'Climate Week' Kicks Off in NYC: Activism, Politics, Pranks To Come

by Emily Gertz

categories: Activism, Climate Security, International Action, Politics

Published September 21, 2009 @ 07:11AM PT

Hundreds gathered in Central Park on a Sunday to wake up global leaders to climate change with an energetic "human countdown" to action -- the activist kick-off to the coming week, which includes the UN General Assembly's Climate Summit, and the Group of 20 (G20) major economies meeting in Pittsburgh.

The city's going to be chock-a-block with meetings, demonstrations, art, film, and more.

With the assistance of the Climate Voice project, I'll be covering Tuesday's Climate Summit, and the G20 meeting, both here and at Grist, where my intro to some of the week's political intrigues is up:

While climate is not formally on the G20’s agenda, some are hoping that President Obama will come off his speech at the New York event ready to signal to other world leaders that the U.S. will lead on forging a strong replacement to the Kyoto Protocol treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which expires in 2013. Its successor is supposed to be largely finalized at December’s global-warming talks.

...however, the Obama administration may be hamstrung by sluggish Senate progress on passing climate legislation. Senate leaders keep pushing back the timetable for action on a bill, with Majority Leader Harry Reid suggesting last week that it could be bumped all the way to next year. Republicans are almost universally opposed to a cap-and-trade system for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, and many moderate Democrats aren’t enthusiastic about cap-and-trade either.

If the Senate doesn’t pass a climate bill by early December, U.S. influence in Copenhagen may well be diminished, though if the EPA takes action to regulate greenhouse gases with its existing authority, that could give the Obama administration something to take the table.

Meanwhile, the administration is working toward a bilateral climate agreement, which could circumvent the Kyoto treaty framework. Where the world’s two greatest greenhouse-gas polluters lead, the rest of the world will probably have to follow, no matter how strong or weak the results may be.

Keep your eyes on this space, and on this space, and on my twitter feed, for ongoing updates and reports.