COPENHAGEN—It’s easy to get lost here at the UN climate talks in Denmark. The flood of people, the forests of documents and fliers, the swarm of numbers; they even have their own language – and it’s not Danish. Climatese, we can call it; a new language of power in our world.
But now and then there are moments of frank speech. This, from a leading Chinese delegate, Ambassador Yu Qing Tai, talking about the notion of “atmospheric space” and the rights of countries to pollute it:
“For the developed countries (US, EU), when it’s a matter of emission space it boils down to this: they say ‘What’s ours is ours, and what we’ve taken from you we’ll keep.’ For us, we say our emission space is under occupation, and we want it back.”
So it’s about territorial competition over the sky. It’s about access to a massive carbon waste dump. It’s about measuring how much more of the black stuff you can get away with burning over the next couple of decades. It’s about not just the lines drawn on maps of the earth’s surface, but lines being drawn in the sky.
One thing for sure, it ain’t about Tuvalu. That low-lying Pacific island country – with a tolerance for sea-level increase of about 7 inches – tried to slow things down the last couple of days, getting the plenary session (not the smokeless smoke-filled rooms, mind you) shut down for a few hours.
“We’re negotiating for the survival of our countries,” said Dessima Williams, ambassador from Grenada and the chair of the bloc of small island nations. Unless the thousands of scientists involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are wrong or are running a big hustle on us all, Tuvalu is pretty well screwed. Grenadians, in the Caribbean Sea, have some mountain high ground to fight over. Tuvalu is made up of sand atolls a couple feet above the water.
When you step back and compare that sort of space – water lapping at the door of your house – with squabbling over atmospheric space to dump an invisible odorless gas, you get a sense of the disconnect here in Copenhagen. The very weirdness of it all.
When you enter the summit venue here in a spooky post-industrial corner of metro Copenhagen, you enter an unreality chamber. At COP 15, the pleasingly named acronym for the 15th annual conference of signatories to the UN climate change convention, nobody is seriously talking about the people getting crunched by 200 years of fossil-fuel burning by the industrial countries. Nor are they really talking about the tragic human impact of Sino-Indian burning to come. Sure, they’re talking about all that stuff – talking and talking – but not really about — certainly not with — the people really affected. Your mind couldn’t really entertain serious contemplation of their plight and do your work at the same time. One of them has to give.
And history largely ends at the door of the COP. The age-old struggle of the oppressed of Africa, Asia and Latin America against foreigners and their own elite is reduced to a simple row of flags. The Sudanese ambassador and chair of the developing world bloc – G77 and China – can with a withering eye and an even tone denounce the injustice of the rich nations, and no one is impolite enough to raise the matter of Darfur, or the moral standing of a representative of the government of Sudan to talk of rights and justice.
I’m not challenging the morality of people of the so-called developing world to seek redress of historical grievances they have with the people of the so-called developed world. The privileges that I have enjoyed as an American will be paid for in part when the sea rakes away the Mekong Delta. I’m responsible for that and should be held accountable. It is better if I pay in some way today than to leave it to my descendants to pay in another.
US negotiator Todd Stern, in a press conference on Dec. 10, apparently does not agree with me. “We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere up there that are there now. But the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations – I just categorically reject that.”
On the other hand, I’m sure the honorable third world delegates and NGO lobbyists would agree with my stance. Their demands are consistent: you rich countries start burning less of the black stuff and pay us money to 1) slow down our future burning rate and 2) cope with the fact that we’ve all burned way too much already and are too late to avoid at least some of the craziness.
But that’s my problem: I don’t want a “big emitter,” – whether from London or Lusaka – getting my money. I think I’m like a lot of Europeans and neo-Europeans[1] in that I’m willing to sacrifice some time and money on reparations for the climate crimes that I’ve inherited with my history (and still knowingly commit by doing things like flying to this climate conference). It’s easy for me because I don’t much like the shopping mall or most of the toys they sell there, but neither do I like the idea of throwing my money away. Like many people, I’m ready to do quite a lot – and waiting for someone to show me how! – to help the Cambodians cope with climate change. But I also reckon that there are enough BMWs in Phnom Penh; I don’t need to contribute to that fund.
When the Climate Righteous call loudly for an adaptation fund or money to give governments to protect forests, I get kind of uncomfortable. You know that a lot of the Righteous got that way by fighting the powers – on dams, on plantations, on human rights – and they want now to award them with more money. It doesn’t make much sense in the real world, but maybe it doesn’t have to. The Climate Industry has taken on a life of its own, a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of language, lobbyists and literature. It doesn’t matter that the world isn’t really divided up into a bunch of independent sovereign nations. It doesn’t matter that it’s patently ridiculous to group China and Saudi Arabia into a negotiating bloc with Senegal and Kiribati. It doesn’t even matter that none of this expensive talk – something like $200 million for this summit alone – will actually reduce carbon pollution.
The show must, and certainly will, go on. COP 16 will be in Mexico City, after all, and you know that’s going to be a party.
Back on the farm, we can talk about real action – on a pretty tiny scale – on both mitigating and adapting to climate change. That’s one thing that is not being really talked about here: farming. I’ll talk about that in the next blog.
[1] North Americans, Australians, New Zealanders.
In response to Les I must say I like his sceptical approach and my scepticism of one claim he made led me to Google and straight away I found its refutation:
Global Deforestation: Contribution to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide …
by GM Woodwell – 1983 – Cited by 128 – Related articles
Global Deforestation: Contribution to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. G. M. Woodwell 1, J. E. Hobbie 1, R. A. Houghton 1, J. M. Melillo 1, B. Moore 2, …
http://www.sciencemag.org › Science Magazine › 9 December 1983 – Similar –
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/222/4628/1081
Talking with Marty, an ex-physicist now a lawyer, when I mentioned historians being critical of the scientists conclusions and observed that their methods and way of using data are so different to those of science and should not be applied to scientific issues, he said that the climate deniers just do not understand how science works and therefore go on denying. I might add that the religious, who accept the tales made up by the ancients so ignorant of the world have the same problem.
Never-the-less I agree with the concluding comments of Les as would the Buddha I suppose.
[...] From Jeff @ Copenhagen http://www.fairearthfarm.com/lines-drawn-in-the-sky-in-copenhagen.html [...]
Great article! As usual any big issue which involves many people and many bureaucrats becomes a monster of conflicting interests and ethical dilemmas. Personally I think that the whole focus is in the wrong area. At the risk of being labeled a heretic I offer these opinions for discussion.
Personally I am not impressed with computer models and ‘Climate science’. Part of me feels as if the CO2 business could be a Furphy (red herring) with some other hidden agendas. I also think it is a huge diversion from what I see as more serious environmental issues of excessive consumption, deforestation, loss of habitat and unsustainable agriculture, just to name a few. These things will finish us sooner and more thoroughly than a few degrees warming (or cooling as the case may be). Deforestation for example is known to accelerate desertification and affect weather patterns, yet the propaganda images of brown feet on parched soils link it only to CO2. I am horrified that some greens, even one of my heros, David Bellamy, are advocating nuclear energy because its use will decrease emission of greenhouse gas.
It seems every environmental issue is attributed to CO2 and the science, though I am not a scientist, seems sloppy or speculative. A classic example is the failure to allow for the effect of particulate matter in the atmosphere on solar radiation. Until recently it was a mystery why ‘pan evaporation rate’ had decreased when all the models had predicted an increase.(google: Changes in Australian Pan Evaporation from 1970 to 2002). When air traffic was suspended after 911, evaporation rates approached the predicted levels as the air cleared a little. To me, though I am not a climate scientist, particulate matter in the atmosphere and its effect on solar radiation would be an obvious and essential variable in any computer modelling. How many other subtle or undiscovered variables have not been taken into account?
And not to make light of low lying islands serious plight, but have we actually recorded a rise in sea level yet? After the tsunami a few years back I saw pictures of some islands where the coral was high and dry. The movement of tectonic plates had raised these islands several metres. Darwin wrote about this phenomenon in one of his first books. Some islands are rising, and some are sinking. This is a natural and inevitable geological process and may have nothing to do with anthropocentric climate change.
I am sceptical by nature, and have a tendency to play the devils advocate. I am open to all data and new theories but don’t like it when comments such as ‘the debate on climate change is settled’ become accepted.
I believe that trees are one of the major factors modifying climate, and there is mountains of data to verify this. Why do none of these debates discuss deforestation as a factor in climate change? CO2 and increased temperatures stimulate tree growth. Maybe I am a simple and naieve man, but my simple and naieve solution is this: consume less, travel less and plant more trees!(and grow a bit of food if you think you might need to eat)
Well a week to go after one of squabbling over not paying third World countries and now George suggests $150 billion per annum for them while the US spends $700 p.a. on war.
Clearly their plan is to destroy the World not save it.
Last night in Chiang Mai UCLA Lecurer Paul Tiffany told students a) The US political system of Red & Blue is frozen in division, b) Thailand is much the same with Red & Yellow and the top people in Bangkok are telling him a civil war is coming & c) The Chinese populace is so furious at systemic corruption that riots are running at 100,000 p.a. and likewise folk are saying there that a civil war will erupt.
Maybe if these things happen early enough the Chinese can get back on their bikes and lead the World out of the mess?
Meanwhile will the island states pull out the Joker in their hand? Will they close their airports and give their Western (and rich Eastern) guests an extended holiday until Cop15 accepts a list of demands such as – Halving World air traffic as from January 1st; Banning new coalfired power stations, reducing fossil fuel use by 10% p.a. from next year etc..