COP 20: Ukraine Rush.

Under close supervision for the US Ukraine's Kiev government has today announced it is carrying out emergency repairs to it's Chernobyl-era Zaporizhya nuclear power plant. They are being deliberately secretive about the exact nature of the work but it seems to be routine maintenance that has been brought forward over concerns the plant is being over-worked due to a shortage of coal that has been caused by the Kiev government's decision to go to war with Ukraine's main coal producing region.

This obviously promotes discussion about the COP20 over using nuclear power to replace power plants run on fossil fuels such as coal. After all it is established that nuclear power is not considered a viable replacement for fossil fuels under the terms of the negotiation because it is simply so complicated and so dangerous. However this incident seems to focus primarily on the minor tensions over the Technological Expert Meetings (TEM's).

Within negotiations there is a huge knowledge gap with nations like Vanuatu (pop: 260,000) simply not being able to compete with nations such as the US (pop: 350 million). Therefore the TEM's system has been set up to at least allow the smaller, less developed nations to at least participate in the negotiations.

The problem is that many rich nations seem to despise the very notion of assisting smaller nations to allow them to develop. A prime example of this is the current situation in Ukraine where I think it is obvious to all that the true purpose of the US' demands for sanctions is to wreck Russia's economy and do serious damage to the European Union's (EU) economy rather then to alter anyone's behaviour. Then you have the situation in the middle-east where Saudi Arabia seems intent of burning the entire region to the ground just so it can declare itself the most powerful nation in the region.

Therefore a lot of the small nations are worried that the TEM's process will become highly politicised with only certain nations being invited and other nations being excluded entirely. To counter this they have suggested bringing the meetings entirely online. The US obviously trying to reject this with US intelligences recent hacking of Sony Pictures and massive computer problems that have meant a third party on the line has crashed my PC three times while I've been scribbling out this quick note.

Generally I think the US is just being hostile because it wants to play politics with the TEM's process but bringing the whole thing online does bring in a whole extra level of technical complication that the process is meant to avoid. Therefore it seems to me to be an obvious compromise of changing the rules for TEM's so they can only be considered official if all nations are formally invited in good time - say three months. However I am prepared to be flexible on the definition of "good time" because there is still the challenge of getting technical experts to attend which could legitimately require last minute changes.

13:30 on 3/12/14 (UK date).