"Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure"

My favourite, from The Guardian newspaper:

“Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure”

Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary General)

“It may not be everything we hoped for, but this decision of the Conference of Parties is an essential beginning.”

John Sauven (Executive Director, Greenpeace UK):

“It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

Dr Peter Barrett (NZ Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington):

We now have to ask what more we can do to convince political and business leaders that the future threat from fossil energy is real, imminent and that our legacy does matter.”

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Global Change Institute, University of Queensland)

A brave face on total failure. This is a triumph for the fossil fuel lobby.”

Professor Tim Flannery (Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council)

“We’ve made a huge advance at this meeting on a number of fronts, one being those pledged emissions, another being the funding we’ve now got for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. The third is the REDD negotiations, the world’s efforts to protect the tropical rainforests and that seems to be going very well indeed.”

Dr Jim Salinger (University of Auckland)

“I welcome the news that the big players: USA, China, India, Brazil and South Africa have committed to limit temperature increases to 2 degrees C. It is essential that all countries sign on to effective emissions reductions targets of greenhouse gases by 40% at 2020 and 80% by 2080 to prevent disruptive climate change and sea level rise later this century that so threaten peoples such as those in the tropical Pacific.”

Professor Suzi Kerr (Stanford University, Department of Economics)

“The agreement on a transparent monitoring mechanism is a relief and a major step forward with respect to some key developing countries.”

Dr Andy Reisinger (Senior Research Fellow, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute)

“It is worrying that even those countries that brokered the deal have admitted that the specific emissions targets will not be stringent enough to reach their stated long-term goal, which is to limit global average temperature increases to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. We will have to wait until the final numbers are on table to see how far the actual emissions targets fall short of that ultimate goal, and what amount of warming we might expect more realistically once the dust and celebratory rhetoric has settled.”