Todd SternAs Dave lamented last week, most of the predicting and posturing preceding the Copenhagen climate talks amounts to little more than Some Person Guessing. You might consider the weekend news from the UK Observer -- which reported the Obama administration's intention to set a provisional target for U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions -- to be more of the same, though it at least relies on the head of Obama’s climate negotiation team.

From the Observer:

President Barack Obama is considering setting a provisional target for cutting America's huge greenhouse gas emissions, removing the greatest single obstacle to a landmark global agreement to fight climate change.

The Observer has learnt that administration officials have been consulting international negotiators and key players on Capitol Hill about signing up to a provisional target at the UN global warming summit in Copenhagen, now less than three weeks away.

Todd Stern, the state department climate change envoy, said the administration recognised that America had to come forward with a target for cutting its emissions. The US, which with China is responsible for 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, is the only major developed nation yet to table an offer.

"What we are looking at is to see whether we could put down essentially a provisional number that would be contingent on our legislation," Stern said from Copenhagen, where he was meeting Danish officials.

By doing so, the administration would get out ahead of Congress—pledging something that 67 senators may not be willing to ratify. It has so far refused to do that in its climate work, to the detriment of its international popularity. But this is what European Union countries do all the time, Rob Bradley, the World Resources Institute’s director of international climate policy, said on Friday. They make agreements at the international level, then pass national legislation to make good on their promises. And, said Bradley, they’ve grown tired of hearing why this doesn’t work in the United States.

Stern’s suggestion—a U.S. commitment contingent on Congress passing legislation—could help the administration work around that dilemma.

Finally, a bit more from Agence France-Presse:

The United States will present an emissions target at upcoming UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, a senior official said Monday, as President Barack Obama mulled whether to attend the conference.

The official refused to be drawn on what that target would be but indicated that Obama would announce it in the next few days along with a decision on whether he will fly to the Danish capital to give added impetus to proceedings.

Added impetus to proceedings--let's hope our inspirer-in-chief finds a more inspiring way to put it.

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

First things first: A week of anticlimaxes saw President Barack Obama conducting a less-than-exuberant swing through China, the international community conceding a binding climate treaty at the COP-15 negotiations in Copenhagen, and U.S. lawmakers postponing to the spring of 2010 consideration of climate policy -- even as talk of a legislative "plan B" surfaced. A Wall Street Journal piece on Obama's China visit characterizes how hemmed in the president is abroad and at home, balancing as complex a portfolio as any new president has faced in a century, at least.

Obama left China with seven commitments to work more closely on energy matters, particularly the development of an inventory for China's greenhouse gas emissions. This technical cooperation may have a political echo in Washington, where Senate Democrats making up their minds about climate change policy have expressed concern that the world's leading CO2 producer, China, is unable to quantify its pollution. A close read of language in the U.S.-China agreement reveals "subtle but important shift" in climate positions, writes NRDC's Jake Schmidt.

The call is (also) coming from inside the house: Other international voices sound increasingly nonplussed with U.S. performance in the global climate arena. Critics blame Obama, who personifies America abroad, for what they see as a continuation of President George W. Bush's policies against Kyoto-style international climate agreements. The German newsweekly Spiegel publishes a deeply critical view of Obama's young presidency. It echoes voices heard elsewhere, voices Climate Post heard a little bit in India last month and that he documented in a post this week over at the New York Times' DotEarth blog. The Catch-22: The U.S.'s critics abroad feel that their complaints will not be heard here, since, as Christian Schwägerl charges in Spiegel, "Americans do not look beyond their own borders."

Naomi Klein, the activist, globalization skeptic, and writer, provides a fine example in Rolling Stone of how some Americans do not look within their own borders. Klein's breathless call for climate reparations paid by rich nations to poor, vulnerable nations overlooks major and minor "real-world" issues, beginning with which bank account -- previously unrevealed -- is she writing her checks from? The piece makes a fine bookend with George Will's latest effort, as naive as Will's piece is ignorant. (Both writers seem equally angry.)

Thomas Friedman thumps opponents of measures to reduce national emissions of heat-trapping gases, condensing observations of his recent book into his New York Times column.

You heard it here first!: The COP-15 talks in Copenhagen were a cautious success. After months of increasingly dour headlines, 15,000 people (18 of them from the Nicholas Institute and Nicholas School) will have descended three weeks from now on this elegant Scandinavian capital and will have reached a political agreement, in a spirit of collaboration and goodwill that will be expected to lead to a binding legal treaty next year. Whatever will have happened in Copenhagen to make it a success -- after all, we just don't know -- it's likely that high-profile attendees will trumpet its successes, however defined. There has been too much anticipation, too much pre-game show, too many resources spent, to not produce something tangible, or at least argue that something tangible was produced. Even if it receives headlines similar in tone to Obama's China trip.

A casual observer to the now year-long run-up to next month's talks in Copenhagen might be forgiven for thinking that a treaty is an end in itself. The treaty is a means by which countries force themselves and each other to transform their economies toward non-polluting energy systems. The Guardian lassoes some top thinkers on climate policy, who emphasize the urgency to inject capital into energy technologies that do not emit heat-trapping gases. The public emphasis on a deal next month has overshadowed this urgency, the Guardian contents, and, unless investment picks up, nations will continue to build out fossil-fuel powered 20th-century-style infrastructure projects.

Without national or international guidance, businesses already working toward a clean tech economy face considerable uncertainty. Players in the $126 billion global carbon market -- concentrated in the European Union's emissions trading scheme -- are particularly exposed. The impetus for that market came after the Kyoto Protocol. Its 2012 expiration date threatens investments, money, and projects tied up in the system. Developing nations, particularly China and India, have made up to hundreds of millions of dollars executing carbon-reduction projects that generate emission credits that rich nations use to "offset" their pollution. The global market for carbon offsets traded under the current regime adds up to $6.5 billion.

The push for "green jobs" continues, even without an international mandate. Americans in green jobs needn't work for U.S. companies, it turns out. With Obama in China, Suntech, the world's largest maker of solar panels, announced it would build a factory near Phoenix. The Chinese company's move may ease some lawmakers' concerns that less expensive labor costs will push clean-energy manufacturing jobs overseas, BusinessWeek reports. That the profit motive is drawing a Chinese solar giant to the U.S. should fuel the ongoing confusion about whether solar energy is affordable or not.

Roger Pielke Jr, the University of Colorado Boulder political scientist who plays Ugolino to more liberal climate bloggers' Ruggieri (or vice versa), reminds us with a picture, and his own quick romp through the headlines, what's happening, and keeps happening, far beneath lofty discussions and aspirations of Copenhagen.

A day in the life: Washington's mystique might emerge in the contrast between the monumental things that occur here (and that are expected to but don't), and the patient, gradual, and frequently silent steps it takes to achieve them. It takes a piece like Barry Yeoman's profile of Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions (and Climate Post's "publisher") to add depth to the generally superficial headlines about events in Washington. The piece, just published in Duke magazine, lays out with dimension and color the Institute's mission and the way we do the things we do.

Climate Post will be off next week for Thanksgiving and will return Dec. 3.

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

As resurrections go, it was a speedy one. On Monday, much of the world's media declared that the chances of a worthwhile deal being reached at next month's international climate talks were as dead as the proverbial dodo. By Tuesday, however, the conjectured corpse was clearly still alive, if not exactly kicking.

President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao were quick to insist this week that their two nations are committed to making Copenhagen a success.  Above, the two leaders together at a reception before the formal state dinner at Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Nov. 17, 2009.Photo: White HouseThe cause of the premature obituaries were weekend statements by President Barack Obama and Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen that it would not be possible to finalize a full, legally binding treaty when diplomats from around the world gather in Copenhagen starting Dec. 7. This, we were told, would turn the meeting into little more than a talking shop, while the real negotiations were postponed until later.

But as Grist readers already know, the fact that the conference will not produce a full-blown treaty is old news. I reported it here two weeks ago, together with quotes to that effect from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer.

The excruciating slowness of the U.N. negotiating process (which, after a combined eight weeks of formal talks in three cities starting last spring, still failed to produce a final negotiating text) and the recalcitrance of the U.S. Senate in passing a climate bill long ago assured it would be impossible to tie up a full treaty in Copenhagen.

My article also explored the alternative set out by Rasmussen at the weekend -- also already suggested by Merkel and de Boer -- of a "political" agreement, which would later be formalized in a treaty. Far from being a talking shop, the Copenhagen conference would be expected to agree on all the main elements of a climate pact, including big greenhouse gas emission cuts by rich countries, sharp reductions in the rate of growth of emissions in rapidly industrializing ones, and funding to help meet the vast costs faced by poor countries in controlling their own emissions and adapting to the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Rasmussen spelled this out in his statement, though it was little reported, making it clear that the conference must reach a "binding" deal that is "precise on specific commitments" and "provides for immediate action." He went on: "We cannot do half a deal in Copenhagen and postpone the rest till later. We need the commitments. We need the figures. We need the action."

By Tuesday evening, it was clear that such a deal was still a possibility. Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who as the leaders of the world's two greatest polluters will do more than anyone to determine whether the conference succeeds or fails, agreed to press for it. "Our aim," said Obama, echoing Rasmussen's words, "is not a partial accord or a political declaration but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and has an immediate operational effect."

The two leaders agreed that "transitioning to a low-carbon economy is an opportunity to promote continued economic growth and sustainable development in all countries" and struck deals to launch "a joint energy efficiency action plan and a partnership on renewable energy and the electric power grid" -- steps welcomed by Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, who has put much effort into building links between the two countries.

At the same time, environment ministers from 40 key countries -- assembled this week for a two-day preparatory meeting in Copenhagen -- made good progress towards a political agreement. "My feeling is that it looks better today than when we started meeting," said Danish Energy and Climate Change Minister Connie Hedegaard, when the talks ended on Tuesday evening. And indeed -- though there is still a very long way to go -- an agreement is marginally closer than before the weekend alarm.

Much depends on whether the U.S. Senate can demonstrate real progress on a climate bill that would cap and gradually lower America's greenhouse gas emissions. The hope is that enough will be achieved by senators over the next few weeks to enable Obama to go to Copenhagen with a provisional offer of emission reductions, pending passage of the legislation in early 2010. That, in turn, would make international agreement possible.

But time is short. If the Senate ties Obama's hands, it will be hard to salvage much in Copenhagen; the obituaries will then be due. As Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, put it this week, there remains an "extremely high" risk of continuing deadlock.

If Obama assures the conference that the U.S. Congress will finalize a climate bill, the legislation would have to be passed by the end of spring, since the American midterm elections will be approaching fast. Failure to pass a bill by then would be disastrous.

It is all very difficult. But there is a chance that, with luck and skill, a climate-saving deal can be reached. And while far from ideal, the hope that a deal is still salvageable is a lot better than the doom that was so widely pronounced at the start of the week.

Related Links:

Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

China and the U.S. announced on Tuesday a Joint Statement (available here) and a package of agreed actions on clean energy. This meeting between these two countries that account for around 40 percent of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels couldn't come at a more critical time in efforts to secure a strong international agreement to address global warming pollution (as I discussed here).

We didn't expect big announcements on the critical issues of specific emissions reduction commitments from the two countries (hopefully that will be outlined in the coming months), but the U.S. and China did agree to some very positive shifts on a couple of fronts. These were subtle, but important, changes in the Chinese position that has occurred over the last year. Having President Obama talking about global warming with China on such frequency and at such a high-level has definitely helped with this shift.

Here are the headlines from the climate portions of the Joint Statement that struck me. (The NRDC China Program team will also provide some perspectives on the agreed package of actions on clean energy, available here).

1. Nature of the Copenhagen outcome.

There was a little buzz over the weekend, when 19 countries reportedly agreed that they would seek a framework in Copenhagen that agrees to "one agreement, two steps" (as I discussed here). Here is what the Joint U.S.-China Statement had to say on that front:

So while the U.S. and China both recognized the challenge of finalizing the legal agreement in Copenhagen (as was recognized this weekend and that I discussed here), they did stress that the agreement could be more than just a mere piece of paper that has no meaning. Rather, if such an agreement were reached in Copenhagen with the elements that they stressed, it could lead to real commitments to actions that reduce emissions while the full legal agreement is finalized. So as I said before: stay tuned as I expect we'll have an interesting two-week ride in Copenhagen.

2. Both countries will take mitigation commitments and "stand behind them".

Here is what they had to say on this important front: "The United States and China ... resolve to take significant mitigation actions and recognize the important role that their countries play in promoting a sustainable outcome that will strengthen the world's ability to combat climate change" [emphasis added].

While Chinese President Hu Jintao announced in September that China would take further actions to address their global warming pollution, including outlining an effort to reduce the overall global warming pollution intensity of their economy (as I discussed here and my colleague discussed here), this announcement codifies that this commitment will be forthcoming. And given that they also agreed that the Copenhagen Agreement should include "mitigation actions of developing countries," it now appears clear that the Chinese will commit to those actions in an international agreement. It wasn't clear before whether China would just have those as domestic commitments or whether they would also translate them into international commitments (as I discussed here) so this is a positive change.

And they also announced that:

"The two sides resolve to stand behind these commitments" [emphasis added].

This is a shift from the previous Chinese position in that they weren't willing to "open up their books and defend them" in the same way that the U.S. would (as I discussed here).

So that means that China and the U.S. agreed that they would both have to commit to these emissions reduction actions internationally and they would be held accountable for them. Both of these signal a subtle, but important shift that will help make China more accountable to meet their commitments.

3. Both countries actions to reduce emissions will be fully transparent.

Both sides agreed that the international agreement should: "...provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support" [emphasis added].

This didn't go as far as we ultimately need on the transparency of actions, but the Chinese did move from their previous position. The Chinese have been saying before that they wouldn't subject all their actions to international scrutiny. And now they are at least saying that those actions would need to be done with "full transparency". And as a part of this agreement they signed a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States and the National Development and Reform Commission of China and to Build Capacity to Address Climate Change. As my colleague has discussed (see here) there are steps that would need to be taken to "build confidence on U.S.-China climate actions." Hopefully this shift and cooperation agreement will provide further flesh to the important "transparency" issue of Chinese and U.S. actions.

-----

In addition to these overarching shifts, the two sides did also agree to a set of joint actions that will hopefully produce tangible reductions in global warming pollution and deployment of clean energy.

So while the U.S. and China didn't agree to the big ticket items -- the specific emissions reductions objectives -- which we ultimately need them to commit to, there were some important shifts in the Chinese position.

Hopefully we'll see even more shifts in the coming couple of weeks (and months). The shifts from these two key countries have a very big impact on the overall stability of the international efforts to address global warming.

Related Links:

Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

WASHINGTON - The United States will not agree to targets cutting greenhouse-gas emissions unless developing countries, particularly China, make similar moves, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern warned Wednesday.

"No country holds the fate of the Earth in its hands more than China," Stern told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, weeks before a major climate change summit in Copenhagen.

Stern said new climate rules could include exemptions for developing countries to ensure that growth is not hampered, but emerging giants like China, India, and Brazil should pull their weight.

"What we do not agree with, though, is that we should commit to implement what we promise to do, while major developing countries make no commitment at all," he said.

His comments come as divisions between developed and developing countries threaten to prevent a Copenhagen climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

"We have 32 days left before the beginning of the Copenhagen conference and there is still a lot of work to do," Stern said.  "It's fair to say that the progress has been too slow, especially in the formal U.N. negotiating track. The developed-developing country divide that has run down the center of climate change discussions for the past 17 years is still, I'm afraid, alive and well."

But Stern said the situation was not all gloomy. "Paradoxically, while the negotiations are in a difficult state, it's also true that we are at a moment in history when more countries, including China, Brazil, and South Africa, are taking stronger actions or are poised to take stronger actions than ever before to combat climate change."

He addressed members of Congress as they debate a bill aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, which many see as a prerequisite to a deal at Copenhagen.

Climate talks in Barcelona resumed on Wednesday after an angry spat, but negotiators admitted chances for sealing a hoped-for U.N. treaty on global warming by year's end were vanishing. 

On Tuesday, African countries boycotted the Barcelona climate talks. The bloc of 50 nations accused rich counterparts of backsliding on promises to curb human-made carbon emissions blamed for global warming, demanding they slash their pollution by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

The squabble blocked talks among countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the cornerstone pact of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The twin-track process was launched in Bali in 2007 with the goal of concluding a post-2012 treaty among the UNFCCC's 192 parties at a Dec. 7-18 showdown in Copenhagen.

Related Links:

Wash. Times: “China vows to dramatically slow emissions growth.”

State of the Climate Movement: Can fasting and asceticism save the world?

China, India, U.S. commit to seal Copenhagen deal

Cross-Posted from Streetsblog.

Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe.

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic -- it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life -- the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry -- would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California -- it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Copenhagen panic is premature

Yvo de BoerThe global community should be investing $300 billion annually to combat global warming, according to U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer. De Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, says the world needs to be spending $100 billion annually to help vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, and another $200 billion each year to shift the global energy mix away from fossil fuels.

"The world will need a phenomenal amount of money to change its energy supply from fossil fuels to cleaner sources and to adapt to climate change," de Boer said Friday.

According to a U.N. Environment Program news update:

De Boer estimates the annual cost of climate change adaptation at US$100 billion per year. This is the amount needed to cope with natural disasters such as flooding and drought that will result from increased warming. Meanwhile, he pegs the cost of cutting global emissions at US$200 billion annually.

Currently, the draft text contains 200 brackets indicating points of disagreement between negotiators, who differ on who should bear the financial burden of the climate change challenge.

Nevertheless, De Boer stressed that a U.N. climate pact to be agreed upon in Copenhagen should set up a fair mechanism for raising long-term funds, rather than compel countries to contribute specific amount. "A robust burden-sharing formula is the most important thing."

De Boer also recommended that countries participating in the Copenhagen Conference, open negotiations with some cash on the table, perhaps US$10 billion.

At the G8 Summit in July, UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner noted that a successful Copenhagen Summit depended on the political will of world leaders to make good on their Green Economy pledges which entails investing heavily in renewable energies and energy efficiency.

A fair and "robust burden-sharing formula" would presumably imply that as the world's richest nation and the world's largest contributor to cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions, the United States, would contribute something like 1/4 to 1/3 of the total global investments required to adapt to and mitigate the climate threat. That would imply $50-66 billion annually to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency and a contribution of $25-33 billion annually to global adaptation efforts, for a total of $75-99 billion per year.

Where exactly is that money going to come from? An excellent question, and one that seems neglected by the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill now winding it's way through Congress. After political concessions to (attempt to) silence industry opposition, that bill would invest just about $10 billion annually in clean energy and efficiency and devote just about $1.6 billion to domestic adaptation efforts and $1.9 billion to international technology transfer efforts (all values assuming a $15/ton CO2 price, and scaled proportionately at other CO2 prices).

The clean energy and efficiency investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus bill) put us in the right ballpark -- at least on the mitigation front -- investing over $60 billion annually in America's efforts to build a new clean energy economy. But those short-term investments will expire by the end of 2010, and without an effort to build on and extend this critical clean energy spending, the U.S. will be left without sufficient funding to fulfill our fair share of global climate investments.

With the climate advocacy community primarily focused to date on establishing (and protecting already compromised) emissions reduction targets and "caps," the Waxman-Markey bill looks poised to leave the United States a long way from the level of commitment to clean energy and adaptation investments called for the UNFCC secretariat. We're running out of time to change that picture ...

Related Links:

India aims for 20 gigawatts solar by 2022

New Energy Finance: Solar power 50% cheaper by year end

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

The U.S. wind energy industry installed 1,210 megawatts (MW) of new power generating capacity in the second quarter, bringing the total added this year to just over 4,000 MW -  an amount larger than the 2,900 MW added in the first six months of 2008, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today in its second quarter (Q2) market report [click here].

And this is after a record 2008 (see "U.S. wind energy grows by record 8,300 MW"), which in turn made this country the global wind leader. AWEA's press release notes:

The state posting the fastest growth in the 2nd quarter was Missouri, where wind power installations expanded by 90%.

"Missourians know that in order for us to grow our state's economy and create the jobs of the twenty-first century, we must embrace new technology and advances like the ones presented to us through renewable wind energy," said Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. "So I'm proud that the American Wind Energy Association's quarterly report shows no state has capitalized on these growth opportunities more aggressively over the last three months than Missouri has.  But that isn't enough.  Missouri will continue to look for ways to enhance our energy supply and independence by using common-sense and cost effective expansions of clean, renewable wind power."

Paging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) - your vote is needed on a climate and clean energy bill.  As is the vote of members from other fast growing wind states:

Pennsylvania and South Dakota ranked second and third in terms of growth rate in the second quarter, expanding by 28% and 21% respectively.

With growth like this comes more than a dozen new and expanding factories around the country - and the jobs they bring:

AWEA explains what this means for clean energy jobs:

New installations will generate approximately 1,000 construction jobs in Q2 and a projected 4,500 construction jobs for 2009 in its entirety. The wind industry in the U.S. currently employs 85,000 people but could be cut by half without a strong RES in place, meaning a loss of more than 40,000 jobs in an already depressed economy.

And while EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus, even that is not a sure thing in this economic and financial meltdown.

While the pace of new wind farm installations and manufacturing announcements is substantial, AWEA said it is seeing a reduced level of activity in manufacturing of wind turbines and their components, a development it termed troubling in view of the fact that the U.S. industry was previously on track for much larger growth and the global wind power industry is continuing to expand.

We need a stronger renewable electricity standard to remain competitive with China which has tripled its wind goal to 100,000 MW by 2020.

The U.S. is the only developed country without an RES in place. And if the RES as it stands in the House climate bill is not strengthened, the U.S. risks losing 75% of the global wind jobs overseas.

For now, though, let's celebrate an industry that is adding jobs in these troubled times:  It's STILL braggin' time for wind!

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The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Copenhagen panic is premature

I am outside of Mexico City with delegates from the world's 17 biggest economies who are meeting this week ahead of the next G8 meeting to further negotiate international climate agreements. Issues on the table include funding for forest protection, mid-term and long-term emission reduction targets, and financing for adaption and mitigation. The outcomes from these talks remain in doubt and other questions fester, like to what will the U.S. commit to?

Greenpeace and our partners have our own climate treaty, which can serve as a model for these delegates as they decide the crucial questions about the future of our planet. Given the future potential economic costs of the emerging climate crisis, we can't afford not to tackle climate change. We need to see the economic crisis as an opportunity to invest in our future through building sustainable green economies by massively increasing energy efficiency and investing in renewable sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power, thereby stimulating the economy, creating jobs, promoting sustainable growth and simultaneously addressing the climate crisis.  What we cannot afford is being locked into unsustainable dirty industries dependent on fossil fuel power. 

For an effective climate deal at December's Copenhagen Climate Summit, the world's wealthiest nations--the G8 countries, who are at the core of the MEF-- need to take the lead both at MEF and when they meet in L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 Summit next month. The G8 countries emit more than 40% of global CO2 emissions, despite being home to only 13% of the world's population. These countries are looking at the U.S. to show leadership, but thus far, the leadership from the U.S. has been absent.

This is really a question of trust. By committing to targets for emissions cuts and financing for developing countries for mitigation, forest protection and adaptation, G8 countries can build trust and confidence and lead the way on global climate action - both for the MEF as well as for the UN negotiations, which will culminate in Copenhagen in December. But if they don't show leadership, the rest of the world will have little incentive to take any sort of action.

At the last MEF, Germany and France called for strong short-term commitments, along the lines of what the world's leading scientists recommend to fight against climate change. But the U.S. balked, and the slow progress of the U.S. Congress on a climate deal and its refusal to support the policies that keep climate change as far under 2 degrees C as possible must be leaving the rest of the world questioning the U.S.'s commitment.

Last week, the White House released a report that found that climate change is already creating changes in the United States by threatening the Southwest with heat waves, the Atlantic with stronger storms and the Midwest with drought. Given confirmation from the highest levels of government, there is no excuse for inaction.

The time to lead is now. The G8 leaders at the MEF and the G8 summit need to take responsibility for their role in climate change and agree to:

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Sarah van Schagen recounted how climate change will mess with salmon, skiing, and other essentials of life in the Pacific Northwest -- according to the Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report released today. As we say in Seattle, um… I don’t think we have a local saying for “oh crap.”

globalchange.govLest you non-Northwesterners feel jealous for lack of attention, here’s a rundown of what the report says will happen in other regions of this great (for now!) American land. (For a much more colorful set of maps and graphics of local climate impacts from the report, check out Climate change in living color.)

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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

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Since the mid-1800s, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, accounted for 29% of the global total. Those 328,000 million metric tons of cumulative emissions are the most of any country and more than three times the amount emitted by China over the same period (93,000 MtCO2), according to data from the World Resources Institute.

Cumulative emissions are responsible for the high levels of CO2 concentrations that are destroying the climate, which means the moral responsibility rests with Americans to show leadership on emissions reductions.

Using WRI data, Greenpeace has written “America’s Share of the Climate Crisis,” which also looks at emissions since 1960:

Hmm. “If Texas were its own country….” Isn’t that what Governor Rick Perry proposed (see AP story “Gov. Rick Perry: Texas Could Secede, Leave Union“)?

Hmm. Two fewer GOP senators … only 59 votes needed to break a filibuster … a lot easier for progressives to win Presidential elections. Something to dream about…. But I digress.

Time for Americans to lead on emissions reductions.

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Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist

Old soldiers, as they say, never die -- and at 97 the legendary Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap seems intent on proving the point.

But he does not seem to be that interested in fading away, either. For the man who drove out first France and then the United States is enthusiastically embracing a new battle -- as an eco-warrior.

For a European child of the 1960s like me -- for whom the Vietnam War was a youthful defining event -- this is truly riveting news. It is like someone of my father's generation discovering Germany's Field Marshal Rommel campaigning to save the whale in the 1970s, or people of my son's age coming across, say, Saddam Hussein running an animal sanctuary in forty years time.

Giap was just as feared in his day -- and many readers could be forgiven for assuming him to have passed away years ago.

Be that as it may, the general's emergence provides a dramatic personalization of one of the more surprising trends of the last few years -- the greening of the military. Britain and the United States are in the vanguard of what we may one day come to call the "military-ecological complex."

But before we get to that, spare a thought for the Chinese firm, Chinalco, that now finds itself in the sights of the man who routed the French Army in the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu (55 years ago last week) and then led North Vietnamese forces against far superior American military between 1965 and 1974. The national Vietnamese communist government, which Giap did so much to make possible, calls Chinalco's bauxite mining in the country's beautiful Central Highlands "a major policy of the party and of the state."

But the general will have none of it. He cites a report that concluded that the mining would cause "devastating, long-term ecological damage" and says: "We should not exploit the bauxite. The exploitation will cause serious consequences on the environment, society and national defense."

It is, of course, defense considerations that have awakened military leaders in the West to the importance of green issues. Gen. Giap may be concerned about inviting investment from Vietnam's old enemy, China. But top brass in Britain, the United States and many other countries are most worried about the potential for future conflict caused by resource scarcity, environmental refugees and -- above all -- global warming.

"Just a few years ago," former British defense official Derek Twigg told a conference last September, "it would have been fanciful, to say the least, for a defense minister to be speaking about climate change, let alone stating categorically that it will have a crucial effect on the defense operations of Britain and its allies.

"Climate change will serve to amplify instability. Because of it, our troops will be asked to complete more challenging tasks, in more places, more often." He added: "It is a long term danger that must be tackled head on."

U.S. military leaders were even sooner to see the threat. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, or we will pay the price in military terms later on," said General Anthony Zinni, a former commander of American forces in the Middle East, at the launch two years ago of a report that concluded that global warming was a "threat multiplier", creating breeding grounds for terrorism.

Another of the report's authors, Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, former commander-in-chief of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, added that the "rising ocean water levels, droughts, violent weather and ruined national economies" that would result from global warming "can provide the conditions that will extend the war on terror."

Even more interestingly, the two countries' armed forces are setting out to tackle their own gas-guzzling consumption of fossil fuels. Britain's Ministry of Defence, responsible for 70 percent of all the Her Majesty's Government's carbon dioxide emissions, has so far cut them by ten percent this decade and has certified its planes to fly entirely on biofuels, probably made from algae, when they are available.

The Pentagon, which gave humanity the 68-ton, less-than-one-mile-to-the-gallon M1 Abrams tank -- now aims to get a quarter of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. It is saving fuel by removing floor mats and redundant tools from its planes, and has saved 100,000 gallons of oil a day by insulating tents in Iraq and Afghanistan with a layer of hard foam.

General Giap, notoriously profligate with his men's lives, might not have appreciated the Pentagon's combat-zone energy-efficiency efforts, but the U.S. military reckons these steps prevent casualties, as every one per cent of fuel excuses 6,444 soldiers from traveling in fuel convoys, favored targets of insurgent forces.

And, the newly green military chiefs add, their multi-billion-dollar acquisition budgets may boost the development of green technologies, just as military spending once led to the development of jet engines, microchips, the Internet and the global positioning system.

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Green groups won an important victory for clean air last week when a federal appeals court ruled that chemical plants, refineries, and other industrial sites are still subject to pollution limits even during equipment malfunctions and when plants start up or shut down. Some refineries and other sites have used the Clean Air Act’s start-up, shut-down loophole—which the Bush administration expanded—to evade enforcement actions. “For more than a decade, polluters have relied on this loophole at the expense of neighboring communities,” said Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew.

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Over 100 million people in the United States, nearly one-third of its population, live in metro areas that violate federal standards for daily soot pollution on at least some days, the U.S. EPA said this week. However, missing from the EPA’s list of officially sooty areas—and thus exempt from further enforcement actions to clean up the pollution—are at least five metropolitan areas that violated the annual standard for soot pollution and have been struggling with long-term soot problems, among them ultra-polluted Houston, Texas.

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Waste products from oil-shale development are not hazardous and thus would not have to be treated as such, the U.S. EPA ruled this week, thereby lowering the costs of developing oil-shale deposits on public lands in the U.S. West.

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A proposed rule change at the U.S. Interior Department would make it easier for individual national parks to open existing trails to mountain biking, a move opposed by some conservationists and hikers who argue mountain biking can speed erosion and disturb the national-park experience for other visitors. For their part, mountain-biking advocates say that greater access to trails in national parks could, among other things, spur more young people to visit the parks.

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The survival of Chrysler and General Motors remains in doubt after Congress adjourned late Thursday night without passing a Senate bailout bill for U.S. automakers. The U.S. House passed a version of the bailout bill Wednesday that included a key green provision requiring automakers to abide by California's strict fuel-efficiency requirements. However, the Senate's rescue bill contained a provision essentially stipulating the opposite, but now that the legislation is dead, neither version will be passed into law.

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