GCRA  OVERVIEW  FAQ  NEWS  ARTICLES  PHOTOS  REEF ISSUES  RESTORATION  PAPERS  LINKS 

BALI U.N. CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE:
CAPITAL CRIMES AGAINST THE ENVIRONMENT?

 Tom Goreau

Bali, December 15 2007

 Today in Bali the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (FCCC) ended with an obscure compromise after nearly two weeks of deadlock. The various news reports cast very conflicting slants on the outcome, some saying that the US caved in by agreeing to anything at all.  Others suggest that it was the European Union that backed down by agreeing to a statement lacking any specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in sharp contrast to their stated position and their promises to the developing countries and especially to the small island states.

This amounts to a real betrayal of all those who counted on the EU to do the right thing, and amounts to a capital crime against the environment, because millions will die as the result of unchecked global warming.

 My perspective comes as one who was intimately involved in the process, not only as a delegate to the Conference, but also as someone who helped write the original draft of the treaty.

 In Bali I was on the Delegations of Jamaica (my home island and a member state of the UN) , and of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (an Intergovernmental Organization representing almost all Caribbean states), while also representing the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Partnership in New Technologies for Small Island Developing States (as Coordinator of the Partnership), the Global Coral Reef Alliance (an international NGO), and Yayasan Karang Lestari (Protected Coral Foundation, an Indonesian NGO that runs the world's largest coral reef restoration project).

 When FCCC was first being drafted, I was Senior Scientific Affairs Officer in charge of Climate Change and Biodiversity at the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development, and had much input into the original draft of the treaty sent out to government negotiators. What we sent to them was far better than what we got back!

 While many of my specific contributions remained, most were turned into nonsense, or made completely ineffective when the governments finished with it. Our strong insistence on complete accounting of all greenhouse gas sources and sinks was changed into selective listing of some sources and some sinks while ignoring others, so that the result was dishonest accounting that confused gross with net fluxes (if an accountant did with real money he would immediately be jailed unless he worked for Enron, Halliburton, or the Bush Administration). Bogus carbon sinks were liberally rewarded, while the real ones were ignored.

Almost all of the specific references to coral reefs that I had inserted into the draft were eliminated, while the few that remained were all my doing. While they kept among the goals of the Convention protecting Earth's critically important climatically sensitive ecosystems (such as coral reefs), they failed to identify such ecosystems, require that they be monitored for signs of climatic stress, or include a trigger mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if such stresses were shown.

 The FCC is effectively a treaty to stabilize the RATE OF INCREASE OF CO2, NOT ITS CONCENTRATION. Therefore, minutes after the treaty was signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro I was passing out leaflets denouncing it as a death sentence for coral reefs and low lying islands and coastal areas, and said that we would lose most of the corals in the world in the next decade, which is what indeed happened.

 The Kyoto Protocols to FCCC, and the Clean Development Mechanism (which allows rich  countries to burn coal and oil if they pay poor countries to plant trees, and so is neither clean nor results in development), only made things worse,. CDM only gives credit for planting trees, which are only at best a temporary reservoir and not a real sink, while they ignore ALL the real long term carbon sinks. In any event, no country lived up  to the Kyoto Protocol except for Russia, due to economic collapse.

 In my briefings to the Association of Small Island States in Bali, the 41 Island  Nations of the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean (and later circulated to all member states), I pointed out that IPCC had seriously and systematically UNDERESTIMATED the extent of climate change, showing that the sensitivity of temperature and sea level to CO2 clearly shown by the past climate record in coral reefs, ice cores, and deep sea sediments is orders of magnitude higher than IPCC's models. This is a result of IPCC model's failure to include most of the positive feedback mechanisms that we know operate in the Earth climate system, and the fact that the time horizon for their projections is orders of magnitude shorter than the time needed to achieve the response to increased CO2. Therefore the changes will be much greater than policymakers are being led to believe, and the need for action is far more urgent.

 I also showed from the GCRA long term global coral reef temperature database, that the EU proposal, to allow CO2 to rise to 450 ppm and temperatures to rise by 2 degrees C was unacceptable because it would kill, all coral reefs and drown all low lying coasts. Coral reefs just can't take any more warming, we have already lost most of the corals in our reefs worldwide from high temperatures. I also showed that it was essential to REDUCE atmospheric CO2 by at least one third to stabilize climate at safe levels, and presented new, cost effective clean and sustainable tidal energy energy resources not now being developed due to lack of policies and funding, and cost effective charcoal soil carbon sinks that could reduce atmospheric CO2 to safe levels and store the carbon forever in ways that greatly increase soil fertility and agricultural productivity. None of these solutions were being discussed by the UN negotiators, while they discussed "solutions" that are minor or nonexistent.

 In Bali the Island Nations took the moral lead. But we were opposed by the world richest and most powerful countries, a coalition of oil producers and coal burners.  The US, with the backing of Canada, and Japan, refused to consider any limits on their rights to burn fossil fuels. The Arab oil producing states tried incessantly to block every initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And, with the covert backing of the US, China, India, and Russia claimed that any limitations on their right to pollute our atmosphere was a plot to keep them from developing using the same destructive dirty methods as the western countries. The EU, who we counted on, backed down to the dirty polluters in order to achieve any sort of consensus.

 That China and India, with their thousands of years of advanced civilization and science, should have fallen for this instead of leading  the way towards cleaner sustainable development paths, is truly sad. And by placing their short sighted greed, ignorance, and stupidity first, the unholy polluting coalition of oil producers and coal burners has told the world that they don't care who else they hurt by continuing their dirty addiction, killing reefs and drowning islands and coasts, and imperiling millions in poor countries.

Even worse, they have shown that they do not care for the rights of future generations, not even of their own people. That is why this shameful agreement is a capital crime against the environment that must be undone as soon as the bush regime leaves office.