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December 11, 2005: Why America finally woke up to climate change threat

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Why America finally woke up to climate change threat

Goaded by its neighbours, its mayors, its former president and some rubber ducks, the US finally agrees to dialogue

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor

11 December 2005

SUNDAY HERALD (Scotland)

 

The turning point, history may record, was the duck moment. It was around midnight on Thursday at the crucial United Nations climate talks in Montreal, Canada, when the chief United States negotiator, Harlan Watson, threw a wobbly. Fearing that a Canadian proposal for an international dialogue on combating global warming was really a covert attempt to drag the US into binding negotiations, he walked out. But not before making the memorable retort: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck."

That prompted an imaginative piece of direct action by Phil Clapp, the president of the US National Environmental Trust. On Friday morning his team scoured Montreal shops for rubber ducks, and within hours the little yellow creatures were ubiquitous in the conference centre.

They were paraded by environmentalists, popped up in ministers’ top pockets, and even made an appearance on the US delegation’s table. The Americans, after being harangued and vilified all week, were finally embarrassed.

Of course there was more to their 11th hour U-turn, agreed in the early hours of Saturday morning, to participate in a long-term dialogue on combating climate change. They had been stung by criticism from former US president Bill Clinton, who described the approach of the Bush administration as "flat wrong".

The Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin, had also attacked the US for not having "a global conscience". And some of the 195 mayors from US cities committed to combating climate change turned up in Montreal to say what they thought of their country’s stance.

"I’m a very proud American," declared the mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels. "To see my country not among the community of nations on this issue – which I believe is the pre-eminent issue threatening our species – really disturbs me."

The US was also put under severe pressure by the European Union’s delegation, led by the UK environment secretary, Margaret Beckett. Behind the scenes, she talked tough, even threatening to stall the whole process unless the US signed up.

Earlier in the week, she had accurately predicted what would happen. US negotiators always played the same game, she said. "They say no all the way through until the final 30 seconds, then sometimes they say yes."

The change of heart by the Americans is important because it will ensure that they remain involved in discussions until President Bush stands down in 2009. The hope is that he’ll then be replaced by someone more sympathetic to multilateral diplomacy.

But the shift should not be overstated. The Montreal agreement doesn’t commit the US to much more than it signed up to at the G8 summit of world leaders at Gleneagles in Perthshire in July.

It has agreed to take part in a dialogue on "strategic approaches for long-term co-operative action to address climate change". But the talks are "without prejudice to any future negotiations, commitments, process, framework or mandate".

Dr Richard Dixon, who was in Montreal representing WWF Scotland, accused the Bush administration of misjudging the mood of the international community. "They played silly games with the talks and forced countries to bend over backwards just to agree to keep talking," he said.

"But in the end they realised that any failure would be blamed squarely on them. And all they are signing up to is a bigger version of the G8 dialogues, an international talking-shop to keep them in the loop until Bush leaves office."

The agreement on a dialogue was negotiated under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which involves 189 countries, including the US. But that was only half of what was achieved in Montreal.

Parallel negotiations also took place between the 157 countries – not including the US – which are parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement on cutting greenhouse gases signed in Japan in 1997. The aim was to launch a process that would enable the world to work out how to make deeper cuts in emissions after the protocol expires in 2012.

At times it looked as if that would never happen. In the past few days, there were periods of despair, as Margaret Beckett frankly admitted, when the talks turned "sour".

The final hitch was an arcane dispute involving Russia and Saudi Arabia over the role of the voluntary pollution cuts to be made by developing countries. That was only finally resolved following a series of all-night, arm-twisting sessions.

 

 

 

But then, just after 6.15 yesterday morning, agreement was reached. More than 20 hours of unbroken negotiations finally gave birth to a new hope: that the process begun at Kyoto eight years ago will now be advanced.

New negotiations will begin next May to devise tougher targets and timetables for countries to cut pollution after 2012. For the first time the world has a new road map showing how it might mitigate the disasters that climate chaos could bring.

The outcome was universally hailed as a success. For the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, and environmental group Friends of the Earth, it was a historic watershed.

Beckett pronounced herself "delighted", while the Canadian environment minister, Stephane Dion, who chaired the Montreal negotiations, argued that they had achieved what many thought was unachievable.

"Facing the worst ecological threat to humanity, you have said: the world is united, and together, step by step, we will win this fight," he told delegates at the close.

"This meeting is a landmark," said WWF’s Dixon. "It brings the Kyoto Protocol fully into force and sets the world on course to further emission cuts to try and keep the final temperature rise below two degrees centigrade."

Scientists regard a rise of 2ºC as a potential "tipping point" that could trigger a series of irreversible global catastrophes. The polar ice-caps could melt and flood the world’s low-lying cities, while the gulf stream current which warms Scotland and northwest Europe could be switched off.

Businesses across the globe had been given the strongest possible signal that the market for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases was here to stay, Dixon argued. "The Bush administration’s hope that it could kill off the Kyoto Protocol has been comprehensively dashed by the strong agreements passed by the rest of the world."

Richard Kinley, acting head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, pointed out that countries in Montreal had also agreed to strengthen the "clean development mechanism" under which richer countries can invest in climate-friendly projects in poorer countries.

This had been "one of the main successes", he suggested. Developed countries had committed themselves to fund the clean development mechanism with over $13 million in 2006-07.

Another Kyoto mechanism, known as "joint implementation", came into being in Montreal. A government body was set up to oversee the scheme under which rich countries can invest in central and eastern Europe in return for carbon credits to help meet their Kyoto targets.

The Kyoto Protocol requires some 40 industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. But it doesn’t set any reduction targets for developing countries like China and India.

There are of course many major problems still to be resolved. Actual targets and timetables for cuts will have to be agreed within the next seven years, and nobody pretends that will be easy.

There will be demands for the bigger developing nations to start making cuts, which they will probably resist. The two most troublesome parties to the Kyoto Protocol, Russia and Saudi Arabia, may well throw more spanners in the works.

And, at least for a while, the US is likely to keep refusing to promise reductions in its emissions. Since it is responsible for a quarter of the world’s pollution, this is obviously a major barrier to progress.

But, yesterday, few of the 10,000 delegates gathered in Montreal gave much thought to the difficulties to come. They were exhausted, emotional and euphoric.

As each final acronym-laden agreement was announced by Stephane Dion, delegates rose to their feet for standing ovations. When he brought down his gavel for the last time, there were hugs, kisses and even tears around the huge hall. At last, they were thinking, we have have done the right thing. All the endless hours of arguing over words have given the planet a better chance of survival. And maybe – just maybe – the world this morning is a safer place.

 

 

http://www.sundayherald.com/53282

Topic(s): climate news, policy news, Political News

Posted By EcoBC

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