Outside the conference, Greenpeace blocks a huge coal carrier in Rotterdam Harbor. This strong statement intended for the climate change conference is in keeping with the activists' usual dramatic theatrics.
Theatrics generally come with a price tag and this action is no exception. Greenpeace's illegal blocking of the ship could cost companies millions of dollars.
At the same time, inside the conference center, in a sidebar event, South Africa well argues their essential need for coal. Desperately needing affordable and available energy sources, South Africa is dependent upon coal. Not only does coal offer the only electrical way out of poverty for half of the country's population, but also, coal is the critical feedstock for South Africa's chemical industry.
"Energy and oil are South Africa's second highest sector in attracting foreign direct investment," the packed room was told in the presentation today. It was stressed that investment was needed immediately for waste management projects, since half of the population is totally without any waste management facilities.
Waste management facilities, like urban centers and manufacturing require greater electricity generation than made possible, so far, by renewable technologies.
South Africa is not alone in finding electricity from coal to be essential. We might imagine that two hundred years from now we will not be using fossil fuels, just as there was little use two hundred years ago. But, in the meantime, reality dictates that world populations want substantial electricity now. Only coal, gas, oil, nuclear and large hydro deliver substantial electricity now.
South Africa is not alone in her electricity generation concern. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, electricity consumption in the US more than doubled between 1970 and 1988, and is projected to grow an additional 34 percent by 2020. Cyberspace, far from being "resource-free" is already using 14 percent of that electricity.
Coal currently provides more than half of the electricity consumed nationwide. As our reliance on electricity grows, so will the need for electricity from coal. Fortunately, U.S. coal reserves are plentiful, with enough coal to last for the next 250 years at current usage rates. On average, electricity from coal is less expensive than power generated from natural gas and renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
Restricting the use of coal to generate electricity would mean greater reliance on more expensive or, in some cases, imported sources of power. Studies predict that consumers could end up paying twice as much for electricity if we are forced to find other sources of generation to replace the electricity we currently get from coal.
Importantly, electricity from coal is increasingly clean. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, overall emissions of pollutants defined by the Clean Air Act as being harmful to human health have decreased 31 percent nationally since 1970. During this time the use of coal to generate electricity nearly tripled.
Those, like Greenpeace, who seek to eliminate coal as a source of energy in South Africa, in Europe, in the U.S., or anywhere seem reluctant to acknowledge these improvements. They seem equally intent on perpetuating old and outdated stereotypes of coal-based electric utilities.
Theirs is not a rational position for the NOW.
Jan Pronk is well suited to be leading this Netherlands gathering. As the consummate diplomat, Pronk calls upon his negotiating skills to aid his work as host.
His responses to questions are refreshing in their candor. When asked about sanctions or penalties for non-compliance, his response, delivered with a smile, was, "Here in the Netherlands we just tell people to do it voluntarily or we will increase taxes."
He makes no attempt to hide the fact that he likes emissions trading as a mechanism. He confides that he finds himself having to educate environmental groups when they meet with him. Their opposition to emissions trading is understandable. A country with money, like the US, might buy its way into compliance by purchase of hot air from a country that is de-industrializing, like Russia. Pronk, however, sees beyond this loophole possibility to an economic truth.
Pronk says his lecture stresses that one cannot value a public good like air without a market. Only markets, he argues, furnish prices that signal information about those values.
He, however, agrees with environmental NGOs that no compliance ought to be accomplished without true domestic reductions.
Why?
Pronk is persuaded that domestic reductions are needed for psychological and political reasons. That view is supported by the present push to make recycling prevalent and ubiquitous. Doing so allows everyone to feel part of the process. There is a buying in and an ownership of the issue.
When asked about the status of sinks, his raised eyebrows answered before his words. He categorizes the current status as a "vicious circle." He stresses that sinks need a "cautious approach." Pronk favors sinks in adaptation, not in the CDM mechanism. He does not think that agreement on the sinks issue will be reached by the end of COP6 because it has been a bottom-up solution that is too time-consuming.
However, Pronk acknowledged that a top-down temporary approach is being considered which might be credible. A meeting tonight may answer questions. Columbia's proposal about forest sinks' projects in CDM does address permanence. Of course, permanence is iffy with forests that at some point in time must release their stored carbon dioxide.
Within the Columbian proposal, credits for forests would be granted with something like an expiration date. Upon this so-called expiration date, a renewal period could extend the timeframe and the credits as long as the project credibly was still sequestering carbon dioxide.
Thus, seemingly indefatigable, Jan Pronk engages all groups and leads the negotiating process along.
If COP6 does produce a text that makes the Kyoto Protocol ratifiable, it will be in large part due to Minister Pronk.
Some bit of twisted logic surfaced today.
There have always been arguments by environmental groups against much use of flexible mechanisms for developed countries like the US. We are too rich. We consume too much. Our per capita emissions are too high.
And our lawyers are too likely to find loopholes in any protocol.
We Americans oh so cleverly will find ways to paper-comply with emissions reductions targets while not really changing a thing about the way we live. Or, so the story has gone.
The familiar admonition has been "If the use of these flexible mechanisms to meet targets is not capped, then rich countries will never change they way they use energy and consume resources."
After all, making the US "change its evil ways" and undergo "a wrenching transformation of society" have always been stated goals of environmental NGOs and the Vice President.
Are there two additional stated goals now?
Today's conference rag reads, "By forcing the rich to make their reductions domestically, they will be forced to become innovative in developing new renewable energy technologies. Keeping action [domestic] forces the pace of that development. Merely planting trees or upgrading coal-fired power stations in developing countries does nothing to help it."
So, we rich countries are to be confined to our rooms until we have created a boatload of brilliant new patents for the good of the planet?
That's new goal number one.
What is the second?
It is like a demand for sound money.
The worry is that projects taking place under mechanisms are really projects that would have happened anyway. These "anyway" emissions reductions are devalued reductions. They are cheap CERs.
Will bad CERs drive out good like bad money drives out good?
Cheap CERs appear to be worrisome. Why? Apparently, because "cheap CERs will mean that the more ambitious cutting-edge technology projects that truly contribute to sustainable development are unlikely to be financed."
The paper made it clear that our trying to get out of this forced domestic inventiveness would be a "blatant US attempt at cheating."
Shouldn't someone tell these global planners that man's creative genius has never responded positively to force?
Rich countries forced to create new technology?
I don't think so.
COP6 is a "success" if the outcome of COP6 "makes the Kyoto Protocol ratifiable." Is this definition of success an early attempt to lower expectations at The Hague? Participants have heard this euphemistic phrase at every meeting, although prior usage did include the tag phrase "by 2002." The year has now been dropped.
Is the current push to ratify the Protocol really just an effort to save face?
Is it possible that this big ball of wax is so utterly unacceptable to business, environmentalists, the rest of civil society and diplomats alike that they would prefer to drop it?
So much ego, money and meeting time have gone into this global plan to ration energy. Political, activist and business careers depend upon creating this new bureaucratic layer of rules and regulations. All accumulated forward motion will be lost if it is acknowledged that controlling the energy of the whole world is neither doable nor desirable.
What sane business will leap into an interim project when business is told directly that there will be no legal basis for them to be able to depend on the project actually counting for something?
Such vagueness places business in the untenable position that their financial investments will be held hostage to some capricious future ruling. This uncomfortable situation is not unlike our perverse anti-trust law in which, after the fact, business conduct is declared criminal.
Some hold utopian beliefs that agreement can emerge by the weekend when the diplomats begin to arrive. Is there anyone so naive as to believe that negotiating could be reduced to selecting choices like entrees off a buffet?
This situation is anything but a buffet. There are so many crosscutting issues in the texts they are not separable. Diplomats cannot possibly appreciate the complexities represented by the pages before them that delegates have agonized over. Consider the sheer numbers. The European Union delegation alone here is two hundred fifty people. Most have added their two cents to the wordsmith of documents.
Is part of saving face a numbers match up? When the United Kingdom heard yesterday that the United States Congress has a large group of observers coming in this weekend, the UK Parliament scurried to send a force, also.
Environmental NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations), who have steadfastly been hostile to most US positions, celebrated yesterday what they called "Bill's Online Bonanza." Seizing upon the rare positive push for the Protocol that came last Saturday in a web address, the NGO newsletter heaped praise upon the quacking of our lame duck President. Clinton appears to have taken the inclusion of nuclear options off the CDM table.
Such cavalier positions, if true, are the reasons this global warming treaty is undoable and undesirable. Are Americans going to endorse policies that promise to destroy jobs, slow economic growth and hurt low-income groups?
Success may not be just around the corner. Few Americans have ever been that bothered about some tradition of "saving face."
Not a single developed country has ratified the Kyoto Protocol in the three years since it was cobbled together. The legally binding treaty on global warming has gone begging.
Lack of endorsement is because issues are broad and complex. Perhaps climate change issues are too broad and too complex for treaties. Goals are unclear. Science is uncertain, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
This treaty is not just about technology. As with most treaties, it is about politics. Americans, especially, are keenly aware this week of just how uncertain politics can be.
However, fewer and fewer people around the globe seek dependence upon politicians as the core to their existences, anyway. More and more seek the creativity and dignity of responsibility and self-governance. This trend reflects a position, not of apathy, but of empowerment as information is horizontally available in a truly equitable age based upon knowledge-capital. Perhaps what is seen as indecision about the Treaty is actually a decision to reject a centrally controlled planned economy.
The burdens of the Treaty appear greater that its benefits. Developed countries would be politically committing themselves to reducing their collective emissions of six key greenhouse gases by at least 5%, within the period 2008-2012. However, none believe that such efforts will accomplish purported environmental goals. Most suggest that this initial effort represents only 1/30th of the required behavioral changes in man’s production/consumption habits.
Nevertheless, delegations and non-governmental organizations continue to meet, and to meet, and to meet. Hundreds of groups write up agendas. Thousands of participants attend closed or open meetings throughout the sprawling Congress Center. Attention is focused on minutiae that push the Protocol somewhere, anywhere.
On many agendas, protocol-related issues present the most difficulties. Needing resolution at COP6 are:
These are contentious items. No one has all the facts. Unintended consequences from premature or faulty steps threaten all actions that might be taken. In that light, treaty indecision is a good thing.
Indecision on the climate change treaty seems perfectly matched by indecision reflected in The Hague environment. Unable to settle upon being sea or land, this piece of Europe challenges both attitudes and wardrobes of the five to ten thousand accredited participants at this 6th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP6 – UNFCCC). Rain is not drizzling or pattering here. It is sloshing. It is invading. Bleakness pervades.
Bleakness verging on desperation is also reflected in the Convention documents this first morning of the two-week meeting. “Work it out!” is the conference theme. An earth globe is the dot in the exclamation point.
The Earth Times morning headline is “Critical two weeks in history of Earth.” Few participants question that man-made greenhouse gases are threatening Earth with catastrophic rising temperatures, droughts and more destructive storms. Few participants question much. Feeling alone rules.
As if appointed Ministry of Propaganda, BBC TV inundates viewers in hotel rooms with films of scarcity and finite resources. No film finds mention of a single positive contribution of humankind. Man everywhere is destructive. But, is man everywhere only destruction upon Earth?
Each participant received a COP6 briefcase. Within was a hardback book titled, The straw that breaks the camel’s back…? Commissioned by the government of The Netherlands, the author captures in poetry and photos an apocalyptic-only perspective of man. But, is the only possible perspective of man one of apocalypse?
It is completely possible that the Kyoto Protocol would not be in its foundering position if it were based upon unassailable scientific integrity coupled with a view toward the abundance possible through institutions of free societies.
Countries are embracing economic and political freedom globally. It is noteworthy today that those freedoms are not going begging like this Treaty is.