It was less than a year ago, but everything seemed so different then. George W. Bush was still in the White House, but officials gathered at the annual international climate talks, held last December in Poznan, felt new hope in the chilly Polish air: President-elect Obama had, against many expectations, made it clear that combatting global warming was to be a priority for his incoming administration.
George W. Bush may no longer be president, but America is once again seen as the bad guy in the effort to negotiate a new climate change pact. Above, a gagged “Statue of Liberty” at a 2007 climate protest in Britain.jystewart via FlickrThe hope grew, if anything, in March when Obama’s new climate envoy, Todd Stern, traveled to Bonn and addressed the first of this year’s long series of climate negotiations. “We are very glad to be back, we want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us,” he told the delegates, promising to engage “powerfully, fervently” in the talks, which were tasked with preparing for the vital climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.
Things look very different today. In the eyes of most of the world, the United States has again emerged as the principal obstacle to a new international climate agreement, in stark contrast to India, China and other rapidly industrializing developing countries that, despite the widely held view of a year ago that they would be unlikely to cooperate on drafting a new pact, have actually moved further and faster to address the climate crisis.
As the final preparatory talks wound up in Barcelona at the end of last week without finalizing a negotiating text for Copenhagen, almost everyone had accepted that a new agreement would not be finalized in the Danish capital, thanks to the United States’ failure to deliver on last year’s hopeful signals.
Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace’s policy director, said U.S. intransigence was “threatening to kill the prospect of a legally binding Copenhagen treaty.” Oxfam added: “The U.S. shadow is looming large over the climate talks.”
Key delegates vented their frustration by breaking with protocol to point the finger towards Washington. “Clearly, the U.S. has been slowing things down,” said Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Union’s chief climate negotiator. Alicia Montalbo, chief negotiator for Spain (the next country to hold the rotating European Union presidency), echoed Kaiser’s sentiments more indirectly, saying: “There’s a certain level of frustration in seeing that not all countries share (the) vision.” More of the same came from Denmark’s climate minister, Connie Hedegaard: “We can’t imagine having an agreement without the United States, they have to be a part of it,” she told Agence France-Presse.
After visiting President Obama last week, Frederik Reinfeld, the Prime Minister of Sweden (and current EU president) said the slow progress of the U.S. Senate’s climate bill made adopting a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen impossible. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing both houses of Congress on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, devoted most of her speech to the need to address climate change, stressing: “We have no time to lose.”
Leaders across the globe occupying different spots on the political spectrum are also committed to achieving a climate deal soon. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are on board, and they enjoy increasing support from such key developing country leaders as Hu Jintao of China, Manmohan Singh of India, Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. Given the broad coalition for climate action, the Obama administration risks running into its greatest foreign policy crisis to date if it continues to stand in the way of a strong, new agreement.
In a sense, this is not Obama’s fault. He is the strongest advocate for action on climate change in the White House, just as his predecessor was its most fervent naysayer. He is personally as convinced of the importance of the issue as Merkel, Brown, Sarkozy, or any other leader—even if his closest political aides are not. And there is insufficient understanding in the rest of the world of the constraints imposed by the U.S. system of governance.
Never before has such a vital, international treaty depended so crucially on the 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Even previous environmental breakthroughs, such as the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer or the Washington Convention on Endangered Species, were preceded by U.S. legislation. As such, the rest of the world is experiencing for the first time how its vital interests can be affected by American politics, as senators from coal or oil states object to legislation that would curb emissions from fossil fuels.
There is only limited understanding of Obama’s plight in the rest of the world, since in most countries the executive controls the legislature. It is understandable enough for a citizen of the Maldives, faced with the disappearance of his or her country due to rising sea levels, to become impatient that the “most powerful man on earth” is so constrained by his political system. But that is the fact of life, and the rest of the world needs to be careful not to make it more difficult to get the bill through Congress.
Mind you, the United States does not help when it attacks developing countries, as Stern did last week, for focusing “on citing chapter and verse of dubious interpretations…designed to prove that they don’t have any responsibility for action now, rather than thinking through pragmatic ways to find common ground to start solving the problem.” When those same countries have moved so much further on the climate issue over the last year than the Americans, this sort of rhetoric can only be seen as inflammatory.
Millions of words have been exchanged over the past year, but success at Copenhagen hangs on just one—trust. If there was trust, Obama could get the space he needs to win the political fight he faces at home. Unfortunately, it is a scarce and diminishing commodity as Copenhagen approaches. The president and his fellow leaders need to focus in the next few weeks on building it.
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Comments
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Steven Earl Salmony Posted 5:09 am
13 Nov 2009
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Kiara Posted 2:03 pm
13 Nov 2009
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wonderingmind42 Posted 2:39 pm
13 Nov 2009
If you haven't had a chance yet to look at my book "What's the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate," I'd like to send you a copy. It's based on my unlikely viral video "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" and it's specifically designed as a tool to break through to the great unengaged majority (esp. the U.S.), which is where, after all, the war will be won or lost.
Bill McKibben wrote of it: "This book trumps most of our accounts of the global warming crisis, partly for its good humor and straightforward logic, and partly because the author has actually figured out what actions make sense," and Chris Mooney said even he learned something from it (in his New Scientist review). It's gotten very little exposure, but might very well be a catalyst to open up huge new demographics, as demonstrated by the 7.7 million views the original video got (for a ten-minute whiteboard lecture on climate change!).
Email me at wonderingmind42 at gmail dot com, or for greater expediency, just order it off Amazon.co.uk (it's a cheap paperback).
No one in Europe has covered the book yet, unfortunately (though I've sent Monbiot a copy), despite being published in July. Perhaps you could scoop it. :-)
Cheers,
Greg Craven
Corvallis, Oregon
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mm510 Posted 10:57 pm
13 Nov 2009
Getting 2/3 of the Senate to ratify a climate change treaty in the next few years, however, is probably impossible. The forces of ignorance and dirty industry are just too strong.
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Billhook Posted 6:11 am
14 Nov 2009
"Millions of words have been exchanged over the past year, but success at Copenhagen hangs on just one—trust. If there was trust, Obama could get the space he needs to win the political fight he faces at home. Unfortunately, it is a scarce and diminishing commodity as Copenhagen approaches. The president and his fellow leaders need to focus in the next few weeks on building it."
Trust is plainly essential not only for Obama's needs within the US, but also for other nations to be willing to agree a treaty with America. After all, the US under Bush reneged on Kyoto, which other nations negotiated in good faith, allowing the US major influence over its terms.
Obama continues Bush's renegade stance not only in making no effort to ratify Kyoto, but specifically in using the fabricated baseline of 2005 for US emissions, while ignoring the legal UNFCCC 1990 baseline to which the US signed up.
Obama has now personally declared, as his first requirement for attending Copenhagen, that he be convinced that all other parties are negotiating in good faith. This is a calculated diplomatic insult, and signals clearly that the US has no interest in moving negotiations forward.
And as for building trust, Obama plainly isn't interested.
The prospect of a multilateral north-south treaty among a coallition of the willing, without the participation of the US and perhaps of China too, looks increasingly promising as the necessary breakthrough.
Regards,
Billhook
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selti Posted 8:06 pm
14 Nov 2009
The only issue in the global warming debate is the truth.
The only question in the global warming debate is “does human emission of CO2 causes global warming?”
One method to find the truth is to compare data with theory.
According to the data, comparison of the model projection from the IPCC with the actual mean global temperature observation from the Hadley center shows that the projections are utterly, absolutely wrong, as shown in chart above.
Science is not about the majority or authority, but about the data.
The globe has its warming and its cooling phases. We must adapt to climate change as a result of these changes. The cooling phase of the globe has started in 1998 for about 30 years to the freezing temperatures of the 1970s, as shown in the following chart for cooling and warming phases of global temperature.
Global Cooling Trend Until about 2030
Also, physics falsifies the theory that human emission of CO2 causes global warming:
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
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Steven Earl Salmony Posted 6:53 am
15 Nov 2009
A colossal tragedy is in the making. Father Profit wins again and again. Mother Nature loses.
Now for some good news: "THE(only)GAME(in town)" is in the bottom half of the ninth inning and, therefore, not yet over for Mother Nature.
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BlackbirdHighway Posted 4:48 pm
15 Nov 2009
There has been no cooling at all since 1998. The years 1999-2009 have been, on average, by far the warmest decade ever. Eight of the top ten warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2000. The coolest year of the 2000's was still warmer than all but one of the 90's. In the 90's record high temperatures occurred 36% more often than record lows. In the 2000's, record highs occurred 104% more often than lows. For three months last summer, the oceans of the world reached the highest temperatures since humankind came into existence. Arctic ice reached it's lowest point ever in 2007.
The AP gave global temperature data to several professional statisticians without telling what the data represented. None of them detected the slightest hint of a cooling trend starting in 1998 or any other year.
So, there is the data for you. Massive, overwhelming data all indicating that you are wrong.
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selti Posted 6:21 pm
15 Nov 2009
Global Cooling Since 1998
Case Closed!
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Matt Petryni Posted 11:38 pm
15 Nov 2009
But here's a chart from the exact same site you linked showing the (obviously rising) 30-year trendline for global mean tempertature:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/mean:12/plot/wti/trend
Here's one using the exact same data you used, except I removed the detrend function you had been working with:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset:0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:0.52/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend:0.706/offset:0.97/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/detrend:0.706/offset:0.07
Funny how if you simply take out a detrend function, the data suddenly appears to be trending toward warmer temperatures. I guess for your purposes it's best we manipulate the data a little bit though. Argument's stronger that way and what not...
Perhaps it would be even better to manipulate the data so we only look at the last 10 years:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2003/plot/uah/from:2003/trend
"Case Closed!"
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selti Posted 12:13 am
16 Nov 2009
I agree the globe was warming at about 0.5 deg C/Century in the last century, and the century before last.
As a result, when comparing the temperature of 1998 to 2008, this long term linear warming must be removed, because it is only 0.05 deg/decade and is negligible when comparing short term temperatures.
If you see two people walking up a hill one after the other, how would you compare their heights? Offcourse, you will remove the slope of the hill.
As a result, to compare the temperature of 1998 to 2008, you use this chart, which shows definite cooling. From historical patterns, the trend is for cooling for 30 years until 2030.
Also, the theory of CO2 driven global warming is wrong, as shown in this chart.
Unfortunately, some types of beliefs do not require evidence.
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