Changing Landscapes (COP 13)

17 Dec 2007 – Geoff Lye

Well into the flight to London and the screen map has only one city showing: Akjerbensh. (No, I’ve no idea where either, but then nor has Google).

The journey home started with another serendipitous encounter: this time with the UN’s Yvo de Boer whose taxi pulled up at the airport immediately behind mine. As we headed for check-in, I re-introduced myself. ‘I was offering congratulations outside the Plenary Hall on the adoption of the Roadmap when you were attacked by the media…’ He looked slightly alarmed. ‘Perhaps I should have said overwhelmed’, I continued.

On Saturday, he and I had left the Plenary by the same door towards the end of the rollercoaster meeting. I was in mid-sentence talking to him barely 10 paces outside the hall when his assistant rushed up. ‘Yvo, get back in. The Chinese are speaking’. De Boer literally ran back and I followed. It was the Chinese, of course, who had called on the UN to apologise for the morning’s procedural errors. This time, their tone was conciliatory. It was as he left the hall again that he was overwhelmed by hordes of photographers, cameramen and journalists. He answered questions politely as he shuffled the mob slowly across the foyer. He then stopped. ‘I think you’d better stop now. I’m going in there for a pee.’

So, back at the airport, I asked his view of the outcome. In respectful-blog style, I will not repeat our exact conversation, but the essence was that his critical objective had been ‘to get the show on the road….and we have done it’. I share that view but will come back to that later.

As it happened, we ended up flying to Bangkok on the same plane at opposite ends of row 22. I would love to have spent part of the journey talking to him in more detail, but he was spared that.

The flight map is now showing new locations: Syrzam, Uraisk and Novokuybyshevsk. Did I really get an O level in geography? The live news texts made depressing reading and there was only climate-related item as Bali rapidly receded behind me – and from public consciousness. The story is not Bali related, but is on the role California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown, is playing in using his office to address climate change. It reported that his ‘public nuisance’ action against Big Auto and coal plant manufacturers for ‘global warming induced’ natural disasters was recently dismissed by judges. [But note that the climate liability issue is only just emerging in legal systems and is likely to follow asbestos and tobacco into the annals of twenty first century large scale litigation. See the climate change chapter of SustainAbility’s report The Changing Landscape of Liability].

The news item also reported a major victory for California and 16 other US states last week when a judge ruled in their favour on the issue of whether greenhouse gases from new cars and light trucks could be regulated at the state level. If the judgement is sustained, the implications not only for the auto industry but for all carbon intensive industries are huge. As I have noted elsewhere, any business waiting for UN, regional or national climate regulation to set the standards for corporate climate accountability over the coming years is at growing risk of being ’blindsided’ by a host of unilateral and ‘bottom up’ initiatives: they are likely to disrupt whole sectors and industries; and transform markets through high carbon sticks (clubs?) and low carbon carrots.

Bali may have been a gathering of the climate obsessed, but it really feels as I leave it all behind that this was a watershed moment in climate change history. I also feel privileged to have shared it with so many extraordinary people.