Victoria, Wednesday December 14th

Well, it is five days since the big COP-11 climate conference ended, and the world's media has moved onto other things. The overall conclusion is that it was a surprising success, and that the USA, which had hoped to kill Kyoto, was completely sidelined by the rest of the world's nations.

When the US delegation pulled out of the talks in a fit of pique, they miscalculated badly. Their walk-out ran to bad media in the US, and then along came Bill Clinton saying that they were "flat wrong" to claim that Kyoto would harm the American economy.

Meanwhile, every aspect of the conference ended up as good as anyone had hoped for, so now we can progress, and start making serious plans.

I went to Montreal as someone who is very knowledgeable about the science of climate change and sustainable energy solutions, and as author of the book Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers, 2001). When it came to the legal clauses of the Kyoto Protocol, however, I was a stranger in a strange land, where I did not know the language. In the early days, when the NGO leaders asked, "Shall we combine the 3.9 group with the 9.2 group?", I had to scramble to know what they meant.

The NGO Community is Super-Organized
The global Climate Action Network (www.climatenetwork.org) has over 340 NGO members, offices in 13 countries in the world, and its leaders are really well organized. They know each other, and many have been to COP conferences before. They know the ropes, they know how to work together, and they know what they want. Canada's participation in the Network (www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/) is equally well organized.

But just how well they were organized did not become apparent until after the COP was ended, when Canada's Louise Comeau circulated a confidential strategy chart which listed seven areas where results were needed. For each area, there were four columns headed: "Totally Unacceptable" - "Unacceptable" - "Tolerable" - "Ideal". This is exactly how leadership should proceed. You do your homework in advance, and become totally clear what you want. Then you go out and get it. The NGO leaders had smaller groups of people working on each of the core areas, gathering intelligence from the progress of the talks, and lobbying when they found a way in.

The main talks on the 5th floor of the Palais were closed to all except the official national delegations, but the Canadian government went out of its way to include 26 people from the NGO community in its official delegation (as well as 26 people from the business community), and other countries (except the USA) probably did the same.

It was interesting to observe how the science of climate change has really sunk in, compared to, say, three years ago. There seemed to be a widespread understanding that the prospects of future climate change were alarming and scary, except among the American government delegation and the right wing US business organizations that with them. It is this grasp of the danger that we are in that is driving acceptance of the need for targets such as 30% by 2020, and 80% by 2050.

It also became really apparent that we all have to embrace these goals: individuals, schools, colleges, businesses, cities, states, and provinces, as well as national governments. Our provincial government here in BC has produced a climate change plan (see www.env.gov.bc.ca/air/climate/cc_plan/actions.html), but it has no goals, no targets, and very little substance. It could quite happily drift in the basement of some building and not re-appear for fifty years, for all that the government seems to care. (With apologies to the two or three civil servants who are very keen to see more happen).

But Where is BC?
It was because BC has not set any short-term or long-term targets that Barry Penner, BC's Minister of the Environment, refused to sign the Declaration of the Federated States and Regional Governments on Climate Change that was signed by the governments of Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Bavaria, Brussels, California, Catalonia (Spain), Maine, New South Wales, Scotland, South Australia, Upper Austria, Vermont, Wallonia (Belgium), and Western Cape (South Africa).

The Declaration (see www.mddep.gouv.qc.ca/air/leaders/Declaration_en.pdf) has a list of blank spaces where there was supposed to be a signature, which includes British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Victoria (Australia), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Connecticut.

But wait: it gets worse.

What are BC's Cities Doing?
Here in Canada, the FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) has a great program called Partners for Climate Protection. It has been going for probably at least ten years, and 129 cities have signed on. For the details, see http://kn.fcm.ca, and click on Partners for Climate Protection.

The program has five milestones that each community has agreed to pursue:

1. Create a greenhouse gas emissions inventory and forecast
2. Set an emissions reductions plan
3. Develop a local action plan
4. Implement the local action plan or a set of activities
5. Monitor progress and report results.

Here in BC, there are 39 participant communities:
24 have passed Milestone 1
8 have passed Milestone 2
4 have passed Milestone 3
2 have passed Milestone 4
0 have passed Milestone 5.

What is Victoria Doing?
The City of Victoria, which joined the program at least 8 years ago, has not even reached Milestone One. Nor has the District of Saanich, which joined around 5 years ago. The only communities we can be proud of are the City of Vancouver, the GVRD, North Vancouver, Whistler, Langley, and Prince George. In Alberta, both Edmonton and Calgary have proceeded past Milestone 5. This is embarrassing!

Even with these commitments, most are only for their own internal municipal operations: not for the community as a whole. Only seven of the 39 community have begun to tackle their community-wide goals, and of these, only Vancouver has made it to Stage Three, with its Cool Vancouver process (see www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/sustainability/coolvancouver).

This presents a real challenge, especially to the Victoria Chapter of the BCSEA: we've got to get Victoria on board. We've got to get the City to pull the documents out of whatever basement they have gotten lost in, where they are slowly gathering mould. There's a new council, and Mayor Alan Lowe wants Victoria to be one of the world's most livable cities, that takes sustainable development seriously. So we've got to do it.

30% reduction by 2020 and 80% reduction by 2050 for the whole community. That's the new game in town. We've really got to get onto it. Watch for more from the BCSEA on this, soon!

What is London Doing?
The City of London, which joined the new C20 Climate Group of big cities at the World Cities Leadership Summit this October, has set the goal of 20% below 1990 for greenhouse gases by 2010; and 60% below by 2050.

At COP-11, they participated in a side-event where Nicky Gavron, the Deputy Mayor, explained that they have set a further goal of obtaining 10% of their energy from renewables by 2010, 30% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Their new independent, for-profit, part community-owned Climate Change Agency wants to see one Zero Carbon Development like Dockside Green built in every London borough by 2010. By establishing the daily Congestion Charge of $8 for cars entering the city centre (except hybrid and alternative fuelled vehicles), they have reduced the number of cars entering the centre by 30%, seen an 18% drop in traffic, a 40% increase in the use of transit, and reduced their transport CO2 emissions by 19% since 2000. The income from the Congestion Charge goes into transit and alternative travel modes. It just makes sense, and 2/3rds of Londoners support it.

In Closing
The world has just taken a giant step forward. We have left the era of denial and foot-dragging, and entered the fast lane. From now on, and for the next 25 to 50 years, we will need to make a huge, dynamic, exciting energy transformation, as we leave the Age of Oil, and enter the Solar Age. The game is finally on, to see if we can move fast enough to slow down the pace of our emissions, and then reverse them, in time to step the worst of the coming disasters.

We're in action! If you are not already a member of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, please join us. We are helping to lead the charge, and we need all the help we can get. For details, see www.bcsea.org/getinvolved

Many thanks for your feedback while I've been writing this blog. I'll take a short break, and then return to it as I feel inspired; you may see other BCSEA Directors taking their turn here too.

Best wishes,

Guy Dauncey
President, BC Sustainable Energy Association
Back at home is cozy Victoria
www.bcsea.org

Well, it is all over, and the story is: SUCCESS!

The last two days have been full of ups and downs, which I have tried to follow and interpret (and occasionally mis-interpret) through a mixture of conversations and following the latest media interpretations via Google News (a recent discovery: if you set up a personal Google News page http://news.google.ca/, you can personalize it to send you only the news stories that carry a particular phrase, such as "climate change" or "flying giraffes". Very handy).

The final deal, which was gaveled down by Stephane Dion at 6.17am this Saturday morning, is (1) that the Kyoto nations have agreed to start discussions to draft a new long-range plan to combat climate change, to start in 2012 when Kyoto expires; and (2) that the larger group of world nations, including the USA, China and India, which signed the 1992 Convention but which have not ratified Kyoto, will hold an open-ended dialogue to discuss ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but with the specific inclusion of a clause that the Americans demanded insisting that the dialogue for these nations not include any talk about new commitments. The world's delegates cheered when the deal was finally done.

The NGO community is jubilant, full of hugs and tears. The deal is done, and the world can get down to work to tackle the really big task: implementing the actions, as well as the words. In addition to those two agreements listed above, there were also successful conclusions to a lot of side-agreements regarding the detailed implementation of the existing Kyoto Protocol. The best news coverage I've seen so far is from Peter Gorrie, in the Toronto Star.

My Google News indicator says there are 1,533 related news stories, which tells you how busy the world's media is with this issue. The Reuters story is also good.

But there was also a second, really significant outcome from the talks. A new informal world standard has emerged for a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020, and an 80% reduction by 2050. The new C20 group of major world cities (including London) has signed onto this goal, as has the European Parliament. This was also the goal set by the youth delegation, which has received a LOT of attention. California has adopted the 80% by 2050 goal, and President Chirac has said that France and the other developed nations should strive for a 75% reduction by 2050.

Personally, given what I know of the science, I don't think this is good enough: I believe we should aim for an 80% reduction by 2025, but for what’s politically achievable right now, that places me in cloud cuckoo land. I'll still hold to that goal, while trumpeting the 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 goals as fantastic.

These are not legally binding goals, of course; but they set the tenor of the direction in which we should be heading. What's great about them is that the small numbers, such as a 6% reduction, allow people to think that we can continue with business as usual, while just fiddling with a few details. An 80% reduction calls for a complete rethink of the way we use energy, travel, and live, and opens the door to a future designed entirely along the lines of green sustainability (unless it's done with nuclear, which is still in play).

Friday was full of excitement, as it seemed as if everything might come off the rails, at some points. Six months ago, when we knew that COP-11 would happen in Montreal, Elizabeth May of the Sierra Club invited various high-level people to attend, with the hope and intention that it would involve the mainstream American media and others, and awaken the USA to what was happening. The Sierra Club's strategy worked brilliantly, not only because there has been a very strong presence from US city mayors, California State, and other leaders, who have made it quite clear that they are behind Kyoto, and more (195 US cities have now signed onto the full Kyoto goals), but also because Elizabeth's trump card came up good when Bill Clinton decided just 3 days ago that yes, he would attend.

This threw everyone into an excited tizzy, and when the big moment arrived, around 2pm on Friday, everyone went into the big plenary room, where all of the chairs had to be turned round, so that Clinton would not speak under the formal UNFCCC logo. Then we all had to leave the room while it was "swept" (not for litter, but for aliens from Mars), and then we all trooped back in, and Clinton immediately received a big standing ovation, before he'd even opened his mouth.

In his speech, he showed his normal flair with numbers, examples, policies and practices (it is just impossible to imagine George W giving a similar kind of speech), and really emphasized the economic benefits of greenhouse gas reduction, saying that the opponents of Kyoto were "flat wrong" when they said that it would kill jobs and destroy the economy, which is one the US government’s main excuses for not signing on. See for a full report.

When he said, "We know from every passing year we get more and more objective data that if we had a serious, disciplined effort to apply on a large scale existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies that we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, our economies," he received spontaneous cheers and full applause (in which I was a very vocal participant). This is really important, since if we can persuade people on the economic arguments, the remaining few "skeptic" doubts on the science arguments suddenly don't matter.

The US delegation was really miffed at Clinton showing up and stealing the show, and they subsequently walked out of the negotiations, threatening to veto the whole thing. All that they were being asked to do under the existing text for the 1992 Parties to COP was agree to a dialogue, but no, even that was too much. The NGO community held a contest, as to what better word might please them, such as a "thingy". Someone suggested "lunch at the ranch", but the US delegates weren't up for lunch with anyone, unless it was on their terms.

However, their walk-out did not play well in the US media, and after having a call to the White House, they came back into the play, and finally agreed to participate in the dialogue as long as it did not discuss commitments. As one NGO leader put it, in the stand-off over the planet's future, the US blinked first. They caved in to the almost unanimous global pressure from all the other countries, and as a result, we now have a twin-track process which allows us to chart our way into a safer, more sustainable world.

On a personal level, Thursday was a wild day for me, and very rewarding. I was invited to speak to the youth delegation, which got them very pumped, and then I did a 15-minute web-cast for the UNFCCC about the BCSEA, and a "12 Step Process to make BC 100% free of Fossil Fuels". This went down really well, and I had a big crowd listening at the end.

This lead to a meeting with the South African Minister of the Environment (who is trying to fight off the pressure to go nuclear), and with David Walsh, the Environment Critic for the opposition Liberal Party in the Alberta Legislature (who is trying to get a voice of sanity into Alberta politics), a radio interview for a German station and a film interview for a future film on activism and climate change. I ended up in conversations from 3:30pm till 10pm that night; and enjoying every moment of it.

Friday was equally busy, as I shared in presenting a seminar on Green Heat with Bill Eggertson in the morning, which was poorly attended, but successful nonetheless. And there have been many other highlights, such as listening to the City of London's presentation by their Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron.

But that's going to have to wait till I do a final wrap-up blog, since now I've got to get my skates on, and get organized for my flight back to Victoria.

So over and out!

Guy

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!

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

Today has been rich and full, and I am starting to get my bearings, both geographically and Kyoto-legally. I must say right out that the work of the NGO global (called CANET) delegation is more than impressive; it is superb. They are REALLY on top of things, and beavering away in each of the relevant COP working groups. The details are often quite arcane, and when they talk about them to neophytes like myself, it is often as if they are talking in another language (Kyoto-ese), which makes it tough for beginners to get up to speed, but they are really working hard, as they have done for many COPP conferences before. I may consider myself something of an expert at climate change, the science and the solutions, but I have not immersed myself in the legalities of the actual negotiations before, so I am among the beginners here.

So what is the nuts and bolts? The EU (which works as a bloc) is trying to include the US in the Kyoto after 2012 discussions, which the NGO community thinks is not the way to go; the New Zealanders are being needlessly negative; the Swedes are insisting that carbon trading must have caps, in other words, that an industry sector must be told "Here's your limit for CO2 emissions: now either reduce to that level, or trade with someone else to get the same equivalent level"; the Finns want to talk about technology transfer; the US is still refusing to debate a post-2012 debate; etc, etc.

There are a few people in the NGO community who sit on their governments' official delegations, so they are able to feed information back to the rest of us. Canada has been great: they have included many NGO people, in its 230 person-strong delegation, including our own Taylor Zeeg, from the BCSEA. The US has maybe one person from an NGO in its 123 person-strong delegation. They don't want anyone rocking their particular boat. For everyone else, it's a matter of gathering intelligence, and finding out whatever you can, from whatever quarter is possible.

The other Americans have been fabulous. I went to two presentations today, one from the US southeast, with people from Florida and Carolina, which is really vulnerable to hurricanes and storms. Quote: "There ain't nothing good about losing your entire home, and your livelihood." The speakers said that after Katrina, ordinary people were asking "What is this global warming thing? What do we need to know about it?" One person spoke of Category Five denial in Washington, and how the big insurance companies are running so alarmed about what's happening in Florida from the hurricanes that the State government is now on the hook for much insurance that the insurance companies won't touch any more. He foresaw a capital flight from areas of coastal Florida and Texas, because you can't build without insurance. Another quote: "We are continuing to have a failure of leadership, at home and abroad."

Then later in the day, another meeting had the State of California and the State of Sao Paolo in Brazil doing a joint presentation, called No Reason to Wait, in which they showed how they have each been able to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions successfully, with a positive financial return. In Sao Paolo, it is through the use of ethanol from sugar cane, energy conservation, the use of landfill methane gas to make electricity, and reforestation of the Atlantic forest. In California, it is primarily through energy efficiency, and the acceleration of renewable energy.

California has made a formal commitment to an 80% reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; they are releasing the draft report this Thursday. (See www.climatechange.ca.gov, where you can also find the "No Reason to Wait" paper)

On another tack, the NGO community gives a daily Fossil of the Day award, to encourage better progress; today it was given to the EU, (for reasons I did not fully understand); to Australia, for remarks made by their Environment Minister which were full of denial; and to the Netherlands. I would like to see us also give a daily positive award, perhaps called the Climate Leaders Award, to reward positive initiatives, and I'd like to see us give the first such award to Papua New Guinea (PNG), for its land-use proposal that would allow the forest-dwelling villagers to receive benefits through the Clean Development Mechanism if they choose not to cut their existing old growth forests. The pressure of poverty is very strong, especially when they are enticed by logging companies, who offer them cash for their traditional forest. They don't want to lose it, but they feel the need for development, hospitals, and schools.

I had heard about this before, but at tea this afternoon I saw a very Papuan looking man near me, and I said "Excuse me, are you by any chance from Papua New Guinea?" He replied with a smile "Right first time!" We then had a great half-hour talk, in which he told me that he was a forester by training, and that he was part of the 6-person Papuan government delegation; his ministry has been trying to control the really bad clear-cut logging that has been going on in PNG, and he has faced assassination threats for his efforts.

His name is Goodwill Amos; Amos is a local Papuan name, and his father was told in a vision that he would have a son, and that he should call him Goodwill. So when his mother became pregnant, after having had two daughters, when the time of his birth arrived, his father announced that it would be a boy, and that he should be called Goodwill, and then took off to bed! These are the kind of tales you hear, if you sit around and talk.

Anyway, I'm busy rallying support for this initiative, to have a Climate Leaders Award, knowing that that the leaders of the NGO community have already decided not to, because, they've never done if before, and that it would take too long to decide who should get it. We'll find out tomorrow how I get on.

Oh, by the way; I did go back to the hydrogen enhanced car people, and persuaded them (I think) to call their device the Hydrogen Enhanced Gasoline Vehicle (and Hydrogen Enhanced Diesel Vehicle). They seem quite receptive to the idea.

And all this is just a fraction of the overall day, as one person amid the 10,000 experienced it. Some more odds and ends:

Jose Goldemberg, the Environment Secretary from Brazil, offered these figures:
Jobs per terawatt hour from petroleum: 260
Jobs per terawatt hour from wind: 918 to 200
Jobs per terawatt hour from solar PV: 30,000

And someone else offered this data:
Global subsidies to energy, 1974 to 2002:
Nuclear energy: $169 billion
Fossil fuels: $37 billion
Renewables: $24 billion

In 2002, Japan alone paid $2.8 billion in subsidies to nuclear fission (a VERY long shot). In the same year, the whole world combined paid $2.4 billion in subsidies to renewables. In 2004, the world spent $2 trillion of energy. In 1998, it spent $240 billion in energy subsidies, 75% of which went to fossil fuels, and just 6% to renewables. And to add frustration to the stupidity: since 1992, and Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the World Bank has lent $28 billion for fossils fuels, 17 times more than it has lent for renewable energy projects. Just think what we could do, if we applied our resources intelligently!

Change gear. Tonight, I went to the big show put on by the David Suzuki Foundation; a concert come energy-raiser at a theater near my little hotel. Great music, (check http://www.ninjatune.net/kidkoala), excited atmosphere, and both Severin Suzuki and David Suzuki were on top form. Then back to my hotel, and settle down to write this; it's now 1.00am, and tomorrow is another day.

Good night!


Sunday night, December 4th
Greetings; still cold here! Sunday is a rest day for the COP-11 itself, but I know that all over Montreal, small groups of people are gathering, strategizing, discussing, and making preparations for the week to come.

For myself, it was a chance to take in a different dimension. In the afternoon, there was a major spiritual event at St. Joseph's Oratory, on the northern side of Westmount "mountain". The church itself is slightly more than impressive; it's a huge, enormous edifice, full of chambers and vast open spaces for worship.

The Call of the Earth (Un Cri de la Terre) was organized by a team of people over several months, and you could really tell; the intensity of the energy was so tangible. It started (full house, maybe a thousand people) with a native man speaking of a prophecy he had received in a dream as a child, that Now is the Time. Then a small child entered, carrying a candle down the nave, followed by a Spiritual Declaration on Climate Change. The whole event, lasting two hours, was a rich collage of music, dancers, music, film, slides, and a personal sharing of actions we would take. There was witness on climate change from the Artic, India, Morocco, and the Pacific Islands, and there was a beautiful cloth mandala that some children had made. The whole event was a work dreamed in heaven, and delivered on Earth.

Then after taking an hour to rest, read and recover, I ventured out into the Latin quarter for supper, and found a great vegetarian restaurant, filled, it turned out, with fellow conference goers from Halifax and Edmonton. So a merry evening was had by all.

Well, I arrived here on Friday night, after a long day's traveling, and on Saturday morning I went down to the big Palais, where it's all happening. It's minus 17 in the streets, with the wind-chill, and definitely not something a wimpy BC'er from Victoria is used to, even though I once spent a winter in Winnipeg.

Luckily I bumped into Jenny Fraser, a good friend who works with the BC Ministry of Environment on climate adaptation, and she "showed me the works and got me oriented." When you are among 10,000 people, and there are six to ten simultaneous meetings going on, and 50 different groups and delegations, all with their own schedule of events, it takes some orienting!

The "real" event is taking place behind closed doors, as the country delegations work their way through the legal clauses and mechanisms of the COP and MOP processes. The big story (the only story) here is the heavyweight attempt by the USD administration to make sure that there IS no commitment to continue with Kyoto after 2012, except perhaps as a voluntary thing. Since all agreements are made by consensus, and since the US sits at the table of the UN Framework Convention on Climate change (which George Bush senior signed in 1992), the US is still at the table, and able to use their influence (including, we presume, outright threats and bribes) to try to get their way.

The NGO community here is highly organized, with daily meetings, and working groups on each of the various clauses of Kyoto that are being further worked on, and further groups trying to gain information from the different regional groups (eg Africa Group, South America group, G77). The flip side of this is that the way they explain things is VERY obscure and hard to follow, unless you've done a LOT of homework in the technical and legal side of the various clauses.

Basically, however, it is not the goals of this COP-11 to decide on what levels of reduction there should be after 2012. That will come later. Our job here is to make sure that there IS a later, or that there is an agreement to continue with a Kyoto-style negotiation framework to follow 2012. And on whether we will succeed in that, the next six days will tell.

In the afternoon, I wrapped up warm, joined a group from the Climate Justice campaign, and headed for the streets for the big demo. They estimated some 40,000 people were there, and it was completely friendly, positive, safe, feisty, etc and the police presence was minimal to non-existent (in comparison to previous Quebec policing at demos).

So with the temperature at -10 or so, we all strolled into separate gatherings that converged for the final rally, led by a skilled group of drummers; then we tried to keep warm while listening to the short and powerful speeches about how we needed to stop the world from getting warmer. If you tried to organize a big street demo in Victoria with the temperature this low, you might get 3 people out! And here there were 40,000. It was really heroic. Nothing is going to stop Montrealers from expressing their opinions!

After three hours, I really had to go inside to get warm, so I slipped into the big Guy Favreau complex, just north of the Palais, where there is a huge exhibit called "A World of Solutions" happening. Booths from everyone, everywhere. My most intriguing meeting was with the booth for the new hydrogen "ad-on" car, which is a regular car, to which these folks have added a small hydrogen system you can as it were "plug in". You fill it with water, and it is charged with electricity from the car's alternator to create hydrogen, which is fed directly into the injection chamber. The result is that the car uses 10 to 20% less fuel, and therefore produces 10-20% fewer greenhouse gases. The company is called Innovative Hydrogen Solutions, their website is www.IHSresearch.com, and they call the technology H2N-GEN. I've had it cross my desk before, but never seen it, or properly registered what it was. So I told them "you've really got to give this a better name!" They all agreed, and I said, "You should call it the Hydrogen Enhanced Vehicle (HEV)." They loved that, but overnight, I've decided it should be called the Hydrogen Enhanced Gasoline Vehicle (HEGV), so I'll go back on Monday and see if I can get them to adopt that.

I also met with the people at the Chicago Climate Exchange, and came away very favorably impressed. Since the US has not joined Kyoto, they are locked out of any global emissions trading, but they have persuaded a good number of companies to reduce their emissions by 1% a year between 1998 and 2003, and to trade their emissions among each other if some companies have been unable to meet that target, while others have done more. So they are getting good traction.

Last night, there was THE PARTY: a regular COP-11 tradition. It was in smoky club (no no-smoking bylaws here, alas!!!), and the music was modern techno-electric, which is not my personal favorite, but there was a wild atmosphere, and everyone was enjoying themselves, with acrobats, and a great band too. Then it was out into the cold to walk back to my hotel!

I'm off now to a big Inter-Religious Celebration, called Call of the Earth - Un Cri de la Terre; so more on this later!

Best wishes,
Guy