Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Monday for action to prevent deforestation and thereby slow down climate change. Clearing and burning forests accounts for 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
“There’s no point in words. It’s time for action,” Kerry told the crowd at a special event focused on the issue. “What we need is leadership, leadership, leadership, and leadership. It’s got to start with the heads of states.”
Kerry and Lugar were joined by Kenyan environmental advocate and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, as well as leaders from big green groups like Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy and businesses like Marriott International and American Electric Power. The event was hosted by the group Avoided Deforestation Partners (how’s that for an unappealing moniker?), an international network that works to stop tropical deforestation, in part by promoting carbon offsets.
Maathai said that as the world moves toward major climate talks in Copenhagen in December, efforts to curb deforestation should play an important role. She also emphasized that the conversation should not be about saving the planet, but about saving people. “You cannot save the planet. What you need to do is see if you can try to save yourself,” said Maathai. “The planet is not going to die. The planet will survive. It will adjust itself, as it has always done.”
Former U.S. climate negotiator Stuart Eizenstat also spoke at the event, emphasizing that programs to incentivize avoided deforestation will be critical in engaging developing nations in climate talks. Developing nations and their citizens depend more directly on forests for their livelihoods, and deforestation is often the result of a lack of other economic options.
“There was an impasse [during Kyoto Protocol negotiations] between developed and developing nations that must be avoided in Copenhagen,” said Eizenstat. “This is a way to engage developing countries that want to come to the table, who want to make their contribution to avoiding climate change.”
The two senators at the event have indicated that they will make climate a focus of the Foreign Relations Committee this year. Last month, the panel heard testimony from Al Gore at its first hearing of the 111th Congress.
On Jan. 29, Lugar and Kerry introduced a bill to reauthorize for three years the Tropical Rain Forest Conservation Act of 1998, legislation that Lugar and former Sen. Joe Biden first initiated. Since original passage of the bill, an estimated 50 million acres of tropical forests around the world have been preserved through so-called “debt-for-nature swaps,” which allow countries to reduce their foreign debt in exchange for protecting forests.
Efforts to reauthorize the act stalled last year amid squabbling, but Lugar said Monday that he’s more optimistic in the current political climate. “I’m hopeful this year we will be able to overcome the objections and get this bill passed,” he said.
Grist caught up with Kerry after today’s event and inquired about his committee’s next moves. He wasn’t very specific. “We’re going to do additional hearings,” said Kerry. “We’ll be following up on the road to Copenhagen, we’re going to be staying with it consistently from now until Copenhagen.”
As for crafting a domestic climate plan, Kerry said his committee is “working very closely” with members of other committees to develop a cap-and-trade bill.
Merkel threatens no-show at Copenhagen climate talks
Obama will go to Copenhagen—if he can seal a deal
Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Comments
View as Flat
dobermanmacleod Posted 3:20 pm
09 Feb 2009
'Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming' --Leemans and Eickhout (2004), 'Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,' Global Environmental Change 14, 219-228
Here is what Climate Code Red says:
--Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
--There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to "thermal inertia", or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
--If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don't increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
--Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don't increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
To summarize, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007), not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE, unless geoengineering is attempted:
"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008
Let me suggest a cheap and simple geoengineering technology: just add a little sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere.
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 10:33 pm
09 Feb 2009
The MTR process destroys the mountains and valleys beyond any kind of real reclamation. They use tires and diesel to burn the clear cut forest. They use mullions of pounds of nitrate explosives to blast away the overburden. The blasted crushed up rock in the fills leach heavy metals into streams and creeks.
Clean up your own back yard first before you try to tell the world about saving a forest. This bunch has lost all credibility when talking about deforestation. The kind of deforestation done in Southern Appalachia is not repairable. One might be able to restore tropical jungle forest over time. The MTR Mountain and Valley is destroyed completely. No one will ever go to the effort to remove thousands of tons of overburden from the valleys and place it back on the mountain, plus the top soil that takes hundreds of years to develop.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
Jake Schmidt Posted 11:07 pm
09 Feb 2009
Leadership needs to come both by ensuring that significant financial resources and other support is effectively integrated into the US climate legislative and that the US plays a strong role in ensuring that the new international global warming agreement also includes these tools.
We hope that you'll join us in this effort to address the loss of the world's tropical forests before it is too late.
Jake Schmidt
International Climate Policy Director
Natural Resources Defense Council
Permalink
biodiversivist Posted 3:16 am
10 Feb 2009
Now, if someone could just explain to Lugar how the price signal sent around the world by our stuffing corn into our cars causes deforestation. This is your classic government push me pull you. Subsidizing deforestation, while trying to stop it.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 4:39 am
10 Feb 2009
The changes to the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act and to EPA rules that allow MTR were for the most part administrative changes made by George Bush. Under this present administration it would not be very difficult to have these changes reversed. Why not a consorted effort now to stop MTR and if it can't be done with just the administrative changes make the Appalachian Forest part of Lugar and Kerry's debt for nature swaps.
Hell the place has been on some sort of welfare since the 60's and the ARC, Appalachian Regional Commission has cost billions. We should have incurred some debt by now. Make Kentucky and West Virginia trade some Deciduous Forest land to pay for it.
Ethnocentic elitist should not be trading with just the Latino's until we swap out some U.S. Forest also.
We will call the place Kentuctinia to make it sound like a country instead of the states of Kentucky and West Virginia. Feds won't know the difference because they forgot about this place years ago.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
Backcut Posted 6:57 am
10 Feb 2009
Obama is on the clock to deal with this emergency. Using "unplanned ignitions" to manage our crowded, unhealthy and neglected forests is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, states are reducing their own fire protection agencies and are being stetched thin when multiple let-burn fires, after burning for weeks, approach Federal property line boundaries and become state fires.
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 11:56 pm
10 Feb 2009
Sorry my mistake, wrong blog
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
archigeek Posted 1:09 am
11 Feb 2009
The mellotron is your friend.
Permalink
Backcut Posted 2:20 am
11 Feb 2009
Saving our forests is easily possible but, it is NOT politically-palatable at this time in history. Until we follow science, we'll continue to treat the symptoms of de-forestation instead of the disease.
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 9:57 am
11 Feb 2009
Well hell thats different, only a few piddly thousands of acres that can be saved with a few rule and regulation changes. I know that a few thousand acres will be added in the next year or two and this is acreage that includes valley's that are being buried. Mountain tops Blown off and shoved into pristine valleys.
Yep, its only thousands of Appalachian Mountains down in dogpatch that nobody gives a s#^t about.
It's not like you have to stop co2 and suck millions of tons of the stuff out of the atmosphere. You just get old change is coming, change is here to overturn the Bush rule and reg changes he made to The Surface Mine and Reclamation Act, plus the rule changes he made to EPA, specifically the streams and Clean Water Act.
Here's a tip, stop MTR and you are going to raise the price of coal per ton in the Eastern Coal Fields. Stop all types of coal stripping in Appalachia and you will raise the price of coal even higher. You may get the price of coal high enough to let the alternative energy sector catch up. Could get you some co2 reduction to save the Canadian forest.
I can see why you can write off the southern Appalachia Mountains, not worth the effort. The place is just a hillbilly s*#t hole. Not to worry we will pour the good black stuff out of these thousands of acres with a lower MTR mining cost, help you with your co2 problem.
It is as much about stopping a cheap form of coal production with just the added benifit of saving thousands of acres of deciduous forest.
Friggen Brilliant!
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink