Goodbye 2011 … Hello 2012

There’s barely little more than 30 minutes left in 2011, and I just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you who have been part of the community we’ve built during the past three years (It’s hard for me to believe it’s been that long, too!).

For me and for our family, the year was a full one, rich in memorable experiences and, unfortunately, painful losses.

On the one hand, Aidan graduated from high school and completed his first summer at Tulane.

My brother Mike, at age 44 and after five years of dating Annie Du, married her in a beautiful ceremony overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

On the other hand, Dunreith’s mother Helen died just four months after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

Gary Adelman, my mother’s cousin and an avuncular figure to me, is likely to follow her soon.

It was a year full of professional change and growth.  After five years, I left The Chicago Reporter to start working at Hoy, the Chicago Tribune’s Spanish-language newspaper.

In an unexpected development, I was elected to take the reins of the Dart Society from Miles Moffeit.  We had a strong year highlighted by a 40 percent growth in membership, a highly successful fundraiser in New York City that featured Gloria Steinem speaking and the launch of Dart Society Reports, our online magazine.

It was a year full of travel.

Dunreith, Aidan and I went with Mike and Jon to Madrid in April.  We took repeated trips to Massachusetts during Helen’s illness-Dunreith set up shop there for most of the summer-drove Aidan to New Orleans, traveled to New York and DC for Dart events, flew to Las Vegas and San Francisco for Mike’s bachelor party and wedding, respectively.   I also spent a week in Los Angeles and two weeks in South Africa for journalism fellowships about health and climate change.

As always, it was a year of writing.

I still have a long way to go, and I’ve developed a rudimentary writing proficiency in Spanish.

I started posting for the Huffington Post, made progress on my next book project-look for an online publication by the spring of next year-and shifted my focus here to make the blog more a space for personal reflection and sharing than one that strictly deals with books.

And, as always, and in some ways perhaps more than ever, it’s been a year of gratitude and love.

Gratitude for the many gifts I experience that include good health, a clear mind, warm memories, meaningful work and fun people with which to do it, warm memories behind and large dreams and visions ahead.

Gratitude for the energy to keep on writing.

And, of course, love for the friends and family that make life so worth living.

Thank you all for your role in making this past year such a rewarding one.

I’m excited to keep it going in 2012.

The new year begins in 19 minutes.

 

 

Climate Change Chronicles, Part XV

Busisiwe Ndlela’s mother died from asthma in Verulam, South Africa when the girl was just 14 years old.

The girl had never known her father.

Her twin brother had died years before.

Her mother’s death, then, would leave her alone in the world.

But before her passing, her mother imparted a valuable lesson.

“You must depend on yourself,” Ndlela, who looks younger than her 60 years, said her mother told her. “You must work hard.”

“From that day I worked hard to today,” she said.

Ndlela first worked for her mother’s employer, raising that woman’s children for six years.

She then moved to a long-term stint with a family in suburban Durban North. In her second job, she cared for that family’s children, and then for the parents as they aged.

Since 2008, though, Ndlehela, whose name means, “The road where we are,” has turned her unwavering work ethic to planting trees.

About 1,200 of them.

Ndlela is one more than 600 “treepreneurs” in the Buffelsdraai area northwest of Durban who have been working with conservation non-profit Wildlands Conservation Trust on an innovative pilot program that seeks to restore a 2000-acre sugar cane field to its original state.

In so doing, the program seeks to educate residents about climate change, provide a much-needed boost to the local economy and become an eco-tourist destination.

The City of Durban purchased the property from sugar cane company Tongaat-Hulett prior to the program’s start in 2008.

Richard Winn, environmental manager at Durban Solid Waste, the city’s waste management department, explained that the project gives interested people trees to plant from seeds that have gathered in the area. His department supplies topsoil to program participants.

The amount of payment a treepreneur receives depends on the height of the tree.

A tree that is 1 foot tall pays 5 rand, or about 60 cents.

A 20-inch tree pays 7.50, or about 90 cents.

A tree that is about one yard high pays 10 rand, or $1.25.

The money has been a welcome addition for Ziningi Gcabashe.

One of the program’s original participants, she has gone on to plant more than 15,000 trees. She’s used the money from the trees to pay for items like her children’s school fees.

Gcabashe said the program has grown in popularity since people have seen its success. Learning how to plant trees has also helped people do their part to combat climate change, she said.

Winn said that the trees are the first step in a three-stage process that will take place over several years as about 250 acres per year are altered.

Subsequent steps include having the treepreneurs shift to being “super growers” who work on planting second-level plants to achieve a higher level of biodiversity.

The third stage will involve hiring area residents to maintain the altered landscape.

As the metropolitan Durban area’s largest forest, Buffelsdraai could supply trees for people in the surrounding 30 miles, according to Winn.

He said it also could become an eco-tourism and residential destination.

“When they’ve got 800 hectares of forest doing its cleaning, people will want to move in,” he said.

Sean O’Donoghue, acting manager of Durban’s climate protection branch, said the potential jobs could inject a new element into the often heated debate between conservationists and those who want to develop the land for commercial purposes.

“This is the first time that conservation brings jobs to people,” he said.

Count on Ndlela to be one of the employees.

“It must carry on,” she said about the program. “We are not starving.”

Climate Change Chronicles, Part XIV

I wrote while in Durban for COP17 about the quantity of equipment I brought.

Here is my roommate Lorenzo Morales’ side of the story as well as videos we made in Spanish talking about the stuff each one transported.

I came to Durban, South Africa, as a journalist to cover the UN Climate Change talks, the main point of which is to figure out (without much success so far) how to reduce our carbon print in the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide and other gases are the byproducts of our modern lifestyle and the principal cause of surging temperatures in the planet.

I was born and raised in Colombia, a tropical country in South America. We are rich in forests, biodiversity and water sources. That makes us a key pillar in stopping global warming: we both host large tenures of carbon-capturing trees and our emissions are pretty low (0.31 per cent of the global total). We are part of the Kyoto protocol and here in Durban we support a second term of commitments

In Durban I share a room with Jeff Lowenstein, a U.S colleague from Chicago. He comes from the opposite corner of the world when it comes to emissions. The US is the second largest emitter, after China and the main polluter of CO2 per capita (17,7 tones per person each year while the rest of the world, excluding China, South Africa and the EU, emit less than 3.4 tons per year). The U.S. never signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and it appears to be pushing for it to die quietly in Durban.

Jeff and I sharing the same room tells its own story. We are a pretty accurate reflection of our countries, at least when it comes to consumption patterns. A quick luggage archeology reveals a little of our respective countries’ stances.

Here is a list of some of the stuff we both brought:

Jeff

2 Laptop computers (Dell and Mac Book Pro 15’’)

3 extension leads

20 AA Duracell batteries

2 plug converters (+ 2 energy transformers)

6 notepads

11 pens

500 personal business cards, approx.

50 vitamin pills (he takes 4 each day)

0 refillable water container

3 hardcover books (Earth by Bill Mc Kibben, Science As A Contact Sport by Stephen Shneider, Storms Of My Grandchildren by James Hansen)

Total checked-in luggage weight: 21 kilos

Lorenzo

1 Toshiba laptop 10´´

1 extension lead

4 Energizer rechargeable batteries

1 energy plug converter

2 reporter’s notepads

2 pens

0 personal business cards

6 anti-flu pills (just in case)

1 refillable plastic water bottle

1 paperback book (Heat by Georges Monbiot)

Total checked-in luggage weight: 14 kilos

This list might amount to little more than a funny anecdote. But for me it was revealing: human-sized evidence that any action to tackle climate change has to tackle individual attitudes and behavior. But I certainly can’t stand in judgement. In fact with just one flight, I might have contributed more to global warming than Jeff, despite his superior consumption . When I printed out (yes, I printed it out despite all those trees chopped down) my Delta ticket from Bogota, at the bottom of the itinerary read: ‘The estimated CO2 amount for this flight is 2020 kg. Jeff’s flight from Chicago, while also contributing to CO2 emissions, was probably closer to around 1650 kg.

2020 – the kg my flight to the COP17 emitted – is also the year when developed countries are willing to postpone any decision or binding commitment on emissions reduction. Some fear that might be too late, and that includes my good friend Jeff.

Here is my video talking about Lorenzo’s stuff:

And here is Lorenzo discussing what I brought:

RIP, Elzie Whittington, aka ‘Grandma.’

A lot of times you hear about a funeral being a celebration, but it doesn’t feel that way.

But with Elzie Whittington, childhood friends Scooter and Teo’s grandmother who I always knew as “Grandma,” it was truly the case.

The stylish silver hat that lay atop her coffin was just one indicator of the strength, wisdom, courage and compassion she displayed during each of her 95 years before she passed last Sunday.

Born in 1916 as one of 16 children to her parents in Ashland, Mississippi, she first showed her wisdom at an early age, according to the pastor who presided over the ceremony, by learning how to sew in order to get out of the hot sun.   She only showed further wisdom, he added, by accepting Jesus in her heart and by basing her life on love.

It was a fruitful one.

After moving to Chicago, she met and married George Whittington in 1935.  The couple had five children before he died in 1953, leaving her a widowed single mother.

Grandma didn’t blink, but rather rolled up her sleeves and continued the hard but rewarding work of raising her children to be decent, contributory people.

She succeeded, too, as the first row at A.A. Rayner’s filled with smartly-dressed children, grandchildren and other relatives attested.

Grandma didn’t just get by, though.  She brought all kinds of loving touches to her family, alternately cooking memorably delicious meals, sewing clothes and cutting family members’ hair in the latest styles.

The family reciprocated the love she gave, as we heard through the series of moving tributes.

The detail that got me in the heart was when Will Worley read a letter from Sage, Scooter’s daughter who could not attend because she was taking her final exams.

“Thank you for teaching me that saying ‘What’ is not polite,” Sage wrote at the beginning of her list of sources of gratitude. “Thank you for making me a corsage when it was my time.”

Later, Scooter’s mother told me that Grandma made each of her granddaughters a corsage for their Sweet 16.

In Sage’s case, she was 94 years old when she did the work.

The pastor made the point that the Bible only promises 70 years, so that Grandma had a quarter century of life on G-d’s time.

When I spoke, I mentioned that the pastor may be right, but Grandma never looked more than 60 or 70 to me.

I also talked about her sense of humor, remembering how after Scooter’s wedding Grandma, Teo, Mrs. Lee, family friend Bev and I were driving along talking about the wedding.

Who wore what.

Who said what.

The usual.

Then we started laughing.  And laughing.  And laughing.

All of us laughed so hard for what felt like 15 minutes that eventually I said, “My smile is starting to hurt.”

With a twinkle in her eye, Grandma led that charge.

Teo sprang up after I spoke.

Pain in his eyes, he talked about Bill Withers’ song, ‘Grandma’s Hands.” It was all right for other people’s grandmothers to co-star in the song, he said, but this was Grandma’s song.

After the ceremony, Jon and I went to Aunt Linda’s house, site of a legendary barbeque on July 4, 2003.  We reunited with the family and did what you do after funerals: eat, enjoy each other’s company, eat some more, visit some more.

It was precisely the kind of gathering Grandma would have loved, everyone agreed.

To begin, the food was bountiful and lovingly prepared.

Fried chicken. Barbequed chicken.  Two types of lasagna.  Pasta salad.  Four types of cake.

I caught up with Scooter.

We swapped notes about the college application process and how we deal with our kids’ dating lives.  We shared our conviction about how much our elementary school teachers had impacted us.  And we talked about work and love, the stuff of life.

Mrs. Lee told me about Grandma’s last day, how she told one of her two remaining daughters that she was an Obama woman through and through, and that if they were the only two people who voted for him next November, so be it.

Dunreith arrived.  We visited with Teo and Sylvia, saw their children, Julien and Raven, and then needed to return home for dinner with Aidan, who had just flown in after completing his first semester at Tulane.

We passed Scooter on the street outside Aunt Linda’s house.

We said we loved each other and drove to the highway, edified by the legacy Grandma left for us with her life, challenged to live as fully in the time granted to us as she did in hers, and grateful for the unconditional love she gave and that I was one of so many people privileged to receive.

Climate Change Chronicles, Part XIII

It may have seemed hard to believe after attending COP17, when I’m sure that a word cloud of the proceedings  would have shown “climate change” to be the dominant word, and there are many people who doubt its existence.

There were glimmerings of this when Lord Christopher Monckton and Sen. James Imhofe made their annual effort t garner attention for their positions that climate change does not exist and is, in fact, the product of some left-wing conspiracy.

Their goal: to gain coverage and sow uncertainty in readers or viewers’ mind about the trend that leading scientific body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said is nearly 100 percent certain that is anthropogenic, or man-made, in nature.

While they may not have succeeded in this venue, they have done so in the past.

But the amount of attention these “merchants of doubt,” in former BBC Latin American bureau chief James Painter’s  parlance, receive varies widely by country.

To his credit, Painter still keeps his hand in the journalism game.  But he has transitioned largely to being the head of the journalism fellowship program at Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.  In 2011, he authored Summoned by Science,  an analysis of media coverage of  the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.  His most recent report is instructive, then, both on its substance and as an illustration of potential career trajectory during a highly turbulent period in the industry’s history (The latter is not an insignificant point.).

In Poles Apart: the International Reporting of Climate Scepticism, he’s concentrated his attention on the question of the frequency and context of climate skeptics like Imhofe in  the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, India and China. Painter does make a distinction, one of many in the work, between scientific skeptics who have legitimate questions about the scientific merits of the latest work, and outright deniers like Monckton and Imhofe for whom no standard of proof  of global warming would ever be sufficient

The product of rigorous research-Painter told me he personally checked each of the close to 5,000 articles read to ensure data integrity and methodological consistency-the report has a number of key findings.

The first and most basic is that climate change coverage, specifically, the space and context providing for climate change skeptics, varies widely by country.

Developing countries like Brazil,India and China, tend to cover climate change skepticism less frequently than developed countries like the United Kingdom and the United States.  This is likely because, he speculates, the developing countries are more directly and frequently experiencing climate change’s effects.

Pointer also points out that skeptics appeared close to half the time in the opinion pages.   In the United States, for instance, where a majority of the Republican presidential candidates have said they don’t believe in climate change, conservative papers like The Wall Street Journal have a high percentage and quantity of stories in which there are uncontested skeptics (One of the many values of Painter’s report is its ability like a microscope to alter its focus to attend to the smallest detail, then, with another swivel, to provide a much larger perspective.) In Brazil, on the other hand, where the government has supported and is starting to implement a series of emission reductions programs and legislations, there is none.

On one level, this is not real surprising.

Neither is Painter’s finding that the paper’s ideology tends to be correlated, with right-wing papers tending to give more uncontested space to climate skeptics than their left-leaning counterparts.

Painter takes the conversation,  deeper, though by examining the consequences of that additional space, finding that when there’s confusion about the science of climate change, people are less likely to push for policy change.

This last point is a critical one, for it speaks both to skeptics’ political objectives  and the media’s role in either facilitating or working against it.  Painter’s project gives us ample evidence to see the role media  in general, and specific outlets in particular, play in the various countries.

There are limitations to, and legitimate questions about, the work.

As mentioned above, some may take issue with its not being peer-reviewed. The choice of period to look at coverage, while useful from the perspective of generating material to analyze, may not be representative of all coverage at all times.  More basically, while Painter looks at six admittedly important countries who collectively account for more than half of global admissions, he does not have the entire story.

These points are well taken, and, from talking with Painter, are ones with which he would likely have little problem. At the same time, as community activist the Rev. Robin Hood once told me about an investigation I did about fatal police shootings, failing to have the entire story does not mean that you’ve said nothing (Note: This was actually Rev. Hood’s name).

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Painter’s content analysis  is a valuable contribution on an important aspect of the palne’ts most pressing issue and a reminder of the role we journalists and our editors play in supplying a lot of the information on which people base their opinions.

 

Climate Change Chronicles, Part XII: Images from Amabhakabhaka

Climate Change Chronicles, Part XI

In a set of decisions alternately hailed as an historic breakthrough and derided as woefully insufficient, negotiators from around the world announced Sunday morning the agreements they had forged during the previous two weeks at the United Nations climate change conference in Durban.

Among the accord’s key elements: an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the only current legally binding commitment binding nations to curb carbon emissions.

The second commitment period will start on January 1, 2013, thereby avoiding a gap between the first period’s expiration and the second’s resumption.

Another major point was a commitment to develop a comprehensive global plan as soon as possible, and by 2015 the latest, to reduce emissions. to reduce emissions that would take effect in 2020.

The parties also agreed to make operational a fund for developing nations that would start paying $100 billion annually starting in 2020 to support efforts combating climate change.

Initially approved in Cancun in December 2010, the fund is set to receive pledges from a number of countries like Korea.

These decisions and others prompted praise from people intimately involved with the often grueling process that ended on Sunday morning, close to two days after originally scheduled.

“We have taken crucial steps forward for the common good and the global citizenry today,” said Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South
African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation and President
of the Durban UN Climate Change Conference (COP17/CMP7). “I believe that what we have achieved in Durban will play a
central role in saving tomorrow, today.”

Cristiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, concurred with Nkoana-Mashabane.

“I salute the countries who made this agreement,” Figueres said. “They have all laid aside
some cherished objectives of their own to meet a common purpose – a
long-term solution to climate change. I sincerely thank the South African
Presidency who steered through a long and intense conference to a historic
agreement that has met all major issues.”

Nkoana-Mashabane invoked history before the grueling negotiations’ final push, noting that Friday marked exactly 50 years since Chief Albert Luthuli, who lived north of Durban, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

But others were far less impressed.

Former Bolivian top negotiatior Pablo Solon took aim at the developed countries like the United States, Europe, Japan and Russia, saying on Democracy Now that they are “just just trying to avoid their responsibility when it comes to greenhouse emissions cuts. So, that is the real outcome out of Durban, and that is why there is so much concern around the world, because, especially the developing countries, the poor nations, and the poor people around the world, even in the United States, are going to be those ones that are going to suffer the consequences of this. That is why we call it a climate apartheid.”

Governments themselves acknowledged that the current sum of pledges to cut
emissions both from developed and developing countries is not high enough
to keep the global average temperature rise below two degrees Celsius, according to a UNFCCC press release.

As a result, countries will become more ambitious in their emissions reduction goals. Their actions will led by the International Panel on Climate Change’s First Assessment Report and the global review process that will take place from 2013 to 2015.

The next major UNFCCC Climate Change Conference, COP 18, will take place November 26 to December 7, 2012, in Qatar. South Korea will cooperate closely with the host nation.

Climate Change Chronicles, Part X

“We are making history again, Jeff” Vukani exclaimed as we walked amongst a streaming mass of fantatical Orlando Pirates supporters on our way to the spanking new Moses Mabidha stadium.

I was inclined to agree.

Playing, coaching and watching soccer had been a major component of the year Vukani and I had participated in the Fulbright Teacher Exchange program.

One of my most memorable experiences came early in the year, when Tsepo, one of Vukani’s best friends, drove me to Johannesburg for the finals of the Four Nations Cup that pitted South Africa and Tunisia.

When Ntuthuko, another friend, realized that the number of tickets was one short of the amount needed for all of us go to go, he broke the news to me with a seriousness that I could only assume he had learned during the portion of his medical training that deals with informing people they have a little time to live.

“You see, Jeff,” he said.  “The problem is that we don’t have enough tickets.  How would you feel about staying here while we watched the game?”

“Not after I came all the way from Durban!”  I responded.

“OK, Jeff,” Ntuthuko said.  “Don’t worry.  We will organize.”

He was good to his word and returned several hours later not only with the promised ticket, but one that was in the Vodacom box that meant we had access to ample supplies of food and drink.

I only learned later that Tsepo, he and some of the other guys that, if their quest had been unsuccessful, they had planned to drug my Coke so that I would sleep through the game, at which point they would return and upbraid me for being so sleepy.

Fortunately, that was not necessary.

Although I knew it was not going to happen this time, the thought that if again we did not have enough tickets, at least I would have only come from Durban to Durban did flit through my mind.

Vukani actually drew on a college connection to get us seats in the Presidential Suite.  This was handy both because of the tasty food and free flowing beer, but also because it was raining quite hard and we were able to stay dry.

Vukani had further marked the significance of the occasion by giving me his son Sanikwa’s black winter hat with the Pirates logo (I had done my part by donning the navy blue blazer I wore when Dunreith and I got married for the second time at Look Park.).

It attracted plenty of attention.

I had trouble walking more than 25 yards without some crazed Pirates fan flashing in front of me, arms crossed in an X at the wrist to resemble the bones and yelling, “Amabakhabakha,” the Zulu name for the team, and pointing to my hat.

Ntuthuko was supposed to join us, but had to tend to being the second in command for the beginning of his sister’s daughter lobola process.

In the initial meeting, members of the groom’s party comes to the bride’s house to state their intentions and start to build a relationship with the familes that will merge through he marriage.

Vukani actually had to sell two surplus tickets.

Rather than scalp them for a profit, he sold them at face value to a man who looked as if the 100 Rands, the equivalent of about $12, was an awful lot, but there was no way he was not going to take his woman to that game.

Pre-game festivities consisted of downing a couple of beers with Owen, an energetic events planner for whom Vukani had been the main negotiator during the lobola, or bride negotiation, process.

We headed up to the stands, got the guards to open up the gates and entered the box.

It was perfect.

Rather than being enclosed and distant from the other fans, the box was just a hop away from the passageway where the fans walked toward their seats (This created some problems as a series of non-box fans tried to join the section.).

Moses Mabidha is an open dome that holds about 50,000, each of which has at least a decent view of the field, and has an arch that looms over it.  The bright lights illuminated the perfectly manicured grass, onto which a steady stream of rain fell.

I would guess that about 100 of us where white, another illustration o f the racially charged nature of apartheid’s comprensive nature in which legal and all other aspects of life were racially based.  Rugby and cricket were white sports.  Soccer was black.

The stadium was part of South Africa’s effort to host a “carbon neutral” world cup.  In this case, it meant tearing down the existing stadium and rebuilding it with the same materials.

In an unfortunate twist that illustrated the apartheid era’s more subtle yet legacy in the country, the soccer authorities apparently did not communicate much with the rugby officials who run King’s Park Stadium, which is literally adjacent to it, about the field dimensions.

As a result, rugby games are rarely played there.

But all of that was far removed from our minds when the game began.

It was a sloppy affair, but one in which Pirates struck first, just minutes into the game.

The goal set off a frenzy of celebration from the crowd, which, although both teams were technically playing away games, was filled with 90, if not 95, percent Pirates’ supporters.

Vukani was right in there with them, dancing, pumping his fist in the air and yelling with glee.

Even though Pirates had a golden chance to put the game away just minutes later, they failed to convert, and the score held at halftime.

Vukani and I agreed that this meant that Wits was dangerous.

Twenty minutes into the second half, the opponents struck, tieing the score at 1-1.

The potential tie forced Pirates to dig deep within themselves, and they responded, scoring a second goal on a left-footed blast, followed by a lovely clinching goal in which they moved the ball down the left flank before placing it by the frustrated goal keeper.

Each successive score set off ever more exuberant and joyful celebrations which continued long after the game ended and dozens of fans stormed the field before being tackled by the security guards who often got in a few swift quick kicks to the miscreants.

Vukani couldn’t have been happier.

The game was an important one, as Pirates were seeking to become the first club to hold all five titles in one season. Last year they won the treble, a first in local football since the formation of the Professional Soccer League (PSL).

We asked someone to take a picture of us.

The image showed us arm in arm, cheering and holding our beers.

It reminded me of one we took when we first met 16 years ago in Washington, DC, near a monument for South African veterans.  There, we also stood arm in arm before setting off for our various adventures.

More than a decade and a half later, that moment of connection was captured again, this time on his soil, over our shared passion for sport, now middle-aged fathers and husbands, we were ever so grateful to be together, to share the experience and, indeed, to again make history.

 

Climate Change Chronicles, Part IX

It’s just after 9:00 a.m. local time here in Durban, and COP17 continues to grind on to an uncertain conclusion.

All meetings have been postponed until 10:00 a.m., raising questions among some about whether a deal will be struck.

The United Nations Framework on Climate Change Conference web site has posted three documents since last night that seemed to indicate the nations were moving to a conclusion.

The Bigger Picture document extends the planning process to arrive at a legal instrument by 2015. The phrasing is deliberate and could represent an effort to appease the United States, which firmly opposed the creating of a legally binding standard. This “road map” is the product of a proposal the European Union introduced and advocated for strongly.

The second document calls for a second commitment period extension of the Kyoto Protocol to begin on January 1 2013 and to end December 31 2017.

If approved, this will represent the fulfillment of what Cristiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCC, said would happen as early as last Sunday.

The rub, of course, is that major emitters like Canada, India, and Russia have all said they will not sign onto the extension-a stance that shows no signs of changing.

China has indicated its willingness to join the second commitment period and has also said it will agree to certain binding commitments on emissions provided certain conditions are met.

But the United States, which never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has both indicated that it intends to do the same with the second commitment period. It also has said that it will only agree to emissions reductions if developing nations like India and China do the same.

The lack of binding commitments is all but certain to have dire circumstances for African and small island nations, some of which will have scorching drought and water submersion, respectively.

Last year in Cancun the world’s nation’s agreed to create a Green Climate Fund that would give developing nations $100 billion per year starting in 2020. The third document posted on the UNFCCC site spells out the details of the plans to “operationalize” it. This means setting up the structure so that it can start to be funded.

The document notes that South Korea has agreed to pledge money, but does not detail how much.

Even if approved, these agreements were not arrived at in a sufficiently open and democratic process, according to Angus Joseph, a nomadic resident of South Africa and Planet Earth.

He and a racially diverse group of about a dozen people slept in the park at Speaker’s Corner last night as part of Occupy COP 17.

Evening highlights included the performance of a play and singing songs by candlelight, and the main goal, he said, was to illustrate that democracy is not about giving someone else the power to make decisions.

Local police interrupted the occupiers at 7:00 a.m., telling them they were causing a disturbance by sleeping and had to stand up.

Joseph said his group was building on national traditions of occupying space that the former hearkened back to the apartheid era.

“They are the original occupiers,” Joseph said, referring to people forcibly removed under the Group Areas Act. “They would go and occupy space that they should be in due to being removed to a space that was too far away and unsafe.”

Joseph sported a white t-shirt with images of Mahatma Gandhi and Chief Albert Luthuli, both of whom spent significant time in Durban. In addition to being International Human Rights Day, December 10 also marked the 50th anniversary of Luthuli’s receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

Joseph and the other occupiers had hoped that this local tradition of non-violent struggle would help move the world’s delegates to a meaningful agreement, but thought that outcome was unlikely.

“We’re not super optimistic,” he said.

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern did not appear to be filled with optimism, either.

Talking shortly after the meetings were scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m., he said he was still waiting to receive the revised text.

“It’s like hurry up and wait,” he said.

Climate Change Chronicles, Part VIII

Today’s the last day of COP17, the United Nations conference on climate change, and the place is absolutely buzzing with activity.

It remains to be seen whether the world’s nations will be able to come to meaningful terms on what arguably is the planetary issue of the 21st century.

Here are some of the major issues being discussed:

a. Kyoto Protocol Second Commitment Period.  This would extend the only legally binding document on carbon emissions for an additional period of time.  The Least Developed Countries, or LDCs, are pushing for five years after the initial protocol ends in January 3, while other nations have said seven years works better for them.

A big hitch is that many major carbon emitters like the United, Japan, Russia and Canada have ruled out signing onto an extension (The United States never signed the first protocol.).

Meanwhile, South Africa, China, India and Brazil, the so-called Basic countries, have started to work on an alternative framework that would concentrate on climate equity and sustainable development.

b. Road map: The European Union has said it will sign up to extend Kyoto only if all nations adopt a “road map” pointing toward a legally binding treaty under which countries would have until 2015 to formulate plans that would take effect by 2020.

c.  The Green Climate Fund: At the Cancun conference in 2010, agreement was reached to create a $100 billion fund that would be disbursed annually to developing nations.  Discussion here in Durban has focused on making the fund operational before getting specific pledge commitments.  African Union nations, among others, have signaled that this is an important issue for them.

Meanwhile, youth activists from the University of Witswatersrand staged a protest this morning in which people wearing white body suits spray painted with the words “Must Sign” took turns lieing on the ground, then wrote phrases in orange chalk like “Sign the protocol.  Stop wasting time.  Renew it.”

A pair of youth played on a tambourine and scraped a comb over a tube-like piece of metal as the group traced a path past a fortress-like collection of green, black and blue crates from Cape Town.

You get the idea.

I’ll be tweeting actively throughout the day, and, most likely, well into the night at @JeffKLO.

It’s a thrill to be here and I’ll keep you posted about what we learn.

For now, though, I’m heading to a COP17 press conference.

More soon.