Every night at 6pm, just when you think that all sense of reason is truly lost from the world of international negotiations, a peculiar ceremony pills a little humor back into the UN Conference Center. The Fossil of the Day is an award commemorating “those who gave their lives, so long ago, so that we today could have the coal, oil, and other products made from their bodies.” The award is given to the buggest “bonehead” of the day, the delegation that introduced the biggest roadblock to negotiations. Tuesday, it was the G-77 ground who received the second place prize for seeking to receive CDM funding for natural carbon sequestration, rather than beginning other new, additional mitigation projects. Ukraine completed a hat trick for the day, taking 3rd and 1st place for proposing that they commit to a 20% decrease in 1990 emission levels, which, for them, equates to a 75% increase from current levels.
With mermaid costumes, booing choruses, and it’s very own anthem, the Fossil of the Day tradition is an uplifting end to any long day of negotiations. However it’s more than that. It’s a fresh breath of stark honesty, a blunt acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of some of these proposals. On the one hand, it is extremely refreshing and quite a relief to see that someone is calling the troublemakers out – that the international community sees through these agendas. However, since it is clear that these inconsistencies do not go unnoticed or unacknowledged, it is worrisome that being called out on these facades is not enough to bring them to an end.
