Cancun Climate Change Conference: the Diary - Telegraph

• The surreal nature of attending a climate change conference on a strip of land that 40 years ago was a mangrove swamp cannot be underestimated. In the 1970s the Mexican Government decided to create a ‘super resort’ with money from the oil industry. They transformed the white beaches and unspoilt rainforests into a series of motorways, concrete monaliths and raked beaches. Add cheap labour and booze and you have a success story. Cancun is now most well known as the destination of choice for American teenagers during Spring Break. It has 27,000 hotel rooms, liquor stores, white beaches and not much else. But it has also destroyed a pristine environment and is pumping out millions of tonnes of carbon and effluent everyday. Mexican environmentalists intend to use the hypocrisy of the situation to highlight some of the problems in their country with regulation of pollution and destruction of the remaining rainforests.