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A view from the bus

Dec 6th 2010, 14:35 by O.M. | CANCUN

A correspondent reports from the climate change talks, day one

THIS column, emblematically, comes to you from a bus. In the annals of UN climate diplomacy, the Cancún meeting—the 16th conference of the parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is also the 6th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol—will be remembered, more succinctly, as the conference of the buses. To all but a few, they are the inescapable essence of the Cancún experience.

This particular bus is headed from the Moon Palace to the Cancún Messe, a journey of about 20 minutes. The Moon Palace, a vast resort on the Gulf coast some way to the south of both Cancún proper and its separate hotel zone, is hosting the negotiations. It is large enough that it itself requires internal shuttle buses to connect its various parts, such as the halls where negotiations are taking place with those in which the journalists would be sequestered. Would be, because journalists want to be where the action is. The isolated press centre is largely deserted; the few in the press room are as likely as not filing pieces about how empty it is, or indeed interviewing each other on the subject. 

The Moon Palace also contains the offices for the delegations to the conference, and many of the delegates themselves in some 2000 suites. It has a multiplicity of swimming pools and other attractions, lawns, palms and lazy iguanas. It probably looks a lot less like a car park with set dressing by someone who couldn’t get a job at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas when these various attractions are being enjoyed by a throng of happy honeymooners, as they are intended to be. At the moment they are mostly empty. Whether the same is true of the jacuzzis provided in every suite, who can say. Those in suites your correspondent has visited on business are being treated as embarrassments, but the press is not always present. (Full disclosure: some journalists, including this one, have simply through the nature of the accommodation Cancún has to offer been forced to accept jacuzzis of our own.)

The Messe, at which this bus is now arriving, is more honestly industrial. Sitting in the middle of nowhere on a busy highway, it consists of two large warehouse/sheds functioning as an exhibition centre. In them you will find stands from a bewildering number of international bodies, NGOs, trade associations and so on who think they have something to offer, and meeting rooms for side events, twenty or so of them a day. 

The Messe is also the central bus station. The only way into the Moon Palace, unless you are the most VI of VIPs, is on a bus that leaves from within the security cordon at the Messe; the only way out is on a bus back to the Messe. So everyone has to pass back and forth through the Messe’s cavernous halls. Buses by the dozen pull in and out in a not terribly steady stream connecting the Messe to the hotels, both those on the 20km long spit of sand that embraces Cancún’s lagoon and those on the mainland, some of which lie in the opposite direction. They can take over an hour to bring delegates in in the morning, depending on the particular hotel and the traffic, and rarely take much less than half an hour. The daily Cancún commute, hotel to Moon Palace and back, is thus at a minimum two hours, and could well be longer. If you have it in mind to visit the Moon Palace, then go to one of the hotels—in which yet more side events are taking place—and then get back to the negotiations you will be bus-bound half the day. 

The absurd environmental wastefulness of all this has not gone unremarked. But it is accepted, more or less, as an unavoidable side effect of the choice of venue. The Moon Palace is huge and easily secured, but not so huge that it can take the whole circus and all its side shows. Once it became the venue, the decentralised nature of the rest of the meeting followed more or less logically. And those who follow, let alone partake in, these negotiations, endlessly locked in an attempt to produce climate agreements which command assent, or at least acquiescence, from every single country here, are used to dealing with absurdities which follow more or less logically. Nor is the idea of an endless journey back and forth between different positions, none of which engender great enthusiasm, entirely alien.  

And the buses (having passed through the Messe your correspondent is now headed hotelwards) may prove themselves to be the key networking sites for the convention. It’s not that there is enforced propinquity. It is very rare that a bus doesn’t have free double seats to spare for those who don’t want company; indeed it’s not uncommon for buses to have a single passenger. But every day one journey or another will bring a chance encounter with some friend or acquaintance willing to share news, gossip or opinions, or just to swap anecdotage about endless bus journeys. One can almost imagine negotiating breakthroughs based on such moments of in-transitory fellow feeling. 

Except that the negotiators see little of the buses, confined as they are, for most of the time, to the compound of the Moon Palace. The jacuzzis, one assumes, are less fruitful sites for random meetings, if only because there are just too many of them.

And so to disembark.

Readers' comments

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Valli2

We can and must change our habits, as climate change is clearly on. This year has been by far the warmest one in Greenland´s history. While Europe is freezing and so are the residents of Atlanta, Georgia, the temperature in November was as high as +16°C in West-Greenland. It is true, probably, that the causes of rizing average temperature on the planet are humanly induced. But this has certainly happened before, or should one say: The CO2 concentration of the atmosphere has been much higher earlier, without human causes. Perhaps nature has been gradually fixating more and more carbon in what we call fossile fuels, shells in the sea etc. through millions of years. Fact is, that 10 million years ago, the forests of Iceland carried tree species the cousins of which we now have in South-Vietnam. Now, to date Iceland is desolate, with an average temperature 10°C lower than 10 million years ago. So Iceland is bound to profit from a warmer climate. The problem is, that although this has happened before, change is happening at an increasing pace, which may make it difficult for forests as an example to migrate fast enough towards the poles. When you add into the equation the political orthodoxy of "environmentalism", which opposes the use of what they invariably call: Invasive alien species, if an introduced species thrives and can reproduce in its new home, you get a dangerous mixture.

A warmer climate will certainly enhance food production in Canada and Russia, but are those countries willing to accept scores of millions of climatic refugees from hotter climes in a near future? And speaking of forests: It is so typical of environmentalists to oppose the use of afforestation to counter climate change, not to speak of the use of alien species to that end. All remedies must be painful, otherwise they are deemed by those selfrighteous souls as indifferent. No need to say, that nature does not agree with environmentalists on that one.

Charel

Let's all be reasonable about climate change. There is no denying that natural causes since time began have caused climate change. The world has changed from hot to cold and back again.

But now, in the last decades mankind has let loose a spurt of CO2 into the atmosphere. It is an undisputed fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes the climate to heat up.

Mankind has no answer to the natural causes of climate change, but does that mean we should not take action to limit the damage we cause that we can control?

A rise in temperature will probably benefit some and certainly harm many more. Changing our habits is hard, but change we must, either out of our free will or dictated by the change we create. If we wait it maybe too late.

Nirvana-bound

I like your subtle sarcasm. Speaks volumes on the hypocritical charades & machievalian shenanigans that comprise these phoney 'enviro-climactic' pow wows, every once in a while.

Where a whole lotta hot air & bombast pervades the citadels of deceit & not much else, (other than partaking of the absurd & profligate 'fringe benefits' on offer in sunny, plush & posh Cancun.)

What a criminal waste!

jgjgjg

To the commentator: was that you that Amy Goodman interviewed yesterday because you happened to be the first (only) person to walk into the room? It was someone from the Economist.

Pretty tragicomic: a journalist interviewing another journalist because there's no one else to interview.

Rach 123.

This article accurately illustrates the problem facing our soceity. The need for a strategies, policies and legally binding targets are being addressed. However, the biggest threat to the environment and subsequently climate change is consumption. Human behaviour, transport and lifestyle choices are price inelastic and while we are being told to reduce, reuse and recycle, leaders trying to combat climate change in Cancun have chosen a location which contributes to climate change! Their carbon footprints will certainly not have decreased during the time spent within Cancun.

happyfish18

As though the Japs and the Rest of Richii care, Bolivia delegates had declared Genocide in Cancun. After all, the Japs were imfamous for carrying out actual genocides in the 1930-40s.

happyfish18

Delegates from the like of Vanuatu, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua etc. can shout their voice hoarse. Negotiations on funding and technology transfer are probably going nowhere especially when the Rich countries readily lined up behind the Japs wetties to backward assed the Poor again.

Prudent Man, CFA

Undoubtedly they could arrange for all of the quangocrats to stay in one room if they had to pay for this boondoggle themselves. This is nothing but high maintenance networking and job searches for those who can pull this scam off. Useless grants anyone?

Eva51

... and now altogether with other 77 nations: "Give us money!"
I can imagine why those coneferences about alleged AGW are held in Cancun or Bali. It's so very easy to speak about "hot weather", pardon me, "climate". I offer Northern Ontario in December,or January. This would stop this nonsense in its tracks, and save a lot of money for real environmental problems.

Eusebius Pamphili

Just a thought... When the founders wanted to get something done they threw a cager. When Franklin went to Paris most business was resolved at the Perisian night caps.

Maybe we need to factor in human nature, factor out beuracracy and possible get something accomplished.

orsolino

How appropriate! Jacuzzis provided in every accomodation for a conference where hot is is present in every speech. Leave it to the United Nations to fill the year's biggest 'non-event' with a delicious irony/

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