companies that contribute to global warming (oil, coal) create a huge profit. The Chamber of Commerce lobbies for what’s in the best interest of these companies, their profits remaining huge. The Chamber doesn’t lobby for my son or the children at the charter school that were visiting the building today.

Currently, our future is in the hands of world leaders over in Copenhagen. They are in the final days of negotiating a climate treaty that has the potential to either save the day or keep us on a path to dangerous climate change.

I hope our world leaders will do the right thing and protect our future and not the bank accounts of polluting companies. It would be a crime, indeed, if world leaders gathered for two weeks and didn’t come out with a strong, binding treaty to combat the effects of global warming.

We need YOU! Please take action today.

--Michelle

Greenpeace activists displayed banners on the route between Copenhagen airport and the Bella Centre, where crucial climate talks are being attended by 120 world leaders.

With only hours left in the Copenhagen climate treaty talks an early version of the final agreement draft text has been leaked to NGOs and media.

"Unless the remaining gap of around 1.9 to 4.2 Gt is closed and Parties commit themselves to strong action prior and after 2020, global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550ppm with the related temperature raise around 3 degrees Celsius."

>>Check out the leaked COP15 draft text on the Huffington Post here

Yesterday - we all heard about a leaked memo that sent shockwaves through the NGO grapevine. Kevin Grandia, of DeSmogBlog explains:

"In layman terms this means that if the developed nations, like the US, Canada, Germany and France don't commit to deeper emissions cuts at the talks underway in Copenhagen we're screwed.

Based on the best scientific research, experts in the field have concluded that in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we need to stabilize carbon emissions at or below 350 parts per million."

>>Our Jamie also blogged about this memo yesterday.

Greenpeace US executive director Phil Radford commented on Obama's speech earlier:

“The world was waiting for the spirit of yes we can, but all we got was my way or the highway.

President Obama can still save Copenhagen by doing what he called on other leaders to do and give some ground by increasing his commitment to cut global warming pollution. But as it is he crossed an ocean to tell the world he has nothing new to offer, then he said take it or leave it.

By offering no movement on US global warming pollution cuts he showed his disregard for the science and the victims of climate change in the United States and abroad. He now risks being branded as the man who killed Copenhagen.

He said all parties must move, but he offered no movement. He said the decades long split between the rich world and poor needs to end, but his vision of a deal here would give us a three degree Celcius temperature rise which will devastate Africa and the small island states.”

Activists called on President Obama to show leadership and shed the influence of lobbyists. Read more about this action here it.
© Tazz / Greenpeace

Minute by minute, the situation in Copenhagen keeps on changing and it's difficult to keep track of just how far things have slid and where the ray of shining hope will come from. With most of the Greenpeace team working from offices in the city centre (after being booted out of the Bella Centre where the summit is taking place), we're reliant on calls and emails from the few people who are allowed inside as well as news reports from the global media.

One such lifeline is the Guardian's live blog which is automatically updating at regular intervals with the latest from inside the Bella Centre. I've got it open in a separate tab to keep an eye on what's happening...

Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

While we're waiting to hear the announcements from Copenhagen - here's a blow by blow account of what's happened at the Summit so far - written by Martin Lloyd, our climate communications manager:

With thousands of negotiators and hundreds of points to agree it may be impossible to come up with a comprehensive account of what happened. But I'll try and list some of the highlights.

At the start of the year the game-plan for success when it came to getting a fair, ambitious and binding agreement looked like this.

1. Rich countries needed to show they were serious by offering significant and guaranteed funds to support action by the developing world.

2. The developing world would then have the confidence to commit to action

3. Which would let Rich nations commit to stronger action

4. The handful of holdout nations would then face a world united for climate action

As the talks started, despite two years of negotiations there was almost no progress to report. Only a series of commitments from the developing world, all conditional on the rich countries coming up with the money.

So, what happened?

Day 1: South Africa joins India, China, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia in tabling commitments as the big developing world countries call the bluff of the rich nations.

It's a gut-busting, heart-breaking cop-out and I'm so very, very angry although sadly not very surprised. The exhaustion we're all feeling in the Greenpeace team only adds to the appalling sense of frustration - our leaders swanned in and let us all down. The deal isn't fair or ambitious and it certainly isn't legally binding. Even though the agreement, such as it is, has yet to be sealed, they have failed.

I hoped it would be different but the skewed nature of international diplomacy has led the Copenhagen summit through two turbulent weeks into an exercise in arm-twisting and back-room deals. The bullying tactics of the developed countries have ensured they have got what they want, despite the attempts of some developing countries to stand their ground.

As those such as Naomi Klein and George Monbiot have been saying, they've carved up a new piece of real estate - the atmosphere - and seen to it that they can pollute more than other countries while bearing less of the brunt of the consequences.

The blame doesn't entirely fall on the shoulders of Sarkozy, Brown, Merkel, Rudd and the like, but they share the bulk of it, and trying to shift it on to other countries like China is just feeble. Obama has been a particular disappointment. Despite saying the science should dictate the action, the lack of hard commitments in either of his two speeches today was appalling. Where are the emissions targets? Where are the financing for developing countries? Where is the binding agreement? We need them now, not at some unspecified point in the future.

It's not over though, not by a long way. As the leaders begin to disperse and leave their ministers to hammer out the final details (although how you make something out of virtually nothing is an interesting question), they'll be preparing the spin that will try to convince us that they've done a good job, that they haven't sold us down the river in so business as usual can continue. We all have to hold them to account and show them where they've cocked up.

The spin is already starting as statements from heads of government are hitting the wires, hailing a historic agreement that will set the world on a path to a better future. They're wrong and as things stand, we're on course for a breakdown in our climate and everything that entails.

And can you believe Obama said he had to leave because of inclement weather conditions in Washington?

They can't be allowed to get away with this. Watch this space for what comes next.

World leaders are scurrying to the Copenhagen airport like rats fleeing a sinking ship. You’d think they were all in the Maldives right now or something, and they could see the water closing in over their heads (if you’ll permit me to mix a couple metaphors).

I hope there are two main takeaways from this fiasco:

1. We coordinated, we organized, we messaged, we demonstrated, we protested. It ultimately fell short, but we came together in unprecedented numbers and forged a global coalition. That’s a victory in and of itself. Let’s redouble our efforts. Only the most massive global public outcry the world has ever seen is going to push our bought-and-paid for politicians to take real action.

2. Like Naomi Klein just told the folks at the Fresh Air Center, it’s time to “take the kid gloves off with Obama.” As an American who gave not just my vote but my time and money to Candidate Obama, I feel betrayed by President Obama. He has sold us down the river on too many important issues, but none more important than global warming since all the others will be irrelevant in the face of runaway climate change.

Two years of planning, two weeks of negotiations, and all we got was a worse than half-assed deal cobbled together in the last two hours. You could say I’m feeling kinda down. Down, but not out. Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown – these people were never going to save us anyway. We will save ourselves.

Late last night, after the results of negotiations by the world's leaders became known, Kumi Naidoo - Greenpeace International executive director - took part in a press conference organised by the Climate Action Network. There he spelled out what the announcement meant and how we must keep on pushing for a FAB deal.

It's over. The fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties has this afternoon officially drawn to a close (or rather all but collapsed), but what are we left with? Very little is the honest answer and, no matter how the politicians spin it or how the media interprets it, it sucks.

Obama called it a "historic first step" and it's neither historic nor a first step. The Kyoto Protocol was both, yet in the 12 years since it was laid down, we've barely progressed - the increasing severity of climate change impacts and the urgent warnings from scientists should have had leaders scrabbling for solutions. Instead, yesterday a small group of these leaders flew in, claimed the deal was done and flew out again, leaving chaos in their wake – and other leaders outraged.

Just how feeble is this so-called 'Copenhagen Accord' (which, incidentally, has not even been formally adopted by the conference)? Let's see.

Spontaneous demonstration by NGOs outside the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, after world leaders failed to agree on a fair, ambitious and binding treaty. © Greenpeace/Myllyvirta

The following piece is written by one of our UK climate campaigners, Joss Garman, and published in the Independent

The most progressive US president in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speaker-phone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that could challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation that put a man on the Moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantle of a religion.

Then a Chinese premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Barack Obama's speech that he refuses to meet – sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager's house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.

Late in the evening, the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs that they call a "deal", although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them signing it with great solemnity.

Obama's team then briefs the travelling White House press pack – most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global-climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball. Before we know it, The New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a "meaningful" accord.

Meanwhile, a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 bloc of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal.

Two days after the Copenhagen meeting came to a close, Greenpeace activists protested in Chapultepec Lake , Mexico City, enacting a future disaster scenario for Mexico after the failure of the COP15. The banners read 'Politicians You Failed Now solve Your Own Disaster' in Spanish and English. Mexico will be the venue of the COP-16 in 2010.

In the last two weeks, a lot of history was made. We witnessed world leaders attend the most important international meeting since the Second World War, President Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace, and the occurrence of the biggest climate march in history. Unfortunately, we also witnessed an historic failure of political leadership.

The Copenhagen Accord is neither fair nor ambitious and it certainly isn't legally binding. Climate activists feel cheated and ignored and the clock keeps ticking. Climate scientists around the world tell us we have to ensure global emissions peak by 2015 in order to avoid average global temperature rising more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. In mere days we'll be welcoming the year 2010 and industrialised countries have made no commitment to reduce emissions.

So the bad news is, world leaders have failed us in Copenhagen and time is ticking away. But the good news is that next year in Mexico, leaders will get another change to save the world.

Don't let our hope sink. In the last two weeks, we protested, we witnessed, we came together to make our demands heard. We showed up in unprecedented numbers and forged a global coalition. That in itself, is a victory.

So now, let's redouble our efforts and get politicians to take real action.

Copyright Greenpeace

Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and its stench wafted all the way to Hong Kong. On Monday, 20 of our activists erected 100 crosses and held a minute of silence at the Cenotaph in the city's Central district to mourn the deaths of the growing number of people climate change kills every year and to criticise world leaders for their inactivity in Copenhagen.

In Copenhagen, leaders didn't make history--but the world's people did. A year of unprecedented action on climate change reached never before seen heights in the last two weeks: Thousands upon thousands of vigils, rallies, and protests, floods of phone calls and messages sent, millions of petition signatures--all calling for the fair, ambitious and binding climate treaty.

“We still need and still will win”