Gallows humor is about all Yvo de Boer can muster these days. When the head of the United Nations Climate Secretariat entered the press hall at the Copenhagen climate conference on Tuesday evening, he was carrying a life ring, which he had just been handed by the development NGO Oxfam. "Act now. Save lives," it said on the ring. And "tck, tck, tck." A photographer asked him to stick his head through the ring for a picture. De Boer grinned. "I'll hang myself with it if this here goes wrong," he replied.
"This here." De Boer was referring to the climate summit, and it reached a critical phase on Tuesday. "In the next 48 hours, the environment ministers are going to have to work very hard," de Boer said. Should the 130 heads of state and government, many of whom are arriving on Wednesday, be unable to come up with a tangible agreement, the summit could end up with little more than a weak political statement of intention. Failure, in other words, is imminent.
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