COP 15: DAY TWO
Posted by Vera Pardee
Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:59 p.m.

It's the second day of COP 15, the international climate summit once billed as the last clear chance to unite the world in the fight against climate change, but now only another stepping stone to that elusive goal. Kassie and Brendan arrived on Sunday after a 25-plus-hour journey, obtained their NGO observer badges, and immediately tackled a mountain of work despite horrendous jet lag. I arrived late Sunday night, well rested and already on the European time schedule, and marveled at their activity level. So far it’s been steady 20-hour work days for both of them.

Today I joined a line of many hundreds of people seeking to obtain their observer entry badges to the Bella Center. After nearly three hours standing outside in 38-degree Fahrenheit weather, we were admitted to the inside security lines, inching along for another half hour. Security is tight and police is omnipresent, yet the large crew of organizers, assistants, and security personnel is uniformly friendly, welcoming, and patient. The Bella Center, the main venue for this event, is a mazelike structure with numerous beehive sub-halls, ranging from huge areas filled with hundreds of free-access computers to cubbyholes for private conversations. (The press is reporting a furor about alleged secret side deals among various groups of countries and other entities already preparing for this conference’s failure.)  The cavernous plenary conference hall is divided into the main area for the delegates, from more than 200 countries, and a rear section for observers. The nametags for delegate countries are nearly all black – except that a handful are white, including the United States: our inglorious badge of shame for not ever having ratified the Kyoto Treaty.

The number and diversity of participants from the developing world is startling. It seems everyone is here. The voices from those parts of the world suffering 75 percent of the brunt of current climate change effects — such as loss of food and water resources, increasing droughts, desertification, and species extinctions — but collectively responsible for no more than 25 percent of historical greenhouse gas emissions are loud and angry. Yet the United States, by far the largest historical contributor to the problem and emitting far more greenhouse gases per capita than anyone else on Earth, claims it cannot make a binding commitment to stop polluting the rest of the world’s atmosphere, poisoning its waters, and depopulating the wildlife on its lands.  Our international obligations are dual: to immediately reduce the carbon we spew forth with every step we take right now, and to make monetary and other reparations for some 150 years of creating wealth for ourselves while despoiling the air, water, and land of the rest of the world (as well as our own).

And the apologia spin machine of the U.S. delegation is in overdrive. The United States is touting its achievements in finally issuing a finding that greenhouse gases are indeed dangerous to the public health and welfare and issuing the first proposal to limit carbon pollution from vehicles. But the mileage and emission standards the Obama administration proposes to reach by 2016 (a bit more than 33 mpg once all the loopholes are counted) are woefully behind what Europe and Japan achieve right now (with the EU at 41.8 mpg in 2008 and Japan at 40.6 mpg in 2007). No doubt U.S. engagement has improved tremendously since the change in administration – but that baseline was so low that anything was an automatic improvement. Is the glass half empty or half full?  Either way, our obligation and debt are enormous.

Ironically, the U.S. Export-Import Bank is infuriating the developing world and undermining U.S. climate change efforts by announcing this week its approval for a record-breaking $3 billion in financing to the ExxonMobil-led Papua New Guinea Liquid Natural Gas project. This project would emit vast amounts of lifecycle greenhouse gases and lay pipelines through primary tropical forests, threatening species already on the verge of extinction. Keep in mind that these $3 billion in financing subsidies are slated for a corporation, a prime global polluter, that posted a profit of $45 billion in 2008. Still, the developed nations are proudly touting a “converging consensus” that together they might be willing to contribute all of $10 billion per year to assist developing nations in mitigating and adapting to our polluted world. The contradictions are astounding.

Next entry – Day Three: The Center Shines