On Wednesday we had been told that an overarching paper by President Pronk would sort out the issues.
On Thursday Pronk had said that he had received four positive reports (Box A: capacity building, technology transfer, adverse effects and guidance to the GEF; Box B: mechanisms; Box C: LULUCF; Box D: compliance, Policies and measures, and accounting, reporting and review under Protocol articles 5, 7, and 8). Because the reports were positive and because nobody was asking for more time, he said that he saw no need for his own intervention.
By 12:35PM yesterday he changed his mind.
Justifying his intervention, Pronk argued, "We need a new setting because we keep backing away from what appeared to be agreement. I will now write what has been agreed and what has not been agreed and what cannot be agreed within the present setting."
In his own words he said, "It will not be ideal." Pronk planned to present a paper last night about which he had promised "it will cause pain, but will be a sharing of pain as evenly as possible."
Pronk called his dictatorial-like intervention necessary because in his view the positive positions stated by ministers in plenary sessions were not being reflected anywhere in the actual negotiations.
He hastened to say that his paper did not equal the outcome of COP6. He had even said on Thursday that he had not written it yet, but few believed that.
He met separately in his small quarters with head ministers. His paper was to be written and distributed. Supposedly, by midnight last night exhausted ministers gathered again.
The European Union's anticipated rejection of Pronk's positions has been foretold. Late Thursday they had declared the inclusion of sinks into the protocol to be a colossal "Kyoto mistake." The EU, furthermore, had felt that Pronk's intervention would "just make everybody mad."
Not surprisingly, the G-77 and China position also is expected to oppose the Pronk Plan. Representing that group, Nigeria had protested, "sharing pain can not be equal because the developing countries are not at fault." He had argued that the developing countries faced the highest stakes and saw no winning position as long as developed countries were "not coming to terms with the developing countries' position." "The developed countries have caused the problem," stated Nigeria emphatically.
As this article goes to press the results are unknown. Some timeframe, however, has been promised as a merciful conclusion to this misery. "COP6 will close Saturday not Sunday," vowed Pronk.
Pronk did have the last word.
He entreated, "Don't throw a pie at me!"
Calling themselves a Non-Governmental DIS-Organization (NGDO?) some forty members of The Rising Tide taught future activists just how to succeed at protesting.
Instructions to be gleaned from their observed activities yesterday include:
This morning (the morning after the assaults), delegates themselves are uncritical of yesterday's disrupters except to lament that time was wasted.
Disrupters incurred no penalties. No arrests were made. On the contrary, they were invited to sit at the table. Jan Pronk urged them to a head table with him so that their "People Not Profits" slogan could be widely captured by all media.
WWF and Greenpeace used the occasion to point out, with perhaps a hint of professional envy, that the disruptions did show frustration with governments in dealing with emissions.
Conference executive secretary Michael Zammit Cutajar said, "I hope the impatience if not the methods of the protesters will get transmitted to the negotiators." It is not surprising that Cutajar appears soft on the disruptions. His anti-business empathy is legendary.
Local, national and international press headlines, internet releases and television coverage appears to revel in the riveting circus techniques.
After two weeks of no Protocol progress, at last there was action.
Something was a success.
Happy Thanksgiving.
"Any new chance to make some money is welcomed by American farmers who recently faced record low crop prices," reported Paul Faeth of the World Resources Institute. Faeth's article, titled Farmers Back Flexibility claimed that there are signs in Indiana that farmers would support a Kyoto Protocol if they got credit for sopping up carbon dioxide.
Under Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Jim Lyons, confirmed that the USDA hoped farmers would be paid to not touch their lands. Promising that the 2002 Farm Bill will be re-written, Lyons expected that money would then be included for land to be sinks. They have been termed Kyoto Lands. "The challenge is private land stewardship," Lyons stated. He added, "We must keep up incentives like CRP and, in addition, pay owners for land to be sinks."
Why should sinks be written into the 2002 Farm Bill?
Linda Delgado, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, answered that question. She explained that the USDA is afraid that conservation efforts are tapering off. Payment for sinks is needed to create more incentives to conserve and as insurance against the loss of the position the USDA has already achieved.
Delgado implied that the agency needed sinks as a whip to continue to drive land-use practices. She said the USDA needed to be able to tell owners, "Let's sequester more carbon."
The Convention on Desertification creates a direct tie to carbon sequestration. It was just ratified. Few are yet aware of it. The new treaty covers all the western states. Indeed, it covers seventy percent of the landmass of earth. The Convention of Desertification is to be integrated into the several treaties supporting a new, emerging United Nations treaty on water.
Both the Desertification treaty and the emerging treaty on water will help the USDA. One-third of US land mass is owned by the federal government. That's seven hundred million acres. However, regulations allow federal mandates to affect private land as well as federal. Some argue that federal management is necessary. "Federal land is better managed than private land," said David Hayes, Deputy Secretary of the Interior.
Which farmers might make this new money?
Where are the sinks now?
Forestland sequesters 47% of carbon dioxide currently. Crops sequester 16%. Grazing land sequesters 27%. All together, that is 300 million hectares, of which 192 million acres is federal. Timber, mining and grazing revenues no longer add much money to federal coffers. Recreation now contributes 75% of the revenues from federal lands. USDA says that is more than timber, mining or grazing revenues combined.
The audience was told that one big reason for those declining revenues from resource use is lack of demand. Jim Lyons stated, "The market for timber has declined." He remarked that that only 3,000 million board feet of timber is being produced today, down from 11,000 million board feet in 1990.
A few of us who concern ourselves with food and fiber issues might have a vastly different presentation to make than the one made by these US agencies.
We are more likely to be able to prove up the position that Americans who work in natural resources have been driven from their lands and from their jobs by those very federal regulations of which these bureaucrats are so proud.
Demand is not down. Suppliers are closed out.
Paying the remaining few to sop up carbon hardly seems like a positive program for production.
Does it?
How often has media claimed that thousands of scientists agree that man's emissions are dangerous to the planet and they say that those scientists are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?
Three lead authors of IPCC say we have been misinformed.
These authors recently chaired an unusual, but welcome, sidebar for a standing-room only crowd. They unequivocally stated "members of the IPCC are nations (80 to 120 nations), not scientists." As such, their point was that it is misleading to refer to IPCC as thousands of scientists in some sort of agreement. IPCC is based in Geneva as part of UNEP.
How do these IPCC nations work?
Nations elect a bureau and working groups of between five to twenty science authors. Summaries of the working groups are drafted by a small subset of these contributors. IPCC is not science. At its best, it is an assessment of science. At its worse, it is political science.
"IPCC is oriented toward searching for supportive evidence," cautioned one presenter. Evidence that is not supportive of the global warming hypothesis is cited as "uncertainty." Those are political choices, not science assessments.
Despite acknowledged selectivity of data, the role asked of IPCC nations expands with every meeting. European Union (EU) this week has suggested that IPCC create methodologies for Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs). Such a role goes far beyond assessment, but is perhaps unavoidable, given the necessity to think that we know what might scientifically be happening as results of human activity.
Participants at COP6 are depending on IPCC work. In the Land-use, Land-use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) contact group, members decided that "guidance on the biome approach should be sought from the IPCC." In another forum, Brazil and Peru asked acceptance of the "natural regeneration is a management approach according to the IPCC Special Report."
So, more and more of the policy behind this Kyoto Protocol is depending upon a group "the IPCC" that is seen to be more objective than, in reality, it is.
How did IPCC science end up hostage to politics?
The process appears to divide workers and not seek their collaboration in the end result. "Scientists never get their reports back," lamented one author. Politicians write the policy summaries, not the scientists. Politicians leave much out of the final reports. "Summaries make the message "on line" by including, at the last moment, new authors such as Michael Grubb," offered one presenter.
Rarely is underlying work in total agreement. Some chapters may actually disagree with each other and may have reached two different conclusions, but final reports are cleansed to present one supportive position. Working group chair, Ben Santer, became infamous a few years back with his last minute change of mind and subsequent cleansing of the underlying work in WG 8 of the Second Assessment Report (SAR). Santer simply left out several conclusions of working scientists that were disclaimers to the thesis that unique anthropogenic forcing (human influence upon climate) was evident.
"Bob Watson is determined to drive the scare factor up," commented one of the lead authors at this sidebar about the two presentations in plenary sessions that had been made by Robert Watson, Chairman IPCC.
"In the end, they are just politicians," concluded a scientist tiredly.
Full text of Chirac speech
French President Jacques Chirac definitely shocked Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) this morning.
Chirac exhorted, "By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace. We are demonstrating our capacity to assert control over our fate in the spirit of solidarity, to organize our collective sovereignty over this planet, our common heritage."
There was more scold than diplomacy in the French President's plenary speech. He faulted "those who earn a living on energy wastage." He scornfully noted, "Each American emits three times more greenhouse gases than a Frenchman."
What does he want?
Chirac has a global vision. He urged, "We must place the creative power of our modern economies at the service of the fight against climate change, the new frontier of our development."
According to the French President, placing our creative power at the service of this fight apparently includes:
Thus, Chirac's list includes items to which the United States objects.
While the objectionable list is not surprising from a European country, Senator Hagel said the global governance reference really was. One source said the head of the U.S. Delegation, Frank Loy, and White House counsel to President Clinton, Roger Ballentine, were equally surprised.
If Chirac's global governance support appeared unseemly to some, it was not to all.
Netherlands' Prime Minister, Wim Kok , referred to the "need to look at global governance issues connected to globalization and sustainable development." In doing so, Kok praised the UN Millennium Declaration that was signed by most of the same heads of state in New York in September as are here in The Hague in November.
Kok quoted two full passages from the Declaration. Firstly: the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed. Secondly: we must spare no effort to free all of humanity from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities. We resolve therefore to adopt a new ethic of conservation and stewardship.
Obviously, global governance is no strange or shocking phrase to Mr. Kok.
Will it be oft repeated this week?
It just might. Statements are scheduled all day tomorrow. There will be statements by further parties, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and observer states.
If global governance is mentioned even more, even more ears will be noticing now.
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.
Floy Lilley's reports of November 13 through 16th have been moved.