As the Copenhagen climate talks (COP15) enter their second and final week, frustration reigns. The developed and developing nations are having trouble coming to agreement on who needs to do how much by when. The low-lying island nations, whose very survival is at stake, such as Maldives and Tuvalu, are feeling desperate, and thousands of citizens have taken to the streets in protest.

Environmental Finance Center Executive Director Sarah Diefendorf, who is attending COP15, notes:  “Tuvalu has been the hero here. Their statement at this morning’s plenary brought a huge round of applause for the impassioned speech of envoy Ian Fry: ‘I want to have for the leaders an option to consider a legally binding treaty. We’ve had our proposal on the table for 6 months. 6 months, it’s not the last two days of this meeting. I woke this morning, and I was crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit. The fate of my country rests in your hands.’”

When the moral argument for action failed, some tried to shame the developing nations into parting with their dollars. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke Friday night at a candlelight vigil:
“They marched in Berlin, and the wall fell.  They marched in Cape Town, and apartheid fell.  Today, they marched in Copenhagen so that climate change will fall. If you are able to bail out the banks with hundreds of billions, surely you can give a few billion so the world’s poor can use clean energy and clean fuel.  For your own sake, for your childrens’ sake – pay up, please.”

Others vented their frustration on the streets.  The Guardian reports that over 900 people were arrested during protests on the evening of December 12, and quotes an eyewitness: “I was in the last line of people before the police suddenly moved in for no obvious reason. It seemed as if they just wanted to take out a bunch of random people. No one was being violent, I didn’t see anyone doing anything apart from singing and chanting and marching. Everything had been really peaceful.”

This news report shows the massive crowds, with faces from all over the globe: