There was no Tuesday afternoon entry because it was too nuts. Last night we had a briefing with the Canadian delegation. Richard Ballhorn the head of delegation answered questions for about an hour and then his staff dealt with our questions for a bit longer. The negotiators told us that a number of issues were not going to be resolved by the delegates - they would have to be resolved by the politicians who would be arriving in the next day, Wednesday. The ministers will speak to the plenary session on Thursday. One of the big issues that will likely be left for the politicians to resolve will be the renewable energy targets. However, so much remains outstanding that the chair of the negotiating meetings set a meeting on Tuesday night meant to go all night to try and resolve as many issues as possible. A lot of bad things can be decided at 2 in the morning so we set up shifts to go through the night and track the discussions. I got the lucky shift - 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and went over to the plenary session. Imagine a vast basketball arena sized room, with easily 40 rows of tables and chairs in a square around the centre of the room. In the centre the chair of the meeting trying to get through the wrangling. In an interlude between wrangles a friendly delegate came over to talk about how the US is playing chicken with other countries. Trying to weaken or obliterate language around environmental protection they want to put other countries in a box for not agreeing. The meeting will collapse if no consensus is found and so the country that can be blamed for not allowing agreement to happen can be blamed for making the conference fail. This game of UN chicken looks like it will intensify in the days to come. The talks came to a deadlock at 11:00 p.m. and the chair cancelled the all night session - much to the relief of many. I headed back home after midnight in a cab with an amazingly talkative cabby. He talked about why he wants the summit to succeed - too many hungry kids, too many kids who have never slept in a bed, he sees the summit as a chance for the poor to get enough to survive. The larger environment stuff is not on his agenda. While we drove back there was a huge thunderstorm, lightning flashing like mad and the car windows fogging up so we were constantly using sheets of toilet paper from the roll he kept in his car to clear the fog off the windshield. The days are not getting shorter here.

-Peter