| Thursday, January 24, 2008 |
| Papers that are non-papers |
The press conference room is cool enough for a nap. Half a dozen reporters are camped out on the padded, scratchy seats, heads hanging to the side, trying to catch a few winks before the U.S. delegation holds its next press conference. The negotiators are secreted away behind closed doors now, and until they come out with a Bali Roadmap (probably late tonight or early tomorrow morning), there’s little to do but wait. Wait, and spread rumors, that is.
The current rumor is that the U.S. is winning its battle to strip a target range for emissions reductions by developed countries from the Bali Roadmap, the plan for how the UN will proceed with climate negotiations when the first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. But it’s a rumor; we don’t know what will happen. The rumors fill our time. The latest publicly available draft is here. In the twisted parlance of UN negotiations, this paper is called a non-paper. It’s a working document, not final. Everyone is trying to sneak peeks at one another’s non-papers, like schoolchildren cheating on the test.
Earlier, I sat sipping coffee and chatting with a woman from an oil-producing country when chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson sat down across from us. I strained to overhear his conversation with a colleague, but caught nothing more than occasional phrases. The woman I was talking to pulled documents from her bag, a couple of today’s draft versions of the roadmap that a delegate had passed on to her. More non-papers.
In one version, the range of 25-40% emission cuts for developed countries appeared, and in another, it did not. Both versions still contained language recognizing that emissions must begin to decline within 10-15 years. If the range is included, as the EU and most developing countries want, it will not bind nations to any target, but will serve as a starting point for negotiations that will go on for the next two years.
Watson ate a sandwich, then headed off. He didn’t look to me like someone who thought things were going well, or going poorly. He just looked like someone who has seen most of this before. In previous years, negotiations have often dragged late into the night, and one delegate said today that negotiations seem to proceed at a rate of about one sentence per day.
Outside, environmental groups are staging a steady stream of demonstrations in the hot sun, like the one (shown above) that presented to delegates a petition signed by more than 2 million people urging action on climate change. Inside, it’s as calm as the eye of a storm. |
posted by Share@U @ 12:51 AM   |
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| Live from Bali: The UN Climate Change Conference... |
Upon returning to Washington, D.C., I decided that it was time to take stock—that is, carbon stock. My travels took me more than 20,000 miles round-trip, and as one reader of this blog aptly pointed out, the 10,000 people who traveled to the Bali climate conference racked up quite a carbon footprint in the course of their efforts to help abate climate change—the UN estimated about 47,000 tons total. Some media reports put the number as high as 100,000 tons and compare the meeting’s greenhouse gas emissions to driving 20,000 cars for a year or the annual emissions of the African state of Chad.
Before the word “hypocrite” gets thrown about too loosely, however, many people thought about this before the conference. For example, the meeting’s convener, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), announced during the conference that it will offset the 3,370 tons of carbon dioxide generated by the travel of UN staff, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. And the Indonesian government planted 79 million trees before the meeting, which they estimated would absorb the emissions of the entire meeting. (Tree projects are tricky, though; it’s hard to say how many of the trees will survive, and eventually they will die and re-release carbon dioxide.)
Any “offset” is basically a way to cancel out greenhouse gas emissions in one place by reducing greenhouse gases someplace else. For example, the UN will offset its staff travel by investing about $100,000 into the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund, which ultimately will go to projects that reduce emissions in developing countries. The money might go to planting trees that take up carbon dioxide, or to reducing the production in China of potent greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are made in the manufacture of refrigerants.
Some organizations and delegations traveling to Bali also purchased their own offsets, including the U.K.’s 40-person team and 80 people from the environmental group WWF International.
As for me, I went online to find out how much carbon I burned getting to Bali. There are many good carbon calculators available, and the three I tried placed my emissions between 3.7 and 5.3 tons of carbon dioxide. According to Carbonfund.org (their tagline: Reduce what you can, offset what you can’t), I can cancel out my Bali emissions for about $20. They’ll invest my 20 bucks in projects that support renewable energy (such as wind and solar) and energy efficiency, and in forestry projects.
Offsetting may not be as good as avoiding emissions in the first place, but at least it’s a start. Looks like it’s time for me to pay up. |
| posted by Share@U @ 12:45 AM |
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