Tom Athanasiou’s Posts

• climate check please!

  "The Bill" 0

  Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago

  Best short film about climate justice ever -- even if it is in German.  (It's got subtitles.)

• The blame game gets ready for prime time

  Bonn was disappointing, and Copenhagen will be too. Who to blame? 2

  Posted 5 months ago

  The latest round of climate talks was a big disappointment, and Copenhagen will almost certainly be another. If it is, who will get blamed?

• The greening of the global south

  Drawing actual conclusions about the international challenge 11

  Posted 1 year, 8 months ago

  Here's something novel: a well-informed and honest article from a significant British magazine (Prospect) that looks hard at the core political challenges of global climate stabilization and then draws some conclusions. And it's written by Simon Retallack, who knows his way around both the climate policy debate and the climate movement.

• Climate Code Red

  The case for a sustainability emergency 18

  Posted 1 year, 9 months ago

  The pressure to soft-pedal is very, very high. I know because I feel it. I'm tempted. I do not wish to be dismissed as an apocalyptic. So when I read, in this fine and even astonishing report, that "politics as usual" must be cast aside, and quickly, there's something in me that balks.

  After all, the mainline debate at Bali was about a "25-40% cut by 2020" for the developed countries. Isn't this enough? Doesn't it tell us that we're already moving as quickly as we can? Must we call for emergency mobilization? Must we seek to put all… Read More

• Where do we go from here?

  The Bali meeting, and the lessons learned 11

  Posted 1 year, 11 months ago

  It's important, this time, to draw conclusions, and to do so publicly. Because Bali has taken us -- barely and painfully -- over a line and into a new and even more difficult level in the climate game we'll be playing for the rest of our lives. In fact, it's not too much to say that, with the realizations of the last year and their culmination at the 13th Conference of Parties, the game has, finally, belatedly, begun in earnest.

  First up, we knew going into Bali that if the old routine continued without variation, we'd really… Read More

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Tom Athanasiou’s Recent Comments

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  Thank you David! And this just in from the China US agreement: "In this context both sides believe that, while striving for final legal agreement, an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries. The outcome should also substantially scale up financial assistance to developing countries, promote technology development, dissemination and transfer, pay particular attention to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to climate change, promote steps to preserve and enhance forests, and provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support." The point? There are two: 1) Despite the view, so common in the US, that what is needed is "symmetry" between the US and China, the guys at the top are quite aware that -- at least when it comes to rhetoric -- what is needed is a fair asymmetry, one in which the wealthy nations take on "emission reduction targets" and the developing nations take on "nationally appropriate mitigation actions." 2) It's going to take years to work out a viable approach to such a fair asymmetry, one that actually makes political and historical sense. But when it comes to the next step, the one that might actually be taken in Copenhagen, the key is going to be the wealthy world targets -- what it's going to commit to cutting and what it's going to commit to putting on the table as a "support package" for the developing countries. This statement seems to imply that the US understands that it's going to have to put actual numbers on the table in Copenhagen. Will it? And what will they be? And will they be targets that it actually stands behind? Or will they just be for show? These are the real questions.On Rumors of Copenhagen's demise have been greatly exaggerated posted 3 days, 23 hours ago 2 Responses

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  First of all, as the great philosopher Jimmy Dale Gilmore once put it, this is just a wave, it's not the water. It's been clear for a long time that the political conditions necessary for a real deal are not in place. And Copenhagen was never going to put them there. Given this, the question is if we can find a way to early action with a transitional accord that is 1) good enough to start sharply bending the emissions curves, 2) fair enough to make the principle-based global accord that we actually need to stabilize the climate possible Copenhagen was never going to be that accord. So, actually, very little has changed. Save that, as a Danish Greenpeace activist just put it, the "smell of gunpower is in the air." As for the “one agreement, two steps" stuff, it's going to require some real finesse. Because it's basically impossible (see above about missing political conditions) unless the global targets are really weak. And one nice thing about having more time is that we're all getting educated. So for example, maybe by the time a deal is actually on the block Dave Roberts will understand why increasing "pressure on China and India to step up to the plate with targets and timetables" is exactly the wrong way to think about a viable global accord.On Delaying an international climate treaty: not as bad as it looks posted 4 days, 13 hours ago 26 Responses

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  The Schellnhuber paper is indeed interesting. And his recent talks have been bracing. But a few points of clarification on the per cap side are in order. First of all, and most importantly, the WGBU is *not* Contraction and Convergence, as Bill Hook has implied above, The "budget approach," which it represents, is based on *cumulative* per-cap emissions. Thus, the WGBU proposal is more akin to the "carbon debt" approach which has gained so much traction in the negotiations this past year than it is with C&C. See for example http://www.ecoequity.org/2009/07/the-remaining-emissions-budget/. Notably, though, WGBU seeks equality in the 2010 to 2050 emissions window, which is pretty outrageous from a historical perspective. That is to say, all emissions prior to 2010 are written off. It's really a sign of his desperation that he advocates such a late start date. Oh Shit indeed. Cheers, tomaOn A scary new climate study will have you saying 'Oh, shit!' posted 1 month ago 16 Responses

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  Steve;

  Great post.  I want to particularly commend you for your explanation of why cutting consumption subsides -- which generally serve to improve that access of the poor to energy services -- is "not the place to start." 

  I also want to support your caution against getting this wrong, in terms of taking something that should be brilliant -- the elimination of fossil subsides -- and turning it into a device for pressuring the South in the Copenhagen negotiations.

  "a negotiating tactic designed to show that the developing world has plenty of funds available to adapt to climate change and invest in clean energy, if only they would stop making energy affordable for their populations"

  Personally, I'm living in hope, and betting that things don't get that bad.  I mean, damn, would that be stupid!

  
  -- toma

   

  On Obama to propose ending fossil fuel subsidies in Pittsburgh? posted 2 months ago 3 Responses

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  Nice piece Dave;

  You're absolutely right that the Obama team is playing a many sided game. And that if we're lucky it will turn out well. 

  It goes without saying, or should, that other nations are also playing many-sided games.  There are bilaterals happening on all sides, and there's the G8, and the G5, and the G20, and the UN general assembly later this year, and the MEF process, and all the rest of it.

  All this dialogs and multilogs make a difference.  But it should also be stressed, and stressed again, that having lots of ways of talking about the problem, however helpful it may be, doesn't change the structure of the problem. 

  And the fundamental point, in this regard, is that we are late, late, late.  The current marker for the current science is the Meinhausen et. al. paper -- Greenhouse-gas emissions targets for limiting global warming to 2C -- that was published in Nature back in April.  It tells us, among other things, that to have a 75% chance of holding the 2C target (the one that the US just begrudingly accepted) total global GHG emissions in the period 2000 to 2050 must be held to 1000 Gigatons of C02 equvalent.  And we've already released about 300 of those.

  Not to start throwing numbers around, but this is going to be very, very hard.  And this in turn puts the developing countries in a very bad situation.  Because, while we all know that the future is unwritten, and the world is changing, and all the rest of that good stuff, the fact is that, at this point, even a modest version of the good life means increased access to energy services for lots and lots of people, and given the technics that we've been left with, this means increased GHG emissions as well.

  What does this mean?  Only that, as Alden Meyer just noted in the pages of the Times, in an aticle called Poorer Nations Reject a Target on Emissions Cut, "They're saying, 'We just don't trust you guys.'"  And that everything depends on recognizing that words alone -- no matter what venues they're spoken -- are not going to change this.

  The key is going to be finance and technology.  Lots of it.  As in a "finance and technology support package for mitigation and adaptaion in the developing world."  And then using this package to build not just momentum but trust as well.  The extra meetings don't hurt, but they're not going to accomplish anything alone. 

  Not that this is anything you disagree with.  But somehow you managed to write a nice piece about the talks, the many talks, without mentioning the elephant in the room.

  Wherever that room is, and however many people or however few people are in it, it's the same elephant.

   

   

  On What is Obama's international climate strategy? posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago 9 Responses