This past week, the world of international politics, was highlighted by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Australia. This conference, which brought together several leaders from 21 nations that surround the Pacific Ocean, was called to conduct business that might concern one or more of these leaders. From this seemingly broad spectrum of issues that the nations could discuss, including many pressing issues like a rearmed Japan, crazy ol’ North Korea and Chinese environmental abuse, one could expect that something would come out of this conference, right? Wrong. The only thing that came out of this conference were a series of gaffes, many compliments to our own dear president and a toothless gesture of an environmental policy.
Some of the news points of this conference included some humorous gaffes. To start the show, there was a controversy over shirts. Yes, shirts. It seems that each of these conferences has a sort of pattern where the visiting leaders put on a native-looking costume, pose for pictures (complete with awkward smiles) and usually President Bush stares off into the distance with a blank look on his face. The previous APEC conference was held in the Philippines, where the leaders wore a special type of shirt. Well, the Aussie leaders called it a “peasant shirt.” The Filipinos were upset by this, and it became the talk of the conference. The environment, nuclear proliferation, slave labor-any of these could have been discussed-but instead, shirts were.
On a lighter note, the conference was marked by Bush making several goofs. He referred to APEC as OPEC, thanked the Austrian-not Australian-Army for its help, then wandered off stage the wrong way and had to walk back across while another leader was speaking. Also, during a protest, a police officer was hit in the forehead with a dart, and the Australian equivalent of Stephen Colbert crashed the Conference with a fake press badge, that actually stated that it was fake.
All kidding aside, the conference did create the Sydney Declaration on Climate Change. Sounds cool, sounds progressive. It isn’t. It does establish goals of environmental protection, emissions reduction, protection of habitat, and all the other wonderful goals of green peace. It even establishes a framework and benchmark years. But, it is a stunning failure and a waste of time because of one detail: It is optional. It is not binding in any way, and any signatory nation can implement as much or as little of it as it wishes. A nation could do absolutely nothing and be fine. I find this absurd. Why make something that is optional? Any substantive environmental change will not be easy, and anything that is optional will not be done because of this difficulty. So why waste the time?
What bothers me is not that a bunch of leaders got together, made arses of themselves and passed a meaningless gesture of a declaration, but that the conference was wasted. I am further troubled by the perception that this conference was a success. They did nothing at all. A 10 minute conference call could have accomplished all that this conference did. Have we relegated ourselves to a depressing reality that international meetings will always be a massive waste of time? These conferences are invaluable times were the “deciders,” as Bush would call them, are supposed to create change. These conferences could be forums for discussion where substantive changes are made.
The leaders could make decisions right then and there that could resolve the pressing issues of the day. But instead they wile away this valuable time talking about shirts and Bush making an idiot out of himself. I say this is stupid; he has been in office for almost 7 years and makes an idiot out of himself-deal with it. I say let’s stop wasting these conferences and stop them from being awkward photo opportunities. Our leaders need to turn these meetings into times where they solve problems, not whine about shirts.
Patrick McShane is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
