So they reached an agreement. Until a couple of hours ago, what that agreement actually said depended on whether you read the Murdoch or Fairfax press, since the UNFCCC hadn’t bothered to put the text of the agreements on their website. It’s now available here.
In summary, it could have been worse - they could have agreed to do nothing at all, or agreed to deliberately increase carbon emissions. As it is, they’ve agreed to keep talking. If this were a trade negotiation, that would be an excellent result. If it were working towards a disarmament treaty, it’d be OK.
But when we have a decade to undertake the single greatest transformation that human civilsation will have accomplished, it’s kind of not really good enough, is it?
Brian Bahnisch has a good summary at Larvatus Prodeo.
Forgive my glumness. I’ll try to get a more thorough post from myself or Christine or Oliver up in the next day or so. Christine’s release from today is here, for interest.
Tim, Angus Grigg in the Fin Review today said “it took 225 hours of talking for the world to agree it should continue talking.”
It’s not quite that bad, I think, but certainly could/should have been a lot better.
The Fin Review has 7 articles on the subject today. I think they do pretty good job on these things. Of interest is an assessment of Rudd’s diplomacy (not flattering) and some detail on which countries knocked which bits out of the text. I really should do another post, but don’t have time, so I’ll await what you guys do with interest
I don’t know why you’re surprised. Your experience in parliament should tell you that our elected representatives are followers, not leaders. They’ll agree on a big reduction when the public demands it. The public in the West is still busy mowing their lawn.
There are a lot of informed and active people, unfortunately they’re disenfranchised, in the sense that they’re politically cynical and apathetic, never write to their MPs, and so on. I’ve met a lot of apathetic and disenfranchised greenish people.
Not really surprised, Kiashu, in those terms. But still part of me is always surprised that intelligent people can just completely fail on something this big…
Thanks, Brian. I read the AFR’s coverage with interest. It was very solid. Grigg is a fine journalist.
What does the aggreement mean?
The Australian logging industry will continue to justify australian deforestation as a strategy to support efforts to halt or slow Indonesian deforestation. Australia and Indonesia are cooperating with a military spy sattelite system to monitor Indonesian deforestation, as well as the many autonomy and independence movements in the region.
The coal industry will continue to promote the myth of clean coal and this mythical technology will be the bulk of technology transfer from developed to developing world - thus maintaining dependence on coal. Coal will fuel the developing world while it waits for the hypothetical clean coal technology to appear at some hypothetical stage in the future.
Nuclear power will be part of the mix of technology transfer to the developing world which will justify such things as Russia’s present supply of reactor and fuel to Iran.
The hype of global warming has and will continue to increase uranium prices. Stockpiled uranium sits in drums increasing in value in anticipation of hypothetical markets, irrespective of the economic or ecological viability of nuclear power.
Coal and nuclear technology will be quietly delivered to the developing world, cloaked by a few inadequate and tokenistic, but highly publicised wind and solar projects.
The third world development agenda will continue to be exclusively controled by the rich world’s growth agenda, by way of technology transfer. Global trade, in particular of energy, fuel and technology will continue the poor worlds dependence on the rich world’s control of markets.
etc., etc.
Bali, like Kyoto, Stern and the bulk of the international work done on climate change is fatally flawed by its assumption that change will be not only painless but it will be profitable.
The multinational corporations and rich states have captured the ecological agenda and made it meaningless.
They have assured the affluent world that we do not have to reduce our affluence, that they wont let things will change very much.
They have redesigned their own business plans to accomodate changes in the market due to climate change as well as the changes in national laws and foreign policies as a result of climate change.
They have carved out a direction that preserves corporate global domination of the earth’s resources and their continued profits and have put ecological and climate sustainability as a secondary and expendible consideration.
The Australian Green party and the Australian green movement have supported the U.N. process and promoted it as the strategy to deal with climate change. We have provided loud and sustained cheering for those engaged in perpetual talking.
Ten years on and nothing has changed. It is clear that the whole process is so dominated by the polluters that it will never achieve anything.
It is time to reject the U.N., Kyoto and the next step in the process as corrupted and futile.
The key to understanding the US position is to realise that the US people remain almost entirely disengaged from this process.
The US government representatives are acting on behalf of their mega-rich corporate sponsors, who may recognise global warming as a major problem but do not want to take any responsibility for solving it. To these people, the problem is actually an opportunity: they think they can force others to solve it while they rake in increased profits.
It was the same thing in WWII, where many US millionaires (including GWB’s grandfather Prescott Bush) turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities and argued for the USA to stay out of the war while they were busy profiteering from it. Cynics often argue that the USA has never been involved in a war which it did not think it could turn to its own economic advantage.
Global warming became a major electoral issue this year in Australia, but there are no signs that it will have the same priority in US elections next year. Unless the citizens of the USA wake up to reality, I don’t see much potential for improvement in the US stance, even after Bush is gone.
I don’t really understand why countries can’t band together and make their own treaties - if X or Y won’t get on board, we take off without them. Let them catch up later when they’re all embarassed and lonely.
It’s worked for all kinds of arms treaties and the like. Would it be better to have 189 countries reducing emissions by 60% while 1 country continues as-is, than have 190 countries doing nothing substantial.
This whole developed vs undeveloped countries thing is silly, too. Plainly the fair and reasonable way to do things is to say, “we’ll have a carbon dioxide equivalent per capita target, and this will reduce each year; for each 1t per capita you’re above it, you pay $1 billion into a common fund, and if you’re below it, you’re eligible to get that money for renewable energy projects, going first to the countries with the least electricity per capita.” Set the first year’s target at (say) 10.0 tonnes, reducing by 0.2 tonnes per year thereafter until 50 years from now we’re at 0.
This then would encourage the developing countries to develop using renewable energy, and encourage the developed countries to reduce emissions to avoid the fines. And it’d be completely fair, since it’d set the same target for everyone.
Kiashu,
I think the stats for the USA are something like 4% of the world’s population producing 20% of carbon emissions. So while it was encouraging to see the whole world ready to make an agreement without US involvement if needed, it’s also clear that getting the USA locked in to real targets - along with China, India and everybody else - is the optimum goal.
I guess any agreement is still just a plan which can go wrong. We should all be pressuring our governments for unilateral action regardless of whatever global targets we are signed up to.
Obviously you want the big ones on board in any agreement. For example, if you wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons, it’d be a bit hard going on without the US and Russia. But in such a case I’d go on anyway, because if France, the UK, China, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and India all got rid of them very publicly and with much fanfare, it’d have a definite good effect in reducing the chances of nuclear war or accident, and would put strong public pressure on the US and Russia to follow along.
Likewise with a GHG treaty. Let’s imagine that everyone except the US goes along with a 40% reduction by 2050. By about 2020 with our reductions and their increase, the US will have gone from 22% to 60% of world emissions. At that point you’re going to see diplomacy kick in big time. You’d get tariffs and even sanctions against them, and even without it, just the sense of embarassment would do a lot.
I think the world experience with apartheid is very informative here. Using public and diplomatic pressure to effect change in a backwards country - it’s slow, but it does work.
Of course you want the big guys in on it, but if you can’t get them on board, go ahead without them - soon enough you’l find them running along the tracks trying to jump on. “Wait for me!”