Climate Negotiation Basics

It is tough to understand what happens at the climate negotiations and how it happens, but I am starting to wrap my head around it. Within the negotiations process, groups with similar interests come together to form coalitions to amplify their affect. Within these groups there are subgroups and sometimes sub-subgroups for specific policy issues and/or regional concerns. Any country can be part of as many or as few groups as they like. It's a strategic decision, and often times it is limited by the size of a particular country's delegation. This grouping system means that a group must reach a consensus and then, as a group, try to express and advance their ideas about the treaty in opposition/relation to all the other groups fighting for space with the eventual goal of putting their ideas, or some form of their ideas, into the final document that will someday become the international climate treaty.

This leads to an immensely complicated process of policy point trading. The U.S. might not care so much about Land Use and Land Use Change policy dealing with swamps, so they might trade this point with AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) for support on the framework of how we keep track of carbon emissions from manufacturing. Even with this great political game going on, it's really boring to watch: it all happens in a room filled with rows and rows of negotiators sitting at long tables with country placards and microphones being called upon one after the other to express support or dissent for proposals. Once a negotiator is called upon they could talk for 10 minutes (often done to deliberately waste time or to create a sense of urgency around consensus for a particular issue), or they could say 3 words (perhaps indicative of a desperate negotiator trying to save time).

When an agreement is reached on the ideas surrounding an issue, then the words of the text have to be decided. This means a bracketing of text. Yes, [brackets]. A sentence might look like...We must have [a robust legal framework surrounding the transfer of adaptation technologies][protect intellectual property rights with a strong international legal framework][pass sanctions on countries who fail to adequately protect intellectual property rights of parties allowing access to adaptation technologies]. And so on and so on, and then you pick and fight for your favorite wording, or you add another bracket. Or, and if you don't like version 1 and just can't live with the bracket situation happening, then you could always submit version 1a, 1b, 1c with language of your own.

Right now, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and the rest of the world are at a standstill about adding a target of limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius in a shared vision text (which is more like a mission statement than anything else). The Bolivians (super socialist) are pushing for a 1 degree Celsius change, the rest of the world is asking for 1.5 degrees Celsius, and Saudia Arabia (a long time obstructionist of the climate negotiations) is pushing for 2 degrees Celsius. So the text looks like this now [1.0][1.5][2.0].

A quick dip into the geo-politics of why this is happening...The Bolivians see themselves as being one of the few countries to genuinely represent and push for indigenous rights. They're undergoing a big socialist movement now that is giving the indigenous majority there a role in the government for the first time, and so they are very blunt as negotiators and push for things that the rest of the world will not ever accept. The Saudi Arabians, our allies who produced Osama bin Laden and the 911 high-jackers, have been trying to slow and stop this process for years. They continue to profit from the inelastic demand of oil and the money applied by the U.S. and other nations to have some influence over OPEC. The rest of the world is doing a lot of talk here about shifting away from heavy dependence upon oil, which is bad news for the Saudi's cozy position, so they obstruct, delay, and block reasonable proposals, like the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for the effects of climate change in the shared vision part of the text.

And, that's an oversimplified explanation to one single little bracket fight going on now. There are hundreds happening on all different subjects here in Cancun today.

Response to a Few Climate Questions

I think that if you are genuinely interested in climate science, then you could read the International Energy Agency reports, or reports from NOAA, or from our armed forces, or from NASA or many other organizations to find out these answers. It is easy to find contrary opinions to climate change within the public discourse, but if you really take the scientific discourse seriously and look critically at the scientific consensus, then in time I think that you might change your mind.

I think you understand that no science is absolutely certain. This is what I was taught at Statesboro High School, and this is what they are teaching at Statesboro High today.

What science does is point us to rational conclusions (that are never accepted as absolutely certain) upon which we can base decisions. Science tells us that we've reached peak oil and that the world's population will grow to 9 billion by the time I'm 64. No one is arguing about that. It also tells us that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been in a very long time and that the rate of increase has been accelerating since the industrial revolution.

But all this is science, and so there is an element of uncertainty. If you pour vinegar and baking soda into a kid's volcano, just because it overflows every single time doesn't mean it will again...there could be some other factor acting upon it. The most likely cause for that overflow appears to be the mixing of baking soda and vinegar, but no scientist is absolutely certain of this fact. You can choose to put that kid's volcano above your carpet and mix the two ingredients together with the belief that it will not overflow, but many people might think that is a dumb thing to do. I imagine that if you saw a child about to pour those ingredients into a volcano on your carpet, then you would exercise the precautionary principle and say "Stop!"
So I say stop, but a lot of people don't like that because there are a lot of political and economic implications they don't like...that good Americans react to emotionally, regardless of the fact that the chemical processes of the atmosphere are happening. It is scary to me that people are not concerned with science, because if the scientific consensus is correct, then this means very bad things for my generation and my future children and grandchildren.

Reaction to Steven Chu's Talk at the COP16

I am grateful for the access to high government officials here in Cancun, and I am glad that Steven Chu chose to end his speech with a quotation that called for inter-generational equity.

I showed up to hear the Secretary of Energy for the United States government come to talk to a knowledgeable audience at the climate change negotiations about energy policy in the U.S. Instead we got an earful of praise of the wonders of science, a twenty minute explanation of how climate change was happening, a harangue upon the minutia of future battery technology, and speculations bringing scientists together to invent new technology to combat climate change. The irrelevance of Steven Chu's words to an audience hungry to hear more might have been made up by some real engagement with people through a question and answer session, but, oh no, look at the time, sorry, we just couldn't have predicted that if we have Steven talk now then he would have to leave immediately afterwards to catch a plane. Really it is just a huge logistical failure on our part...I wish I could argue with the airlines (said the handler), but, you know, this guy is only in charge of a major government department and so he couldn't possibly have been put on another flight. D


Taking a wider view, are these irrelevant presentations and lack of engagement strategic messaging? Nothing new or significant has been said, and ideas about climate change have been tossed around completely apart from the ground of U.S. climate and energy policy. This is certainly relective of what is happening in the negotiations (what the U.S. are doing in the negotiations), but the State Department does a lot better about communicating the reality and the feasible possibilities of policies that could be adopted to mitigate climate change.

I can't help but take a swipe at the DOE communications team and say this: if you're listening, get some training from Ben Kobren (Pershing's communication guy) about how to better do your job. It was definitely a big waste of time for anyone informed and interested in climate change and energy issue.

America and the Kyoto Protocol

America is the only country in the world that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the only document that legally binds nations to emissions reductions under international law. The reasoning in the Senate back in the late 1990s was that the structure of the document was flawed because it allows developing countries to emit a certain amount as they develop their economies while developed countries had to take steps to cut emissions. The clinch point for the Senate was China. Our Senators believed that if China did not commit to binding emissions cuts, then the Chinese could emit more CO2, and so would out compete our businesses.

Our Senate's action upon this deeply flawed assumption has made the U.S. much less competitive in the long term. This is a much bigger issue than just “oh no, China is going to out compete us.” The whole world has been orienting their institutions, production facilities, and markets to make more with less. More and more investment firms are now asking for CO2 emissions data from major companies to gauge whether or not a company's business model is sustainable and hence a good long-term investment. More and more countries have passed tough energy efficiency standards on their products, and so if we do not adopt similar standards, then we cannot export certain goods to major markets (e.g. many American cars cannot be sold in most other developed countries because we haven't bothered to work on fuel efficiency). One British economist recently predicted that if the United States does not take significant steps to cut its emissions, then our country could eventually face trade sanctions due to the unfair competitive advantage we might have as we produce dirtier products.

Our leaders' out of step attitude on climate change and their inaction on the climate change issue as being directly detrimental to future financial well-being of all American citizens, as well as to American economic power. It is an option to continue to be the only country on the planet to do nothing about climate change, but it is getting to the point that it will be economically harmful in the short term.

Here at the climate negotiations, the whole world is desperately negotiating around our climate change inaction, making concessions so that some agreement can be arranged that is acceptable to our people. We are the most powerful nation in the world and we could be working to create a consensus about a future-oriented climate agreement that sets the U.S. on track to remain the world's top economic power in the 21^st century. Instead, because we choose to not engage with climate change, we have chosen a way in which the rest of the world decides around us what the future will look like and how major elements of the global economy will be structured. Forging on towards an American future not informed by the reality of peak oil, a basic respect demographics that predicts a world population of 9 billion by 2050, and the best scientific climate knowledge available is a choice we can still continue to make, but if America continues to choose more emissions now, then eventually it will mean much less money and much less political power in the next few years.

Explaining Lobbying to Chinese Youth

Today at the international climate change negotiations I experienced American youth trying to explain to Chinese youth on their first trip out of China how exactly lobbying in America worked. This came about because an American youth put up a powerpoint slide showing how the energy industry in the United States was the largest overall contributor to political campaigns. While the presentation was very good, the young person neglected to realize that democratic processes and lobbying was not something that the vast majority of Chinese ever think about. Since the presenter was trying to move quickly through the presentation, to describe lobbying he first said something along the lines of “businesses give money to the government so that they can have laws the way that they want them.” This is the basic American understanding of lobbying, but it is way oversimplified to actually convey the message. So, I started to explain to the Chinese young people around me that the money was actually offered to elected officials in our Congress while they were campaigning so that the candidate could have money to convince the public that they were the best person to vote for. Chinese young people who did not fully grasp the American electoral process who were hearing for the first time about lobbying sort of understood, but they all had perplexed looks on their faces and asked questions to clarify how exactly lobbying worked.

This led to another conversation where I asked whether or not Chinese youth could speak out against their government about climate change. One youth told me that in China, everything had to be framed in a way that went along with the norms and agenda of the Chinese government. My interpretation of this speaking is that in China you are allowed to strongly suggest that something is a good idea for the country, or that you ask the government put more emphasis on its work in some area or another, but that you are not allowed to say anything negative about what the government is doing. I then said that we in America so strongly believe that we can and should criticize the government in America that we have protected our rights to own guns for over two hundred years so that in case the government ever gets to be tyrannical, then we can overthrow it. The response to that was that there were pros and cons to every system of government.

All this was part of a collaborative effort between the Chinese Youth Climate Action Network and Americans from the Cascade Climate Action Network, the Sierra Student Coalition, and SustainUS, the group that accredited me with the U.N. so that I could attend this climate change conference.

I think today was the first time that I have ever spoken to a Chinese person fresh out of China with very little international experience. It made me very grateful that we have so much collaboration among our citizens about so many things not related to government and that if we do disagree with our government, then we have the freedom to say or do so much to actively express our opinions.

A Key Argument of the International Climate Change Negotiations: Total vs. Per Capita Emissions

One key argument necessary to have a good understanding of the international climate negotiations are the Total Emissions versus Per Capita Emissions debate.

Total Emissions versus Per Capita Emissions:

The developed world generally argues along the Total Emissions line of logic. In this argument, the parties that pollute the most total are primarily responsible for the climate change, and so they bear most of the responsibility for fixing the problem. Ever since China passed the U.S. in total CO2 emissions in 2008, this has been an argument that works its way into U.S. climate policies.

Many countries in the developing world argue along the Par Capita Emissions line. In this argument the countries which have the highest per capita emissions are more responsible for climate change. The countries with the highest per capita emissions (or, carbon footprints) are, by and large, the most developed countries. There is an implicit idea here that because we as a species share the atmosphere, then eventually we should roughly be polluting the same amount.

This debate gets into many wider ideas about how our leaders are approaching the climate problem. When the U.S. touts the total emissions argument and demands that China cuts its greenhouse gas emissions because they are the world's number one polluter, China might fire back that each one of their citizens polluted 4 times less than the average U.S. citizen, and that their citizens should have the right to pollute just as much as the citizens in the U.S.

For a visual of the total and per capita numbers, click here: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html

These lines of argument are usually not so rigidly one-sided (China this, U.S. that), but they do crop up as major thematic points in the conference in the many policy debates going on in the conference. A big idea is that because the world economy is primarily driven by the combustion of carbon-based fuel, then in order to develop and grow economies and improve standards of living and pull people out of poverty, developing countries must produce more CO2 in order to develop. Developing countries believe that developed countries have no right to try to limit their CO2 emissions because that means essentially limiting their development and economic growth. Developed countries, on the other hand, are worried by the models that suggest if more people in the developing world do reach comparable levels of per capita emissions as they have in the developed world have, then very bad things will start to happen. Connected to all of these arguments are ideas about the links between prosperity and emissions, past emissions (huge for industrialized nations, not so huge for India or China) and future emissions (skyrocketing for India, China, and Brazil), and how to reasonably share the responsibility and liability of climate change.

Emerging from all this debating is the general consensus among most nations about the most fair thing to do. Developed countries must 1) reduce their own total and per capita emissions while 2) helping developed countries transition to more sustainable growth paths so that they will not have to pollute more to grow their economies and developed countries must also (3) aid developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change that they had little to do in bring about. Reducing emissions in developed countries (1) means, among other things, investing in energy efficient infrastructure and in low carbon energy sources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Helping developed countries not pollute so much as they grow their economies (2) means making alternative clean technologies accessible and affordable to these countries through technology transfer and help financing the investments necessary for a lower-carbon economy as they grow. Aiding developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change (3) means helping people cope with the specific effects of climate change. One specific example of this would be aiding a country in building a dike to keep the ocean from encroaching upon its land as sea-level rise occurs.

So, those are some international climate change basics for you, stated in a very general way to make it accessible. There is a lot more to it than this, of course, but this is one angle to approach understanding everything that will go on in Cancun. Debating specific points of the climate treaty (finance, REDD, technology transfer, mitigation, and adaptation) tends to be immensely complicated because any nation can weigh in on any point being set down into words. It is an immensely complicated and tedious process, but it is also the world's best hope to minimize the effects of climate change.

A Note About Lord Monckton and SustainUS

So, a bit about the events surrounding the video. Some SustainUS youth disrupted Lord Monckton's meeting, then Lord Monckton called SustainUS and a Jewish grandson of someone who escaped from Nazi Germany “Hitler Youth,” then he lied to the Associated Press about it, saying “it was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the Audience.” The BBC got a hold of both videos and played them one after the other. So, Lord Monckton was not only discredited because he acted as an extremist in calling youth “Hitler Youth,” but also because he lied about doing it and then got caught in his own lie on national television in Great Britain.

Sure, maybe he didn't know that someone was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor initially, but after the youth told Lord Monckton that he was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Lord Monckton knew this and continued to call the youth a member of the Hitler Youth. He went on to say that “the whole air of the Copenhagen conference has the stink of a Nuremberg rally about it” (http://www.picvi.com/video/get.php?id=29296, 2:20). He turned his “Hitler Youth” outburst upon everyone at the Copenhagen conference, namely, every government in the entire world. Comparing a U.N. conference to a Nazi rally is one of the most extreme position on climate change that I have ever heard.