The U.N. and me

I'm in New York all week reporting on the U.N. meeting of the General Assembly and will be posting both here and at Grist all day tomorrow. Later in the week, I'll cover the Clinton Global Initiative for both Grist and The Media Consortium, so you all have a lot to look forward to (don't laugh).

Tonight, I along with some other writers attended a U.N. Foundation dinner tonight designed to bring the U.N.'s climate change directors into better contact with members of the online media.

As far as accomplishing that goal went, the dinner was, I guess, a huge success. For instance, I and other members of the online media came into contact with some important employees of the U.N.! But on the key point of bringing American political writers and U.N. officials to a common understanding of climate change's political problems, I think it was frustratingly unproductive.

The evening started out quietly enough. The guests of honor, I suppose, were Yvo de Boer, Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Nick Nuttall, spokesman for UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program (or Programme, if you'd prefer) and for a while we all exchanged banal pleasantries: They wanted to better understand online media and blogger outreach, we told them a bit about that; we asked them what to expect at tomorrow's meeting, they provided answers. Everybody enjoyed the free food!

About half way through the evening, though, Nuttall, a kind British journalist cum climate advocate with a generally soft disposition, grew a little bit agitated about what he regarded as the other guests' insouciant approach to the issue at hand. And that's where I think progress slowed. I haven't transcribed my recordings just yet, but the gist was basically this: "Climate change is already damaging peoples lives and irreversibly upsetting our natural resources. It is in fact a pressing international concern but it's also the biggest opportunity the world has seen to move as one into an advanced new era. How can you be so blase about this?"

I sympathize, But I also think his concern is rather badly misplaced. American political writers probably don't devote enough of their attention to writing about climate change. But they devote much, much more than they ever used to, and are devoting more and more all the time. What they suffer from, I feel, is a pessimism that comes from the fact that American politicians don't take the issue very seriously and that nothing anybody has done has been able to move things forward at the level of national policy. One problem, as some have noticed, is that we've had this thing called the Bush administration in power for the last six years. But in addition to that, there's simply an inadequate degree of public interest in the crisis to overcome all the countervailing forces operating on other powerful people and ergo almost nothing ever happens.

What the bloggers and op-ed writers of the United States (those, at least, who care about global warming) would like to see on Monday is something that doesn't simply reinforce that pessimism. The fact that the U.S. is the first and perhaps biggest problem that needs solving here can not be an elephant in the room tomorrow. That is, at least, if political writers in America are going to take any notice. They (myself included) would all like to see the Angela Merkels and Nicolas Sarkozys of the world call directly upon America to change--to stop being the biggest single obstacle to solving the problem and start being the biggest single asset.

The U.N. is not by design a political body, and it's not a lobby, and there may be no way to organize that kind of outcry. But what I tried to stress tonight, in conversations with both gentlemen, was that solving climate change will only be possible after solving the domestic political situation in America. There's a sense, I fear, that the world thinks it can just wait until George W. Bush is out of office and then everything will be fine. I think this mindset is disastrous. It involves waiting a year and a half (or, perhaps, five-to-ten percent of the time we have before us if we're going to forestall the worst of the crisis) and it fundamentally misunderstand key aspects of the American political system.

Nuttall stressed to me repeatedly that climate change presents a plethora of economic opportunities and that, in an even longer-term sense, a carbon economy--based as it is on finite resources--simply won't be possible anymore. I agree. But I suspect very strongly that if he spoke with a representative sample of American congressmen, they would mostly agree as well. Then he'd sit back and watch as those same congressmen returned to their offices and continued to do almost nothing. Al Gore could become president next November, and there would still be high walls separating the status quo from meaningful change. What ultimately must be upset are the short term incentives politicians face when weighing the importance of associating themselves with a cause whose benefits (and blowbacks) won't be evident for many election cycles to come.

One way to do that would be for the Secretary General of the U.N. to lend his support to the forces that might make obstructing action on climate change as politically disastrous for American politicians as obstructing action on the Iraq war will likely prove to be next fall. To make sure that big, important people--foreign leaders well regarded in America--speak frankly and publicly about what America's role has been in creating and continuing the crisis, and what it must do mitigate it.

Post Script: I'm going to cross-post this at Grist, because I'm in New York at their behest, but I don't suppose it will show up there until the morning and I want to get it up ASAP.