The First 24 Hours: Part III

As I said in the last post, I'm really rubbing elbows with the big shots here in Copenhagen. Today's list of head honcho sightings include:

Al Gore:
The auditorium filled up before I could get in, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of this climate change superhero as he unveiled a report on the latest round of climate research. I even managed to get a picture of his forehead as he walked by the mob of press in which I was lurking.


Chris Gregoire:
The Governor of Washington State took part of a panel on climate action beyond Copenhagen. The panel also included Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which just announced that it will begin regulating CO2 emissions.



The Mayor of Des Moines:
I introduced myself to this local leader at the conference after a panel talk on the role of cities in Climate Change, which included the mayors of Kyoto, Mexico City, Little Rock, Mandera (in Kenya), and Bonn. He was really excited to find someone from Iowa, and invited me and the other delegates to come visit in the capital sometime. The panel itself was an exciting look at how local governments seem to be doing much more on climate change that national government. It's got me excited to head back to Grinnell and try to help reinvigorate the mayor's Energy Task Force.



When I wasn't stalking these climate stars, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation on the work of NGOs on household sustainability and how that work fits, or doesn't fit, into the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developed countries to pay developing countries to off-set their greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing their own emissions. I also heard from EU leaders about how public participation is encouraged in international environmental agreements. I think that perhaps the most engaging part of my day, though, was a chance encounter with an OXFAM worker from Hong Kong who happened to join me for lunch. We struck up a conversation about how things are going, and why more isn't being done by the United States (unsurprisingly, this seems to be the general tact of how conversations go here.) In trying to explain why more isn't being done, I realized that there really isn't a good moral reason.

Morality is a term I've heard come up more than once today in the context that, unless the US helps developing countries adapt to Climate Change, the US's historic greenhouse gas emissions will doom millions to hunger, displacement, and perhaps even death. In that context, people wonder, as they should, why the US refuses to commit to cutting emissions and aiding poor countries. And in response to that question, the only answer I've been able to give is self-interest. Or put another way, greed. I'd like to say that it's more complicated than that, but, when we've got the European example to compare ourselves to, I'm not sure there's any other explanation.

At the end of the day, some pretty bad news came our way. Access is becoming a serious issue here at COP15. NGOs originally had fairly unrestricted access to the events, but as more and more people have arrived from around the world have arrived, space is becoming limited. To combat the problem, the UNFCCC has decided to institute a quota system that limits the number of people admitted from each NGO. The system takes effect tomorrow, and it essentially means that each person here with the World Federation of United Nation Associations (WFUNA), the group I'm with, will only be able to attend one more day of the conference. It's extremely frustrating given the fact that names of every delegate were submitted over a month ago - the UNFCCC should have been able to plan for this long ago. That said, I've just got to make the most of the time I have inside (probably all day Wednesday). And the rest of the time, I'll be attending the many peripheral events happening around Copenhagen.