No Place for Cripples

On Tuesday, the second day of the second week of a Conference of the Parties, it reaches a full throated roar. Everybody has arrived. But at this one, in Bali, I kept looking in vain for the Wrecking Crew, who, lo and behold, were nowhere to be found.

Since the very first COP, and at many other associated assemblies, this handful of veteran American lobbyists, seasoned by as many as four decades in the trenches defending the interests of coal, oil, auto, cement and other companies, have been a fixture. For many years, their coordinator was Donald Pearlman, a silver-haired Washington lawyer who had worked in the Reagan Administration for Secretary of Energy Don Hodel. (It was Pearlman who said that the proper response to the increased cancer-causing sunlight from continued destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer by chemicals such as DuPont’s Freons was not to ban them, but instead for the public to wear hats and sunglasses.)

Pearlman could be seen at the Conferences sprawling in a couch or chair near the entrance to the meeting room for delegates, especially those from oil-rich nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Conveniently positioned to grab a delegate by the arm, Pearlman would whisper instructions, or pass a note. A few moments later, the delegate would ask for recognition and dutifully read what had been whispered or written.

But Pearlman’s ever-present cigarettes finally claimed his life, so the chair passed to Dave Finnegan, who spent decades working for the Rep. John Dingell, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and a tough guy. An avid hunter, Dingell once told an interviewer that “When I go hunting, I take the biggest gun I can carry. When I shoot something I want it to go down. I don’t want any cripples walking around.”

Pearlman, Finnegan and the others share this take-no-prisoners attitude, which has made them extraordinarily effective–indeed, more effective than all but a few know.

Ten years ago, as it became clear that the nations of the world were steamrolling their way to Kyoto, the consensus was that some sort of global agreement would be arrived at and, more likely than not, the United States would be a party. After all, Al “Ozone Man”Gore, as he was casually derided by President Bush-the-father in campaign of 1992, held the nation’s number two spot, and the Congress was in the hands of those wacko treehuggers, the Democrats.

But not all Democrats are treehuggers, and chief among these is Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. A former coal miner himself, Byrd was a pit bull when it came to protecting or advancing the interests of the state and its miners. Trouble is, how could he collect a majority of votes in a Senate that was increasingly troubled by the threat posed by global warming.

Byrd’s solution, in which he was joined by freshman Republican Chuck Hagel, was a stroke of genius: instead of opposing an international agreement outright, the pair merely objected to mandating emission reductions in the United States and other industrialized nations unless “new specific scheduled commitments” were imposed on developing nations. The resolution zipped through the Senate 95-0.

The rest was child’s play. Pearlman simply instructed the delegation from oil-rich Nigeria to object in Kyoto to the imposition of new commitments and, viola, the Protocol arrived in the United States still born. One observer insisted that in Kyoto he overheard Pearlman cackling gleefully while huddled with a Nigerian delegate, exalting over the victory, one that is now in its tenth year. Pearlman may be dead, but his victory survives, and that will continue to be the case as long as nations such as China, India and Nigeria object to “new specific scheduled commitments.”

Total attendance at the climate negotiations has risen steadily, even as meetings have been held in ever-more-distant locations, such as Bali this year and Nairobi, Kenya the last. Finnegan, it turns out, is here somewhere, according to the registration staff, even if he is less visible than in the past. Still, the presence of U.S. business lobbyists at this year’s session seems notably off, especially given the importance that some assign to it, expecting that it will lay the foundation a successor agreement to Kyoto.

The explanation for their absence may be quite simple: everything is going according to the plans laid out in the months preceding Kyoto. There have been ten years of massive disinformation–nay, outright lies and fraud–by so-called scientists in the pay of ExxonMobil, General Motors and much of the rest of corporate America. Now, as warming has become indisputable, the United States Congress is moving to adopt the worst of all possible solutions, and the one ardently desired by industries and the rich, emissions trading.

As long as the world’s biggest polluter, the United States, refuses to act, the rest of the world is caught between a rock and a hard place. Frankly, what they ought to do is act unilaterally and impose sanctions on nations that refuse to follow suit, including China, India and the United States. Would there be some sudden economic disruptions. Yes, and they might be severe.

As matters now stand, however, the world is continuing on what at least a few fairly well qualified people believe might later prove to have been a death spiral, a period where even incomplete action might have been enough to pull the planet back from the brink of climate chaos. Until at least some nations simply grit their teeth and confront the United States, they are little more than what John Dingell does not like to see walking around: cripples.

Re Donald Pearlman: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_leggett/2006/04/exxonmobils_longlived_emulatio.html

Carbon wars

Beware renewed ExxonMobil’s efforts to discredit the evidence of climate change. They’ve been at it for years.

August 1990, Sundsvaal, Sweden: Don Pearlman of the World Climate Council, a key carbon club organisation, openly coaches the Saudi Arabian delegation to the final IPCC plenary before the World Climate Conference. The Saudis deploy stalling tactics as a device to water down the IPCC’s summary report, (attempted sabotage: partially successful), including a laughable concerted effort to excise the words “carbon dioxide” from the document (manipulation: partially successful).

Re Exxon: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ExxonMobil#Exxon.27s_funding_of_climate_skeptics

Exxon’s funding of climate skeptics

A study by the US Union of Concerned Scientists reports that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report says, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community. [3]

See exxonsecrets.org for fact-sheets on funding recipients.

Re purpose of Bali:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/02/AR2007120200583.html

UN Kicks Off Bali Climate Conference

By JOSEPH COLEMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, December 3, 2007; 1:21 AM

Also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2220767,00.html

Hope and fear in Bali

Leader
Monday December 3, 2007
The Guardian

The science of climate change is clear. The politics of the world’s response are still murky, as the Bali summit, which begins today, will show. Even the most optimistic bets as to the outcome of the two-week meeting fall short of what scientists say is needed. There will be no transforming Bali protocol at the end of it, no sudden conversion of the United States to deep cuts in its own emissions and no binding agreement to cap pollution from rapidly growing economies such as China and India. Instead, 10,000 officials and ministers from around 190 countries will battle for advantage at the start of a process that will take at least two years to complete. The aim is to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol. No one can be sure yet what form it will take.

BALI, Indonesia — Delegates and scientists from around the world opened the biggest-ever climate change conference Monday, urging rapid progress in building a new international pact by 2009 to combat global warming _ or risk economic and environmental disaster.