KEY POINTS:
Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore was in a bullish mood before travelling to Bali for the United Nations climate conference. "It is my great hope that the meeting will result in a strong mandate empowering the world to move forward quickly to a meaningful treaty," he said. The catalyst for this would, he surmised, be a growing people-power movement that would push world leaders to take strong action to curb greenhouse gases.
Mr Gore seems destined to leave Bali disappointed. As much as he is right about the increased public appetite for a strong response, arising in large part from the findings of a six-year study by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he underestimates the political obstacles. These suggest the major fruit of Bali will be a less-than-conclusive two-year roadmap to negotiate a broader successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
The realities have been recognised from the outset by those most intimately involved in the talks. The head of the UN climate secretariat, Yvo de Boer, says that "reaching a conclusion even in two years is going to be very ambitious, let alone trying to achieve that kind of result in two weeks".
The particularly thorny issue of mandatory greenhouse gas emission caps should, he suggests, be left for the climax of negotiations for a post-Kyoto pact. There is, first, the need to grapple with more fundamental tensions. These encompass the need to involve all nations and to dampen national self-interest.
In both respects, the United States is pivotal. It remains the only developed country not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. This refusal was predicated on the belief that its economy would be damaged and that developing nations, such as China and India, had been favoured by not being required to meet 2008-12 targets.
The US has continued to place itself offside by advocating voluntary emission targets. Now, it is raising further ire in Bali by seeking to cull a non-binding draft proposal that developed nations should aim to cut their emissions by up to 40 per cent by 2020. That figure was suggested by the UN climate panel. The US has also indicated that it remains intent on pushing ahead with its own talks with 17 major emitters of greenhouse gases in Hawaii next month. Clearly, this will be a distraction from the UN process. Washington's renewed emphasis on these talks also dilutes the pact reached by Apec members in Sydney in September to work within the UN framework. Increasingly, that looks to have been a face-saving sop for Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the White House's ailing ally.
But whatever the friction generated by the US in Bali, all delegates recognise a post-Kyoto regime will be meaningless unless that country is involved. Therefore, a softly-softly approach is likely to prevail. Those wanting more concrete action will have to console themselves that President George W. Bush's term is nearing its end, and that popular pressure is building for the next occupant of the White House, whether Democrat or Republican, to embrace international co-operation, and the concept of mandatory emission targets. In that scheme of things, it will be only a minor irritant that the next annual UN meeting, in Poland late next year, will occur after the presidential election but before Mr Bush leaves office.
Bali, therefore, is unlikely to deliver a drastic response. But it should start wheels turning and, most importantly, confirm a change of atmosphere so decisive that China, in particular, is taking a far more constructive approach. For all but the most overly ambitious of campaigners, that should salve much of the disappointment.
