Waiting for history to happen is no small task. It is late Friday afternoon here in Paris and the COP21 is staggering its way toward a conclusion. Things were meant to wrap today. That was the plan all along. A historic and sweeping international climate agreement approved by 6 p.m. as per the mandate of COP21 President and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. The man himself, however, emerged from behind closed-door negotiations just after lunch today to let an eager pack of journalists know that such a tidy and timely outcome was not in the works.
Back-to-back nights of essentially around-the-clock talks between only the highest level negotiators had been helpful but far from final. A weary-looking Fabius, flanked by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, told the assembled crowd that a “final draft” text would be delivered to the parties early Saturday morning and that he fully expected ratification by the end of the day. “We are nearly there. We are almost at the finish line.” he said, echoing sentiments and exact phrases he has used repeatedly in the last 36 hours, “I am optimistic.”
If only that was all it took, one determined manʼs optimism. Alas, when nearly 200 countries are fighting over the language of a nearly 20,000-word document that will become the most important environmental treaty of our time, the phrase “cluster fuck” comes immediately to mind. Last night, after yet another draft document was released at a meeting of Fabius's Comité de Paris, the writing was very quickly put on the wall for todayʼs call for negotiating overtime.