FLOP15 “Takes Note” of Copenhagen Accord

It remains to be seen if the money promised in the Copenhagen Accord ever materialises. Every penny pledged so far at COP15 has been old money, taken from Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), and handed back to the developing world as adaptation assistance. It leaves me sceptical that any of the money that Clinton and Obama talked about during their touch-and-go diplomacy is actually real.

The most interesting thing I noticed as the COP wound up is that it “took note” of the Copenhagen Accord, rather than ‘adopting’ it. That means it has no formal standing within the Conference of the Parties (COP).

Basically, they said ‘yeah, right’.

If it was going to have any legitimacy, the COP would have to ‘adopt’ the Copenhagen Accord. It didn’t. Ironically, the press around the world is saying it has.

Others have been more frank about what this agreement is about:

There is, finally, a Copenhagen Accord – a deal that is so unfair, so unambitious and so devoid of commitment that the countries of the world could agree only to “take note” of its existence. There was no hope whatever that everyone would actually “approve.”As reported through the night, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a modestly celebrated accord late last evening, taking fulsome credit for having saved the day in a private negotiation with China, India, Brazil an South Africa – what Bill McKibben later described as “a league of super-polluters.”

Here in Denmark, the newspapers are kicking with the story of FLOP15. It’s a clever headline that crosses all the language barriers and has strangers striking up conversations in cafes across town.

 

AOSIS Strikes back at Copenhagen

As I write, the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) is fighting a rear guard action on the floor of the conference at Copenhagen. They want the words “legally binding instrument” inserted into the mandate to extend the work of the Adhoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA).

They are not going to win this, but it is telling which countries are backing the call of AOSIS and which are not. I cannot be sure, but if previous statements and behaviour from our embarassing  Minister Tim Groser mean anything, New Zealand won’t be backing our pacific neighbours.

It looks like the hideously watered down Copenhagen Accord, which is a small nail in the coffin of Kyoto, is going to be the only thing comming out of Copenhagen.

The big noters like Obama may already have left the building, but the grit and determination of those countries already affected by climate change is inspiring.

It looks like the real work is going to be left to those of us outside the halls of power, through peaceful, non-violent protest and civil disobedience.

Time to brush up on my childhood reading – David henry Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience“.

 

Copenhagen Commentary #4

We are in a countdown to failure here in Copenhagen. The high minded speeches and calls for action continue, but behind the scenes there is a deepening sense that we’ll get worse than window dressing – a political statement which at its best guarantees a 3 degree warming of the planet, which is unacceptable. At worst, we’re all toast.

President Obama was spectacularly uninspiring. We need more than superb rhetoric. We need action. This whole process has been held captive by the US Congress – or the world’s fear of it. That’s a pity. It’s time to leave them behind and get on with a global deal.

If the Americans fail to tag along, globally taxing their goods at the border based on their carbon footprint would soon see action – if the world stood together. That is, after all, what they have been threatening themselves! No amount of military might could overcome the collective will of the world. The US dollar is already teetering on the verge of irrelevance, and fear of its collapse is about the only thing keeping many dollar rich countries in check – but for how long?

All this I say as a patriotic American. America has failed to lead so it should get out of the way. I fully appreciate the US’ misgiving about ratifying treaties that have international enforcement clauses. I wish New Zealand would think more about this when it signs so called free trade deals which give away its sovereingty. However, it is humanity that is at stake here, not just US hegemony. So the US needs to pull its head in and get out of the way of a legally binding climate treaty.

Meanwhile, the Danish hosts continue to insult China and the G77, dispalying an incredible ignorance of international diplomacy, or worse, a crass xenophobia. The Danes forgot to invite China to a ‘high level contact group meeting’ last night. Oops. The quiet but inexorable rise of Chinese hegemony is still being ignored by the west. Too bad. They have all the $US cash, all the manufacturing and a growing ability to project their power. We insult them at our peril.

 

One more day to go for the COP15

(A post by a New Zealand Youth Delegation participant in Copenhagen)

Hello people,

Just thought I better give you all a quick update.

It’s very cold. Snow starting falling on Tuesday, and it hasn’t let up much since. It’s -4 with a windchill of -11.

Went to Sweden today as we’ve been completely locked out of the conference. They accredited 45 000 people with entry for a venue with 15 000 capacity… Welcome to the UN. Long queues, chaotic, hard to figure out what’s going on. They started limiting numbers on Tuesday, with our delegation of twelve being allowed to bring in 5 people. Then today NGO numbers were limited to 1000 (allocated through constituencies – my one being YOUNGO or Youth NGO, and I don’t think NZYD got any. There are nine NGO constituencies) Tomorrow they are limiting NGOs numbers to just 90 people, with 10 going to each constituency, because of the shear number of world leaders (120 to 135ish, including Mugabe) and their entourages who are going to be at the venue. So many NGOs are very unhappy. There was also a protest going on yesterday, which was my last day at the venue, where they tried to storm the building (without hope – there were so many police, and Danish police are very brutal, so we’ve steered well clear of them, and kept our conference badges well visible. They did manage to arrest a French Green MP, who they released once they realised who he was.)

Anyway talks don’t sound like they’re going too well… We’ll have to see what world leaders can do when they talk tomorrow. Did the march last Saturday with about 100 000 people at it. It was an incredibly uplifting experience, and we carried the massive NZYD sail (signed by young Kiwis about what they think about climate change) the whole 3 hour walk, which gave us a great reputation – see the photo.

Other things we’ve done is hijacked the NZers in Copenhagen party when we presented the NZYD sail to Ministers Tim Groser and Nick Smith, and then gave a long speech that really challenged their policies (not being cute youth as they were hoping we were). There we met Simon Upton and Major Kerry Prendergast too (though she didn’t react much to the speech…). We got a really long applause at the end though, even though the crowd was a mix of Kiwi NGOs, business people and delegates.

Other famous people I’ve seen include Desmund Tutu, Senator John Kerry, Helen Clark and almost Ban Ki-Moon (but he couldn’t make his side-event due to negotiations). Also went to a Global Greens talk and saw a bunch of cool people talk including Elizabeth May (Canadian Green Party Leader) who absolutely rubbished the Canadian Government (which as of yesterday had the most Fossils of the Day, slightly ahead of the US). The current Canadian Government – which does not have majority support at all but is in power due to First Past the Post – is absolutely abysmal. She also said “Things may be better now that the US has a new administration, but unfortunately they are still the United States,” to rapturous applause. Good ol’ Canadians…

For the last day we will continue to send love letters to John Key, and try and get a meeting with him. Let’s hope he commits to stronger targets – a conditional 10-20% by 2020 is not good enough – especially considering the strong conditions will not be met (such as other developing countries committing to stronger targets…). Plus we’re trying to get the message out that the new Emissions Trading Scheme is crap – contrary to what our Government is saying, given it has no cap on emissions and thus will allow them to increase…
Anyway, it’s being a crazy ride, and can tell you other things later, but should probably go. Will have to see how the final day of the talks go – which are likely to continue into Saturday before they wrap up – for better or for worse.

Original post on Zackarate Island as part of the NZYD reporting from Copenhagen.

 

Copenhagen Comments #3

Last night we had an honest 6 inches of snow here in Copenhagen, turning the city into a picture postcard. Most of it is still around this morning, and it is with great amusement that I watch the tens of thousands of bicycle commuters wend their way through the snowy streets.

All NGO observers but a lucky thousand have been kicked out of the Bella Centre at COP15. Many are annoyed that the stalls they have rented and the side events that they have prepared for and scheduled for months have been cancelled – there is no one to come to them. The Bella Centre is one big ministerial morass.

I cannot be sure, but I don’t think that Labour’s Charles Chauvel ever managed to enter the building. I know he stood in the freezing, outdoor registration line for 10 hours on Monday, only to have the desk close before he got to it. We haven’t heard from him since. This is a common story, even for people who registered to attend over a year ago. Fingers are pointing all around as to how 45,000 people were allowed to register for a venue that only holds 15,000. In this regard, it’s a shambles.

One also has to wonder about the Labour Party’s commitment to climate change issues, when their spokesperson had to make his way to Copenhagen privately (and good on him) and doesn’t manage to get in the door. Surely a commited opposition would make a commitment to front up to the biggest issue facing humanity. Oh, right. The Greens have done just that.

One of the quiet successes at the negotiations has been accomplished by the various NGOs working on REDD. (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.) Earlier this year, the European Union sabotaged the treaty text, taking indigenous people’s rights out and making the treaty one big party for logging companies. The REDD NGO’s have managed to restore the text almost to it’s original state. We’ll see if it survives the scrutiny of the Ministers. One can only hope.

The shame of the conference this week was our very own Minister Groser’s outburst. He called the Tuvalu chief negotiator an ‘extremist’ and obstructive of the negotiations for wanting a legally binding agreement at Copenhagen! He also called the United Nations process all sorts of names. This is not diplomatic or Ministerial behaviour in anyone’s book.

Oxfam has just accused Minister Nick Smith of trying to redefine the word ‘fair’.

For some more in depth comments on the goings on here in Copenhagen, hop on over to frogblog and check out what Jeanette Fitzsimons and Kennedy Graham have to say. Kennedy’s musings are a hoot!

It’s going to be an interesting couple of days!

 

Wassup with the VUW School of Gender & Women’s Studies?

Most of you know I’m currently an academic feminist.

If it had been up to the VUW Academic Board, this would not be so.
At long last, Dr Lesley Hall has been confirmed in her position for another year, and the undergraduate papers in the School of Gender & Women’s Studies (GWS) will remain.

Great news, I hear you say.
Well, yes, but not for the mass of undergraduates who have been trying to enrol in papers that have not shown on the VUW enrolement website, nor have they been confirmed in any on or offline prospectuses so far.

It is a travesty of education policy to arbitrarily choose from one academic year to next whether courses will be continued, as the VUW Council have been wont to do with GWS over the past few enrolement seasons.
“Oh noes, we have falling enrolements, we must cut courses”, they say, when their late approval of courses has contributed to uncertainty about course provision – along with the mega-PR campaign encouraging undergrad students to enrol early online, where the courses don’t show.

So, if you, or anyone you know, had intended to take a Gend paper this coming academic year, jump back on the website and dump that Accy or Eng paper you chose instead, and create a huge paper trail of grumpy feminist students who want their courses back!

Rant over.

Tonite, and tomorrow afternoon, some students are graduating with majors in GWS, including (soon to be) Dr Alison Hopkins.
I shall be joining the other post-grad students in progress to congratulate Alison and the others, at our School pre-grad morning tea, then joining the procession in Lambton Quay as a ’sidewalk photographer’ to record the achievements of those of my peers who have finished theses despite the distinctly unwelcome air we have studied in, as Fac Ed and FHSS fight over the living, breathing bodies of our postgrad students.
But I’ll save the ongoings of that argument for another post!

Here’s something pretty from back in 2008, when we first started complaining about the cuts to facilities for GWS.

2008 protest poster

 

Comments from Copenhagen

It’s half way through my fourth day in Copenhagen, and I know I’m in the time zone because I am starved and it’s actually lunchtime!

We had an awsome march through Copenhagen yesterday. Four and a half hours across town with 100,000 people from around the globe. Jeanette, Kennedy and I marched with the New Zealand Youth Delegation (NZYD) and hundreds of representatives from Green Parties around the world. It was magic.

The NZYD had a huge NZ America’s Cup spinaker with youth delegate signatures scrawled all over it. We marched around and under it, with dozens of kind strangers helping us keep it aloft.

On the sobering side, we are at that part of the conference where everyone is pessimistic and confused. The draft texts floating around since yesterday have made everyone angry. This is typical at such conferences, I am told.

The Annex 1 countries attempts to kill off Kyoto entirely seem to have failed, but the developing world is pissed. Funny that!

Some of what NZ is demanding has survived the first cut and is still in the draft text. We’ll see how they do this week.

Meanwhile, I am at the KlimaForum, the “People’s Climate Forum”, where alternative, sleeves-rolled-up discussions are happening between people who know that our leaders are only serving the interests of economic growth – not saving humanity from climate change.

It’s not the planet we need to protect. It will be here long after we humans have consumed ourselves to extinction.

Here is a video I shot of the Young Greens co-leaders during the march yesterday. Enjoy it, and share it around!

 

John Banks defending democracy?

Crazy as it seems, even John Banks is against the ridiculously high spending limit in the proposed electoral rules for the Auckland supercity.

I think it illustrates just how far-right Rodney’s supercity plans have gone that even John Banks can find fault with them.

 

Wardfire

David Farrar over at Kiwiblog has replied on the subject of unbalanced supercity wards, accusing critics of simply having a go at Rodney Hide. I shall oblige and leave the minister of local government out of this, and instead focus on the undemocratic shambles that this new supercity plan is building.

Farrar claims that the grossly disproportionate wards are okay, as we need to be able to make exceptions for some cases for rural areas. I actually agree- my issue is not with the fact that there is a ward with a greater than 10% difference from the average of the Supercity. My issue is that eight of the twelve proposed wards (or twelve of the twenty counselors) are within the unacceptable range. By definition, two thirds of a group cannot all be exceptional cases. Even if this arrangement benefited the left, it would clearly be wrong and necessitate urgent reform. It’s not about who’s winning. It’s about the principle that elections ought to be fair, and votes ought to be as equitable as possible for people living in different areas.

With relatively little deviation from areas of interest, it should be possible to smooth out the differences between the wards much more, and allow the two wards Farrar mentions to be truly exceptional outliers that barely graze that 10% margin, instead of crushing it at 24% and 17% deviations. A 24% outlier can’t even be called an exceptional case- it’s the kind of statistic that smells of gerrymandering. Let’s preserve geographic and social boundaries without making a joke out of local elections, shall we?

 

Arise, Sir Rodney Bjelke-Petersen

Sir Joh would have been proud.

Back in the1970s and 1980s one of New Zealand’s more infamous emigrants, the corrupt and racist Queensland Premier the late Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, held onto power by what became known as the Bjelke-mander under which electorate boundaries were drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many voters as metropolitan ones.

As a result, Bjelke-Petersen was able to retain the State Premiership with as little as 20% of the vote going to his Country (later National) Party.

Now take a look at this table, taken from the Local Government Commission’s proposed ward boundaries for the Supercity:

I live in the Waitakere ward. So the vote of someone who lives in the Rodney ward will be worth 1.42 times my vote.  The vote of someone who lives in the Hibiscus-Albany-East Coast Bays ward will be worth 1.32 times my vote.  The vote of someone who lives in the Howick-Botany-Pakuranga ward will be worth 1.31 times my vote.  The vote of someone who lives in the Frankin ward will be worth 1.28 times my vote.

The structure is clearly screwed to provide greater worth to votes from areas that traditionally vote centre-right than those that traditionally vote centre-left or are more evenly politically balanced.

I don’t blame the Local Government Commission.  They were left with little choice given the Government’s legislating that there  would be only 20 councillors, that they would all be elected under First Past the Post, and that Rodney and Franklin would have to have one councillor each.

A gerrymander was inevitable.  And was no doubt planned because, as Rodney Hide said himself:

…you turn up with your papers … they [Cabinet] are too busy with their own stuff; they’re not bothered…