Reuters

The Colossal Fossil mock award is presented to activist Jordan Konek from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Australian Youth Climate Coalition (ATCC). Picture: Reuters/Rogan Ward

Like the Darwin Awards, which acknowledge stupidity for entertainment’s sake, the Fossil of the Day Awards at COP17 served to embarrass countries who were not well behaved on the climate change scheme.

As the only country to have weakened its emissions targets after returning from COP15 in Copenhagen, Canada was named the “Colossal Fossil” of the climate conference. It was also the only country to have signed the Kyoto protocol, and then say it had no intention of meeting its targets.

On each day of the conference, the Climate Action Network (CAN) voted for countries judged to have done their best to block progress in the negotiations. Other frequenters included New Zealand, Russia, and the US.

The first Fossil of the Day award was given to Turkey, for trying to get funding under the Kyoto protocol without agreeing to any greenhouse gas pollution cuts. Turkey has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by 98 percent since 1990, and so far has avoided any commitment to turn this around.

The US earned itself a fossil for trying to delay progress at the talks. It repeatedly said it had no problem with a legally binding agreement, but then went on to rattle off a list of conditions, many of which flew in the face on the original UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Even Saudi Arabia scooped an award after its negotiator said it did not need mitigation measures. Russia received an award for opposing the second commitment to the Kyoto protocol, and for then trying to carry over its emissions credits into the same commitment period, at the same time, although it was hard to explain logically.

Meanwhile, New Zealand was insisting that it could not agree to provisional implementation of a second commitment period, despite its internal policy stating that it could. New Zealand also scooped the final fossil award on Friday. Negotiators described Kyoto as “an insult to New Zealand”, while according to CAN, the only insult was to the citizens of New Zealand and the rest of the world, who will all have to suffer the costs of climate change.