New Bali vocab.

Term of the Day: Self Financing Climate Compact (When levies on mitigation are used to finance adaptation, and climate regime begins to pay for itself. Translated to English: money raised from carbon levies could be directed toward drought-early warning systems, drought resistant crops, dykes, flood proof houses on stilts, or water wings)

Other Term of the Day: GNGO. I met a nice lady from the China Association for NGO Cooperation, which is a GNGO—a Governmental Non-Government Organization.

Who’s hot?
-Indonesian hospitality: The Balinese people, predominantly Hindu, are some of the most smiling warm people I have come across. Even their horns honk unobnoxiously. A couple of examples: I fell asleep at the Climate Change Conference 5-Star hotel in the lobby after filing a blog and drinking a beer, as a procrastination effort to avoid my two hour scooter ride to my sleeping quarters located a fairly well-priced but not-so-convenient 2 hour ride away, assuming my sense of navigation didn’t betray me. If this happened in Toronto’s downtown Hyatt, a rather burly security guard would wake you up with threatening questions and sweep you out onto the street like a happy wanderer. Not in Bali. In Bali, the small soft spoken man with a smile wakes you up gently to offer you a pillow. In the morning, it gets even better. A breakfast buffet fit for a king awaits. It was only free the first time as I discovered on my second try, if you come after it officially opens and there are people to get your room number or credit card in its absence. At 186,000 Rupiah (about $19), it isn’t cheap, so I stocked up on food including boxes of Muesli and loaf of bread to see me through the day. Noticing all the extra food I had, the nice Balinese waitress brought me a doggy bag to pack up.

-Germany: Towards, the end of the day, a German friend, Prof. Schellnhuber, who advises Chancellor Merkel wrote with some news that made me want to say Ich Bin Berliner: “My spirits are fine, since the German cabinet will agree today on a policy package that will reduce national GHG emissions by 40% by 2020 (in comparison to 1990)!”

-China: China proposed a special provision to reserve a place to allow the US to join in post-Kyoto commitment discussions, should a future administration be so inclined.

-The UN bikes: 13 of the 200 complimentary bikes to wheel around the resort compound were nicked during the first two days of meetings. People are voting with their pedals for green mobility. Come to think of it, this climate change crowd really likes their bikes. My bike was involuntarily liberated in Toronto while I watched Al Gore deliver his Inconvenient Truth slide show. This kind of free-wheeling would never happen at an oil and gas or auto show.

-New Zealand: New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister announced a moratorium on building new fossil fuel power generation plants for the next ten years.

Who’s not?
-Security guards in UN tents at nighttime: The A/C was on so high last night that the poor bugger was shivering and wearing what appeared to be a light winter jacket.

-Saudi Arabia: Won top prize for Fossil of the Day Awards. Their citation read: First prize goes to Saudi Arabia for a long and rambling intervention this morning complaining that the Kyoto protocol has an unfair focus on CO2 (and then called for prioritization of carbon capture and storage, which is concentrated on CO2). And secondly, for saying that we "should not attach an economic element to the noble cause of fighting climate change"--when for years, Saudi Arabia has been trying to undermine the fight against climate change specifically by campaigning by alleging adverse economic effects! Saudi Arabia is presently classified as a developing country.” Climate Action Network is urging that the Saudis, along with South Korea and Singapore, should join the group of countries subject to deep binding targets (During the Fossil of the Day Awards, May Jeong was called in to represent Japan—she did a good job despite her North Korean roots).

-India: India said it is happy to agree to a binding target of not exceeding the industrialized world’s per capita emissions. This sounds perfectly fair. If China and India can both get their per capita emissions up to where we are in Canada right now, global emissions will triple overnight, ensuring that our grandkids have the sole option of visiting Bali on a scuba diving expedition. Meanwhile, both South Africa and Brazil have hinted that they would be willing to except binding targets by 2018.

Tidbits from Today:
-According to UN Climate chief Yvo de Boer, governments have agreed to set up a global fund to fight deforestation.

-Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were making a strong case to be able to cash in on the credits from their hot air, thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s fumbling away the Soviet Union, which led to an economic implosion and did wonders for reducing greenhouse gases.

-The Africans seem especially keen on accountability and ensuring that countries that fail to meet their Kyoto targets are punished. I didn’t hear Canada’s reaction to this, but I can imagine it was similar to Japan’s as they are on the same page for almost all other issues. Japan said “we think it would be counterproductive to have legally binding punishment for countries that fail to meet their commitments.”

-The $64 million dollar question: Two per cent of clean development mechanism (CDM) financial flows are supposed to be levied to go toward adaptation. In the most recent year, about $5 billion worth of clean development mechanism projects were done, but only $36 million worth of adaptation funds were generated. So what happened to the other $64 million? I think there is a technical answer and I am hoping to find this out tomorrow.

-CANbiguity. The Climate Action Network International has a concise and sufficiently vague proposal to be supported by anyone who wants real action on protecting the climate in a fair way. The plan calls for developed countries to reduce emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020 and at least 80 per cent by 2050, from a 1990 base year. The plan also calls for 50 per cent GHG emissions reductions by 2050 globally. The plan is silent on required reductions for developing countries, including the giant tiger and elephant in the room. But meeting the 50 per cent below 1990 by 2050 will mean that developing countries have to reduce their emissions by 20 per cent, which is a huge gap from their business-as-usual scenarios. Give the recent UN Human Development Report that kudos for having the kahunas to say the 20 per cent reduction number of developing countries out loud.

-China called for a large technology transfer fund to be funded by developed countries.

-Rumour is that the US is hoping to use the trade ministers’ meeting this weekend in Bali to get a technology transfer fund that is outside of the UN.