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14 December 2007
Climate Change Wrangle Goes into Overtime

By Lea Terhune
USINFO Staff Writer

Washington -- Delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNPCCC) conference saw more than an international wrangle over a document intended to set the pace for mitigating and adapting to climate change. They also got a glimpse of American political dissent as U.S. politicians and environmental activists trooped to the meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to have a say.

“The United States is committed to developing a post-2012 arrangement that will slow, stop and reverse global emissions in order to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system,” U.S. Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky said at a December 13 briefing. The Kyoto Protocol, ratified by all major developed nations but the United States, expires in 2012. The purpose of the Bali meeting is to negotiate a new framework for action.

Discussion among the 190 countries went into overtime on the last day of the two-week conference, December 14, but UNPCCC head Ivo de Boer said delegates were “on the brink of agreement” and “absolutely not deadlocked” as the meeting extended to another day.

“The U.S. is showing a great deal of flexibility, is trying to be sensitive to the positions of others and is as keen as everybody else to make sure it walks away from here with a deal that includes the United States,” de Boer told Agence France Presse, adding that officials were seeking a post-Kyoto plan that includes the United States.

However, former U.S. vice president and Nobel peace laureate Al Gore maintained that the United States is not doing enough to achieve progress in Bali.

“My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that,” he told a crowded room at the 13th UNPCCC conference of parties. “My country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward in Bali with progress and with hope.” He had flown directly from Oslo, Norway, where he received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), for their work documenting and publicizing the seriousness of global warming.

The sticking point for the U.S. delegation has been inclusion of a suggestion in a nonbinding preamble of the draft document that industrialized nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020. The Bush administration supports voluntary reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions that have been shown to accelerate global warming.

At an earlier briefing, Dobriansky summarized the U.S. stance: “Global climate change requires a comprehensive approach that spans environmental, financial, trade, economic, social and political portfolios.”

“Once numbers appear in text, it predetermines outcomes and it will tend to drive the negotiations in one direction,” senior U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson said, explaining the U.S. rationale. Canada and Japan are among those in agreement on this issue.

Dobriansky said the United States wants to set “ambitious and effective midterm goals and strategies” that lead to a long-term goal for reducing global emissions.

Although it opted out of the Kyoto Protocol, the United States actively promotes and funds international efforts to stop deforestation, to develop and use alternative fuels and technologies that reduce carbon dioxide byproducts of industrial activity and to encourage developing nations to keep emissions down. Carbon dioxide is the chief contributor to global warming, according to IPCC scientists.

“The United States has a responsibility,” Dobriansky said, to which “we’re devoting a significant amount of resources, some $37 billion,” toward solutions.

Climate change is an issue in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and political conversation, and that drew some American politicians to the conference. Earlier in the week, U.S. Senator John Kerry made a trip to Bali and was one of 52 members of the U.S. Congress to sign a letter asking the Bush administration to stop blocking “language that would establish the need for action” in the negotiated document for the so-called Bali Roadmap on climate change. “The United States must adopt negotiating positions … that are designed to propel further progress, not fuel additional delay,” the letter stated.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a Bali appearance, as did California state officials. California leads efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the state level. On December 12, a U.S. federal court upheld a 2002 California law that requires a 30 percent reduction in automobile tailpipe emissions by 2016. An energy bill now before the U.S. Congress demands more stringent fuel economy for cars and trucks.

In Bali, nations negotiated to remove roadblocks on the map intended to guide world governments to meet “the moral challenge of our generation,” as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon characterized it.

“The time for equivocation is over,” he said. “The science is clear. Climate change is happening. The impact is real. The time to act is now.”

Dobriansky said the United States is committed to action: “We want to have consensus and we want to have a shared vision. And I think there’s a strong determination to reach that outcome here.”

For more information, see Climate Change and Clean Energy.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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