Monthly Archives: December 2019
Naming and Shaming the Countries that have held the World to Ransom
This is the final update from Madrid by Emeritus Professor John Sweeney. And so after two weeks of negotiations, COP25 finally came to a fractious end on Sunday, some 40 hours past the scheduled close. As the remaining bleary-eyed delegates gathered for the final plenary, the stands were being dismantled, the protesters had departed and […]
Deadlock at COP – Can the Chilean President Deliver Progress on Key Issues?
A third update from Madrid by John Sweeney, Maynooth University’s Emeritus Professor of Geography. There are many contradictions at COP25 here in Madrid. Since the meeting was originally scheduled for Santiago in Chile, the organisation of the meeting is rather as if a piece of Chile was transported to suburban Madrid. So, the main chairs […]
Waiting for Leadership and the EU’s Green New Deal
This is the second update from COP 25 in Madrid by John Sweeney, Emeritus Professor of Geography here in Maynooth. The end of the first week of most COPs is probably what is best described as ‘peak pessimism’. The public servants have laboured all week in placing square brackets in their text around possible options […]
COP25 – No Real Progress in Week 1
John Sweeney, Emeritus Professor of Geography, provides the first of his updates from COP25 in Madrid. The annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change rotates around the continents to minimise travel and thus the carbon footprint involved and was this year due to be held in the […]
Eye on the World 