Wednesday: A Discouraging Day

Today, they started piping video footage from the Plenary Sessions of the country delegations into the open access area of the conference center. Around mid-morning, I discovered this fact and began to watch as the representatives of various developing countries questioned the procedure that had been followed earlier this morning. It seems that, in the hurry to prepare a draft text in preparation for the arrival of heads of state, the Danish government introduced a next draft, skipping the official procedure set out to do so, and in the process, deviating from the agenda that had been officially published for the day. The conference was never officially opened, and the committee officially charged with producing and reporting on a draft were never given the floor.

In response, China, Brazil, India, and Ecuador all questioned the "inclusivity and transparency" of the negotiation process. They felt that the next draft had been dropped from the sky by the Danish government without the consultation of the rest of the parties gathered there. The frustration culminated with a full-fledged rant by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the evils of the imperial capitalist world system embodied by the Danish text. He elaborated, pointing out the vast inequality in income and in CO2 emissions between rich and poor countries. Then he took a jab at developed countries, saying "If the climate were a bank, they would save it." Though I have no patience for his anticapitalistic sentiments, I couldn't help but think that he was one of the more insightful speakers of the day.



Heads of state and other high level officials are beginning to trickle in for the final negotiations that will take place over the next two days, and so the speeches today were particularly good. I had the chance to see Senator John Kerry argue that "It's the science itself demanding action from all of us." He called upon those skeptical of climate change to "prove us wrong, or stand down," and then committed to seeing a comprehensive climate bill through congress by the spring of next year. The specifics he called for hardly live up to the vision he set down at the beginning of the speech, but all in all, it was encouraging to hear a US congressman arguing that a climate bill is possible.



At the end of the day, I also had the opportunity to hear Secretary General Ban Ki-moon speak about major sticking points that had arisen in the negotiations earlier today. Essentially these are the same questions that have stalled talks since the very beginning: What should targets be for emissions reductions, and who should realize that reduction? How much financial assistance will be provided by the developed countries to the developing world to help those countries adapt to climate change and to grow their economies without corresponding emissions increases? Despite these lingering questions, though, Ki-moon expressed some optimism because, he said, the negotiations are following a more or less normal pattern for multilateral negotiations. He called for a strong agreement to be reached now, pointing out that, with the presence of 130 heads of state and with the attention of the world focused on these talks, the time seems right for deal-making.



I called this a discouraging day, but with the optimism of Ki-moon, you might wonder why that is. Unfortunately, I think that my big take-home message from today is that the process here at the UN talks is anything but transparent or democratic. Having watched observer organizations being arbitrarily blocked from entry into the center, and then arriving inside only to hear that the president of the conference had violated procedures to push forward his own version of the agreement, I've gained new insight into the real, grimy politics behind multilateral agreements such as this. There may be real progress made on climate change over the next two days, but the process is not what I had once thought it was. It's clear that only a few parties, those who hold the real power including China, the EU, and the US, will make the final decisions. Everyone else here is just along for the ride.

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By the way, I was recently interviewed by Ben Kieffer for his show The Exchange on Iowa Public Radio. The show aired earlier today, but if you missed it, you can listen here. I show up at minute 13:30 in the show titled "Climate Change."