On opening morning of the United Nations climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, tour buses blasting air-conditioning crawl in traffic along the peninsula’s swanky hotel zone. The streets’ medians and shoulders are lined with state and municipal police cars, Chevy trucks and Dodge Chargers emblazoned with “Policía Federal.” Young men in Mexican army uniforms, perched in the beds of modified pickups, point machine guns toward the traffic; others watch from alongside the road, guns slung over their shoulders. A few stand with one knee cocked, eyes turned down to their cell phones.
Approaching the conference security checkpoint—where identification badges are scanned and bags screened before delegates, journalists and NGO representatives board a second bus for the actual conference site—the buses pass a McDonald’s. Two soldiers stand at the exit of the restaurant’s drive-through.
“Don’t take my sandwich,” a young journalist from South America quietly jokes from the back of the bus.
Like many aspects of the Cancún scene during the climate talks—from the luxury hotels perched on eroding beaches to the obfuscatory press briefings from the US special envoy for climate change, and the activists dressed as polar bears—the security feels like part of a show.
From Nov. 29-Dec. 10, representatives from more than 190 nations gathered in Mexico for the 16th annual Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The talks are called COP16 for short.
But while developing nations, particularly small island states, watch the rising seas erode their shores, the United States continues to thwart action on climate change. Worse, the US’ bad behavior is influencing other countries—such as Canada, Japan and Russia—to back away from commitments they made under the Kyoto Protocol.
Though global in reach, the climate change negotiations should be of particular interest to New Mexicans, according to Shrayas Jatkar, associate regional representative of the Sierra Club in Albuquerque.
“New Mexico and the US Southwest are experiencing the effects of climate change more than any other part of the US except for Alaska,” Jatkar says. “Our very ability to live here is threatened by a changing climate, which is making New Mexico a hotter and drier place to live.”
But more importantly, UN climate negotiators—especially those representing the US—should follow New Mexico’s example. Just as the UN talks moved into full force in Cancún, the state’s Environmental Improvement Board voted to approve a second greenhouse gas cap-and-trade proposal that had been debated over the summer.
“The two recent decisions by the state’s [Environmental Improvement Board] to limit global warming pollution demonstrate that there is the political will to not just address climate change,” Jatkar says, “but to follow the best science in dealing with it.”
Interesting to read your take on the Cancun climate change talks. As an attendee of the Copenhagen talks, I would not say all I gloom and doom. Keep in mind that all climate progress is local. Here’s what is happening locally: Sierra Club distributed 150,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs, worth 11 megawatts in savings. Another 450 New Mexicans put solar panels of their roofs in 2010, worth over 1 megawatts in output, placing New Mexico’s residential solar roof output to 6 megawatts. At the institutional level solar is really taking off, thanks in large part to the federal stimulus: two state office buildings solar arrays of 110 kW each, fifteen schools around the state are emplacing 50 kW solar PV systems, Taos Town Hall will soon sport a 50kW system on its roof, and Espanola’s City Hall is now heated and cooled geothermally. The City of Santa Fe is using solar leasing, avoiding up front costs, to emplace 1 mW of solar PV panels between the wastewater treatment plant and the airport; it plans to build a similar sized array to help pump the Buckman water up hill, thence it will put a roof full of solar atop the community convention center. And the state DOT headquarters in Santa Fe will soon sport 925 kW of solar Pv on roofs and carports, using a state clean energy bond.
The Santa Fe projects get us about four percent toward a carbon-free electrical energy future. Unleashing all home, business, and institutional roofs that are solar feasible, coupled with cooperation with the State Land Office, the federal Bureau of Land Management, and US Forest Service to use lands suitable for solar, wind and geothermal, Santa Fe can get to 100% clean electrical energy sources. It is a scenario that, repeated locally around world, can get toward where we need to be, even without a global legally binding treaty that is not going to happen anytime soon.
Thanks. I am amazed that UNM legitimizes global warming denial by continuing to broadcast sports on AM 770 KKOB where Rush Limbaugh and others do hours of propaganda for the carbon giants.