Clusterfuck… And that’s just the getting here.

My colleague Max Boykoff and I just sat on a bus for two and a half hours trying to get to the Cancunmesse, which is one of two halls where things are happening at the COP. The Moon Palace, which is where the real UN talks are happening, is 7 kilometers in the opposite direction. Basically, one has to travel past the Moon Palace from the Hotel Zone to get to the Cancunmesse. Once one is at the Cancunmesse, if one wants to go to the Moon Palace, then one must board a different bus to go there. To get back to the Hotel Zone, one must then leave the Moon Palace by bus, backtrack back to the Cancunmesse, and then take a bus from the Cancunmesse back to the Hotel Zone. That’s fourteen kilometers out of a person’s way, each way, to get to the EU discussion rooms. And that doesn’t account for traffic, which is a friggin’ nightmare, thanks in part to seemingly absurd militarization of the entire peninsula.

I’ll say more in a bit, as I’m still trying to figure out what’s doing in the Cancunmesse.

Cancun

Here in sunny, militarized, and Vegazoid Cancun for the COP 16 talks. Arrived in the evening last night, checked into the hotel. It’s pretty chaotic.

I’ll try to post regularly over the next week, while I’m here, since I probably won’t be doing much work on my book. but here’s this from Climate Wire. Sounds about right:

Sandy, white beaches and a ‘toxic’ issue confront negotiators as Cancun talks begin (11/29/2010)

To hear climate change negotiators describe it, this week’s U.N. global warming summit in Cancun, Mexico, is shaping up like a confab of homebuilders.

Delegates say they are “laying foundations,” setting up “frameworks” and installing the “building blocks” for a future treaty.

They might also need a bomb shelter. Analysts say a blast is ready to detonate, and it’s called the Kyoto Protocol.

“It is one of those issues that could blow up in a toxic way,” one British climate diplomat told ClimateWire.

As negotiators from 192 countries descend on the Latin American city, best known for its sandy, white beaches and spring break nightlife, many delegates still carry the bitterness of last year’s contentious climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. At the same time, participants insist, they spent much of 2010 trying to repair the rifts and are ready to get to work.