'You First!'                  [Het Parool, The Netherlands]

Nederlands Dagblad, The Netherlands

America Unfairly Blamed

for Climate Obstructionism

"The proceedings at Bali were taken hostage by Europe's antagonism toward the U.S., enabling Al Gore to score in an open goal."

By Jan van Benthem

Translated By Meta Mertens

December 17, 2007

The Netherlands - Nederlands Dagblad - Original Article (Dutch)

At the Climate Conference in Bali, the two Nobel Peace Prize winners stood on opposite sides. Al Gore opted to discuss the obvious truth: The U.S. is blocking every solution, so go ahead without America until a little over a year goes by and there is a more judicious U.S. president WATCH .

Thundering applause was the response. And the behavior of the U.S. over the following days as Washington torpedoed global limits on greenhouse gasses appeared to prove him right. Disappointed, the first delegates packed their suitcases for home on Saturday.

Fortunately, there were a sufficient number of people present who had listened to Gore's Nobel Prize co-winners, the U.N. Climate Panel. Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri didn't pin everything on an agreement concerning percentages. More important, he said, was to come to an agreement about where to begin. The percentages will be part of the two-years of talks leading to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocols must be agreed to.

Earlier, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that an agreement on numbers wasn't realistic at this stage. When some, particularly the E.U., decided to do so anyway, the proceedings at Bali were taken hostage by its antagonism toward the U.S., enabling Al Gore to score in an open goal.

But in spite of the picture drawn by the outside world, it wasn't just America acting as an obstacle. Japan and Canada share the same point of view as the United States, while at this moment, neither China - which is the largest polluter - nor rapidly-growing India - will accept greenhouse emission limits. And neither has the U.S. rejected all restrictions. Even while the Bali conference was taking place, the U.S. Senate approved a law that was earlier accepted by President Bush, which obligates the American automobile industry to build cars that are forty percent more fuel efficient - the first law of this kind in more than thirty years.

All parties in Bali have now made an about-face, which has finally resulted, in the words of the Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer, a “very balanced accord."

More important than discussions of specific figures, the U.N. Climate Panel's Bali report has been generally accepted as the starting point for a new policy. With these common basis for discussion, the next two years can be used to prepare a worthwhile successor to the Kyoto Treaty. By then all nations will be confronted with stark choices - choices that will strongly affect the lives of their citizens. And these are citizens who still must undergo a turnabout of their own.

To mention just one item as an example, as long as there are things like terrace heaters [outdoor heaters] being eagerly purchased, which in the most literal sense heat the air, there are clearly more than a few things that have to change about our own sense of responsibility for the earth where all of us must live.

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