Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/ga1climate021108.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 11 -- "You can't hear a comma," UN climate change point-man Yvo de Boer told Inner City Press on Monday. He'd been asked about the negotiations in Bali in December, specifically about his widely-seen but little understood crying jag near the end of the conference. While the voice-over on a number of global television broadcasts of his tears had ascribed them to the tenseness of the talks or the state of the planet, de Boer on Monday confirmed that he'd been accused by China of holding two sets of negotiations over two sets of documents. He said there had been confusion about when the informal talks ended, and the formal ones began. The rest, he said, "will be for my book." Video here.
Afterwards, off-camera, de Boer said he "felt bad" for the Americans, who were "put in an uncomfortable position" by a comma not enunciated by the Indian delegation at the talks. As de Boer recounts it, the talk was of a sentence providing that developing countries should take real, measurable and verifiable actions ... but should be provided with real, measurable and verifiable financial resources into order do that. The question left unanswered by the reading, according to de Boer, was whether "real, measurable and verifiable" referred only to money, or related to other provisions. The U.S. was left out on a limb, and Yvo de Boer regrets it.
Asked about coal by Inner City Press, de Boer said that moratorium on coal use is not realistic, but there are still legitimate questions about whether carbon buried via "capture and store" technology will in fact stay buried. At least de Boer answered this question. An hour earlier, in the same room but with many more journalists present, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airways dodged the identical coal question from Inner City Press, answering instead about biofuels. After saying that corn ethanol does not, on balance, reduce dirty energy emissions, Branson admitted that he is invested in corn biofuel. Daryl Hannah, shrugging off the UN press corps' jokes about mermaids -- based, it seems, on her appearance in the 1980s movie "Splash" -- answered that biofuels are best when made from waste, or even algae. Video here.
In the Trusteeship Council chamber as afternoon turned to dusk, Sha Zukang of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs concluded with what he called, to some laughter, "propaganda from DESA." Kemal Devis of the UN Development Program -- and formerly of the World Bank -- said that the World Bank has a role in middle income countries. While the director of the UN Environment Program Aichem Steiner speechified, UN correspondents with time on their hands noted that Steiner is not listed as participating in any way in the UN's financial disclosure program. We'll have more on this.
