Peter Gallagher

The reac­tion to the “pro­posed six-nation pact”:http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005–07-28T042819Z_01_N28305145_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-ENVIRONMENT-CLIMATE-AUSTRALIA-COL.XML on cli­mate change is begin­ning to warm up—both for and against. I con­sider it’s a clever move to take the lead on global cli­mate change pol­icy. What we know so far inspires con­fi­dence that this pro­posal might, unlike the Kyoto pro­to­col, achieve real change The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion “approves”:http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=217999+28-Jul-2005+RTRS&srch=climate+eu …

Some read­ers have accused me, offline, of describ­ing a dead nego­ti­a­tion as ‘just rest­ing’ (or, per­haps, “‘pin­ing for the fjords’”:http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/dead-parrot.htm). I’m less pes­simistic than many com­men­ta­tors about remain­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in these nego­ti­a­tions; but I’m not a“‘ressurectionist’”:http://www.literaturepage.com/read/taleoftwocities-176.html. For­tu­nately, I don’t need to be. As I “predicted”:http://www.inquit.com/article/455/wto-agriculture-negotiations-gloom-abounds, the Director-General of WTO—tired of play­ing with an ‘alarm but­ton’ …

Mon­u­men­tal efforts have pro­duced a victory—of sorts—that gives lit­tle com­fort. The nar­row pas­sage of the CAFTA bill poses a wor­ry­ing ques­tion about Con­gress’ will­ing­ness to make changes in the future to secure much big­ger rewards for U.S. trade The biggest con­cern is the appar­ent rea­son for the vic­tory even by a nar­row mar­gin was not …

“Flop in July; fail (pos­si­bly) in Sep­tem­ber”. That seems to be the prog­no­sis from the FT and Reuters reports out of Geneva fol­low­ing the Heads of Del­e­ga­tion meet­ing Tues­day. It’s what I “expected to hear”:http://www.inquit.com/article/452/how-the-us-and-ec-summed-up-dalian. There’s one more step before the sum­mer break in Geneva. I’m not look­ing for a “break­through” but I sus­pect that …

The Kyoto treaty would have lit­tle impact on green­house emis­sions even if rat­i­fied by all; eco­nomic analy­sis sug­gests that if there is an urgent need to do some­thing it is to find means of cut­ting emis­sions other than treaty “tar­gets”, includ­ing the use of more appro­pri­ate tech­nolo­gies. The net­ben­e­fits of emis­sion con­trols over the next …

Portman’s absence from the WTO trade nego­ti­a­tions has been obvi­ous for some months. United States’ pri­or­i­ties lie else­where: with CAFTA, specif­i­cally. He sent his Deputy to the recent Dalian meet­ing in China while he rode the ele­va­tor on Capi­tol Hill In the past I’ve down­played the dis­trac­tion fac­tor of regional agree­ments. I’ve argued that pol­i­tics …

I’ve sum­ma­rized the evi­dence from state­ments at the Min­is­te­r­ial meet­ing in Dalian (China) two weeks ago that Agri­cul­ture Nego­ti­a­tions chair­man Tim Grosser will not have the mate­r­ial for his planned ‘approx­i­ma­tion’ of the final deal at next Tuesday’s meet­ing with Geneva Ambas­sadors (26 July). But still … there is some move­ment to report It’s a …