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Where are the children?

…well today some of them were at Copenhagen City Hall, delivering a Climate Declaration.  “The battle against climate change is upon all of us,” they surmised, correctly.

And in the conference centre itself we got to enjoy ‘Youth and Future Generations Day’, which was made immediately apparent by the overabundance of fresh faces and orange t-shirts, plus assorted chants, songs and ‘actions’.

But, seriously, where are the children in the agreement text? There’s lots of wondrous language about gender-sensitivity and the rights of the most vulnerable people, but diddly-squat about the kids, who, lest we forget, a) make up half the population, and b) are the future.

In other news, there are rumblings of discontent at how diffuse the negotiations have got. There are so many working groups poring over so many texts that it’s not humanly possible for any one individual to know exactly what’s going on.

I suspect many people are waiting for the world leaders to show up next week. My guess is that US President Obama, Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, and Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany,  don’t really care about split infinitives. They’re interested in the major stuff – how much, and by when, basically. Watch this space…

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