Another day, another whirlwind!

As far as the COP goes, today was the beginning of the high-level meetings, when the Presidents, Prime Minsters, and other High Honchos ride into town, and make their formal set-piece speeches, while their staff keep on slaving over the texts, trying to make progress by eliminating brackets. The bracket is to COP-11 what the puck is to Hockey Night in Canada: the goal is to hit the bracket, steal the bracket, or throw the bracket out of someone else's text. The final win-win goal for everyone is a text with no brackets at all, meaning everyone has finally agreed. The Youth delegation mad a big banner yesterday, saying OUR FUTURE IS IN BRACKETS.

The Big Plenary was launched by Paul Martin, who made a speech that was so impressive, and so moved the delegates that they applauded... and applauded... and applauded. Now this is something, among a bevy of bureaucrats in suits. His speech hit home, and reached them at a deeper level than normal. Here, you can read it for yourselves: http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news.asp?id=666

This afternoon, in the NGO session, when the activists plan their activities, there was a call for articles to the daily ECO which the NGO community publishes every day (someone stays up to 5am to get it finalized; in both languages). I proposed reprinting some of PM's speech, so I had to dig out the text and cut it down to 400 words, and someone proposed that the title to the piece be: "Paul to George: FCCC off!" (FCCC stands for Framework Convention on Climate Change). Whether or not it makes it to tomorrow's ECO, I'll have to wait and see; it's not my decision.

At the press conference afterwards, Paul Martin said "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I would say this: there is such a thing as a global conscience, and now is the time to listen to it."

The French President, Jacques Chirac, has called for developed nations to reduce their emissions by 75% by 2050, and for the whole world to reduce by 50% by 2050. These are progressive numbers, coming from a world leader.

For myself, today has been a series of fascinating workshops and meetings, where I am always on my feet in the Question Period, challenging, pushing, etc, and generally not letting people get away with anything; and praising the folks who are doing good work. I am going to further postpone my proposal to have a Climate Leaders Award each day, to match the Fossil of the Day; it's not that it's not a good idea, but the NGO community has got so much critical stuff on its plate, I don't want to disturb the flow.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait got the Fossil of the Day award today, for being so constantly, consistently, and persistently obstructive. Saudi Arabia has been proposing they should be compensated for diminished income if the world starts using less oil. I don't think they're going to get their way, so I suggest that we all send a welfare cheque for $1 to:

King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud,
The Royal Palace,
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia.

I suggest we mark our cheques "Saudi Kyoto Oil Compensation Fund".

There was a fascinating two hour workshop this morning with NGO people from the North-Eastern US and the Atlantic Provinces, whose respective governments have signed onto a joint New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Action Plan. The NGOs have got together and done a Report Card on the progress for each state/province, and the session ran through all of the progress, or lack of it. It was quite revealing to learn that the current Quebec Liberal Government, under Jean Charest, has closed down its climate change unit, disbanded its program for big corporations, and has no plan of action, no vision, and no strategy. One of their ministers is on the record as saying

"Quebec is a society that is enjoying growth, and a society that enjoys growth is a society that builds roads."

To keep to this wonderful vision, they are building 8 new highway projects, and neglecting public transit.

At the same session, it was inspiring to learn about what's been happening in Connecticut, where a few years ago they were right at the back of the pack when it came to climate change. So then an active NGO formed the Connecticut Climate Coalition, and signed up 85 partner organizations, representing 500,000 people (out of 3.5 million total). They got their members to send 3,500 hand-written letters to the Governor, and even though he was hiding away on a corruption charge (he has since been jailed; ain't America wonderful!), and the political types said they'd never achieve anything, they managed to get a very progressive bill with 55 recommendations brought to Public Hearings (now there's a concept for Canadian democracy!).

At the Hearings, in front of the Connecticut Legislators, they had 150 people show up even though it was almost the holiday season in late June. They led off their expressions with three children, representing schools, who held up paintings of what their future would look like in 2050 if nobody acted, and other drawings of what it would look like if they did act, and the children said, "We are trusting you to make the right decision for us." Later, when Exxon sent a bevy of heavy oil dudes to argue that a gallon a day keeps the doctor away, they really grilled them, and then voted in favour of the whole package. Wow! The point was made that hand-written letters count for far, far more than form letters, or form emails. And children count for more than adults!

Another highlight was questioning the energy modeling by the man from the International Energy Agency, and pooh-poohing their grand Energy Study that aims to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to about 2% above the 1990 level by 2050. Some goal!! (And they have to include nuclear and coal to get there.) They were very graceful to me, and very polite; I think they were quite impressed with the data I offered. On the same panel, I got to ask the Environmental Chief from Toyota if he had seen the new Hydrogen Enhanced Gasoline Vehicle. No, he said, he had never heard of it. So I made sure he went to visit. Maybe they'll chalk me up for a small royalty if Toyota buy into the technology!

I finished the day at a workshop with the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction, from Britain; one of the world's top science centres in the field. Their data and modeling shows which parts of the world will get increased rainfall, and which less; all of the models show decreased rainfall for the Amazon, which is the most alarming part of it all. They have already experienced a dramatic drought there this year, as has Portugal, which had 77% less winter rainfall last winter, leading to a drought over 97% of the country, and a dramatic increase in forest fires. All good cheery stuff.

One other thing: the Toyota presentation showed the data for the use of energy in hybrid versus hydrogen cars, on a "well to wheel" and "tank to wheel" basis. On tank to wheel, the hydrogen vehicle outperforms the latest Prius; but when you count well to wheel, the Prius makes better use of energy, since there is a loss of energy in the hydrogen process. More praise to the hybrid!

And yes, Toyota knows about the "Plug-In Hybrid", on which the Vancouver Chapter is holding a Forum on this Thursday Night, December 8th, with Felix Cramer, from www.Calcars.org, the originators of the technology (En Route Towards Sustainable Transportation: A forum presented by the BC Sustainable Energy Association, Vancouver City Hall, Strathcona Room, 453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, see http://www.bcsea.org/events). The man from Toyota had some very positive words for it, while raising questions about the lifecycle management of the batteries. Can someone pass this on to Felix?

Tomorrow's another day; I'm doing a 15' global web cast about the BCSEA at 4:30pm at the UNFCCC Climate Kiosk; that's going to be strange, speaking into the camera while ignoring the audience.

It's crisp and cold here, with the temperature falling. Back at the Palais, I expect there are still people burning the midnight biodiesel, playing hockey with the brackets.

Good night!