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| President George W. Bush | U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice | Former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore |
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MEM
1:
Washington DC September 27 and 28, 2007 |
UN Climate Change Conference
Bali, Indonesia December 3-14 2007 |
MEM 2:
East West Center, Honolulu January 30-31, 2008 |
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| Campaign Kickoff On May 31, 2007 President Bush announced a new initiative to develop and contribute to a post-Kyoto framework on energy security and climate change by the end of 2008. This effort contributes to existing national, bilateral, regional and international programs to address the long-term challenge of global climate change and reinforces President Bush's firm commitment to taking action on climate change at home and abroad. The first of these meetings will be held in Washington, DC, on September 27 and 28, 2007 and will include representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, South Africa, United Kingdom, the EU, the EC, and the UN. |
BALI, Indonesia (AP) —
European nations threatened Thursday to boycott U.S.-sponsored climate talks next month unless the Bush administration compromises and agrees to a "road map" for reducing greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. With the U.N. climate
conference in its final hours, Nobel laureate Al Gore said the United
States was "principally responsible" for blocking progress here toward
an agreement on launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol
when it expires in 2012. |
Hawaii Conference Events and Community
Actions Newswatch: Global climate conference set An international climate change meeting will be held later this month at the East-West Center, a spokeswoman for the White House said yesterday. How many of 17 invited countries will attend the Jan. 30-31 event and exactly what its agenda will be continues to evolve, said Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the President's Council on Environmental Quality. How much, if any, of the diplomatic meeting will be public also has yet to be decided, she said. |
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| President George W.
Bush (May 31, 2007) "By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China. In addition to this long-term global goal, each country would establish midterm national targets and programs that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs." |
Grist (December 6, 2007): Hey, Look Over There! U.S., avoiding action at current climate meeting, announces new climate meeting President Bush has announced a climate-change meeting in Hawaii next month for 17 of the world's major greenhouse-gas emitters to talk about setting goals for curbing emissions. The meeting is a follow-up to an anticlimactic summit that Bush hosted in late September. Oddly enough, during the pivotal climate-change meeting going on in Bali right this red-hot minute, the attitude of the U.S. is so obstructionist that 11 U.S. House Committee chairfolk felt compelled to write a letter assuring delegates that "President Bush's avoidance of action is not the status quo here in America." |
President Bush invited the "major economies" countries,
which together produce more than 80 percent of greenhouse gasses, to
meet in Honolulu as a follow-up to a September meeting in Washington. As the United Nation's summit on climate change concluded in Bali last month, some European nations threatened to boycott Bush's meeting. Hellmer said the U.S. delegation will include Jim Connaughton, chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, and Dan Price, with the National Security Council. |
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| President George W. Bush (September 28,
2007) "Energy security and climate change are two of the great challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously. The world's response will help shape the future of the global economy and the condition of our environment for future generations. The nations in this room have special responsibilities." |
Climate change is one of history's the greatest security challenges, says think tank study The report by a panel of security and climate specialists, sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security, will be released in Washington on Monday. The Associated Press received an advance copy. |
Hawaii was chosen as "a good location that can easily be
reached by the majority of the participants," Hellmer said. Potential participants include the United States, China, Portugal, Russian, Japan, India, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Korea, France, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil, plus representatives from the European Commission and United Nations. http://starbulletin.com/2008/01/06/news/briefs.html |
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| James Caonnaughton White House Council on Environmental Quality and President Bush's Personal Representative to the Major Economies Meeting Foreign Press Center Briefing, Washington, DC September 21, 2007 MR. CONNAUGHTON: The U.S. has strongly backed goals and targets.
Eileen
Claussen |
Climate change is likely to breed new conflicts, but it already is magnifying existing problems, from the desertification of Darfur and competition for water in the Middle East to the disruptive monsoons in Asia which increase the pressure for land, the report said. It examined three scenarios, ranging from the consequences of an expected temperature increase of 1.3 degrees Centigrade (2.5 Fahrenheit) by 2040, to the catastrophic implications of a 5.6 degree (10 F) by the end of the century.At the very least, the report said, the United States can expect more population migrations, both internally and from across its borders; a proliferation of diseases; greater conflict in weak states, especially in Africa where climates will change most drastically; and a restructuring in global power in line with the accessibility of natural resources. Left unchecked, "the collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate change futures would destabilize virtually every aspect of modern life," said the report, comparing the potential outcome with the Cold War doomsday scenarios of a nuclear holocaust. "Climate change has the potential to be one of the greatest national security challenges that this or any other generation of policy makers is likely to confront," said the report. Among its contributors were former CIA director James Woolsey, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta and former Vice President Al Gore's security adviser Leon Fuerth. |
US must make a
'quantum leap' South Africa January 19, 2008 Cape Town - Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has called on the US to assume a "fair share of responsibility" in reducing world greenhouse gas emissions. In a speech delivered in Cape Town at a climate change roundtable discussion involving, among others, UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairerson Rajendra Pachauri, he welcomed a recent US commitment to join negotiations on emissions. The US commitment was made during international talks on climate change held in Bali last month. "The United States' commitment to join negotiations is an important step forward. But it remains a first step -- an infant step. What we expect from them is a quantum leap. "We need to build a bridge from the fragmented and inadequate status quo to a climate regime where the US also accepts internationally agreed and binding targets. It is critical that 'comparable effort' leads to US commitments to absolute reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. "Developing countries demonstrated real leadership in Bali. It is now over to the US to demonstrate leadership and take their fair share of responsibility." Van Schalkwyk said this would be his message when he flew to the US at the end of the month to attend a second US-hosted Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change. "This meeting will follow two days after President [George] Bush's State of the Union address on January 28. "If the US is really committed to addressing this issue, January 28 will be a golden opportunity for President Bush to signal that turning point for real action and commitment on climate change," he said. Bush has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at achieving international consensus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saying it is unfair and too costly for developed nations. http://www.news24.com/News24/AnanziArticle/0,,2-13-1443_2254516,00.html |
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| Heritage Foundation On September 27–28, the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, initiated by President Bush several months ago, will bring together the world's major emitters of greenhouse gases to discuss future national goals. The Bush Administration favors voluntary emissions reductions supplemented by technological innovation, which differs from the binding international targets and regulation exemplified by the failed Kyoto Protocol. The Administration's approach offers a more promising means for creating a rational and workable climate policy. |
The report listed 10 implications of climate change that policy makers should consider, including rising tensions between rich and poor nations, the backlash resulting from massive migrations, health problems partly caused by water shortages and crop failures, and concerns over nuclear proliferation as nations increasingly rely on nuclear energy.
Attention began to focus earlier this year on the strategic consequences of climate change. But the latest report, more than 100 pages long, is among the most detailed analyses published so far on security aspects. Last April, a a panel of retired top-ranking military officers issued the alarm that global warming was a "serious security threat" likely to aggravate terrorism and world instability. The Office of the National Intelligence Director said the following month it has begun working on an assessment of the national security implications of climate change. |
Elites vs. Greens in
the global south Can the environmental movement in the Global South, asks Walden Bello, serve as a pivotal agent in the fight against global warming? Saturday, January 19, 2008 By Walden Bello Last month’s conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, brought the North-South fault line in climate politics into sharp relief. While U.S. intransigence on the question of mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions took center stage, not far behind was the issue of what commitments fast-growing developing countries like China and India should make in a new, post-Kyoto climate change regime. The developing world’s stance toward the question of the environment has often been equated with the pugnacious stance of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, who famously said at the Rio Conference on the Environment and Development in June 1992, “When the rich chopped down their own forests, built their poison-belching factories and scoured the world for cheap resources, the poor said nothing. Indeed they paid for the development of the rich. Now the rich claim a right to regulate the development of the poor countries…As colonies we were exploited. Now as independent nations we are to be equally exploited.” The North has interpreted Mahathir as speaking for a South that doesn’t have much of an environmental movement and that seeks to catch up whatever the cost. Today, China has emerged as the prime exemplar of this Mahathirian obsession with rapid industrialization that has minimal regard for the environment. In fact, however, the environmental costs of rapid industrialization are of major concern to significant sectors of the population of developing countries. The environmental movement, moreover, has been a significant actor in the debates in which many countries are exploring alternatives to the destabilizing high-growth model. While the focus of this piece is Asia, many of the same trends can be observed in Latin America, Africa, and other parts of the global South. The Environmental Movement in the NICs Among the most advanced environmental movements are those in South Korea and Taiwan, which were once known as “Newly Industrializing Countries” (NICs) or “Newly Industrializing Economies.” This should not be surprising since the process of rapid industrialization in these two societies from 1965 to 1990 took place with few environmental controls, if any. In Korea, the Han River that flows through Seoul and the Nakdong River flowing through Pusan were so polluted by unchecked dumping of industrial waste that they were close to being classified as biologically dead. Toxic waste dumping reached critical proportions. Seoul achieved the distinction in 1978 of being the city with the highest content of sulphur dioxide in the air, with high levels being registered as well in Inchon, Pusan, Ulsan, Masan, Anyang, and Changweon. ...
National Elites and Third Worldism The reason for tracing the evolution of a mass-based environmental movement in East Asia and India is to counter the image that the Asian masses are inert elements that uncritically accept the environmentally damaging high-growth export-oriented models promoted by their governing elites. As the geographer Jared Diamond notes in his influential book Collapse, people in the Third World “know very well how they are being harmed by population growth, deforestation, overfishing, and other problems. They know it because they immediately pay the penalty, in forms such as loss of free timber for their houses, massive soil erosion, and…their inability to afford clothes, books, and school fees for their children.” It is the national elites that spout the ultra-Third Worldist line that the South has yet to fulfill its quota of polluting the world while the North has exceeded its quota. They insist on an exemption for the big rapidly industrializing countries from mandatory limits on the emission of greenhouse gases under a new Kyoto Protocol. When the Bush administration refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because it does not bind China and India, and the Chinese and Indian governments say they will not tolerate curbs on their greenhouse gas emissions because the United States has not ratified Kyoto, they are in fact playing out an unholy alliance to allow their economic elites to continue to evade their environmental responsibilities and free-ride on the rest of the world. This alliance has now become formalized in the so-called “Asia Pacific Partnership” created last year by China, India, Japan, Korea, and the United States as a rival to the UN-negotiated Kyoto Protocol. Having recently recruited Canada, which is now led by Bush clone Stephen Harper, this grouping seeks voluntary, as opposed mandatory, curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. This dangerous band of renegade states simply wants to spew carbon as they damn well please, which is what voluntary targets are all about. They are the core of the Major Economies Meeting slated later this month in Honolulu that many fear is designed to derail the recently agreed “Bali Roadmap.” ...
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) and senior analyst and former executive director of Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, Thailand. Afsar Jafri and Dale Wen assisted in the preparation of this commentary. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies. http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=13759 http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=13759 ********************************* Energy & Environment News Darren Samuelsohn, E&ENews PM senior reporter Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) will open President Bush's second round of international climate talks later this month in Honolulu, the White House said today. Lingle's 20-minute speech on Jan. 30 kicks off two days of closed-door meetings among the world's largest sources of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. The Hawaii talks mark the first time countries will gather since last month's U.N. climate confere An unnamed "U.S. representative" and the U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer are the only other speakers listed on the agenda for the Bush administration's Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave speeches during the first round of U.S.-led talks last September in Washington (Greenwire, Sept. 28, 2007). But neither is expected in Hawaii, according to Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman at the White House Sixteen countries plus the European Union and United Nations are on the list of invited participants for Honolulu, including China, India, Indonesia and the United Kingdom. Most countries, however, have not yet said who they will send to Hawaii. At least three more U.S.-led meetings are scheduled before Bush leaves office. That's on top of more than a dozen other high-level climate sessions in 2008, including the Group of Eight nations summit this summer in Hokkaido, Japan. There, world leaders a In Hawaii, Lingle can showcase a law she signed last June that requires the state to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. |
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