G-8 climate scorecard shows US in last. The U.S. has done the least among the world’s eight largest economies to address global warming, a study released Thursday found.
By PATRICK McGROARTY, BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. has done the least among the world’s eight largest economies to address global warming, a study released Thursday found.
The G-8 Climate Scorecards 2008, released Thursday ahead of next week’s gathering of the Group of Eight on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, also found that none of the eight countries are making improvements large enough to prevent temperature increases that scientists think would cause catastrophic climate changes. The gathering includes the heads of states of the U.S., Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia.
Regine Guenther, director of the World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Program in Germany, told reporters in the German capital that G-8 leaders should commit to reducing emissions in their countries 40 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. “If we don’t achieve that, the world’s climate will change in ways that we can’t even imagine today,” Guenther said.

The scorecard ranked Britain as the developed nation that has done the most to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and reach targets set by the Kyoto Protocol. France and Germany are close behind. Germany was praised for its investment in renewable energy.
“But all three countries are at best half as far along the road as they should be,” a statement announcing the study said.
The scorecard was compiled by Ecofys, a Dutch consulting company, and commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund and insurer Allianz SE.

Joachim Faber, an Allianz board member who helped compile the scorecards, said a global emissions trading market is important to fighting climate change, and that the EU should lead its development.
“The EU-specific trading system we have at the moment must serve as model system for one that we can found outside the EU, for the world economy,” he said.

The study criticized low energy efficiency in the U.S., but said there was hope in legislation under consideration by Congress and initiatives led by non-governmental groups.

The study also analyzed — but did not rank — five of the world’s fastest growing economies: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. “These countries cannot be measured with the same ruler as industrialized countries,” the statement said.

Bush Makes Final Push for Global Climate Deal.
By Michael Abramowitz and Blaine Harden, WashPost, July 3, 2008.

“In his final months in office, President Bush is mounting a last-ditch effort to forge a new global deal to limit greenhouse-gas emissions but finds himself once again at odds with much of the rest of the world on how to address climate change. Bush aides said a deal might be struck when the president sits down next week in Japan with the leaders of the world’s largest industrialized nations and developing countries such as China and India. Japan is pushing for leaders at the Group of Eight summit to agree to a goal of cutting global carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2050, a proposal that the White House appears to be considering seriously. The Bush administration is also conducting negotiations with countries on including more-specific targets for each to meet by 2020 or 2025. Germany is pushing for more-significant cuts in emissions than the United States and some other countries are willing to consider, while China and India want the United States and other industrialized countries to do most of the heavy lifting for the next 10 to 15 years. Previewing his G-8 agenda yesterday in the Rose Garden, Bush emphasized the necessity of including the developing countries in any agreement struck by his administration… Environmentalists contend that Bush’s moves on global warming are too little, too late. They say even an agreement on a long-term goal would be meaningless because it would likely not bind the United States to making actual reductions. In many ways, they said, G-8 nations have begun to shift their focus to presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom have indicated a willingness to consider steeper reductions than Bush — the kind of cuts the White House regards as unrealistic… Anything that the leaders agree to next week would have to be worked into a treaty that the United Nations hopes to conclude by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.”  

 From:      dissemination at wider.unu.edu

The Helsinky-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER).
 http://www.wider.unu.edu

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

Southern Engines of Global Growth: Africa and CIBS (China, India, Brazil and South Africa)
4-6 September 2008, Johannesburg, South Africa
Submission deadline: 30 June 2008.

The Financial Times of London: A weaker dollar could even see investors push the oil price higher. Last month, Opec president Chakib Khelil used this argument to predict $200 oil – and it looked less far-fetched this week when the Goldman Sachs analyst who correctly predicted $100 oil made a similar, if self-serving, prediction.

Look what I came up when we searched for “Oil $200″ on Financial Times online:
 http://search.ft.com/search?queryText=Oi…

The stuff is exciting to us – this because we need a higher price of oil in order to bring recalcitrant folks to their senses.

The need is to proceed decreasing the dependence on oil. To do this we will have to sell the remaining Hummers to the world’s museums. We saw this week the start by General Motors scratching their production of SUVs.

Also, we saw the UN making grand promises for a hunger free world, but going home after being rebuffed by the Latin Americans who won the day. Biofuels are not the source of hunger but the opposition to them is another oil industry invention.

The higher the price of oil – the better – but clearly we can envision much better ways of achieving this then by burying the dollar so that the oil magnates get their feed. Had we gone to the sun rather then Iraq, we would by now have turned the dollar around. Washington will try now to tar white-man Barak Obama in order to keep some of the Washington establishment in place. Those folks better be retired to the salt mines and straight thinking fresh and green folks replace every single one of them. Do not bring in MIT professors, they did not relearn yet the difference between thermodynamics and human dynamics. Bring in old time, home grown conservationists as the real honesty-goodness conservatives. We looked at some of the stuff being pushed around the webs and we are appalled at what the US election campaign will be like.

Bring in folks that believe a dollar in hand is valued more then a dollar in speculative spin. Bring in 140 IQ folks that know to operate technologies that could effectively be run by 100 IQ folks. Do not sell us pie-in-the-sky, but allow the world to grow rice and wheat and corn. Make the world proud again when holding in hand a green US dollar.

Obama, we hope someone gives you to look at this posting.

G8 SUMMIT 2008 – Environment Heads to Talk CO2 cuts in Kobe.

By KO HIRANO, Kyodo News, May 20, 2008.

The Group of Eight environment ministers will open on Saturday a three-day meeting in Kobe on ways to meet Japan’s proposal to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The ministers will seek G8 cooperation on promoting the “co-benefits approach” to help developing countries achieve economic growth while curbing pollution and waste, Environment Ministry officials said.

The ministers will also discuss steps to protect biodiversity and to ensure the efficient use of resources with the “3Rs” approach of reducing waste by promoting reuse and recycling, the officials said.

The Kobe event, chaired by Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita, will be a preparatory meeting for the July G8 summit in Hokkaido, at which policy coordination to curb climate change will top the agenda.

Emerging economies, including Brazil, China and India, plan to take part in the Kobe session.

The ministers are expected to discuss the setting of a long-term carbon reduction target, with Japan and Europe backing the idea.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, invites you to participate in the following side-event:

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO -
THE BIGGEST ENVIRONMENT CHALLENGE IN AFRICA TODAY.

Thursday 29th May, 13.15 – 14.45
Press Room, Maritim Hotel, Bonn
9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Background:
The DR Congo is one of the worlds poorest, least developed and least stable countries whilst at the same time contains a wealth of natural resources including large areas of arable land, water , forest products and minerals. The forests of the DR Congo cover some one million square kilometers and as such can be also considered to be one of the largest and most important carbon sinks on the continent and the world. Armed conflict has raged across DR Congo on a large scale since 1994 resulting in more than five million deaths. Low level conflict and chronic instability continues to plague eastern Congo. Large scale displacement due to conflict is also evident with approximately 500,000 Internally Displaced Persons found in eastern DR Congo alone. The DRC economy is almost entirely driven by largely uncontrolled natural resource extraction and utilization. This has taken a significant toll on many aspects of the environment, with deforestation, species depletion and mining associated pollution being the three most significant issues. UNEP has recently launched a special programme to address these issues.

Agenda:

This side event will provide an introduction to the UNEP Programme in the Congo, including the following:

UNEP will report on our programme to assist the Congolese govt, including the post-conflict assessment, assistance with the environmental framework law, and facilitation of a stakeholder dialogue in the Virungas region.
The DR Congo government will outline its current and future actions.
The GRASP partnership will outline their latest activities in the country, including new funding for gorilla and chimpanzee conservation activities in Eastern DRC.
CMS will announce latest developments on the Gorilla Agreement, which comes into force on June 1.
CITES will report on latest figures the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme has collected from Eastern DRC
UNESCO will report on their activities regarding World Heritage Sites in Danger
Professor Ian Swingland will discuss how DRC can benefit from using the market effectively to conserve its biodiversity

For further details, contact:  melanie.virtue at unep.org
 marie.khan at cbd.int or
David Ainsworth at 0170 558 5819 (until 30 May)  david.ainsworth at cbd.int
Information for journalists
To access the live webcast, please visit the home page of the CBD website,
www.cbd.int, and follow the links indicated.
For information on the ninth meeting of the conference of the Parties go
to:     http://www.cbd.int/cop9/
~~~~~~~~~
Melanie Virtue, Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP) Coordinator
GRASP Secretariat, UNEP, PO Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya.
Ph: +254 20 762-4163 Fax: +254 20 762-3926 or 762-4300, Web:  www.unep.org
To call from outside Africa, dial Italy +39 0831 24 3000, wait for tone, then dial 124 4163

————————-

 US Consumers Rank Last in World Survey of Green Habits.
By Queenie Wong for McClatchy Newspapers – based on National Geographic Magazine. Wednesday May 7, 2008.

Washington – Americans rank last in a new National Geographic-sponsored survey released Wednesday that compares environmental consumption habits in 14 countries.

Americans were least likely to choose the greener option in three out of four categories – housing, transportation and consumer goods – according to the assessment.

In the fourth category, food, Americans ranked ahead of Japanese consumers, who eat more meat and seafood.

The rankings, called “Greendex,” are the first to compare the lifestyles and behaviors of consumers in multiple countries, according to the National Geographic Society.

It plans to conduct the 100-plus question survey annually and considers trends more important than yearly scores, said Terry Garcia, executive vice president of National Geographic’s mission programs.

“This is not just a one-time snapshot,” Garcia said. “Some of the most important information may yet be revealed.”

India and Brazil tied for the highest score – 60 points out of a hundred. U.S. consumers scored 44.9.

In between, China scored 56.1, Mexico 54.2, Hungary 53.2, Russia 52.4, Great Britain 50.2, Germany 50.2, Australia 50.2, Spain 50, Japan 49.1, France 48.7 and Canada 48.5.

Results are based on 1,000 online respondents per country interviewed in January and February by GlobeScan, an international polling firm based in Toronto.

To see how you score, take an abbreviated version of the survey. It’s at nationalgeographic.com

A separate GlobeScan survey showed consumers in Brazil, Mexico and China to be most concerned about global warming. In general, people in developing countries were more worried about harming the environment than those in developed ones were. They also live in smaller houses, are more likely to consume locally produced food and more likely to get to work by foot, bike or public transportation.

The consumer choice rankings were adjusted for factors in which individuals have no control, such as climate and the availability of mass transit.

      From:          media at kdun.org
    Subject:       Green World Congress calls for elected UN body.
Date:       May 6, 2008 3:14:10 AM EDT

Committee for a Democratic United Nations.

PRESS RELEASE

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Green World Congress calls for elected UN body – Parliamentary Assembly proposed to overcome “international democratic deficit.”

Sao Paulo/Berlin. The outcome statement of the second Global Greens Congress adopted on
4th May in Sao Paulo has called for “the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly” as
one step to overcome the “international democratic deficit.” “In the face of global
challenges such as climate change it is pretty clear that we need much more effective
international decision-making. This requires that the world’s citizens are better included
in international institutions. Hence the proposal for a body composed of elected
representatives,” said Senator Isabelle Durant, Secretary-General of the Belgian party
Ecolo, in Brasil. The congress assembled representatives of green parties and movements
from over 80 countries.

The leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, commented in Sao Paulo that
“governments mainly care about advancing their national interests. By contrast, a UN
Parliamentary Assembly could help to promote the global common interest.” “The resolution
adopted by the congress underlines that the green movement is convinced that a dialogue is
needed on the notion of a bi-cameral system at the UN,” May added.

The Committee for a Democratic U.N., an NGO specialized on the topic based in Berlin,
Germany, strongly welcomed the resolution. The Committee noted that the Global Greens are
the third major international party network to endorse the proposal of a UN Parliamentary
Assembly, following the Liberal International and the Socialist International.

The support of the Global Greens adds momentum to an international campaign for the
establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly which was launched in April 2007. The
campaign is backed by more than 450 members of parliament and over 100 non-governmental
organizations from around the world. The Committee for a Democratic U.N. acts as its
international secretariat.

CONTACTS:

Senator Isabelle Durant, Secretary-General, Ecolo,
Phone +32 81 22 78 71, Email  isabelle.durant at ecolo.be

Didier Couernelle, Ecolo delegate at the congress,
Phone +32 2 410 59 56, Email  didier.coeurnelle at gmail.com

Elizabeth May, Party leader, Canadian Greens,
Phone +1 613.240.8921, Email  debra at greenparty.ca

Andreas Bummel, Executive Chairman, Committee for a Democratic U.N.,
Phone +27 827 610 979, Email  bummel at kdun.org

MORE INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET:

2nd Global Greens Congress: http://www.globalgreens.org.br/
Committee for a Democratic UN: http://www.kdun.org/
Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly: http://www.unpacampaign.org/

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

Economists Debate Link Between War, Credit Crisis
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 15, 2008; A03

Economist Joseph Stiglitz says the connection between Iraq and the economic downturn is real. (Photo: Manish Swarup/AP)

For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the connection between the Iraq conflict and the U.S. economic downturn is simple: “The president has taken us into a failed war,” the California Democrat said recently. “He’s taken us deeply into debt, and that debt is taking us into recession.”

This assessment was put to powerful political effect in the latest congressional hearings on the war, when Democrats and Republicans alike told Army Gen. David H. Petraeus that the oil-rich Iraqi government should relieve the United States of the conflict’s financial burdens. And Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) echoed the theme yesterday at a manufacturing forum in Pittsburgh.

“If we can spend $10 billion a month rebuilding Iraq,” the Democratic presidential contender declared, “we can spend $15 billion a year in our own country to put Americans back to work and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of our economy.”

But this logic may have more political salience than economic validity, according to many economists, who say that the assertions linking the five-year-old conflict in Iraq to the domestic economic slide have been oversimplified.

“You should support the war or oppose the war, which I do and have done from the start, on the merits of the war itself,” said Martin N. Baily, a former chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. But, he added, “the current problems the United States is facing have very little to do with the war in Iraq.”

Even so, the theme resonated in Congress last week. “We’re kind of bankrupting this country,” Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) told Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. “We’re eating our seed corn. We’re in a recession, and God only knows how long we’re going to be in it.”

The link between Iraq and the downturn reflects a growing public perception that individual economic anxieties must stem somehow from the unpopular war — a unified theory of political misery, said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster.

“It’s a sour economy, it’s a sour mood and it’s a sour situation in Iraq,” he said. “The public has for the last two years been told about the cost of Iraq in terms of human life. But then there was a direct and important switch, when we went into what I call the surge period, where the budget costs became front and center. While the administration was touting military successes, what the American public saw directly were the costs.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who wrote the new book “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” contends that the connection is real. Even with a growing energy demand from China, the United States and elsewhere, oil traders anticipated before the war that the price of oil would remain about $25 a barrel. Instead, it has soared to more than $100 a barrel. Iraqi oil production has not risen with demand, in part because investment in the Middle East has been stunted by war-related unrest.

Those price increases are self-perpetuating, Stiglitz argues. Oil-rich Persian Gulf states are so awash in money that they are not sure what to do with it all. By holding back oil production, they make more off what they do produce and keep their greatest asset — oil — in the ground as they search for ways to spend their cash.

That cash, through state-owned sovereign wealth funds, has flowed into stocks, bonds and other investments, creating incentives for lenders to offer low-interest loans, many of which have now gone sour.

But that is only one factor, by Stiglitz’s accounting. The federal government has sunk deeply into debt, first with tax cuts, then with accelerating war expenditures that have easily topped half a trillion dollars. That limited the government’s ability to keep the economy on track through tax cuts or domestic investments, so the Federal Reserve Board used low interest rates and the free flow of money to keep the economy growing. Cheap credit sparked rash loans, a housing bubble and the current crisis.

“The war played a very important role,” Stiglitz said.

To economists on the left and the right, his analysis strains credulity. Traditional economics hold that large budget deficits “crowd out” private lending, raising interest rates and making lending scarce, not profligate.

“The credit crisis we got into is because of the housing boom, the relaxation of lending standards and certainly a lack of adequate supervision,” Baily said. “I don’t see a connection with government borrowing.”

And most economists still think that oil prices are soaring because of rising demand, not constrained supply.

“I guess you can argue there’s been a contagion of foolishness” sparked by a spendthrift federal government, “but that seems like a stretch,” said Kevin A. Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute economist and an adviser to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Republicans have tried their best to beat back the argument before it takes hold, even citing one of their ideological nemeses, Princeton University economist and liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has raised doubts about any link between the war and the credit crunch.

“While both parties agree that middle-class families and small businesses are struggling with skyrocketing costs of living, this latest argument from Democratic leaders smacks of political opportunism at its very worst,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week.

The analysis is politically powerful because people believe it. A CNN poll last month found that 71 percent of Americans say government spending in Iraq is a factor in the economic downturn.

“When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war,” Obama told an audience last month at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”

The analysis will drive the debate on the $108 billion in additional war spending that President Bush is now requesting. Congress is set to begin debate on war funding before the end of the month.

“I think there is a connection between the state of our economy and Iraq, and what we’re spending over there,” said Rep. Baron P. Hill (Ind.), a leading Democratic budget hawk. “We’re limited as to what we can do to stimulate the economy. We’re limited as to what we can do on health care or any other program. We need to spend more money on infrastructure, on roads and bridges that would have a stimulative effect on the economy, and we’re not doing those things because of all the money we’re spending in Iraq.”

UN Can Regulate Emissions Trading Without Conflict of Interest   – By Rattaphol Onsanit and Mathew Carr.

April 1 (Bloomberg) — The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change can successfully fulfill its role as an emissions-trading regulator, while potential rival watchdogs have conflicts of interest, a UN official said.

“It’s very difficult to think of any organization that would not be in the conflict-of-interest position,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the so-called UNFCCC, said today in an interview in Bangkok, where about 160 countries are meeting to discuss climate protection.

“If you want to put it with some institutions, say the World Bank, UN Development Programme, or the Global Environment Facility, they are involved in implementing projects and raising money,” de Boer said.

The UNFCCC regulates projects in developing countries aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. The UN credit-trading program is the world’s second- biggest carbon market, after the EU system. A group of officials from the world’s 13 biggest nations said in February that the UNFCCC’s lawmaking and regulatory roles should be separated to introduce professional market governance.

The world should create an “independent, regulatory body for the carbon market,” according to draft recommendations from a committee of the Group of Eight Plus Five. The G8 comprises Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. The five developing countries are Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

Rising Demand:

Demand for UN carbon credits may surge more than fourfold by 2013 under emission-reduction rules being considered by lawmakers around the world, London-based research company New Carbon Finance forecast Jan. 28. China is the biggest supplier of certified emission reduction credits, which are administered by the UNFCCC in Bonn.

“There are some people who argue that the supports to the mechanism should not be in the UNFCCC secretariat, because we are the convention secretariat,” de Boer said. “But if you don’t want to put it in the secretariat, where do you want to put it?”

The UNFCCC secretariat isn’t involved in the projects, so “doesn’t have conflict of interest,” de Boer said. “I don’t think a bank or a brokerage house is in a better position to access whether a project would lead to real, measurable, verifiable emission reduction.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Rattaphol Onsanit in Bangkok at  ronsanit at bloomberg.net; Mathew Carr in London at  m.carr at bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 1, 2008 07:07 EDT

Columbia Business School, March 28, 2008, Hosted LABA (Latin American Business Association) Conference 2008.

The Topic – “LATIN AMERICA: Growth Perspectives in a Shifting Political Landscape.”

www.SustainabiliTank.info posted the announcement as we received it from YPIC – the UN affiliated “Young Professionals for International Cooperation.”

The meeting had 5 Sessions – serious business advice – Growth Oriented – and networking.
I will restrict the reporting to a star studded Fifth-Session actually titled: “THE SHIFTING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICAL LANDSCAPE.” This was indeed the special thing about this year’s meeting.

Interestingly, the two stars of the panel were both “Have-Beens” of sorts – Ex-Presidents of their countries. But – and watch this – they actually were those that put things in motion that are part of the present developments in their respective countries – though the emergence of the China factor came after them. From their “freedom to analyse” now – their presentations were enlightening indeed.

The Former Presidents were – President Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and President Alexandro Toledo of Peru.

Further, President Gaviria is also Former Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Chairman was also an important “EX-” and now Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University. Jose Antonio Ocampo, who was put in place of the previously announced Mr. Andres Oppenheimer, 1978 Graduate of The Columbia School of Journalism, now Latin American editor and syndicated foreign affairs columnist, The Miami Herald – The Newspaper for the Americas in the city that calls itself the capital of Latin America.

Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian national, teaches now courses in the Ph.D. program in Sustainable Development and has an active role in the Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought. He came to Columbia from the UN where he was UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) under UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan – appointed September 1, 2003 to suceed Mr. Nitin Dessai of India. He was replaced by the new UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, as the rumors are at the UN, because he had to promise that slot to China. So – Ocampo went from Colombia to UN and from there to Columbia (the “U” changed to “u” but we are glad he still will be involved in Sustainable Development – as the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was part of his domain at the UN – who knows – he might be able to do more good in his new job then in the previous job).

Professor Ocampo, prior to his coming to the UN, served in various positions in the government of Colombia as Minister of nearly every economic topic, and head of agrarian banks. He was also Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) 1998 – 2003, before coming to the UN, and that position gave him the overview of all of Latin America. His recent publications include “Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development,” with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo French-Davis and Deepak Nayyar, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Professor Ocampo was also a Professor in the Advanced Programme on Rethinking Development Economics at Cambridge University, a Professor of Economics at Universidad de los Andes of Bogota, a Professor of Economic History at the National University of Colombia, as well as a Visiting Fellow at Yale and Oxford.

Introducing the Session, Ocampo said that Gaviria was his boss. Ocampo said that both men had successful periods even though there were controversies in Toledo’s days at helm. There is now a shifting Political Landscape and people talk of two different lefts in Latin America. Ocampo would like to hear from the two Presidents what they think of these changes, and what they think the US elections would imply for Latin America?

President CESAR GAVIRIA TRUJILLO is currently National Director of the Colombian Liberal Party, and is a member of the Advisory Commission of External Relations of Colombia, where, it is said, he recently contributed mediation in the diplomatic incidents between the Colombian Government and the States of Ecuador and Venezuela.

He studied at Universidad de los Andes in the 1960’s and established there AIESEC (the local chapter of the International Association of the Students of Economics), and then in 1968 he was elected President of AIESEC in Colombia. This began his public service career. { Personally I found this interesting, because sometime in the begining of the 80’s I came to Medellin, Antioquia, as a speaker at a Global AIESEC meeting, and most probably had then the chance to meet him.} At 23 he was elected councilman of his hometown in Pereira, in the Coffee famous Risaralda State. 4 years later he became Mayor. In 1974 he was elected into the House of Representatives, before rising to the top in 1983. Three years later he became co-chair of the Colombian Liberal Party.

He was first elected to Congress in 1974; 1986 – 1990 he served in Virgilio Barco’s government, first as Minister of Finance and later as Minister of the Interior, then when Liberal Candidate Senator Gallant was assassinated, he became the Presidential Candidate, and President, August 7, 1990 – August 7, 1994. The period of Presidents Barco and Gaviria was marked by a process of trying peace with the M-19 and other rebells.

As President he did economic reforms to bring Colombia into the International economy; his time saw growth, the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to fortify Colombian Democracy, Human Rights laws, he made the Central Bank independent, and privatized many public service and infrastructure institutions.

He was followed in offfice by Ernesto Samper Pizano also from the Liberal Party who had a difficult campaign against Andrés Pastrana Arango, the candidate of the Colombian Conservative Party. Opinion polls were sharply divided. The elections for President took place on 29 May 1994. Ernesto Samper was elected president by a very narrow margin. Strangely eventually Ernesto Samper became also 16th Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement (October 20, 1995 – August 7, 1998). Andres Pastrana and the Conservatives won the Presidency in 1998.

But, there is another parallel story here. Samper was accused shortly after his presidential victory by his opponent and future successor, Andrés Pastrana Arango, of having received campaign donations from the Cali drug cartel in an excess of $6 million US dollars. Samper initially denied the allegations and deemed his political adversary as a sore loser, but soon afterwards a series of tape recordings were released to the public, the so called narco-cassettes. The Prosecutor General at the time, Alfonso Valdivieso, personally led the investigation. Valdivieso was cousin of the late Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento, a charismatic presidential candidate assassinated by the Medellín Cartel in 1989 for his political views, particularly for favoring the extradition of drug dealers to the United States. Soon, the investigations led by Valdivieso unveiled a more than evident connection between the Cali drug cartel and top figures of Colombia’s society including politicians, journalists, athletes, army and police officers, and artists, among others.

A corollary to the Samper story: As a consequence of the political turmoil, the U.S. government withdrew any political assistance to Samper’s government. For consecutive years, Samper’s administration was lambasted by the US for its supposed failure to make every effort to effectively fight the war against cocaine and the Cali Cartel. Additionally, the US revoked Samper’s visa and thereby effectively banned him from entering the country. Then in July 2006, the present Colombia President, Álvaro Uribe, offered Samper Colombia’s ambassadorship to France. This led to the resignation of Former President and Colombian ambassador to the U.S., Andrés Pastrana, who criticized the decision. Opposition was also expressed by the media, political groups and other parts of Colombian society. In the end, Samper did not accept the offer.

Andres Pastrana was President August 7, 1998 – August 7, 2002, and 17th Secretary General of Non-Aligned Movement only between August 7, 1998 – September 3, 1998 when he was succeeded by Nelson Mandela. In 2002 he was succeeded as President by Álvaro Uribe Vélez who started out as a Liberal Party member, and is now in his second term (till August 7, 2010) as President, seemingly as an Independent.

The International Herald Tribune of May 29, 2006 wrote: “Colombian president wins 2nd term.”
By Juan Forero, BOGOTà , Colombia: “President Álvaro Uribe, considered by the Bush administration to be an unswerving caretaker for Washington’s drug war in Latin America, was re-elected Sunday in a landslide to a second four-year term. Colombians gave Uribe 62 percent of the vote, with nearly all of the votes counted. Voters were apparently satisfied that he had made headway during his first term in wresting control of this country from Marxist rebels and drug traffickers. He overwhelmed the second-place finisher, Carlos Gaviria, a left-of-center former Constitutional Court justice who received 22 percent of the vote, and Horacio Serpa, the Liberal Party’s standard-bearer, who garnered less than 12 percent. “

We wrote this lengthy introduction in order to be able to say that seemingly – the Branco-Gaviria times in Colombian recent history were probably the best days the country has seen for a long time – though, it is now the tough hand of President Uribe that is most appreciated by Washington.

Dr. ALEXANDRO TOLEDO was democratically elected President of Peru from July 2001-July 2006. He was elected by narrowly defeating former President Alan García. It was Toledo’s second presidential race in just 13 months. A year earlier he ran against incumbent Alberto K. Fujimori. Toledo dropped out of the runoff election amid widespread allegations that the election was rigged in Fujimori’s favor. Months after being reelected, Fujimori fled to his native Japan and resigned via fax after the broadcast of Fujimori’s chief spy, Vladimiro Montesinos, evidently bribing an opposition congressman to switch parties.

Toledo was born in a small and remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of sixteen brothers and sisters from a family of extreme poverty. His father was a bricklayer and his mother sold fish at markets. At the age of six, he worked as a street shoe shiner and simultaneously sold newspapers and lotteries to supplement the family income.

At age 16, with the guidance of members of the Peace Corps, Toledo enrolled at the University of San Francisco on a one-year scholarship. He continued his education, obtaining a partial soccer scholarship and making up the difference by pumping gas.

In addition to two masters degrees, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford, where he met his wife, Elaine Karp, a Belgian-born American anthropologist. Dr. Toledo was able to go from extreme poverty to the most prestigious academic centers of the world, later becoming one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. He is the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years.

Dr. Toledo attributes his academic and political accomplishments as being the result of a statistical error. His most precious dream and work now is that other men and women of the large socially excluded Peruvian and Latin American population can also become presidents of their respective countries by having access to quality health care and education.

On the stump, like the most experienced politicians, Toledo knows how to work a crowd, whether addressing peasants or potential foreign investors. Seamlessly transitioning from a buttoned-down, eloquent economist to a rebel outfitted in jeans, a t-shirt, and a bandana, Toledo is well versed in international trade and promises to give voice to the labor movement.

Mostly, though, Toledo has preached a centrist platform, pledging to award small-business loans to farmers, balance the budget, lure foreign investment, and create jobs. Toledo’s moderate campaign and carefully selected issues have found broad appeal.

President Toledo first appeared on the international political scene in 1996 when he formed and led a broad democratic coalition in the streets of Peru to bring down the autocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori. This coalition had the support of the international democratic community.

During the five years of Dr. Toledo’s presidency, the Peruvian economy grew at an average rate of 6 percent, registering as one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. Inflation averaged 1.5 percent and fiscal deficit went as low as 0.2 percent. While markets in China and Thailand were opened, free trade agreement negotiations with the United States, Chile, Mexico and Singapore were about to conclude. These markets were generating new investments and jobs for the most poverty-stricken Peruvians.

The fight against poverty through health and educational investment was the central aim of Dr. Toledo’s presidency. As a result of sustained economic growth and deliberate social policies directed to the most poor, extreme poverty was reduced by 25 percent in five years. Employment grew at an average rate of 6 percent from 2004-2006.


Before becoming President, Dr. Toledo worked for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, and the United Nations in New York.

During his academic years, Professor Toledo was a visiting scholar and a research associate at Harvard University and Waseda University in Tokyo. He is currently an economics professor (on leave) at the University of ESAN in Peru.

1986-1991: Director, Economic Development Institute (IDE/ESAN), Lima, Peru.

1989: Leader of the PNUD/OIT mission for the evaluation of: “Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Growth, Employment and Salaries” in six Central American countries, UNDP/ New York.

1981- 1983: Chairman of the Economic Advisory Committee to the President of the Central Reserve Bank and the Labor Minister in Peru under President Fernando Belaunde.

1981-1983: General Director, Institute of Economic and Labor Studies, Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Lima, Peru.

Current Activities:

-Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI – Stanford University) and Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) for the 2007-2008 academic year.

-Distinguished Fellow in residency at the Center for Advanced Studies and Behavioral Science (CASBS) at Stanford for the 2006-2008 academic years.

-Founder and President of the Global Center for Development and Democracy (GCDD), which studies the interrelationship between poverty, inequality, and the future of democratic governance.

To read more about this amazing man who is an unusual giant hidden in a diminutive figure – see please: http://fsi.stanford.edu/people/alejandro…
Gaviria was the first to make an introductory speech. He said he was happy to be here with Toledo, because of Toledo’s attempt to bring back democracy to Peru. This is needed now in Colombia. Toledo, was first of the great number of the mestizo/Indio people to be able to head an administration that will be recognized in time as successful.

Latin American governments are – some say are from the right others from the left – but this is an oversimplification – this is true also in the US. The solutions are not only in the programs they say but in the markets.

(1) We had failed the race for growth – we had a lost decade then we saw optimism in the 90’s with 7-8% growth/year – then down to 2%. We still have many problems – do not think we are OK. A main problem is structural – the rate of saving. We had the Argentina crisis – started there – we did not solve it. The Financial Globalization – it is critical in LA.

Financial, Trade Globalization – it is useful as trade but the vulnerability in LA is from the Financial Globalization.We are all citizens of the World. The way NGOs work and bring up issues like child labor, discrimination against women – this changes us. A Colombian decision in Ecuador has disturbed the whole region.

(2) We need to understand that the political problems in LA are not just economic – they are social problems. The Quality of the Institutions – i.e. education – that is what is important – in order to enable to deal with the problems from globalization.

The US Ambassador in 1971 ( we assume he was talking about the Ambassador to Bogota) thought markets will solve the problems of LA – but political problems are more important. In India people organized themselves to supply the services that the government did not supply.

Toledo followed by saying that he had not the privilege to belong to Gaviria’s party, but he had the chance to study his leadership in Colombia and at the OAS. Now he said: “You have described the history, I will start with this as a base to build for the future.” He said upon himself that he feels he was intelligent before he got into politics, and will now take the five years of experience in his job (that is his five years as President), to look for the future.

LA has an opportunity to make a “qualitative jump” in the World Economy in the next 10-15 years. This is cautious optimism. He saw a growth of 6% LA average for 6 consecutive years . Peru had 9.1%/year. We are changing in relation to the internal composition of growth. WE SELL MANGOES TO CHINA. That is much better then the mineral commodities we used to export. These exports are much better because they are less dependent on the fluctuations of the market. We now have China & India of 2.3 billion people. The EU 500 million, our region 500 million. WE HAVE DIVERSIFIED FROM THE DEPENDENCE ON THE US.

Addressing the students – In the last 60 years we got a stock of human capital dispersed in the diaspora -if you do not lose your heart to Merrill-Lynch or JP Morgan. All we need is intelligent policy to recuperate. In the next 10 -15 years the region could become a player in the economy.

Today the G8 talk BRICs (Brazil Russia, India, China). I disagree: May be LARIC (Latin America, Russia, India, China). It is our responsibility to take in our hands the construction of the investments.

1. if we are capable we do not have to see 110 million people trying to survive on $1/day. This is not the environment that assists investment for growth and we do not reduce poverty.

2. Poverty and inequality of institutions – democratic government is in danger.

3. Cheap empty populism is the danger – it can emerge.

Toledo said that he has too much respect for the left to believe that Hugo Chaves is on the left. These types (the populists) were not able to obtain Sustainable Growth and distribute the gains to build up the countries.

Lack of access to clean water, medication, education … are the indicators. 122 million people included in the production cycle will buy more bread, socks and more yahoo – make a market. This besides the inclusion.

INVESTING IN REDUCING INEQUALITY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS AND PROFITABLE FOR THE MARKET. You in the business school are tempted by Wall Street. A modest suggestion – don’t lose the opportunity, the region is waiting for you. Colombia, Peru are waiting for you. It is a regional opportunity – if you don’t do it – nobody else will do it.

Toledo, before politics he was teaching econometrics. Don’t stay in the US – he repeated. I know you will forgo 20-30% of salary if you made a difference in your country.

Free Trade Agreements are of enormous importance. I sent a letter of Congratulation. I decided to work for the Colombia, Panama FTAs. This all makes sense if you integrate this with the medium and small companies – not only the big ones.

The busines of inclusion is god for democracy and business. Toledo goes now to Kiev to talk about democracy.

LATIN AMERICA HAS THE SIZE OF THE US MARKET.

Answering to a question from Ocampo about the US in LA?

Toledo said that there is check & balances in Venezuela. True – there was significant set-back in the country.

On Bolivia – yes it had a good economic policy for years, but it collapsed because of lack of representation of indigenous people. Morales was very important in Bolivia.

When the Argentinian crisis came – the devaluation – the US was disengaged. The Argentinians never got a visit from the US treasury, IMF. They got an Anti-Americanism that was not there before.

The American government supported the coup in Venezuela.

The crisis in Brazil came from the Asia Crisis. The US did not show interest.

There were great mistakes on the US side. Mistakes in US foreign policy.

On the US elections?

We Need A New Relationship Based On Respect Of LA Governments And Public Opinion.

This is not a question of left – but of mistakes.

I think NAFTA was good. But Mexico is going bankrupt even with NAFTA. It should grow 6%. It is like Portugal, Greece, Spain.

Brazil had last year the first good year 5%. Colombia had 7%, Peru 8%.

Globalization & Trade do not check with distribution of income. One must look into that. We need to do a lot more about these people.

Ocampo summing up:

(1) Hugo Chaves? He is not a problem – he is a consequence. Try to confront poverty by giving official aid.

(2) Professionally, going back to Colombia is a great opportunity.

(3) The need for strong democratic institutions and a just judiciary institution, Freedom of the Press, a strong curriculum – and these strong democratic institutions will solve the accountability problem. Lack of democracy thus lack of accountability.

Clean Water is strongly associated with poverty and democracy.

WE NEED MORE LEADERS THEN PREDICTIONS. Leaders that have the capacity to do investments.

The difference between leaders and politicians? Politicians make a decision for next election and profitability is not in the next 3-4 years. In LA one must make decisions so that accountancy is not dependent from selling mineral commodities.

We need an economy of knowledge that depends on other products.

THE EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF INDIGENOUS LEADERS IN THE LAST 25 YEARS IN LA.

TOLEDO WAS THE FIRST DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED INDIGENOUS PRESIDENT IN 500 YEARS.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo.

Colombian President César Gaviria

Columbia University Professor José Antonio Ocampo, Former USG at UNDESA

“We will turn the ‘entente cordiale’ [cordial relationship] into the ‘entente amicale’ [friendly relationship],” he said at a press conference.

In the last years, relations between the two countries had cooled, notably over Britain’s participation in the 2003 Iraq war which France opposed.

Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, respectively Mr Brown and Mr Sarkozy’s predecessors, also had different views on the EU’s future, on the common agricultural policy and free trade.

But now, although these policy differences are not completely bridged over, Mr Brown said the Franco-British cooperation could turn into an “entente formidable” – or a wonderful relationship.

The range of fields where the two leaders vowed to work jointly include “[reforms of] international institutions, foreign and defence policy, development, migration, “climate change and energy“, and global prosperity, including the promotion of practical responses to such challenges”, says a 14-page joint declaration published Thursday (27 March).

{ At www.SustainabiliTAnk.info we specially liked the linkage between the subjects of CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY into one item. }

More concretely, France and the UK will work together to reform institutions such as the G8, the International Monetary Fund and the UN Security Council – where they reaffirmed support for Germany, Brazil, India and Japan’s candidacies for a permanent seat, as well as for a permanent African representation.

They will also “tackle development and climate change together and coordinate their action in order to harness greater resources”, the document reads.

One of the Anglo-French goals suggests getting “16 million children into school in Africa by 2010 and every child by 2015.”

The two leaders also called for greater transparency in financial markets and for the improvement of risk management in a bid to “promote financial stability” following the recent global credit crisis.

They also pledged to join efforts to combat terrorism and to boost the EU’s military capabilities, and will work on proposals for a meeting of EU leaders in June on “how EU counter-radicalisation efforts might be deepened, for example by devoting more EU spending to counter radicalisation work.”

But they did not agree on how to approach the 2008 Olympic Games’ opening ceremony in Beijing in August, in light of China’s recent crackdown on Tibet.

Mr Sarkozy has not ruled out boycotting the opening ceremony of the games. The French president, who will head the EU at the time of Olympics, said he will consult other member states before taking a final decision on the matter.

Mr Brown, whose country will host the next Games in 2012, excluded a boycott and said he would attend the ceremony.

Towards an ‘entente formidable’
The Sarkozy-Brown meeting took place the second day of the French leader’s state visit to the UK.

And Peter Sain ley Berry, editor of EuropaWorld, writes on EUobserver his “Comment” looking not at the UN, but at the EU –   “Is this what the president of Europe will be doing?”

28.03.2008,   By Peter Sain ley Berry, Brussels – ‘C’est magnfique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre!’ (It may be superb, but it isn’t war!) Marshall Bosquet remarked about the Charge of the British Light Brigade at the battle of Balaclava in 1854. Military ineptitude then sent a small brigade of cavalry to attack multiple batteries of Russian guns, with predictable consequences.

The incident descended easily into legend. ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the Six Hundred,’ wrote Tennyson, while in the hands of the Irish playwright, Bernard Shaw, the episode became the satirical comedy – ‘Arms and the Man.’ Although the cavalry charge succeeds (because the enemy guns fortuitously have no cartridges) the cavalry commander receives no plaudits. ‘I won the battle the wrong way,’ he moans, ‘while our generals were losing it the right way.’

The Crimean war, of which Balaclava formed part, was incidentally the first major conflict in which Britain and France had been allies after eight previous centuries of internecine strife, something to which generals on both sides of the Channel found it hard to adjust. Indeed, it might be said that we are still adjusting to it. France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, on a state visit to Britain this week, was still saying on the radio that he hoped that Britons would come to trust France.

This seems a forlorn hope. Two hundred years after Napoleon, many Britons still distrust the French with a vehemence that borders on the pathological. To admit to liking France, her culture, language and people – as opposed to a source of cheap property – is not something undertaken lightly, even in the hallowed portals of Westminster.

As President Sarkozy addressed the British Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, it was noticeable how many ears were muffled by headphones, presumably lest the contagion of the French language should pierce our leaders’ monoglot brains.

On the French side, this neighbourly suspicion is reciprocated, albeit at one remove. The hostility is to a soul-less Anglo-Saxon world that, like Oscar Wilde’s cynic, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. The inhabitants, on the other hand, they treat with a respect that I always find remarkable.

From time to time statesmen on both sides of the Channel try gallantly to bridge this political and cultural chasm; to put, as it were, the pieces of the Plantagenet jigsaw back together. Winston Churchill is far out front in these stakes. Indeed, he almost succeeded in 1940 in bringing about a Franco-British Union.

Now it is the turn of Mr Sarkozy. He has not yet acquired Churchillian status. In fact he is almost as unpopular as Churchill was in his pre-glory days. He was not actually proposing a Franco-British Union, but amid great panache and rhetorical flourish, he suggested a Franco-British partnership in which the two ancient foes would stand back to back against the world. ‘When Britain and France speak with one voice,’ he said, ‘who will dare not listen,’ or words to that effect.

The core of his argument was that a refreshed Franco-British entente (promoted in the process from ‘cordiale’ to ‘amicale’) would create an unstoppable force both inside Europe and on the world stage. Europe might be driven by the Franco-German motor but it needed a Franco-British wheel to steer it.

With its theatricality, an effect compounded by the gilded gothic decor of the House of Lords, the speech seemed at times a one-man cavalry charge of its own – this time into the sensitivities and suspicions of the greater part of his audience. Yet it was also a remarkable gesture of friendship. It is impossible to think of a British statesman proposing a similar ‘friendly understanding’ to the French Parliament.

There will not be a close Franco-British partnership in Europe, of course, even though the two countries may progress some key matters including nuclear technology, defence and immigration. The Channel is far broader than the Rhine. Despite Sarkozy’s assertion that what unites us is greater than what divides us – Iraq, Turkey, labour markets, agricultural trade, European integration, relations with the USA – cannot lightly be put aside however amicale the spirit.

Sakozy must have known, therefore, that his proposals would be shot down by the cannons of sceptic public opinion and the machine guns of the popular press. The real question, therefore, is not so much on the substance, but why he chose to make so bold a speech?

For beneath the carapace of flattery, laid on with a trowel – the gift of British democracy; the indomitable spirits of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish youth that had left their bones in France; the vibrancy of our entrepreneurial spirit; our determination to stand by France in 1940; the liberation – it was a bold, hard-hitting speech with a core of observations about the limitations of today’s nation state to act alone. The Middle East, Tibet, Darfur, Human Rights, Climate Change, Development, Globalisation – these global issues could only be addressed together.

It was also unashamedly a speech that underlined the importance of the European Union, not just in contributing to the resolution of global problems, but, more locally, to immigration, defence, energy, institutional reform. Shorn of its trappings it was the speech that successive British Prime Ministers from Mrs Thatcher to Gordon Brown should have been prepared to give many times before, instead of pretending that they had chosen the European path by accident rather than design.

Yet in having the raw courage to beard the lion in its Parliamentary den and to deliver a powerful message about how Europe needed Britain’s rather more full-hearted co-operation, Sarkozy was perhaps trying to do something more.

In a few months time the European Council will appoint its first President, someone who, no doubt, will be invited to Parliaments in the member states and indeed across the world, to deliver a powerful, European message.

France will shortly hold the European Presidency; Sarkozy himself will be kingmaker to this appointment. Indeed at some future point, he may advance himself for the Presidential role. Was he saying, in the Westminster Parliament, this is how I see a future European President projecting the values of the Union? And – as now over Tibet – being prepared to take a lead?

We shall see. Whatever, he has done himself no harm at all in the European Presidential stakes of 2014.

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The Independent of London: Soros warns ’systemic failure’ may be upon us.

By Sean O’Grady, Thursday, 24 January 2008

“This is not a normal crisis”. George Soros, the doyen of international finance, the man who made billions from sterling’s expulsion from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, and who now spends much of his time on philanthropic activities, is listened to in Davos respectfully. Yesterday he had something important to say about the state of the world’s financial system: “central banks have lost control”; a “global sheriff” to patrol international markets should help them out.

Mr Soros offered the proceedings a deep historical perspective. To his mind, he told participants at the World Economic Forum, we are “at the end of an era”. The 60-year economic supremacy of the US and the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency of choice is drawing to a close, fundamentally weakened by the shift in economic power eastwards with the rise of China. A more recent era is also over: that of “superleverage”. Regulators, the financier said, have not yet fully appreciated the portent of these developments. “Systemic failure” may be upon us.

Mr Soros said he supported fiscal and monetary action to boost the US economy, but was concerned about the limits to monetary easing. Referring to the 25 per cent deprecation of the dollar in the last couple of years, he added: “I question how far the Fed can go, given the reluctance of people to hold dollars”.

Eventually, he said, there will have to be more regulation of financial institutions, including of the hedge funds he once pioneered, possibly limiting financial products and encouraging more disclosure of where risks lie. What is needed is “assurance that the main market makers will not be allowed to fail,” he said. “We need a new sheriff, not Washington consensus.”

The Independent Related Articles:
Hopes of large cuts in interest rates dashed by bankers.
Brown and Darling lose confidence of entrepreneurs, poll shows.
Market uncertainty casts chill over forum’s opening sessions. Adrian Hamilton: This crisis can only be solved at a global level.
Hamish McRae: Consumers can earn their way out of trouble but public debt is the problem.
Jeremy Warner’s Outlook: Davos mood turns ugly.

Adrian Hamilton: This crisis can only be solved at a global level.

The Independent, Opinion – Thursday, 24 January 2008

It was a coincidence no doubt – although a convenient one – that the Prime Minister was abroad when the world markets started their precipitate decline, telling the Indians that the world’s global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund needed radical reform with a role to “prevent crises and not simply to manage or resolve them as in the past”.

He was on the same theme when he returned to London on Tuesday, spreading the word that he was now calling for an emergency meeting of European finance ministers in London to urge, as one report put it, “for measures to improve transparency in the banking system, co-ordinate national regulators, review the role of credit rating agencies, and to strengthen the management of liquidity risks”.

Gordon Brown is no doubt right to call for early international action to deal with the present crisis, although whether his fellow European finance ministers will be willing to hear the call from a man who has spent the past decade bad-mouthing their efforts with the euro might be considered debatable.

Nor is he wrong to see the need for regulatory reform. There is a strong case for improving the rules on bank regulation and capital market supervision in the light of the credit crunch of the past six months. If you want to get really excited, as some commentators do, you can demand a wholesale re-ordering of the role of the state in the markets on the grounds that laissez-faire economics has been tested and found wanting.

But none of that helps deal with the present crisis. Nor is it clear that structural reform would materially affect the markets and their effective management. Institutional change makes a convenient rallying call for politicians under pressure. But it is not structures that are so much at fault at the moment as a basic failure of leadership.

If banks went in for excessively loose lending, asset prices were overvalued and the normal rules of fiscal rectitude were abandoned, it was because it suited everyone, including finance ministers and central bankers, to let it happen. It was a convenient way for countries to keep growth at a time of restricted public expenditure and for the world to cope with the huge transfer of funds from the West to the oil producers and to Asia.

If regulators and finance ministers had wanted to question the growth of securitisation, they could have. The power of central banks, even informally, is considerable, while there are plenty of institutions, such as the Bank for International Settlements and the G8, to co-ordinate international action if it is globalisation that is spreading the problem.

The crisis we face at the moment is a very real one. It is the product of a credit crunch brought about by serious strains in the banking system, excessive borrowing by Western and Asian consumers, the onset of a business cycle that would have slowed growth in any case and serious underlying problems caused by imbalances in trade in the world.

It matters to London particularly, not just because, as the Bank of England Governor would have it, it poses problems of the risks of inflation versus recession domestically, but because the British economy and employment are now so dependent on our role as a global financial centre. When the banks in America sneeze, we can catch double pneumonia.

The credit squeeze and economic slowdown is not going to go away at the drop of a Federal reserve interest rate and a package of tax cuts, not least because the problems of overheating and credit constraint are affecting Asia as much as America and Europe. China and India may not be in a position to bail us out of this one.

The worry at the moment is that, as far as international co-ordination is concerned, it’s every man for himself. The US moves are not the product of careful consideration but the urgent actions of a country at the beginning of an election year. If it wasn’t for the politics, they wouldn’t have been introduced in this way. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank in the meantime are going their merry and quite separate ways, while currencies and capital movements – both of which will be altered by the crisis and the responses – are being left free to bounce between individual national actions, and China, India and the Middle East will be making their own decisions as to where to put their surpluses now that America is turning sour.

The need for international co-ordination and leadership has never been greater, yet the lack of it has never been more obvious. Forget institutional reform, let’s just get down to the old-fashioned business of getting the players round the table “to manage and resolve” the crisis at hand.

 a.hamilton at independent.co.uk

 â€˜Calls for papers’ by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the   UN University (UNU-WIDER).

Details can be found at:
 http://www.wider.unu.edu

Call for Papers to 3 WIDER Project Workshops.

-   Beyond the Tipping Point: Development in an Urban World, submission deadline 31 January 2008.

Details…

-   Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Concepts, Measurements, and Impacts, submission deadline 14 March 2008.

Details…

-   Southern Engines of Global Growth: China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (CIBS); Financial Flows and Capital Markets, submission deadline 15 April 2008.

Details…
World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER) undertakes multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on structural changes affecting the living conditions of the world’s poorest people; provides a forum for professional interaction and the advocacy of policies leading to robust, equitable and environmentally sustainable growth; and promotes capacity strengthening and training for scholars and government officials in the field of economic and social policy making. WIDER is the first research and training centre of the United Nations University (UNU), established in Helsinki, Finland in 1984. www.wider.unu.edu

=========================================
For more information on our activities and the website, please contact:
Ara Kazandjian ara(at wider.unu.edu

World Institute for Development Economics Research
of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER)
Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, 00160 Helsinki, Finland
Tel. +358-9-6159911, Fax. +358-9-61599333
 http://www.wider.unu.edu

For details on the activities of the United Nations University
and its international network of research and training centres/programmes:
 http://www.update.unu.edu/

The Final Evaluation Of The Bali Meetings Looks Better Then We Dared To Hope For – This Because There Are Clear Dynamics That Does Not Allow Leaders In Power To Have Their Ways.

OK, time has come that we summarize the events of the last two weeks and after that march away to other pressing issues.

Clearly, Bali did not live up to the exaggerated expectations the European leaders put into their wishes from the meetings, but was it a failure?

For those that expected the earth to fall into climate-collapse and disrepair, Bali presented very dim results. But then, if the worst of the prognoses would indeed materialize, then also all what Europe does is not sufficient, and a more forthcoming result from Bali could also not have saved the world – for that – it is already late.


But, if we think with cooler minds, then we can see that Bali has made it possible for a definite move to progress:

- Let us start with Japan and Russia that obliged themselves with planning for moves to reduce dramatically their CO2 emissions.

- The Responsibilities of the more advanced among the developing countries were defined more accurately.

- With the political U-turn in Australia, a country that joined now the ranks of those that signed the Kyoto Protocol – this left in the rejectionist’s front only the US and Canada from among the industrialized countries.

- With the US there was also a change. There is a slowly creeping change of mind and the surprising agreement to the consensus by its delegate to Bali, the White House insider, Paula Dobriansky, has now made possible that an
agreement will be readied in two years.

- The eventual agreement will go beyond the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, because now all big States will be part of the agreement. The finalization of such an agreement will occur after the Presidential elections in the USA.
Seemingly it was always planed this way.

- By the time of the COP 14 of the UNFCCC meeting in Poznan, in December 2008, there will already be a new US “President-in-Waiting” and he or she will come to the meetings or will send an emissary. With the new President
moving into the White House on January 20, 2009, it will be this new President that will be involved in the negotiations during the year 2009 – with the final outcome planned for Copenhagen at the COP 15 of the UNFCCC.
All the main contenders in the US elections, the Democrats, and the Republicans, have shown interest in pulling through the new climate change agreement, this because there is already a majority among the US population that wants positive results. Some of the main US States, including California, are already moving along lines similar to the EU States. Many US businesses are already on the process train – and the train is moving indeed.

- It is clear that the developing countries will commit suicide if they do not think about the effects their fast industrialization has on the planet, but it is also true that they will do nothing unless the industrialized countries make first and decisive moves. So, a US Administration that starts by showing a positive example will have a much higher chance for succeeding in its negotiations with China and India, then the present Bush Administration.

- So far as the UN is concerned, the snail pace of the UN decision making process is a hindrance by the fact that it is slower then the pace of climate change. We say thus with full understanding of the meaning of this skepticism
when thinking about the UN, that the efforts by the US in starting bilateral negotiations with other large polluters, if handled by a US President who is keen about what he says, is not such a bad idea as it sounds, when put forward
by the present US administration. Eventually a club of major polluters, let’s say of 80% of the total emissions will be formed, and the implementation of the program that will be discussed in Copenhagen will be entrusted to this club.
Were the US present Administration not as obstinate as they were, they could even have claimed some rights for trying to engineer this polluter’s club. The reality remains that they lost credibility by expressively not recognizing the
seriousness of the problem, censoring scientific research, removing some of the best leaders in climate change issues and so on …, but looking back at Bali, all may yet be back on track. Thank you German Minister of the
Environment, Mr. Gabriel – you are credited with getting the US attention on 12/16.2007 as you got the UN Commission on Sustainable Development attention on the night of 5/11/ 2007. The post-Kyoto process was put now back on tracks; the CSD process has yet to be revived. The CSD is important because in the end effect, there will be no action on climate change if there is no consensus that all development must eventually be of the Sustainable
Development kind.

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A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF COP 13 & COP/MOP 3                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             by the IISD team in Bali the KIMO ENB Summary and Analysis now online:
BALI: ISLAND OF THE GODS AND BREAKTHROUGHS?
You should not be impelled to act for selfish reasons, nor should you be attached to inaction. (Bhagavad Gita. 2.47)
Marking the culmination of a year of unprecedented high-level political, media and public attention to climate change science and policy, the Bali Climate Change Conference produced a two-year “roadmap” that provides a vision, an outline destination, and negotiating tracks for all countries to respond to the climate challenge with the urgency that is now fixed in the public mind in the wake of the headline findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. The outline destination is an effective political response that matches both the IPCC science and the ultimate objective of the Convention; it was never intended that the Bali Conference would focus on precise targets. Instead, the divergent parties and groups who drive the climate regime process launched a negotiating framework with “building blocks” that may help to square a number of circles, notably the need to reconcile local and immediate self-interest with the need to pursue action collectively in the common and long-term interests of people and planet. The informal dialogue over the past two years has now been transformed into a platform for the engagement of parties from the entire development spectrum, including the United States and developing countries.
This brief analysis opens with a discussion on the complexity of the climate change process, and describes the elements of the Bali roadmap and their potential significance in enabling negotiations on the future of the climate regime, including a post-2012 agreement. It identifies the main political achievements of the Conference, and assesses some of the specific outcomes from negotiations on the so-called “building blocks” of mitigation, adaptation, financing and technology transfer.
MANAGING COMPLEXITY
Of the 10,000 participants in the Bali Conference, it is likely only a handful of them had a meaningful grasp of all the pieces that now make up the deepening complexity of the climate change regime. Delegates in Bali had to balance meetings of the UNFCCC COP and the Kyoto Protocol COP/MOP, along with the subsidiary bodies, the Ad Hoc Working Group, dozens of contact groups and informal consultations on issues ranging from budgets to national reporting to reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries, not to mention side events held by governments, international organizations, business and industry, and environmental NGOs. Balancing the large number of participants, issues and negotiating venues requires stamina, time management and a lot of creativity. With the launch of new negotiations on a long-term agreement, which, by definition must be more ambitious than anything that has gone before, yet another piece has been added to the ever-growing complex puzzle that makes up the climate regime.
Managing this deepening complexity in a highly sensitive – and largely transparent – political environment has become an extraordinary feat, undertaken by a UNFCCC Secretariat that continues to impress participants with a combination of professionalism, competence and good humor. The UN Secretary-General’s decision to adopt climate change as one of his own UN system-wide priorities, with a more effective division of labor and lines of accountability on climate-related issues throughout the UN system, will shore up the resources required for the future. A greater emphasis on the need to draw on expertise found outside the immediate UNFCCC process was also a notable and timely feature of discussions in Bali.
Nevertheless, the challenge of defining precisely what elements of the Bali decisions and outcomes constitute the “Bali roadmap” is its own complex work in progress. For example, what exactly is the nature of the agreement that must result from the Bali roadmap? This is still a matter of debate, with divergent views on the legal form or architecture that will accommodate and, perhaps elaborate, existing commitments under the Convention and the Protocol in the near term and after 2012. So, while the Bali roadmap was never categorically defined, most are viewing it as a compendium of decisions and processes adopted and launched by the COP and COP/MOP, which can be divided into three types:
·       Negotiating tracks;

·       Building blocks; and

·       Supporting activities, including reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
NEGOTIATING TRACKS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The Bali roadmap builds on the negotiating tracks on long-term issues launched at the Montreal Climate Change Conference at the end of 2005. In addition to the legal necessity to address the post-2012 period after the Protocol’s first commitment period expires, the Bali roadmap aims to mend some of the fractures that have evolved in the architecture of the climate change regime, most notably the refusal of the United States to ratify the Protocol. The institutionalization of tensions between developed and developing country parties,   the crisis of confidence surrounding the implementation of existing commitments, and a growing need for the distribution of responsibilities to reflect the economic power and responsibilities of major emerging economies, have also haunted the process. The Bali roadmap must continue to provide a means to re-engage the United States in negotiations on future commitments, with some level of comparability with other developed country undertakings; it must develop innovative mechanisms and incentives for the engagement of the major emerging economies; and it will be judged, above all, by the extent to which it addresses the ultimate objective of the Convention – to put the world on a path to avoid dangerous climate change – by responding, without equivocation, to the IPCC’s findings.
At the heart of the Bali roadmap are the negotiating tracks to be pursued under the newly launched Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and the existing Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Protocol. The work of each track will be important, but – in all probability – it is the convergence of views, with each track taking the work of the other on board, that will inform deliberations on the ambition and the means for all to contribute to a future agreement or agreements.
One indication of the likely contents of the roadmap came early on in Bali in an intervention by COP President Witoelar during the Contact Group on Long-term Cooperative Action. He explained that the roadmap has a track for negotiations under the Convention, with a milestone in 2008, and a destination in 2009. The centerpiece of this track is the decision on the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, which for the first time sets out a negotiating agenda that encompasses discussions on mitigation for both developing and developed countries. Since the negotiations will take place under the Convention, they will include all parties – developing countries and the US. However, there is some question as to the nature of the mandate for this track, other than a reference to the ultimate objective of the Convention. Some have contrasted the work of this AWG with the stronger mandate built into the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Berlin Mandate, which resulted in the Kyoto Protocol. “We may have to return to the COP to clarify and strengthen the mandate; for the moment we have taken a leap of faith,” said one observer, hoping that the work would result in a binding agreement.
On the Protocol track is the work programme, methods and schedule of future sessions of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Protocol. Important aspects of the work of the AWG will be taken on board and feed into the second review of the Protocol under Article 9 at COP/MOP 4.
One of the most significant developments in Bali was a shift that the Executive Secretary likened to the “dismantling of the Berlin Wall.” While a “two-track” approach will continue and maintain a degree of separation between discussions under the Convention and the Protocol, the decision on the AWG on Long-Term Cooperative Action uses for the first time language on “developed” and “developing” countries, rather than “Annex I” and “non-Annex I” countries. This is widely regarded as a breakthrough, as it offers the prospect of moving beyond the constraints of working within only Annex I and non-Annex I countries when defining future contributions to a future agreement. It is anticipated that new approaches to differentiating contributions, tied to countries’ economic capacity, will form part of the future architecture. Moreover, the new AWG will also fully engage and address the future role of the US, which has not ratified the Protocol.
The risk in all of this, identified by some developing country parties, is that certain Annex I parties may seize on this development to “jump ship” and attempt to adopt more relaxed commitments than those under the Kyoto Protocol. This led to proposals for a “firewall” that would lock existing Annex I parties into the most ambitious end of the commitment spectrum.
BUILDING BLOCKS
Integral to the emerging and no doubt cross-fertilizing work programmes across the negotiating tracks are the so-called “building blocks” of mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance. These key issues were considered both under the roadmap negotiations and in related talks on topics such as the Adaptation Fund.
With evidence that the confidence-building phase of negotiations has begun to yield some results in terms of the re-engagement of the US and engagement of major developing country economies, the Bali Conference was regarded by some, notably the EU and major NGOs, as the moment to lock the process into evidence-based negotiations on mitigation and commitments. The timing and ambition of the EU’s agenda was not unexpected and contributed to some of the fiercest exchanges between negotiators.
MITIGATION: The debate on mitigation, notably the terms of engagement by developing countries, in the context of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, was not resolved until the COP plenary on Saturday. Under the gaze of unprecedented media attention, India turned the final hours of negotiations into something approaching a Bollywood Blockbuster, with star-studded cameo roles by none other than the UN Secretary-General and the President of Indonesia, calling on parties to close a deal. Up until Saturday afternoon, the prospect of a collapse of the negotiations was not ruled out by senior participants.
In a defining moment of the Conference, at the final and dramatic COP plenary session, the US stood down from its opposition to a proposal by India, supported by the G-77/China. The Indian proposal aimed to ensure that mitigation actions by developing country parties are supported by technology, financing and capacity building, subject to measurable, reportable and verifiable procedures. This new paragraph has far-reaching implications for linking developing country participation in a future agreement and confidence that they will access the means to deliver. Fired by a suspicion that developed countries had set up future negotiations that might relax their own commitments, while placing too much onus on developing country contributions, India deftly seized the momentum for the closure of a deal on the roadmap, in the full gaze of the world’s media, to introduce a new rigor to the delivery of developed country commitments on capacity building. Introducing this outstanding debate into the final COP plenary on Saturday was just one of the high-risk strategies deployed to press for closure on issues that had played out for days behind closed doors. In the end, after phone calls reportedly involving Washington, the US delegation dropped its opposition to the Indian proposal, stung by rebuffs from South Africa and Papua New Guinea and lengthy applause from delegates and observers who favored the proposal.
The mitigation debate was also behind contested approaches to referencing the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. This battle was fought on two fronts: under the Protocol and under the Convention. In the AWG under the Protocol, Russia, Canada, and Japan lined up to oppose a reference to the 25-40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction range in the AWG’s report from Vienna, which included this and other quotes from the IPCC AR4. Noting that media coverage was feeding public expectations that countries were “going to agree” to reductions in this range and that “we have to be careful about presenting the range as the target,” the Russian Federation continued its opposition all the way to the AWG closing plenary. Canada and Japan, which had argued in the informal consultations that Russia should be heeded, changed their position after a concerted campaign by AOSIS to insert a comprehensive reference to the IPCC AR4.
There was less success on the Convention front in the Dialogue on Cooperative Action, where the reference to the IPCC science is weaker. AOSIS was unable to summon up the support for a stronger reference when negotiators met in a small informal group to close on this issue. Participants believe that this will be a weaker starting point for negotiations on cooperative action under the Convention, and the IPCC references may have to be revisited.
ADAPTATION AND FINANCE: One of the significant outcomes bringing together both adaptation and finance was the decision to operationalize the Adaptation Fund, which was set up to finance adaptation in developing countries. The Fund had proven to be particularly delicate to negotiate because, unlike other funds under the UNFCCC, it is funded through a levy on CDM projects undertaken in developing countries and is therefore not dependent on donors. At past meetings, proposals to appoint the GEF as the Fund’s manager have generated controversies between developed and developing countries, and an agreement on the Adaptation Fund Board, operating under the guidance of the COP/MOP, was a significant breakthrough. However, the early stages of the Conference were marked by intensive lobbying by representatives from the GEF who were determined to secure a role in servicing the Fund. In the end, they secured an interim role in providing a secretariat function.
The establishment of the Adaptation Fund was widely applauded. It was also seen as one of several positive outcomes for the G-77/China at this meeting, which some observers note are a reflection of the increasing economic and political clout of this group.
TECHNOLOGY: The basis for an interim funding programme under the GEF was brokered behind the scenes early in the Conference, although agreement on the final details was complicated. Technology funding is expected to be scaled up when a comprehensive agreement on future commitments is reached, possibly in Copenhagen. Governments agreed to kick start a strategic programme to scale up investment in the transfer of both the mitigation and adaptation technologies needed by developing countries. Again, the outcome was widely viewed as a positive one for developing countries.
SUPPORTING ACTIVITIES – REDUCING EMISSIONS FROM DEFORESTATION                                                                                                                                       A decision on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries is as significant for the wider deforestation debate as it is for the climate regime. As one observer put it, the deforestation issue has suffered from a level of fragmentation and now, perhaps for the first time, may ultimately be brought under a legally binding framework.
There was an agreement to launch a process for understanding the challenges ahead, including through demonstration activities over the next two years, in preparation for addressing these issues in a post-2012 agreement.
A problematic part of this debate was how to include the issue in the post-2012 regime. The US supported a reference to “land use” in the decision on reducing emissions from deforestation, alarming some observers as it recalled broader discussions of land use that included not only forestry but also agriculture and other forms of land management. There was, however, agreement to open up options in future discussions on long-term cooperative action by including in the decision an explicit reference to reduced emissions from deforestation “and consideration of … the role of conservation, sustainable management of forest and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”
MOVING FORWARD
The Bali Conference demonstrated that at certain moments in climate talks, notably when negotiations are taking place in the full gaze of a public and media who are better informed than at any time since the emergence of the climate change agenda, parties come under extreme pressure to face up to the science. The high-level political attention given to climate change has introduced an unprecedented level of interest and investment of expertise by organizations, not only by research and advocacy organizations, but also by the media. The number of side events held in parallel to the conference was also unprecedented, and included two full day events during the weekend: the Climate and Development Days, and the Forest Day.
A youth delegate told the COP plenary, “You can’t negotiate with physics and chemistry.” This, of course, is not entirely true. Parties do disagree with the science, but their arguments can sometimes change when they are exposed to the critical gaze of global public opinion. A feature of the Bali Conference was the shift in a number of positions when negotiators left the closed-door ministerials and returned to the plenary sessions, as illustrated by the pressure that came to bear on the US and Canada in the final COP plenary. Transparency can be a decisive factor.
At COP/MOP 3, the interplay between international climate politics and domestic elections was illustrated by the dramatic win by Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party in Australia. In 2008, another domestic election may have a dramatic impact on the global climate change regime, whatever the outcome. The global public gaze that fixed on the COP plenary in Bali will now turn to the US election in November 2008.
In the meantime, parties to the Convention and the Protocol have succeeded in honoring the call for a “breakthrough” that came from the UN Secretary-General’s climate change summit in September. Bali launched far reaching negotiations with a clear deadline for the conclusion of an agreement on the post-2012 period. Bali was successful in delivering the expected roadmap and building blocks. Now it is up to everyone, negotiators, politicians, public opinion and media to play their respective parts – progress in negotiations, take action, keep up the pressure, and maintain vigilance – to make sure the road from Bali doesn’t end up in the sea.

On Saturday evening, December 15, 2007, as the remaining participants at the BICC rushed to catch their flights home or scattered to Ubud or elsewhere to recover, the ENB writing team began work on our twenty thousand-word summary and analysis. The PDF version can be found at http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb12354… and for easy cut-and-paste (“Yes, we know you do!!!” – writes KIMO) go to http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12354e.html

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See Also:

Klimawende für die Zeit nach Bush.
Eric Frey, www.der Standard.at, December 16, 2007.

Der Kompromiss von Bali hat einen Kurswechsel der USA bereits vorweggenommen.
Es war zu erwarten, dass europäische Politiker und Kommentatoren das Ergebnis von Bali als faulen Kompromiss und Rückschlag für den Klimaschutz abkanzeln würden. Tatsächlich wurde in Bali weniger beschlossen als von den EU-Staaten gefordert, vor allem keine Verpflichtung auf konkrete Ziele für die Reduktion der Treibhausgase.

Für all jene, die überzeugt sind, dass die Erde in kurzer Zeit auf einen Klimakollaps zusteuert, war Bali sicher ein Debakel. Aber wenn die schlimmsten Prognosen tatsächlich zutreffen, dann ist auch alles, was Europa tut, viel zu wenig, dann hätte selbst ein besseres Ergebnis aus Bali die Welt nicht retten können.

Geht man – wie viele andere Forscher – von einem etwas weniger dramatischen Szenario aus, dann hat der Klimagipfel hingegen deutliche Fortschritte gebracht. Erstmals haben sich Japan und Russland zu einer dramatischen Reduktion der CO2-Emissionen verpflichtet. Die Verantwortung der großen Schwellenländer wurde genauer definiert, und nach der Kehrtwende in Australien, wo die neue Linksregierung dem Kioto-Protokoll beigetreten ist, besteht die Ablehnungsfront unter den Industriestaaten nur noch aus den USA und Kanada.

Und gerade bei den USA hat Bali den schleichenden Sinneswandel deutlich gemacht. Zwar erwies sich die amerikanische Chefverhandlerin Paula Dobriansky als Hauptblockiererin und zwang die Konferenz in eine Verlängerung. Aber ihre überraschende Zustimmung zu einem Kompromissergebnis in letzter Minute eröffnet nun die Chance, dass innerhalb von zwei Jahren ein ernsthaftes Klimaschutzabkommen zustande kommt, an dem – anders als am Kioto-Protokoll – alle großen Staaten beteiligt sind.

Zwar werden die USA zunächst über das Kioto-Nachfolgeabkommen nicht mitverhandeln. In der entscheidenden Phase aber wird George W. Bush nicht mehr Präsident sein. Sollte im Jänner 2009 ein Demokrat ins Weiße Haus einziehen, dann könnten sich die USA sehr schnell den Verhandlungen über konkrete Treibhausgasreduktionen anschließen. Selbst die führenden republikanischen Kandidaten sind in dieser Frage nicht so stur wie Bush. Die öffentliche Meinung in den USA_fordert lautstark einen Kurswechsel: Die Mehrheit der Amerikaner, bedeutende Unternehmen und wichtige Bundesstaaten wie Kalifornien unterstützen eine Klimapolitik nach europäischem Muster. Die nachträgliche Distanzierung des Weißen Hauses vom Bali-Ergebnis spielt hier keine Rolle: Der Fahrplan ist entschieden, der Zug rollt, und es stellt sich nur noch die Frage, wer auf ihn aufspringt.

Mit ihrer Sorge über den geringen Beitrag der Entwicklungsländer zum Klimaschutz haben die Amerikaner einen wunden Punkt aller Verhandlungen angesprochen, für den sie allerdings mitverantwortlich sind. Es stimmt, dass China und Indien mehr gegen den Anstieg ihrer CO2-Emissionen unternehmen müssen und Maßnahmen nicht auf den fernen Tag verschieben dürfen, an dem sie sich westlichen Lebensstandards angenähert haben. Eine solche Vorgangsweise wäre für alle fatal, und am meisten für die armen Länder.

Aber der Süden wird den Klimaschutz erst dann ernst nehmen, wenn die größeren Klimasünder im Norden mit gutem Beispiel vorangehen. Eine US-Regierung, die dem Energieverbrauch zuhause entschlossen entgegentritt, hätte ganz andere Möglichkeiten auf China und Indien einzuwirken als die Bush-Partie.

Gewonnen haben diese Länder in Bali die Aussicht auf finanzielle Hilfe beim Klimaschutz. Diese kann etwa von Österreich kommen, wenn es wie erwartet sein Kioto-Ziel verfehlt und dann Bußgelder in internationale Töpfe einzahlen muss.

Der kleine Schritt von Bali könnte sich so als Wegbereiter für größere Schritte ab 2010 erweisen – vor allem dann, wenn die Forschung mit Alarmmeldungen weiterhin Weltöffentlichkeit und Politik sensibilisiert. Doch gerade in diesem Fall ist zu befürchten, dass das Schneckentempo der Diplomatie mit dem Klimawandel nicht Schritt halten kann. (Eric Frey/DER STANDARD, Printausgabe, 17.12.2007)

1

Climate Deal Runs Straight Into Trouble With US.
By Shaun Tandon from Agence France-Presse, Sunday 16 December 2007.

A hard-fought deal fixing a 2009 deadline for a new treaty to tackle global warming ran straight into trouble Sunday with the United States voicing “serious concerns” over its provisions.

As negotiators headed home after two weeks of intense haggling, the White House complained that the agreement did not do enough to commit major emerging economies such as China and India to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

It underlined lingering division over how to confront the perils of global warming, which scientists warn will put millions of people at risk of hunger, homelessness and disease by the end of the century if temperatures keep rising at current rates.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who flew to the Indonesian island of Bali for a late appeal for flexibility, praised the agreement as a “pivotal first step” to tackle what he called “the defining challenge of our time”.

With the deal, the summit of 190 nations launched a process to negotiate a new treaty for when the UN Kyoto Protocol’s pledges on slashing greenhouse gas emissions expire in 2012.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who reversed his country’s previous stance and ratified Kyoto on his first official act last month, said the world “decided to take a bold step into the future”.

“But it’s only one step and we’ve got a long, long way to go,” he warned in Brisbane.

European nations and environmentalists broadly welcomed the move, although it did not go as far as many had wished by failing to specify any targets for slashing emissions blamed for global warming.

An isolated US delegation had backed down during an unplanned 13th day of talks and said it would finally accept the deal, but hours later US President George W. Bush’s administration counter-attacked.

The White House said any Kyoto successor treaty must acknowledge a nation’s sovereign right to pursue economic growth and energy security.

While there were several positive aspects to the Bali deal, it added, the “United States does have serious concerns about other aspects of the decision as we begin the negotiations.”

The United States is the only major industrialised nation to reject Kyoto, arguing it is unfair as it does not require fast-growing emerging economies to meet targeted emissions cuts.

China is the world’s second largest greenhouse-gas emitter after the United States, and is also outside the Kyoto treaty.

The White House said future talks must acknowledge that developed nations could not tackle climate change on their own through targeted emissions cuts, and that emerging economies had to be drawn in.

“Empirical studies on emission trends in the major developing economies now conclusively establish that emissions reductions principally by the developed world will be insufficient to confront the global problem effectively.”

The agreement came after extraordinary scenes in which UN chief Ban jetted in for a last-ditch appeal, the UN’s exhausted climate chief nearly broke down in tears and tiny Papua New Guinea told the United States to take the lead or “get out of the way.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the deal “a vital step forward for the whole world,” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it “opens the way to real negotiations on effective measures.”

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN organisation running the conference, hailed the accord as breaking down “the Berlin Wall of climate change.”

Still, analysts warn that while the framework for tackling climate change remains intact, the result of negotiations toward a new treaty depends heavily on the outcome of the US presidential election next November.

“The US elections are now the single most important factor in the equation,” said Steve Sawyer, a climate veteran and secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based lobby for the wind-turbine industry.

The drama of Bali will be minor compared to the poker game when talks on a new treaty reach crunch point, said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s under-secretary for environmental policy.

“The mother of all battles will be in 2009,” he cautioned. “This is just a warm-up.”

The Following Is by David G. Klein – Taken From The New York Times of December 16, 2007
- The Issue That Had Many Articles Reacting To The End of the Deliberations in Bali.
We Think that the Klein Drawing Presents the Economic Essence Of The Reality When Talking
About The Effects Of CO2 Emissions Into The Atmosphere, And The Resulting Global warming And Climate Change.



An excellent article on the essence of the problem of ethics in global warming – past and present.
This is the problem that only at a UN level can get a decent hearing – this makes irrelevant if we like the UN or not.
 www.SustainabiliTank.info comment)

THE WORLD
As China Goes, So Goes Global Warming.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published:The New York Times, December 16, 2007
GIVEN the accelerated melting these days in Greenland, it’s probably no longer appropriate to use the adjective “glacial” to describe treaty negotiations aimed at curbing dangerous human interference with the climate.

Graphic
A Carbon Tide: Past, Present and Future

Dot Earth

Comment on this article at Dot Earth »

The talks in Bali over the last two weeks were just the latest baby step in trying to make that happen. The Bali achievement? Two more years of talks. In the meantime, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main climate-heating emission, continue the climb that began 250 years ago, as industrialization surged on a diet of fossil fuels.

So, presuming the industrialized and industrializing nations are serious, who or what can realistically turn the carbon tide?

As always, the fingers of many experts on energy and the environment point both west and east — to the United States and China.

The established superpower arose riding a wave of fossil-fueled prosperity. The emerging one, sitting on a wealth of coal, sees few reasons not to follow suit; after all, it has only just caught its wave (with India and others in hot pursuit).

Yet the tide can only be turned, a host of scientists and economists with varied perspectives agree, if China and other rising powers like India speed through the familiar path in nation building — resource extraction, industrial and economic growth, accompanying despoliation, and then environmental restoration and protection. If they don’t, their emissions will eventually swamp all other sources, according to many analyses.

Richard Richels, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, helped produce an ominous forecast: even if the established industrial powers turned off every power plant and car right now, unless there are changes in policy in poorer countries the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could still reach 450 parts per million — a level deemed unacceptably dangerous by many scientists — by 2070. (If no one does anything, that threshold is reached in 2040.)

Libertarians say that once countries get rich, they’ll do the right thing for the climate. But critics of this view say the long life of carbon dioxide (and of sources like the coal-burning plants China is building at the rate of one a week) mean that waiting just compounds the problem beyond fixing.

Theories abound over how best to help China embrace emissions-reducing policies. One way, many scientists and scholars say, is to make nonpolluting energy sources cheaper than the unfettered burning of abundant fossil fuels. Right now they are far more expensive.

That is why several dozen top-flight climate and energy experts sent a letter this month to members of Congress and the presidential candidates seeking a tenfold rise in the federal budget for energy research, now about $3 billion a year.

Some economists say the only thing that will speed the change is money, whether it is called aid, technology assistance, or something else.

Representatives of developing countries have long made this point, noting that the established powers spent a century building the greenhouse-gas blanket. Speaking in Bali, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s United Nations ambassador, said: “What we have to do is to find a way to reduce emissions by those who can afford to reduce emissions.”

But there are plenty of doubts about the willingness of Congress, particularly, to pay emerging economic competitors.

Some experts see the best prospects for change coming from the ground up, pointing to efforts like MetroBus, a program involving the World Resources Institute that greatly expanded the use of mass transit in Mexico City.

BinBin Jiang, a research associate in energy and development at Stanford University, sees similar opportunities in creating an efficient infrastructure for China’s exploding midsize cities. “That’s where you determine if you are going to leapfrog or go along the old Western path,” she said.

But Ms. Jiang also stressed that meaningful change in energy and climate policy within the United States was critical, too. “China is clearly responsible for the largest wedge of emissions in the future, but the United States is still the biggest roadblock,” she said. “The U.S. is not going to be influential by telling China what to do. It has to lead by example.”

Drama and tears before Bali deal was struck.

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor,Telegraph.co.uk from Bali
Last Updated: 4:01pm GMT 15/12/2007

An extraordinary day began with a fresh text of the Bali “road map” which Indonesia’s Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, as president of the conference, presented to delegates saying a “delicate balance” had been achieved.

India’s ambassador immediately made clear that he was not prepared to go along without it being made clear that there was responsibility of industrialised nations to supply developing countries with clean technologies, finance and support to deal with them problem “in a measurable manner.”

The crucial part of the agreement for developing countries had been rewritten overnight in a way that G77 countries said made it unclear that the supply of finance and clean technology, such as clean coal plants, had to be measurable reportable and verifiable.

China piled in, then Pakistan, and it became clear that this was a full scale row.

The conference was stopped, then restarted by Mr Witoelar, leading to wild accusations by China that the UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, had allowed it to re-start while negotiations, chaired by the Indonesian foreign minister, were still continuing.

This Mr de Boer, in tears after two nights without sleep, later denied, to supportive applause.
Then Mr Witoelar called for another break in which he summoned the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, and the Indonesian President Yudhoyono, to read the riot act to delegates and break the deadlock.

Mr Yudhoyono urged the conference not to allow “the planet to crumble because we can’t find the right wording.”

Mr Ban said he was “disappointed at the lack of progress” and pointed out the conference was already due to have ended five hours earlier. This was at 1.20 pm local time.

The conference reconvened. South Africa made an emotional appeal for the Americans to reconsider their statement – and was supported by delegation after delegation from the developing world while Miss Dobriansky and James Connaughton, President Bush’s climate change adviser, talked increasingly animatedly off-microphone.

The killer blow came from the Harvard-educated representative of Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad, who used Mr Connaughton’s diplomatic gaffe of earlier in the week to humiliate the Americans.

Mr Connaughton had said: “We will lead. We will continue to lead but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.” Mr Conrad said, to applause: “If you are not willing to lead, then get out of the way.”

Miss Dobriansky finally pressed her button to speak again and said: “We will go forward and join the consensus.”

After cheers and diplomatic congratulations, the president of the conference assessed that “we are very, very close”, then banged his gavel down on India’s proposal to mark that a consensus had been achieved.

——————————-
Bali Climate Plan Leads to Washington.

By Charles J. Hanley, AP Special Correspondent Published on Guardian.co.UK, Saturday December 15, 2007 7:31 AM.

BALI, Indonesia (AP) – The “Bali Roadmap” for new climate negotiations leads to one address and one date: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and Jan. 20, 2009.

That’s when a new occupant of the White House will be sworn into office, and when a fresh U.S. team, with what many expect to be a new attitude, will take up the negotiating mandate issued here Saturday at the end of the two-week U.N. climate conference.

For seven years, these annual sessions have witnessed a long-running diplomatic feud between the Bush administration, deadset against international obligations for industrial nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, and most of the rest of the world, which favors them.

The faceoff played out again in Bali this past week, when the U.S. delegation blocked an effort to insert an ambitious negotiating goal for the next two years – emissions cuts of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

It was a repeat of what has happened consistently since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandated relatively small reductions but was rejected by the U.S.

Time now may be on the side of emission cuts proponents.

From California to New England, U.S. state governments are enacting their own mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other industrial and transportation gases blamed for global warming. Scores of U.S. cities have adopted Kyoto-style targets, trimming emissions via “green” building codes, conversion of municipal fleets to hybrid vehicles, energy-saving lighting and other measures.

Judging from recent opinion polls, natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the southeastern U.S. drought and the California wildfires apparently are awakening more and more Americans to the potential perils of climate change.

“The majority of the United States is with you,” California’s environment secretary, Linda Adams, told the hundreds of Bali conference delegates last week. “We know that climate change affects all of us.”

In Washington, too, there’s movement after years of inaction. A Senate committee has approved the first legislation mandating caps on greenhouse gases and sent it to the full Senate.

“What you see is a new direction coming,” said David Doniger, a veteran climate policy analyst with the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council. “And this new direction is a very clear indication of where our policy is going in the future.”

That policy will be set primarily by the new president, and the Democratic presidential candidates and at least two of the Republicans – Arizona’s Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – have endorsed mandatory emissions caps.

To many at Bali, the U.S. election calendar dominates the climate calendar. Even the diplomatically cautious and precise Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, managed to hint that delegates should bide their time in the coming 2008-2009 negotiations.

“I really hope that that is a discussion” – about emissions reduction levels – “taken up toward the end of that two-year debate,” he told reporters.

But decisive U.S. action, even after Bush, is far from assured.

“The real problem is Congress,” Michael R. Bloomberg, New York’s climate-activist mayor, told a Bali gathering this past week. “They’re unwilling to face any issue that has costs or antagonizes any group of voters.” In fact, the emissions-caps bill may face trouble in the full Senate.

Even swift action may come too late for some.

Rising seas, expanding from warmth and from the runoff of melted land ice, are encroaching on low-lying island states, especially in the western Pacific. In these islanders’ minds, the roadmaps and new directions were needed a decade or more ago.

“We are very concerned that there is so little progress,” Kete Ioane, environment minister of the Cook Islands, told the Bali assembly days ago. “We are merely asking for our survival, nothing more, nothing less.”

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Climate Plan Looks Beyond Bush’s Tenure.
By THOMAS FULLER and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: December 16, 2007

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — The world’s faltering effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions got a new lease on life on Saturday, as delegates from 187 countries agreed to negotiate a new accord over the next two years — pushing the crucial debates about United States participation into the administration of a new American president.

Many officials and environmental campaigners said American negotiators had remained obstructionist until the final hour of the two-week convention and had changed their stance only after public rebukes that included boos and hisses from other delegates.

The resulting “Bali Action Plan” contains no binding commitments, which European countries had sought and the United States fended off. The plan concludes that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required” and provides a timetable for two years of talks to shape the first formal addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty since the Kyoto Protocol 10 years ago.

“The next presidential election takes place at the halfway point in these treaty talks,” David D. Doniger, who directs climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council and served in the Clinton administration, said on his Web log on Saturday. “So the U.S. will field a new team in the second half. And there are good odds that the next president will get serious on global warming.”

But the White House, while calling the negotiating plan “quite positive” in a printed statement, said the problem lay elsewhere. It described “serious concerns” about the limited steps taken by emerging economic powers.

Without citing China and India by name, it clearly singled them out, saying: “The negotiations must proceed on the view that the problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone. Major developing economies must likewise act.”

In the talks, China and other emerging powers did inch forward, agreeing for the first time to seek ways to make “measurable, reportable and verifiable” emissions cuts. But those countries showed no signs of agreeing to any mandatory restrictions any time soon, saying their priority remained growing out of poverty.

The finish to the negotiations came after a last-minute standoff in the public plenary at the end of a day of high emotions, with the co-organizer of the conference, Yvo de Boer, fleeing the podium at one point as he held back tears.

The standoff started when developing countries demanded that the United States agree that the eventual pact measure not only poorer countries’ steps, but also the effectiveness of financial and technological assistance from wealthier ones.

The United States capitulated in that open session, which many observers and delegates said included more public acrimony than any of the treaty conferences since the 1992 framework.

The concession, though, came after a more profound shift by the Bush administration, which agreed during the two-week conference to pursue a new pact fulfilling the unmet goals of the original treaty; the pact would take effect in 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

While many observers described the United States change as a U-turn, it was the culmination of months of movement by the Bush administration, which had for years insisted that the 1992 treaty was enough to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate.

In 2005 talks in Montreal, for example, the American negotiating team walked out of one session, rejecting any talk of formal negotiations to improve on that pact.

Since then, the Bush administration has been confronted by new scientific data on climate change and by growing political pressure both internationally and domestically.

Still, while accepting on Saturday the need for a new agreement, the United States retained the flexibility that it had sought at the outset, fending off European attempts to set binding commitments on emission reductions. American negotiators said that was vital to gain global consensus.

The targets sought by Europe and others remain in the action plan — including the need for rich countries to cut emissions by 2020 up to 40 percent below 1990 levels, and a 50 percent cut in emissions globally by 2050. But they are now a footnote to the nonbinding preamble, not a main feature of the plan.

Andrew Light, an expert on environmental ethics at the University of Washington who was in Bali, criticized the Bush administration for insisting on those targets being sidelined, saying the United States had, in essence, rejected the foreboding climate projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it had repeatedly praised in recent weeks.

“We could have moved on from here with a confident range of future cuts,” Mr. Light said. “Instead we have to move on with the same continued uncertainty. At the beginning of the week I was really heartened by the public praise the U.S. delegation was giving to the I.P.C.C. and now I can’t help but think, was it all lip service?”

Some environmental groups criticized Europe for not sticking to its guns. But it appeared that, in the end, the Europeans followed a path recommended in a speech last Monday by former Vice President Al Gore, fresh from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

He advised Bali negotiators to look beyond the Bush administration, whose tenure ends in one year.

Beyond the histrionics and the politics, there were deeper reasons for the continuing clashes: in particular, the huge wave of industrialization and economic growth sweeping Asia.

The United States and Europe were largely responsible for taking the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by the burning of fossil fuels, to its current concentration of 380 parts per million from 280, a level which, until the industrial revolution, was not exceeded in at least 650,000 years.

But the growth in emissions for decades to come will largely be driven by developing countries, where some two billion people still cook on firewood or dung and crave the comforts and prosperity that come with abundant energy.

According to a recent analysis led by economists at the Electric Power Research Institute, if rich and poor countries do not together divert from “business as usual,” the concentration by 2040 could exceed 450 parts per million, a threshold that many scientists say could set in motion harmful changes for centuries to come.

Europe prevailed over the United States in one area, insisting that the next two years of talks proceed on two tracks: one for those countries, including the United States, not committing to mandatory limits, and a second building on the Kyoto Procotol, the 1997 update to the original treaty that requires emissions reductions in 36 major industrialized nations, but has been rejected by the United States.

The United States team in Bali had fought against that, demanding that a new agreement encompass the world’s major polluters and have sufficient flexibility, and no hard targets, to do that.

But in the end the United States had to agree to two tracks to avoid a total breakdown of the talks.

That is important, environmental campaigners said, because it guarantees work toward new mandatory gas restrictions in 2012, when the limits under the current Kyoto accord expire.

It also sustains a mechanism that, in theory, the United States could join under a new administration — if Congress becomes less insistent that the biggest developing countries move in lockstep.

That demand is reflected in some language in the current climate bill moving forward in the Senate, which demands “comparable” action from such countries.

There were many moments of drama and theater in the negotiations, at a resort complex on the southern tip of Bali, involving 11,000 officials, environmentalists, industry lobbyists and journalists. But nothing else matched the point on Saturday, in the final tumultuous plenary, when the American team was booed for trying to block a proposal by India.

Kevin Conrad, the negotiator from Papua New Guinea, rebuked the American delegation. “If for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us,” he said. “Please, get out of the way.”

He was alluding to remarks made by an American official, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, last week to a Reuters reporter, who quoted him as saying, “The U.S. will lead, and we will continue to lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”

That statement had become a sore point to many delegations.

A few more statements were made, but none of America’s traditional allies came to its defense.

Finally, Paula Dobriansky, the lead American negotiator, spoke.

“We came here to Bali because we want to go forward as part of a new framework,” said Ms. Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs. “We believe we have a shared vision and we want to move that forward. We want a success here in Bali. We will go forward and join consensus.”

The delegates erupted in lengthy applause, realizing that a deal was finally at hand.

Thomas Fuller reported from Nusa Dua, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Peter Gelling contributed reporting from Nusa Dua.

Related
Dot Earth: Move Over Kyoto — Here Comes a ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ (December 15, 2007)
TierneyLab: Contrarians vs. Bali (December 14, 2007)

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The World – As China Goes, So Goes Global Warming.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN, The New York Times, December 16, 2007.
GIVEN the accelerated melting these days in Greenland, it’s probably no longer appropriate to use the adjective “glacial” to describe treaty negotiations aimed at curbing dangerous human interference with the climate.

{Dot Earth – A New York Times blog about climate change, the environment and sustainability. Join the discussion. Comment on this article at Dot Earth }

The talks in Bali over the last two weeks were just the latest baby step in trying to make that happen. The Bali achievement? Two more years of talks. In the meantime, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main climate-heating emission, continue the climb that began 250 years ago, as industrialization surged on a diet of fossil fuels.

So, presuming the industrialized and industrializing nations are serious, who or what can realistically turn the carbon tide?

As always, the fingers of many experts on energy and the environment point both west and east — to the United States and China.

The established superpower arose riding a wave of fossil-fueled prosperity. The emerging one, sitting on a wealth of coal, sees few reasons not to follow suit; after all, it has only just caught its wave (with India and others in hot pursuit).

Yet the tide can only be turned, a host of scientists and economists with varied perspectives agree, if China and other rising powers like India speed through the familiar path in nation building — resource extraction, industrial and economic growth, accompanying despoliation, and then environmental restoration and protection. If they don’t, their emissions will eventually swamp all other sources, according to many analyses.

Richard Richels, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, helped produce an ominous forecast: even if the established industrial powers turned off every power plant and car right now, unless there are changes in policy in poorer countries the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could still reach 450 parts per million — a level deemed unacceptably dangerous by many scientists — by 2070. (If no one does anything, that threshold is reached in 2040.)

Libertarians say that once countries get rich, they’ll do the right thing for the climate. But critics of this view say the long life of carbon dioxide (and of sources like the coal-burning plants China is building at the rate of one a week) mean that waiting just compounds the problem beyond fixing.

Theories abound over how best to help China embrace emissions-reducing policies. One way, many scientists and scholars say, is to make nonpolluting energy sources cheaper than the unfettered burning of abundant fossil fuels. Right now they are far more expensive.

That is why several dozen top-flight climate and energy experts sent a letter this month to members of Congress and the presidential candidates seeking a tenfold rise in the federal budget for energy research, now about $3 billion a year.

Some economists say the only thing that will speed the change is money, whether it is called aid, technology assistance, or something else.

Representatives of developing countries have long made this point, noting that the established powers spent a century building the greenhouse-gas blanket. Speaking in Bali, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s United Nations ambassador, said: “What we have to do is to find a way to reduce emissions by those who can afford to reduce emissions.”

But there are plenty of doubts about the willingness of Congress, particularly, to pay emerging economic competitors.

Some experts see the best prospects for change coming from the ground up, pointing to efforts like MetroBus, a program involving the World Resources Institute that greatly expanded the use of mass transit in Mexico City.

BinBin Jiang, a research associate in energy and development at Stanford University, sees similar opportunities in creating an efficient infrastructure for China’s exploding midsize cities. “That’s where you determine if you are going to leapfrog or go along the old Western path,” she said.

But Ms. Jiang also stressed that meaningful change in energy and climate policy within the United States was critical, too. “China is clearly responsible for the largest wedge of emissions in the future, but the United States is still the biggest roadblock,” she said. “The U.S. is not going to be influential by telling China what to do. It has to lead by example.”

———————–

ECONOMIC VIEW - A Carbon Cap That Starts in Washington.

By JUDITH CHEVALIER, The New York Times, December 16, 2007.

THE United Nations conference on climate change wrapped up in Bali, Indonesia, last week without a firm commitment from the United States or China to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. While a binding global agreement would be the best way to cut back on those emissions, a more limited but still useful approach is available, and it is wending its way through Congress.

In its current version, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, as the bill is known, would cap American carbon consumption through a tradeable permit plan. Even among those who support tradeable permits, there is considerable debate about what level of emissions reductions is realistic. Critics also object that it would damage American competitiveness to commit to domestic reductions without parallel commitments from developing-country trade partners like China.

But instead of using Chinese inaction as an excuse to avoid dealing with the problem, we should consider why emissions from China are soaring. There are numerous factors, all stemming from China’s rapid economic development. Yet one of the biggest is the enormous increase in China’s production of manufactured goods for export. Indeed, a study by the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in Britain estimated that in 2004, net exports accounted for 23 percent of Chinese greenhouse gas emissions.

We know where most of those Chinese exports are headed — to developed countries, like the United States, which accounts for about a quarter of them. A rough calculation suggests that almost 6 percent of Chinese carbon emissions are generated in the production of goods consumed here. That is the rough equivalent of the total emissions produced by Australia or France.

The Tyndall Center argues that carbon reduction policies should focus on carbon consumption, not emissions. That makes sense, especially in the absence of a binding global agreement.

One goal of a tradeable permit system is to force consumer prices for goods to reflect the harm that the production of those goods causes the planet. For example, if a television were made using a high-emission process, the factory would have to buy many carbon permits, driving up the TV’s price. A television made in a low-emission factory would require fewer permits, lowering its relative price. Consumers, of course, would have an incentive to choose the TV from the low-emission factory, and all factories would have an incentive to lower emissions.

A problem would arise, however, if a producer needed to buy permits to make televisions in a country with a carbon cap, while no permits were required in a country without a cap. The television from the country without the cap would be cheaper, consumers would prefer it, and there would be no economic incentive to cut emissions. Environmentalists call this the “leakage problem”: just as a balloon squeezed at one end will bulge at the other, emissions caps applied in only some economies will lead to emissions surges in others.

A provision in the current version of the Climate Security Act links responsibility to carbon consumption, not production. This idea derives from a joint proposal by the American Electric Power Company and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The provision requires that importers of goods from countries without carbon caps obtain permits for the emissions resulting from the goods’ production. While this requirement could be used to protect American jobs from foreign competition, if handled equitably, it could provide an elegant solution to the leakage problem.

If the United States adopted a tradable permit system that treated emissions from domestic producers identically to emissions associated with imported goods, then products that are more emissions-intensive, whether domestic or imported, would require more permits and thus be more expensive. Producers in the United States and abroad would have an incentive to reduce greenhouse gases to make their goods more competitive.

Of course, such a plan would have an immediate cost for Chinese producers and American consumers. Chinese production methods are now much more carbon-emission-intensive than American methods, so the plan would probably raise the average price of Chinese imports. The alternative, however, is to try to force the Chinese to adopt binding carbon caps similar to those considered in the United States. But that would also raise the Chinese imports’ price. Moreover, Chinese adoption of carbon caps would apply to the whole economy and would be much more costly for China; an American carbon consumption permit system would shield the Chinese domestic sector.

“The best policy — both in terms of the environment and in terms of economic theory — would be to have all countries take on binding emissions caps under an international agreement,” said Nathaniel Keohane, director of economic policy and analysis at Environmental Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group. “But we have to recognize that’s not going to happen overnight.” In the meantime, he said, the United States and other developed countries “need to take the lead.” He called carbon consumption caps “a good first step.”

“FROM an environmental point of view,” Mr. Keohane said, “it would ensure that the pollution we cut here at home doesn’t simply end up coming out of a smokestack somewhere else. It levels the playing field for American companies in the global economy. And it also helps us move toward a truly international system, by providing an incentive for developing countries to take on binding caps of their own.”

The carbon consumption provision will face scrutiny under current trade agreements, but there is sound logic for including it in any emissions legislation. Most important, it would eliminate an excuse for doing nothing.

Judith Chevalier is a professor of economics and finance at the Yale School of Management.

———————-

OP-ED COLUMNIST   – It’s Too Late for Later.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Bali, Indonesia, December 16, 2007.

The negotiators at the United Nations climate conference here in Bali came from almost 200 countries and spoke almost as many languages, but driving them all to find a better way to address climate change was one widely shared, if unspoken, sentiment: that “later” is over for our generation.

“Later” was a luxury for previous generations and civilizations. It meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, enjoy the same weather or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid — but just do it later, whenever you got around to it.

If there is one change in global consciousness that seems to have settled in over just the past couple of years, it is the notion that later is over. Later is no longer when you get to do all those same things — just on your time schedule. Later is now when they’re gone — when you won’t get to do any of them ever again, unless there is some radical collective action to mitigate climate change, and maybe even if there is.

There are many reasons that later is over. The fact that global warming is now having such an observable effect on pillars of our ecosystem — like the frozen sea ice within the Arctic Circle, which a new study says could disappear entirely during summers by 2040 — is certainly one big factor. But the other is the voracious power of today’s global economy, which has created a situation in which the world is not just getting hot, it’s getting raped.

Throughout human history there was always some new part of the ocean to plunder, some new forest to devour, some new farmlands to exploit, noted Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who came to observe the Bali conference. But “now that economic development has become the prerogative of every country,” he said, we’ve run out of virgin oceans and lands “for new rising economic powers to exploit.” So, too many countries are now chasing too few fish, trees and water resources, and are either devouring their own or plundering those of neighbors at alarming rates.

Indeed, today’s global economy has become like a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck, and we’ve lost the key — so no one can stop it from wiping out more and more of the natural world, no matter what the global plan. There was a chilling essay in The Jakarta Post last week by Andrio Adiwibowo, a lecturer in environmental management at the University of Indonesia. It was about how a smart plan to protect the mangrove forests around coastal Jakarta was never carried out, leading to widespread tidal flooding last month.

This line jumped out at me: “The plan was not implemented. Instead of providing a buffer zone, development encroached into the core zone, which was covered over by concrete.”

You could read that story in a hundred different developing countries today. But the fact that you read it here is one of the most important reasons that later has become extinct. Indonesia is second only to Brazil in terrestrial biodiversity and is No. 1 in the world in marine biodiversity. Just one and a half acres in Borneo contains more different tree species than all of North America — not to mention animals that don’t exist anywhere else on earth. If we lose them, there will be no later for some of the rarest plants and animals on the planet.

And we are losing them. Market-driven forces emanating primarily from China, Europe and America have become so powerful that Indonesia recently made the Guinness World Records for having the fastest rate of deforestation in the world.

Indonesia is now losing tropical forests the size of Maryland every year, and the carbon released by the cutting and clearing — much of it from illegal logging — has made Indonesia the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, after the United States and China. Deforestation actually accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars and trucks in the world, an issue the Bali conference finally addressed.

I interviewed Barnabas Suebu, the governor of the Indonesian province of Papua, home to some of its richest forests. He waxed eloquent about how difficult it is to create jobs that will give his villagers anything close to the income they can get from chopping down a tree and selling it to smugglers, who will ship it to Malaysia or China to be made into furniture for Americans or Europeans. He said his motto was, “Think big, start small, act now — before everything becomes too late.”

Ditto for all of us. If you want to help preserve the Indonesian forests, think fast, start quick, act now. Just don’t say later.

“We are introducing to the world a new energy matrix in the fuel sector. Should the world adopt it, then we will have much less pollution, much less gases emitted into the atmosphere, especially those that cause greenhouse effect. I am convinced that Brazil has things to teach the developed world about how to avoid emission of gases that lead to the greenhouse effect,” said president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the radio show “Café com o Presidente” (‘Breakfast with the President’).” (Agência Brasil, December 3)

Brazil Energy Summit in New York City June 23, 2008.

The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, New York City

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Chamber Executive Director, Sueli Bonaparte, at (212) 751-4691 or e-mail:  Sueli at brazilcham.com

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