Yvo de Boer
So it looks like Copenhagen is going to be a bust. I know I know all that grassroots organization utilizing this wonderful social nexus known as the web has all been in vain. Thanks anyway 350.org, tcktcktck, and Hopenhagen but frankly a Copenhagen deal looks pretty unlikely. As UN Climate chief Yvo de Boer said yesterday;
I don’t think we can get a legally binding agreement by Copenhagen. I think that we can get that within a year after Copenhagen.
Shiiiiiiiit yo and I thought optimism was a UN mandate. Well what’s the problem Yvo, why can’t we just all get along and find a solution? Diplomacy doesn’t work without a road map did anyone set one up?
According to a roadmap laid out in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007, international negotiations to agree on a successor to the legally binding Kyoto Protocol are to be concluded in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Ohhh so a road map was established. So what are the big holdups?
- Developing countries are not satisfied with a political agreement in Copenhagen.
Well we knew that this was going to be a sticking issue so what steps are being taken to calm the developing fears? Well nothing really. Developed countries don’t want to come to a consensus on funding for climate change and don’t seem to want to move forward till developing countries agree to binding targets, which they won’t do. So a standstill is established. Actually the solution seems to be a big fat backtrack with some nations suggesting we carry on with Kyoto.
What about the good ole’ US of A?
Some other delegates said it could take longer, partly because domestic US climate legislation will not be ready this year despite a vote by a Senate panel on Thursday in favor of a Democratic climate bill. A Japanese official said “unless it’s agreed within six months after Copenhagen it will perhaps be the following year because of the US mid-term elections”. About a third of the US Senate is up for re-election in November 2010.
Wow talk about deflating any optimism about some kind of binding agreement. Now it seems that all the delegates can agree on is that success is not in the cards for Copenhagen.
Few delegates at the Barcelona talks seemed to believe Thursday that a legally binding climate pact is still within reach in Copenhagen. The discussion was rather how long the delay would be.
Thank god these people get paid well. I can’t imagine working as a climate change diplomat and not getting some good green. All that false hope and no payoff? It just wouldn’t be worth the headache and utter constipated mediation without the moola.
What this really seems to conjure up in my mind is a sense that diplomacy has had it day. The idea of peaceful mitigation with relatively positive results died with the Iraq war, as the neo-con hawks seized an opportunity and sliced into the delicate fabric of the UN rule of law. Since that point every diplomatic action that has been undertaken; North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine etc. has been met with delay, scorned by participating parties, diluted, or utterly ignored. Although some of these situations and hostilities have been well established, the hope that a new US administration with a clear focus on diplomacy would be able to bring about real change in global situations is starting to diminish. I know that diplomacy takes time but when delegates have a defeatist (some would call it realistic) expectation about a conference that hasn’t even taken place yet we need to ask the question, Is diplomacy the way to go in combating global warming?
Filed under: COP15, Denmark, Politics, climate change, global warming | Tagged: Copenhagen, delay, diplomacy failure, Kyoto, UN, Yvo de Boer
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Hopefully this “diplomatic standstill” will dissolve once the preliminary scientific messages compiled by the Congress’ Scientific Writing Team is submitted to the decision makers at COP15 by the Danish government. (The summary is divided in 6 parts: Climatic Change, Social Disruption, Long-Term Strategy, Equity Dimensions, Inaction is Inexcusable and Meeting the Challenge.) The crux of Meeting the Challenge is to overcome significant restraints which includes “reducing inertia in social and economic systems and building on a growing public desire for governments to act on climate change.” As far as I can see, this inertia in question exists as a result of the socioeconomic differences between developed and developing countries. These differences run deep, but on the most basic level there simply needs to be sufficient funding on a GLOBAL scale to not only bring the problems addressed at COP15 into public consciousness, but to also get the ball rolling to put solutions to these problems into action.