Saturday, 26 December 2009
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
We're not quite that stupid
It's a week now since I left Copenhagen. I've had four good nights of sleep in a row, a luxury I've not enjoyed for quite some time. And I've had many, many conversations about The COP. So here are my final impressions.
The Americans have landed
There were a vast number of American delegates. At a rough guess, perhaps a third of the people I met were from US NGOs, there to put across the ideas of the American environmental movement. They left me impressed with their enthusiasm and suggested a massive pent up desire for change in America.
Everyone talks
Inside the talks - if you could get inside that is - the approachability of delegates was remarkable. Its as if everyone was there on the same terms. You could walk up to anyone, introduce yourself and ask pertinent questions. In this way I came across national delegates, a vice chair of the IPCC, the heads of a few NGOs and power companies, and all willing to talk and say what they thought openly. The transparency of the process was impressive.
I won't be asking UNFCCC to organise my wedding
If there's one organisation that came out of this incredibly badly it was UN FCCC. By the end of the conference, they had succeeded in alienating most of the NGO representatives who would have arrived as supporters of FCCC and what it aimed to do. And they just did it through logistical stupidity.
You can't tell people that they've a ticket to an event half way around the World, let them book and pay for their flights and hotels in one of the World's most expensive cities, then tell them when they turn up that they can't come in. Really, it's a very, very bad plan and it played right into the hands of the countries that wanted to see UN FCCC and Kyoto dead. Who got what they wanted.
We're not dead yet
People keep asking me whether I think Copenhagen was a disaster. If you think in the sort of terms that Greenpeace think, where every unnecessary death or extinction is an unforgivable tragedy, then yes, Copenhagen was an utter disaster. But then so is eating meat, so is taking a flight, so is being born a human being. That mindset imagines a utopia where the red in tooth and claw nature of existence has been surpassed by some pseudo-divine balance between man and nature.
Nature is not like that. Humanity is just the latest natural disaster to hit the Earth, just as the meteorite (or whatever it was) wiped out the dinosaurs, or the ice ages destroyed the landscapes of the past.
That we have the capacity at all to mitigate this disaster is unprecedented in nature, and that we are making serious efforts to do so is a wonder given the savagery that lies within us. Only a few years ago our fellow citizens of Earth were hacking each others limbs off by the millions in Rwanda and Bosnia, and these were in many cases sensible, educated middle class people, just like us. For many in the World, life is still Hobbesian.
When I first began to pay attention to climate change back in 1990, I certainly didn't realise how serious the problem would turn out to be, nor did I think that within 20 years we'd have come as far as we have. Many major nations have reduced their emissions. Most now are serious about doing so at some level, as shown by the Copenhagen Accord. And the rich, those of us who built our wealth by emitting most of the GHGs currently in the atmosphere, have begun to accept our responsibility for reducing the effects this is having on the poor.
20 years is a short time in global geopolitics. Fixing the ozone layer was a trivial problem but took half that time. Reducing global nuclear proliferation has been ongoing now for 50 years and is still not finished. As the impacts of climate change begin to bite over the coming couple of decades and as technology improves, we will develop tighter targets and better approaches, perhaps based on sectoral restraints rather than national ceilings. It will take more floods in Saudi Arabia, more sand-storms in China, more famines for the poor, more devastated harvests in the American mid-West, more rivers running through Knightsbridge. But it will come.
Yes, for those who sought an instant pot-noodle agreement that would fix everything, Copenhagen was a great disappointment. Yes, there will be unnecessary famines, wars, deaths and extinctions. But no, we should not give up hope. We'll get there in the end, and yes the solution will be more expensive and difficult because it's late, but if we don't we'll be dead. And we're not quite that stupid.
Check back with me in another 20 years. Merry Christmas.
The Americans have landed
There were a vast number of American delegates. At a rough guess, perhaps a third of the people I met were from US NGOs, there to put across the ideas of the American environmental movement. They left me impressed with their enthusiasm and suggested a massive pent up desire for change in America.
Everyone talks
Inside the talks - if you could get inside that is - the approachability of delegates was remarkable. Its as if everyone was there on the same terms. You could walk up to anyone, introduce yourself and ask pertinent questions. In this way I came across national delegates, a vice chair of the IPCC, the heads of a few NGOs and power companies, and all willing to talk and say what they thought openly. The transparency of the process was impressive.
I won't be asking UNFCCC to organise my wedding
If there's one organisation that came out of this incredibly badly it was UN FCCC. By the end of the conference, they had succeeded in alienating most of the NGO representatives who would have arrived as supporters of FCCC and what it aimed to do. And they just did it through logistical stupidity.
You can't tell people that they've a ticket to an event half way around the World, let them book and pay for their flights and hotels in one of the World's most expensive cities, then tell them when they turn up that they can't come in. Really, it's a very, very bad plan and it played right into the hands of the countries that wanted to see UN FCCC and Kyoto dead. Who got what they wanted.
We're not dead yet
People keep asking me whether I think Copenhagen was a disaster. If you think in the sort of terms that Greenpeace think, where every unnecessary death or extinction is an unforgivable tragedy, then yes, Copenhagen was an utter disaster. But then so is eating meat, so is taking a flight, so is being born a human being. That mindset imagines a utopia where the red in tooth and claw nature of existence has been surpassed by some pseudo-divine balance between man and nature.
Nature is not like that. Humanity is just the latest natural disaster to hit the Earth, just as the meteorite (or whatever it was) wiped out the dinosaurs, or the ice ages destroyed the landscapes of the past.
That we have the capacity at all to mitigate this disaster is unprecedented in nature, and that we are making serious efforts to do so is a wonder given the savagery that lies within us. Only a few years ago our fellow citizens of Earth were hacking each others limbs off by the millions in Rwanda and Bosnia, and these were in many cases sensible, educated middle class people, just like us. For many in the World, life is still Hobbesian.
When I first began to pay attention to climate change back in 1990, I certainly didn't realise how serious the problem would turn out to be, nor did I think that within 20 years we'd have come as far as we have. Many major nations have reduced their emissions. Most now are serious about doing so at some level, as shown by the Copenhagen Accord. And the rich, those of us who built our wealth by emitting most of the GHGs currently in the atmosphere, have begun to accept our responsibility for reducing the effects this is having on the poor.
20 years is a short time in global geopolitics. Fixing the ozone layer was a trivial problem but took half that time. Reducing global nuclear proliferation has been ongoing now for 50 years and is still not finished. As the impacts of climate change begin to bite over the coming couple of decades and as technology improves, we will develop tighter targets and better approaches, perhaps based on sectoral restraints rather than national ceilings. It will take more floods in Saudi Arabia, more sand-storms in China, more famines for the poor, more devastated harvests in the American mid-West, more rivers running through Knightsbridge. But it will come.
Yes, for those who sought an instant pot-noodle agreement that would fix everything, Copenhagen was a great disappointment. Yes, there will be unnecessary famines, wars, deaths and extinctions. But no, we should not give up hope. We'll get there in the end, and yes the solution will be more expensive and difficult because it's late, but if we don't we'll be dead. And we're not quite that stupid.
Check back with me in another 20 years. Merry Christmas.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
What goes on Tuesday stays on Tuesday
There's an old saying in England - what goes on tour, stays on tour - and some of the stuff that went on on Tuesday was commercially sensitive. As a result, the story of Tuesday is a bit dull for the simple reason that I need to exercise some sensible self-censorship and not give away commercial secrets.
The day began with our morning briefing, where our senior execs would revise the schedule for the day ahead. At 1030 we were due to meet with one of the most senior environmental policy executives in the World, X, the leader of Organisation Y. Then at 1pm there was the CDP event where our CTO was due to speak. Despite the massive mayhem of yesterday and the colder weather that was pressing in, there was no reason to shake up the schedule for today so we stuck to plan A.
Our meeting with X was due to happen in a very beautiful old mansion house, on the side of a Copenhagen square. We got there a bit early, and as luck would have it arrived at exactly the same moment as X. She ushered us into her office, a magnificent set of rooms with a beautiful view overlooking the square. As far as I could tell was bigger than the flat that I'm trying to buy in London. London property prices are a killer ... The square was filled with exhibits about the environment, so we were looking down on a collection of satellites, huge photos of the beauty of the environment, and graphs of the nightmare scenarios of global temperature rises. Her top team of four directors - who were also around for the COP - joined us.
The conversations opened with discussion of the COP. All of Organisation Y's team were exhausted, having worked late into the night on many nights working the negotiations. All of them had even bigger bags under their eyes than I did. Under the circumstances, it was incredibly generous of them to give us an hour and a half of their time. At this stage, they all still felt that there would be a good agreement out of the COP.
The long and the short of our meeting with X (and really all that I can say) was that we found we had a lot in common both between our general work and the innovations work I'm leading in our business and the things Organisation Y are planning for the future, and given that organisation's enormous influence that is very promising indeed.
From there we went to Crowne Plaza hotel for the Carbon Disclosure Project we were sponsoring. This was well attended and our CTO did a good job of getting our point of view across to the assembled delegates. The points we were trying to get across all seem a bit academic, but are important. Because there are growing numbers of environmental rules and regulations, the administrative and measurement costs of meeting these are growing to the point where for big organisations just reporting the numbers to environmental agencies can run into millions of euros/pounds/dollars per year. And our point is that there are some tricks of the trade that can be applied to cut these costs and make your reporting more reliable at the same time, and we happen to know quite a lot about these tricks.
The other point we made was that the trend towards using accounting methodologies to address environmental problems is probably unwise. Accounting methods are designed to keep track of money that can be counted in pounds, shillings and pence, to an accuracy of pence even in huge organisations. Keeping track of money to this level of accuracy is essential for any organisation.
But this approach is total overkill for environmental reporting. For two decades, scientists have been working on methods of accounting for greenhouse gases, ozone destroying substances, air and water pollution, etc etc and these are methods that are based on a thorough understanding that the substances involved are very hard to quantify or keep track of through the "food chain" that is our economy. The methods are based on transparency and verification to reduce uncertainties, not based on penny-by-penny tracking of resources, and cost far, far less to implement than accounting type solutions.
Anyway, these ideas went down well. Our event ended and the rest of the team headed back to our hotel, while I took my final chance to take in the COP before leaving the next day. Prince Charles was due to be speaking at the plenary session at 5pm, so myself and a friend who was also at the COP thought we might be able to blag our way into the event ....
... we were turned away in no uncertain terms by security. Oh well, if you don't try, you never know. :)
The rest of the day was spent in a bit of networking, then heading to bed early. The long day was over.
The day began with our morning briefing, where our senior execs would revise the schedule for the day ahead. At 1030 we were due to meet with one of the most senior environmental policy executives in the World, X, the leader of Organisation Y. Then at 1pm there was the CDP event where our CTO was due to speak. Despite the massive mayhem of yesterday and the colder weather that was pressing in, there was no reason to shake up the schedule for today so we stuck to plan A.
Our meeting with X was due to happen in a very beautiful old mansion house, on the side of a Copenhagen square. We got there a bit early, and as luck would have it arrived at exactly the same moment as X. She ushered us into her office, a magnificent set of rooms with a beautiful view overlooking the square. As far as I could tell was bigger than the flat that I'm trying to buy in London. London property prices are a killer ... The square was filled with exhibits about the environment, so we were looking down on a collection of satellites, huge photos of the beauty of the environment, and graphs of the nightmare scenarios of global temperature rises. Her top team of four directors - who were also around for the COP - joined us.
The conversations opened with discussion of the COP. All of Organisation Y's team were exhausted, having worked late into the night on many nights working the negotiations. All of them had even bigger bags under their eyes than I did. Under the circumstances, it was incredibly generous of them to give us an hour and a half of their time. At this stage, they all still felt that there would be a good agreement out of the COP.
The long and the short of our meeting with X (and really all that I can say) was that we found we had a lot in common both between our general work and the innovations work I'm leading in our business and the things Organisation Y are planning for the future, and given that organisation's enormous influence that is very promising indeed.
From there we went to Crowne Plaza hotel for the Carbon Disclosure Project we were sponsoring. This was well attended and our CTO did a good job of getting our point of view across to the assembled delegates. The points we were trying to get across all seem a bit academic, but are important. Because there are growing numbers of environmental rules and regulations, the administrative and measurement costs of meeting these are growing to the point where for big organisations just reporting the numbers to environmental agencies can run into millions of euros/pounds/dollars per year. And our point is that there are some tricks of the trade that can be applied to cut these costs and make your reporting more reliable at the same time, and we happen to know quite a lot about these tricks.
The other point we made was that the trend towards using accounting methodologies to address environmental problems is probably unwise. Accounting methods are designed to keep track of money that can be counted in pounds, shillings and pence, to an accuracy of pence even in huge organisations. Keeping track of money to this level of accuracy is essential for any organisation.
But this approach is total overkill for environmental reporting. For two decades, scientists have been working on methods of accounting for greenhouse gases, ozone destroying substances, air and water pollution, etc etc and these are methods that are based on a thorough understanding that the substances involved are very hard to quantify or keep track of through the "food chain" that is our economy. The methods are based on transparency and verification to reduce uncertainties, not based on penny-by-penny tracking of resources, and cost far, far less to implement than accounting type solutions.
Anyway, these ideas went down well. Our event ended and the rest of the team headed back to our hotel, while I took my final chance to take in the COP before leaving the next day. Prince Charles was due to be speaking at the plenary session at 5pm, so myself and a friend who was also at the COP thought we might be able to blag our way into the event ....
... we were turned away in no uncertain terms by security. Oh well, if you don't try, you never know. :)
The rest of the day was spent in a bit of networking, then heading to bed early. The long day was over.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and the mystery lady in the lift
It's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad that I'm sharing my hotel with, according to the nice policeman. Yesterday's copper schmoozing investment wasn't wasted after all it seems.
Eeeek - get the bomb squad! Oh no hang on, they're all here already, and they all have very, VERY large guns all over the hotel. I suspect I'll sleep safe in my bed tonight.
More bizarrely, I met a very well turned out lady of Middle Eastern origin in the lift this morning, who told me her husband was speaking at the UN today. Hmmm .. heads of state day .... she was on her own, looked a bit bored and lonely and politely invited me to join her for breakfast. Of all the days to have an 830am meeting planned. Who knows what might have happened.
In case, dear reader, you're wondering what level of hotel I'm staying at, yes it's nice, but as far as I know the 110 best hotels in Denmark each have a president in them of some colour, shape or origin. And one of them even has Tony Blair - so perhaps sharing a building with Ahmedinejad isn't so bad after all.
The rest of the day was a cracker - talk about making up for yesterday's cock-ups! But it's 2:09am and I should be in bed, as we've a breakfast meeting at 730 before heading home. The tale of technical geeky successes and putting one up on the Global Accounting Conspiracy .. sorry ... Fraternity will have to wait...
Eeeek - get the bomb squad! Oh no hang on, they're all here already, and they all have very, VERY large guns all over the hotel. I suspect I'll sleep safe in my bed tonight.
More bizarrely, I met a very well turned out lady of Middle Eastern origin in the lift this morning, who told me her husband was speaking at the UN today. Hmmm .. heads of state day .... she was on her own, looked a bit bored and lonely and politely invited me to join her for breakfast. Of all the days to have an 830am meeting planned. Who knows what might have happened.
In case, dear reader, you're wondering what level of hotel I'm staying at, yes it's nice, but as far as I know the 110 best hotels in Denmark each have a president in them of some colour, shape or origin. And one of them even has Tony Blair - so perhaps sharing a building with Ahmedinejad isn't so bad after all.
The rest of the day was a cracker - talk about making up for yesterday's cock-ups! But it's 2:09am and I should be in bed, as we've a breakfast meeting at 730 before heading home. The tale of technical geeky successes and putting one up on the Global Accounting Conspiracy .. sorry ... Fraternity will have to wait...
Monday, 14 December 2009
A day that's finally over
Ok, well its bedtime. My hotel is crawling with police, but they won't tell us which head of state is staying here, no matter how much I schmooze the policeman. Spent the early evening making arrangements to ensure that our emissions policy specialist could get in over the next few days. Had to give up all our other passes to make it work - so much for our corporate networking events.
When coming here I thought this would an extraordinary opportunity to see the FCCC in action and meet incredible people. Both have turned out to be true, but in ways least expected.
The contrasts are extraordinary. The stoic Danish hosts for whom conformity and consensus is everything, epitomised by the unfailingly polite police who are everywhere and thoroughly intimidating. The chaotic UN FCCC that seems to be digging its own grave. The masses of people who came here from around the World to make their voices heard as part of the process, whether the vegan lobbyists dressed as chickens wandering inside the conference, the Greenpeace folk who kept us all warm with coffee as we stood around in the subzeros, or the global corporate leaders queueing with the dreadlocked rasta-kids at 7 in the morning in the hope of getting in, but probably didn't. Wow, but maybe not a good wow.
I can't wait to get home to London. But tomorrow is OUR chance to make a difference, the day we say what we came to say to the side event we're supporting. What we came all this way for. So, fingers crossed, bedtime.
When coming here I thought this would an extraordinary opportunity to see the FCCC in action and meet incredible people. Both have turned out to be true, but in ways least expected.
The contrasts are extraordinary. The stoic Danish hosts for whom conformity and consensus is everything, epitomised by the unfailingly polite police who are everywhere and thoroughly intimidating. The chaotic UN FCCC that seems to be digging its own grave. The masses of people who came here from around the World to make their voices heard as part of the process, whether the vegan lobbyists dressed as chickens wandering inside the conference, the Greenpeace folk who kept us all warm with coffee as we stood around in the subzeros, or the global corporate leaders queueing with the dreadlocked rasta-kids at 7 in the morning in the hope of getting in, but probably didn't. Wow, but maybe not a good wow.
I can't wait to get home to London. But tomorrow is OUR chance to make a difference, the day we say what we came to say to the side event we're supporting. What we came all this way for. So, fingers crossed, bedtime.
Chaos and going carbon negative
It has been a ludicrous day. Having spent the last 5 weeks organising a series of meetings and events today for our team to attend, the chaotic logistics of the UNFCCC meant that most of the people who turned up today got turned away. We (well, my bosses and I) started queuing to get in at 740 am this morning, in sub-zero temperatures. By 1030 the queue had moved about 200m and we gave up. So much for the best laid plans of 5 weeks.
I ran into one former work colleague who now works at Chatham house. He gave up the queue at 3pm having waited since 9am. He was utterly frozen when we met him.
So ... if this is how they run a conference, how do they run a treaty ...
I got in for a little while this afternoon on my own and was told there are now three treaty texts running, but they're not being given to non-govrenment delegates. Rumours are that two of them reject Kyoto, but I've no idea if this is true or not.
Met a senior EU & IPCC climatologist, who turned out to be ex-phd supervisor of a friend. He was quite pessimistic, not on the liklihood of an outcome, but of its utility. He reckons there will be an agreement - you don't round up 110 heads of state for a week for nothing - but the science suggests that we have already passed the threshold at which 2 degrees warming could be prevented. And what we need to be doing to prevent it now is planning for a carbon NEGATIVE society within 4 decades. Jaysus that's hard work.
Am looking forward to my bed. Was up until 2 last night finalising arrangements for today, which were all already redundant by 8am this morning.
I ran into one former work colleague who now works at Chatham house. He gave up the queue at 3pm having waited since 9am. He was utterly frozen when we met him.
So ... if this is how they run a conference, how do they run a treaty ...
I got in for a little while this afternoon on my own and was told there are now three treaty texts running, but they're not being given to non-govrenment delegates. Rumours are that two of them reject Kyoto, but I've no idea if this is true or not.
Met a senior EU & IPCC climatologist, who turned out to be ex-phd supervisor of a friend. He was quite pessimistic, not on the liklihood of an outcome, but of its utility. He reckons there will be an agreement - you don't round up 110 heads of state for a week for nothing - but the science suggests that we have already passed the threshold at which 2 degrees warming could be prevented. And what we need to be doing to prevent it now is planning for a carbon NEGATIVE society within 4 decades. Jaysus that's hard work.
Am looking forward to my bed. Was up until 2 last night finalising arrangements for today, which were all already redundant by 8am this morning.
The queue of 20,000
This morning sees the beginning of the second week of the conference, and the arrival of the 20,000 excess delegates.
And the UN is not ready. I'm currently standing with my colleagues close to the front of a 2km long queue of people trying to get in. I've seen heads of major corporations, environmental NGOs and social justice groups standing freezing for three hours in sub-zero temperatures. The reception desk has only 12 people on it.
Unbelievable.
And the UN is not ready. I'm currently standing with my colleagues close to the front of a 2km long queue of people trying to get in. I've seen heads of major corporations, environmental NGOs and social justice groups standing freezing for three hours in sub-zero temperatures. The reception desk has only 12 people on it.
Unbelievable.
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