Now, to do the big wrap on the final act, the real President of Mexico is at the dais to make a thank you farewell wrap-up speech, insuring the boffo reviews and benefits of this particular morality play.

But Mexico is that kind of place. Stories and pageants are a key part of the culture, and there is always a lesson to take home as we leave the theater. I will invite you, dear reader, to draw the lesson from the Cancun Package and COP 16 that you see.

 Prologue: COP President's Informal Plenary

Act I: AWG-KP Plenary, sending a report to CMP 6

Act II: AWG-LCA Plenary, sending a report to COP 16

Intermission

Act IV: COP 16 Plenary, taking up report of AWG-LCA

Epilogue: Closing press conference

There are a few twists, Act III and Act IV are intertwined in a complicated way more akin to modern TV serial dramas.  But no matter.

So in the Prologue, we set the scene: the happy celebration of a well-fought campaign, regardless of the fact that the victory is mighty thin in concrete terms.  But the citizenry are thrilled because the rather tedious thrashing ("Something is rotten in the state of Denmark") has now died out and things are moving forward, albeit at a snail's pace, not a stallion's.

But now comes a plot twist, a protagonist calling into question the entire rationale for the play and the characters and roles therein.  In this case, the clarion is the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

Having had its dignity diminished in the chaos of the previously mentioned rotten state at COP 15, Bolivia is demanding respect and consideration of its principles and recommendations.

The way it is doing so is to object to each decision made in the various above enumerated Acts.  And of course they do have a lot on their side in terms of critique and recommendations.  But they also have little sympathy in delaying the achievement of the denouement that must necessarily happen.

And so at the moment, partway into Act III, we are watching the great symbolic joust between the COP President and Bolivia.

After suitable speeches, banners, trumpets, parades, consultations and other proceedings, Bolivia will get a concession in the text and will gracefully give way, though it must be given several moments for soliloquies on the global stage.

It might take a while. Stay tuned.

For the past week, I’ve observed the UN Climate Negotiations in Cancun with the Sierra Club delegation. Today is the last official day of the conference (with proceedings going into the night), so I’m taking the time to reflect on my experiences and how the negotiations are progressing.

The draft Decision just released this evening moves forward many issues that have been critical to eventually achieving an effective global agreement to protect the climate: (1) anchoring mitigation targets in the draft decision, (2) enhancing the reporting and review process, (3) establishing an Adaptation Committee, (4) urging more ambitious targets, (5) adopting a policy approach for reducing emissions from deforestation,(6) creates a Green Climate Fund, includes technology development and capacity building, (7) a review process to include best available science and consideration of strengthening from a 2C to a 1.5C tempreature rise goal. 

The draft Decision adds new subject matter and detail to the model of the Copenhagen Accord, creating conceptual agreements and institutions to operationalize them, but much remains to be resolved in future years, including many details of each of the above points, such as specific rules for forest protection and market mechanisms, how the Green Climate Fund will be funded, and how Countries' mitigation pledges will be adequate to meet the climate goals stated in the shared vision. 

The UNFCCC process requires consensus, and while progress has been slow, we should hope it remains steady. 

A small but significant addition was made into the LCA text today.  In the first section (Shared Vision), the last paragraph states:

The story of this little bit of text has been a long up-and-down saga.  The 'just transition' reference has been in and out of the text at least three times. It disappeared again last weekend, only to come back in after a strenuous week of lobbying and behind the scenes pushing (and I worked with Annabella Rosemberg of ITUC and the CAN Shared Vision working group to get an article in ECO supporting reinstatement).

Why is this important?  Most of what we work on in the negotiations as environmental groups is the 'how much' -- the timetables and targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, the amount of finance and technology support needed to help developing countries deal with climate change while developing in a sustainable way. 

'Just transition' is about the 'how' -- how to get to the goals by assembling and focusing the work of billions of people to address and successfully reduce the risks of dangerous climate change as well as associated environmental risks, while building a fairer and more sustainable economic future. 

As the ITUC has long said, having a 'just transition' to a low-carbon future is crucial, and they have sponsored in-depth debate and development of resolutions and papers that lay out the contours of this approach in great depth.  For more info see:

http://www.ituc-csi.org/+-climate-change-+.html

Since I first began working with ITUC at COP 11 in Montreal in 2005, I've been impressed with their serious and creative approach to the very difficult issues that climate poses for all of us.

And I want to commemorate the work of two pioneers of blue-green work, Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime leader in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, and Jim Jontz. member of the Indiana Legislature and five-term member of Congress, and then executive director of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment.  Tonight, their visionary work has achieved global significance.

So tonight I want to salute the ITUC and its many associated national federations and trade union members worldwide for showing us that 'another world is possible.'

 It's always dangerous to guess ahead of time where the sticky points will be in the final deliberations at the end of a COP.  Bolivia is going to raise a list of issues but it's not looking like they will actually block the decisions, although there will probably be negotiations to give them some concessions. 

A more longstanding concern is with Saudi Arabia, which is very sensitive to any language that would dimiinish their future oil market.  And then there is Russia, which has long speciliazed in last-minute blocking (which in a consensus process means a final decision can't be made) on various obscure concerns.

There are still significant worries about some of the bigger pieces on financing and other issues, but in general, the deal is so weak it looks like a least-common-denominator win and right now, barring something unexpected, we will have a Cancun Package tomorrow. 

The other thing this represents is a broad view, including countries that are really opposed to each other on key issues, that the UNFCCC is the one place with legitimacy and reach to achieve international agreement on joint climate action.  The terrible process in Denmark a year ago has led to what some call "the ghost of Copenagen past."  That burden now seems to be lifting. 

Not that countries will work together happily ever after.  They are countries, after all, and fight, sometimes bitterly, for their perceived interests. But for all the noise about the impossibility of reaching consensus, blah blah (and no doubt the UNFCCC needs a backup voting procedure, which originally was blocked by influence from the US oil industry and has been carried on ever after by, you guessed it, the Saudis), the consensus process has a very different dynamic than majority voting and can, when the political will exists, go a very long way in the right direction.

There was an "informal plenary" at around 6 which basically was the announcement by Maria Espinosa, Mexico's foreign minister and the COP president, about the basic plan and schedule. 

The plan and the basic outlines of the draft texts got a rolling wave of applause at the informal plenary.  I was outside the building for an informal gathering with our Sierra Club delegates so I missed it, but you can watch the video and more from Adopt a Negotiator/tcktcktck here:

http://adoptanegotiator.org/2010/12/11/liveblogging-last-day-of-the-cancun-climate-change-conference/

It will be a very late evening, with interspersed plenary sessions and backroom meetings of key delegates and country groups. 

 The LULUCF draft decision I referred to previously looks less dire than we first thought, but I'll post more later.  Off to a Climate Action Network LULUCF group meeting now to talk about that.

 This is convenient for countries but terrible for the atmosphere, because it allows countries to increase their emissions without accounting for them.  That makes it easier to reach their targets for reducing emissions from sources like power plants, cars and industry.

Credible estimates say that 500 million tons a year of CO2 could fall into this loophole. That's a lot -- more than half as much as all Kyoto countries pledged to reduce by 2012 (their post-2012 pledges would be higher, but not even double). 

The details are complex but this is, in my view,. a major defeat for the principle of environmental integrity in the climate negotiations.  It doesn't affect the US directly because we are not in the Kyoto Protocol, but it will have an indirect downward pull on our domestic forest and lands emissions accounting approach.

This is still a draft decision, and to be sure it doesn't actually say that "reference levels" will replace the old method, but it lists the levels chosen by countries over the last few months and sets up a review process (demanded by the G77+China, the major developing country negotiating bloc).  If the decision goes through as is, it all but guarantees that the Logging Loophole will be officially locked into place in Durban at COP 17 a year from now.  But effectively speaking, it's a 500 million ton giveaaway to political expediency and industry interest.

The best-guess timeline is a several hours to look at the new texts, then the general plenaries starting in the late evening and going all night.

No word yet on the "crunch issues" -- the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the launch of the new climate institutions (financial, adaptation, technology and REDD), and a couple others.  But we are heading for a very weak outcome.

So the second level is all the rest of us, including NGOs, media, and even most members of the country delegations.  I saw the chief negotiator for South Africa, the delegation manager for the US, and the top negotiator for New Zealand who is also manager of the AWG-KP (Kyoto Protocol ad-hoc working group) strolling around outside in the last hour.

 And we're all saying, where's the bloody text!  The 'text' is the draft decisions to be adopted by the two main plenaries (COP 16 for the UN Framework Convention and CMP 6 for Kyoto) later today -- maybe.

The latest hallway rumor is that some expect the session to wrap up as late as 6 pm Saturday.  But the Mexican COP presidency has made clear they want it done by tonight.  It all depends on the political dealmaking going down right now and through the day and probably the evening in those small rooms.

As for the deal itself, there are a couple possibilities.  One would be inability to find a way to keep the chances for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol alive for a year.  That would be a collapse scenario with unpredictable but dire consequences. The other is a political declaration, a set of very weak decisions and basically not "kick the can" but a "tap the can down the road" outcome.

There is sooooo much going on each day during the COP that it can be difficult to keep track of where progress is being made…or not.  There are numerous briefings – CAN has daily meetings (Sierra Club is a member of Climate Action Network which is a global network of about 500 non-governmental organizations), US CAN meetings (includes about 80 US NGOs), US Delegation with NGOs -- and the list goes on.  The SC Delegation has tried to convene every other day or so, for those who can make it.  Conference logistics don’t make it that easy to travel between venues on short notice.

 Of course, one can track events and news through the CAN and COP16 websites, including access to live web cams for some of the sessions.  Two popular media for getting a sense of progress that is being made in the negotiations (or not!) are the Eco Newsletter and Fossil Awards. 

 Eco Newsletter is published daily and provides an insiders look at “what should happen at the negotiations from CAN’s perspective.”  Our very own Fred Heutte has been Editor in Chief this year. If you don’t arrive early enough to the conference, you’ll lose out on picking up a copy.  Fortunately, you can read these online.

CAN also sponsors the “Fossil of the Day” Awards – which recognize countries that have performed badly during the climate change negotiations.  These “slightly sarcastic yet highly prestigious awards are presented almost daily during the conference.  Of the 17 awards that have been presented thus far, Canada leads the pack with five such honors, 3 of which are for first place.  Sad to say, the US is next in line with four awards, all of which were received over the last THREE CONSECUTIVE days!   Since these awards are voted on by CAN members, this is the international NGO community being critical of the US negotiating stance (ie, impeding progress on multiple fronts).  There’s a great article on this in the ECO 10 issue.

The CAN Technology was disappointed that the US chose to now, at Cancun, insist that it will only "consider" establishing the Technology Mechanism rather than actually creating it. Technology transfer has been a core commitment since the beginning of the Convention, and we've already wasted too much time discussing how to do it. A workable proposal is finally on the table and everyone else is willing to go with it and establish the new technology mechanism here in Cancun. Insisting that we should "consider" establishing it was not helpful.

We were confused by this position since the Copenhagen Accord clearly states that leaders agreed to "establish a Technology Mechanism", "operational immediately". This move is surprising in that it seems to go behind what heads of state already agreed to and is effectively an attempt to renegotiate a deal struck among world leaders. For the last year, most parties in the technology negotiations have been working hard to answer the remaining questions and a lot of progress was made in Cancun. While everyone else is being flexible, the US simply isn't.

The US championed the need for a technology center and networks and is developing some regional center pilots, so we don't understand the hesitation about the proposal that's on the table. Concerns by US clean tech companies about being under a burdensome and bureaucratic UN body are misinformed; what our warming world needs is precisely what a multilateral mechanism can deliver: coordinated planning and implementation to speed-up and scale-up the what poor countries and communities need to transition quickly to a low-emissions future."

Plenaries are already being postponed and new negotiating texts are delayed.  You can follow that action at www.unfccc.int

More when I know more.

On my way to the Cancun Messe this morning I sat beside a delegate from Nepal who gave me an up-close view from a country on the frontline of climate change.

It happens that I visited Nepal in the '80s and was able to visualize his story as he told it.  He spoke of the beauty of his highland home and the anguish of his fellow citizens at the losses they are already seeing.  He described it as a prime example of climate injustice having nearly the lowest energy consumption and the earliest impacts.  

He also described the uncertainty of the governmental arena with its nascent republic and party power struggles. (Sound familiar?)  His work in the administration includes serving on a climate committee headed by the prime minister.  

But he began an ended with an urgent plea that the parties find a way to bridge their differences quickly because his country is desperate for adaptation aid.  I won't forget it and I hope we can help him.

I recently joined our Sierra Club Delegation for week 2 of COP16. There was an opportunity for many of us to meet briefly over dinner on Saturday evening, which was wonderful.  It was great for those of us just arriving on the scene to tap into the energy and experience of the group that had just completed their “tour of duty” during the first week.

Hats off to our compadres for a successful Heads in the Sand event! 

Even at the beginning of this second week, as we head into the formal negotiations, the profound failures of COP15 in Copenhagen permeate the conversations in Cancun.  So, it’s no surprise that very key session seems to being with the same mantra for how leaders hope these talks will proceed, and for which I’ve taken the liberty to translate: inclusiveness (ie, no secret meetings), transparency (ie, no secret documents), and creativity (ie, show “some” level of ambition, dammit!).  

We'll see.  

Going on the Offensive Against Climate Change in the USA

How and Why President Obama should use his “Bully Pulpit”

to move our country forward to a safe, clean energy future

Having just returned to the U.S. from the UN climate negotiations in Cancun, it is apparent to me that the most important work remains to be done right here at home.

The science of climate change tells us that we can wait no longer to take real action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid the most calamitous consequences of global warming, but for the politicians and the American public the issue barely registers as we wrestle with an enduring economic downturn.

The signs of climate change are everywhere if one just pauses to look around or to read the scientific reports that grow more alarming by the day. One has to wonder how Sarah Palin can get away with denying climate change when her home state is already experiencing the consequences.  Native Alaskans are seeing their fishing villages swallowed up by the sea with the loss of the sea ice that had protected these communities for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

While environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and many others do our best to engage the public on climate change, the aggressive misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry dominates the debate.  Clearly, courageous leadership is needed.

Here are this writer’s thoughts on what President Obama should do right now to address climate change, to earn his place in the history of humankind and maybe even ensure his re-election in 2012.

1. Confront the Climate Change issue head on.   President Obama can be a passionate and effective communicator; we saw that in his election campaign. Now he needs to recapture that passion in service to humankind on the issue of climate change.

2. Take the fight to the skeptics and deniers.  At his State of the Union Address, President Obama needs to have in the audience and recognize from his podium a Native Alaskan, a resident of New Orleans, and one from Hampton Roads, Virginia, (a Republican hotbed of climate skeptics that happens to be the second most vulnerable urban area in our country) and explain their fate to the nation if no action is taken on climate change.  He also needs to recognize from the podium prominent climate scientists like James Hansen and Michael Mann and explain their work in simple terms that all Americans can understand.

3. Set forth a vision of a save, clean energy future.  President Obama must set forth a vision that is the equivalent of Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon in ten years with a plan equal to Harry Truman’s and George C. Marshall’s Marshall Plan to rebuild war torn Europe and Japan.   He can start by encouraging and incentivizing efficiency, solar, wind and sustainable bio-mass on a massive scale and enlisting the nation’s utilities and industries to be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 

4. Acknowledge the leadership role the U.S. must play at the international level. Having the world’s biggest economy and largest military, the U.S. is both admired and feared.  Either way, the world looks to us for leadership, and since the Kyoto Protocol was reached in 1997, the US has been absent from and, more frequently, an obstacle to climate negotiations.  President Obama can use his considerable popularity with people across the globe to rally support for action on climate change by the nations of the world. By the time the world reconvenes these climate talks in Durban, South Africa in 2011, the U.S. could be a constructive force for progress on climate change. But he doesn’t have to wait until then.  In the remaining days of the Cancun talks, President Obama can begin to lay out his strategy and vision for a safe and clean energy future to the American people and to the world.

Will these actions, if taken by President Obama, insure the success of his presidency or even his re-election in 2012? There is no way to tell.  But is the right thing to do, and it could be the policy initiative that defines his presidency and his place in history.

Glen Besa is the Virginia Director of the Sierra Club and a member of the Sierra Club’s delegation to the UN Climate Conference in Cancun.  He attended the first week of the climate negotiations and now has returned home to the US to continue the fight for action on climate change by the U.S. Congress and the President. His comments are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Sierra Club.

In the challenging negotiations at the UN Climate Conference in Cancun, perhaps the most hopeful sign is the young people from all over the world who come to these UN negotiations determined to make a difference. With just one week left in these talks, I wanted to share with readers the impressive role of these student climate activists and, also, to offer one humble suggestions to all the students at the conference.

Our Sierra Student Coalition (SSC) has an international delegation, twenty strong that included students from China, Mexico, South Korea and Puerto Rico studying in the U.S. in addition to American students from across the country.  SustainUS and 350.org also have numerous student representatives, and there are student delegations from nations across the globe attending these talks on the future of the world we will turn over to them. 

While most official negotiators stay at sterile, glitzy beachside hotels in luxurious isolation from the real world, hundreds of students occupy the inexpensive hostels throughout downtown Cancun meeting into the late hours, strategizing and planning how to influence these negotiations on climate policy. At the hostel where I have stayed, the New Zealand Youth Delegation covered the walls of our shared kitchen with papers outlining their plans and strategy as well as assignments for who would do the dishes, cooking or laundry day by day.  They are a cohesive corps of young, experienced activists very serious about their mission, but fun loving as well.  Best of all they were quite friendly and open with me and other more senior adult activists in Cancun for the same purpose.  Chelsea Robinson, a 19 year old Co-Convener of the NZ delegation, is just one of this impressive group of committed youth making a difference with whom I shared a cup of coffee and an impressions on the talks several mornings in the first week of the conference.

All the students I’ve met are well organized.  Rather than take direction from older professional environmental staff, they mentor and challenge each other to grasp the near impenetrable nuances of climate diplomacy. Our SSC students meet nightly from 10:30 PM to midnight discussing that day’s and the next day’s negotiations, planning actions to garner media, and educating themselves in the minutia of international “climate-speak”.  And early each morning students from across the globe come together to collaborate at a YOUNGO meeting (Youth NGOs).

Summer Jiakun Zhao, is a student from China, studying in the United States is a member of our Sierra Student delegation.  Even before the UN conference began, Summer and other U.S. and Chinese students have been engaging in intense negotiations on the same issues and differences confronting the official negotiators, working to reach an accord that they then shared with the U.S. and Chinese governments the first week of the Cancun conference. Their message: “If we can do it, so can you.” 

These students and young adults, many from countries on the front line of climate catastrophe like Africa and small island nations, need little advice from their seniors who continue to make such a mess of these negotiations on which the future of civilization as we know it depends.  But if I may humbly offer just one suggestion to all the students working for climate justice in Cancun, it is this:  Recalling the response of the tiny country of Papua New Guinea to the efforts of the U.S. Delegation to sabotage to UN Climate talks in Bali in 2007, I would urge the students to exclaim in one united voice to the official negotiators the same words that Papua New Guinea said to the U.S. just three years ago: “Lead or get out of the way!”. 

Day 4: UN Climate Conference – Cancun, Mexico

Playing Poker with the Planet

The first week of the two week UN climate conference involves mostly posturing by nations as they take measure of each other in private “bi lateral” talks while they jockey for advantage in their messaging to the media and attempt to score political points in their domestic press.  In other words there is not too much to report regarding progress in the talks.  In all likelihood, the final outcome will not be known before Dec 10 when the climate talks are to adjourn.

Still, the key areas for possible progress (or failure) are clear.

Financing- will the wealthy nations like the U.S. proceed with financing commitments to poorer and less developed nations to assist with adaptation (dealing with the consequences of climate change-adapting) and mitigation (growing their economies and lifting more of their citizens out of poverty while limiting the growth of their carbon foot prints).

Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) – how do the wealthy nations incentivize less developed countries to protect the vast carbon sinks that are their forests, rather than cutting them down like all the Western countries did years ago).  How do we insure that once a forest is protected that it stays protected? 

Kyoto Protocol - A second commitment period for countries that are parties to the Kyoto Protocol.  The U.S. never ratified Kyoto, so we are not a party, but after 2012 the original commitments for CO2 reductions should have been met and what new reductions should the parties commit to?  Japan has been drawing major heat for opposing a second commitment period, and Canada and others are happy to let Japan draw the heat although they, too, want to slow things down.   Canada is an interesting case with Steven Harper, the leader of Conservative Government in power, taking on the mantle of George Bush-lite.  With so much money to be made selling oil from tar sands to the USA, Harper is simply ignoring the commitments Canada made when it ratified Kyoto. 

Like most international negotiations, it is a giant poker game. The U.S. insists that any agreement be comprehensive, that incremental progress be made across the board on all issues. Other countries want to lock in partial agreements that can be made on less controversial issues.  Obviously, if the less controversial matters are off the table, then they can no longer be used as bargaining clips on more controversial matters, and this position by U.S. engenders resentments from other countries fearful that the nations of the world could walk away from Cancun with no real accomplishments.  

Many believe that the very future of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which is the agreement that is the foundation of these ongoing negotiations could be threatened by a failure to claim some success in Cancun. If, for example, the U.S. and China, two countries that alone account for almost 50% of the world’s total emissions, reach a bi-lateral deal outside the UNFCCC, then other countries will do the same and a opportunity for comprehensive unifying agreement will be lost. For small island nations that could disappear in less than 100 years, being at the table is a key to their survival and the future of their people.

It is the enormous carbon and diplomatic footprint of the U.S. that makes the Sierra Club so important to these negotiations even if we never set foot in Cancun or any of the UN climate conferences. As the most influential grassroots environmental group in the US, we have played and will play a big role in the United States’ position and actions on climate change.  It’s a big job, so keep working.

Glen Besa, is one of forty Sierra Club representatives serving as official observers to the UN climate talks in Cancun.

The Sierra Student Coalition has arrived in Cancun, Mexico for the United Nations climate talks - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of Parties 16 (UNFCCC COP16)!

Upon arriving, members of the SSC delegation were finally able to meet their collaborators from the Chinese Youth Delegation, with whom they've been working for months on a strategic partnership around the climate negotiations. SSC and SustainUS have been leading the US side of the collaboration.

Stay tuned for a more detailed post coming from the core organizers of the shared US/China Youth workshops and actions, but for right now, turn your attention to the awesome media coverage we got on Reuters (story at 0:59)!

Featuring Ethan Buckner, 20, a long-time SSCer from Minnesota.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fnews%2Fvideo%2Fstory%3FvideoId%3D165565245%26videoChannel%3D-9991&h=67996