Stevensonian Democratic Internationalist, Professor Richard N. Gardner, among the best that try to help the UN, and with Internationalist Environmental Credentials as well, says Copenhagen will be the stage where individual Nations will declare what they are ready to do to decrease their impact on climate change – just that and no-more at this stage.

Professor and Ambassador Richard N. Gardner, with Columbia University since 1957, is Professor of Law and International Organizations at the Law School. He was also US Ambassador to Italy and Spain.

Professor Gardner was appointed by President Kennedy as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in 1961, a position he held until 1965, when he served also as a senior adviser to Adlai Stevenson II, the John F, Kennedy appointed United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Further, after a year with the U.N., he served as a member of the President’s Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy from 1970 to 1971. He served also in various advisory positions in the U.N.

He served as a special adviser to the United Nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio as he did in 1972 to the UN Conference on the Human Environment. From 1982 to 1993 he was cochairman of the Aspen Institute Program on the United States and the World Economy.

I remember Professor Gardner from the ’92 UNCED and from lectures at Columbia University. He is a convinced internationalist – as good as the believers in a UN system can get.

He was a principle adviser to Adlai Stevenson who himself, since the San Francisco 1945 Conference that created the UN, was a strong believer in the good the UN can do – even when it was just the place where the US and the USSR could meet to talk in order to tone down the Cuban missile crisis. So, it was not surprising that Professor Gardner was a speaker at the UN memorial to Senator, Governor, Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson.

The November 3, 2009 meeting in the ECOSOC room at the UN, was opened by US Ambassador Alejandro Wolf, moderated by former US Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, and populated UN stars – some going back to time of the creation – like Brian Urquhart who served under all UNSGs todate, went on well over time.

I will not elaborate here on what was said and on the only question (from the Ambassador from Botswana) – because of the over-time – that was allowed at the end, but will go directly to my little after-the-meeting exchange with Ambassador Gardner.

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Gardner, a US Stevensonian Internationalist Democrat, even past member of The Trilateral Commission 1957 – 2005, and International Environmentalist, was my target for questions about “the Hopenhagen.”  I wanted to know what he thinks the UN can expect realistically from Copenhagen?  And he did not disappoint me.

Gardner said that the situation is not ready for an across the board agreement – just only for individual countries stating what they will do to reduce their emissions.

On my question about bi-lateral agreements – like US-China, US-India, China-India, Brazil-China etc. this sort of agreements that are economic and environmental at the same time and could create the network on which some day an international agreement might be based. He completely accepted this approach and offered that the upcoming President Obama trip to China is extremely important to a climate agreement.

I did not ask him about the possibility of an EU internal agreement so it could speak with one voice, but I mentioned having seen the home-made passport (leather parchment and eagle feather) that Thomas Banyaka, the spokesman for the Hopi Nation, used to enter and leave Sweden for his participation at the 1972 Conference on the Environment. The Hopi being an Environment-friendly Nation with no UN status.