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September 2009 – Kyoto Protocol and US public opinion

September in the Climate change debate

Officially speaking, September is the intermission period between the informal start of the ad-hoc working groups meetings that took place in Bonn last month, and their continuation starting Sept. 28 in Bangkok. But the absence of official meetings on the calendar for most of the month does not meet work is not getting done, as participants says that oftentimes more works gets done behind closed doors than when the world is watching. Stay tuned for more updates.

A post-Kyoto agreement

The international process aimed at producing a post-Kyoto agreement by the end-of-the-year meetings in Copenhagen is entering the final stretch, and so far opinions about whether the it will be successful or not are mixed.

Without a doubt, the series of UN meetings so far this year have failed to live up to expectations. Many of the key figures interviewed by Climate-Change.tv at the recent intersessional consultations in Bonn expressed frustration at the lack of progress toward reducing the massive draft texts down to manageable dimensions. Click here for a list of those interviews.

But the news is not all bad. Several participants noted that the process is not far from the pace of the negotiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol a dozen years ago, and the hope remains that a strong push in the final weeks heading toward Copenhagen can still yield results.

US and Waxman-Markey progress

Count Annie Petsonk from the Environmental Defense Fund among those who remain hopeful. In an interview, she said she believes that the right movement on the much-heralded Waxman-Markey legislation in the US could provide the kind of momentum the process needs. Click on the image on the upper right side of this newsletter for more details.

The coming weeks will help decide whether a final agreement will be reached in Copenhagen and, if it is, how strong it will be. Be sure to check back with Climate-Change.tv periodically for the video snapshots that help illustrate the state of negotiations as they move forward.