Thursday, December 11th, 1997
By Andrew Kerr

Daily Diary Archives

With a Gurgle and a Sigh, the Climate Treaty Disappears into a "Black Hole of Loopholes"

Andrew Kerr Thursday morning, and its been an unscheduled all-nighter. The conference that was supposed to end Wednesday struggled on til 10 a.m. after weathering a near late-night breakdown. The longer it continued, we reckoned, the more the chance of getting a good agreement. But we couldnt close some of the major loopholes that governments kept opening up, so theyve produced a flawed agreement thats a good start but is going to let the major polluters continue emitting greenhouse gases at near the present level. Plenty of work to do with a giant political caulking gun!

Those few in the team who are still vertical are the ones with the large hollow grey eyes. Now were stripping the office and packing boxes to be sent back to Tokyo and the States. Our panelboard kennel which has been home for the last 10 days, and has taken on a greater feeling of home every day, was stripped in an hour. Just a blank white box with no trace of WWFs fantastic, well-oiled international team which strategized, lunched, phoned, faxed and photocopied together for 16 hours a day. Theres a sense of disappointment at not getting an agreement here that immediately takes a large bite out of climate change, relief that the conference is over, but also a feeling that we did our best, got brilliant media coverage and put pressure on governments. Its not often that world leaders are calling each other in the night on an environmental issue. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, well look back and think that Kyoto was the historic moment when we put a kink in the rising curve of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere before starting on serious reductions. Turning a supertanker like this one takes more than one crank on the helm of the wheel, even if its heading toward the rocks.

Wednesday had been another day of building tension. Press expectations rising, rumours flying and were intercepting visiting Environment Ministers and officials mid-way between their meetings. We tried for every opportunity to make sure the good guys held their line: -- even faxing Prime Ministers to persuade them to call Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. The media were on an unbelievable feeding frenzy; a crush of cameras and bright lights hemming in the leading negotiators like rock stars. The negotiations continued behind closed doors as night came on. The pace of media interviews slowed and then midnight came and went. We must have been losing it about this time in the panelboard kennel because all it took was one lone photographer to peer inside for us to haul out the rubber world leader masks and fought each other across the almost deserted press center (by the way, is there any truth to the rumor that the world leader masks/soccer game made it on ABCs Nightline in the States. Pretending to be in heavy negotiations, with our mobile phones to our ears, we were asked by a Japanese journalist for the message of our performance. Message? Performance? Er, quick, improvize! And by next afternoon we had another color photo of Clinton, Yeltsin and Hashimoto in the Kyoto paper with a call for Japan to reduce its CO2 emissions.

So as we round up our Kyoto coverage, you should by now have picked up some of the facts and figures of global warming:

  • what is CO2?
  • which country is the Number One emitter?
  • what species could get it in the neck unless we cut CO2 emissions?
  • what can we do?

    Answers:

  • carbon dioxide - big, bad global warming gas from burning fossil fuels;
  • the US;
  • only a fewlike polar bears, reindeers, the Monarch butterfly - need we continue?
  • lots! Use energy more efficiently for a start. Insulate your home have a look at the WWF website.

    So as we sign off with barely functioning fingers, your friendly Climate Chroniclers Lee and Andrew would like to send a special thank you to the entire Kyoto team a motley crew of some of the finest WWF and its friends have to offer Yurika Ayukawa , Steve Bernow, Bill Chandler, Peter DeBrine, Cherry Farrow, Liz Foley, Makoto Hoshino (WWF Japan CEO), Aldo Iacomelli, Lars Georg Jensen, Marijke Unger, Shigeki Komori, Machiko Koshihara, Nick Mabey, Adam Markham, Gisele McAuliffe, Konrad Meyer, Irving Mintzer, Richard Mott, Michael Rae, Sible Schone, Gordon Shepherd, Stephan Singer, Ulrike Hellmessen, Dian Phylipsen, Dr. Haruki Tsuchiya, Rick Gregory, Koichi Watanabe, Yuki Yamauchi, Rumiko Hayakawa, Ritzko Yoneda and Hiroki Sakuma. They have suffered with us and supported us during this amazing 11-day experience that is the culmination of over a years worth of planning and extremely hard work.

    And to our wives, Patty and Fransce.Hang on, luvs, were on the way home!!!!