COP17 Begins

Later today (28/11/11) the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) and the 7th conference of signatories to the Kyoto protocol (CMP7) will open in Durban South Africa. Running until December 9th the purpose of these twin conferences is to examine the latest scientific data on the issues surrounding global warming/climate change and attempt to find political solutions to the problems created by these phenomenon.

This will also be the first large global summit since the G20 Summit in early November. Although not technically on the agenda that summit was dominated by the financial crisis in the Eurozone. On that issue US President Barak Obama said that there was much hard work to be done. Although he could have been talking about the work European leaders need to do or commenting on my situation Obama was mainly talking about the work the US needs to do. Since the second world war the US has relied on Britain to be it's man in Europe. Unfortunately the October 27th agreement paves the way for a two teir Europe with an inner core of nations who use the Euro as their currency (the Eurogroup) and a periphery of nations who don't. Britain will obviously be on the periphery while the Eurogroup intends to forge closer links with China in order to fund the special purpose vehicles referenced in the October 27th agreement. This lack of access puts the US at a distinct disadvantage as political power shifts from west to east and we move towards a multi-polar world. So the US are desperate to use the COP17/CMP7 to put pressure on Eurogroup/Chinese relations in order to find out what is planned for these special purpose vehicles. To this end we have already seen the US move the markets to increase the cost of borrowing for Italy, Spain and Portugal creating a mini-crisis. Unfortunately for the US Britain has already tipped China off about this play through their special 27 vehicle crash on the M5 motorway on November 4th. So while the US wants Britain to be it's man in Europe Britain clearly wants to be China's man in the US and are already trying to tear apart the October 27th agreement by forcing France who are now locked into a mutual defence pact to push the unworkable Eurobonds idea as an alternative.

The second significant issue at the moment is the Gulf Co-operation Council's (GCC) led by Saudi Arabia (oil & gas) and Qatar (gas) push for regional dominance in the middle east. Obviously this involves the situations in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. The big question though is whether the Saudis will be successful in putting enough pressure on the US to allow Israel to attack Iran. If this does happen the worst case scenario that everybody is worried about is that Iran will retaliate by raining conventional missiles down on Israel. As Israel is a small nation there is a risk that they will respond with a nuclear strike on Iran provoking a Pakistani nuclear attack against Israel. If that happens there is talk of the US launching a retaliatory strike against Pakistan provoking a Russian nuclear strike on the US. Hopefully though most people are bluffing and referring to Surface to Air Missiles in terms of their acronym SAM. There is a lot of range testing going on though.

So although it is actually a really exciting time in terms of climate science I think that all these other things mean that the sort of climate change everyone will be talking about at the COP17/CMP7 will have nothing whatsoever to do with the greenhouse effect.