"Our ability to take collective action is in doubt," US President Barack Obama warned the plenary.

While negotiations in support of REDD are reported to have  moved forward in the weeks leading up to today, they were  overshadowed this morning by the drama emerging as world leaders struggled to find consensus on a political deal that will allow progress toward a climate action treaty.

Upon arrival in Copenhagen today, President Barak Obama held early morning meetings with a small group of political leaders in a last ditch effort to reach consensus on a draft political agreement on climate change to rescue the COP15 Summit from concluding without hope for a climate deal. ( The draft agreement will no doubt generate an additional flurry of pages to add to the more than 4,000,000 pages of text that the Konica-Minolta document production center has generated over the course of the COP15 meeting.)

In his presentation to the plenary this morning Obama  urged world leaders to "choose action over inaction; the future over the past – with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people and to the future of our planet".

While many parties are likely to see a political deal as a dissapointing failure that lacks transparency and inclusiveness, leaders from developing nations are nonetheless working on a draft agreement that would take steps toward addressing the key issues of emission reductions by rich countires, coupled with financing for adaptation and mitigation to poor and vulnerable countries. Progress has been made on many fronts during the two weeks of negotiations, however longstanding issues still divide developed and developing nations of the world.  Despite these divisions there have been signs of hope that a deal of some sort is still possible.

One of this issues has been financial support for adaptation and mitigation and another has been transparency. Yesterday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would contribute to a long term climate change fund that would provide $100 billion a year by 2020.  This non-binding offer by the US  was made contingent upon on reaching a broader agreement addressing "transparency" in the reporting of China's measures to limit hegreenhouse gas emissions. Shortly afterward China responded by offering to open its reporting on actions to reduce carbon emissions to international review. This morning President Lula of Brazil offered that his country would  contribute to the finance mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol –  if an agreement is reached in Copenhagen Friday.  Lula underlined that the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of emerging economy emissions" should respect the sovereignty of each country" and that action on climate change should not hamper economic growth in the developing world:  "For a lot of people in Brazil, in Africa, in India, China and other developing countries three meals a day is still something of the future.  Despite such progress negotiations are still at stalemate and COP15 is  gearing up for a make or break finale. In her address the conference president, Danish minister Connie Hedegaard, said “In these very hours we are balancing between success and failure. Success is within reach. But (…) I must also warn you: We can fail.”

For the duration of the conference, all official meetings and press conferences will be available live and on-demand in original languages and in English translation. Shortly after the close of each meeting, on-demand files will be available. Also, a selection of side events will be available on-demand in original languages.

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