Free Republic

Firebrand leaders Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Robert Mugabe turned up the heat at the UN climate talks, dumping the blame for global warming squarely at the feet of capitalism. Mr Chavez, the President of Venezuela, was one of the first world leaders to take the podium at the venue of the Copenhagen talks. He seized the occasion to characterise newly-minted Nobel Peace laureate US President Barack Obama as a warmonger. "I don't think Obama is here yet," said Mr Chavez. "He got the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers to kill innocent people...

THE Copenhagen climate summit was pretty much summed up in the high-level segment yesterday when Penny Wong's speech was interrupted by whistles and chanting and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got a standing ovation. President Chavez brought the house down. When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause. When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was...

The climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce". With just two days remaining, the inability to overcome disagreements about the shape of a deal to combat global warming led to hours of inaction today , while outside the negotiations police clashed with protesters who broke through a security cordon but failed in an attempt to storm the conference centre. "We have made no progress" said a source close to the talks. "What people don't realise is that we are now...