Pablo Solon (*)
After 9 days of negotiations there is no doubt that we saw this movie before. It is the third remake of Copenhagen and Cancun. Same actors. Same script. The documents are produced outside the formal negotiating scenario . In private meetings, dinners which the 193 member states do not attend. The result of these meetings is known only on the last day. In the case of Copenhagen it was at two in the morning after the event should have already ended. In Cancun, the draft decision just appeared at 5 p.m. on the last day and was not opened for negotiation, not even to correct a comma. Bolivia stood firm on both occasions. The reason: the very low emission reduction commitments of industrialized countries that would lead to an increase in average global temperatures of more than 4° Celsius. In Cancun, Bolivia stood alone. I could not do otherwise. How could we accept the same document that was rejected in Copenhagen, knowing that 350,000 people die each year due to natural disasters caused by climate change? To remain silent is to be complicit in genocide and ecocide. To accept a disastrous document in order not to be left alone is cowardly diplomacy. Even more so when one trumpets the “people’s diplomacy” and has pledged to defend the “People’s Agreement” of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia last year.
Durban will be worse than Copenhagen and Cancun. Two days before the close of the meetings, the true text that is being negotiated is not yet known. Everyone knows that the actual 131-page document is just a compilation of proposals that were already on the table in Panama two months ago. The formal negotiations have barely advanced. The real document will appear toward the end of COP17.
But more importantly, the substance of the negotiations remains unchanged from Copenhagen. The emission reduction pledges by developed countries are still 13% to 17% based on 1990 levels. Everyone knows that this is a catastrophe. But instead of becoming outraged, they attempt to sweeten the poison. The wrapper of this package will be the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a mandate for a new binding agreement. The substance of the package will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: do virtually nothing during this decade in terms of reducing emissions, and get a mandate to negotiate an agreement that will be even weaker than the Kyoto Protocol and that will replace it in 2020. “The Great Escape III” is the name of this movie, and it tells the story of how the governments of rich countries along with transnational corporations are looking to escape their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of becoming stronger, the fight against climate change is becoming more soft and flexible, with voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. The question is, who will step up this time to denounce the fraud to the end? Or could it be that this time, everyone will accept the remake of Copenhagen and Cancun?
The truth is that beyond the setting and the last scene, the end of this film will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: humanity and mother earth will be the victims of a rise in temperature not seen in 800,000 years.
(*) Pablo Solon is an international analyst and social activist. He was chief negotiator for climate change and United Nations Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009-June 2011). http://pablosolon.wordpress.com/
4 comments
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December 7, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Peter Carter
Dear Pablo tragically you are right about the deplorable negotiations situation and the terrible situation this puts Mother Earth and all Humanity in.
You are one of the few people with the intelligence and the sensitivity to see these realities.
Our fate is being decided in just the new years – by the Arctic.
A planetary cataclysm is rapidly unfolding in the Arctic.
The Arctic is not the agenda. None of the computer models relied on by the scientists include any of the Arctic feedbacks in projecting temperature increases.
World leading Arctic expert professor Peter Wadhams (UK) made a public statement last month that the Arctic summer sea ice is on course to be virtually gone by 2015. I have spoken with him and he very concerned for Humanity.
The loss of the Arctic summer ice large albedo cooling would increase the rate of Arctic and subarctic warming three and half time (David Lawrence 2008).
The rapidly warming Arctic is releasing global warming methane feedback emissions from warming peat lands, thawing permafrost, and sea floor frozen solid methane gas hydrate from the East Siberian continental shelf. The entire open North Atlantic Arctic is emitting methane (HIPPO airborne monitoring)
The loss of Arctic summer ice cooling replaced by open ocean heat absorption will drive these Arctic methane emissions at an ever increasing rate. Methane for 20 years after emissions has a global warming effect 72 times at that of CO2.
Though there is no way of knowing if we can now survive if we do face this catastrophic reality – we will not survive if we do not.
In solidarity Dr Peter Carter
December 7, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Fugstar
decolonial naions of the world unite, or is the adaptation hush money all thats at stake for you?
December 7, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Ricky Ward
What Peter Carter is saying does not come as news to me and so I call for some drastic action.
Sometimes I wonder if anything short of a nuclear war, hopefully very limited in extent, will wake up the world to the peril we face?
However short of nuclear war, which only India & Pakistan in the Third World could initiate there are bold actions available. These are actions which are necessary to drastically reduce CO2 emissions and poor nations of the South can initiate them and shock the North into responding.
Please do this – BAN AVIATION and BAN the manufacture and external trade of MOTOR VEHICLES.
This could start tomorrow if only one or two nations were to take the lead. Ideally South Africa as host nation should close its airports now, thereby extending COP17 to allow the delegates to leisurely decide on collective actions.
And from Peter’s story these need to include protection and collection of the methane, be it plastic white sheeting over Siberia and the Arctic sea or whatever as well as rebuilding societies on an international socialist model.
Failing these peaceful moves it would seem widespread sabotage as the Maquis undertook in Vichy France would be in order.
December 8, 2011 at 4:41 am
Keith Lampe
Dear Pablo, Thank you for your important statement here. An additional major disappointment with the Durban conference is that neither delegates nor protesters at it were provided with information about the best replacements for coal, oil, nuclear and gas. Thus their focus continues to be on merely reducing emissions even though it’s now possible to stop them altogether–thanks to breakthrough inventors in the energy fields of zero point, cold fusion and advanced hydrogen/water. It’s appalling that Andrea Rossi’s magnificent new E-Cat Generator was not featured!!!!! Please visit pesn.com for the latest news about this and other tremendously helpful energy breakthroughs. Meanwhile, the infamous US General Electric Corp continues to peddle its insipid solar and wind gear and the lives of the 99%–plus those of most other species–continue to be increasingly endangered.
Yours for all our relations,
Keith Lampe aka Ponderosa Pine and Ro-Non-So-Te
Co-founder, US environmental movement in 1969,
Living Creatures Associates in 1972,
All-Species Projects in 1978 and founder, US
Pro-Democracy Movement in 1991
Vilcabamba, Ecuador