Durban climate talks: day eight diary

Libyan geoengineering plans | People power takes to the streets
| Media's room with a view | Climate change. Isn't. Happening.

COP17 in Durban :  Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and  Christiana Figueres
Incoming COP17 president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and UNFCCC secretary Christiana Figueres speak at a rally at the climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Photograph: Jenny Bates for The Guardian

Libyan geoengineering plans

South Sudan, the world's newest country, is here sitting next to the Vatican, and so is the new Libyan transitional government, with six delegates. Libya is wildly ambitious and clearly already trying to revolutionise thinking on climate change and science. It plans a monster geoengineering project that would not just cool the Earth by 6C and cut carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2021, it says, but would reverse global warming, provide power for 2 billion people, lower sea levels and restore the climate of 1750. Wow. How, you ask? Easily, says Muftah Elarbash, who describes himself as a Libyan environmental engineer who is on the delegation. He wants to build, at a cost of around $45 trillion, several dozen giant, 15km wide "venting towers" to create constant winds in the desert to drive massive windfarms which would then electrify the world. "Once that is done the maximum ambient temperature of 26.2C will be reached in 2020 - 6C below the catastrophic threshold temperature of 32". He reckons that by 2080 the climate will be back to that seen in 1750. If you think all that is a bit far-fetched, then Elarbash cites the recent Libyan revolution against Gaddafi. "Libya did mission impossible in eight months with the help of the world," he says. One note of warning: better not mention a return to the British climate of 1750. Horace Walpole, MP, records: "[The year] opened with most unseasonable weather, the heat being beyond what was ever known in any other country". Severe earthquakes and widespread flooding followed.

People power takes to the streets

Saturday's march of around 20,000 people through the streets of Durban was remarkable for its humour and diversity, and thought to be one of the largest demonstrations in South Africa in years. It was lightly policed and allowed to pass the US embassy, the city hall, the conference halls and straight down the biggest street - would that be allowed to happen in Europe or the US? Moreover, it wasn't dominated by any one group. I spotted waste pickers, farmers, refugees, indigenous peoples from around Africa and Latin America, unions, people fighting airports, clowns, evictees, landless peasants, NGOs like WWF, Friend of the Earth International and Greenpeace, schools, political parties, students, squatters, slum and shack-dwellers, priests and faith groups, academics, Ogonis from the Niger delta, UN delegates and ambassadors as well as UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres. Best slogans? "Keep the oil in the soil and the coal in the hole" and "Never trust a cop".

Media's room with a view

The world's media is usually confined at these meetings to vast windowless halls miles from the action or sunless bunkers where any sense of reality is quickly lost. Not in Durban. The building is light and airy, and the fourth estate, along with the G77 and China group, the Africa group, and the east developed coalition, are ensconced in VIP rooms and balconies with views of lush gardens and trees. Meanwhile the British delegation, along with the EU, the US, Canada, and most other rich countries must descend each day into the fetid, polluted air of the centre's vast underground carpark where shacks have been set up in a dark, oil-stained concrete wasteland. Who ever said South Africa did not have a sense of humour?

Climate change. Isn't. Happening.

The denialists have not yet been seen in the COP17 halls but the formidable team of Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Marc Morano, Kelvin Kemm, Leon Louw and Craig Rucker from the Washington-based Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) are threatening to turn up. Until they do we can only muse on Monckton's latest blog where he says he plans to stop the Marxists' "wet dreams":

"I find myself with CFACT in Durban among the creatures of consensus for the annual UN climate gabfest. At a recent dinner for the inconvenient economist Bjørn Lomborg in London, I first uttered the three fateful words that now fill the hearts of the world's governing climate racketeers with dread. 'It. Isn't. Happening.' When I plopped these three plump pebbles into the conversation, there was a ripple of aghast silence. It was as though I'd perpetrated what the professor of Greek at Cambridge used to call a 'gaseous halation' in front of the Queen".

Bravo, Lord Monckton. You. Are. A. Wag.