The real work is now underway. The sun has set on Day 2 of the United Nations Climate Change Conference here in Paris, the glitz and glam of yesterday’s headline-grabbing opening ceremony fading as sure as the daylight was gobbled up by a darkening late-fall evening.
The lion’s share of world leaders and prime ministers have departed, leaving behind teams of negotiators to handle the heavy lifting of brokering a deal. It would be wrong to say that hope has left the building along with the heads of state, but it sure feels like reality just showed up in the hallways and meeting rooms of Le Bourget in a way that was palatably absent just 24 hours ago.
As one official observer told me today, the task at hand is “basically the most insane puzzle you could imagine, and then some.” Consider the core logistics of achieving a compromise by the final whistle on December 10: The current working draft of an agreement is nearly 100 pages long and memorializes the wants and wishes of nearly 200 commenting countries. These are broken down into 1,622 brackets with 230 related “options." The goal is to posture and talk and negotiate and trade and acquiesce until there are zero brackets and zero options remaining to be haggled over, a process that requires scores of translators and go-between staffers.
