President Obama's Remarks on the Massey Energy Coal Mine Disaster
Today, President Barack Obama discussed the initial findings of an investigation by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Joe Main, and MSHA Administrator for Coal Mine Safety and Health Kevin Stricklin:
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. On April 5th, the United States suffered the worst mine disaster in more than a generation. Twenty-nine lives were lost. Families have been devastated. Communities have been upended. And during this painful time, all of us are mourning with the people of Montcoal and Whitesville and Naoma and the Coal River Valley. The people of West Virginia are in our prayers.But we owe them more than prayers. We owe them action. We owe them accountability. We owe them an assurance that when they go to work every day, when they enter that dark mine, they are not alone. They ought to know that behind them there is a company that’s doing what it takes to protect them, and a government that is looking out for their safety.
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, I asked the officials standing with me – Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Joe Main and Kevin Stricklin with the Mine Safety and Health Administration – to lead an investigation into what caused the explosion at Massey Energy Company’s Upper Big Branch mine. I asked them to report back with preliminary findings this week.
We just concluded a meeting, where they briefed me on their investigation. I want to emphasize that this investigation is ongoing, and there’s still a lot that we don’t know. But we do know that this tragedy was triggered by a failure at the Upper Big Branch mine—a failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes that they allow unsafe conditions to continue.
So today I’ve directed Secretary Solis, Assistant Secretary Main, and Administrator Stricklin to work closely with state mining officials to press ahead with this investigation—so we can help make sure a disaster like this never happens again. Owners responsible for conditions in the Upper Big Branch mine should be held accountable for decisions they made and preventive measures they failed to take. And I’ve asked Secretary Solis to work with the Justice Department to ensure that every tool in the federal government is available in this investigation.
But this isn’t just about a single mine. It’s about all of our mines. The safety record at the Massey Upper Big Branch mine was troubling. And it’s clear that while there are many responsible companies, far too many mines aren’t doing enough to protect their workers’ safety.
Climate Wise Women Tour: Georgetown
In April 2010, Climate Wise Women from the South Pacific Islands, Uganda and Biloxi, Mississippi will begin a 30-city, 18-country speaking tour in the Americas. These community activists can’t wait for politicians and governmental negotiators to get it right on climate change. They want straight talk on what climate change is doing to women, children, families and communities around the world. The tour continues to Asia / the Pacific in Fall 2010 and to Europe in Spring 2011.
Panelists- Keya Chatterjee, World Wildlife Foundation
- Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
- Kari Manlove, Center for American Progress
- Tonya Rawe, CARE
- Gina Wimp, Georgetown University
Georgetown
Reiss Science Bldg Rm 112 6-8:00pm
Climate Wise Women Tour: Johns Hopkins
In April 2010, Climate Wise Women from the South Pacific Islands, Uganda and Biloxi, Mississippi will begin a 30-city, 18-country speaking tour in the Americas. These community activists can’t wait for politicians and governmental negotiators to get it right on climate change. They want straight talk on what climate change is doing to women, children, families and communities around the world. The tour continues to Asia / the Pacific in Fall 2010 and to Europe in Spring 2011.
Panelists- Majora Carter, Majora Carter Group
- Elizabeth Becker, Author/Journalist
- Kathleen Rogers, Earth Day Network
Johns Hopkins
1717 Mass. Ave NW Rm LL7
How to Use Social Media to Drive Growth for Sustainable Products
A lively discussion moderated by Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones will take place from 5:30-6:30 followed by a cocktail reception at Helix Lounge featuring drink and food specials.
Panelists:- Sacha Cohen is President of grassfed media, an integrated communications firm that helps green companies create compelling content, marketing materials, and social media campaigns. She is also the founder of GoingGreenDC.net.
- Jennifer Kaplan is adjunct faculty in Marketing at Marymount University, blogger for Ecopreneurist.com, and author of the new book,Greening Your Small Business.
- Diane MacEachern is a communications professional, speaker and accomplished writer. Diane is passionate about empowering consumers — especially women — to use their marketplace clout to protect the environment. Diane is the author of Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World.
- Lynn Miller is a green marketing consultant and founder of Organicmania.com, a blog “devoted to cutting through the hype andfiguring out when it makes sense to lay out the big bucks for organic and green purchases. Lynn also tweets with a business focus at @4GreenPs.
- Adam Shake is Editor-in-Chief of Simple Earth Media and founder of Twilight Earth and EcoTech Daily. He is an environmental writer, advocate, entrepreneur, speaker and Washington DC-based activist. Adam is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and an active participant in a number of environmental and social media clubs and organizations.
Moderator:
Kate Sheppard is an environmental reporter and blogger at Mother Jones. Kate’s inside the beltway muckraking on the energy industry and the Chamber of Commerce make her a must follow for anyone interested in the business and politics of green and greenwashing.
Helix Lounge
Hotel Helix
1430 Rhode Island Ave NW
Climate Policy: Public Perception, Science, and the Political Landscape
This briefing will explore public perceptions of climate change, scientific understanding, and the current political landscape. Our goal is to identify areas where these three perspectives reinforce each other and where they diverge in order to: 1) better understand the challenges and opportunities policy-makers face, 2) identify remaining needs that, if met, could help society most effectively manage risks, and 3) explore opportunities to improve communication among policy-makers, scientists, and the public.
Speakers:- Norman J. Ornstein, Ph.D. Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D. Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs, Department of Geosciences and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
- Jon A. Krosnick, Ph.D. Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Communication, Stanford University
- Paul Higgins, Ph.D. Senior Policy Fellow, American Meteorological Society
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Norman Ornstein is a long-time observer of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call and is an election analyst for CBS News. He serves as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI’s Election Watch series. He also serves as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000); the coauthored The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006); and, most recently, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), also coauthored.
Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is also the Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at the Woodrow Wilson School. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2002 after more than two decades with the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-governmental environmental organization, where he served as chief scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program. Oppenheimer is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, serving most recently as a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and is now a coordinating lead author of an upcoming IPCC Special Report covering climate extremes and disasters. He serves on the US National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems. He is also a science advisor to the Environmental Defense Fund. His interests include science and policy of the atmosphere, particularly climate change and its impacts. Much of his research aims to understand the potential for “dangerous” outcomes of increasing levels of greenhouse gases by exploring the effects of global warming on ecosystems such as coral reefs, on the ice sheets and sea level, and on patterns of human migration. Oppenheimer is the author of more than 100 articles published in professional journals and is co-author (with Robert H. Boyle) of a 1990 book, Dead Heat: The Race Against The Greenhouse Effect. He received his Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Chicago.
Jon A. Krosnick is Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of communication, political science, and psychology at Stanford University.
A leading international authority on questionnaire design and survey research methods, Professor Krosnick has taught courses for professionals on survey methods for 25 years around the world and has served as a methodology consultant to government agencies, commercial firms, and academic scholars. His books include “Introduction to Survey Research, Polling, and Data Analysis” and “The Handbook of Questionnaire Design” (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), which reviews 100 years of research on how different ways of asking questions can yield different answers from survey respondents and on how to design questions to measure most accurately. His recent research has focused on how other aspects of survey methodology (e.g., collecting data by interviewing face-to-face vs. by telephone or on paper questionnaires) can be optimized to maximize accuracy.
Dr. Krosnick is also a world-recognized expert on the psychology of attitudes, especially in the area of politics. He is co-principal investigator of the American National Election Study, the nation’s preeminent academic research project exploring voter decision-making and political campaign effects. For 30 years, Dr. Krosnick has studied how the American public’s political attitudes are formed, change, and shape thinking and action. His publication explore the causes of people decisions about whether to vote, for whom to vote, whether to approve of the President’s performance, whether to take action to influence government policy-making on a specific issue, and much more.
Dr. Krosnick’s scholarship has been recognized with the Phillip Brickman Memorial Prize, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award, the Erik Erikson Early Career Award for Excellence and Creativity, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and membership as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
As an expert witness in court, he has testified evaluating the quality of surveys presented as evidence by opposing counsel and has conducted original survey research to inform courts in cases involving unreimbursed expenses, uncompensated overtime work, exempt/non-exempt misclassification, patent/trademark violation, health effects of accidents, consequences of being misinformed about the results of standardized academic tests, economic valuation of environmental damage, change of venue motions, and other topics.
At Stanford, Dr. Krosnick directs the Political Psychology Research Group (PPRG). PPRG is a cross-disciplinary team of scholars who conduct empirical studies of the psychology of political behavior and studies seeking to optimize research methodology for studying political psychology. The group’s studies employ a wide range of research methods, including surveys, experiments, and content analysis, and the group often conducts collaborative research studies with leading news media organizations, including ABC News, The Associated Press, the Washington Post, and Time Magazine. Support for the group’s work has come from U.S. Government agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics), private foundations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and Institutes at Stanford (e.g., the Woods Institute for the Environment). Dr. Krosnick also directs the Summer Institute in Political Psychology, an annual event that brings 60 students and professions from around the world to Stanford for intensive training in political psychology theory and methods.
In his spare time, Dr. Krosnick plays drums with a contemporary jazz group called Charged Particles that has released two CD’s internationally and tours across the U.S. and abroad (www.chargedparticles.com).
White House Press Gaggle on the Copenhagen Accord Negotiations 1
In this official transcript of a briefing delivered on Air Force One on the way back from Copenhagen, Denmark to Washington, D.C., a senior administration official (evidently Press Secretary Robert Gibbs) describes the unusual process President Obama took to craft the Copenhagen Accord with the leaders of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.
11:46 P.M. CET
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So I just want to make sure everybody is cool with the rules here. We’re going to have probably a couple of these on this flight. What I want to do though, on background as a senior administration official, I want to go through a series of events that led up to the President going into what we had set up as a bilateral meeting with Premier Wen. So I just want to get—I want everyone to be clear on this set of events. So let me go through this timeline and then we can go through questions. And bear with me because I sometimes can’t even read my own writing.
At the first bilateral meeting with Premier Wen, the President, as we have done over the past several days, was pushing quite hard on transparency language. And we had given some transparency language to them and negotiators on our side had gone to work with their side on the notion of transparency.
Q The language was before the meeting, though? Was given to them before the meeting?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’m sorry, say again.
Q When you said, “we had given language to them,” you meant before their bilat?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This was during the bilat. So this was at the end of the bilat and the President says to Wen that he thinks our negotiators should get together, spend about an hour seeing if we can make some progress – because in all honesty, rhetorically, we were hearing what we wanted to hear about steps that they were willing to take on transparency, but wanted to make sure that we would have something to agree on that wasn’t just them agreeing to agree.
So the President at that point – you guys will have some times in your email to go through – but remember there comes a point in which you should have gotten from Kevin Lewis, via an update from me, that says the President has gone to the multilateral meeting and representing the Chinese was their climate change ambassador in the ministry of foreign affairs, who was in this meeting – to put it, I guess, accurately – as to speak for the entire Chinese government.
It’s at this point that the President, before our Medvedev bilateral, the President said to staff, I don’t want to mess around with this anymore, I want to just talk with Premier Wen. So we were trying to do that before the Medvedev bilat. Our advance team called their advance team to try to set this meeting up, and in all honesty make one more chance, make one more run at getting something done. The Chinese say they need to call our advance guys back. So it’s clear that it’s going to take some time to get this Wen meeting done, so we’re going to go ahead and do the Medvedev bilat earlier than was on the schedule.
And as the President waited for Medvedev to be – to move the delegation down into the room, the President also says to staff, we should meet in a group of three with Lula of Brazil, Singh of India, and Zuma of South Africa. All right. So, let’s get a meeting with Wen, let’s get a meeting with these three guys.
We get a call back from advance that Wen is at the hotel and the Chinese staff are at the airport.
Q (Inaudible.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t know what level of staff, but some of their staff – a decent chunk of their staff was at the airport.
Q So they had all left the Bella Center?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.
Q Including Wen – and that was news to you guys -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Wen was at the hotel.
Q Oh, he was at the hotel.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The Indians – when we called also about Zuma, Lula and Singh, we were told Singh was at the airport.
Q Do you consider that a walk-out?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I think they thought the meeting was done. I think they thought there wasn’t anything left to stay for, in all honesty.
Q That was around 4:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m.?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’d have to – my sense is probably closer to 4:00 p.m. So we basically – we set times for when we want to have these meetings. We called the advance for each of these countries. We want to do – we had given the Chinese to a certain point before we were going to lock in first the other meetings. So we hadn’t heard back from the Chinese so we lock in first the notion at 5:30 p.m. we’d like to meet with the three, Zuma, Lula and Singh. And then at 6:15 p.m. – the Chinese called back – we didn’t know if they were going to call back, at 6:15 p.m. we lock in that we’re going to do a bilateral meeting with Premier Wen.
Zuma originally accepted this 5:30 p.m. multilateral meeting. Brazil tells us that they don’t know if they can come because they want the Indians to come. The Indians, as I just said, were at the airport. Zuma is under the impression that everybody is coming. Advance basically tells the South Africans that at this point the Brazilians are unclear about meeting without the Indians, the Indians are at the airport, and Zuma at that point says, well, if they’re not coming I can’t do this.
The Chinese then call and say, can we move our 6:15 p.m. bilateral back to 7:00 p.m. And we said – we put them on hold, talked a little bit, the President walked up, the President said, move it to 7:00 p.m., I’m going back to the multilateral. The President goes to the multilateral and we had been getting emails at this time from those in the European delegation about – because the President had left that first multilateral – or the previous multilateral after the deputy foreign minister for climate change had been there representing the Chinese and saying, I’m going to go find and talk to Wen. All right, we’re going to do this Wen thing. So the Europeans are wondering sort of where we were with Premier Wen.
He spent about 45 minutes in the bilateral meeting -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL #2: In the multilateral.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I’m sorry, in the multilateral meeting; thank you. That’s with the Europeans, that’s with Ethiopians. At the very -
Q (Inaudible.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So this would have been, quite frankly, leading up to about 7:00 p.m.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL #2: After Medvedev.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, after Medvedev. We said – a couple of us start to walk up to the room where the multilat is because we had sent advance to look at the room, the room where we were going to have the China bilat and realize the room is occupied by what we think are the Chinese and we can’t get into the room to look at it.
So they come back and it sort of got our antennae up a little bit. So by the time several of us, including Denis McDonough and I, got into the multilateral room we’ve now figured out why we can’t get into that room: because that room has Wen, Lula, Singh and Zuma. They’re all having a meeting.
Q So they weren’t at the airport?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Or they came back.
Q And you guys didn’t know this.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We did not know this. We are getting – I can show you some of the emails that we’re getting saying – because truthfully I asked one of the advance guys, did you see anybody else in the hallway? And he said, just clearly Chinese.
Q So Wen -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Wen, Lula, Singh and Zuma. But we’re starting to get emails one by one, hey Zuma is in this room, too; hey, Singh is in this room, too. So all of a sudden that’s when we start to make sure we’re walking up to the multilateral room. The President is beginning to leave. He spends time right before he leaves – this would have been right before 7:00 p.m., the President is talking with Chancellor Merkel and Gordon Brown about going for this bilateral meeting with Premier Wen, that they had rescheduled for 7:00 p.m.
Again, we thought we were still on for a bilateral meeting. That’s when our delegation walked over. We held and I think Ben moved the pool because we had heard at this point previous to this that the pool for the Chinese had been assembled outside of this room. And we had the President wait for a minute while Ben moved the pool so that – we had heard that they were going to pre-set without any of us. So we had the President hold.
That’s I think when many of you start to pick up this story. This is when I think you, in the pool report, said, you know -
Q When he said, are you ready, are you ready?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Are you ready for me? We were going to -
Q You were going to crash their meeting.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, no, no, no, no. We weren’t crashing a meeting; we were going for our bilateral meeting.
Q And you found those other people there.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We found the other people there. We found this out as we were going -
Q So as you walked in you realized it -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We found this out – remember, we found this out as Denis and I are walking up to the room to go with the President, because the delegations were the same for the Wen bilat, Denis, Ben and I were both in the delegation for the original Wen bilat. That’s when the President walks in – Helene has in the pool report, you know, “Are you ready for me?”
Q Is it correct to say that when he walked in he didn’t know?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t – I think it’s safe to say they did not intend to have that meeting with four of them; they intended to have that meeting with one. The President walks in – and by the time I finally push through I hear the President say – there aren’t any seats, right, I mean, I think if you’ve seen some of the pictures, there were basically no chairs. And the President says, “No, no, don’t worry, I’m going to go sit by my friend Lula,” and says, “Hey, Lula.” Walks over, moves a chair, sits down next to Lula. The Secretary of State sits down next to him.
And that leaves us at a series of events that Doug and others covered where there’s pushing and that would have been at 7:00 p.m. local time, so 1:00 p.m. sort of East Coast Time.
Q When the President -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me just – I want to do a couple things now. They’re still meeting back in Copenhagen. We’re going to get some regular updates, and as we get some updates, our hope and goal is to provide you then a little bit more context. Then we’ll start then at 7:00 p.m., or 1:00 p.m Eastern, because there’s several more twists in this road before we get to I think my notes have it at about – that whole meeting concludes about 8:15 p.m.-8:20 p.m. But there’s a whole lot of fun in between.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me take a few -
Q Can I clarify two just sort of factual points. You said at one point that the President left the multilateral because of the level of Chinese representation – is that right, that he – basically he said, I’m out?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me say this – I think the President realized, based on a meeting that – meetings that he’d had in Beijing with Premier Wen and the bilateral, he felt like he had a very good relationship with Premier Wen, and quite frankly, if the Chinese were going to make – if the Chinese were going to move on transparency, it wasn’t going to be through the deputy mining minister – right?
Q Is that what the guy is, deputy mining minister?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I was just – sort of a joke. But, no, he’s the – I think we sent it around – he’s the -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL #2: Climate change ambassador.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: – climate change rep for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But in all honesty, it’s a position lower than the person that was in the original multilateral when we got there -
Q (Inaudible.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, yes. So I think at that point, the President – I think the President understands that he wants to make one more run at this, but he wants to make one more run at this with Premier Wen.
Q And later in the – when he was going up to the meeting that turned into the multilateral, is it your thought that they meant to have a meeting with each other to exclude the United States, or get their ducks in a row, or what was going on?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I will assume that their meeting was to get their ducks in a row. Because at this point, though our – certainly our impression was that a number of these people were either at or on the way to the airport. We had confirmed with the Chinese before he went to the multilateral the second to last time – the last time being right before the press conference – but the second to last time, that we had just then agreed to move the bilateral meeting that we wanted to set up with the Chinese to 7:00 p.m. So we believed, up until about two minutes before Denis and I walked into the multilateral, before moving to the 7:00 p.m. meeting, that we were having a bilateral meeting.
Q But it’s not – it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise because those four countries have been working as a negotiating team on this issue, right?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Certainly no surprise. Again, we were trying to put together a similar meeting, but found the logistics to be hard to do. And I think I know now why the logistics proved somewhat challenging. They were busy; they were meeting.
Q Was it logistics, or were they trying to have their own separate meeting without the U.S. involved?
Q Were they trying to scuffle the deal and get together and -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t know that they were trying – I don’t know where they were on the deal. I know that the – again, the President’s viewpoint was I’m going to make one last run. When it appeared we couldn’t get the Chinese earlier in the day, the President said, well, if we can’t get the Chinese then let’s get the next three that are – absolutely they’re working as a team. They’ve got similar interests, there’s no doubt about that.
Again, the only surprise we had, in all honesty, was we did not know at 6:15 p.m., when we moved our meeting from 6:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., that in that room wasn’t just the Chinese having a meeting about their posture going into the 7:00 p.m. meeting, but in fact all four countries that we had been trying to arrange meetings with were indeed all in the same room.
Q Well, when did that become clear? When the President goes to that meeting does he think he’s going to meet Wen, and walks in the door and is, like, oh, everyone is here?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, no. Denis and I had told him that – we had told him -
Q That they were all in there?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: – that the room that the meeting is being held in for our bilateral currently contains the leaders of those four countries. And he said, “Good.”
Q That was his thought – good?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And we were off.
Q Can I ask one logistical -
Q So he said, “Good,” and, I’m going to go up there at 7:00 p.m. for my prior appointment with Wen -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He said, “Good,” on the way to walking to the meeting. I mean, we had a 7:00 p.m. meeting and we were walking on our way to meet our 7:00 p.m. meeting. We briefed him that our 7:00 p.m. meeting is in a room currently occupied by not just the Chinese, but the three other countries. And the President’s viewpoint is, I wanted to see them all and now is our chance.
Q Were they waiting for him there? Is that why they were all there, because they knew he was coming?
Q Was there surprise when he walked in?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, the Chinese were waiting for us. I do not believe they anticipated that the meeting that we ultimately had would actually include all the countries. There’s no doubt -
Q They thought you guys would wait until they were done?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don’t know whether they thought we would – there really wasn’t anybody to – actually I think we were shown into the room, in all honesty. I think we were shown which direction to go to the room and I think there was no doubt there was some surprise that we were going to join the bigger meeting.
Q I’ve got to ask why you didn’t have better intel – and I don’t mean in the CIA sense – on where all these people were? I mean, it’s not -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We did. We thought they were at the airport.
Q Right, exactly.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I mean, that’s what we were told.
Q But, you know, you’re all sort of in a close area there. Why didn’t anybody from the administration know where all these people were? I mean -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, it’s not our job to know where Prime Minister Singh is if his – if we’re told he’s at the airport.
Q But usually at these summits there’s a lot of Sherpa-tracking going on and that sort of thing, you know.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, look, I – I mean, we were – we were told they were at the airport. We were told delegations were split up. We were told they weren’t going to meet – Zuma wasn’t going to come unless he was under the impression that the other two were going to come.
Q Do you think that’s all part of the brinksmanship and the sort of horse-trading and maneuvering?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I honestly think that they – well, my gut instinct tells me that they knew they had to make one more run at this.
Q One more?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: One more run at this.
Q But there’s this – what they call a taxicab strategy, when you always threaten to walk out. I mean, do you think that’s what -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, they didn’t threaten to walk out. When we tried to set up the meetings we were told they were gone. I mean, if they employed that strategy they didn’t lay down the threat.
Q Can I ask a logistical question just about when – I mean, because we’re all on the plane and we land at 1:00 a.m. in the morning -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If we’re lucky.
Q If we’re lucky.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If somebody wants to type this up and call it in, I will tell them that that’s fine to do – largely because I want to be – I want to make clear, we did not break into what we thought was a secret meeting, okay? Again, the reason that we appeared at the room – the reason we appeared at the room was at – in the 5:00 p.m. hour the Chinese wanted to move their 6:15 p.m. meeting back to 7:00 p.m. in the room that they had for their meetings. We said, fine. We were walking to meet our 7:00 p.m. appointment.
Q Well, you guys want – I mean, can we – because are we going to try and get this in for tonight? Or – I just want to make sure that – the one thing I just want to make sure doesn’t happen is a transcript lands and some – and we don’t somewhere -
Q I’m more interested in what happens between 7:00 p.m. and 8:15 p.m.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It’s a good story, my friend, and with a little luck we’ll be able to tell that at a little bit later leg on the flight.
Q That’s what I mean. So we, like hold – are we holding everything until we land? Or are we trying to, like -
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I just want to make sure – I don’t want to be – just again, I just want to make sure that – the reason I gave you this series of events is because to accurately portray just sort of what is happening and when. We did not – again, our presence at that room at 7:00 p.m. was expected based on the meeting that we had set up. Whether or -
Q With Wen.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. Whether or not the other – fair enough we did not know the other three were there until at a point at which we were about to go and walking to that meeting.
Q And you and Denis told the President?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Denis and I -
Q Was anybody mad about it?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. We thought this was a great opportunity to finish four meetings.
Q The other guys.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, it’s hard to tell because the truth is – and we’ll get into this on the next leg of this – there were – quickly dove into about an hour and 20 minutes worth of negotiating that – I want to do this part off the record.
- * * * *
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So, the President believed that he needed to talk to Wen, they needed to make one more run at getting an agreement. So he’s in this meeting – this is the group of leaders that we first visit in the very beginning of the morning. So it is comprised of – obviously you’re going to take the four out that are already in the different meeting. So you’ve got a pretty decent cross-section, first, of – you’ve the Europeans – you’ve got Merkel, Brown, Sarkozy; you’ve got Rudd from Australia; you’ve got Rasmussen from Denmark. You’ve also got Meles from Ethiopia; you’ve got Mexico, Norway – so you basically have the smaller developing countries, Europe, Australia, Scandinavia – so you basically have the larger group minus the four that he ultimately sees.
This larger group had come to the conclusion that the agreement would either – they needed to make one more run at two main points. One of them was the percent reduction by 2050 and the temperature change, as well as the transparency; that they had to do that with Wen or they were not going to get an agreement.
So, at this point – so the President went around to – went around the table, physically walking around the table, talking to Ethiopia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, the Maldives – all these countries to talk about what they were going to go – what he was going to go do in making a last run at Premier Wen. And they talked about the fact that if they didn’t – if they went to Wen and they couldn’t get an agreement, that basically they would still try to structure something for those that would sign on in order to continue to make progress toward something in the future.
So essentially the President has – is working with Europe, Asia – I’m sorry, Europe, Australia, and others in the developed – of the developed economies, in addition to the smaller developing countries minus India, China, Brazil, and South Africa, which is essential in ensuring that, in all honesty, the other four realized – this is where I think the other four realized that they’ve got to make one more run at this, too, because what they were – what the President was discussing along with this group was, if they couldn’t get something that included China, India, Brazil, and South Africa on transparency and temperature mitigation, that they would get what they could with who they could get it with.
So you basically have – you’ve got – you’ve now got two different coalitions. All right.
Q I just don’t understand your last sentence – they would get what they could with who they could get it with.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, basically if the Chinese were unwilling to do transparency, and the Indians and the Brazilians and the South Africans followed the Chinese, then the President and those in that multilateral group would try to get something that all they could agree on, and we would go out with all of that.
I mean, look, I think it’s safe to say at that point in the day, China had real – they were balking at transparency. The President thought at the very least we could get – we can make progress on something by putting together a coalition of those that were agreeable to having some sort of declaration or agreement.
Q And that coalition included both developing and developed countries?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, and that obviously is the key to -
Q Like you could create leverage against the four outstanding.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, yes. I think that’s why people stowed their luggage in their overhead bins and decided to come back to the negotiating table. Came back from the airport.
All right? Thanks, guys.
Climate Action Network Protests Exclusion of Friends of the Earth, Avaaz From Copenhagen Talks
The Climate Action Network has issued the following letter to protest the removal of Friends of the Earth International, the largest grassroots environmental organization in the world, and Avaaz, the largest online activist organization in the world. Download the letter.
On behalf of Climate Action Network International, and our 500 member organizations, I would like to register our strong concern about the limited NGO access to the second week of the Copenhagen climate negotiations. In particular the removal of badges from Avaaz and Friends of the Earth International.The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development affirms that “non-governmental organisations play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy.” Civil society has played a constructive and vital role in the climate negotiations since their inception. Civil society brings insight, oversight and connection to people around the world who depend on the work of NGOs to pursue the credibility of the process and integrity of the outcome.
Excluding civil society is not only inconsistent with UN Principles. It is profoundly counterproductive to the spirit of the conference and the practical value of its outcome. To launch the world toward a sustainable future, the process over the critical next few days must be accountable and transparent so that the result will have the power of broad ownership by all sectors. Nothing less than the full and active participation of civil society can produce such an outcome.
On Saturday more than one million people at four thousand events in one hundred and forty countries called for world leaders to agree a fair, ambitious and binding agreement at Copenhagen. One hundred thousand marched on the streets of Copenhagen. Environment and development groups provide a conduit for the world’s people to engage in the climate negotiations. And many of the world’s people will look to civil society to judge the outcome of Copenhagen. It is essential that civil society is allowed to participate in these negotiations.
I urge you to reinstate participants from Avaaz and Friends of the Earth International, and to ensure the plenary sessions are open to NGO attendance.
I am happy to work with you and your teams to ensure the full and fruitful participation of civil society in these historic talks.
Yours sincerely, David Turnbull Director Climate Action Network International
15th Conference of the Parties - Climate Change Conference
The sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are open to Parties of the Convention and Observer States (Governments), the United Nations System and observer organizations duly admitted by the Conference of the Parties. In addition, accredited press is allowed to cover the proceedings of the Convention.
Participation in COP15 is restricted to duly nominated representatives of Parties, observer States, admitted observer organizations and accredited press/media. The sessions are not open to the public.
COP 15 comprises a number of sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies of the Convention, its Kyoto Protocol, bilateral and multilateral meetings as well as side events and exhibits.
Five Parties have recently made proposals for a protocol under the Convention pursuant to Article 17 of the Convention.
The secretariat has also received twelve proposals by Parties for amendment to the Kyoto Protocol pursuant to Articles 20 and 21 of the Protocol.
Senate Watch, China: Bingaman, Cantwell, Casey, Dorgan, Klobuchar, Lugar, Murkowski, Rockefeller, Whitehouse
Senators respond to China’s recent emissions reduction announcement of lowering greenhouse gas intensity by 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Several senators continue to move away from the legislative structure passed by the House of Representatives, and supported by President Obama and most industry advocates of reform.
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)Maria Cantwell (D-WA)E&E News Bill Wicker, a Bingaman spokesman, said the chairman supports the economywide cap-and-trade approach for reducing emissions but also sees some merits in the other ideas. Additionally, several panel members on both sides of the aisle have signaled interest in legislative options beyond the cap-and-trade bill approved earlier this spring in the House and now up for debate in the Senate. “We thought it’d be a good idea to step back and put all of the different policy options into a single hearing,” Wicker said.
E&E News By the time we’re done with financial regulatory reform, everybody’s head is going to be spinning and they’re going to be saying, “Oh my gosh, how can you prevent this from happening again?”
Robert Casey (D-PA)People are moving more toward something that’s much more streamlined. The bottom line is you don’t want to have added volatility to the market when trying to solve [the emissions] problem. And that’s clearly what the futures trading does. It adds volatility. What you want is a predictable price so that people can move forward and diversify.
E&E News There’s a lot of verification we’re going to have to see before I’d embrace it [China’s announced GHG commitments] and say it’s as positive a development as the Chinese would hope we’d say it is. I’m a little skeptical is maybe the fastest way to say it.
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)So if we’ve got problems here in terms of working that out and making sure there are enough emission allowances for us to do what we need to do here, you can imagine how much more complicated it gets internationally.
E&E News Some will make the case that if you do financial reform that setting up a Wall Street trading system on carbon securities is less dangerous. I am not interested in setting up a trillion-dollar carbon securities market to tell us what the price of energy is going to be.
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)E&E News It’s pretty clear to me that our nation is going to continue to use our most abundant resource, which is coal, but we’re going to use it differently. And the question is how do we do that. How do we find the science, technology and research capability to allow us to continue to use coal in a manner that would decarbonize it or use it in a much lower manner? This [CCS funding report] was a unique exercise and a unique product of thought, where several stakeholders have come together on a single issue. . . [It will provide] beneficial pathways for future legislation.
Richard G. LugarE&E News The idea would be while the body is working on financial regulation, then during that same time we’ll be getting the energy, the bipartisan group working on energy.
Lisa Murkowski (D-AK)E&E News I’d not be comfortable if the Copenhagen progress report relied on billions of dollars [in international assistance] anticipated from the U.S. budget that we’ve not debated and will be very contentious.
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)E&E News Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), offered Bingaman praise for keeping an open mind to alternatives. “Everyone assumes cap and trade is the only way to go,” Dillon said. “There’s been a demonization or marginalization of anyone raising other options.” As for Murkowski, a onetime supporter of cap-and-trade legislation, Dillon said, “She’s not promoting one idea over another yet. She’s exploring the options.”
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)E&E News The Chinese are a mystery that way. They enter negotiations always with an advantage because nobody knows what they’re going to do, what they’re going to say, or whether they mean it.
E&E News Unfortunately, we start from a position where there’s fairly considerable basis for skepticism on the enforcement side [for China emissions reductions], which means the administration has got to come up with a pretty solid program. It doesn’t matter what their numbers are if they don’t have to prove them.
Politico If we don’t provide those other technologies a level playing field, we provide an unfair advantage to the nuclear power industry at the expense of the American economy at large.
Obama Administration Announces Copenhagen Schedule, Including Presidential Visit
On Wednesday, December 9th, President Barack Obama will participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15).
For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference. U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs. The following keynote events and speakers are currently scheduled:
- Wednesday, December 9th: Taking Action at Home, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson
- Thursday, December 10th: New Energy Future: the role of public lands in clean energy production and carbon capture, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar
- Friday, December 11th: Clean Energy Jobs in a Global Marketplace, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
- Monday, December 14th: Leading in Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Secretary Steven Chu
- Tuesday, December 15th: Clean Energy Investments: creating opportunities for rural economies, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
- Thursday, December 17th: Backing Up International Agreement with Domestic Action, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley and Assistant to the President Carol Browner
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose envoy Todd Stern is in charge of U.S. climate negotiations, was not part of the announcements.