December 07, 2007
Bali Summit Rattled By Earthquake & Dubious Progress
The 10,000 attendees of the U.N.'s two-week climate change conference got a reminder of the Earth's fragility today, when an earthquake hit 150 miles southwest of Bali, Indonesia.
The quake wasn't strong enough to cause damage or injury -- just 5.4 on the Richter scale -- but the walls and floors in the complex hosting the conference shook for about 10 seconds. Attendees from 190 countries are working on striking a deal to address global warming and other international environmental concerns.
Organizers of the conference may have been struck another kind of blow, as well: A U.N. official said today that it's unlikely the U.S. will agree to any binding deal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, said the discussion started "very enthusiastically," but several developing nations along with the U.S. will probably reject the standards and the international community has failed to agree on an approach to global warming.
When Australia announced its decision earlier this week to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. became the world's only wealthy country not to sign the accord. The Bali conference was designed to put a plan in place for when Kyoto expires in 2012, and organizers had hoped to convince the U.S. to sign on to the international community's next steps, but the White House has made it clear it won't support mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Shaming the delegation hasn't worked, either: Salon relates a story of a coalition group naming the U.S. the "fossil of the day" to a roomful of laughter and boos. The Bush administration plans to have the last laugh, trying to forge a behind-the-scenes agreement with China and India to get around the mandatory emissions caps.
The mood at home is changing, though, and as poll numbers begin to suggest the American people want their government to reduce global warming, some observers in Bali sense a shift.
"It's as if you had a huge ice jam in a river that's been there forever," Peter Goldmark, director of the climate and air program for Environmental Defense, told Salon. "Picture the hoary frost-bearded obstructionist Bush administration officials trying to hold that back, and now that's beginning to crack, and that's enormously exciting to all the other countries."
The Senate is trying to ride that momentum as well. On Wednesday, a bill mandating a 70-percent reduction in carbon-dioxide and other emissions by 2050 made it out of committee and will be up for debate on the floor. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer called the vote on the bipartisan legislation, sponsored by independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman and Republican John Warner, the greatest moment of her entire political career.
Posted at 9:10 AM
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Asia, Climate Change, U.N.
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