• Things have gone a little crazy in Copenhagen.
• Civil society has been severely restricted from entering the conference venue, and have effectively been banned on Friday, which is the final day of high level negotiations.
• Friends of the Earth, which in my opinion remains the “big ENGO” most closely connected to the grassroots, has beenbanned from entering the venue at all as of this morning.
• FYI, in my experience (and I’ve been to a few of these things), both of these developments are unprecedented and shocking.
• 350.org has called for a climate justice fast to be taken by individuals, for 24 hours, starting at any time on Thursday. I think this is a great action, and maybe when I turn my paper in I will tell you why in more detail. Let me just say now that I am participating, I think you should too, and i think you should tell all your friends. Take the time to think about the way climate change is going to cause worldwide food scarcity and famine. Pray.
• 350 is also asking you to call heads of state: check out the handy list and the call tool. You don’t have to just call your own head of state, either. Climate change affects us all and the responsibility is global. In particular, fire up your Skype and call one of the leaders on the green list and thank them for supporting the target of 350 ppm.

If you are reading this blog, it means you care - YOU CAN HELP, SO DO IT.

A major problem with the popular discourse on climate wars is that it is excessively general, and poorly if at all informed by evidence…. what is passing as research on climate conflicts is not good social science either: it eschews evidence, most of it ignores the large body of research on the causes of conflict generally and on so-called ‘environmental conflicts’ in particular, and very little of it is peer-reviewed.

While there is evidence that resource scarcity does increase the likelihood of violent conflict, correlation is not causation.  The current assumption that climatic stress leads to war takes no account of social and cultural responses, to say nothing of international aid and cooperation.  Worse still, taking an oversimplified view of conflict related to environmental stress, such as the violence in Darfur, could inure us to the reality of war crimes and atrocities.

Moreover, Barnett points out one more major factor in the discussion of climate security: the military establishment, which has no particular interest in promoting peace. The army is in and of itself a major greenhouse gas emitter – Barnett estimates the U.S. military’s total emissions in 2006 at 1% of the global total.  Yet their interest in co-opting the discourse around climate change is more insidious than protecting their desire to emit.  Countries which are already powerful through military means need a narrative of conflict to maintain their status on the international stage:

These countries require discourses of global disorder in order to justify their security and trade policies, and their security and defence agencies require problems to justify their continued existence in a world where the threat of war has diminished since the end of the cold war. They seem to be appropriating the dangers of climate change to serve these institutional agendas. That these agendas are inimical to a sustainable world where there are deep cuts in emissions and considerable action on adaptation is obvious.

It is clearly time to adopt a view of climate security which puts peace at the center of the discussion, rather than war.  Moreover, it is our job as activists and organizers to expand our scrutiny to include anyone, including the military and the arms trade, whose interests stand at odds to human security and social justice.

5. Forests
Back in 1992, the Rio summit was originally supposed to develop a forests treaty in addition to the two well-known agreements which came out of the meeting: The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The forests issue is now coming back in the climate talks in the form of REDD – reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. The UN does have a way with acronyms, doesn’t it?

Key challenges under REDD are the definition of a ‘managed forest’ for the purposes of carbon credits, what to do about reforestation, and whether or not developing countries should be paid not to cut down their forests. If you’re interested, Friends of the Earth has just released a major report on REDD ahead of the talks.

4. China
Although China is way behind in per capita emissions, the country is now, officially, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter on an absolute scale. This, not to mention being the world’s most populous nation, makes it one of the most important countries in the quest to stop climate chaos. Until recently, the U.S. and China were both at an impasse, with each country refusing to accept binding greenhouse gas emissions targets without the other. Now, with Barack Obama pledging a new chapter in U.S. action on climate change, the ball is in China’s court. The actions they take at this year’s meeting may influence international climate change policy for many years to come.

3. Money – for adaptation and technology transfer
Moving our great big resource-munching world to a low-carbon lifestyle isn’t just about political will (although that’s a big part of it). It’s about money. In this case, the money is specifically needed for two things: adaptation, to help poorer countries cope with the effects of global warming, and technology transfer, to help other countries grow their economies in a clean, green, lean sort of way. The UNFCCC has already established an Adaptation Fund, but it’s yet to be seen whether this fund will get the money it needs. The U.S. has tried to block proposals for technology transfer in previous negotiations, but this may change under an Obama administration – remember during the debates when he repeatedly mentioned exporting clean technologies to China?

2. The United States
Well, this is a bit obvious, isn’t it? But despite the fact that the country is under new management, the current occupant is yet to move out of the White House. Because the U.S. team at the climate talks is run by the state department, it’s under executive authority – this is why the U.S. delegation in Bali was politely but firmly told to get out of the way and let the world get on with the job of solving the climate crisis. For the past eight years, the U.S. delegation has been pulling out all the stops to prevent climate progress, and arguably there’s even less to keep them from being international nincompoops one last time.

However, the balance of power has shifted. The views from the U.S. congressional delegation, as well as from Obama’s transition team, may be more influential then the spastic flappings of a lame duck administration.

1. The Youth Caucus
This is the youth climate blog, after all. If you’re here, it’s because you already tentatively agree that the next generation is the one to watch. Youth from around the world have spent the last year preparing to hit the ground in Poland and speak truth to power – and you can read about it all here. We have one climate, one future, and one chance to avert disaster.

Will you join us?

The front page of today’s Guardian offers cold comfort for people in the developing countries worst affected by climate change.  The UK wants to help them, but only if they get a little something in return.  That’s right, the UK treasury only wants to offer climate adaptation funds in the form of conditional loans, fully repayable with interest and administered by the World Bank.

When the Environmental Transformation Fund (ETF) and its £800 million pot for developing country adaptation was being discussed and promoted at the climate change talks in Bali last December, it was clear that the UK was using it as a major tool in the negotiations to highlight the government’s commitment to (and moral authority on) climate change.  But the intention to disburse the fund in the form of loans (although it will, of course, still be earmarked as aid) belies the government’s good intentions.  Additionally, the Guardian article confirms rumors which have been circulating for some time that the UK government is trying to get other G8 governments to also donate in the form of concessionary loans, ahead of a media push when the international adaptation funds are announced at the G8 meeting in Japan in July.  However, other G8 countries, including the US, prefer to offer adaptation funding in the form of loans.  Furthermore, the World Bank, the UK’s loan distributor of choice, is well known for its enthusiastic funding of fossil fuel projects in the development world, and its refusal to cease this form of lending when its own independent review told it to do so.

“It should be grants and not loans, otherwise developing countries will have to pay twice, once for the emissions that caused the problems and then again to clean up the mess,” said Tom Sharman, a policy adviser with ActionAid in London.  And therein lies the rub: although the UK, the progenitor of the industrial revolution, is fully culpable in creating the current climate crisis, they refuse to redress the balance.  Countries like Bangladesh, where 20 million people are under the threat of displacement from rising seas, will be expected to repay all their ETF adaptation assistance at market rates.  It’s yet to be seen how a relatively poor country like Bangladesh could ever come up with the money, let alone island nations like Vanautu or Kiribati who may be entirely flooded by rising seas.

Adding insult to injury, this weekend sees UK debt campaigners celebrating the 10th anniversary of the human chain during the G8 meeting in Birmingham.  A landmark moment in the global Jubilee Debt Campaign, the 70,000 strong human chain pushed debt onto the G8 agenda and led to widespread forgiveness of unpayable developing-country debt.  The movement is so strong in the UK that Gordon Brown himself is expected to deliver a videotaped address at tomorrow’s rally in Birmingham.  He is not expected to explain his ministers’ new plan to increase the indebtedness of countries who can least afford to pay it back.  After all, climate change isn’t just a global catastrophe.  It’s a business proposition.

Yet already some consumer groups are pointing out that, without a lot of explanation, shoppers may well find themselves even more confused.  It does seem a conceptual leap between salt, which is consumed directly, and grams of carbon dioxide emissions.

A bigger concern is that the carbon labelling scheme might take the responsibility for carbon dioxide emission away from the producer and put it onto the consumer, thereby reducing the pressure for systematic carbon dioxide reductions in the production process.  It certainly does seem to be a canny way to directly assess Tesco consumers’ concern about climate change.

A dubious eco-champion

Admittedly, there are some bigger questions about how much we can trust Tesco’s own green credentials.  Britain’s biggest retailer, Tesco owns and operates 3,200 supermarkets throughout the world, including Fresh and Wild in California.  It’s estimated that 1 in every 8 pounds spent at a UK retailer is spent in Tesco, and that the company owns more UK real estate than the Queen.

As pointed out by the Guardian, Tesco has been weathering the current credit crunch and downturn in spending by increasing the number of bargains in its stores, including ever-multiplying ’2 for 1′ deals and goods priced at £1 or less.  Tesco, as much or more than other UK retailers (including the Wal-Mart owned Asda) encourages the overconsumption which has landed rich countries into such an ecological mess, and while it may measure the grams of carbon emitted by a carton of orange juice, what I’d really like to see is how much of the company’s carbon footprint has been exported to China.

Yet, arguably, Tesco’s size makes it a greater ally rather than a greater threat.  Carbon labelling, assuming it expands to the rest of Tesco’s range and is accompanied by consumer education, could prompt a sea-change in the way shoppers think about their products.  It could also encourage the adoption of tools such as full-cost pricing which overcome some of capitalism’s ridiculous ecological shortcomings.  The trick, it seems to me, is to keep a sharp eye on programs like Tesco’s to keep them from being yet another bold example of corporate greenwashing.

At the moment I’m sitting on a fourteen hour flight, the last leg of my journey home. My round-trip flight from London (where I live and work) emitted about 3 tons of carbon dioxide. When I started a Facebook group to support youth activism at the Bali conference, one of the first comments I got was “Isn’t it ironic that you’re all flying to Bali for a climate change conference? You’re better off spending all that money on local climate change efforts at home.” It echoed a sentiment I had heard from a number of people, including my own partner. I wasn’t the only one going, of course; I was part of a delegation of 22 young Americans and approximately 150 people under the age of 26 attending the conference. I fully recognize that flying halfway across the world and staying in a big, air-conditioned hotel is hardly the most obvious way of living out my principles. So what possessed me to go? And what did I do when I got there to justify the expense and the emissions?

Although Bali is a fine slice of tropical paradise, I didn’t exactly get a beach vacation. I spent most of my time sitting on the floor underneath the conference center’s rear stairwell, which the youth delegates had informally occupied as our ‘bunker’. I started every day with a 7:30 meeting and usually finished the day around 10:00, after strategizing with other countries’ youth delegations, blogging back to supporters at home, lobbying country delegates, organizing actions such as handing out ‘climate emergency kits’, putting on press conferences, following negotiations, and constantly running back and forth between two conference venues which were about a mile apart. I began by optimistically bringing my swimsuit along with my laptop, but by the third day of negotiations I realized that I was only rarely going to see the clear blue Balinese ocean. There was simply too much work to be done. As an American, I represented the country Al Gore referred to as “the single biggest obstacle to progress in these climate change negotiations.” Growing up in the richest country in the world, I have benefited from the carbon emissions generated by our industrial development; I am already richer than the vast majority of people in the world. Nonetheless it is the poor and vulnerable, particularly in developing countries, who will suffer most from climate change. I can’t understand how the current administration can reconcile this injustice – and their criminal inaction – with their purported Christianity and ‘compassion’. The official delegation continued to obstruct the process at nearly every turn. This included key agreements to foster the sharing of clean technologies, which will help countries like China and India develop without endangering our future. As the talks dragged into an unexpected extra day of negotiations, I was sure that my country would cause the summit to collapse, wasting even more time as we creep ever closer to catastrophe.

Yet even the State Department couldn’t handle the pressure after being booed by 189 countries. “Please, get out of the way,” pleaded Papua New Guinea, a small island nation which stands to be washed away by sea level rise. And, astonishingly, they did. They were greeted by cheers of, if not approbation, at least relief. The youth contingent, which had earlier moved delegates to tears with a plenary address begging for action, were nearing tears themselves. This is not to say the outlook is rosy. The US government is already contesting the Bali roadmap, expressing “serious reservations” and returning once again to China and India, the red herrings of US climate change policy. The administration didn’t so much turn around as gingerly step to one side, carping and bitching as the world stampedes past toward a binding international agreement which might, hopefully, save us from the world’s largest climactic mess. But that’s enough for me right now. November 4, 2008 gets closer every day.

So, was it worth it? Did I earn my 3 tons of carbon dioxide? The problem with work like this – which is, essentially, simply a form of high-level nagging – is that you can never really tell what you’ve achieved. You can count your blog posts, or the number of hours you’ve spent watching ministers talk, or the number of times that one Reuters photograph of you in a reindeer suit has circled the globe. But it’s never just you; in the case of this summit I was surrounded and supported by scores of the most amazing, passionate, intelligent people I have ever met. And we’re all working together, not just in Bali but in our own countries, all over the world, to ensure strong, decisive action to protect our future. The agreement in Bali sets the stage for the global solution to the climate crisis, which is a pretty big prize to keep our eye on. We have at least two more years of work to hammer out a new agreement, and then we may spend our lifetimes developing it, protecting it, and implementing it in our own communities. It’s going to be a lot of work, but as my friend Karmila said, addressing ministers from all over the world: “The world is watching. The youth are rising. Join us.”

The most memorable time so far was the ‘Fighting for our Future’ side event – an informal sharing and learning session organized for other people at the conference – we held to highlight the youth climate movement.

Presenter after presenter took the stage to show amazing work done by young people in Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, Canada, the US, and the UK to raise awareness and inspire action. There was more energy in the room than I’ve ever felt at the UNFCCC conference, and the session was packed. We heard about cycle campaigns, press stunts, lobbying, and even how to occupy your local coal-fired power plant without disrupting the national grid.

At the end, a woman in the audience stood up. “I’m from Kiribati,” she said, “which is two meters above sea level.” She had to pause to fight tears. “And I just wanted you to know how connected I feel to all of you. Thank you.” We all had tears in our eyes too. It’s rare to get such a powerful reminder of just what we’re all fighting for.

Unfortunately, the more I learn at this conference, the more I worry. The Kyoto Protocol is such a flawed process. Beyond the fact that nobody can work out when or how developing countries (and notable developed party poopers) should get on board, the framework convention itself is problematic.

A key issue at this week’s conference is REDD – reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries. The current issue of the New Scientist has an investigative piece which illustrates just how tricky this issue is. If a peat bog is drained to plant trees for paper or biofuels – which can count as forest cover under the UNFCCC – it emits huge amounts of CO2. In the case of biofuels, the farming actually emits about 30 times more carbon than is saved by burning biofuels instead of petrol.

I also attended a side event held by the gender and climate change group which highlighted the particular problems faced by women who depend on forests for their livelihoods. For example, the system of valuation for carbon credits doesn’t include forests’ role as havens of biodiversity, nor the fact that many people in developing countries need the forests to live.

“We don’t manage the forest,” said Anna Pinto from India. “We live with the forest. You don’t manage your family, do you?”

Yet under the Clean Development Mechanism, a system by which rich countries can offset their carbon emissions by funding ‘clean development’ projects in developing countries, in some places biodiverse forests are being replaced by monoculture tree plantations. So not only is deforestation causing massive carbon emissions, some communities are being victimized by the very parts of the Kyoto Protocol which are supposed to benefit them.

This is a huge problem, and one that isn’t going to be solved any time soon. As we’re constantly reminded, this meeting is supposed to be ‘process-oriented’; it’s setting out a roadmap to develop the next stage of the Kyoto Protocol. Yet that doesn’t stop us from trying to fix the loopholes that no-one ever anticipated, even if that means a huge amount of time and effort struggling through working groups and the minute details of negotiated text.

It’s easy to say that since the Kyoto Protocol is so complex and problematic, we shouldn’t bother with it. But that’s a total cop-out. Climate change is the most important issue facing our generation, and it’s a global problem. We don’t have the time to waste to make the process perfect. The IPCC estimates that we have a couple of decades to solve this problem, and others are saying that’s a generous estimate. Don’t be fooled by the US’s diversionary tactics – the UNFCCC process is our only hope of getting our ducks in a row before they float away in the rising tide.