The context, though is important. As she resigned, she said that the they’d be introducing a President’s text based on “work of AWGs.” This is obviously different than a Chair’s text — or something that came out of the party-driven process.

While it might not seem like such a big deal from the high-level or outside of this weird UN world, for those who follow the UN closely, it’s a bit startling that suddently this really is no longer a UNFCCC meeting. It’s now a Climate Summit that is–if we’re being totally honest–completely removed from the 2 years of UNFCCC work under the Bali Action Plan that was supposed to bring us here.

That’s why China, Brazil, India and others are putting up such a fight right now. Danish Primse Minister Rasmussen is pretty obviously shoving this new text out there as the only option forward. This text really drops from the sky. Doesn’t at all reflect the work of the past 2 years.

So while we’re here in the UN context, this has suddenly become a Heads of State summit with little if anything to do w/ the UNFCCC.

You could see this as obvious and predictable and expected, but it’s exactly what plenty of countries have been publicly fearing and everyone in the UNFCCC has been assuring would NOT happen for 6 months now. And it’s hugely, hugely important to countries that feel bullied around and that the rich industrialized powers are calling all the shots, exactly what is not supposed to happen in the UN.

(Now if you ask me if I think that a HoS summit has a better chance of actually getting *a* deal done than the UNFCCC, well, yes, I absolutely do. But that’s sort of beside the point.)

BTW–Things were so wild from the bell this morning, that I haven’t even had the chance to write about how bullish and difficult the US was being last night/this early morning in the LCA meetings, keeping everyone up until 7am. Good grief.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR