Obama Buzz Felt at Global Climate Talks: "'US back in the conversation, with a leader that gets it."

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: NYT/AP

The president-elect won't be there, but an Obama buzz will crackle through the conference hall when negotiators gather Monday for a final push toward a sweeping new global warming treaty.

''America is back,'' says Sen. John Kerry, underscoring that Barack Obama's election signals a U.S. intent to regain a leadership role on climate change. ''After eight years of obstruction and delay and denial, the United States is going to rejoin the world community in tackling this global challenge,'' said the Massachusetts Democrat, in line to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Delegates from nearly 190 countries gather for two weeks in Poznan, Poland, meeting for fourth time in the past year. Previous talks have witnessed bickering, clashes and compromise in what the top U.N. climate official calls the most difficult and complex international negotiation in history.

They have set a deadline of December 2009 to complete an accord on reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for changing the Earth's climate.

Delegates say Obama's election promises to energize a process that until now has been burdened by a U.S. reluctance to endorse any international climate regime. ''In Poznan there will be a buzz -- we can call it the American buzz,'' said Jake Schmidt, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. ''The U.S. is back in the conversation, and back with a leader that gets it.''...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-EU-Climate-Change-Obama.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. Heh. We just took an 8-year break from the world. No biggie.

[sakabatou]

5. No biggie?

Really? I'm sorry, but I don't see it as a "no biggie."

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Neither does BinB or anyone else.

I think that was a bit sardonic.

[Sal Minella]

7. Actually, we continued to use the world for purposes of plundering resources and colonization.

We just took an eight-year break from being a partner among civilized nations.
But I guess that's what you were actually saying, isn't it.

[karynnj]

8. Maybe only a 7 year break -

"Washington refused to ratify the protocol. President George W. Bush argued it would hurt the U.S. economy while making no demands on emerging economic powers like China, which has surpassed the U.S. as the world's biggest polluter.

A breakthrough came at last December's talks when China and other developing countries agreed to share the burden of controlling emissions -- though without accepting the same limits as the industrial countries, and only if they get help to switch to lower-carbon economies."

Last December, the US did sign on to a treaty that corrected the main reason the Senate would not have passed Kyoto. It had a compromise that did constrain third world carbon production - while realizing that the third world could not be treated as the first world was. They needed the opportunity to develop, but they needed to avoid the errors we went through.

Here were two Senate hearings on what happened in Bali, but the SFRC site appears to be down. Here is another source that has part of one of the hearings. This one was in April 2008 - the earlier one was in January 2008.
http://www.kerryvision.net/2008/04/in_defense_of_treehuggers.html

What is clear is that some of the people on the US team did work very hard to get something out of Bali. In addition, Senator Kerry went as the Congressional delegation. He spoke of the fact that every Democrat running (and McCain) were willing to do more than Bush and he worked towards keeping us in the works. On the link above, Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat (around 4 minutes in) said:

"The fact that we had a treaty was significantly due to the fact that Senator Kerry was there. He was a virtual part of our negotiating team, without his day and night support and lobbying of the EU. we would not have gotten a treaty."

Given Gore's work educating people and the work started to get a better treaty, we may be in better shape than we were in the late 1990s when it was known that changes were needed to get Kyoto passed. I think the treaty that they hope to have by December 2009 will go through the SFRC, so it is good that someone as committed as Kerry will be the Senator leading the effort to pass it.

[JNelson6563]

2. It's like we get a Mulligan from the world.

:toast:

[Acadia Blue]

3. Perhaps science and education will not be put down anymore

[defendandprotect]

4. Even leaders who"got it" did little ...ie nationalizing oil, electric cars --

and that includes Gore who had an oil company supporting him throughout his career --

EXCEPT Carter --- tho I'm sure he wasn't able to do all he wanted to do --