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December 14—4:30am: Last minute negotiations (Posted by Kevin Knobloch, UCS President)
The UCS team—Alden, Peter, Doug, our crack press officer Aaron, and I—spent a significant chunk of yesterday working to increase pressure on the Bush Administration and its Bali delegation to stop being part of the problem and shift to being part of the solution.
That’s not to say we didn’t have a chance to help shape the policy decisions that will end up in the final Bali Mandate. Doug and Peter labored through the day to advise on what is turning out to be an historic inclusion in the future treaty of provisions that will reduce emissions resulting from the slashing and burning of tropical rainforests. And Alden worked with several colleagues from other groups on draft text that was given to friendly delegations to modify and use as the basis for their own proposals.
Yesterday, the U.S. Climate Action Network, of which we are an integral part (Alden was chair of this coalition of environmental organizations for eleven years), decided to convene a press conference to call out the U.S. delegates for blocking or disrupting the negotiations in various ways. Our media event was slotted just before the U.S. delegation’s own press conference, which meant the reporters would have our core messages in their minds as they asked the American negotiators questions about their actions and strategies.
The U.S. delegation had explicitly rejected positive overtures on long-standing contentious issues from developing countries and the overall effect of their actions has been to sour the mood of the talks.
I was on stage with Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Erin Kenzie, the chairperson of the youth organization SustainUS, and John Coequyt of Greenpeace. My job was to underscore the high credibility of the body of climate science that makes a compelling case for bold action. I decided to be very strong in my words, as time is increasingly short for us to act on climate change. “One of the most unconscionable actions of the U.S. delegation here has been continuing to question the clarity and urgency of climate change science,” I told the assembled reporters from around the world. “In rejecting a range of midterm emissions reduction targets, U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson questioned the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, saying there were many uncertainties remaining in the scenarios. This comes after the panel was awarded a Nobel Prize, and ignores the fact that the United States agreed to the findings of the panel four times over in this year alone.”
I made a point that Peter—the chief scientist of our climate campaign and a lead author of the IPCC’s most recent assessment—often makes. “It is essential to understand that the IPCC’s work is conservative, as a consensus scientific document reflecting the findings of many studies and scientists across the globe.” Scientific findings reported since the IPCC’s latest assessment have made clear that the urgency for policymakers to act is steadily increasing, and I cited a stunning study just reported this week by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher at Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California. His latest modeling studies show that Arctic sea ice will disappear in summers as early as 2013. Using data sets from 1979 to 2004, the team didn’t even include this year’s data that revealed the Arctic ice cover had been reduced to 4.13 million square kilometers, the smallest cover recorded by humans.
Our press conference made quite a splash and The New York Times quoted me in its story the next day, as did other media outlets. But the real media star of the day was Al Gore, who arrived earlier in the day and spoke to a packed hall last night. Our former Vice President was greeted like a cross between a rock star and the moral leader that he is. He’s at the height of his oratory powers, and he energized and inspired the tired delegates and advocates. He noted the failure of U.S. leadership at the conference and urged the audience to forge ahead without the U.S. government’s blessing if need be.
The negotiations intensified this evening as ministers from around the globe struggled to find language they all could agree to. The incorrigible U.S. delegation had introduced more troublesome language at 1:00 a.m. on Friday. Alden and a few other hardy souls maintained a watch in the open air lobby of the hotel where the ministers were meeting. Occasionally, some would come out to consult with Alden or others about new proposals, or revised wording on old proposals.
Negotiations are ongoing and the skillful Climate Action Network advocates—many of whom, like Alden, are veterans of these United Nation’s climate negotiations over the years—are hanging outside the rooms where the ministers are wrestling to reach a final agreement, button-holing the ones they knew to gain intelligence and gently lobby. Reporters, ministerial staff, and organizational advocates are mingling together into the night, awaiting what we hope will be positive news.
December 14: Science, Politics, and Bali (Posted by Peter Frumhoff, Director of Science and Policy)
While climate negotiators wrangle over final language on the Bali Mandate, reports from climate scientists at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in San Francisco provide a sobering reminder of what’s at stake. Halfway across the world, scientists have reported accelerated rates of decline in the Greenland Ice Sheet. Additionally, new climate model projections indicate that Arctic sea ice may entirely disappear within a decade. "Glacial" is, sadly, no longer an apt metaphor to describe the painstakingly slow progress at these negotiations.
The major sticking point in the final hours here in Bali is whether nations will agree to a deep long-term target for reducing heat-trapping emissions—and whether industrialized countries will agree on language about near-term targets to put the world on a path towards avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.
On the long-term target, the science is abundantly clear. To prevent truly catastrophic climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions of greenhouse gases must peak in the next 10-15 years and be reduced to well below half of 2000 levels by 2050. UCS’s recent targets report builds on this finding and makes clear that the United States must reduce its emissions by at least 80 percent below 2000 levels by mid-century.
There is so much at stake. The urgency of the science has been heard by most of the countries engaged in these negotiations, but some—most importantly, the United States—are actively fighting efforts to reach agreement. We're working hard to make sure they don't succeed.
December 13: Discovering Bali’s precious tropical forests (Posted by Doug Boucher, Director of Tropical Forests and Climate Initiative) 
Yesterday, I got the chance to leave the conference area for the first time in 10 days and see a bit of Bali—and in particular—the tropical forests, my main work at UCS and my great love. I went to West Bali National Park and hiked around for several hours with a guide, Bardi. It was a great experience. I’ve returned to the convention center today with a new sense of enthusiasm, and increased dedication to accomplish something meaningful to protect these great tropical forests. 
The National Park is mostly monsoon forest, not the rain forest that we classically think of as representing the tropics. That means that it’s still fairly dry in December, which is the first month of the wet season here south of the equator. The dryness is very obvious—we walked upstream along the dried-up bed of a sizable river, which was shaded by big trees but had no water at all visible except in the big holes made by the digging of wild boars. As soon as we moved up the hill away from the river, we were in open sunlight, as all the trees around us were totally leafless. It reminded me of my early work in the Costa Rican National Park Service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, 35 ago, when I was stationed in Santa Rosa National Park in the dry forest zone. The same incredible contrast between the green, humid wet season and the arid dry season was evident here half a world away. 
But, as in Costa Rica, wildlife was abundant. We saw a large Sambar deer, giant squirrels (twice), and two kinds of monkeys—the abundant gray macaques, which admittedly are everywhere here, even along the roadsides, but also the black monkey, a leaf-eater that stays high in the trees. Towards the end of the hike we saw what Bardi told me was a toucan, and initially I was puzzled—I thought that toucans were only found in the Western Hemisphere. But it turned out to be a hornbill, with the long beak of a toucan but also the incredible upward-projecting nose-like growth on top of its beak. It seemed very large to me, but Bardi said that this was actually pretty small for the species, and that normally one didn’t see it in the monsoon forest, only in the montane rain forest several hundred meters higher up. “It must have come down here to greet you,” he said.
In addition to the animals, I also saw two tree species that are found only in this park—one a close relative of the “chicle” tree I knew from Mexico and Central America, which was the original source of Chiclets chewing gum. As we walked through the forest, I noticed how big some of the trees were, and couldn’t help but start to estimate how much carbon they must have stored in their trunks and branches. (Tons, for some of the largest.) This is the reason that tropical forests and reducing deforestation is so important to global warming—the carbon in tropical forests, which is converted to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when they are cut down, represents an enormous stock of potential greenhouse gases that deforestation threatens to release. Slowing deforestation not only protects the deer, the hornbills, the squirrels, and the monkeys—it also helps protect us humans from dangerous climate change. 
Another notable part of my trip was finding Hindu temples far up the river, right in the midst of the National Park. People from the area were sweeping them clean, dressing the statues in bright golden and black-and-white checkered cloths, and preparing food as sacrifices. There was even an electric line—a double strand of blue wire running along the forest floor up to the temple—to illuminate the area during night-time ceremonies associated with the moon. Bardi told me that the temple site was a very special place, sacred to the peasants of the region, and that the temples with their rock carvings of tigers, snakes, and other animals represented important manifestations of divinity.
It brought home to me in an unexpected way the meaning of a phrase we hear often in these climate change negotiations—“common but differentiated responsibilities.” In the United States, it would be unthinkable to have such a thing in a National Park, but here, it was taken for granted that the temple ceremonies, sometimes with hundreds of participants, were perfectly compatible with conserving wildlife. And indeed, from all the animals and trees I saw, the park seemed to be fulfilling its conservation mission very well.
This is what “common but differentiated responsibilities” means—all countries have an obligation to work against climate change and its causes such as deforestation, but each one will do it in its own individual way, in light of its own history and culture. West Bali National Park is different from our national parks, but they all work towards the goal of reducing deforestation and the global warming pollution it causes—the common responsibility of all people everywhere.
December 12: Meeting with the U.S. delegation; U.S. continues to abdicate responsibility (Posted by Kevin Knobloch, UCS President)
The ministers (senior ranking environmental diplomats) from all the participating countries have finally arrived, and we’re heading into the last three days of the Bali climate talks. Final agreement on a roadmap for the next two years is elusive so far—and only the ministers can salvage this gathering.
I led a delegation of CEOs and senior staff from U.S.-based environmental organizations this morning to a private meeting with James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who is heading the U.S. delegation along with Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky. We asked Connaughton to show U.S. leadership by agreeing to the long-term global warming emission reduction target that has been proposed here in Bali as part of the negotiating framework. The reduction target proposed is "well below half of 2000 levels by 2050." Unfortunately, he resisted endorsing a specific number, but told us that he agreed that the United States needs to deeply reduce its global warming pollution in line with what the best science calls for.
Later in the day at a large, public event, Connaughton and a team of federal energy, environmental, and agriculture officials presented a bullish picture of the Bush administration’s investments in clean energy technologies and low-carbon land use practices. It was all well and good, but in the absence of strong American leadership that takes responsibility for our historic and current global warming pollution and commits to specific carbon reduction targets for both the near-term (e.g. 2020) and long-term (2050), it’s simply not anywhere good enough. Regrettably, Connaughton was unwilling to unequivocally signal that leadership to the assembled audience.
The White House’s team ran into a credibility dilemma when, in their power point slides, they cited the 25 state-passed renewable electricity standards that have begun to provide significant emission reductions across the country. UCS has been instrumental in designing this policy tool—in which electricity generators must purchase increasing percentages of new, clean renewable energy capacity—and we’ve been active in encouraging their adoption in all 25 states. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asked Connaughton why he would tout the state renewable electricity standards at the same time the president has said he will veto the energy bill working its way through Congress if it includes a national renewable standard. The official’s answer was unconvincing.
The administration similarly, in an earlier communication to the United Nations and Bali delegates, touted the California regulation of carbon from vehicle tailpipe standards as part of U.S. leadership—when in fact the administration has worked to undercut that regulation in federal and state courts even as 12 other states have already adopted the California standard.
Again and again, this administration abdicates its responsibility—as the head of the world’s biggest climate polluter—to lead the world by ensuring our planet can continue to sustain life. Here in Bali, on a range of matters, such as the export of clean technologies to the developing world or the need to enlist the rainforest nations in halting deforestation, the U.S. delegation keeps missing opportunities to build its credibility and lead the world forward in a positive, urgent way.
To be sure, the United States is not the only unhelpful country at these talks, as Japan and Canada have signaled an interest in backtracking from their earlier commitments and China started out with a very productive proposal only to pull back as the days ticked by. We have two working days left, and in the world of such international negotiations, that can be a lot of time. But only if the responsible parties set the game-playing aside, and act in a way that is commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis we are striving to stare down.
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