Tuesday in Week 2

Today felt like a productive day, though I'm not sure if it actually was.

I made it to spokescouncil as usual this morning, which was dominated by a solemn atmosphere because the proposed action on 1.5 degrees today was turned down by the secretariat.  It was going to involve youth counting the number of climate-related deaths that have happened this year and, after they reached a certain number, falling over.  We were told that if we removed the theme of death we might be able to do it later in the week in cancun messe.

Later I headed to Moon Palace to lurk outside of a closed meeting, alongside some other youth delegates. We waited for delegates to come out and then asked them about the status of 1.5 degrees in the Long-term Cooperative Action text.  I had a couple of successful interactions, one woman showed me the draft text (which included 1.5 and 2 degrees both in brackets and 350 ppm also in brackets).  A woman from the Pakistan negotiating team informed me that the G77 (developing countries) does not have a unified position on the inclusion of 1.5, but that some countries were even pushing for 1 degree to be included as the upper limit for temperature rise.

I then found out that I had been selected as one of the few youth to attend the opening plenary of the high-level segment which happened this afternoon.  So I headed back to the Messe to pick up my snazzy green pass which got me into the plenary session.

The plenary started with a cultural performance provided by Mexico (dancers dressed in as strange creatures.  Then they showed a short video about how amazing Mexico is.  The next couple of hours were taken up by speeches by the honorary guests and representatives of the major groupings of country.  Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the UN, spoke, emphasizing the urgency of these negotiations.  The Presidents of Mexico and Guatemala spoke as well as the president of Nauru (a small Pacific island) and the prime minister of Palau.  All of them stressed the importance of the unfccc discussions and the need for some decisions to be made here in Cancun.  I was glad to witness this plenary, though it was so long.

Then I rushed to a meeting about 1.5 during which we planned our strategy for tomorrow before heading to a briefing by Jonathan Pershing (a representative on the US negotiating team).  The briefing was informative and realistic, like the last one we attended by him.
After the briefing I caught a US negotiator asking about the US stance on 1.5 degrees.  Apparently, they are supporting the 1.5 degree review (which is currently mentioned in the appendix of the long-term text) but are not in favor of it appearing in the Shared Vision introduction to the text.  There they think that 2 degrees is a more realistic target that they would be able to commit to.
Hoping for another full day of involvement tomorrow!