The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Head of State at the Copenhagen Climate Talks

The head of the web communications team at GPI writes an awesome blog that he describes as "a glimpse behind the scenes at Greenpeace and a repository for lessons learned and experiments in online activism and social media."

He wrote a completely amazing post about how a simple, declarative statement such as "All countries agree to phase out nuclear power" can become something so convoluted and mangled throughout the negotiating process that it means very little and achieves virtually nothing. Something like this: "[All countries agree to {consider adopting plans to} {develop multi-stakeholder approaches, with the aim to {take measures to} {have instruments in place to} phase out {inter alia, where possible} nuclear power.]"

Go read the whole post, it's an instant classic and it will tell you pretty much all you need to know about how these types of negotiations work.