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"
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!!!!
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