On November 29 representatives from 190 countries will be in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Late last week, following a two-day Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington, the Obama administration’s chief climate negotiator told reporters not to expect too much. More than 125,000 demonstrators convened in the streets of Copenhagen last year, hoping their cheers and compelling testimonies would encourage swifter, more comprehensive action from negotiators.“I would describe myself right now as neither an optimist nor a pessimist,” said Todd Stern, the State Department’s special envoy on climate, adding that there won’t be any “enormous leaps forward” in Cancun but “real and concrete steps” can be made. Exactly what those could be has not come into focus, though Stern and other negotiators also noted that unless something tangible occurs at the Cancun meeting, the credibility of the UN process will weaken. “The process can’t continually stalemate and remain the locus of activity,” Stern said. A year ago, of course, global anticipation of a diplomatic breakthrough was high enough to attract the American president, the Chinese premier, and over 100 other heads of state to the Copenhagen climate summit. More than 125,000 people from all over the world marched for climate action on a cold and sunny Saturday afternoon. Thousands of journalists and producers filed reports from a crowded media room at the Bella Center, itself so full that security forces limited access. Yet what was clear in Copenhagen, just as it was plain in the two other international climate conferences I’ve attended — in Barcelona in 2009 and in Tianjin last month — is this: The very same governments that produced a near stalemate on a climate treaty are simultaneously supporting global alliances of powerful energy companies to develop and consume the planet’s remaining reserves of fossil fuels. Let’s just put it this way. The executives of those companies are perfectly content with the grudging pace of climate negotiations. Nobody else should be. The equatorial regions of east Africa are drying up as fast as the tinderbox hills and water-scarce fields of Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Both poles are melting along with the glaciers of Greenland and the Himalayas. South Dakota this year experienced floods and hail and fierce storms that formed the most erratic and dangerous weather in its recorded history. The damage to freshwater supplies is the most personal consequence of climate change around the world. Climate change, in fact, is producing an emergency, except in the front offices of the world’s major fossil fuel companies and the legions of elected and appointed officials they’ve helped to install in public office. And as Circle of Blue reports in its Choke Point: U.S. series this year, and in its other projects, there is no more visible evidence than the effect climate change is having on the planet’s reserves of fresh water. In the U.S., persistent drought on the Colorado Plateau has so significantly lowered water levels in the Colorado River and Lake Mead that Hoover Dam is fast approaching the day when it will no longer produce any power. In Myanmar and Bangladesh, record floods this year displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The damage to freshwater supplies is the most personal consequence of climate change around the world. It’s true that a number of nations have initiated important industrial programs to lower carbon emissions by fostering the switch to cleaner energy sources. China, for instance, has gained international renown for the speed at which it’s developed an alternative fuels manufacturing and power-generating sector. It’s not nearly enough, though, to slow the planet’s warming. That’s because the bigger money in the industrialized world involves producing and consuming carbon-emitting coal, oil, and natural gas. cont. added by: JanforGore
