The news from Copenhagen, Denmark is not good.
As I write this, it is being reported that African countries had, “in a dramatic move”, threatened to walk out of the ongoing United nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taking place in Copenhagen, having discovered that the developed countries were planning to “sabotage” the process of saving the planet from global warming, “by abandoning the Kyoto protocol”.
The Kyoto protocol binds the developed countries to certain minimum levels of gas emissions. But because the technicalities of determining these levels of gas emissions are so complex, figures can easily be conjured up to confuse the unwary.
Worse, the emission numbers can be linked to payments to be made to developing countries to diminish their levels of emission.
The “savings” made from developing countries would be used to balance up, or exchanged for payments the developed countries would make, in place of giving up more of their own emissions.
Who at all thought of this trap? Anything that involves money brings trouble. Why not simply say, “You contribute the most to emissions. So cut down by 30 or 40 per cent, as the case may be. And everyone else cannot go over say, 10 per cent of Figure X. And finish with it?
These technicalities are used at all sorts of meetings — especially those dealing with world trade, where technical experts drone on and on, boring the delegates of developing countries to death, until out of sheer fatigue, they append their signatures to agreements they hardly understand.
The same tactics have now appeared at the Copenhagen Conference, which is the last chance of the people of the earth to partially save themselves from the calamity they have invited on to the planet, through their careless and stupid emission of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.
The African countries, led by Nigeria and Algeria, said at a press conference that they were “disappointed” with moves by the developed countries that would “collapse” the Kyoto protocol, and pursue, in its stead, other “non-binding agreements”.
Now, the Kyoto protocol was adopted on December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and it entered into force on February 16, 2005. As at November 2009, 187 states had ratified the protocol.
It doesn’t have the complete support of the United States, the biggest emitter of all.!
The delegates of the industrialised countries want to cause confusion and procrastinate, and, according to the London Guardian, will only “hammer out a large part of the deal on the last day, when the heads of state arrive”.
One senior African negotiator told the paper: “It’s a ploy to slip through provisions that are not amenable to developing country efforts. It’s playing dirty.”
Another added: “It is as serious a situation as it ever has been. It is more than probable that many heads of state will not come if the negotiations are not complete [for them to sign]. Why should a head of state come to sign an agreement that is basically a non-agreement?”
It is not only the African delegates who are unhappy with the way things are going in Copenhagen.
High level Chinese and Indian representatives indicated they would be in Copenhagen, but they made clear they wanted key points agreed before they arrived.
They also wanted to avoid a situation where Western leaders jetted in and steamrollered the main points of the agreement on the very last day of the conference, when everyone is dog-tired — tactics the Western countries have used again and again I other international conferences.
Mr Su Wei, China’s top climate negotiator, was quoted as saying he hoped there would be no outstanding issues by the time his country’s premier, Mr Wen Jiabao, arrived. “I hope the only question we will leave for leaders is how to pronounce Copenhagen,” he said.
Indian representatives also said their Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, would come to the summit, but emphasised the urgency of having negotiators produce a text in advance.
Mr Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, said: “We are saying that heads of state should not be negotiating a draft text. We must have a draft text already finalised. The heads of state should come to leave their imprint on the deal.”
The UK’s climate secretary, Mr Ed Miliband, acknowledged that there was some way to go before a workable deal was reached.
“We’re now getting close to midnight in this negotiation and we need to act like it. That means more urgency to solve problems, not just identify them.”
One key point of contention is the US and EU insistence that emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil, should agree to peak their emissions by 2020. Developing countries argue that this would lock them into poverty.
Being locked into poverty is bad enough, but what about seeing your habitat and livelihood disappearing into the sea for ever? I travelled once, more than 40 years ago, to Keta with my friend, Charles Segbefia, to see his birthplace completely inundated by a major flood.
We had to go from house to house by boat! It was a scene that made one remember the calamity that befell the world in Noah’s time. It really scared me.
There is major work going on right now in Keta to try and save as much of the town and its surrounding villages as possible.
Yet all the work may be for nothing if climate change continues at its current level. Ada and some of its neighbouring villages are also seriously threatened.
An NGO website, www.StopKillingUs.com,
has some amazing pictures and reports about some of these low-lying areas in Ghana that its teams have visited and photographed, which can educate readers about the dangers we face more than anything I can write.
So please, if you do have the means, visit
www.StopKillingUs.com.
I’ll just give you titbits of what I found on the website: “In August 2008, we [SKU] organized a visit to a village called Totope in the Ada area for members of some NGOs and international press who were taking part and observing the climate change talks in Accra.
The purpose of the visit was to highlight the problems that many coastal communities are experiencing in Africa due to coastal erosion and rising sea levels…
“ [Picture of: House now abandoned because of the sea encroachment]
“In recent times climate change seems to be top on the world agenda. Scientists have made observations that a rise in sea levels could be a consequence of the warming of the earth surface, due to the increase of carbon dioxide and other gases trapped in the atmosphere.
“Forests which serve as sinks for these gases are reducing at an alarming rate.
In Ghana about 70 per cent of the original forest cover has been removed. Most of this forest cover has been removed due to bushfires started deliberately for land clearance for subsistence farming and charcoal production; a major source of energy for cooking.
“The Kyoto Protocol which has set binding targets for 37 developed nations to reduce green house gases comes to an end in 2012. There have been previous negotiations towards the establishment of a deal that will replace the Kyoto Protocol.
This… led to the hosting of one of such meetings in Accra from the 21st – 27th of August 2008 in Accra…
“The three communities we visited along the Ada coast are Alavanyo, Pute and Totope. The Totope village community appears to be the community closest to the sea and being squeezed between the sea and the Songor Lagoon, is the most vulnerable....
According to the residents almost half of the houses in Totope have been washed away.
The stories that were told were that of hopelessness for the future as most of the young people have left.”
Do you not feel like weeping after reading that? Some of the pictures on the website will actually make you weep, unless you are made of stone.
And yet all this is happening, as meaningless technicalities are employed to delay an agreement being reached in Copenhagen — an agreement which, even if acceded to, may come too late to save people on the low-lying areas of the West African coastline, as well countries as far afield as Bangladesh and, especially, the Maldives islands. The real truth is that some of the bureaucrats sitting in huge offices chewing fat cigars don’t believe that there is any danger to worry about.
And, of course, there is no chance in hell of getting them to go and visit Keta, Ada or Totope to see things for themselves, Even if they saw it, they would find arguments to rationalise away the effects of global warming.
It is so frustrating, especially if you have beautiful children and grandchildren, and realise that there may be no future on a habitable earth for them.
The 20th century generation — just one generation on an earth about 4.55 billion years old and on which mankind (homo sapiens) has lived for only about 150,000 years — has ruined the planet totally. And it does not even want to know about what it has done.
As I write this, it is being reported that African countries had, “in a dramatic move”, threatened to walk out of the ongoing United nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taking place in Copenhagen, having discovered that the developed countries were planning to “sabotage” the process of saving the planet from global warming, “by abandoning the Kyoto protocol”.
The Kyoto protocol binds the developed countries to certain minimum levels of gas emissions. But because the technicalities of determining these levels of gas emissions are so complex, figures can easily be conjured up to confuse the unwary.
Worse, the emission numbers can be linked to payments to be made to developing countries to diminish their levels of emission.
The “savings” made from developing countries would be used to balance up, or exchanged for payments the developed countries would make, in place of giving up more of their own emissions.
Who at all thought of this trap? Anything that involves money brings trouble. Why not simply say, “You contribute the most to emissions. So cut down by 30 or 40 per cent, as the case may be. And everyone else cannot go over say, 10 per cent of Figure X. And finish with it?
These technicalities are used at all sorts of meetings — especially those dealing with world trade, where technical experts drone on and on, boring the delegates of developing countries to death, until out of sheer fatigue, they append their signatures to agreements they hardly understand.
The same tactics have now appeared at the Copenhagen Conference, which is the last chance of the people of the earth to partially save themselves from the calamity they have invited on to the planet, through their careless and stupid emission of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.
The African countries, led by Nigeria and Algeria, said at a press conference that they were “disappointed” with moves by the developed countries that would “collapse” the Kyoto protocol, and pursue, in its stead, other “non-binding agreements”.
Now, the Kyoto protocol was adopted on December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and it entered into force on February 16, 2005. As at November 2009, 187 states had ratified the protocol.
It doesn’t have the complete support of the United States, the biggest emitter of all.!
The delegates of the industrialised countries want to cause confusion and procrastinate, and, according to the London Guardian, will only “hammer out a large part of the deal on the last day, when the heads of state arrive”.
One senior African negotiator told the paper: “It’s a ploy to slip through provisions that are not amenable to developing country efforts. It’s playing dirty.”
Another added: “It is as serious a situation as it ever has been. It is more than probable that many heads of state will not come if the negotiations are not complete [for them to sign]. Why should a head of state come to sign an agreement that is basically a non-agreement?”
It is not only the African delegates who are unhappy with the way things are going in Copenhagen.
High level Chinese and Indian representatives indicated they would be in Copenhagen, but they made clear they wanted key points agreed before they arrived.
They also wanted to avoid a situation where Western leaders jetted in and steamrollered the main points of the agreement on the very last day of the conference, when everyone is dog-tired — tactics the Western countries have used again and again I other international conferences.
Mr Su Wei, China’s top climate negotiator, was quoted as saying he hoped there would be no outstanding issues by the time his country’s premier, Mr Wen Jiabao, arrived. “I hope the only question we will leave for leaders is how to pronounce Copenhagen,” he said.
Indian representatives also said their Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, would come to the summit, but emphasised the urgency of having negotiators produce a text in advance.
Mr Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, said: “We are saying that heads of state should not be negotiating a draft text. We must have a draft text already finalised. The heads of state should come to leave their imprint on the deal.”
The UK’s climate secretary, Mr Ed Miliband, acknowledged that there was some way to go before a workable deal was reached.
“We’re now getting close to midnight in this negotiation and we need to act like it. That means more urgency to solve problems, not just identify them.”
One key point of contention is the US and EU insistence that emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil, should agree to peak their emissions by 2020. Developing countries argue that this would lock them into poverty.
Being locked into poverty is bad enough, but what about seeing your habitat and livelihood disappearing into the sea for ever? I travelled once, more than 40 years ago, to Keta with my friend, Charles Segbefia, to see his birthplace completely inundated by a major flood.
We had to go from house to house by boat! It was a scene that made one remember the calamity that befell the world in Noah’s time. It really scared me.
There is major work going on right now in Keta to try and save as much of the town and its surrounding villages as possible.
Yet all the work may be for nothing if climate change continues at its current level. Ada and some of its neighbouring villages are also seriously threatened.
An NGO website, www.StopKillingUs.com,
has some amazing pictures and reports about some of these low-lying areas in Ghana that its teams have visited and photographed, which can educate readers about the dangers we face more than anything I can write.
So please, if you do have the means, visit
www.StopKillingUs.com.
I’ll just give you titbits of what I found on the website: “In August 2008, we [SKU] organized a visit to a village called Totope in the Ada area for members of some NGOs and international press who were taking part and observing the climate change talks in Accra.
The purpose of the visit was to highlight the problems that many coastal communities are experiencing in Africa due to coastal erosion and rising sea levels…
“ [Picture of: House now abandoned because of the sea encroachment]
“In recent times climate change seems to be top on the world agenda. Scientists have made observations that a rise in sea levels could be a consequence of the warming of the earth surface, due to the increase of carbon dioxide and other gases trapped in the atmosphere.
“Forests which serve as sinks for these gases are reducing at an alarming rate.
In Ghana about 70 per cent of the original forest cover has been removed. Most of this forest cover has been removed due to bushfires started deliberately for land clearance for subsistence farming and charcoal production; a major source of energy for cooking.
“The Kyoto Protocol which has set binding targets for 37 developed nations to reduce green house gases comes to an end in 2012. There have been previous negotiations towards the establishment of a deal that will replace the Kyoto Protocol.
This… led to the hosting of one of such meetings in Accra from the 21st – 27th of August 2008 in Accra…
“The three communities we visited along the Ada coast are Alavanyo, Pute and Totope. The Totope village community appears to be the community closest to the sea and being squeezed between the sea and the Songor Lagoon, is the most vulnerable....
According to the residents almost half of the houses in Totope have been washed away.
The stories that were told were that of hopelessness for the future as most of the young people have left.”
Do you not feel like weeping after reading that? Some of the pictures on the website will actually make you weep, unless you are made of stone.
And yet all this is happening, as meaningless technicalities are employed to delay an agreement being reached in Copenhagen — an agreement which, even if acceded to, may come too late to save people on the low-lying areas of the West African coastline, as well countries as far afield as Bangladesh and, especially, the Maldives islands. The real truth is that some of the bureaucrats sitting in huge offices chewing fat cigars don’t believe that there is any danger to worry about.
And, of course, there is no chance in hell of getting them to go and visit Keta, Ada or Totope to see things for themselves, Even if they saw it, they would find arguments to rationalise away the effects of global warming.
It is so frustrating, especially if you have beautiful children and grandchildren, and realise that there may be no future on a habitable earth for them.
The 20th century generation — just one generation on an earth about 4.55 billion years old and on which mankind (homo sapiens) has lived for only about 150,000 years — has ruined the planet totally. And it does not even want to know about what it has done.
