Earth Equity News

The 'Flying Dutchman' of Climate Change. Interview by Bryan Walsh, Time, March 12, 2009. "His colleagues call him the 'Flying Dutchman' because of all the time Yvo de Boer spends in the air, traveling from one world capital to another as he tries to stitch together a global deal to cut greenhouse-gas emissions... As executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), De Boer is the U.N.'s point man for the ongoing global effort to plan a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The deadline for a new treaty is coming up fast: at the U.N. climate summit that will be held in Copenhagen at the end of the year... Time: 'You were just in Washington. Can you give me a sense of what the new Administration and Congress are expecting on climate negotiations this year?' de Boer: 'What struck me across the board was this huge enthusiasm to get moving on the topic. It's very clear that it's very near the top of the political agenda, if not at the top. The Obama Administration is committed to putting an ambitious domestic-policy package in place... I'd agree that legislation is not going to be passed by Copenhagen, but it will be well advanced by then... There is tremendous political momentum internationally to come to an agreement, and if you let that slip, the momentum and enthusiasm will gradually dissipate and things will become more difficult. But having said that, I'm not under the illusion that every final little detail of how the agreement will work in practice will be finalized in Copenhagen. A certain amount of engineering has to be done.'"