I just want to report that I am alive and well, and will be back shortly with more regular updates. There is certainly a lot to talk about. The trip to Washington provided lots of fodder. Best quote from an unnamed Senator: “Why it’s the trees that produce most of the CO2, isn’t it?” Frightening.
Here I am on the Speaker of the House’s private balcony (I’m the tallest one):
If you are dying to hear me you can check out this NPR On Point Radio feature on Green China & the Clean-Tech Race (last third of show).
International climate change negotiations. Let’s see where are we? Looks like about the same place we were when last I posted, but now we have less than two months until Copenhagen. Equally frightening. If anything, China has made a little progress, and the US seems to be backpedalling a bit. However, claims that the developed nations are trying to undo Kyoto don’t really concern me. At least as I understand it, the only change the US is proposing is that some developing county’s commit to take the actions they say they are going to take (not commit to actually achieving the predicted results of those actions) in text of a new international agreement.
AFP reported on Wednesday that
Even with a new administration, the US position has not changed. “We are not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That is out,” US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing told AFP on Wednesday.
What the United States favours instead, he said, is a new legal framework in which all countries would lay out their carbon-curbing schemes, and agree that they be measured and verified by outside experts.
“We are not asking (developing) countries to commit to the outcome. We are asking them to commit to the action itself,” Pershing said earlier in a press conference. “We have to commit to the outcome. There is a big difference.”
I could write a book on how national policy pronouncements from China at the national level, however laudable, are often not implemented at the local level. Any agreement must be based on a “trust, but verify” model. A failure by China to record their new and encouraging climate commitments in a new agreement makes those commitments not worth the paper their not written on. More on this later.
Now back to other work, but I’ll try to up the frequency of posting from this point forward.
3 responses so far ↓
1 sustainablejohn // Oct 12, 2009 at 12:08 pm
加油! keep em coming, we miss you!
2 Greg // Oct 13, 2009 at 8:30 am
It can be guaranteed that the second tier nations will sign and openly continue their ways, claiming to be full-on developing nations. The developing nations do not have the money or the infrastructure to support such GHG reducing technologies and their leaders do not have any self discipline when it comes to managing their countries’ finances.
Also, we saw how well the EU and Canada adhered to their Kyoto commitments. In other words, substantial emissions agreements are pointless except more tax payer funded luxury travel.
3 Green News // Oct 15, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Thanks for the updates !
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