What happened at Copenhagen .... is no surprise

I was off in Tanzania, without internet and phone access, during the climate change conference at Copenhagen.  One of the high school students in that village asked me, "Sorry sir, what is the purpose of the international conference in Denmark?"
(A clarification: almost always the students there used "sorry" to preface their questions.)

I was so tempted to give him the bottom line that I gave students in my classes last term: that the Copenhagen conference won't achieve a damn thing because:

• the US is way too weak to shape the global agenda, particularly thanks to the US owing China a huge chunk of change
• China will be a tough negotiator and won't yield an inch, and will not care for emission reductions
• India will cry poverty and seek sympathy, and will not be interested in any emission reductions
• the rest of the world will merely watch these unfold

Of course, I spun a different story for this curious Tanzanian student.
But then it has taken me this long to kind of get caught up with what happened when I was gone.  The piece in the Guardian sounds exactly like the script that I had offered up my students--I suppose I was correct for once!  Here is how the piece starts:

China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

I am not sure what to make of such a report.  Way too cinematic a report.  It almost makes me want to discount it entirely.  But, dammit, the description there is so much like what I told my students would happen!

China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.
China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

I am not going to deny the possibility of China doing what it reportedly did.  But, this narrative does conveniently overlook how the US did not want to do anything all these years.  It overlooks how the US was often the lone dissenter among the industrialized countries.  Oh well.  Back to the Guardian:

Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China's negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity ("equal rights to the atmosphere") in the service of planetary suicide – and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.

Let it be the last time that you were fooled into thinking that China would play nice on global issues--it would only China were to gain relatively more than the rest of the countries.

A long time ago, when I was in grad school, in a serious academic conversation a classmate of mine--who was from China--gave me the bottom line: China is the center of the world.  And this was just about when Deng Xiaoping had barely uttered that "to get rich is glorious" ....

Welcome to the 21st century, folks. 

Al Gore is a no-go to Copenhagen .... "climategate" strikes?

The AP reports that Gore is canceling an appointment for which tickets had been sold:

Climate campaigner Al Gore has canceled a lecture he was supposed to deliver in Copenhagen.
The former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner had been scheduled to speak to more than 3,000 people at a Dec. 16 event hosted by the Berlingske Tidende newspaper group.
The group says Gore canceled the lecture Thursday, citing unforeseen changes in his schedule.

Of course, speculation is that this is a result of "Climategate" .... (not that Gore was involved in the emails)
Meanwhile, Senator Boxer is calling for a criminal investigation.  I hope they do track down the person(s) involved.  After all, we do not want to ignore the fact that hacking is a criminal offense.
And Senator Inhofe wants Congressional investigations, which I am sure will go above and beyond the hacking itself and into whether global warming is for real.  (Yes, it is for real, despite all the crazy emails.)

This is typically supposed to be a slow news period--from Thanksgiving until a week into the new year.  But, it has turned out to be one busy time: I mean, climategate, Woods' woods and irons, Afghanistan war, civil war for the roses, .....aaaaahhhhh, please, slow down .....

Anyway, here is Al Gore when he appeared on the Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Formidable Opponent - Global Warming With Al Gore
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Climategate: a wonderful twofer :-)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Scientists Hide Global Warming Data
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Something Is Melting in Denmark - Dan Esty
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Not from Monty Python, but from Senator James Inhofe

From the NY Times Magazine: (in bold are the questions, and his responses follow)

You think the detainees at Guantánamo eat better than you do?
I’m talking about before they got in there, what they ate back in Yemen or wherever they came from. One of the big problems is they become obese when they get here because they’ve never eaten that good before. Can you tell me one reason to close Gitmo?
Because it’s on foreign soil, where prisoners don’t have the same legal rights as prisoners tried here, and we want to apply the same laws to everybody.
You want to apply the same laws to terrorists that are captured as you do to criminals in America?
Yes.
Wow.
Because we have to take the high road as Americans.
I see. That’s an interesting concept.

Billion-plus in the dark, while we energy hogs whine

Get this:

An estimated 79 percent of the people in the Third World -- the 50 poorest nations -- have no access to electricity, despite decades of international development work. The total number of individuals without electric power is put at about 1.5 billion, or a quarter of the world's population, concentrated mostly in Africa and southern Asia.
The 1.5 billion figure represents an improvement over previous years, but not because of any concerted effort to expand power connections. Rather, it is a consequence of rapid urbanization with populations moving to electricity and not the other way around, said Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist.
"This is very bad and is something that the energy community and others should be ashamed of," Birol said. The amount of electricity consumed in one day in all sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa, is about equal to that consumed in New York City, an indicator of the huge gap in electricity usage in the world.

In case you missed that last sentence, let me repeat that quote:

The amount of electricity consumed in one day in all sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa, is about equal to that consumed in New York City

We don't talk enough about this HUGE imbalance. I suppose it is because we will feel guilty as a result; denial helps, eh!

But, these are the kind of issues that will bubble up at Copenhagen and other conferences.  My metaphorical hat is off to people who bring such issues to our attention:

about 2.5 billion people globally subsist on wood or charcoal. With so much attention on the energy consumption habits of larger economies in the climate talks, the report's authors say they worry that the plight of those without any modern power is being willfully ignored. A quarter of the world is disconnected from debates over clean energy "because their reality is much more basic than that," said UNDP's director of development planning, Olav Kjørven.

This map of the world shows the artificial light used in the night--a measure of electricity usage.