Bali update: Pushing for action, not talk, on climate change

By Andrew C. Revkin

The diplomats and officials gathered in Bali to shape talks leading to a new climate treaty are beginning to feel the heat. In public conference rooms and private hotel suites, they are (in theory at least) trying to prepare a two-year "road map" for updating the faltering 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the world's first experiment in common action to limit global warming. But they are outnumbered by armies of observers, including climate scientists, college students in polar bear costumes, and gray-suited lobbyists for companies that stand to win or lose big in a world shifting away from fossil fuels. (Potential winners: manufacturers of wind turbine blades and nuclear power plants. Potential losers: companies dealing in coal and oil or products that depend on those fuels.)

On Thursday, a delegation of scientists released a "Bali Declaration" in which more than 200 experts in climate, energy, ecology and other related fields called on the negotiators to commit to concrete steps to cut emissions promptly and sharply. This is a big departure from the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change over the last 20 years, in which scientists have periodically laid out "what if" scenarios for emissions, warming, impacts and responses, but avoided defining how much warming is too much. The declaration said that the IPCC and other studies pointed to clear-cut ecological and social dangers above a threshold of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit of additional warming. The only way to avoid that threshold, the scientists said, is to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 from their levels in 1990. And the only hope of doing that lay in starting now, they said.

"For climate negotiators to do their job, they have to realize what climate science is telling them: Climate change is real and urgent and requires strong action now," said one of the signers, Richard Somerville, a climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and an IPCC author. Other observers are acting as a sort of truth squad, revealing back-corridor maneuvers that clash with their goals. Green campaigners handed out their latest set of "Fossil of the Day" awards to countries they accuse of trying to prevent any treaty addendum that includes binding limits on greenhouse gases.

In an e-mail message, Jamie Henn of the Step it Up 2007 organization ran down the award "winners" for Friday: "Third place went to the U.S. and Canada for refusing to accept a draft proposal from the G77, a group of developing countries, for technology transfer as a key component of future discussions. Second place was scooped up by the U.S. as well, this time for re-opening the Major Emitters (or as they call it, Major Economies) negotiations in the midst of the Bali negotiations, distracting from the process at hand. And the first place prize went to, drum roll please, Canada, for refusing to take on absolute emissions reductions targets unless developing countries do so as well - ignoring Canada's historical responsibility and its vastly higher per capita emissions compared to developing countries."

Libertarian groups aligned with industry have been fighting back, blogging and sending out news releases pooh-poohing the effectiveness of the only existing supplement to the original treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. That pact requires the three dozen participating industrialized countries to cut emissions well below levels measured in 1990, but - for the most part - they are not on track to do so. A report challenging the effectiveness of any new Kyoto-style agreement was posted online by a coalition of dozens of private groups opposed to top-down approaches to such problems. Jerry Taylor, an economist at the Cato Institute, also sharply criticized the scientists' statement, saying, "I do not believe that 'the experts' in any field should be dictating climate policy because there are plenty of important value judgments built in to those policies, and experts, however defined, have no objectively better values than you or I." The intensifying activity reflects that next week is crunch time. That's when energy and environment ministers, a sprinkling of prime ministers and presidents, and other senior officials try to close out a negotiating plan that, the United Nations hopes, will end with a Copenhagen Protocol (the 2009 meeting is in that city) that could be in force by the end of 2012, when the Kyoto agreement's emissions limits expire.

To be continue in other article...

(Jakarta, Kamis 21 February 2008, 07.39 pagi)

Re-publish by Jacob Paradox from link (www.routers.com),(www.iht.com), (www.routers.com), (www.nytimes.com)