The View From Kyoto
Without U.S. Participation, the First-Ever Global-Warming Treaty was Doomed to Only Partial Success. Will Bali be Better?
originally published December 12, 2007
Ed Smeloff
Energy-policy expert Ed Smeloff, right, attended the 1997 Kyoto conference working with a journalist for Salon magazine.
Ten years. In geological time, 10 years is hardly noticed - a speck of dust. But for sentient beings, much happens in 10 years. Children grow up, parents and friends pass away, wars start and end, presidents are elected and disgraced, political parties rise and fall. In the last 10 years, around 1.2 billion babies have been born. Some will live to see the 22nd century. Most will have children of their own. Ten years ago, the nations of the world gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to take action to prevent dangerous interference with the planet’s climate. Many hoped that meaningful steps would be taken to protect the Earth for future generations.
Ten years earlier, scientists working through the World Meteorological Society and the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the science of climate change. (The IPCC is the first 20-year-old to win a Nobel Prize.) By 1995, the IPCC concluded that there was a “discernible human impact on the climate.”
Banal as those words sound, their significance is overwhelming. They communicate awareness that our generation can irreversibly damage the Earth’s ecosystems for future generations simply by the way we live. Slowing down and stopping climate change will require societal change on a scale never contemplated previously. The Kyoto Protocol was a first attempt by the nations of the world to bring about this vast change.
Welcome to Kyoto
Kyoto in December 1997 was festive. I was there as an observer, with my background in energy policy and management resources, for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and was working in tandem with a journalist who was reporting for Salon. (It’s interesting to remember that, 10 years ago, Internet journalism was still a novelty.)
Kyoto residents, dressed up as rabbits, ducks, trees and other fauna and flora, marched through the streets in well-choreographed demonstrations. Melting penguin ice sculptures were placed at the entrance to the newly built conference center. Banners and placards in Japanese and English filled the air. A big pink “CO2” wrapped in chains with a leaf growing out of the last link was ubiquitous. Then-Vice President Al Gore was a target of the creatively inclined. “Al Gore - Cut GHGs Now or Go Home” was a Japanese favorite. Some Aussies brandished a red banner with a bunsen burner burning the planet from down under. Greenpeace built a monstrous scrap-heap Tyrannosaurus Rex with a scorecard-style banner that read Dinosaur Diplomacy 1, Climate 0. A beautiful tapestry of a fierce Fudo Myoo, the Buddhist deity of fire, draped the sides of the Kyoto conference center.
Ed Smeloff
Kyoto in December of 1997 was colorful and festive, with residents engaged in well-choreographed demonstrations in the streets.
Inside, activists from a plethora of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) scurried around, sleepless, trying to figure out what was going on in the closed-door negotiations and incessantly writing press releases. Business trade organizations set up booths promoting their technologies. The nuclear industry was calling for a nuclear renaissance. Enron announced plans to build a 50-megawatt solar power plant in the Nevada desert. Toyota passed out refrigerator magnets touting its new hybrid-electric eco-car that it promised to bring to market soon. For the first seven days, the European Union and the United States haggled over how much greenhouse gases to cut and how much flexibility to provide in the treaty. Enviros complained the United States wanted so many loopholes - “flexibility mechanisms” to use the language of the diplomats - that the treaty would be toothless. On the eighth day, Gore flew in and told the U.S. delegation to compromise. Later, Gore symbolically signed the protocol on behalf of the United States.
Gore, who stated in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit that “we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization,” was an enigmatic figure for many attending the Kyoto conference. No political persona understood the issue of climate change better than Gore. Yet the Clinton-Gore Administration risked little to move the public on an issue in which the Earth was in balance. Even before the Kyoto conference, it was clear the Clinton-Gore Administration would not fight for ratification of the treaty in the Senate. It may have been a question of timing.
Seven years later, the treaty became international law, ratified by 169 countries. Among developed nations, only the United States and Australia have been AWOL. (Australia was, anyway, until its new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, signed the treaty this month.) A core principle of the treaty is that the nations of the world have “common but differentiated responsibilities” in controlling greenhouse-gas emissions. That phrase is an acknowledgment that the developed countries of the world are responsible for most of the damaging emissions in the atmosphere and need to take the first steps to reduce emissions. Developing countries, like India and China, are not required to meet specific emission targets during the first compliance period (2008–2012).
The Bush Administration has argued that the United States should not be compelled to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions since China is not required to do so. And although the United States never officially withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty was never sent to the Senate for ratification. From 1990 to 2005, U.S. emissions have increased by 16.3 percent. The Kyoto Protocol requires a U.S. reduction seven percent below 1990 levels. Among European nations, only the United Kingdom and Sweden now are achieving real reductions in greenhouse gases. The most significant emissions reductions in the last 10 years have come from the collapse of industrial enterprises in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
A Failed Success
Ed Smeloff
Greenspace built a scrap-heap T-Rex with a diplomacy scorecard for the 1997 conference.
Looking back 10 years, it would be easy to argue that the Kyoto Protocol has been a failure. Without U.S. participation, it was doomed, at best, to only partial success. However, during the past 10 years, the awareness of the impact of climate change and the impetus for strong action has grown. Devastating hurricanes, fierce wildfires, prolonged droughts and cataclysmic flooding have defined what is at stake. The consequence of inaction for the lives of those born in the last decade and their children is now obvious. The significance of Kyoto, beyond the details, is that there is now a viable international legal framework for dealing with climate change.
This month, the nations of the world will come together in Bali, Indonesia, to start negotiating for a post-2012 climate plan. What happens in Bali will set the stage for the next U.S. administration. It is hard to imagine that the United States will not want to re-engage the rest of the world on an agreement that is crucial for the health of the planet and future generations.
The magnitude of what needs to be done to stabilize the planet’s climate can hardly be understated. We must transform the ways we produce electricity, heat our homes, power our factories and transport ourselves. We need to cut the use of fossil fuels by at least 50 percent, and maybe more, by 2050. We don’t have any time to lose.
Ed Smeloff has 20-plus years of expertise in energy policy and resource planning. He now works as a senior manager for project development at Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group in Southern California.
The Story of My DUI
Part 2: What to Expect When You Report to Jail
originally published December 12, 2007
This is for those of you that are thinking about doing something stupid. Something like, oh… drinking and driving. DON’T. Don’t do it. There are buses and cabs, and, if you are credit card-heavy, there are hotel rooms downtown. So, if you do happen to do something stupid, and you have to go spend a night/ weekend/ week/ month in jail, here is what you can expect.
I did something stupid. I was caught driving under the influence. Yep, you got it, DUI! [Editor’s note: See last week‚Äôs issue for that part of the story.] While I contend that I wasn’t really drunk, the cop that pulled me over for going seven over the limit tends to disagree with me. I pled guilty, got 40 hours of community service, a fine plus court fees and probation fees, mandatory attendance at a Victim Impact Panel and DUI school, my license was suspended for a year and I got four days of jail time.
Four days of jail time! OMG! Four days! Don’t worry, my lawyer said you get two-for-one time. Meaning I would serve 48 hours on my four-day sentence. I just had to make sure that I didn’t do anything wrong for the next year: Probation is a bitch. But that is another story…. Here is what I experienced during my 48 hours in jail.
A Weekender
Jason Crosby
At your hearing, the lawyers (yours and the DA) will work out your sentence and you can report to jail when it will least likely affect your job. I decided that since I work for the major employer in Athens, that I would go in over a weekend so that I wouldn’t have to take time off work. I asked if I could report to jail at 7 p.m. on a Friday, and that was agreed upon by all interested parties.
Now I had a week to think this over. A week’s time to completely freak myself out. You hear all sorts of urban legends… or I did, at least, and I was a bundle of nerves when it came time to take myself to jail. I didn’t have anyone take me. I didn’t want to do that to my friends or family, but you might want to do it differently if it ever happens to you. I got there early. I was hoping that they would just go ahead and take me and that I would get out that much earlier on Sunday, but nope: If you say you are to report for a “weekend” at 7 p.m., they will only take you at 7 p.m. But don’t - and I mean do not - be late. They will not take you if you come in at 7:10 and you were supposed to be there at 7 p.m. They have already got a warrant out for your ass and that is a whole other can of worms.
I sat, waiting. I was a mess. Bouncing from one emotion to another, wanting to cry (yes, I wanted to cry) and then trying to be strong, knowing I was only going to be there 48 hours. Only 48 hours, right? Like it’s a trip to Grandma’s house or something. Finally a deputy came to get me and we went in.
You are told to sit. They first ask for your shoes. I took off my shoes and the deputy checked them for weapons of mass destruction. I was asked to please remove my socks, and to turn them inside out. After doing that, I was told to show the deputy the bottoms of my feet. With that part done, I was told to place both my hands on this (very dirty) wall where I would be patted down. After being groped by the female deputy, I got my picture taken. I don’t normally photograph well as it is, but this was even better: new mug shots. (Fab! Can I get a copy for my wallet? Maybe an eight-by-10 glossy for my living room…)
In the System
They put you into the system. The system. I was now part of the system. Criminal. I am a criminal. I was asked all sorts of boring stuff, but then she asked me what color my underwear was. Um, well… white. (Why do they need to know that? Another question unanswered.) After being put into the system, I was taken to the holding cell. This cell was the same one that I was stuck in when I was arrested. It was dirty and full of graffiti, stuff done in ink and pencil. All my belongings were taken from me; where did these other people that had been in this holding cell get a pen or a pencil?
So I could only guess the time at this point as they took my watch and there are no clocks, but I stayed in there for what seemed like forever, just freezing to death. Did I forget to mention that the jail is about 60 degrees? It may be 97 degrees outside, but they have no trouble cooling the place off. Finally at 11:05 (there was a clock in the office I was taken to), a male deputy this time took me out of that cell and into a little office where they evaluate your mental and physical condition. I was one big goose pimple and he just said that it is always cold in the jail. The nurse asked me when my last cycle was and did I have any meds that I was taking, took my blood pressure and I was “evaluated.” I was “low priority,” meaning that I would go into general population with all the rest of their guests, if you will.
I was issued my hygiene pack. Toothbrush, toothpaste, a liquid shampoo/ body wash combo, packets of gel deodorant that look like those packets of honey you get with your take-out breakfast, and a bar of soap that you would normally see at a hotel. After I sat in the holding cell for another little while longer, I was taken out of that cell and was given my new clothes. I was made to strip down in front of yet another female deputy and put all my clothes into a plastic bag. I was given a one-piece jumpsuit (size XX; I am a medium/large, depending) with snaps up the front to wear. Remember now that I have no underwear or bra or anything.
See, when you turn yourself in, you have to give them your clothes. They have to have a full set of clothes to release you in, so that means that you are going to be without undies or a t-shirt unless you bring them with you. You are allowed to bring stuff with you, up to six pairs of white underwear/ t-shirts/ socks and, for the ladies, white bras with no underwire. Not knowing this myself, I didn’t have any, so there I sat in my used jumpsuit with nothing on underneath. While this might be okay for some, I am a Southern woman. I do not go commando in other people’s clothes, and I certainly did not want to go commando in clothes that many, many, many other women had already worn. Had to! Man, that sucked. I tried to get in touch with friends to run to Wal-Mart or K-Mart to get me some t-shirts and underwear, but no one answered the phone. Jail pay phones call collect, and most cell phones can’t or do not accept the charges. So, I spent the entire 48 hours in my jumpsuit… gross.
Settling In
Finally I was out of the holding cell and was going to be placed in the housing unit. Now, lights-out is at 11 p.m. It was well past 11 at this point. I was given my bedroll (one green, thin mattress-type thing, a washcloth that looks like the bar towels you see at every bar in town, one too-small fitted sheet, a top sheet and a wool blanket) and told to go to cell number two. I marched down the darkened hall and found my cell - not too hard - but then I had to deal with getting that bedroll situated in the dark. There are bunk beds (metal slabs that stick out of the walls) for four women, but my cell had another woman on the floor in what they would later call “the boat” (a plastic bed on the floor). One of the women in my cell helped me get my fitted sheet thing on the bed mat. I was glad to be under a blanket, because I still was freezing. All of this was taking place in the dark - well, as dark as it can be with the hall lights still on.
Sleep is impossible; forget it. Don’t bother. On our wing of the jail, there were seven cells and most of them had five women each. So about 35 women on our side plus that many on the other wing all having to go to the bathroom during the night. Let’s just say that there wasn’t a time the entire weekend when a toilet didn’t flush.
Ah, the toilets. What an adventure those things are.
It’s a sink/ toilet/ water fountain in one machine. But the reason I tell you anything about the toilet is that it is right in full view of all your cellmates or anyone that might happen by. Lucky, lucky me. For me, sans undies, I was naked, having to pee in front of these other women. We tried to give each other some privacy, but how private can it be when your bunk is two feet from the toilet? Face the wall, just face the wall.
The cell was large, as cells go. Well, from what little I know about jail cells, it seemed big. As I paced it and later compared it to my living room, the cell was about 14 by 16 feet. Now that may sound like nothing at all, but after seeing all those shows about prison, it seemed huge.
During most of the day, we jailbirds were free to walk the length of the wing or go to the day room. You have three options for entertaining yourself in the day room - watching TV, playing cards or reading. I was one of the few that read. The day room echoes and people were talking loudly to be heard over the blaring TV, so I decided to find something from the ACC jail library. There are several old magazines and a lot of books on addiction; I picked up a book called Jack and Jill by James Patterson. I had never finished a book of that size in 48 hours, but I was going to give it a shot.
Time for Breakfast, Etc.
Your day starts around 6 a.m. They really want you to get the most out of your time while staying at the Grey Bar Hotel, so you are expected to get out from underneath your covers and make your bunk. You can lie back down on your bunk but not under your covers. You can only be under the covers after lights-out (11 p.m.), but many of the women used their towels to cover up with, so that is what I did.
Breakfast isn’t far behind, and what a fine thing that is… really wrong. I was amazed that anyone actually could eat it. People swapped stuff, and others (like me) went hungry. Oh, and be warned that if you turn yourself in for a weekend stay, they do not serve lunch to the weekenders. Only the “regulars” get lunch. You get your very own deputy to watch over the meal sessions and she isn’t very nice. I realize that they take their jobs very seriously, but while some let you talk quietly, others were very harsh, threatening to take away my gourmet meal of OMG-too-salty chili with cardboard-flavored rice and sweet corn on the side because one crazy woman wouldn’t shut the hell up. One of my cellmates said that most of the women look pregnant because the food makes you swell up, bloat. I did notice that there were a lot of carbohydrates and fats but not a lot of protein. There were a few pregnant women there; they got milk with every meal. I don’t normally drink a lot of milk, but I would have substituted it for something on that tray had I been given the chance.
My Cell
After each meal, you are expected to clean up your cell. You are locked down and the trustees are free to walk around. It is their job to clean the hallway of the wing. You wait for them to get to your cell and they will pass you a broom and dustpan, then the mop. So our cell was cleaned three times each day I was there. Remember, even though you don’t get lunch, the regulars still do and you still have to clean up after a meal that you didn’t get. Susan (not her real name) did most of the cleaning. I should have helped, but I sat on my bunk and watched.
My cellmates and others in the block… some white, mostly black. Not a single Hispanic or Asian woman there. Susan, late 40s, was in jail for driving on a suspended license. She had her license suspended because she hadn’t been paying child support. She went to court and could have done a couple days and probation, but she took the 40 days in jail so that she wouldn’t have to do probation. What? Who does that? No one I knew until that weekend.
Next was Tricia (also not her real name; in fact the names of all my cellmates have been changed here). Tricia was somewhere around 18 to 25 - I’m not sure of her age - and pregnant. She didn’t really talk about why she was there, but she did say that she had taken time over probation and had another 60 days to go. Several members of her family were in jail; two of her sisters were also in the ACC jail.
Then there was Rhonda who, Susan and Tricia said, was arrested for prostitution and possession of crack cocaine… yes, boys and girls, I met a real live crack whore. She didn’t know what day it was and kept saying that she had only been there since the night before (Thursday), but according to Susan, she had been there two weeks. Wonder if she is still there. She’d been there seven times in nine weeks. I wondered how long it would be before she went back again, after getting out.
The final lady was another DUI weekender. She only had 24 hours to serve. I was jealous when she got to leave on Saturday. She works here in town and planned on driving to and from work on a suspended license. There were five of us in that cell. It was crowded. The whole place was crowded.
They were all nice enough, but their lives are so different from mine. I grew up very differently. I live very differently. I’m boring and pay my bills on time and they, well, they took time over probation.
Getting Out
As the time got closer for me to leave, two of my cellmates asked me to phone people when I got out and relay some messages for them. (I said I would, thinking that I could just blow it off. I would never see these women again, but I decided that I would call because they needed me to, and I was out. I even got a phone call from one’s mother thanking me for calling, saying she didn’t know that her child needed help/ money/ visitation.)
I got antsy when time got closer for me to leave. I stood in the hall waiting for the deputy to call my name. Some of the girls were walking the halls and a couple stopped to talk to me. Normally I wouldn’t want to talk to them, but hey, why not?
They asked why I hadn’t come out of my cell all weekend and I explained that I had 48 hours to do. They blew me off, though one made a comment that I still had mascara on. No make-up in jail, along with many other rules. Lots of do’s and don’ts, but I was a weekender, I didn’t care too much. Though, no matter how long you are there, you are an inmate and you are expected to follow the rules. My cellmates helped me out with the routine. Thanks a lot, ladies.
So I waited for them to call my name to tell me it was time to go. When they call your name and tell you to pack up and go, they rush you. They take their sweet time getting you in there, but they rush you out! I was happy to get the hell out. I was taken to another deputy who discharged me and gave me my clothes back. After signing a few things, you are free to leave. However, make sure that if you had any money when you got there, you show them the county deposit slip you got when you were booked in, to get your money back. I left $2.55. Don’t care. They can have it. I am not going back. Ever! You can count on that.
I did finish that book.
I was released on a rainy Sunday. It was the most beautiful day I had ever seen.
You’re Getting Warmer
The Kyoto Accord Began the Race to Halt Global Warming. On Its 10th Anniversary, Why Are We Barely Past the Starting Gate?
originally published December 12, 2007
I remember so well the final morning hours of the Kyoto conference. The negotiations had gone on long past their scheduled evening close, and the convention-center management was frantic - a trade show for children’s clothing was about to begin, and every corner of the vast hall still was littered with the carcasses of the sleeping diplomats who had gathered in Japan to draw up a first-ever global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. But when word finally came that an agreement had been reached, people roused themselves with real enthusiasm - lots of backslapping and hugs.
A long decade after the first powerful warnings had sounded, it seemed that humans were finally rising to the greatest challenge we’d ever faced.
The only long face in the hall belonged to William O’Keefe, chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, otherwise known as the American coal, oil and car lobby. He’d spent the week coordinating the resistance - working with Arab delegates and Russian industrialists to sabotage the emerging plan. And he’d failed. “It’s in free fall now,” he said, stricken. But then he straightened his shoulders and said, “I can’t wait to get back to Washington where we can get things under control.”
I thought he was whistling past the graveyard. In fact, he knew far better than the rest of us what the future would hold. He knew it would be at least another decade before anything changed.
Ten Years Warmer
The important physical-world reality to know about the 10 years after Kyoto is that they included the warmest years on record. All of the warmest years on record.
In that span of time, we’ve come to understand that not only is the globe warming, but also that we’d dramatically underestimated the speed and the size of that warming. By now, the data from the planet outstrips the scientific predictions on an almost daily basis. Earlier this fall, for instance, the melt of Arctic sea ice beat the old record. Beat it in mid-August, and then the ice kept melting for six more weeks, losing an area the size of California every week. “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts,” the headline in the New York Times reported. And they were unnerved by rapid changes in tundra-permafrost systems, not to mention rain-forest systems, temperate-soil carbon-sequestration systems, oceanic-acidity systems.
We’ve gone from a problem for our children to a problem for right about now, as evidenced by, oh, Hurricane Katrina, California wildfires, epic droughts in the Southeast and Southwest. And that’s just the continental United States. Go to Australia sometime: it’s gotten so dry there that native Aussie Rupert Murdoch recently announced that his News Corp. empire was going carbon neutral.
The important political-world reality to know about the 10 years after Kyoto is that we haven’t done anything. Oh, we’ve passed all kinds of interesting state and local laws, wonderful experiments that have begun to show just how much progress is possible. But in Washington, DC, nothing. No laws at all. Until last year, when the GOP surrendered control of Congress, even the hearings were a joke, with “witnesses” like novelist Michael Crichton.
And as a result, our emissions have continued to increase. Worse, we’ve made not the slightest attempt to shift China and India away from using their coal. Instead of an all-out effort to provide the resources so they could go renewable, we’ve stood quietly by and watched from the sidelines as their energy trajectories shot out of control: the Chinese now are opening a new coal-fired plant every week. History will regard even the horror in Iraq as one more predictable folly next to this novel burst of irresponsibility.
A Hint Of a Movement
If you’re looking for good news, there is some.
For one thing, we understand the technologies and the changes in habit that can help. The last 10 years have seen the advent of hybrid cars and the widespread use of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of electric generation throughout the period. Japan and then Germany have pioneered with great success the subsidy scheme required to put millions of solar panels up on rooftops.
Even more important, a real movement has begun to emerge in this country. It began with Katrina, which opened eyes. Al Gore gave those eyes something to look at: his movie made millions realize just what a pickle we were in. Many of those, in turn, became political activists. Earlier this year, six college students and I launched www.stepitup07.org, which has organized almost 2,000 demonstrations in all 50 states. Last month, the student climate movement drew 7,000 hardworking kids from campuses all over the country for a huge conference. We’ve launched a new grassroots coalition, www.1sky.org, that will push both Congress and the big Washington environmental groups.
All this work has tilted public opinion - new polls actually show energy and climate change showing up high on the list of issues that voters care about, which in turn has made the candidates take notice. All the Democrats are saying more or less the right things, though none of them, save John Edwards, is saying them with much volume.
The Race Of All Time
Now it’s a numbers game. Can we turn that political energy into change fast enough to matter?
On the domestic front, the numbers look like this: We’ve got to commit to reductions in carbon emissions of 80 percent by 2050, and we’ve got to get those cuts underway fast - 10 percent in just the next few years. Markets will help - if we send them the information that carbon carries a cost. Only government can do that.
Two more numbers we’re pushing for: zero, which is how many new coal-fired power plants we can afford to open in America, and five million, which is how many green jobs Congress needs to provide for the country’s low-skilled workers. All that insulation isn’t going to stuff itself inside our walls, and those solar panels won’t crawl up on the roofs by themselves. You can’t send the work to China, and you can’t do it with a mouse. This is the last big chance to build an economy that works for most of us.
Internationally, the task is even steeper. The Kyoto Accord, which we ignored, expires in a couple of years. Negotiations begin this month in Bali to strike a new deal, and it’s likely to be the last bite at the apple we’ll get - miss this chance and the climate likely spirals out of control. We have a number here, too: 450, as in parts-per-million carbon dioxide. It’s the absolute upper limit on what we can pour into the atmosphere, and it will take a heroic effort to keep from exceeding it. This is a big change - even 10 years ago, we thought the safe level might be 550. But the data is so clear: The Earth is far more finely balanced than we thought, and our peril much greater. Our foremost climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, testified under oath in a courtroom last year that if we didn’t stop short of that 450 red line, we could see the sea level rise 20 feet before the century was out. That’s civilization-challenging. That’s a carbon summer to match any nuclear winter that anyone ever dreamed about.
It’s a test, a kind of final exam for our political, economic and spiritual systems. And it’s a fair test, nothing vague or fuzzy about it. Chemistry and physics don’t bargain. They don’t compromise. They don’t meet us halfway. We’ll do it or we won’t. And 10 years from now, we’ll know which path we chose.
Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, is an author and environmentalist who frequently writes about global warming. McKibben’s essay was commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Approximately 30 AAN member papers are publishing the essay this week.
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