While political folk in the United States have understandably been transfixed by domestic drama, the United Nations has just wrapped up a five-day meeting in Bangkok, a preliminary to the big COP-17 meeting in Durban, South Africa in December to negotiate an international climate treaty.
The good news: they agreed on the shape of the table.
The bad news: everything to be discussed at the table is being kicked down the road.
The ugly news: does it really matter?
Five nights in Bangkok make good people humble: delegates agreed on the agenda for the Durban conference. During negotiations, rich and poor countries feuded, with the United States pushing to keep the focus on implementing the modest goals of the December 2010 Cancun agreement (e.g., a climate fund) and poor countries demanding action on greenhouse gases. In the end, the compromise roadmap ensured a heavy focus on the Cancun agreements but also on ways to look at more long-term, comprehensive ways to tackle global warming.
Five nights in Bangkok make countries grumble: The big can being kicked down the road is whether to continue the Kyoto Protocol, which by its terms applied only to 40 developed countries, excluding China and India, which was never ratified by the United States, and which is supposed to expire beginning 2012. Expect:
-- developing countries to insist upon renewing Kyoto rather than the Obama-negotiated Copenhagen Accord or other alternatives; for example, a Kenya newspaper editorializes that leading economies need to stop playing games, and take decisive action
-- a new acronym to depict countries with one elbow at the developing countries' table and another at the First World countries' table; see, e.g., BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China); the People's Daily of China reports that the United States will insist on symmetrical commitment from major economies
-- the European Union to note, quite correctly, that climate talks are moving too slowly
-- the United States' chief negotiator to insist, quite incorrectly, that a treaty isn't needed when countries have national laws and regulations
Five nights in Bangkok make civilizations crumble?: Do you think any of this matters? Researchers have recently warned that the UN goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees is virtually impossible. Have a nice day.