A shirt for the Saudis?

Who’s Hot?
Australia: The definite highlight of the day occurred during the opening plenary when Australia announced it would ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The roomful of mostly jaded bureaucrats broke into a spontaneous outburst of intense applause unlike what I thought them capable. I think someone may have even hooted. This could bode well for the climate talks as it suggests that the bureaucrats have a heart.

Who’s Not?
The three Fossil Award winners of the day were in order:

1. Saudi Arabia: I felt it was slightly unfair for Saudi Arabia to get the number one Fossil Award for the first day as they were the only party to make a joke in their opening statement, commenting that they thought the UNFCCC policy of open neck shirts meant that they would be getting a nice new Indonesian batik shirt—but apparently only the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer (who was wearing his) got one. About five minutes after this Yvo came into the room and whispered something to the Saudi delegation. I asked them if Yvo was going to get them a shirt. The Saudi representative said “no, but he should.” Later in the afternoon, the Saudis were the only country to raise a red flag about giving a mandate to a contact group to seek out common solutions, citing that it was impossible for a consensus between developing and developed countries to be reached on the matter of commitments. Maybe Yvo should have given them a shirt after all.

2. US for being the only industrialized country not to ratify Kyoto. Enough said.

3. Canada insisted the all major emitters must be part of obligations in post-2012 agreement paying short shrift to the Orwellian gospel of “common but differentiated responsibility,” which didn’t sound so good, considering Canada has renounced its Kyoto obligations. It was a tough day for Canada, as China appeared to accuse Canada and Japan of trying to “sabotage” a future climate change agreement by talking about the need for large non-industrialized emitters (i.e. China and India) to agree to commitments as well.

China won the award for being the having the most audacity of the day. After calling Japan and Canada saboteurs for even suggesting that countries like China be part of the post-2012 commitments, China proceeded to call for the principle of common but differentiated responsibility to be respected (i.e. no responsibility for them) for developed countries to agree to 25-40 per cent greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2020, while developing countries like China could utilize “policy measures,” and while we’re at it, China said developing countries would need money and lots of it for adaptation and mitigation. Boiled down the Chinese message was: Don’t bugger with us and show me the money.

The Japan-Canada Connection
In the opening plenary, Japan announced that it had submitted a complete 7-point proposal, including mitigation (read: obligations) that would apply to all parties, particularly large emitters. I spoke with the Japanese Ambassador for Global Environment Kyoji Komachi right before his speech. As I was entering his number into my blackberry, I bragged that it was Canadian technology. This prompted him to pull out his Sharp PDA that had real-time TV and a built-in translator. So much for Canadian technology. Right after Japan, Canada was up next, and although our technology may be lagging, our support for Japan’s proposal was not. Canada unreservedly supported Japan’s proposal, which has not yet been made public. Canada also made the point that even if all countries that presently have Kyoto commitments were to take their emission to zero, it would not be enough (with the growth in developing countries) to avoid increasing average global temperatures by less than 2 degrees Celsius, widely considered to be the threshold where climate change gets dangerous.