Obama’s short speech to the conference plenary was probably the most insulting and patronising speech delivered by a US President in a long time.

It’s hard to stand between developing country governments and a pot of gold especially when the obligations that come with it will fall onto their successors.

Government indifference to serious emissions reduction is driven by political greed because they don’t want to be exposed to the voter policy backlash from actually cutting emissions.

NGOs don’t actually like being called NGOs. They prefer being referred to as “civil society”.

Rumours around the conference are that a group of NGOs will try and storm the conference centre to try and get access to political leaders.

Considering the religious fervour that many climate evangelists bring to the issue Sunday is, appropriately, an official day of rest.

What was surprising was that the topic of the leaked emails and documents that has prompted ‘Climategate’ didn’t come up in the questions and answers section.

To make themselves feel important most delegates at international negotiating conferences always talk in acronyms, but at Copenhagen they’re in overdrive.

Like the debate about climate change in Australia, symbolism over substance is triumphing in Copenhagen and the pledge to make the conference carbon neutral is looking decidedly hard to deliver.