It may be the greatest irony that the Lima conference, convened to discuss ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, has itself generated more such gases than a small country.
Even as the climate talks in the Peruvian capital were hanging in the balance, the conference itself has produced more than 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the Daily Mail reported.
This was admitted by the UN itself, which means that the Lima summit has had the largest carbon footprint of any meeting in the two-decade history of climate negotiations.
The amount of carbon dioxide produced at the summit is more than the emissions produced by entire nations such as Malawi, Sierra Leone, Fiji or Barbados over the same 12—day period, with the summit drawing over 12,500 politicians, diplomats, climate activists and journalists, according to the report.
The annual UN global climate change talks, or the 20th Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), started Dec 1 amid hopes for hammering out a new climate deal ahead of the key talks in Paris in 2015.