Blogging the U.N. High-Level Event on Climate Change
Boing Boing Gadgets will be a bit off the rails this morning, as I am at the United Nations to report on the TK, a gathering of some eighty-odd heads of state who have come together to build political momentum for the upcoming successor to the Kyoto Treaty, to be proposed late this year in Bali.
Expect updates about the summit throughout the day. We'll return to regularly scheduled gadget nerdery Tuesday.
Although my level of access is said to be "unfettered," I'm unsure to whom I'll have access. If you have any questions you'd like for me to pass on to a for-the-moment nameless head of state about climate change—specifically climate change and technology, which will be my broad focus—post them up and I'll do my best to connect your questions with someone capable of a worthwhile answer. (A "minister from Tuvalu" was a possible example, so if you have any questions about getting those .tv domains...)
High-Level Event on Climate Change [UN.org]
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Joel, pls ask a head-of-state, any head-of-state, if the new treaty will prohibit the transfer of emission quota from one state to the other.
The real story here is what the Bush administration is up to. Today's event, and the meeting in Bali in December, is part of the U.N.'s mission to have a meaningful post-Kyoto agreement. Then out of the blue, Bush calls a U.S.-led meeting to discuss all of the same stuff for later this week. Everyone is understandably skeptical when George Bush calls for an international meeting on global warming as he hasn't exactly been a leader in this regard in the past.
I think the general consensus is that Bush just refuses to let the U.N. lead the debate. Everyone assumes our position will stay the same: we won't sign a new treaty unless China and other developing countries also agree to the same limits; we don't think the rules should be mandatory but instead should be "voluntary guidelines" that we can then presumably ignore while appearing to have participated in some meaningful way.
Condi will be there today to represent the U.S. so it will be interesting to see what she has to say. I suspect the news from this event will be minimal and everyone will wait to see what happens later in the week to know how to react to Bush's supposed newfound leadership on global warming (oops, I mean climate change).
Great info, Icky. I'm loathe to admit I'm not abreast of the political situation as I am the science and business parts of things, although I'm soaking up a ton today. Also, interesting, Bush is apparently supposed to show at an informal dinner this evening to discuss climate, but yeah, no actual talk.
We won't show up for the work but we'll still stop by for dinner!
Can you please ask how we are going to stop the oceans and volcanoes from emitting CO2? Considering that they are by far the LARGEST producers of CO2...
I'd like to know if anyone at the event has mentioned global dimming yet, rather than getting all hung-up on the buzzterm global warming.
Global dimming is getting more and more media attention: More particles in the earth's atmosphere means less solar radiation and a subsequent drop in temperatures. This effect, which has been studied since the 1950s, is believed to have masked the real magnitude of the effect of greenhouse gas emission on global warming.
Recent drives to be more green have already had effects on pollutant-particle levels in the atmosphere. Less pollution means more radiation, which means even more warming. A worrying thought which may necessitate a more careful approach to solving this whole shebang.