Copenhagen Needs Many Schwarzeneggers

The prize is a silver loving cup filled with coal and adorned with a plastic dinosaur. It’s the “Fossil of the Day Award” and this year’s recipient was Pamela O’Connor, Deputy Mayor of the city of Santa Monica. The determined gray-haired woman said, “I’m sorry to have to accept this.” But she gamely saw the award ceremony through to its conclusion, where a young ecologist sang an eco-friendly version of the song “Bye-bye Miss American Pie.”

The “Fossil of the Day Award” has become a tradition at world climate summits that have now been held annually since the Rio summit in 1992. The anti-prize is awarded by the ecological organization Climate Action Network (CAN) to which almost 500 separate environmental groups worldwide belong; it is awarded to those nations who have been most effective in dragging their feet on climate protection. Those nations are designated “climate fossils.”

This time, the United States won it. “America has the weakest CO2 emission goals of any industrialized nation,” master of ceremonies Ben Winkler said with tongue-in-cheek praise before adding in a serious tone, “Right at the moment when the rest of the world needs the United States to lead, the coal and oil lobbies, along with their representatives in the U.S. Senate, want to keep the country isolated.”

In the midst of the negotiating chaos rampant in the Copenhagen Bella Center, site of this year’s summit, there lies the question of questions: Will the anti-Kyoto renegade and all-time world champion polluter, the United States, finally climb aboard the climate bandwagon or not?

Pamela O’Connor does her best to defend her country’s honor. As an Obama Democrat, she says that there is another America out there as well. Where she lives, the city has become greener; Santa Monica has adopted an environmental action plan. “We promote renewable energy and more ecological transportation,” she reports. And her city in sunny California is by no means alone, she says, “We’re taking the lead at the municipal level.” Then she takes a deep breath and calls out, “We want our government to do more. We need a binding agreement to reduce carbon emissions.”

In recent years, this has become common at such gatherings: American mayors waving the green flag; state representatives who practice European Union-style emissions policies; enthusiastic proponents of environmental protection, all trying to light a fire under their national government.

This year, the United States came as an environmentally-friendly negotiator. George W. Bush defended the oil-smeared American way of life right to the end. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has already defined the green transformation of U.S. industry as a central goal of his administration. Many had hoped he would liberate the climate summit from its notorious neurotic fixation on the United States.

And now this. It’s business as usual, even though Jonathan Pershing, one of America’s chief negotiators, looks the part of an aging Greenpeace activist thanks to his grizzled beard.

Todd Stern, a lean and wiry 58-year old, represents America’s official position as Obama’s special climate emissary to the summit. Gnarled, tough and humorless, he isn’t anyone’s idea of the typical jovial American. Mainly reserved but effective, he gives an insight as to what’s coming; Washington will not budge – neither on its stingy carbon emissions reduction goals, nor on how much help it is willing to contribute toward climate protection in developing countries. The United States will not sign on to the Kyoto Protocol that sets binding and internationally verifiable standards for industrialized nations. Not ever.

The Teetering Summit

That’s one of the sore points of the summit. It’s the reason the G77 developing nations almost sabotaged the conference on Monday when they walked out on the negotiations. Their complaint: the industrialized nations – particularly the USA – were abrogating their historic responsibility. Summit chief Connie Hadegaard spent all day Tuesday trying to gain the trust of the G77 nations by way of broad participation in five working groups. The summit was teetering.

Long-time climate summit watchers are used to that sort of thing but say that Copenhagen seems to be more dramatic than anything they’ve ever seen before. Obama’s man Todd Stern is a once-burned-twice-shy individual who served as Bill Clinton’s point man at the 1997 Kyoto summit.

The Clinton administration signed the historic deal, but then came the collapse: the Republican-controlled Congress rejected the accords. In 2001, the new President, George W. Bush, scrapped them completely. Washington’s maxim for Copenhagen now reads: that sort of thing will never happen again.

Yet, that danger still exists if Obama dares to lean too far out of the environmental window during his appearance at the summit on Friday. The President is having enough trouble getting his climate change legislation through the Senate despite his party’s majority.

He can’t afford to beat up on Senators from coal-producing states nor on those with sizable automobile worker constituencies; the nuclear lobby also wants to be included.

How much easier things would be if only Obama’s team could depend on having more political opponents like Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The green conservative climate change ‘Terminator’ and California governor will visit the summit on Tuesday, attracting swarms of observers and admirers – including many Americans. Billed as the “climate action star” he’ll relate anecdotes, talk about the body building courses he went through in Copenhagen, why Hans-Christian Andersen’s tale of “The Ugly Duckling” has always been one of his favorites and praise the clean water in Copenhagen Harbor. After that he’ll proclaim, “The world needs strict, mandatory CO2 emission regulations and sufficient financial commitment to climate protection in developing nations.”

Schwarzenegger won’t blow all of his opponents away the way his fans are accustomed to seeing him do on screen. Instead, he’ll be constructive. “We stand at the beginning of a global transformation,” he will cry. Not even governments can resist that. The haggling in Copenhagen will be momentarily forgotten.

But it will resume shortly.