Monday, December 1st, 1997
By Lee Poston
Daily Diary Archives
What if We Gave a Press Conference and Everybody Came (But We Didn't)?
Well, the Climate Summit kicked off with a bang today from WWF and the other enviros, but it landed with a thud in the political arena. In its first
major statement of the conference, WWF held a press briefing to release its scorecard that ranks five key nations and the European Union on their efforts to
protect the environment from global warming. The European Union was the only delegation to receive "thumbs-up" for its progressive proposal, while Canada,
the US and Australia received resounding "thumbs-down." Russia received almost all "thumbs-down" and Japan had a mixed bag. Michael Rae of WWF-Australia was so
ashamed of his country's proposal that he spent the first five minutes of the press conference with a paper bag over his head!! Michael then announced his
upcoming Vegas act, "The Comedy Stylings of the Unknown Aussie," at the Sands Hotel Dec. 12-19.
One particular highlight of the press conference was in the five minutes before it began when the conference security tried to eject the entire WWF team
-- including the panelists on the dais -- from the room because they had been instructed to allow only press to enter the press conference. The fact that we
were running the press conference apparently wasn't good enough at first. However, after a little gentle persuading that there would be no press conference
without us, they allowed us to stay. A good thing, since by this time there were over 90 journalists from around the world waiting to hear what we had to say.
On the political front, during its opening address to the plenary session, the US did a little dirty dancing by respinning its position to consider a
differentiated approach to emissions reductions, as opposed to its previous flat rate. In a nutshell, the US had previously favored flat emissions reductions,
meaning all industrialized nations would reduce their emissions to the same set figure. Now they say they may consider "limited, carefully bounded"
differentiation -- allowing countries to adopt different targets depending on agreed principles or formulae.
And in another piece of fancy footwork, the US attempted to escape the spotlight by criticizing the EU proposal as one that would decrease
competitiveness. It also hinted that it is eyeballing a Russian proposal that was so complicated when presented in October in Bonn that it caused several
delegates to spontaneously combust.
One piece of leftover business from Sunday. Several of WWF's intrepid cyclists rode in the EcoRelay--a bicycle tour around Kyoto designed to highlight
the conference and the threats to nature from global warming -- it also highlighted the threats to cyclists from wayward taxi drivers and harried commuters.
Luckily, the entire crew was present and accounted for at the end of the ride.
Tune in tomorrow for an update on the latest events that the panda delegation has been kicked out of.