Two nights ago I was blown away by Al Gore’s speech. He reminded me of why I do this work, and inspired me to keep at it. He spoke of the necessity of taking action now, of the moral imperative of immediate adaptation measures, and of the need for hard targets. “Global warming anywhere is a threat to the world everywhere. We must leave Bali with a strong mandate. It’s not a political issue. It’s not a diplomatic issue. It’s a moral issue.”
This, however, is a stark difference from the way that the US delegation is acting in Bali. It is now Saturday morning, and negotiations are still occurring…with no help from the US, who has done everything in the last week to impede progress and slow the negotiations, as well as weaken the text of the Bali Mandate. Last night the US and EU had a closed-door meeting for several hours. The EU delegations walked out of the meeting sometime after midnight supporting the removal of language from the text that discussed emission targets. They agreed to remove reference to the 25-40% emission targets by 2020, the very basis of post-Kyoto action!! I am still baffled as to what the US was able to do in a few hours to get the world’s leading intergovernmental party on climate change action to back out of the very foundation for these negotiations. It is cruelly ironic how utterly DESTRUCTIVE our government is being compared to Gore, the candidate who lost to George W. Bush. The man who doesn’t actually hold a government position is the one pushing for international leadership on this global issue. The real US delegation, on the other hand, is an embarrassing representation of an administration that is preventing cohesive international action.
So now we wait. Negotiations will resume soon, and they will vote on the Bali mandate’s language and objectives. Will targets make the cut? I can only hope that the leadership here follows Gore’s advice instead of letting the US obstruct the action that must necessarily be taken in Bali: “You can feel anger and frustration and direct it at the US. Or you can move forward and keep a large blank space in your mandate, saying our mandate is incomplete but we’re moving forward in the hope that it will be filled in by the time we have a treaty in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.” So delegates…please leave that empty space in the Mandate for a new US administration, and keep the strong language, because, in the wise words of Al Gore (again), “We have all we need [to change the shape of the world] except political will. And that’s a renewable resource.”
They want your money. This is a great economical opportunity for a whole new enterprise, but it is a scam
Pursuant to an investigation of the greatest environmental crime in history, one might suspect one choice among the 4 L’s.
I think that we all would agree that it certainly is not love for their country. And, one might suspect that there was more lust among the students protesting than among the delegations. It definitely is not lunancy, since lunatics rarely have time for diplomacy. Which leaves us with lucre.