UN Conference on Climate Change Gets Under Way in Copenhagen
07/12/2009
The 15th UN Conference on Climate Change has kicked off in a futuristic and extremely crowded conference centre in Copenhagen. The "Bella Center" is only going to manage to host all of the guests and delegates who have applied to attend this event, thanks to a series of revolving shifts. Fully 34,000 applications have been received for a centre that has a maximum capacity of 15,000 places.
What looks set to become the most important climate conference ever has got under way under a banner of optimism. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that he is certain that the talks will end "with an agreement signed by all of the countries", adding that all of the heads of state and government leaders are in agreement over the goal to be aimed for: "now", he stressed, "we simply have to reach agreement over just how to achieve that goal". Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini said that the goal can only be "a political agreement that is binding on all".
The conference, which has kicked off with the screening of a shocking video on the potential impact of global warming, got under way with an inaugural address from Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. Alluding to the large number of delegations, guests, participants and journalists attending the conference, Prime Minister Rasmussen resorted to a play on words to describe what is going to be happening in the Danish capital in the course of the UN conference. "Over the coming days", he said, "Copenhagen is going to be Openhagen".
In the course of talks lasting two weeks in the Danish capital, delegates from 192 countries will be negotiating a new treaty designed to commit the international community as a whole to the struggle against global warming. The treaty will be designed to take the place of, and indeed to go beyond, the Kyoto Protocol. In that connection, Minister of Foreign Affairs Frattini highlighted the significant political contribution offered by the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, with the member states of the Major Economies Forum, based on restricting global warming to a maximum ceiling of 2° Celsius.
