Rich countries bullying poorer ones, mud-slinging and back-stabbing - environmental summits can be vicious
At 8am on Wednesday 7 October, a smartly dressed fiftysomething Filipino woman took the escalator to the first floor of the UN building in Bangkok and merged into a throng of diplomats, civil servants and environmentalists arriving for the eighth day of the ninth session of the global climate talks. She was met with a few respectful nods.
Bernarditas de Castro Muller – "Ditas" to her chums – chatted to a journalist and a colleague, and then went to work in conference room 1. She spread her papers in front of her, stood up and began to belch fire, tearing the flesh off three Americans and chewing two Europeans. After swallowing them whole, she sat back down.
She didn't, of course, but such is Bernarditas's reputation as a "dragon woman" in the epic UN climate talks which should conclude next month in Copenhagen that if she had, no one (least of all the US and British governments who seem to fear and loathe her) would have been too surprised.