Twenty nine years ago, on this day, September 2, 1994, was the 10th meeting of the outfit that had planned the climate bit of the 1992 Earth Summit and had kept on going afterwards, in the run up to the first “conference of the parties” (to be held in Berlin, in March-April 1995).
Slooooow progress between Rio and Berlin….
Despite the introduction of a formal text into the proceedings which proposed C02 reductions, the session remained deadlocked on the introduction of a protocol such as that proposed by the Germans (Eco, 2 September, 1994: 1). Despite the fact that it was Germany which had proposed it, the EU rapidly said it was not prepared to consider a protocol for COP1, and many developing countries were also opposed, believing it might be a pretext for commitments to be imposed on them, or in some cases even that OECD action itself would hurt their interests. Oil-producing countries often presented their own interests in this way, suggesting OECD action would harm developing countries as a whole e.g. see Al-Sabban, 1991).
Paterson 1996 page 68
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 358ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by this time everyone knew that COP1 was coming (to be held in Berlin) and therefore there would be more and more pressure for something serious to be agreed. But here we were still in the shadow-boxing phase, even though it was obvious that the initial stabilisation targets were not going to be met, and that the science was getting stronger. The IPCC people were working towards their second assessment and the denialists were in their pomp, having defeated Clinton’s BTU.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been grinding away for over 30 years. And given, the absence of strong social movements (among other significant factors) in the countries that matter – for energy justice, climate justice, intergenerational justice – then you’re going to get these sort of technocratic “lost in the detail” shitshows. And so it has come to pass.
What happened next
At cop1 finally there was the Berlin Mandate forcing rich nations to agree that by the end of 1997 they would agree to cuts. That meeting ended up happening in Kyoto, Japan.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..