Kicking off the next round Climate Change Talks
Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by Joshua Wiese in Adopt a Negotiator, U.S.A.
My day started out dressed in a shark costume. I was tasked with welcoming climate negotiators to the talks by strapping on a grey fin, stuffing my suit with fake money, and hustling fake loans with big teeth. Definitely not how I imagined that my first hours of the Bonn Climate Change Talks would go, but these are strange days.
Standing in my ‘loan shark’ suit, I thought about India, now suffering a heat wave worse than anything on record, and there no signs of it letting up. I thought about home, where the Gulf of Mexico is in the throes of one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters in US history. There are no signs of that letting up either.
I thought about why I came to Bonn – to another round of international negotiations attempting to save us from a future plagued by deadly shifts in climate and man-made environmental disasters. The backdrop of events in India and the Gulf could hardly be more poignant or tragic – illustrating the urgency of these efforts and how we’ve fallen dangerously behind.
Things kicked off with a slow start on Monday, opening of two of four negotiating tracks that will proceed over the next two weeks. Monday’s tracks were meetings of Subsidiary Bodies, which are mostly technical in nature. The heavy policy stuff begins Tuesday with talks on the future of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) and on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA).
If you’ve followed these negotiations, you might know that both the KP and LCA tracks were set to conclude in Copenhagen. They obviously didn’t, and we realized with a slap in the face, how far we still have to go before building enough national ambition in key countries around the world to do what’s necessary to confront climate change.The puzzle before us is daunting at best.
As depressing and frustrating as this process is, we’ve made significant (if inadequate) progress on key issues in this journey. Copenhagen helped us begin to unlock resources and legitimize understandings necessary to confront climate change with a fair and adequate response.
We’re close -
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to agreeing on the design of a framework to help the least developed and most vulnerable countries adapt to changes in climate already underway;
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we’re making strides bridging the gaps between our climate change adaptation and mitigation needs and technologies & technology-access required to meet them;
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there are enough pledges for emissions reductions, proposals for rules to protect carbon sinks & encourage sustainable development, and promises of short-term and long-term finance near agreement;
- that we’re beginning to clearly see how far we’ve come and how far short we’ll fall of doing what’s necessary if we stop pushing now.
My hope for these talks in Bonn are that we lay the foundation for what’s necessary – on adaptation, technology, finance, and rules for protecting carbon sinks & ensuring sustainable development. That we call out and fill the gaps, remove the loopholes, straighten what’s crooked and that we create something strong enough to build our future on.
Hence, the shark costume – calling out the gaps and trying to straighten what’s crooked. Hence, my efforts along with the other negotiator trackers over the coming weeks to help understand and tell this story. Hence, why I joined so many driven, caring and smart people who came to Bonn to help push us along.
Day 1 of the latest round of talks is over – stay tuned for what happens next.
Climate change is quite on the rise these days, so be prepaired for more weather disasters-.:
Climate Change really causes the formation of bigger tornadoes and bigger typhoons too””