Saving the world was never going to be easy
By Charles Clover

IT WAS ironically a conference involving the oil industry that was ultimately to scupper talks in The Hague on how to save the world from climate change.

 Delegates at the environment summit were up against a deadline of 4pm on Saturday and the hall had to be cleared by then to make room for oil company representatives at Valve World 2000. This left Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister and president of the talks, needing to have an outline of a text that delegates would endorse by 1pm.

 After two weeks of negotiations, the first of which was devoted to little more than officials from the EU, America and the developing countries explaining their positions, the deal-making between the ministers came too late. There were too many loose ends to be tied, and by 6am on Saturday several EU countries were no longer in the mood. Mr Pronk decided time had run out. Shortly afterwards John Prescott marched out, barking as he did so: "I'm gutted. It's all over." 

So what went wrong and will the world recover? Michael Meacher, the environment minister, said yesterday: "It went wrong because we mistimed it." He believes, with hindsight, that a deal to tie up the unresolved issues left by the Kyoto treaty was more difficult than the original marathon sleep-deprived session in Japan. 

The agreement set industrialised countries the first legally binding reduction targets for greenhouse gases but the complexity of the rules offered the opportunity for some countries to wriggle out of their commitments. Mr Meacher believes that Mr Pronk should have tabled his proposed compromise on day one of the second week and picked off issues which had to be resolved day by day. Personalities did not help. John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, pointed an accusing finger at Dominique Voynet, the French environment minister, for failing to agree to a deal he salvaged from the wreckage of the talks at 2am on Saturday. 

Mr Prescott told BBC Radio: "She got cold feet, felt she could not explain it, said she was exhausted and tired and could not understand the detail and then refused to accept it. That is how the deal fell." It is true that Mme Voynet, a Green party member, had been playing shamelessly to the small part of the French electorate that voted for her. 

Mr Prescott had seized the classic British diplomatic role of liaising between Europe and America when he sought Mme Voynet's agreement, as representative of the French presidency of the EU. Mme Voynet agreed to Mr Prescott making a final approach to the Americans regarding a loophole allowing countries to include the ability of its forests and crops to soak up carbon in measuring its emission reductions, and the Kyoto requirement that countries undertake most of their cuts by domestic action.

 Mr Prescott went to Frank Loy, the chief American negotiator, who least deserved of all of his countrymen the pie in the face he received from the protesters on the eve of Thanksgiving. Mr Loy, on behalf of the Clinton administration which was desperate for a deal, agreed to withdraw the US demand to be allowed to set planting or protecting forests in Brazil against its emissions target. 

The final shape of the deal brokered by Mr Prescott was this: America would be allowed to offset 75 million tons, 10 per cent of its total emissions reductions, against forests and crops. It would do so by planting or managing trees in addition to current programmes. There was also the agreement that domestic action should play a "significant" part in any emission reductions - any more and the Senate would not ratify the treaty, said Mr Loy.

 Mme Voynet's negotiator, Mr Prescott and Mr Loy shook hands on the deal at 5am. At around 6am the agreement was presented to the EU co-ordinating meeting. As well as Mme Voynet, it was attended by the Danish environment minister, Svend Auken, whose country has cost Britain billions in North Sea agreements. 

A football team which does not mark a player like Mr Auken gets what it deserves. Present too were Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, which was also unconvinced. The rest of the EU had gone to bed. Mr Meacher said: "I don't think anyone was turning down the deal." Ministers just called for an explanation on paper, something that could not be provided in time. Mme Voynet told Mr Prescott she was too tired to decide. Mr Pronk was left to conclude at around 7am that the eggtimer had run out. 

Mr Meacher is hoping to squeeze agreement out of the recalcitrant EU at a meeting on December 17. In the end, to everyone's surprise, the United States emerged more committed to wanting a deal than Europe. But veterans of environmental conferences, like myself, put the true genesis for disaster in The Hague as long ago as the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. George Bush, the American President of the time, agreed to freeze all carbon emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, a pledge he and his successor, Bill Clinton, did virtually nothing about.

 George W Bush may well inherit a United States in which industry realises that it can make a green car and that the electorate is increasingly worried about fires, floods and the West Nile virus brought to them by climate change. It would then be a case of the sins of the father being visited on the son.