The speeches podcast: May in Florence, Trump at UNGA

It's a week of speeches - Theresa May asking for extra Brexit time in Florence, Donald Trump ushering in the dog-eat-dog era at the UN, and Emmanuel Macron spelling out his vision of EU reform.

Climate nationalism

Many having given up on the international process delivering solutions to climate change, and eyes are turning to national solutions to fill the void.

While covering last week's UN climate summit in Warsaw, I found myself encountering very different moods depending on which section of the venue I was in. While I was in the rooms surrounding the main plenary chamber, constructed on the field of the city's mammoth National Stadium, I could feel an overwhelming aura of pessimism. Exhausted-looking delegates on the sidelines spoke of demoralising gridlock and a negotiating process on a knife's edge.

But travel upstairs to the ‘national pavilions' located at the top of the stadium, where individual countries hosted events and showcased their climate actions, and the mood couldn't be more different. The Chinese pavilion was exuberantly showcasing their regional emissions trading schemes. The Americans were trumpeting the new emissions standards for power plants. In the EU pavilion, individual member states were announcing new financial contributions to fighting climate change and deforestation left and right.

Dutch rally round ‘right to be racist’

It’s that time of year again. The stockings are being hung by the chimney with care, the hot wine stands are setting up shop, and of course, the Dutch have begun putting on their blackface, big red lips and afro wigs. It’s time again for ‘Black Pete’ to pay us a visit.

And right on cue, it’s also time for the perennial hand-wringing about whether or not this minstrel character, who tags along with Saint Nicholas as he hands out presents to Dutch and Flemish children at Christmas, is racist.

But this year, thanks to some comments by a human rights observer, the debate has taken on an almost frenzied dimension that has even seen a prominent Dutch politician call for the Netherlands to pull out of the United Nations.

The Dutch are furious that a member of the UN’s human rights committee is looking into the issue of whether Black Pete is a racist caricature. The head of the committee, who is Jamaican, told a Dutch TV station she found it impossible to understand how Dutch people do not see it as racist. Dutch people have responded with a torrent of outrage, accusing the UN of trampling on something that is an age-old tradition and is culturally important to them. A petition organised to 'save Black Pete' gathered a million endorsements in its first day. News broadcasters are dressing up as Pete in protest, and Dutch people are making YouTube videos dancing around in blackface singing about how not racist they are.

Timetable diplomacy

It's crunch time ahead of this month's make-or-break annual summit of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

If no deal on aviation emissions can be reached at this summit, starting on 24 September, the EU and its large global partners may be plunged back into a trade war over the question of whether the EU can charge airlines for emissions that took place outside EU airspace.

All emissions from planes taking off or landing in the EU were to be covered under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) from January 2012. But in November the EU suspended for a year its coverage of foreign air traffic after the US, China and others raised howls of protests over sovereignty issues.

Palestinian UN bid divides Europe

I'm at JFK about to fly back to Brussels, and all around the airport you can see signs of this week's general assembly at the United Nations. I saw several pro-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations scattered around the city over the past few days, mostly outside hotels where I assume diplomats and leaders were staying.

Despite the best efforts of the United States and her allies to convince him not to, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went ahead on Friday with his request to have the UN recognise Palestine as a 'non-voting observer' member. The machinations around this have been described as a slow-motion "diplomatic car crash" by diplomats. Coming as it does in the middle of the 'Arab spring', the United States knows it will look bad if they use their veto in the security council to deny the request. On the other hand, their close alliance with Israel means that the US government believes it has no choice but to veto the move.

But will the US be the only one to issue the veto? And which US allies will support the bid in a full assembly vote? Europe is showing characteristic disunity on the issue. France, which also holds veto power on the security council, is supporting the Palestinian bid. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium and Luxembourg have joined France with their support.

Angry Europeans and Embarrassed Americans in New York

There's no doubt about it, this week's UN climate change meeting in New York has been a humbling experience for America. Being shown up by China in the field of environmental protection isn't exactly a shining moment for the US, but it may be a harbinger of the century to come.

European diplomats at the summit are reportedly seething at US inaction, and their reaction to Obama's almost completely substanceless speech yesterday was nothing short of incredulity. But with the climate bill stalled in the US senate and the healthcare fight likely to push it off the agenda until after the hugely important Copenhagen summit in December, Obama's hands are tied. With no climate bill passed by December, the US will likely not be able to commit to the post-Kyoto framework being worked out at the December summit, considered by Europe to be the "last chance" to save the world from the effects of climate change. Though just a year ago it was thought India and China would be the biggest obstructionists to reaching a global agreement, this week it has become clear: the US may be the lone force standing in the way of fighting climate change.

China, on the other hand, unveiled some big commitments this week. Yesterday China's President Hu committed China to getting 15% of its power from non-fossil sources by 2020, planting enough forest to cover an area the size of Norway and limiting the growth of carbon emissions as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product. I'm also hearing word that today at 2pm there will be an announcement at the New York Stock Exchange that China will launch a carbon valuation system called the "Panda Standard", where companies have a certain carbon allowance and can buy or sell credits as they need to. I've even heard that this announcement later today by China may be followed by an announcement setting up a Chinese cap and trade system like Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). I would be truly shocked if they do announce that, but if they do it would be hugely embarrassing for the US, which still has no cap and trade system or even a voluntary standard.

Once the Chinese government became convinced of the reality of climate change about a year ago, they have acted dramatically and rapidly with new environmental measures that now put them ahead of the US in several ways. They’ve restructured their development plans to cut down on high-emissions projects, and within two years they have phased out 54 million kw of coal-fired power capacity by small polluting power plants. Last year the issued new rules on the construction sector for the use of renewable products. They’ve poured money into the development of public transport and the promotion of environmentally-friendly vehicles. Also last year the government ordered retailers to stop providing free plastic shopping bags. China now has the world’s largest hydropower generating capacity and is currently the fourth largest wind power producer after the United States, Germany and Spain – and it’s catching up quickly. Last year renewable energy accounted for about nine percent of the country's energy total, surpassing the US.

Of course, with a top-down command economy China can afford to do these things at this speed. As Thomas Friedman has lamented, if only the US could be "China for a day". But no matter how they've attained these rapid results, the Chinese are putting the Americans to shame.

Needless to say with all the hope that was placed in Obama by Europeans, this has been a disappointing day across the pond. Newspapers over here have been questioning Obama's ability to deliver on climate change, with one particularly scathing article from the Guardian called 'Obama the Impotent' making the email rounds. The Guardian writes:

"On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to reverse the Bush administration's terrible ecological record. Yet so far the world has seen more symbolic gestures from the Obama administration than accomplishments. Its biggest achievement so far has been a disappointment. President Obama signed an executive order to increase US motor vehicle mileage standards – but only to a level that will push fuel efficiency by 2020 to a level that European and Japanese cars reached several years ago, and even China has already achieved."

However one consistent theme has been that the European papers are not blaming Obama himself for the inaction, but rather the government system he has the misfortune of having to lead. Writes the Guardian:

"Thwarting Obama on a regular basis is an unrepresentative senate where "minority rule" prevails and undermines what a majority of the country may want. With two senators elected per state, regardless of population, California with more than 35 million people has the same number of senators as Wyoming with just half a million residents. This constitutional arrangement greatly favours low population states, many of which tend to be conservative, producing what one political analyst has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in pickup trucks with gun racks."

It should be no surprise that China is beginning to surpass the United States in several ways, after all this is slated to be the "China century," which will see a return to a two-superpower world with the US and China competing for power. But the fact that China is now surpassing the US in the fight against climate change should be a big wake-up call to Americans, especially liberals.

For Once, Europe is United Over Gay Rights

A major milestone took place at the UN yesterday. Sixty years after the organisation adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 68 countries signed a non-binding delcaration sponsored by France and the Netherlands demanding the worldwide decriminalisation of homosexuality.

This was the first time that any gay rights issue had been pressed in a large motion at the United Nations, and it was interesting to see that the body was just about evenly split, with 68 countries supporting and 60 countries rejecting the declaration. The nations which rejected the the resolution were largely Arab and African states, with one notable exception: the only Western country to refuse to sign the declaration was the United States.

This is perhaps not surprising considering that homosexuality was only nationally decriminalised in the US five years ago. The Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 ruled that a Texas law making homosexual sex a crime was unconstitutional, and in the process invalidated a number of such state laws across the country (this was the decision which Senator Rick Santorum infamously said would lead to decriminalisation of beastiality). But in light of that recent decision, it seems unusual that the Bush Administration are saying that they can't sign the treaty because it would interfere with states' rights. The 2003 decision ruled that states don't have the right to criminalize homosexuality, so that argument is non-sensical.

Of course any country can sign the declaration at a later point, and perhaps the Obama administration will revisit the issue when it comes into office. It is rather embarassing, and incredible, for the United States to be the only Western country that has refused to sign the document.

But what I found even more interesting that the US's embarassing stance on this issue was the fact that the EU was competely united behind it - all 26 member nations signed the resolution. This is impressive considering that gay rights have been one of the most divisive issues within the European Union - particularly with new entrant Poland, an extreemly religious and conservative country. So to see that Brussels was able to crack the whip and make sure that countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuana and Estonia supported the resolution is quite impressive. Even Ireland and Italy might have balked at signing such a declaration a decade ago. It's a promising sign for gay advocates in Europe who would like to see EU-wide gay rights policies implemented one day in the future.

Homosexuality remains a criminal offence in more than 80 countries, and is punishable by death in seven nations.

The world's newest country

It’s official, Kosovo is now an independent state. Or is it?

On Saturday a long-awaited vote by Kosovo’s parliament declared it to be an independent state and no longer part of Serbia. In reality, Serbia hasn’t controlled Kosovo for nine years. The territory has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999 when NATO intervened to stop a Serbian crackdown on the separatist movement there, a crackdown which sometimes took the form of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Kosovo is today dominated by ethnic Albanians, but is the historic heartland of the medieval Serbian state.

However the road to nationhood isn’t as simple as just a proclamation. Serbia vehemently opposes the move, and its leaders say they will fight to the end to prevent Kosovo’s independence. Serbia filed legal charges against Kosovo's leadership Monday for creating a "false state" and vowed to block any attempts to allow Kosovo to join international associations. It has also declared the new state invalid and illegal. Serbia’s traditional ally Russia has said it also rejects the move and will use its seat on the UN security council to block the body from recognizing the country. The US, Britain, France and Germany are expected to recognize the state within days.