Josh Marshall's TPM tips us off to one reason why the Bush administration turned its back on the UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal. Here's what he found in New York Magazine:
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity. Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said.
There's more:
The contretemps started late Thursday afternoon, when the Associated Press ran a story saying that Clinton had been added at the last minute to the gathering’s speaking schedule at the request of conference organizers. According to the source, barely minutes after the news leaked, conference organizers called Clinton aides and told them that Bush-administration officials were displeased.
“The organizers said the Bush people were threatening to pull out of the deal,” the source said. After some deliberation between Clinton and his aides, Clinton decided he wouldn’t speak, added the source: “President Clinton immediately said, ‘There’s no way that I’m gonna let petty politics get in the way of the deal. So I’m not gonna come.’ That’s the message [the Clinton people] sent back to the organizers.”
But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.’”
Several hours went by, and at the Clinton Foundation’s holiday party on Thursday night, the former president and his aides still thought they weren’t going to Montreal. “The staff that was supposed to go with him had canceled their travel plans,” the source said.
At around 8:30 p.m., organizers called Clinton aides and said that they’d successfully called the bluff of Bush officials, adding that Bush’s aides had backed off and indicated that Clinton’s appearance wouldn’t in fact have adverse diplomatic consequences.
Several hours after all these tense negotiations had been resolved, the U.S. delegation’s chief, Paula Dobriansky, issued a statement saying that events such as Clinton’s speaking “are useful opportunities to hear a wide range of views on global climate change.”
“They were trying to clean up the mess,” the source said. Late Friday the U.S. walked out for other reasons.
There's a report coming up in the Sunday New York Times, already available online which makes no mention of the US fit of pique.
Swiss news has a pretty good summary of the conference.
At one point on 9 December, chief US negotiator Harlan Watson and his aides walked out of the negotiations when delegates moved to include the word “dialogue” in the final communiqué regarding plans to combat climate change in the future.
“If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck,” Watson said, contending that the word choice implied that countries that participate in those talks could be bound by the conclusion that emerges from them.
The US has maintained that it will not participate in any talks that could lead to binding emissions reduction targets. But in the end, the word was left in. The US reluctantly agreed to the text, but only under the condition that it also specifically ruled out “negotiations leading to new commitments”.
“The text that was adopted recognizes the diversity of approaches toward confronting climate change,” said Watson, who has advocated voluntary measures and a greater emphasis on technological solutions in lieu of binding emissions cuts.
That diminutive concession from the US came after enormous pressure from many fronts, including Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who issued an impassioned plea to the US to re-enter the multilateral process, and former US President Bill Clinton who, energized the pro-Kyoto crowd by saying that when it came to his stance on the Kyoto treaty, President George Bush was “flat out wrong”.
That pressure ruffled feathers in Washington. In a statement, Jim Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, said he met with Frank McKenna, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, to express displeasure over Martin’s fiery rhetoric, saying it was an election ploy that could damage relations between the two countries.
The White House, meanwhile, said the appearance by Clinton made the former president, who remains popular in Canada, a political pawn of Martin’s, who is in the midst of a tough battle to retain power in Canada.
Here's how the Globe and Mail saw the outcome:
The United States remained almost alone outside the new Kyoto deal, but agreed to informal talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). The U.S. would only agree to informal talks that will not "open to any discussion leading to new commitments." Critics said the commitment was so empty as to be meaningless. Countries have effectively decided to forge ahead without Washington, said John Bennett of the Sierra Club of Canada.
"This is a clear message to the United States that the rest of the world wants action on climate change," he said.
But Mr. Dion insisted that U.S. participation in the informal "second track" is significant. He announced that the dialogue will begin next year, with initial submissions due in April. The deal does not set emissions-reductions targets for developing countries like China and India, but provides mechanisms through which they can get access to clean technology and financing for climate-friendly projects.
"At this meeting, we've seen the main developing country emitters express the view that they want to take advantage of the carbon market," said Bill Hare of Greenpeace International. "They want the technology and the finance that will flow from that. I think this could be the beginning of a long-term breakthrough."
