Thursday, December 4th, 1997
By Lee Poston
Daily Diary Archives
Loudspeakers, Laptops and Late-Night Lobbying
In writing this daily diatribe, Andrew and I realized we haven't given you, our faithful readers, a good sense of the conference facilities. Working
for WWF, we've both seen our share of conference centers around the world. The Kyoto International Conference Hall is one of the most spectacular we've ever
seen. It's split into two main buildings separated by a man-made (is that sexist?) canal, and is surrounded by beautiful rolling hills.
Plenary sessions, meetings and press conferences are held in the main building, which has earned the nickname "Battlestar Galactica" from the WWF
delegation, because of its futuristic design. The event hall is the holding pen for the media and NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, which are
observer/lobbying organizations like World Wildlife Fund and the fossil fuel industry's Global Climate Coalition (bet you thought you'd never see those two in
the same sentence!?). We could kiss the feet of the person who decided to locate us 25 feet away from the reporters, because it's made our job of getting
information out a whole lot easier.
The entire conference center is wired. Cellphones, laptops, X-Ray machines, fax machines and copiers are everywhere. Every time a cellphone rings,
everybody within 50 yards looks at their shirt pockets. There is a business center and an area with over 30 personal computers, many of them in English and
Japanese, and all offering numerous programs, including internet and e-mail access.
Believe it or not, the closest we've come to experiencing nature so far during this trip is in the toilets, where one can hear the constant sounds of
bird songs piped in over loudspeakers. Ah well, maybe we'll get out to see some of Kyoto's famous temples and wildlife this weekend.
So what went on in the conference today, you ask? Well not a lot.
The US delegation proposed a worrisome amendment that would essentially stop Kyoto commitments from being reviewed in the future -- even if climate
impacts become more apparent. The UK is vigorously resisting this, viewing a review mechanism as a way to continually strengthen what will likely be a weak
agreement from Kyoto.
New proposals hit the table on trading -- basically allowing governments that have lower-than-expected emissions to sell the pollution they avoided to
other countries that may have higher emissions. The new proposals basically remove controls from this process even before a global emissions trading
methodology has been agreed upon, a bad idea if there ever was one.
Well once again the hour is late -- it's after midnight and Michael, Gisele, Makiko, Yurika, Ulrike, Marijke, Andrew and Liz are putting together
press packs for tomorrow's big, secret "photo op/performance art." Lars just got back from some tough late-night lobbying on forest sinks (one group, the
Conference of the Whole, was scheduled to meet until 2 a.m. but got bogged down and quickly became the Conference of the Wholly Exhausted). Nick just finished
up battling computer problems. Stefan is at another hotel across town, working on ECO, which is the daily newsletter put out by the environmental groups. ECO
editorial board meetings often go into the wee hours and involve much gnashing of teeth and twisting of arms.
Stay tuned tomorrow for news of WWF's latest, greatest publicity stunt.
Corretion: there is no correction tonight!