There’s always lots of hope around these conventions. Generally, we hope to achieve a strong agreement to prevent the world from reaching dangerous warming. And most are happy to hope for something passable. However, the politics, bureaucracy, science, economics and history, are so complex and knotted, that expectations are generally pretty low.
Still, yesterday a small sliver of potential opened in the stormy Durban skies. The EU plus the most vulnerable countries in the world (including Africa, the least developed and the low lying island nations) came up with a potential road map for a way forward. This group is proposing binding targets set by 2015.
I won’t get into the details - they are still convoluted and not yet resolved. Looks like the conference will run overtime trying to work something out. But Canada, and the US are not really part of this negotiation. And they likely won’t be, because we’re not seen as part of the solution.
One more item I wanted to include in today’s blog. Minister Kent did make several comments yesterday. Some were around the potential of 2015 for commitments. Most of this was overplayed in the reports.
What I found interesting was listening to the Minister discuss the science around “black carbon” - which is a fancy word for soot. Soot is accelerating the melt of the Arctic.
The Minister was informed and spoke well on the issue. He expressed a need to address black carbon based on the scientific evidence. All good. But it makes me wonder why we don’t use the same argument for the rest of the climate drivers like greenhouse gas emissions. This selectivity with respect to the science is troubling and hints that our elected leaders are willing to spin the science to suit the agenda.
As we move to the last day, Elizabeth and I will do our best to track, report and encourage the outcome. We remain hopeful.
Hope is both an advantage and a burden. If we didn’t have hope it would be tough to keep working in the issue of climate change and these incredibly convoluted negotiations. But too much hope leaves us without the necessary critical skills to call the bs when we see it.