Hi folks! Another interesting day.

It kicked off before I get there, when Stephan Dion, who is President of COP for this conference and for the next year, issued a draft text, proposing that the parties to COP (the original 1992 Convention, which includes the USA, India and China) "engage in discussions to explore and analyze approaches for long-term cooperative action to address climate change that promote environmental effectiveness and the widest possible cooperation and participation (big cut...) to be completed by December 2007" (COP-13).

By proposing this for under COP, he is seeking to include the US. How difficult can that be, simply to agree to talk? But no. The US confirmed its earlier comment that it remained opposed to any discussions under the 1992 Convention (which it signed). The European Union is still hoping to include the US in later discussions, by holding out for an open-ended process of discussion (i.e. no end date), with the hope that a new US administration after January 2009 might take a different approach, once George Bush has left the White House and returned to Texas to complete his military service. The NGO community (and Canada) want a definite end to the discussions, in order to focus the attention and get some results. And so it remains.

By the way, Elizabeth May, who is much closer to the heart of the action here than I am, has her own blog on Montreal, which you can find here: http://citizen.nfb.ca/blogs/emay/. If there's an apparent contradiction between what I report and what she does: take her account, not mine.

Jumping ahead to the evening, I scored a ticket to the grand Canadian Cultural Celebrations in the Biodome, here in Montreal (a stunning event, incredibly well organized, with food, wine, musicians, actors, all amid the many different biome settings of various recreated forests, etc. here in Montreal); and on the bus ride home, I sat next to a Polish delegate and got talking. She's a veteran of COP, having been to at least 3 previous events, representing her government on the climate change file. Her view was that the Americans used to play a very large part in the previous COP discussions, often coming up with proposals. Now they do nothing. When I pointed out that they were actually objecting and obstructing, she reluctantly agreed. But she was still hoping that they would change their approach. So I started sharing my view on what's cooking with the Americans, and I related an intervention I had made earlier in the day with the Pew Center for Climate Change, a major US NGO/business NGO, which works hard to try to create a path that the US can follow.

During the morning, I had asked Eileen Clausen (CEO of the Pew Centre), and her panel, to rank these four reasons which I had drawn up to explain the US intransigence on climate change. Was it:
(1) That the White House was controlled and dominated by the carbon lobby?
(2) That the Bush regime and his political supporters had a gut rejection of any attempt by others to tell Americans what to do; hence their rejecting of all global treaties?
(3) That they did not accept the climate science? Or
(4) That they still believed that Kyoto was a job-killer?

I must admit, there was a refreshing burst of laugher around the room when I asked the question; people very rarely speak in open language here; it's all diplomatic, carefully phrased; after all, they are mostly employed by someone or other (unlike myself), so, well, lets just say that they are not as free to speak their minds as I am.

She replied that it was not (3); very few people were rejecting the science any more; and nor was it (4), except in some areas where people thought that local auto jobs would be threatened. She did agree under (1) that yes, some US politicians were certainly answerable primarily to their (fossil fuel) funders; and for (2), yes, she did agree that there was a gut-level resistance among the Bush regime to being told what to do; and more, that there was a resistance among its supporters to government in general telling people what to do.

I shared these thoughts with my Polish friend, and she was a bit shocked, a bit fascinated, and a bit bemused. She had no idea that so few US senators or congressmen even had passports; until she recollected meeting really smart, intelligent Americans (in America) who had never left their country.

Anyway, this is just one little tale that sheds a small amount of light on what it going on. The European Union delegation is made up of delegates from all of Europe's countries, and I think that they maybe just don't appreciate just how seriously whacky and off-track this current US administration is; so they keep on believing they'll change.

I think that very unlikely, I told my Polish friend; George Bush used to be an alcoholic (she was very shocked to hear that), and his thinking has become distorted by residual brain damage; its either black or white, right or wrong. Negotiating, discussing, listening, change, compromise: these are not concepts he seems to be comfortable with, let alone admitting that you might have been wrong, and changing course

Other US forces are doing what they can to counter the US intransigence. A group of 24 Senators (3 Republican, rest Democrats) wrote a formal letter to the President in the White House yesterday, reminding him of the US legal duty under the 1992 Rio Convention to achieve the stabilization of greenhouse gases, and announcing that they were clearly set on introducing legislation to the floor of the Senate in early 2006 to require a program of mandatory greenhouse gas limits and incentives for the United States.

The Californians were at it again today, too, with a parallel event in which they explained in some detail how Schwarzenegger had made the critical speech in which he committed California to achieve an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; including an 11% reduction below today's level by 2010. The top California executives who were there clearly knew that they had been given their orders by The Governor, and were committed to following them through. Among their concerns were that sea-level rise would bring saline/salty water into the San Joachim Valley, where California grows so much food, making the ground infertile, and that the predicted 90% loss of snow pack would further deprive the Californian farmers of the water they needed to irrigate their crops.

Elsewhere in the conference, Margaret Becket, the British Minister of the Environment, was insisting that compulsory binding targets were the only way to tackle climate change; the Mayor of Seattle was saying that Seattle would make or break the 7% below 1990 level target that they had set themselves, to mimic Kyoto; and the developing nations in the G77 (Group of 77) were continuing to insist that they wanted nothing to do with any kind of limits, in a Kyoto 2 after 2012.

The NGO community is in total and full support of that positon; but perhaps bizarrely, I am not so clear-minded. I think that they just don't understand how the benefits of leapfrogging over the dirty unsustainable habits of the developed world will offer them a far more resilient and sustainable path of development, than insisting they have to go on producing more CO2, just because we (the North) did.

I was therefore with considerable surprise that I heard what seems to be a fairly intelligent notion voiced by the Chair of the International Energy Agency, an otherwise stodgy, boring organization that is in full-blown denial about peak oil concerns. I could tell from the way he spoke that the Chair (maybe he was the president, but you get the drift) was concerned about climate change, and he made the fairly sensible suggestion that the developing world countries (the G77) be invited to adopt targets for greenhouse gas reductions, but that if they missed their targets, there would be no consequences. If they met and exceeded their targets, however, there would be big incentives, perhaps by their ability to sell their excess reductions, or some other means. A big carrot, but no stick. When I suggested this to the Polish delegate, a veteran of several previous COPs, she seemed to indicate that she had never thought of that before; so maybe the idea could have some legs.

Well, that about wraps it up for today. I bumped in Bruce Sampson, VP of Sustainability for BC Hydro, and we stopped for a half-hour talk; three hours later, we were still talking! That's a good sign, and I remain very impressed by his commitment to do really good things within BC Hydro. I also leant some other news that was a bit more worrying, but this is not the place to share it. It'll be out in the news any day now, and there'll doubtless be lots of discussion.

Did I succeed with my suggestion for a Climate Leader Award? Not yet. I have postponed it for a day, following some advice from one of my friends. And I also got a sense from an NGO leader of just how firm her resistance was. It really seems that some NGO leaders find it so much easier to judge, than to praise.

One more thing: Dale Littlejohn, who is also here from the BCSEA, was at another meeting where he learnt that Barry Penner, BC's Environment Minister, who is here representing BC, had declined to sign a declaration at the Climate Leaders Summit, indicating that it would require further consultation with the BC government. Some people have jumped a mile to somehow conclude that this means he is therefore supporting George Bush. Just hold it there! Whatever the "it" is, it means nothing of the sort, and until we know what the declaration said, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Please!

The conference is full of things like this; it's happening all the time, since there is just so much going on, that it takes a while to sort things out. As for me, it's past one am (again), so it's time to send this out, and head for bed!

Cheers!
Guy