The Bigger Picture
Published on January 21st 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In this week’s column I will try to describe my experiences and what it was like to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the company of over 100 world leaders in Copenhagen last month.
After an uneventful two and a half hour flight from Dublin I touched down at Copenhagen’s Roskilde Airport around 3:30 in the afternoon. My first impressions about Copenhagen were very favorable because not only were the airport’s gate areas clean, modern and well lit, but then when I got to Danish Customs, lo and behold there were NO queues to be found anywhere! Then when I walked into the baggage claim area, believe it or not, my bag was already waiting for me on the carousel!
Although there were free buses labeled COP 15 available to take travelers to the Bella Center, site of the climate change conference, and on to the hotels in the city as well, I opted to take the train and purchased a return ticket for 70 Kroner (roughly €8). Much like the airport, the S-train was clean, comfortable, smooth and right on time! I was also delighted that the trip between the airport and Copenhagen’s Central Station only took about 15 minutes including a brief stop at the Bella Center en route.
But during the course of my 5 minute walk from the train station to my hotel I couldn’t escape the feeling that something just didn’t seem right. So later that evening I decided to wander around the city to see if I could put my finger on what it was that seemed so strange to me about the city of Copenhagen. After about 20 minutes of walking around looking at the sights in the center of the city, I spotted a local restaurant that looked inviting so I decided that I would continue my search for an answer over a dinner of corned beef, roasted onions and mashed potatoes. Grand idea!
Because sure enough, as I sat waiting for my dessert of chocolate fondant and fresh fruit, a cyclist rode up, parked her bike and came inside. And that’s when I realized what it was about Copenhagen that just didn’t compute with me; she didn’t lock her bike before she came into the restaurant! In fact neither this woman nor any of the other hundreds of cyclists I saw in Copenhagen that week had bike locks.
I must confess that I am still amazed that no one in Copenhagen, or Denmark for that matter, feels they have any need to safeguard their primary mode of transportation. That’s right; I said their PRIMARY mode of transportation since actual traffic counts show that 37% of Copenhagen residents use bicycles to go to school or work and almost 60% claim that it is their primary mode of transport. This also explains the other thing that didn’t seem quite right to me: the almost total lack of automobile traffic congestion in the middle of a city of over 500,000 people.
To put that 37% bike commuter number in perspective, consider the fact that while another 5% walk and 33% use public transport (buses and trains) to get around the city, only 25% actually drive their cars to school and or work each day. In fact most Copenhagen residents who own cars only use them if they plan to be out very late or on the weekends to travel to and from more rural areas of the country.
Another thing that was missing in Copenhagen was the “tourist buses” that seem to be everywhere in Dublin from spring until autumn. But it’s not because Copenhagen doesn’t get as many tourists as Dublin does. It’s due to the fact that during Copenhagen’s tourist season, between April and September, the city provides visitors with free bicycles to get around on at 110 city bike parks. What a concept!
Last but not least, Copenhagen has made its city center very bike friendly in a number of interesting ways. To begin with, the bike lanes are as nearly as wide as the car traffic lanes and are separated from auto traffic by a small raised curb. Sidewalks are in turn separated from the bike lanes by another small raised curb with rows of 2 by 2 wheel racks to allow cyclists to park bikes on the street side of the sidewalks.
As for why Copenhagen cyclists don’t lock their bikes or even own bike locks, I was told that because there are so many bikes in Copenhagen, the chance of theft is extremely low. As a consequence, most people simply don’t think it’s worth either the time it takes to lock a bike or the money it costs to buy a good bike lock. Regardless, I must say that it was nice to be able to take a deep breath of fresh air while I was walking around the city without choking on automotive exhaust fumes.
But while my experiences getting to and from Copenhagen an around the city center were grand, I can’t say the same for my experiences at the site of the climate change conference, the Bella Center. The conference facilities were actually quite nice and there was plenty of food and drink available for participants, much of it provided for free by various business, NGO and quasi-governmental interest groups. But the problem for many attendees was the effort that was required to get into the Bella Center so you could make use of facilities provided there.
Much of the chaos and hours long queues to go through security screening each morning were due to the fact that the UN accredited over 45,000 people to attend COP 15, but the Bella Centre only had capacity for about 15,000 people. I avoided this trap by waiting until 11am each morning to grab one of the free COP 15 buses but still couldn’t avoid having to pass through a gauntlet of demonstrators, an experience I’ll discuss in more detail next week.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
More about the UNFCCC
The Bigger Picture
Published on January 7th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For my first column of this New Year of 2010, I will pick up where I left off at the end of 2009 and continue my discussion about the goings on at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen last month.
I closed my last column by questioning the efficacy of Bolivian President Evo Morales political grandstanding while he was in front of the global news media at the UNFCCC. But make no mistake; Mr. Morales wasn’t the only political leader using the UNFCCC’s world stage for finger pointing and or to promote their political views instead of working towards the resolution of a difficult environmental issue.
At the end of his 20 minute diatribe against the United States, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela actually got a standing ovation from around a third of the conference delegates after his closing statement that; “Our revolution seeks to help all people. Socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell. Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”
But what was noticeably absent from Hugo Chavez’s remarks was any mention of what Venezuela was planning to do to reduce its own carbon emissions which have grown by 42% in the last five years alone, from 37,076 metric tons in 2004 to just over 52, 529 metric tons is 2008. In fact, during the last five years Venezuela has overtaken Argentina as Latin America’s biggest polluter and second largest source of carbon emissions after Brazil (although most of Brazil’s CO2 emissions are due to deforestation).
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is banned from international travel and was only able to attend the climate change conference because it was being held under the auspices of the United Nations, flailed away at his western critics too saying that; “When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”
But of course Mr. Mugabe also failed to mention that Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tvsangirai, declined to join Mr. Mugabe’s entourage of over 60 people because of the recent “revelations of a bloated Zimbabwe government foreign travel budget.” But Mr. Mugabe probably felt he deserved a trip abroad with an entourage worthy of royalty because he has succeeded in cutting Zimbabwe’s carbon emissions by 25% since 2000 (by impoverishing over 80% of those Zimbabweans who haven’t died from the highest AIDS infection rate in the world). Yes Mugabe is truly a star isn’t he?
But U.S. and European political leaders weren’t the only victims of such political grandstanding. After Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said he also believed that any climate change agreement would have to be independently monitored because “Verification is essential”, he too was attacked by other political leaders in attendance.
Lumumba Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat, accused Mr. Rudd of advocating weak responses to climate change and likened Mr. Rudd’s comments to those made by climate change skeptics. India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh went even further, saying Australia wanted to tear up the Kyoto Protocol and replace it with a single new treaty and accusing Mr. Rudd of being “the Ayatollah of the single track.”
But is it possible that Lumumba Di-Aping doesn’t like the idea of having Sudan’s carbon emissions monitored because then Sudan wouldn’t be able to continue getting away with almost doubling its CO2 emissions (from 1509 metric tons in 2000 to 3000 metric tons in 2005)? Surely not! And surely Jairam Ramesh remarks about Rudd acting like an “Ayatollah” weren’t a reflection of the fact that India’s carbon emissions are growing faster than those of any other country in the world save China? Of course not!
Maybe I’m wrong but I have yet to see a difficult problem resolved because of finger pointing and political posturing by government leaders. So I was disappointed but hardly surprised that the UNFCCC negotiations appeared to be on the verge of collapse prior to President Obama’s arrival on the scene Friday. But instead of attacking those who were opposed to having their nation’s CO2 emissions monitored, Mr. Obama sought to work through these differences by focusing on the need for compromise by all parties.
The resulting climate change agreement that Obama engineered with China, Brazil, India and South Africa left many of the convention’s participants decidedly unsatisfied. But then again, that is the nature of a political compromise. The dictionary defines a compromise as “A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.” In other words, no one leaves the negotiating table entirely pleased with the terms of the final agreement. I’m not exactly pleased with the agreement either, but I’m also happy that I don’t have to contemplate where the world would be without one.
Here is my take on what the 11th hour climate change deal President Obama brokered does and doesn’t do to address climate change.
It does say that both developed and developing countries will make a list of their respective targets for reducing carbon emissions and provides for international monitoring of their progress. It also provides for the development of a mechanism to distribute money provided by rich countries to poor countries that need help adapting to the ill effects of climate change such as droughts, floods and rising sea-levels.
It doesn't represent a new climate change treaty that will take the place of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates strict cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries but not by faster growing developing nations like China and India. It also doesn't set targets for reducing CO2 emissions by 2050.or a date when a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol must be finalized.
Indeed, the world’s nations are still a long way from addressing the problem of climate change, but at least we’re finally moving in the right direction instead of continuing to point fingers at each other.
Published on January 7th 2010 in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
For my first column of this New Year of 2010, I will pick up where I left off at the end of 2009 and continue my discussion about the goings on at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen last month.
I closed my last column by questioning the efficacy of Bolivian President Evo Morales political grandstanding while he was in front of the global news media at the UNFCCC. But make no mistake; Mr. Morales wasn’t the only political leader using the UNFCCC’s world stage for finger pointing and or to promote their political views instead of working towards the resolution of a difficult environmental issue.
At the end of his 20 minute diatribe against the United States, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela actually got a standing ovation from around a third of the conference delegates after his closing statement that; “Our revolution seeks to help all people. Socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell. Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”
But what was noticeably absent from Hugo Chavez’s remarks was any mention of what Venezuela was planning to do to reduce its own carbon emissions which have grown by 42% in the last five years alone, from 37,076 metric tons in 2004 to just over 52, 529 metric tons is 2008. In fact, during the last five years Venezuela has overtaken Argentina as Latin America’s biggest polluter and second largest source of carbon emissions after Brazil (although most of Brazil’s CO2 emissions are due to deforestation).
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is banned from international travel and was only able to attend the climate change conference because it was being held under the auspices of the United Nations, flailed away at his western critics too saying that; “When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”
But of course Mr. Mugabe also failed to mention that Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tvsangirai, declined to join Mr. Mugabe’s entourage of over 60 people because of the recent “revelations of a bloated Zimbabwe government foreign travel budget.” But Mr. Mugabe probably felt he deserved a trip abroad with an entourage worthy of royalty because he has succeeded in cutting Zimbabwe’s carbon emissions by 25% since 2000 (by impoverishing over 80% of those Zimbabweans who haven’t died from the highest AIDS infection rate in the world). Yes Mugabe is truly a star isn’t he?
But U.S. and European political leaders weren’t the only victims of such political grandstanding. After Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said he also believed that any climate change agreement would have to be independently monitored because “Verification is essential”, he too was attacked by other political leaders in attendance.
Lumumba Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat, accused Mr. Rudd of advocating weak responses to climate change and likened Mr. Rudd’s comments to those made by climate change skeptics. India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh went even further, saying Australia wanted to tear up the Kyoto Protocol and replace it with a single new treaty and accusing Mr. Rudd of being “the Ayatollah of the single track.”
But is it possible that Lumumba Di-Aping doesn’t like the idea of having Sudan’s carbon emissions monitored because then Sudan wouldn’t be able to continue getting away with almost doubling its CO2 emissions (from 1509 metric tons in 2000 to 3000 metric tons in 2005)? Surely not! And surely Jairam Ramesh remarks about Rudd acting like an “Ayatollah” weren’t a reflection of the fact that India’s carbon emissions are growing faster than those of any other country in the world save China? Of course not!
Maybe I’m wrong but I have yet to see a difficult problem resolved because of finger pointing and political posturing by government leaders. So I was disappointed but hardly surprised that the UNFCCC negotiations appeared to be on the verge of collapse prior to President Obama’s arrival on the scene Friday. But instead of attacking those who were opposed to having their nation’s CO2 emissions monitored, Mr. Obama sought to work through these differences by focusing on the need for compromise by all parties.
The resulting climate change agreement that Obama engineered with China, Brazil, India and South Africa left many of the convention’s participants decidedly unsatisfied. But then again, that is the nature of a political compromise. The dictionary defines a compromise as “A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.” In other words, no one leaves the negotiating table entirely pleased with the terms of the final agreement. I’m not exactly pleased with the agreement either, but I’m also happy that I don’t have to contemplate where the world would be without one.
Here is my take on what the 11th hour climate change deal President Obama brokered does and doesn’t do to address climate change.
It does say that both developed and developing countries will make a list of their respective targets for reducing carbon emissions and provides for international monitoring of their progress. It also provides for the development of a mechanism to distribute money provided by rich countries to poor countries that need help adapting to the ill effects of climate change such as droughts, floods and rising sea-levels.
It doesn't represent a new climate change treaty that will take the place of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates strict cuts in carbon emissions by developed countries but not by faster growing developing nations like China and India. It also doesn't set targets for reducing CO2 emissions by 2050.or a date when a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol must be finalized.
Indeed, the world’s nations are still a long way from addressing the problem of climate change, but at least we’re finally moving in the right direction instead of continuing to point fingers at each other.
Copenhagen Climate Change Conference
The Bigger Picture
Published on December 24th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to begin discussing my perspectives on Climate Change in conjunction with my experiences at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen.
Four months ago I wrote a series of columns about climate change and discussed my rather low expectations about what the likely outcomes would be from the two weeks of meetings and negotiation that just concluded. But given my low expectations going in to Copenhagen, I actually left feeling more optimistic about the prospects for real action on climate change and with a sense that things were finally moving in the right direction.
However, I also know my take on the climate change negotiations I witnessed is not one shared by many of the participants at the UNFCCC or by the vast majority of members of the news media that were present at the Bella Centre. So to explain my somewhat contrary reasoning I will begin by recounting something I said in my August column about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
In that column I stated my belief that “there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia. Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience. Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are part of the world’s 7 largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia.”
Well on Friday, at the 11th hour of the UN Climate Change Conference, a climate change agreement involving South Africa and the Chimerzilia G5 was announced that averted a complete collapse of the UN Climate Change summit meeting. Mind you, I don’t think it is a deal that will avert climate change and the adverse consequences that will attend it. But it does represent the first real steps forward addressing this issue by the world’s G5 of carbon emissions and the biggest source of carbon emissions in Africa.
The 11th hour deal provides for a system that will independently monitor progress by countries towards their respective carbon emission targets, a significant compromise on an issue that China had been adamantly opposed to. It also provides hundreds of billions of dollars from developed countries for those countries seen as being most vulnerable to the ill effects of climate change. Finally, it sets a goal of holding the average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, which will require both developing and developed countries to cut carbon emissions over the next 40 years.
But this agreement was also an unsatisfactory outcome for a 2 year negotiating process designed to produce a comprehensive and enforceable international treaty to reduce the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Most European leaders expressed support for the deal and praised President Obama for the role he played in the final negotiations, acknowledging that Obama had been able to resolve the dispute with China over independent monitoring of emissions that had eluded them for 2 weeks. But they were also wearing very long faces because the final accord was far less than they wanted and was reached without their involvement.
While many of the political leaders of nations in the G77 group of 130 developing countries were also pleased to see an agreement finally emerge, a number of them were also angry and bitter about the political compromises that were struck as well as the way in which the agreement was negotiated, effectively leaving them outside the negotiations just like the environmental activists sitting in the chill winter air outside the Bella Center.
I had a chance to interview one of those G77 leaders on Thursday afternoon, about 18 hours before Obama arrived to try and save the day. While I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Bolivia who are already suffering from the effects of climate change, I also thought their President, Evo Morales, was guilty of political grandstanding with many of the responses he gave to my questions and those of two other journalists.
When I asked him about UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s comment about the lack of progress in Copenhagen; “We do not have another year to deliberate. (Mother) Nature does not negotiate.” President Morales responded that “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save Mother Earth.” Indeed, this response from Mr. Morales accurately reflected a sentiment held by a number of other G77 political leaders, who want an agreement that limits the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures instead of 2 degrees.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan who led a walkout by many of the G77 members on Monday, says the developed nations’ offer of $10 billion in “quick-start” financing to help poor countries deal with climate change was wholly inadequate. I agree with him that this offer is crap and I understand why many poor countries are digging in their heels and saying that no-deal would be better than a bad climate change agreement.
But instead of expanding on these somewhat valid arguments against the proposed climate agreement, President Morales instead chose to rail against what he sees as the cause of climate change saying that “The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model.” Now I ask you, what are the chances the other political leaders in Copenhagen will actually entertain this kind of suggestion? Slim and None!
Published on December 24th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to begin discussing my perspectives on Climate Change in conjunction with my experiences at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen.
Four months ago I wrote a series of columns about climate change and discussed my rather low expectations about what the likely outcomes would be from the two weeks of meetings and negotiation that just concluded. But given my low expectations going in to Copenhagen, I actually left feeling more optimistic about the prospects for real action on climate change and with a sense that things were finally moving in the right direction.
However, I also know my take on the climate change negotiations I witnessed is not one shared by many of the participants at the UNFCCC or by the vast majority of members of the news media that were present at the Bella Centre. So to explain my somewhat contrary reasoning I will begin by recounting something I said in my August column about the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
In that column I stated my belief that “there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia. Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience. Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are part of the world’s 7 largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia.”
Well on Friday, at the 11th hour of the UN Climate Change Conference, a climate change agreement involving South Africa and the Chimerzilia G5 was announced that averted a complete collapse of the UN Climate Change summit meeting. Mind you, I don’t think it is a deal that will avert climate change and the adverse consequences that will attend it. But it does represent the first real steps forward addressing this issue by the world’s G5 of carbon emissions and the biggest source of carbon emissions in Africa.
The 11th hour deal provides for a system that will independently monitor progress by countries towards their respective carbon emission targets, a significant compromise on an issue that China had been adamantly opposed to. It also provides hundreds of billions of dollars from developed countries for those countries seen as being most vulnerable to the ill effects of climate change. Finally, it sets a goal of holding the average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, which will require both developing and developed countries to cut carbon emissions over the next 40 years.
But this agreement was also an unsatisfactory outcome for a 2 year negotiating process designed to produce a comprehensive and enforceable international treaty to reduce the carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Most European leaders expressed support for the deal and praised President Obama for the role he played in the final negotiations, acknowledging that Obama had been able to resolve the dispute with China over independent monitoring of emissions that had eluded them for 2 weeks. But they were also wearing very long faces because the final accord was far less than they wanted and was reached without their involvement.
While many of the political leaders of nations in the G77 group of 130 developing countries were also pleased to see an agreement finally emerge, a number of them were also angry and bitter about the political compromises that were struck as well as the way in which the agreement was negotiated, effectively leaving them outside the negotiations just like the environmental activists sitting in the chill winter air outside the Bella Center.
I had a chance to interview one of those G77 leaders on Thursday afternoon, about 18 hours before Obama arrived to try and save the day. While I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Bolivia who are already suffering from the effects of climate change, I also thought their President, Evo Morales, was guilty of political grandstanding with many of the responses he gave to my questions and those of two other journalists.
When I asked him about UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s comment about the lack of progress in Copenhagen; “We do not have another year to deliberate. (Mother) Nature does not negotiate.” President Morales responded that “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save Mother Earth.” Indeed, this response from Mr. Morales accurately reflected a sentiment held by a number of other G77 political leaders, who want an agreement that limits the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures instead of 2 degrees.
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan who led a walkout by many of the G77 members on Monday, says the developed nations’ offer of $10 billion in “quick-start” financing to help poor countries deal with climate change was wholly inadequate. I agree with him that this offer is crap and I understand why many poor countries are digging in their heels and saying that no-deal would be better than a bad climate change agreement.
But instead of expanding on these somewhat valid arguments against the proposed climate agreement, President Morales instead chose to rail against what he sees as the cause of climate change saying that “The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model.” Now I ask you, what are the chances the other political leaders in Copenhagen will actually entertain this kind of suggestion? Slim and None!
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