Greenpeace

Yesterday was a hectic and tiring day. Having spent 15 hours in the conference center yesterday, it felt like I had never left as I walked back in at 7:00am this morning. Having now spent five days at the conference center, I finally feel like I have my bearings. The conference center is like a city within a city, which is good, because I have seen nothing in Montreal other than conference center and the Holiday Inn Select, which is right across the street. The days are filled with official U.N. Climate Meetings, side events, Greenpeace briefings, and other misc. meetings. Now on to the excitement! The important discussions around what a post 2012 commitment period would look like began in earnest last evening with a contact group assembled to deal with this issue. The meeting was scheduled to run from 7:30pm to 9:00pm, but ended running almost an hour over. The room, which was configured to seat about 100 people, was overflowing; people were spilling out into the corridors attempting to follow the discussions. The fact that meeting was so well attended speaks to the fact that this is the real work. This meeting was clearly the highlight of my day. Discussions began last night with proposals by the G77 (group of developing nations) and China, the European Union, and Japan. After each group introduced their proposals, the floor was open to other countries. Norway, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Grenada, Canada, Tuvalu, Switzerland, South Africa, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Brazil, India, and Iceland had different takes on the proposals. There were may divergent opinions on what a second commitment period could look like, but there were common elements of that are encouraging. All delegates agreed that discussions on the future beyond 2012 were important, that this meeting called for the development of a process and framework that will end with a decision on future targets, and that this discussion shows that global warming is a serious issue. There were clearly divergent ideas on what the process and timeline should look like, but it was encouraging that delegates are focused on post 2012. The group of delegates working on the post 2012 issue will meet again tomorrow. With the initial session of the contact group behind us, there is now the hard work of fleshing out the details. As the delegate from the Philippines said, “There are 24 hours in a day, and we will need all of them”. So we will be working 25 hours a day. Stay tuned for more updates!

Yesterday was a big day in Montreal, after the first two days of opening sessions and discussions; we had out first important decision at the U.N. International Climate Change Meeting. At around 11:00am yesterday, the delegates agreed to adopt the Marrakech Accords. This decision was an important milestone in the continuing international effort to fight global warming. The Marrakech Accords is the rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol, and adoption of the Accords makes the rules international law. There was concern that the adoption of the Accords would be more difficult, and that Saudi Arabia would try and muck it up. With the adoption of the Accords, applause broke out throughout the room. It was an exciting moment. Yesterday also saw two interesting events with the U.S. delegation. In an afternoon side event the U.S. talked about their progress, or frankly, lack of progress to address the growing threat from global warming. Their presentation was simply more of the same. Voluntary programs and some vague hope that some yet to be discovered technology will solve the problem of rising global warming pollution. Later in the afternoon, I had the opportunity along with my colleagues from other U.S. non-profits, to ask specific questions of the U.S. delegation. When asked what they hoped to see come out of the meetings in Montreal, it was clear that they do not wish to see any meaningful progress on a timeframe or framework for further reductions in binding limits on global warming pollution for the post 2012 period. In another good piece of news, discussions on the post 2012 period have begun in earnest. The first proposal has been but on the table by developing countries and China. This is a good first step, and is now the basis for further discussions among all the delegates. We will learn more over the next couple of days on whether the delegates are moving in the right direction, so stayed tuned.