Exciting news from the UN’s Bali conference on climate change. The conference went into an unscheduled extra day of work Saturday, and at the very last minute the US delegation withdrew the objections it had sustained steadfastly, allowing adoption of the painstakingly negotiated final document to proceed.
CNN describes the scene thus:
- The head of the U.S. delegation — Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky — was booed Saturday afternoon when she announced that the United States was rejecting the plan as then written because they were “not prepared to accept this formulation.” She said developing countries needed to carry more of the responsibility.
While rhetoric at such conferences is often just words, a short speech by a delegate from the small developing country of Papua New Guinea appeared to carry weight with the Americans. The delegate challenged the United States to “either lead, follow or get out of the way.”
Just five minutes later, when it appeared the conference was on the brink of collapse, Dobriansky took to the floor again to announce the United States was willing to accept the arrangement. Applause erupted in the hall and a relative level of success for the conference appeared certain.
At an earlier stage, the big fight had been between the US and the Europeans– as I described here on Thursday. That dispute apparently got resolved through use of the drafting mechanism of putting the statement of the desired emissions targets into a footnote rather than the main text (PDF here) of the Bali Statement. But crucially, the Europeans retained that mention of the target range, after playing some diplomatic hardball against the Bushites. (In politically related news, US Secdef Bob Gates yesterday also backed down a little on the level of the rhetoric he’d been using against the Europeans regarding their contribution to the US-led military coalition in Afghanistan.)
In Bali, a later dispute then erupted between, basically, the world’s rich– and historically very highly emitting– nations and the low-income nations grouped in the “Group of 77”. (Which guess what, represents many more people than the “G-8”.)
I’ve been interested to note that within the G-77 it was India that took the lead in this fight, with China cleverly staying a little out of sight. See e.g. this Daily Telegraph report.
As far as I can figure, the Bali Statement commits the world’s governments to completing an agreement on the post-Kyoto climate-change plan before the end of 2009. Kyoto is due to run out in 2012.
US citizens who are concerned that the position of our own next president should be one that is engaged deeply and constructively with the global anti-warming effort therefore need to use 2008 to make sure that this issue is kept on the front burner of our country’s political discussions throughout next year’s election campaign, and to push candidates to commit to climate change policies that are equitable, effective, and forward-leaning.
I can note that back in the 1990s, Pres. Bill Clinton used the US’s then-considerable strategic muscle to bend the text of Kyoto in a pro-US direction– and then decided to do nothing to try to win ratification for the Protocol from the US Congress.
Guess what: other countries’ people and governments noticed and remembered that sad (and one could even say somewhat duplicitous) performance.
And then came George W. Bush, who along with his side-dick, VP Cheney, derided the whole notion that international agreements with measurable targets had any useful role to play at all.
Climate change is one crucial arena– along with nuclear weapons– in which the wellbeing and survival of US citizens are seen as very clearly inter-reliant with the survival and wellbeing of the rest of the world’s 6 billion people. We are all in this frail boat together.
Luckily, many US citizens seem finally to be waking up to this fact– even if they are not yet ready to acknowledge either the scale of the damage our country’s past emissions have caused to the rest of the world or the depth of the changes in lifestyles and mindsets that will be required to bring our emissions down to a globally-proportionate and reabsorbable level.
But still, it is good that increasing numbers of Americans are starting to think about these things and that there a number of nationwide groups doing good, solid organizing around them… Good, too, that we have increasingly potent and well-organized friends around the world who will help to persuade Washington to get with the global anti-warming program.
I was horrified, however, to see the “business as usual” news judgment being displayed by the WaPo this morning, when it buried its coverage of the globally important, cliffhanging proceedings of the Bali conference to deep down at the bottom of p.17. What were they thinking?
Were they thinking?
The UNFCCC, the body that convened the Bali gathering, has a web-page that directs you to a fascinating array of news coverage of its work from all around the world. You can bet that most of those other media outlets linked to there did not bury the Bali news deep beneath the rest of their stories.
Regrettably , it appears that the upcoming Hawaii conference on climate change, and any embarrassment that would ensue from a negative reaction from potential delegates, may have been the trigger for the agreement on wording by the USA.
It may well be that it will take a change of administration in the US to effect a genuine commitment to tackling AGW.
I believe global warming is being used to get people and countries used to the idea of a tax (carbon tax) by a central global government (UN or some other entity). Once that gains acceptance, then a global currency (carbon dollar) will be floated to replace the dollar. In effect, the currency will be on the carbon standard, and it may be used to purchase X units of oil, coal, etc.
This will require a global economic crisis of one form or another to implement.
The carbon tax will facilitate the migration of industry from high tax areas to low tax areas, and help distribute the wealth between countries. This is necessary before a One World Government is possible, and is happening to a certain extent already between US and other countries like China-Mexico, and perhaps the strong Euro is triggering momentum for a similar transition.
The idea of a New World Order being a One World Global Socialist government has been around for a while. I do not know if the elite have reached a consensus, and are just playing good cop vs bad cop (GWOT crowd who discredits democracy and brings fears of a world dominated by Fascists vs the Earth loving Socialists), or if this is really a split between those who favour one or the other. If divided, then on one side there is a mainly Anglo-American and Neo-Zionist group who wants to achieve global dominance by force and intimidation, and the other more benign group led by Europeans and Anglo-American-Israeli neo-liberals.
There is an obvious shift that just happened. The Iran WW III channel has been switched over to the Climate Change channel. Was this part of the plan, victory of one group over another, invisible forces forced a change of direction (China/Russia?), coincidence or conspiracy?.
If Climate Change were the main issue, there should be talk of a Global Manhattan type project to find a replacement for carbon based fuels. The fact that there is not supports my belief there is another agenda here. Time will tell.
I just cannot see, having read all the communiques that I can find on the net, that anything at all was decided at Bali. True, the Americans were booed, but so what in a world where the Americans say and believe they can do as they please. It is true that the Americans went along with a completely procedural item about when to meet next, or if you like what items are on the agenda. The Americans did not accept that they would, should, or had any idea at all of accepting fixed standards, quota, limits or call any real action whatever you will. They did not accept that it is ridiculous for the bank robber to denounce the clerks in the bank he just robbed of failing to put enough into the global reduction “pot”. For him to go further and say he sees no reason to contribute at all until the dead broke clerks fork up big amounts should have led to the delegates mobbing the Americans and throwing them out. They did not even agree to the numbers, only making a pallid side reference, later reduced to footnote status (that is, not an item of substance in any deal) which means reducing the issue to zero. The American performance was the most outrageous display of arrogant idiocy anyone could possibly have expected, even those who think very ill of the USA. I am afraid you are sheep. Us too, I guess, but you first as having the duty to lead and endlessly clamoring that everyone else is to stand aside and give you room. Hah! You are not going anywhere at all, it seems.