It’s Getting Hot In Here

There are more people to blame for failure in Copenhagen than… sensational cliches to start blog posts with.  Obama probably negotiated his ass off during his 9 hours in Denmark, but he didn’t do enough legwork beforehand to set himself up for success.  China blocked any sort of requirement, goal, target or accountability mechanism, even though it is and will remain the largest greenhouse polluter.  The US Senate didn’t pass a climate bill in time.  The list goes on.

Yet some guilty parties are actively trying to mess the process up instead of just not doing enough: powerful fossil fuel and business interests are working against the interests of the people in the struggle for a senate bill and in the negotiations for a treaty. As Ricken Patel from Avaaz said about Copenhagen: “one group was cracking open the champagne – the polluting industry lobbyists.”

Even before the dust had settled or the last negotiations had stopped, the DC Action Factory used its last few hours as a group to deliver Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming to every single senate office and Roland Burris (D-IL) in person. Maybe we didn’t do enough to expose the dirty energy campaign to hijack the senate, but hopefully final hours as an Action Factory are a sign of big things to come.

Continue reading ‘People vs. Polluters’

Gallery of the ‘Best of’ images from COP 15 in Copenhagen.

Images ©Robert vanWaarden

I just joined the BBC World Service for a live, hour-long program called “Copenhagen: Who is to Blame?” reflecting on the outcomes of the negotiations, including BBC’s environmental analyst, a Chinese policy specialist, WWF’s Campaign Director, India’s Vandana Shiva, and other experts (the podcast is available here, and for a cliffnotes version, start at 39 minutes).

One of the central points I make is that we need to understand what happened at Copenhagen in order to move forward successfully.  As I wrote on Saturday in an open letter to Bill McKibben, founder of 350, the failure to achieve “legally-binding” emissions targets is not the Obama administration’s fault, but rather the result of a flawed UNFCCC framework.  If anything, President Obama should be applauded for bringing together the major emerging economies and hitting the “reset button” on the mitigation negotiation framework.

Indeed, the writing is on the wall: the Kyoto Protocol failed, even with a “legally-binding” agreement among its signatories. As Obama noted in his press conference, “Kyoto was legally binding and everybody still fell short anyway.” Copenhagen failed to produce a meaningful treaty, even with overwhelming pressure from the global climate movement and the G-77.  If the world moves ahead under this framework yet again in Mexico next year, negotiations will again fail to produce a meaningful treaty.

Continue reading ‘BBC World Service: Who is to Blame at Copenhagen?’

Like many of you, I’ve spent much of the past four days trying to make sense of the repercussions and reverberations of the chaotic and dramatic final hours of COP15 in Copenhagen.  How fitting then that Copenhagen concludes as the new year approaches.

The new years season is often one of reflection, a time to look back at the events of the last year and ponder their implications for the course ahead, while setting new intentions for the coming year.

There is much to be said and much to ponder and many emotions to sort out. I hope we all have the time to reflect, plan and renew our resolve in the coming weeks. For now, I only want to share these words with my fellow climate activists. They are not mine, but I find them as apt as any, and a succinct summary of what has been, for me, an increasingly powerful realization:

What came out of Copenhagen is nothing but a faint promise. To make it something real, much less what’s needed, will require intense pressure from civil society, elites, businesses, enlightened governments, and ordinary citizens. And guess what? If there is a robust, legally binding treaty signed in Mexico next year, with sufficient targets and timetables … intense pressure will still be required.

This will be a century-long fight. If the green movement is going to sustain itself over time, it might be wise to try to avoid the emotional roller coaster of “last chances” and “historic failures.” That’s a recipe for burnout. There will be no cathartic moment, no final breakthrough, only a war of inches won by sheer persistence and creativity.

(more here)

Persistence and creativity. Those are two traits that are most certainly not in short supply among the many young clean energy and climate leaders I know. That gives me hope. If the right lessons are learned from the past year, the course ahead will ultimately be successful.

Here’s to 2010, and to the long, critical road ahead.

With the exception of a few hours of shut-eye, I stayed up all Friday night to watch the last hours of the COP15 negotiations.  It was absolutely gripping, shocking, heart-wrenching, inspiring and in the end came with some measure of relief.  (BTW – for anyone that would like to watch any part of Friday night’s negotiations it is all online here.  I have found this partial transcript useful for skipping around in the many hours of footage.)

I have not seen a single news article that has done justice to what happened overnight.  In fact, I’ve seen many that I feel misunderstand or mischaracterize what happened.  Watching the questions journalists asked during the final press conferences, I kept saying to my computer screen “Were you not watching!?” so I suppose it should come as little surprise that I, as someone who watched the entire thing, feel a number of the articles written thus far leave readers with misimpressions.

In particular, I would like to address five things that I’ve seen reported or opined in various media  (primarily on the left) over the last two days that I believe are fallacies, based on what I witnessed.

Fallacy #1 – The “Copenhagen Accord” text preempted a better agreement from being adopted at COP15.

Continue reading ’5 Fallacies In the Coverage of the Copenhagen Accord’

On Saturday afternoon, as most world leaders had left Copenhagen, the AYCC International team gathered in a circle on the dusty floor of a large warehouse called Oskenhallen that most of the NGOs, including us, had been using as a workspace since we’d been locked out of the Bella Centre a few days into the second week of negotiations.

The mood in Oskenhallen was sombre. Small groups of climate advocates were conferring around tables, talking quietly and seriously about next steps post-UN Climate negotiations, and working hard to frame the debate back in their home countries. The sense of activity and purpose and expectations of the past few days had drifted away in a blur of confusion, disappointment, anger, outrage, disbelief, sadness and sleep deprivation. Most of our team had been up all night – either at the snap action held outside the conference centre as soon as news of Obama’s “accord” was released, or doing domestic media interviews and writing opinion editorials for Australia.

At 4pm the 21 members of our core team came together. Slowly, each person reflected on what the past 2 weeks had meant, and expressed their reactions to the outcome.
Continue reading ‘Monday Morning: What’s Left? What’s Next?’

Cross-posted from Americans for Energy Leadership

In a major departure from conventional climate wisdom, Thomas Friedman argues in today’s New York Times that the UNFCCC framework is broken and should be replaced by a global competition in the clean-tech industry, which he says the United States can and should lead. “Let the Earth Race begin,” he declares, contrasting this with the long-dominant “Earth Day” strategy:

“This Copenhagen climate summit was based on the Earth Day strategy. It was not very impressive. This conference produced a series of limited, conditional, messy compromises, which it is not at all clear will get us any closer to mitigating climate change at the speed and scale we need…

Today, we need the Earth Race: who can be the first to invent the most clean technologies so men and women can live safely here on Earth… An Earth Race led by America — built on markets, economic competition, national self-interest and strategic advantage — is a much more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of voluntary, nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference.”

Friedman is right. The race to develop competitive clean-tech industries is the critical element with the potential to motivate enough development and deployment of clean technologies – far more than any potential “legally-binding” global emissions treaty, as we’ve seen with the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the inability of the UNFCCC framework to produce a meaningful treaty at Copenhagen. The International Energy Agency estimates that $10.5 trillion of global investment in clean technology and energy efficiency is necessary over the next 20 years to stay below 450ppm – an unimaginable sum under any UNFCCC treaty.

Moreover, building the long-term political support of a broad segment of the American public requires a national agenda centrally focused on competing in the clean-tech growth industries of the future. As Friedman explains, “If you start the conversation with “climate” you might get half of America to sign up for action. If you start the conversation with giving birth to a “whole new industry” — one that will make us more energy independent, prosperous, secure, innovative, respected and able to out-green China in the next great global industry — you get the country.”

Continue reading ‘Earth to Thomas Friedman: Winning the “Earth Race” Requires Federal Investment’

This is a guest post contributed by Zach Kitamura, an inspiring Pacific University freshman I’ve had the honor of working with this year.  I wholeheartedly agree with Zach that we must channel the frustration and disillusionment of this moment into action makes our movement even more effective.  As a start (and only a start!) please consider contacting the White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact and letting the Obama administration know what you think of the “deal” in Copenhagen.

In the past two weeks, world leaders were presented an incredible opportunity to draft a crucial climate deal that would curb the effects of CO2 and greenhouse gases on the environment. Millions of people around the world voiced their support for a treaty, with people from countries in the Pacific such as Fiji and Vanuatu even pleading to see their countries saved from disappearing in the face of rising sea levels. But, despite their cries and overwhelming scientific evidence that says we need change now, world leaders could not come together and draft a treaty good enough to fulfill what we need to have significant change.

Sadly, I’m not surprised by this outcome. Despite words from heads of state and other foreign ministers saying they would provide needed support—pledges from Europe, China, and the U.S.—no one actually stepped up and led the conference. These “leaders” just fit the classic mold of a politician: all words and no actions.

Unfortunately, the biggest disappointment has come from none other than President Obama. Despite such capabilities of being a leader, Obama just didn’t show what it takes to be a force for change. He has perhaps the toughest job in the world, no doubt about that, and faces vocal opposition from skeptics and the like; but Obama promised to be a leader for change and, well, he’s broken his promise.

Continue reading ‘Where We Go From Here’

Bloodshed with REDD. Talks of saving the world’s last remaining forests and the communities who depend on them came to a grinding halt at the end of the Copenhagen Climate Negotiations. Initial agreement on a global target to reduce deforestation and other safeguards were either moved from operational part of the text to the preamble or were deleted altogether.

The REDD agreements were being touted as an easy document for nations to agree on, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that most working on the initiative were deeply dismayed by the results.

What’s Left? Other processes intended to address the rapid destruction of the world’s tropical forests, including the UN-REDD initiative and the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, will continue but without the safeguards that were put forth in the initial global REDD agreement. This patchwork approach runs the risk of simply shuffling deforestation from one location to another, failing to reduce overall emissions from deforestation, and failing to protect the people who live in and around forested ecosystems.

According to the three-page draft text published by The Guardian, negotiations on how to handle world’s forests will continue into 2010, but it is uncertain whether the draft agreement on REDD negotiated in Copenhagen will be used as the basis for those negotiations. Moreover, the weak paragraph on forests in the draft text represents a backward step in comparison to the Bali Action Plan mandate, which prioritized the protection of forests over the preservation of logging interests.

All this being said, organizations like Global Witness and Rainforest Action Network are gearing up for continued forest protection. Additionally, money is being allocated to promising REDD programs, such as the Rukinga Wildlife Reserve in Kenya, the first REDD project in Africa. More on forests coming soon…

Cross-posted from www.climatejusticefast.com

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Distress, confusion, hurt, anger? Hope, passion, energy?

Emotion! Let it all out, people!

Personally, I am feeling a very strange and beautiful feeling today, as we concluded the fast, after 43 days entirely without food, coinciding with the disappointing end of COP15. It is a mix of feelings – disappointment at politics mixed with hope for the future, met expectations (regarding the politicians’ lacklustre performances) mixed with passion and love, excitement and inspiration (for the peoples’ climate movement), and finally, a very strange sensation of taste in my mouth and nutrition in my belly once more.

For COP15, the tension and the expectations were high. A ‘fair, ambitious and binding’ deal was called for by 12 million people across the world. We got none of it. Instead we got a huge disappointment. COP15 will not go down in history as the moment when the world, humanity, people of all nations and creeds, came together and united for the common good of all future generations.

What a pity. It is actually pitiful. A complete shame.

So what the hell happened, and what do we do now?

Continue reading ‘The End of COP15, and the end of the Fast. So how do we all feel?’