Needling and Needing America, David Steven

David Steven — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:54:19 +0000

When the UN debates the big global issues, you can always trust the United States to be in the thick of the action.

Five years ago, I was in Johannesburg, blogging the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Then the US took on all comers over toilets. For all sorts of reasons (some of which were, in fact, laudable), it held out against a target for getting basic sanitation to more poor people.

The American delegation at the summit were genuinely hurt by the hard time they got over this – and for their equally quixotic stand against corporate social responsibility.

I sat in their office watching the live feed of Colin Powell’s plenary speech. It was met by a chorus of boos. The media team was shocked (so was I), but also surprised (I wasn’t). Their disgust was only worsened by the cheers that met Robert Mugabe – some of which came from journalists.

Expect this pattern to be replayed in Bali. The US will stake out unpopular positions and be met by a tirade of jeers from the gallery.

UN officials already know this. Take the point in the today’s opening press conference when Yvo de Boer, the UN’s lead official on climate change, lapsed into uncharacteristic blather.

He had just been asked what could go wrong this week at Bali. Here’s his answer in full:

[quote]The main risk of failure is that that we focus on the wrong things at the wrong time.

There’s been quite a lot of discussion about international legally binding targets that would apply to industrialized countries. Some countries are in favour of internationally binding targets, other countries are against. Some countries favour targets that would be binding at the national level rather than the international level.

To my mind, this is a critical question, but it’s a question that I personally would come to at the end of the discussion rather than the beginning. What I would personally like to see at the beginning of the discussion is what instruments are we going to have at our disposal? How are we going to fill the toolbox that allows us to come to grips with climate change?[/quote]

Chances are you either understand immediately what Mr de Boer is talking about or are utterly confused. If you fall into the latter camp, you’re not stupid. When de Boer says ‘some countries are against’ binding international targets, ‘some countries’ is code for just one country: the US.

Every other industrialized country, bar Australia, already has a binding international target under the Kyoto Protocol (whether they have any intention of meeting these targets is something we’ll come back to). And Australia will be tearfully welcomed back into the Kyoto fold later on in this meeting.

But the US has never liked targets and has come up with a different plan. Like other G8 leaders, George Bush is signed up to achieving an agreement by 2009 – but instead of binding targets, he wants leaders to agree ‘a long-term goal’ for reducing emissions.

Each country will then be responsible for putting in place ‘strategies’ needed to meet this goal. That’s anathema to the EU, most developed countries and to newly green Australia. It reminds me them of ‘pledge and review’ – a scheme floated over fifteen years ago by the Japanese with wholehearted American support.

Back then – lest we forget – the Europeans wanted greenhouse gases stabilised by the year 2000. The American position was to delay for two reasons – scientific uncertainty and business necessity.

Here’s their Chief Negotiator in 1991:

[quote]"Do you do these things in a way that corresponds to an investment cycle, so that you retire equipment when you would retire it anyway and replace it with new equipment with climate benefits?

Or do you prematurely retire it to meet an artificial target by 2000, which is not a scientifically determined target?"[/quote]

(At the time, in another uncanny flashback, a certain ‘Senator Gore’ was accusing US negotiators of digging their heels in and stopping vital progress.)

So what can we expect in the US vs Rest of the World round #456?

Well, again, it’s worth looking to see whether the Japanese are prepared to break off from the Kyoto club (a club that is entitled, it should be noted, to its own talks, without the US in the room) and start batting for the Americans.

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Needling and Needing America, David Steven