More Bali-hoo

UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONVENTION: BALI ROAD MAP
Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail, 17-Dec-2007

Disappointments on Climate
Editorial, New York Times, 17-Dec-2007

Stalling in Bali
Editorial, Washington Post, 18-Dec-2007

Bully for Bali
Editorial, The Sunday Times, 16-Dec-2007

Canada, U.S. back off Bali deal
Mike De Souza, National Post, 17-Dec-2007

Willingness to talk climate change what counts
Richard Gwyn, Toronto Star, 18-Dec-2007

The Day After..
Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South, 16-Dec-2007

HAPPY ENDING ON BALI
Markus Becker, Der Spiegel, 15-Dec-2007

We've been suckered again by the US.
George Monbiot, The Guardian, 17-Dec-2007

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA -- In the end, the much-anticipated "Bali Road Map" was disappointingly vague and unenforceable, weakened by politics and self-interest. Yet beyond the words of its compromised text, the Bali agreement could still herald a new era of tougher action against global warming.

Most of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases - including the United States, China and India - were unwilling to accept any limits on their growth. Even after 15 days of intense negotiations, the conference failed to reach any global accord on targets for emission cuts by 2020 or even 2050, despite strong pressure from Europe and others.

The scientific consensus on the need for deep cuts - the best research of the world's top scientists, endorsed by this year's Nobel Peace Prize -- was relegated to a mere footnote to a preamble to the main agreement.

But now begins a crucial two years of negotiations on a stronger deal to replace the pledges of the Kyoto accord, which expire in 2012. And the mood of the Bali conference, swinging strongly against the United States on its final day, offered hope to those who seek a more ambitious deal.

"What we have seen disappear is the Berlin Wall of climate change," said Yvo de Boer, chief of the United Nations climate agency. "This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change."

The optimism of the environmentalists is based on the clear evidence of a shifting global mood. A growing number of countries agree on the need for deep cuts in emissions by 2020. The small band of skeptics - including the United States, Canada and Japan - were able to remove the emission targets from the final accord, but they did not dare to kill the conference's other achievements, including crucial agreements on fighting deforestation, transferring clean technology to developing countries, and achieving bigger emission cuts among the wealthy Kyoto nations.

"Now the hard work begins - getting the science back into this agreement, the science that had been stripped out, and getting meaningful commitments by the U.S. onto the table to do our responsible share of dealing with this urgent problem," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S.-based group.

"The hardest work is ahead of us, but we averted the disaster that would have been the collapse of these talks. Once the United States saw that it would be seen as the one bringing down the talks, they thought twice. And to their credit they stepped back from the brink."

Environmentalists are pleased that the Bush administration finally signed onto the Bali agreement, no matter how weak it is, because it brings the U.S. directly into the climate process for the first time in years.

Their optimism is further fuelled by the U.S. presidential election next year, which is widely expected to produce a new president with a more aggressive position on tackling climate change. The new administration will take office at a critical time, in early 2009, with a year remaining until the deadline for a new climate deal.

"We hope to inject some new energy into this process in 12 months with a new administration that can build on the momentum here and join the European Union in providing real leadership in the second half of the negotiations," Mr. Meyer said. "I think we can do this in the time we have available, building on the spirit we saw in Bali."

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he is confident an agreement will be possible by 2009. "It will require a lot of goodwill and a lot of determination, and some countries must change their attitudes," he said. "We will have an election in the United States, and I'm sure that will help, and we may have an election in Canada, and I hope that will help too."

Environment Minister John Baird, the subject of much criticism at Bali, pledged to work for a new agreement by 2009. "We're going to work tremendously hard over the next two years, and see if we can get the very best deal for the environment and the planet," he said.

Business leaders, too, promised to join the campaign for a post-2012 deal in the wake of the Bali agreements. "This is an historic decision and a turning point for mankind," said Guy Sebban, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce.

"All the players - governments, business, non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations - are finally banding together to confront what is perhaps the most important and urgent issue of our age."

The Bali agreement on deforestation, in particular, is considered a huge step forward, since 20 per cent of the world's carbon emissions are produced by deforestation - almost as much as the entire amount of U.S. emissions from all sources.

Canadian environmentalists will try to use the Bali agreement to force Ottawa to work harder on climate change. "The government's current targets and policies fall far short of the standard set in Bali," said Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute. "Nothing less than a massive scale-up of federal efforts on climate change is required for Canada to play a responsible part in the next two years of negotiations."

gyork@globeandmail.com

A week that could have brought important progress on climate change ended in disappointment.

In Bali, where delegates from 187 countries met to begin framing a new global warming treaty, America’s negotiators were in full foot-dragging mode, acting as spoilers rather than providing the leadership the world needs.
In Washington, caving to pressures from the White House, the utilities and the oil companies, the Senate settled for a merely decent energy bill instead of a very good one that would have set the country on a clear path to a cleaner energy future.

The news from Bali was particularly disheartening. The delegates agreed to negotiate by 2009 a new and more comprehensive global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. (Kyoto expires in 2012 and requires that only industrialized nations reduce their production of greenhouse gases.) They pledged for the first time to address deforestation, which accounts for one-fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. And they received vague assurances from China — which will soon overtake the United States as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — and other emerging powers that they would seek “measurable, reportable and verifiable” emissions cuts.

From the United States the delegates got nothing, except a promise to participate in the forthcoming negotiations. Even prying that out of the Bush administration required enormous effort.

Despite pleas from their European allies, the Americans flatly rejected the idea of setting even provisional targets for reductions in greenhouse gases. And they refused to give what the rest of the world wanted most: an unambiguous commitment to reducing America’s own emissions. Without that, there is little hope that other large emitters, including China, will change their ways.

There is some consolation in knowing that the energy bill approved last week included several provisions — among them the first significant improvement in automobile mileage standards in more than 30 years — that over time should begin to reduce the United States’ dependency on foreign oil and its output of greenhouse gases. The bill would have had much greater impact if the Senate had not killed two important provisions opposed by the White House and its big industrial contributors.

One would have required utilities to generate an increasing share of their power from renewable sources like wind. The other would have rolled back about $12 billion in tax breaks granted to the oil companies in the last energy bill and used the proceeds to help develop cleaner fuels and new energy technologies.

The decision to maintain the tax breaks was particularly shameful. Blessed by $90-a-barrel oil, the companies are rolling in profits, and there is no evidence to support the claim that they need these breaks to be able to explore for new resources. Yet the White House had the gall to argue that the breaks are necessary to protect consumers at the pump, and the Senate was craven enough to go along.

This Senate will have another chance to provide the American leadership the world needs on climate change. An ambitious bipartisan bill aimed at cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by midcentury has been approved by a Senate committee and may come to the floor next year. Though the bill is far from perfect and will provoke intense debate, it could offer a measure of redemption for the administration’s embarrassing failure in Bali.

Editorial
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

THE BUSH administration wants everyone to believe that all along it has taken the threat of global warming as seriously as the rest of the world has. Advisers point to Mr. Bush's comments on climate change made as early as 2001 and to the nibbling-at-the-edges actions he has taken on research, regulation and funding. Then rhetoric meets reality, as it did at the climate talks in Bali.

Representatives of 187 nations were in the Indonesian resort destination for almost two weeks this month trying to plot a road map to a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which mandated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 36 industrialized countries and which expires in 2012. The European Union and other countries wanted binding emissions reductions of 25 to 40 percent by 2020. As he has consistently, Mr. Bush said no.

That's not to say something good didn't come out of Bali. The new framework agreement calls on developing nations, such as India and China, to consider adopting national policies to address their respective greenhouse gas emissions that are "measurable, reportable and verifiable." But the heavy lifting for both developed and developing countries will be done in treaty negotiations over the next two years.

The administration's resistance to mandatory cuts led U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to declare last week that the proposed reductions may be "too ambitious." He added: "Practically speaking, this will have to be negotiated down the road." Practically speaking, down the road means when there is a new American president. Palming off the leadership and the tough decisions that go with it to his successor seems to be fine with Mr. Bush.

Congress and the states shouldn't wait. The Senate will take up the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act next month. Sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the bill would put a price on carbon through a declining cap in greenhouse gas emissions for each year between 2012 and 2050. In this cap-and-trade system, companies in the transportation, electric power and manufacturing sectors would purchase and trade allowances for the right to pollute the air. Meanwhile, governors are so fed up with federal inaction on the environment that they're forming their own binding regional compacts for reducing greenhouse gases. This is the kind of leadership the world and many in this country are looking for.
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The last report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that if action is not taken within the next decade, the effects of global warming may be irreversible. Waiting for the next president shouldn't be an option.

It was always likely that the Bali climate change conference would cobble together some kind of deal. Sure enough, in the early hours of yesterday morning after tears, tantrums, boos and recriminations, a “Bali road map” was agreed setting out what the United Nations described as a clear agenda for two years of talks aimed at negotiating a successor to the Kyoto framework. “This is a historic breakthrough and a huge step forward,” said Hilary Benn, environment secretary. “For the first time ever all the world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change concluding in 2009.”

It is easy to dismiss such claims as hyperbole and the Bali deal as yet another fudge from governments, particularly the US government, unwilling to face up to the hard decisions on global warming. The price of getting the United States to sign up was the removal of hard numbers from the road map. Friends of the Earth dismissed it as a “weak outcome” and accused rich countries of letting the developing world down.

Yet Bali was always going to be a holding operation. There was pressure for specific targets to be included in the text. The European Union wanted a commitment to emissions reductions by advanced countries of 25% to 40% by 2020, as well as references to a peak in global emissions over the next 10 to 15 years and a halving by 2050. It is reasonable to argue, however, as America did, that such targets should emerge during the negotiations of the next two years, not be imposed at the outset. America also made important concessions.

Al Gore said it outright in Bali but the unspoken message of yesterday’s deal is that things will change over the next two years, most importantly in the White House. Attitudes are moving in America. Politically this has been led at state level by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and at city level by the mayors of most US cities. George W Bush has looked increasingly out of step with public opinion. Next November’s presidential election should see a new era in the White House on climate policy. The Democratic frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are both seemingly green. Mr Obama wants to introduce an economy-wide “cap-and-trade” programme to cut US greenhouse gas emissions and to invest heavily in energy efficiency.

Mrs Clinton, running a “carbon neutral” campaign, has a similar plan for cutting emissions but also wants a windfall tax on oil companies to be invested in an energy fund to provide one-fifth of US electricity from renewables by 2020. On the Republican side, Senator John McCain was the first to highlight global warming and, while he has little chance of securing the nomination, his rivals have jumped on the band-wagon. Oil at $90 a barrel and a determination to reduce dependence on the Middle East are enough to convince even the sceptics.

Political change is important but so is technology. Developing countries suffer from the effects of climate change but often cannot afford the equipment needed to limit their own pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Even China, growing at a breakneck pace, is still building dirty coal-fired power stations rather than using the clean coal technology available in the West. One significant breakthrough in Bali was an agreement to step up the rate of technology transfer and provide the private sector with more incentives to give poor countries access to the latest innovations.

Bali should not be dismissed. It is not long since Tony Blair said there would never be a successor deal to Kyoto. Now a deal looks distinctly possible, if only after some hard negotiations over the next two years. And it will have America, China and India on board. It is easy to be gloomy but political will and technological change are powerful allies. If these bleary-eyed declarations are followed up with action, there is every reason to be hopeful.

Canada, U.S. back off Bali deal

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA - Soon after the Harper government and the Bush administration reversed course at United Nations climate change summit on the weekend and accepted the "Bali roadmap" toward a new comprehensive agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a White House spokesman expressed reservations about the deal.

The framework was hailed by the UN's top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, as an ambitious, transparent and flexible solution on the road to a comprehensive treaty in 2009, imposing deeper commitments on the richest nations in the world to slash their contribution to global warming, as well as softer targets or commitments for developing countries to come into force after the end of the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period in 2012.

But both the United States and Canada said they would rather have signed onto an agreement that brought the requirements on developing countries in line with those of wealthier nations.

"The United States does have serious concerns about other aspects of the decision as we begin the negotiations," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. The concerns involve a lack of targets for developing countries to also cut greenhouse gas emissions, Ms. Perino said.

"Negotiations must proceed on the view that the problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone," Ms. Perino said. "Major developing economies must likewise act."

Several developing countries, along with the European Union members, protested, booed and resisted attempts by the United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, to impose what most of the countries felt were unfair obligations on the developing world in the fight against climate change.

The pressure eventually forced U.S. lead negotiator Paula Dobriansky to accept the consensus, allowing the Bali roadmap to be adopted. In a subsequent debate of Kyoto countries, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird attempted to stop members of the protocol from declaring that developed countries should collectively strive to deepen their post-2012 targets in the range of a 25%-to 40% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020.

The Harper government has insisted that such a measure would be impossible for Canada to achieve in 12 years. But following a series of rebukes, criticism and pleas from 17 different countries, Mr. Baird told the conference he would "stand down," garnering a warm ovation from delegates.

The concession also meant that he had failed to achieve his main objective of getting binding commitments for major emerging economies such as China and India to reduce their emissions in absolute terms.

"I would underline, I'm naturally disappointed that we didn't have a stronger, more effective mitigation building block," Mr. Baird told reporters. "But we're not going to give up."

Many delegates and observers suggested that the conference was forced to extend for an extra day, instead of wrapping up as scheduled on Friday, because of systematic efforts from the United States, Canada and Japan to block them from officially recognizing that the next climate change agreement should be guided by stringent targets in tune with the latest scientific evidence. Mr. Baird was also accused of skipping out on key meetings during the final hours of the conference and of deliberately trying to slow down the process and prevent a consensus on the Indonesian resort island.

"He treated this as a holiday retreat rather than a working session," said NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen, who also attended the conference. "He went and spent time with people he agreed with as opposed to people he needed to negotiate with."

But Mr. Baird said he worked very long days, getting little sleep in the face of an intensive barrage of criticism levelled at Canada during the two-week conference. He said this was "the real price of leadership" for indicating his government's true beliefs about what was required in the best possible deal for the environment and the planet.

"A lot of countries were thinking what Canada was saying at this conference and simply put we have no option but to work hard for an effective agreement," said Mr. Baird, before taking a jab at Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. "I don't want to come to another conference in 10 years and have the deputy leader of my own party say I didn't get it done."

In the end, the Bali Road-map consists of a framework for emissions cuts, the transfer of clean technology to developing countries, reducing deforestation, and adaptation aid for developing countries vulnerable to droughts and rising sea levels.

Last weekend's United Nations conference on climate change in Bali was a classic example of how shape and content change almost completely depending upon one's perspective.

Whether the outcome should be regarded, as most environmental activists do, as a bitter disappointment, or, as the diplomats would have it, as an accomplishment, depends on whether you prefer viewing a bottle as half-empty or as half-full.

As both would seem the best answer – with, to show my own bias, a definite tilt toward the positive.

The principal argument made by the naysayers is exceedingly persuasive. No agreement was reached on binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A proposal, pushed insistently by the European Union, for the rich nations to agree on a cut in emissions of up to 40 per cent (from 1990 levels) by 2020, was relegated to a mere footnote.

No one is therefore committed to doing anything different from today which, for several nations, most notably the U.S. and Canada, means doing precious little.

So, we'll keep on getting hotter while time continues to pass.

The yeasayers have a good case also, though. Despite coming close to a breakup several times, the assembly of 192 nations agreed eventually on a program of negotiations to achieve a binding pact by the end of 2009. An opportunity now exists to keep alive the Kyoto Protocol which otherwise will expire in 2012.

Agreeing to meet again to try to agree doesn't sound like a lot. It was, this time.

The last-minute U.S. concession – after other national delegates booed its delegates during one public session, an almost unprecedented act at such international gatherings – was real. It has signed on to a process whereby it has accepted to be everyone's favourite target for at least the next two years.

More significant is the timing of this new schedule of negotiations. Its deadline, and a major part of the talks, will take place after George W. Bush has left office.

Almost any new U.S. president, let alone either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, is bound to be more open and conciliatory.

This is of course no guarantee of success. But the agreement to try to agree that was reached at Bali thus will be conducted in far more agreeable circumstances than those of today.

And there was another positive accomplishment at Bali, even though its substantive content was insubstantial.

Any global program to deal with climate change has to be global itself.

At the original Kyoto conference in 1997, this was ignored. The binding targets agreed on there (the ones Canada then proceeded to break), applied only to the wealthy, developed nations.

Back then, this seemed to be fair. The climate crisis has been caused virtually entirely by the developed world's extravagant use of fossil fuels.

We can no longer afford to look only in the rear-view mirror, though. Every week, China opens a new coal-fired plant. Even if all the rich nations closed down every plant and ordered every car to remain in the driveway, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would increase by 2070 to the tipping point of 450 parts per million.

At Bali, China and India hid behind the U.S. While it was being bashed, they could remain silent. The late U.S. concession, though, put the spotlight on these "late polluters" and other comparable if smaller ones such as Indonesia and Brazil.

No agreement was reached at Bali on how developing nations should be included in any global pact. But the argument that they have to play their part was expressed openly for the first time at an international climate change conference (including by Canadian Environment Minister John Baird).

There's merit to China's call for a transfer of anti-polluting technology from rich to poor. Obviously, the emission targets cannot be the same for all.

But either China and India and the others join the march or the U.S. and Canada, and others like Japan, will drop out, or at best straggle behind unwillingly. The global scale of the crisis is without precedent; so must be the response to it.

By Markus Becker in Bali, Indonesia
Der Spiegel
15-Dec-2007

There were tears, boos and, at the end, even hugs: After a long struggle, the delegates at the UN climate conference on Bali finally managed to agree on a roadmap for fighting climate change. Despite the lack of concrete targets, most considered the deal a success.

The last-minute deal came as a relief. DPA

After two weeks of intense discussions and bitter wrangling, delegates from over 180 nations at the Bali climate summit reached agreement on a two-year "roadmap" for finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The last-minute deal came on Saturday after the US delegation made a U-turn in a final negotiating session. The US had opposed a proposal by the G77 bloc, which represents developing countries, for rich nations to do more to help the developing world combat increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Paula Dobriansky, leader of the US delegation, and her colleague James Connaughton found themselves the targets of naked animosity. When Dobriansky announced that the US would not sign up for the Bali roadmap, boos echoed through the room. The Americans were sharply attacked by several delegations. "If you're not willing to lead, please get out of the way," said a US environmental activist representing Papua New Guinea.

Other opponents of binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as Japan or Russia, failed to come to the US delegation's defense. Left isolated, the American delegation gave in and agreed to the roadmap. "We will go forward and join consensus," said Dobriansky. This time the delegation was rewarded with a standing ovation from some participants.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters he was on the verge of sending a mobile phone text message to Chancellor Angela Merkel, asking her to intervene with the White House, when the US delegation reversed their position. "I had already typed the SMS after Dobriansky's first statement but then I was able to cancel it," Gabriel said.

Gabriel was cautiously optimistic about the deal. "Bali has laid the foundations ... it was hard work and exhausting," he said. "But the real work starts now." Earlier in the week, Gabriel had warned that the EU might boycott US- led climate talks if the US delegation did not budge.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon returned to Bali to try to break the summit deadlock after talks, due to end on Friday, extended into Saturday. He expressed his pleasure at the result. "This is the defining moment for me and my mandate as secretary general," he said, adding that he appreciated the "spirit of flexibility" shown by certain delegations.

Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, who acted as conference president, was also pleased with the outcome, describing it as "a real breakthrough."

However the roadmap does not include the firm emission reduction targets which the European Union and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been demanding, although it does state that emission cuts are necessary. Environmental groups and some delegates criticized the draft for not going further, describing it as a missed opportunity.

Under the roadmap approved at the Bali summit, nations will hold a two-year series of talks to negotiate a new treaty which will succeed the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. According to the plan, the successor treaty will be adopted at a UN climate conference in Copenhagen in late 2009.

The roadmap also includes measures to promote the transfer of environmentally friendly technologies to developing countries and to halt deforestation. It also launches a so-called "Adaptation Fund" which will help poor countries cope with the negative consequences of climate change, such as rising sea levels.

George Monbiot
The Guardian
Monday December 17, 2007

'After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session."

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11 - I mean to say, December 11 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto protocol. George Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore's team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy "hot air" from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore's scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren't producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low-carbon technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don't. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the Kyoto protocol, the world cursed and stamped its foot. But his intransigence affected only the US. Gore's team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the American delegation is not the only thing that hasn't changed. After the Kyoto protocol was agreed, the then British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced: "This is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions." Ten years later, the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that "this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever, all the world's nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change." Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases, the US demanded terms that appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore's proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Gore's trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Although Gore does a better job of governing now he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but American politics had made it impossible. In July 1997, the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones. Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading. But even when he succeeded, he announced that "we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate". Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the corporate media - particularly in the US - in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it. I won't bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturday, there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climate deal came 20th, after "Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar for charity" and "Florida store sells 'Santa Hates You' T-shirt".

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies that stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things.

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m. The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore $142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don't believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George Bush. Yes, he is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don't have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

monbiot.com