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AFP

Climate talks: Homage to Catatonia

Fri Nov 06 04:15PM
Climate change protestors dressed as aliens mingle with the delegates at the Barcelona talks.

You live in a huge castle, a ramshackle building that is stuffed with rooms, many of them rather poor and shabby and a few that are luxurious.

A couple of decades ago, you and the many other occupants of the chateau were given a warning. By your own ignorance or greed, you had started a fire in the forest just over the far hills.

Nearly two years ago, as the watchdogs cried that the flames were now starting to lick the castle walls, everyone declared it was time to act urgently.

Castle-dwellers declared that by the end of 2009, they would determine who was most responsible for the fire, how to share the cost of extinguishing it and how to compensate poor occupants who, proportionally, would lose most of their belongings.

A curious course of action, you might agree.

After all, would you launch a two-year haggle, requiring consensus from everyone, if you began to smell smoke in your home?

Anyway... what's your thinking now when you hear that, two years later, everyone's still wrangling over what to do?

That there's a strong likelihood another year of talks will be needed to get an agreement?

And that the action plan will probably fall far short of what the worried fire-watchers say is needed?

That, in essence, is where we are at the UN climate talks in Barcelona this week.

Little more than a month is left before the famous December 7-18 showdown in Copenhagen.

There, the 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are tasked with crafting a treaty that, from the end of 2012, will reduce global warming from a peril to mankind to a manageable problem.

Yet the week-long talks in the Catalonian capital seem to be locked in a state of shocked rigidity.

I can't see any movement at all on the big questions: drastically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and stumping up money for poor countries in the firing line of climate change.

The developing countries won't budge until the rich countries declare their hand. And the rich countries say they are stymied by what's happening in the US, where President Barack Obama is battling to get climate legislation through Congress.

Everything will be left to the final two or three days for environment ministers in Copenhagen.

Rumour has it that they may be flanked by their bosses, for presidents and prime ministers could fly in on the last day or so to break the deadlock.

It's either cynicism or realism that makes me say we are being lined up for a planetary circus, of bleary-eyed all-night negotiations in backrooms and regular bouts of media posturing.

And that it will lead to an agreement to agree on an agreement by 2010, a year later than scheduled.

And -- I gloomily predict -- what eventually emerges will be so weakened by national interests and concern about economic costs that it will not go anywhere near enough to curb the greenhouse problem.

If so, many questions will be asked whether the sprawling, snail-like consensus-driven UN process, built on the system of nation states, is able to deal with a global environmental emergency.

There was a moment at the Barcelona conference on Friday when light relief mixed with cruel reality.

Ten environmentalists, clad as extra-terrestrials from "Planet B," their faces painted green and wobbly antennae on their head, walked around the conference, mingling with delegates.

"Where is your climate leader?" they said. "Take me to your climate leader."

In this blog, reporters and editors for global news wire AFP blog about the news they report and the challenges they face covering events from Baghdad to Beijing, the White House to Darfur. Richard Ingham is AFP's international coordinator of science, health and environment coverage.

Comments1 - 10 of 124

  1. We just have to do it by ourselves. How... www.autonopedia.org

    musimikal From musimikal on Fri Nov 06 05:10PM

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  2. Who will pay for third world countries to control their emissions? - Most of them can't afford to feed their own people!
    .
    Ahhh...We will arrange loans and grants to pay for them - Hooray for Taxpayers!
    .
    As for environmentalists dressing up !!!! - (read Left wing, Hippies with time on their hands) - I have no patience with them at all, next week they will be on a 'Ban the Bomb' or 'Save the Whale' march.
    .
    Climate change is inevitable, it's been happening for millennia - Maybe they can control the cycles of the Sun or something - Hey...Good idea for another Tax! - Or am I being too cynical?

    garenacreman From garenacreman on Fri Nov 06 05:12PM

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  3. It's all b o l l o x! Newly developiong countries won't do anything unless developed countries (ie us) give them loads of money! China, India, Brazil - all richer than us will expect us to pay for it. And guess what - Brown will promise them anything because he will soon be out of power and won't have to come up with the money. Climate change - it's all a money making racket. I've read that Al Gore has become a billionaire from that deceitful, untruthful film of his! I'm glad the US Congress is having none of it, they can see through the phoney science. We should get a grip on this and stop treating like a new religion. Global warming is at best a fanciful theory not a proven fact - the World has gone through periods of ice-age and warming throughout history due to slight deformities in its axis. When it last heated up, there were no fossil fuels - explain that away Mr Gore!

    bill.phipps From bill.phipps on Fri Nov 06 05:42PM

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  4. I look forward to our scientists being unhindered by political agenda and speaking out about this and other subjects. I agree with bill, fanciful and very lucrative theory at best. We need the right people saying it though.

    tracyandhercamera From tracyandhercamera on Fri Nov 06 06:28PM

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  5. How narrow-minded can some people be. OK so there is no proof that we are causing global warming, that is until we reach the stage when life on earth is unsupportable. That may be next year, five years' time, twenty years' time or.... It may be in your lifetime, it may be in your children's lifetime or that of their children BUT do YOU want to wait that long? If it is possible to do something about all the toxic emissions that are being pumped into the atmosphere shouldn't we do something about it? Ask some city dwellers who have to live in a constant smog of exhaust fumes and then die because of the illnesses they contract from that situation - should we do something about all these fumes? What answer will you get?

    The thing is, it isn't just those city dwellers who are being killed off, it is happening all over the world. Not just to people and to wild animals it is also happening to the vegetation, the trees that make the oxygen we breathe, the oxygen that keeps us alive. Without those trees we suffocate. Fight global climate change now, one way or another.

    aa260190 From aa260190 on Fri Nov 06 06:54PM

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  6. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    sayarwood From sayarwood on Fri Nov 06 07:19PM

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  7. what a load of @#$%, Climate change is inevitable, it's been happening for millennia, nature getting her own back! the only reason the world leaders are dittering is they are working out how to tax us even more! other wise they don't give a dam about climate change, time we all woke up to their scam

    garyzzr From garyzzr on Fri Nov 06 08:45PM

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  8. bill.phipps ..no3... you say it's a load of bollox but what if it's not? It doesn't take a Phd to realise that Mankind cannot continue with the'civilised' lifestyles presently enjoyed by many, eating up resources by the ton, polluting the world with by - products of these lifestyles, filling up the air with toxins from trillions of cars, etc, etc. If I compare my earlier years....no car, no tv, no freezer,no dishwasher,no breadmaker,no computer, no central heating, with what I'm enjoying today, I can't help but feel that sometime, somewhere there will be a price to pay, and I don't mean my obscene gas bill.
    I know the scientists can get it wrong- I'm still having a quiet giggle about all the Doomsday scenarios regarding the Millenium Bug which turned out to be a heap of nothing, but it stands to reason that we must stop gobbling up our world's natural resources in the way we're doing at present. Even if the 'global warming' is OTT, we should at least try to ease off for the sake of future generations to come.We are being too greedy, methinks.

    diubell47 From diubell47 on Fri Nov 06 08:47PM

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  9. oh no.
    not me again.

    eccles.adam From eccles.adam on Fri Nov 06 10:07PM

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  10. It has been getting warmer since the last ice age peaked 18,000 years ago Archangel St;Brown thinks he is in charge and it is a good way to raise tax to buy votes in the public sector. A bit like Afghanistan really

    brynolan From brynolan on Fri Nov 06 10:09PM

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