One day to go and a new crisis has emerged at the climate change talks. Not US obstructionism, and not a lack of motivation from the Chinese. No, the greatest threat to the safe future of the planet now seems to be a lack of photocopiers.
To be formally agreed tomorrow, the Bali roadmap must be translated into several different languages and circulated to all delegates who want to make a show of nodding their approval. That's a lot of administration for a single copy centre, and according to the UN, a possible problem.
It could be a deliberate move to distract us from the continuing stalemate over a lack of progress of course. The EU and US have traded insults today, with the former calling the latter an obstruction. The US delegation responded with a barb that they were leading the way on global warming, and others needed to fall in behind and follow. Smirks all round in the press conference room at that one.
Elsewhere, the rumours are flying on everything from a snub to the US delivered by the French minister in his speech (a rumour yet to be confirmed among the British press pack because of a shameful lack of Francophones) to what Al Gore will say in his special presentation later tonight. Leonardo DiCaprio is also supposed to have arrived, to the obvious excitement of many of the female journalists.
The negotiations over the wording of the roadmap text continue apace, just a very slow pace. In the latest draft, the 25-40% carbon cut is now attached to a torturous reference to the Kyoto Protocol, a ploy seemingly designed to exlude the US. Except that, according to the UN, it doesn't. Like the photocopiers, this one could run and run.
