Climate Weak

In an editorial last Saturday, the New York Times dubbed it Climate Week: "The coming week could set a record for the number of high-profile hours spent discussing global warming and what to do about it." First, the UN. Then several days of the Clinton Global Initiative. And finally, President Bush's speech to an international conference on the topic organized by the White House. Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie--the Earth is threatened (droughts, storms, Alaska becoming a sinkhole, disease, species dying off, the Arctic ice disappearing faster than anyone would have believed) so the world's Leaders meet to hear the scientists debate and come up with a Plan to save the World. Or something like that.

"The problem needs all the attention it can get," the Times opined. "But if talk is good, it is also cheap."

First of all, if you missed reports of this momentous week, that was easy enough to do: the media barely covered it. So much for the climate Crisis. So many more important stories than that.

The talkers were impressive. At the UN, California Governor Schwarzenegger said: "The consequences of global climate change are so pressing it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past.What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that means all of us." Al Gore spoke. He called for a global Marshall Plan to confront the Climate Crisis and world poverty. Then the organizer of the event, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon asserted, ""Our goal must be nothing short of a real breakthrough," Ban said. "Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term."

The Washington Post went on to say that this meeting was a preliminary to real negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, which will begin in December. Ban called on industrialized powers to show greater leadership in cutting emissions and said that poor countries will require incentives to lower emission levels "without sacrificing economic growth or poverty reduction." Although Ban did not outline a specific proposal for emission caps, a senior U.N. adviser said Ban believes a legally binding limit on industrial emissions is essential.

Other leaders were more specific, including the otherwise conservative president of France. "Let us together set objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, noting that the European Union is committed to a 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050. "Failure to act would mean going beyond the point of no return."

It's worth noting at this point that dealing with the Climate Crisis is not a political issue that always breaks along party lines in Europe--in the UK, the conservatives are, if anything, even more gung ho than the Labor Party. And in general terms, it isn't a political issue at all.

Then came three extraordinary days of the Clinton Initiative meetings, virtually uncovered by American media. Many large and less large programs were announced to address an array of problems such as poverty and disease, but here's a short list of what was accomplished on the Climate Crisis alone:

A coalition of eight American utilities collectively serving nearly 20 million customers in 22 states announced Thursday that they would focus on energy efficiency.

Over the next five years, Standard Chartered Bank will commit to underwrite $4 to 5 billion in debt to renewable energy projects with a total project value of $8 to $10 billion. The bank will target clean energy projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and focus their efforts in areas such as wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass and coal bed methane. The bank says it may play the role of lead arranger of debt, financial advisor or equity investor.

In another initiative announced Thursday, the X Prize committed to give prize money of up to $300 million to innovators making breakthroughs in energy and climate change, education, health, and poverty alleviation by conducting a dozen global competitions for large scale inducement prizes. X Prize defines a problem and then sets a challenge to find the solution. In this new round of prizes, innovators will have to show outcomes such as a reduction in CO2 or improved mortality rates. Innovators who reach the targets first will be able to claim millions of dollars in prize money.

Working with the Alliance for Climate Protection, Mark Buell and Susie Tompkins Buell will develop a $5 million project to continue moving the United States towards the point at which leaders in both major political parties and all sectors of civil society compete to offer effective proposals, policies, and programs that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

Then on Friday came Bush. The New York Times report began: Seeking to dispel the widespread impression that his administration is isolated on the issue of global warming, President Bush said today that the world’s biggest polluters can limit damage to the atmosphere while still promoting prosperity. At the international conference he called, Bush added: “The best way to tackle this problem is to think creatively and to learn from others’ experiences and to come together on a way to achieve the objectives we share. Together, our nations will pave the way for a new international approach on greenhouse emissions.”

But Bush again refused to endorse mandatory measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and in its own decorous way, the Times story said nobody was buying it. Noting that "the conference drew only midlevel officials from many participating nations," it said: Germany’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, took a detached view of the conference, noting that the Bush administration would be gone in less than 18 months, and that it was unlikely to change its position. He said he spent two days this week discussing climate change with Democrats in Congress with an eye toward the post-Bush future.

In its story on the conference, the Washington Post wrote: After nearly seven years on the defensive, Bush tried to assume a leadership role in crafting "a new international approach" to preserving the world's climate. Yet he found himself largely isolated at a meeting that he had organized to address the issue, lambasted by foreign officials, U.S. lawmakers and environmental activists who saw his effort as more show than substance.

The Post quoted John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change ("what has emerged at this conference, and also at the United Nations, is how isolated the administration is now on this issue, especially on the issue of mandatory targets") and some snark from Rep. Edward Markey, the Democratic chairman of a new House committee on global warming ("The president says his goals are aspirational, but his goals are really procrastinational . The UN is saying the planet is urgently sick, and the Bush administration is saying, 'Take two aspirin and call me when I leave office.' " )

The UK's Guardian was more blunt than that: European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush's failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change... A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December. "It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade," the diplomat said. "I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."

So for Bush, it turned out to be Climate Weak. But until he is gone, and unless a Democrat is elected, only incremental steps by individual cities and states, corporations and perhaps countries are likely to be possible--as well as initiatives like those announced at the Clinton conference, the most successful of the week's climate events. But those efforts won't be enough. It will take the world, and especially the United States of America.

There is more to say about the Bush position and what may be behind it, and about what the Democrats are and are not doing on the Climate Crisis. Stay tuned.