Tuesday, December 2nd, 1997
By Lee Poston

Daily Diary Archives

Waiting for Goredot

Lee Poston Greetings from the Big Chill, where not only did the temperature outside drop significantly today, but the heat and lights in the media and environmental groups' hall was suddenly turned down as well. It's either an effort by the Conference Center to make us suffer to save energy, or a plot by the oil and coal industry to get us to change our tune on global warming.

The big news of the day was the announcement by US President Bill Clinton that Vice President Al Gore will be dispatched to Kyoto for an eight-hour whirlwind visit to the negotiations. Reports are that his limousine will remain idling at the curb while he makes a speech and meets with some delegations. He won't supplant the current negotiating team, which is headed by Stuart Eizenstat of the State Department, who replaced Undersecretary of StateTimothy Wirth just over a week ago, when Wirth announced he will head Ted Turner's new billion-dollar United Nations foundation.

Andrew Kerr Climate Chronicler, Andrew Kerr, said he expected two weeks ago that Gore would attend. Hopefully to deliver a revised or improved US position. Three reasons for this. In past international talks on acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer, the US has never laid all its cards on the table right at the start. And would President Clinton actually be prepared to embarrass his friends, the leaders of the German and UK governments, who have much more progressive positions? OK, perhaps. But more importantly, according to an analysis done for WWF by respected US energy analysts, America could cut its carbon dioxide emissions 10% below the 1990 level by 2005 and double that by 2010 while savings billions of dollars on energy bills. We won't know until Monday morning exactly what new ideas Gore has in his briefcase.

WWF's communications staff was thrilled today to learn that the previous day's press conference resulted in widespread international coverage, with Michael 'the Unknown Comic' Rae of WWF-Australia featured prominently in many stories. Michael is currently experimenting with shopping paraphanalia other than paper bags to wear as headgear.

On the negotiating front, there were heated discussions today about QELROs - no, not a New Age band playing to sold out audiences throughout Inner Mongolia! Actually, this wonderful acronym stands for Quantified Emissions Limitation and Reduction Objectives. Basically, these are the targets and timetables for emission reductions that industrialized countries have to agree on here. They would form the heart of the Kyoto protocol that hopefully will be signed at the end of the conference. The latest proposal floating around is for countries to meet any targets not in a fixed year but averaged over a period of years. WWF says that the shorter the period, the less open it is to possible abuse and the sooner the period starts the better, if we are to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Canada has finally announced its position. Sadly, it aims to only shave its greenhouse gas output by a mere three percent by 2010 and five percent by 2015. And it wants to give itself maximum leeway by including emissions trading, joint implementation, as well as credit for exports of natural gas and nuclear power as ways of avoiding cutting emissions at home. The proposal is another in a lengthening line of disappointments.

'Sinks' also became a burning issue today with time running out to meet the chairman's cut-off of Tuesday evening to bring together rival proposals. This is not a diversion into bathroom equipment but the proposal by countries including the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to rely on vegetation to absorb some of their carbon emissions. But yesterday the former head of the most authoritative intergovernmental scientific panel on climate change warned the meeting that the science on sinks is still desperately uncertain. WWF is not alone in arguing that it's too early to include sinks at all if Kyoto is going to be a water-tight agreement which can be easily policed. Against the best advice, some countries still persist in arguing for sinks to be included. The only conclusion we can draw is that they are raising the issue to torpedo a strong outcome here.

Well that's all for today. It's taken so long to write this Climate Chronicle, that it's begun snowing outside. In tomorrow's edition, we'll summarize the results of the official European Commission documents and answer the burning question -- "How will the EU meet its greenhouse gas targets?"