As we are quickly approaching the final stretch before the Copenhagen climate negotiations (just a week to go before it begins), I thought I would try to give a quick summary of where the past 2 years of international negotiations have taken us and where we are headed.

As I've said before, there are 6 key elements to the international agreement:

So I figured I would help with the lead-in to Copenhagen with a five part series of posts (my colleague Heather Allen will add one as well to cover the adaptation discussion). But before getting into the details on those 6 elements, I thought I would cover a bit of the expectations for Copenhagen.

What can we expect out of Copenhagen? The meeting in Copenhagen is about building on the growing momentum for action that has emerged over the past year and laying a solid foundation for achieving the final legally binding agreement in months, not years. Heads of government from over 70 countries, including all the major emitters, have now signaled that they'll attend the Copenhagen negotiations making it the first "real Summit" on global warming where countries are expected to make commitments to action. This is a very positive step as solving this challenge will require the focus of the key decision-makers in every country, and their sustained focus for 40 plus years.

Over this past year we've had all the major developed countries, with some exceptions, propose serious and firm commitments to curb their emissions (more on this in Part 2). And major emerging economies have all either signaled clear steps that they'll take to reduce their emissions or provided clear signals that they will soon (more on this in Part 3). So we actually have made very serious progress on one of the most important elements of an international agreement - signs of actions by key countries to address their global warming pollution.

The emerging consensus is that Copenhagen will result in a political agreement with some key details being settled this December and a deadline for finalizing the full legally binding agreement sometime next year-"one agreement, two steps".

It is expected that significant progress will be made on each of these six key elements I discussed above so that the agreement reached in Copenhagen isn't just a mere piece of paper with no meaning. Rather, it could lead to real commitments to actions that reduce emissions while the full legal agreement is finalized sometime next year.

Expected Outcome from Copenhagen. The current expectation is that there will be a 6-8 page political agreement which outlines the broad contours of the international agreement, and then a series of "Annexes" to the political agreement which specify further details. The combination of these two sets of documents is then expected to be integrated next year into a legal agreement which can be ratified by countries in the following years. So the current proposed outcome as discussed by the UNFCCC Secretariat Yvo de Boer is for the following items to be agreed in Copenhagen:

1. Deeper emissions reduction targets for developed countries - the expectation is that all developed countries will outline further emissions reductions and then next year these commitments will be translated into legally binding commitments.

2. Developing countries outline specific emissions reductions actions/commitments (called "Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Commitments") - All major developing countries are expected to outline the kinds of emissions reduction actions that they'll commit to undertake.

3. "Prompt start funding" for clean energy, deforestation reduction, and adaptation assistance in developing countries. The current expectation is that developed countries will outline specific commitments to support developing countries through 2012 - developed countries are currently aiming to compile $10 billion per year for these purposes. In addition, there will be a discussion about how future funding will be managed and distributed, including a clear set of options for how larger, more sustainable funding will be developed for the post-2012 period.

4. Decisions on key architectural elements of the new legally binding agreement. Negotiators have been focused on outlining the architecture for the new international agreement, so these decisions would seek to "lock-in" what they can already agree to and establish a clear path to finalizing the additional rules next year. Agreements are expected on all the elements of the Bali Action Plan, so:

The Copenhagen "Wild Ride". For anyone that has followed the international global warming negotiations, you won't be surprised by this negotiation session. It will be a "wild ride" with a lot of grumbling, ups and downs, agreements, threats (or possibilities) of walkouts, moments where it looks like things are coming together and then something sets it back, etc.

And just hopefully, if countries are able to set aside their differences and see the greater good (our future), they'll find a way to agree to set the world on a path that is much closer to solving global warming. They'll outline a new set of actions to address global warming and a clear path to making them firmer and deeper next year.

So stay tuned. I'll be there the whole time, as will a number of my colleagues.

Related Links:

Soil carbon—a blind spot in the debate on carbon

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

India aims for 20 gigawatts solar by 2022

The Presidential Palace. The Presidential Palace in Guinea Bissau lies derelict and burnt out. You can walk amongst the shards of broken crockery, blackened banisters, and singed carpets. Its empty rooms are a fitting metaphor for this failing state.

Teachers in the public sector have not been paid in years. Portuguese, the official language, is hardly spoken by young people and the nation is reverting to a creole contributing to its international isolation.

In a country which ranks 10th from the bottom on the U.N.'s Human Development Index and where life expectancy is 47, there are perhaps more pressing concerns than educating people about climate change.

However, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is doing just that. Nelson Gomez Dias, Country Director in Guinea Bissau, described the mobile laboratory used to educate children in Guinea Bissau on one of its most pressing environmental challenges. Biomass fuel.

Biomass fuel (charcoal and wood) is the single greatest contributor to deforestation in the world. The rural roads of Guinea Bissau are lined with sacks of the stuff on sale to truck drivers to transport to urban markets. And there is great demand as 80 percent of Africans rely on biomass for energy.

The IUCN takes its laboratory to schools across the country. Climate change per se is not on the curriculum. They believe you can only encourage people to act sustainably if you offer them a tangible improvement to their quality of life.

They ask children to boil two liters of water, trialling three methods: the traditional three stone fire with charcoal, with wood, and a biomass burning stove made from termite mud, cow dung and rice stalks. The latter performs better against all criteria: time to boil, amount of fuel required, energy required to fetch fuel, cost of fuel, and associated health implications.

The lesson encourages children to use their resources more sustainably, teaching them how to make the stoves, using materials available throughout Guinea Bissau. Children are also extremely effective agents of change, nagging their parents to adopt the new stoves.

The program targets the most vulnerable members of society, reducing women and children's daily chores, while bringing cost savings and health benefits. Effective environmental education in a country where formal education has gone up in smoke.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

This is really the first year since the launch in 2006 that the blog seems appropriately named!   AFP reports:

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday he will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest by 80 percent by 2020 when he attends December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen. Lula said his pledge will come during high-stakes talks in the Danish capital that aim to push 192 nations towards a climate deal to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“We’re in the process of preparing our proposal for Copenhagen,” Lula said on his weekly radio program, Coffee with the President.  “I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 percent; in other words, we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas.”

Brazil’s rain forest, the largest on Earth, is shrinking at the rate of some 12,000 square kilometers (or 7456.454 miles) per year because of deforestation.

The world appears to be coming together to finally address deforestation, one of the biggest single contributor to climate change:

This is going to cost money, of course, and the developing countries quite naturally expect the rich countries — which grew rich generating the overwhelming majority of cumulative GHG emissions and cutting down their own forests — and oftentimes directly or indirectly financing the deforestation of poorer countries:

Lula said he will also demand in Copenhagen that industrialized countries pay their fair share of the costs of reducing greenhouse gases. Proposals offered by developed countries should not only cover “initiatives to reduce their emissions, but all the other harm they already have inflicted on the planet,” the Brazilian leader said.

“We have to draw a line between rich countries, which have a had an industrial policy in place for more than 150 years, and the poor ones which only now are beginning to develop,” he said.

“With respect to global warming, the responsibility of the rich countries is much greater than that of emerging countries,” said Lula.

But, the good news is that stopping deforestation is one of the most cost-effective, near-term strategies for addressing climate change:

Another good piece of news is that the House climate and clean energy bill allocates a great deal of money to this international effort:

The key will be to ensure that the Senate bill — and the final bill that gets to Obama’s desk next year — keeps these provisions.

Kudos to Brazil for putting this strong commitment on the table.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Soil carbon—a blind spot in the debate on carbon

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

This post was co-authored by Lincoln Chafee, former Republican senator from Rhode Island. It was cross-posted from Roll Call.

It is imperative that the United States find effective and economically viable solutions to the climate crisis. Our elected officials and business leaders ask how we can afford the global transition to a low-carbon economy. Around the globe, developing nations ask how they can afford to reduce their emissions without sacrificing their hopes for a better life. There is no single answer, but there is one unexpected solution that offers hope on both fronts.

To date, the climate debate has focused on reducing fossil fuel emissions and ramping up crucial clean energy alternatives. Far too little attention has been paid to the role tropical deforestation has in warming the planet. It accounts for 17 percent of global emissions -- more than all the world's cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships combined. This is a serious oversight; if left unaddressed, deforestation will undermine all our efforts to solve the climate crisis.

The good news is that protecting "climate forests" is a major global warming solution that can be implemented immediately and affordably. Many developing nations, including Brazil and Indonesia, which together account for 50 percent of global deforestation, are eager to partner with the United States to protect their climate forests. Indeed, Brazil has established a goal of reducing emissions from the Amazon by 80 percent by 2020 and is already making impressive progress in that direction, including robust monitoring and verification systems. Indonesia is moving in a similar direction. These efforts could be focused, honed, and replicated globally.

Protecting climate forests doesn't just make environmental sense -- it's an economic imperative. By including tropical forests in U.S. climate policies, the United States can help reduce future carbon prices confronting U.S. companies by 50 percent and help save the United States $50 billion by 2020 compared with the costs of domestic action. Capturing these savings, however, will require substantial new financial and technical resources, including investing $1 billion in public funding before 2012, growing gradually to $5 billion in public funding and $9 billion in private-sector investments annually by 2020.

Saving climate forests would also strengthen U.S. national security by reducing environmental degradation and international instability caused by climate change, which acts as a threat multiplier for conflict. It would contribute to alleviating global poverty by channeling substantial new revenues to the forest-dependent rural poor and conserve invaluable biodiversity and ecosystem services by protecting some of the world's most important natural places.

This is the thrust of the recommendations issued by the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, a bipartisan and multi-sector panel of leaders we co-chair, which recommends that the United States lead a global effort to halve emissions from tropical deforestation by 2020 and achieve zero net emissions from the forest sector by 2030.

In the context of the cap-and-trade approach endorsed by President Obama and being debated in the Senate now, the way to achieve these ambitious goals is to allow U.S. companies to invest in reducing tropical deforestation in order to meet a substantial portion of their domestic emissions reduction obligation. We must leverage these private-sector investments by using public funds to provide technical assistance that enables nations to participate in U.S. carbon markets. This can also support countries that prove unable to attract private capital and engage nations where deforestation threats are growing.

The climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June would mobilize private-sector investments and would fund new technical assistance programs with a percentage of revenue from domestic emission-allowance auctions. The climate bill released last month by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) allows for a similar approach. While these are for the moment among the least-understood parts of pending climate change legislation, they deserve broad bipartisan support.

Coupled with meaningful reductions in domestic emissions, protecting climate forests is one of the most important as well as the most readily available and most cost-effective means of finding a path forward on climate change. For economic, security, humanitarian, and environmental reasons, tropical forest conservation must be a centerpiece initiative of U.S. climate legislation and diplomacy. The alternatives -- further delaying climate action, neglecting our responsibility as a global leader, and failing to include robust protections for forests -- threaten the vital national interests of the United States. We have the chance to lead, and we must take it.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Well “climate week” has just wrapped up with the conclusion of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.  This week was an important one to build international and US momentum for addressing global warming pollution (as I discussed here).

As I discussed here and my colleague discussed here, some positive steps emerged this week on the international and US front.  I won’t recap them here but every bit of momentum is essential if we are going to be able to seize the opportunity (the statement of NRDC’s President available here gives the broad overview of this week).  We need all machines running in forward and none shifted into reverse.  We got mostly forward movement this week, although not close to at full speed.

And while the G20 meeting didn’t make as much progress as we ultimately need, it did provide a bit of forward momentum on a couple of fronts (the communiqué is available here):

Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.  Going into the G20 meeting, the issue of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies seemed to spring up out of thin air.  But at the end of the meeting the G20 countries had committed to:

"Rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption…We will have our Energy and Finance Ministers, based on their national circumstances, develop implementation strategies and timeframes, and report back to Leaders at the next Summit."

While a lot of details need to emerge on how this will occur and over what timeframe, it is a good down payment.  We can’t get where we need to go if some incentives are working against us.  We need all the wheels moving in the forward direction and subsidies for fossil fuel emissions are moving us in the wrong direction on clean energy and global warming pollution.  As I put it in this Washington Post article:

“Given that we're talking about deep cuts across the world, we can't have investments in clean energy competing against investments in fossil fuels that are going in the wrong direction."

According to one estimate, around $300 billion a year is spent worldwide to subsidize fossil fuels.  According to the Environmental Law Institute, the US government alone provided $72 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry between 2002 and 2008.  So the US has an onus to prove that it can lead on this G20 effort, especially since it was driven at the US suggestion.  Reducing global fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 is estimated to reduce global warming pollution by 10 percent by 2050 (as reported by Reuters) so this could make a positive dent in our efforts.  

Climate Finance and Investment in Developing Countries.  At the end of the Major Economies Forum meeting in Italy President Obama: "asked the G20 finance ministers to take up the climate financing issues and report back to us at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in the fall" (as I discussed here).  So the issue of climate investment and finance in developing countries was supposed to be high on the radar for the G20. 

This was a welcome step since having Finance Ministers and Heads of Government more intimately involved in the climate investment and finance debate was supposed to provide a little “injection of energy” to this debate.  After all, these leaders have tools and influence within their country beyond the pay grade of the current climate negotiators who are currently grappling with this issue. 

Some work by Finance Ministries and Heads of Government went into trying to make progress on this critical issue for getting a strong agreement in Copenhagen.  But it is clear that these leaders have a lot of work left as the G20 countries were only able to state that:

“We welcome the work of the Finance Ministers and direct them to report back at their next meeting with a range of possible options for climate change financing to be provided as a resource to be considered in the UNFCCC negotiations at Copenhagen.”  

Clearly a call for more work isn’t a resolution to this issue, so hopefully Finance Ministers will live up to this call for more work and deliver a set of specific options that can be quickly integrated into the climate negotiations.  Work on this issue definitely needs to “shift into high gear” if we are going to have a strong outcome in Copenhagen.

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So this week saw some very positive forward movement on a number of fronts as NRDC’s President stated:

“This week, President Obama reminded the world that climate change is the challenge of our generation and that history will hold countries, including the U.S., accountable for our response.

It was encouraging to see that several key countries demonstrated forward momentum in climate negotiations. President Hu Jintao signaled that China would commit to curb the growth of their emissions through 2020; Indian leaders said they would take domestic steps to reduce their emissions; Japan’s new government committed to a much deeper target than the previous government; and key world leaders strengthened their support for dealing with deforestation emissions.”

The G20 step to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels was a positive step forward but it is not a replacement for a firm limit on global warming pollution.  Nor is it a “replacement for the needed public-sector investment to mobilize clean-energy investment in developing countries” (as I said in this Bloomberg article).

Now the climate negotiations turn to Bangkok, Thailand where negotiators will hope to continue the momentum coming out of climate week by “rolling up their sleeves” (I’ll be posting from there so stay tuned).  Negotiators will have in front of them a 180 page negotiating text that contains many of the key elements for the Copenhagen agreement, but which will need to be whittled down to the core set of options.

Hopefully the momentum from “climate week” and the Bangkok negotiation session will “shift global efforts into high gear”!

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Soil carbon—a blind spot in the debate on carbon

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Climate week began with world leaders participating in a full day of discussions on global warming. Over 100 world leaders were in attendance-the largest gathering of world leaders on global warming and the first in many respects. The leaders of a number of the key countries provided remarks. Yesterday's events were intended to give a much needed injection of energy to the final stretch of the international negotiations to secure a new agreement in Copenhagen this December.

Remember, there are five key building blocks for the agreement that emerges from Copenhagen so we need to watch what details are filled in on each of these:

As I discussed there are some "rays of hope" in international efforts to address global warming. And leader after leader effectively said something to the effect of: "the fate of future generations depends upon our choices today and our future is in our hands" (or something like that). Some said it more eloquently than me, but my speech writers aren't paid as well.

The U.N. climate summit provided some boosts to the international negotiations as we lead into the final stretch before Copenhagen. Some of these were significant enough to attract attention in the media, while others slipped a bit below the radar but are no less important.

China. President Hu Jintao outlined a set of new actions that China will undertake to reduce their global warming pollution. Most significant they signaled that they would reduce their emissions intensity (emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product) by "a notable margin by 2020 from 2005 levels." They held back the actual number that they would reduce their intensity by in 2020, but this is a negotiation so this isn't surprising at this stage. But as I discussed here and my colleague Barbara Finamore discussed here, this action could mark an important shift in China's efforts.

It is getting harder and harder for countries to hide behind the inaction of China with these promising signs from China.

The details of this new commitment are important, but it is clear that China is willing to take steps to cut its emissions and they signaled that internationally. The U.S. has an important role to play in helping to secure that the detailed commitments that emerge from China are strong. The Chinese will be looking to what the U.S. will do domestically through its clean energy and climate bill, but also what the U.S. will be asking of them through the U.S.-China bilateral agreement. A huge opportunity!

India. Over the last couple of weeks India has shown some very promising shifts in their position. As my colleagues have discussed here and here, India recently announced it would quantify the emissions cuts it will make under its National Action Plan on Climate Change. And India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh explained that India is: "...prepared to take on, voluntarily, unilaterally, mitigation actions as part of a domestic legislative agenda."

Anybody that has followed the negotiations will notice that this is a big shift in the Indian position. They used to be resistant to committing internationally to undertake efforts to reduce their emissions, even though on-the-ground in India they had actually moved on a number fronts to reduce emissions. Details of these commitments need to be firmed up, but this is another new opportunity!

Japan. The new Japanese government came to the U.N. and offered internationally to increase their emissions reduction target to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. This is an important improvement from the offer that the previous government put on the table.

Japan is a highly efficient economy in many respects so this more aggressive target is a positive sign. It is a new opportunity that provides a much needed boost to the targets that developed countries are committing to!

U.S. President Obama spoke before the U.N. and as NRDC's President stated:

This is an opportunity that can be seized by the Senate beginning next week as the debate on the climate bill begins in earnest when a bill is expected to be released by Senator Kerry and Boxer. A lot of work is occurring behind the scenes in the Senate, so I'm optimistic that a bill can move quickly through the Senate. Passage of this bill will put the U.S. in a strong position to secure a strong international agreement and seize this opportunity!

Seizing the Opportunity. These bits of momentum provide an opportunity as world leaders meet in Pittsburgh for the G20. The question is will they seize this opportunity, build upon it in Pittsburgh, and provide an extra boost for the final stretch of the international negotiations.

Will they commit to move forward the important debate on providing the needed investments in developing countries on clean energy, deforestation, and international adaptation?

I'll be here in Pittsburgh watching this debate and nudging for a clear signal from world leaders that they will bring a commitment to Copenhagen to support the needed investment in developing countries. And they'll have to provide a clear signal that they are poised to secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

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

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Today begins a week dubbed because of all the high-level climate discussions that are occurring.  And they just all happen to be occurring in the U.S. at an important time for the domestic debate to pass a clean energy and climate bill in the Senate.

The high-level events begin on Tuesday (Sept. 22) with the U.N. Secretary General hosting an all day session on global warming for Heads of Government from around the world, it continues with a session on deforestation for Heads of Government on Wednesday (Sept. 23), and ends with the G20 Summit in Pittsburg -- with a lot in between.

Heads of Government from these key countries don't meet often to discuss global warming pollution, so every event where this is on the agenda for Heads of Government is an important opportunity to make progress.  And as I've discussed, here, bringing in Heads of Government is critical at this stage of the negotiations if we are to have any chance of securing a strong global agreement in Copenhagen.  Last time Heads of Government from key countries met at the G8 and Major Economies Forum in Italy, some progress was made on a number of important benchmarks of the global effort (as I discussed here).  So there is hope of more to come at these key events.

Time is short before Copenhagen -- about 3 months to the day are left -- so there is a notable sense that things aren't coming together fast enough -- dark clouds appear to be hanging overhead.  Accordingly expectations were high that these high-level events could provide a much needed boost to international efforts -- start to part the clouds and let some sunshine appear.

What gives me a sense of optimism -- besides the fact that regardless of the fluctuations in the political climate the need for clean energy and global warming solutions will remain -- are four things about international efforts on global warming that are important to keep in mind.

25th hour (and maybe 26th) is when these negotiations often come together. This is a high stakes negotiation where everything is intimately woven together. Countries are unwilling to move on one piece as they are waiting for a similar move by another country on a related issue. This is especially true on one of the key pieces on the agenda for the G20 -- finance/investment for developing countries (see my summary of the negotiation texts for an overview of the key issues - part 1, part 2, and part 3).  At the Major Economies Forum in July, President Obama tasked Finance Ministers to report back at the G20 on progress on this issue so there is hope that some promising signs will emerge from Pittsburgh (and the Obama Administration has shown some more public support in recent days, as I discussed here).

As a result, the negotiations often "come down to the wire" as no one is willing to move until they feel like they have moved the other side as much as possible -- the final showdown. We don't have to look too far back into these negotiations to see an example. The Bali meeting which launched the two year negotiations towards Copenhagen wasn't resolved until Saturday afternoon the day after the meeting was supposed to end. And I bet if you asked negotiators -- either before Bali began or at any point during the session -- whether we would get an agreement that looked like the actual outcome they would have said no (including yours truly).

Many times these negotiations only look like agreement can be reached minutes after it is actually reached.

The U.S. is making progress domestically to curb global warming pollution. The last time the world was on the cusp of an international agreement to address global warming -- in 1997 around the Kyoto Protocol negotiations -- domestic efforts to put in place limits on U.S. global warming pollution had made very little progress.  In fact, some would argue that the U.S. was on its heels before Kyoto as the Senate had sent a signal with "mixed" domestic support for what would ultimately emerge.

While things haven't changed as far as we need them to in the U.S., let's not forget about a couple of important changes that have occurred that make the U.S. poised for action more than at any time in the past, including the:

No one wants a repeat of Kyoto where the U.S. couldn't build the domestic support to implement what it committed to internationally. That is why we (and many others) are pushing for the U.S. Senate to take action before Copenhagen -- we need to ensure that the U.S. actually lives up to its promises.

Developing countries are taking action to curb emissions and providing hints of more to come. Over the last two years, there has been a sizeable shift in how developing countries came to the international negotiations. Major developing countries used to say: "we only act when the industrialized world takes even deeper action".  But now most major emerging economies have taken action to curb their emissions and proposed or hinted at more to come.  For example:

Almost all developed countries have proposed deeper emissions cuts. The European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and Japan have all committed to deeper emissions reduction targets (with a signal from the new Japanese government that they'll go even deeper than their predecessor). Two notable exceptions that haven't committed to deeper cuts are Russia (see here for their weak opening offer) and Canada (as noted in this call for greater action from Canada). And while a number of these countries have to firm up their targets and their domestic laws to achieve those targets, these countries have committed in advance of Copenhagen (very different than prior to Kyoto where most hadn't proposed anything or taken steps to implement domestic actions).

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It is easy to feel like the world's efforts to address global warming are under a dark cloud characterized by not enough progress and big unknowns in key countries, but some rays of sunshine are appearing in key countries.

And it is these rays that will have to be pieced together at the 25th hour in Copenhagen.

So will the forecast coming out of climate week improve the outlook for Copenhagen?  Let's hope, as a lot is riding on the world's efforts to solve global warming (I'll be in N.Y. and Pittsburgh to see first hand how it's looking).

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

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

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

A new report, "Forging the Climate Consensus: Domestic and International Offsets" makes clear exactly how important a role high-quality offsets play in maintaining the integrity of climate legislation -- and how they could allow an international climate agreement to achieve far stronger emissions reductions targets than would otherwise be possible.

The report was issued by the National Commission on Energy Policy, which represents major corporations, NGO's, and labor unions (and whose executive director is Jason Grumet, Obama's top energy advisor during the campaign, so it should be taken at least somewhat seriously as the type of thinking being seriously considered in the White House and on Capitol Hill). It includes strong support for offsets, but questions if the verification requirements in the legislation are too tough to allow offsets to be brought to market in sufficient quantity to deliver major cost savings for climate legislation, especially in the first years.

If the bill's restrictions on use of offsets are so severe as to prevent them from being developed, their cost containment value would be reduced and the cost of climate legislation would be higher. That's of concern to the members of the commission, many of whom represent utilities and other interests that are, to a great extent, focused on keeping the cost of climate legislation down (a concern shared by many senators whose votes we'll need to pass climate legislation).

As a result, the commission recommends adopting alternate cost-containment measures like a price collar or an allowance auction reserve to hold prices down.

That's a huge problem. Unlike offsets, which, when done right, deliver emissions reductions by financing affordable (and important) activities like forest conservation and reforestation, price collars let polluters off the hook whenever the price of carbon rises above a certain level -- a dangerous policy, given that we can't be 100 percent sure what the price of carbon will be at any given time. An allowance auction reserve works in a similar way -- the government just releases more pollution permits whenever the price rises. Unlike offsets, which deliver affordability through pollution reductions, these mechanisms deliver affordability but no emissions reductions.

That's a fundamental calculus that offset critics just don't seem to get: if you remove offsets from legislation or an international climate agreement and you have to find cost control mechanisms somewhere else -- or just lower the targets. And that doesn't do any good for the planet or its people.

It was a perspective certainly missing from two anti-offsets broadsides issued this week by opponents of climate legislation: the "Dangerous Distraction" report by Friends of the Earth and a Greenpeace website mocking their use.

Of course, it's essential that offsets actually deliver reductions in pollution. FOE and Greenpeace recycle decades-old claims to imply that many offsets are less than credible.

But these are not your daddy's offsets. There have been tremendous advances to ensure that offsets, especially forest-based offsets, deliver the reductions they promise. Consider the offsets in the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of Representatives.

In addition to establishing a rigorous scientific board to evaluate any proposed offsets, the bill also includes an essential requirement: in order for any offsets to receive credit, they must have already taken place. In other words, you can't get credit for a plan to offset emissions, but only for verified emission reductions that have already occurred.

In addition, there are a variety of very strict requirements to ensure, for instance, that indigenous and forest-dependent people benefit from tropical forest conservation offsets (indeed, if a country doesn't meet the bill's standards for protection of indigenous people, they could be entirely shut out of the program) and that domestic reforestation activities use only native species and protect biodiversity.

Protection of indigenous people is an especially important issue. Deforestation has brought disease, terror, and displacement to indigenous communities around the world. In the Amazon alone, more than 90 indigenous tribes have been wiped out since 1900. These forests are being destroyed because they're not valued for the immense quantity of carbon they store.  To unscrupulous agribusiness and timber interests, their only value is as plantation land. In other words, they're worth more dead than alive.  And to some corporations, the same goes for the communities who live in them. Offset critics sometimes forget that the greatest threat to forest-dependent indigenous people is the destruction of forests, not their conservation. The simple fact that forest offset critics sometimes forget is that the greatest threat to the indigenous people of the forests is their destruction, not their conservation. It's for this reason that rainforest nations have been the leaders in calling for inclusion of incentives to protect forests in climate legislation.

But it's not just Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who underestimate offsets' potential. I think those who are skeptical about how many will be eligible to be brought to market may underestimate the ability of even the poorest nations to develop, for instance, robust national plans and baselines to monitor the effects of deforesttation and conservation. With the possibility of big development resources on the table, they may be spurred to action faster than anyone realizes. Indeed, Brazilian states, in particular, have shown tremendous capacity to ramp up to monitor and attract forest conservation projects.

Of course, I don't want to pretend that all offsets are good. A variety of polluting industries have in the past successfully lobbied for crediting of their dubious activities. Friends of the Earth is absolutely right to point out the absurdity of providing carbon credit to, for instance, big dams, as has been done under the Clean Development Mechanism. Even if one accepts their carbon reductions, the damage they do to rivers and local communities is enormous. These dams should be removed, not subsidized (tell that to the World Bank, which has drastically increased their subsidies for dams).

For instance, there are real worries that the standards behind the domestic agricultural and biomass offsets are way too weak -- meaning that they could undermine a lot of the good work the legislation does to protect forests (see this post for more).

I think there's a fairly easy way to tell which kinds of offsets we should be suspicious of and which we shouldn't: look at what those backing certain kinds of offsets are saying: in general, those willing to embrace rigorous scientific and social standards can be trusted more than those who are lobbying for weaker standards, such as the Big Ag lobby. I wish offset critics were able to see the difference between crediting activities to save forests and giant environmentally destructive hydropower projects or unsustainable biofuels cultivation. Their legitimate criticisms might be listened to more seriously if they didn't try to demonize, for instance, saving endangered forests as well.

This is especially true when it comes to tropical forests. Critics successfully fought to keep tropical forest offsets out of the Kyoto Protocol. The world has suffered the consequences since then. Because of this giant mistake, more than 300 million acres of forest have gone up in smoke in the last ten years, producing an amount of global warming pollution equivalent to ten times the United States' annual emissions. That mistake has not only polluted the climate, it's also made extinct an untold number of species and allowed genocide and murder to be perpetrated against indigenous peoples throughout the tropical forest belt. It's time to come up with solutions to the deforestation crisis, not just dump on one of the key mechanisms that could provide ammo to solve it. 

A final point: the use of offsets shouldn't be conceived of as some kind of necessary concession.  They should be used in any climate legislation (or international agreement), no matter how strong, to make it even stronger by getting bigger pollution reductions for the same economic and political cost.

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Todd Stern the Special Envoy for Climate Change, just testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on: The Road to Copenhagen and International Climate Agreement.

His testimony (available here [pdf]) and response to several questions for the first time publicly stressed the importance of the three international investment provisions in the House clean energy and global warming bill passed this past June:

As I’ve discussed (here and here) the deforestation reduction program, clean energy export provision, and international adaptation assistance programs in the House bill are critical elements to help secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen that puts the world on a path to solving global warming.
 
As Todd put it in his written testimony:

And he was more explicit in response to a question from Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR) regarding “elements that we have done here that will help make your task easier.”  In response Todd Stern said:

These provisions aren’t “charity”, but rather strategic investments.  These investments help:

They arm the U.S. negotiators with a powerful set of tools.  It is important that the Senate builds upon these key provisions and supports greater investments in supporting developing countries that commit to reduce their emissions, cut deforestation emissions, and support the most vulnerable (as my colleague Dave Hawkins recently testified [pdf]).

Oh and let’s not forgot the most important tool -- passing a climate bill in advance of Copenhagen. The farther along the path to actually implementing a reduction in U.S. global warming pollution, the more credible the U.S. will be in securing commitments from other key countries. A point made by Todd Stern as the Associated Press reported: Todd Stern told a House panel that it was critical for the Senate to pass legislation to give the U.S. the ''credibility and leverage'' that it needs to convince other countries to reduce their pollution.

So there were a number of important signals that the Obama Administration outlined today when Todd Stern testified -- critical need for the Senate to include the international “investment” provisions that were in the House bill and the need for the U.S. to pass a global warming bill so the U.S. is credible.

Your move Senate!

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In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night.

Just get rid of all this annoying rainforest stuff, and you can have all cookie shortening you want.Hi there,
I keep hearing that the increasing demand for palm oil and products with palm oil (hello, Newman-Os!) is leading to rainforest destruction in a serious way.

As a baker with a big ol' tub of palm oil shortening in the cupboard in a quest to go au naturel and avoid trans fats, I'm starting to feel guilty and want to know more.

What if the palm oil is organic? Does that matter?

Thanks much,
Palm Oil Perplexed Marta

Hey there, Marta,
You heard right: Palm oil (aka palmitate, palm kernel oil, and palm fruit oil) is hard on our planet's lungs and then some. It's a top-o-the-heap evil-doer when it comes to ubiquitous and environmentally-destructive ingredients.

Here's a quick and unsettling lowdown: Palm oil's bland versatility, shelf-stability and lack of trans fats make it highly desirable to those who seek processed-food ingredients to, well, make processed food. It's in everything from chocolate to snack crackers to margarine. Remember the creamy center of Oreo cookies? Palm oil provides the famously unctuous mouthfeel. It's also in cosmetics, soaps, detergents and some plastics. Worldwide, it's a popular cooking oil. Last but certainly not least, it's increasingly used for biodeisel production.

As you've heard, palm oil's "moment" comes at the expense of the planet. To keep up with demand, vast monocultures of oil palm are grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, where rainforests and peat forests are razed to make way for oil palm trees. Indigenous people are uprooted and harassed, more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere and precious habitat is lost, sending species such as the orangutan on the express train toward extinction. The destruction caused by the demand for palm oil is truly unsettling at a visceral level, even for those who have seen worldwide deforestation. Chris Wille, chief of sustainable agriculture for the Rainforest Alliance, told me this: "It's just mind boggling. I've been in this business for a long time and I feel like I'm pretty tough. I feel like I've seen a lot of burning forests, but what's happening in Indonesia and Malaysia - it shocks even us veterans." If you need a visual of the rainforest being hacked into a moonscape, go here.

Palm production streamrolls rainforest in Indonesia. Photo: GreenpeaceAll of this probably puts a damper on your home-baked trans-fat-free cookies. (Ummm. Is that chocolate chip cookies I smell? No, wait. It's the rainforest burning.) There is no perfect choice when it comes to fats and baking, so you'll have do some soul searching about your own values and health-related needs. Because my cholesterol levels are good and I "trust cows more than chemists," I use organic butter when I bake. A farmer friend also supplies me with the occasional mason jar of local lard. (Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like homemade rendered pig fat.)

If these options don't appeal, can you do right by buying organic palm oil? Sadly, in this case the organic label may not be sufficient. Organic certification bans the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, but has nothing to say about rainforest management. That's right--you could burn down pristine rainforest, plant it with a palms, and still get organic certification. Industry and green groups are trying to hammer about a certified-sustainable label that ensures responsible forest management. But right now, sustainable palm oil is both hard to find and controversial.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an international organization of producers, distributors and conservationists, came up with standards to address deforestation and managed to get 1.3 million tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil onto the market last year. Critics of this "green" palm oil cried foul, alleging greenwash and weak certification standards. It was almost a moot point: Most of that oil has languished on the global market because many of the big players won't pony up the extra money for it. (Surprisingly, Chinese buyers recently stepped up to the plate.) Hoping to spur interest with a good old-fashioned public shaming, the World Wildlife Fund will soon issue a scorecard to show which major palm oil buyers have made commitments to sustainable palm oil.

As consumers, the easiest way to avoid palm oil is to avoid highly processed food, which isn't good for us anyway. (Palm oil, btw, may be trans-fat free, but it's relatively high in saturated fat, the kernel oil even more so.) To banish it, read labels and prepare to do more of your own baking. Here's a list of companies that are big palm oil users. If one of these firms makes a product that causes you to salivate, and it contains palm oil, call or email the company and implore them to use sustainable palm oil. Another school of thought says that not only palm oil is here to stay but that it's also a vital crop for the developing world--so we'd better make damned-sure that it isn't grown in a reprehensible way. Picking up the phone or getting online, I think, is the least we can to support the NGOs that are duking it out on our behalf.

Put that Oreo down, or this guy gets it. If your big ol' tub of veggie shortening is organic and you'd like to see if it's also sustainable, check the manufacturer's web site. According to a somewhat apologetic Newman's Own FAQ, the palm oil in their cream-filled cookies comes from co-ops in Colombia and is certified by Pro Forest. It's a start. The Rainforest Alliance is also currently working with some palm plantations in Latin help them meet standards to earn sustainable certification. Wille told me that within a year consumers will be able to find language on certain food products (cookies and health bars) that will identify palm oil that came from Rain Forest Alliance-certified farms.

Right now there are no official seals or labels that you can rely on and sustainable certification for palm oil, like most things in life, is imperfect. Growers need to, at the very least, commit to ending new deforestation--and according to Wille, conserving "remnant ecosystems within the plantations." Will this be enough to save our planet's lungs or orangutans? Time will tell. Perhaps what we need is an orangutan-friendly label for processed foods. The pathos invoked by the sad eyes of an orphaned baby orangutan might lead more of us to pass up a box of cheap Double-Stuf (sic) Oreos for a more principled product (like, say, regular single-stuf Oreos). Even better, maybe we'll all start baking our own cookies again.

Confession: I have a box of Hint-O-Mint Newman-O's on my shelf right now, and, yes, I am an eat-the-creamy-center-first kind of person.

Sorry, make that the creamy, evil center.

Thanks much for the question, and keep baking!
Lou

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Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

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To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.

As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of the early societies that were in environmental trouble were able to change their ways in time to avoid decline and collapse. Six centuries ago, for example, Icelanders realized that overgrazing on their grass-covered highlands was leading to extensive soil loss from the inherently thin soils of the region. Rather than lose the grasslands and face economic decline, farmers joined together to determine how many sheep the highlands could sustain and then allocated quotas among themselves, thus preserving their grasslands. Their wool production and woolen goods industry continue to thrive today.

Not all societies have fared as well as the Icelanders. The early Sumerian civilization of the fourth millennium BC had advanced far beyond any that had existed before. Its carefully engineered irrigation system gave rise to a highly productive agriculture, one that enabled farmers to produce a food surplus, supporting formation of the first cities and the first written language, cuneiform.

By any measure it was an extraordinary civilization, but there was an environmental flaw in the design of its irrigation system, one that would eventually undermine its food supply. The water that backed up behind dams built across the Euphrates was diverted onto the land through a network of gravity-fed canals. As with most irrigation systems, some irrigation water percolated downward. In this region, where underground drainage was weak, this slowly raised the water table. As the water climbed to within inches of the surface, it began to evaporate into the atmosphere, leaving behind salt. Over time, the accumulation of salt on the soil surface lowered the land's productivity.

Shifting from wheat to barley, a more salt-tolerant plant, postponed Sumer's decline, but it was treating the symptoms, not the cause, of their falling crop yields. As salt concentrations continued to build, the yields of barley eventually declined also. The resultant shrinkage of the food supply undermined this once-great civilization. As land productivity declined, so did the civilization.

The New World counterpart to Sumer is the Mayan civilization that developed in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala. It flourished from AD 250 until its collapse around AD 900. Like the Sumerians, the Mayans had developed a sophisticated, highly productive agriculture, this one based on raised plots of earth surrounded by canals that supplied water.

As with Sumer, the Mayan demise was apparently linked to a failing food supply. For this New World civilization, it was deforestation and soil erosion, likely on top of a series of droughts, that undermined agriculture. Food shortages apparently triggered civil conflict among various Mayan cities as they competed for something to eat. Today this region is covered by jungle, reclaimed by nature.

The Icelanders crossed a political tipping point that enabled them to come together and limit grazing before grassland deterioration reached the point of no return. The Sumerians and Mayans failed to do so. Time ran out.

Today, our successes and problems flow from the extraordinary growth in the world economy over the last century. The economy's annual growth, once measured in billions of dollars, is now measured in the trillions. Indeed, just the annual growth in the output of goods and services in recent years exceeded the total output of the world economy in 1900.

While the economy is growing exponentially, the earth's natural capacities, such as its ability to supply fresh water, forest products, and seafood, have not increased. Humanity's collective demands first surpassed the earth's regenerative capacity around 1980. Today, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth's natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse.

In our modern high-tech civilization, it is easy to forget that the economy, indeed our existence, is wholly dependent on the earth's natural systems and resources. We depend, for example, on the earth's climate system for an environment hospitable to agriculture, on the hydrological cycle to provide us with fresh water, and on long-term geological processes to convert rocks into the soil that has made the earth such a biologically productive planet.

There are now so many of us placing such heavy demands on the earth that we are overwhelming its natural capacities to meet our needs. Forests are shrinking. Each year overgrazing converts vast areas of grassland into desert. The pumping of underground water exceeds natural recharge in countries containing half the world's people, leaving many without adequate water.

Each of us depends on the products and services provided by the earth's ecosystems, ranging from forest to wetlands, from coral reefs to grasslands. Among the services these ecosystems provide are water purification, pollination, carbon sequestration, flood control, and soil conservation. A four-year study of the world's ecosystems by 1,360 scientists, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, reported that 15 of 24 primary ecosystem services are being degraded or pushed beyond their limits. For example, three quarters of oceanic fisheries, a major source of protein in the human diet, are being fished at or beyond their limits, and many are headed toward collapse.

Tropical rainforests are another ecosystem under severe stress, including the vast Amazon rainforest. Thus far roughly 20 percent of the rainforest has been cleared either for cattle ranching or soybean farming. Another 22 percent has been weakened by logging and road building, letting sunlight reach the forest floor, drying it out, and turning it into kindling. When it reaches this point, the rainforest loses its resistance to fire and begins to burn when ignited by lightning strikes. Scientists believe that if half the Amazon is cleared or weakened, this may be the tipping point, the threshold beyond which the rainforest cannot be saved. Daniel Nepstad, an Amazon-based senior scientist from the Woods Hole Research Center, sees a future of "megafires" sweeping through the drying jungle. He notes that the carbon stored in the Amazon's trees equals roughly 15 years of human-induced carbon emissions in the atmosphere. If we reach this tipping point we will have triggered a major climate feedback, another step that could help seal our fate as a civilization.

The excessive pressures on a given resource typically begin in a few countries and then slowly spread to others. Nigeria and the Philippines, once net exporters of forest products, are now importers. Thailand, now largely deforested, has banned logging. So has China, which is turning to Siberia and to the few remaining forested countries in Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar and Papua New Guinea, for the logs it needs.

As wells go dry, as grasslands are converted into desert, as fisheries are depleted, and as soils erode, people are forced to migrate elsewhere, either within their country or across national boundaries. As the earth's natural capacities at the local level are exceeded, the declining economic possibilities generate a flow of environmental refugees.

Countries today are facing several negative environmental trends simultaneously, some of which reinforce each other. The earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians and Mayans were often local, rising and falling in isolation from the rest of the world. In contrast, we will either mobilize together to save our global civilization, or we will all be potential victims of its disintegration.

Adapted from Chapter 1, "Entering a New World," in Lester R. Brown's Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available for free download and purchase from the Earth Policy Institute.

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This past Wednesday (June 17, 2009) the Appropriations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives that has jurisdiction over the international global warming pieces of President Obama's budget passed a bill that supported increasing US commitments to these needed efforts. The funding will make a "down payment" in helping developing countries deploy clean energy, reduce global warming pollution from tropical deforestation, and support adaptation in the most vulnerable populations around the world.

Funding this "down payment" is critical as it provides a bridge to the significant source of funding that could come for these activities through the US clean energy and climate bill. For example, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, which passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and is poised for action on the House floor provides funding in the future for these needed investments (as I've discussed here):

In response to the House Appropriations Subcommittee vote NRDC, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Sierra Club released the following statement.

"Today's action is an important sign of commitment by the Obama Administration, supported by leaders in Congress, to reasserting US leadership in tackling global warming. The funding in the legislation will help support efforts in developing countries to drive clean energy solutions, reduce tropical deforestation, and aid the most vulnerable in adapting to climate change. Such funding represents a concrete step to address the international dimension of global warming while strengthening the US position leading up to negotiations on an international climate agreement in Copenhagen this December.

While it is a first step, however, much work remains to be done to ensure that the funding is used exclusively to finance truly strong clean technology investment that will advance the effort to avert catastrophic global warming, rather than undermining it. In approving this funding, Congress should direct the Treasury to (i) ensure that no funding from the World Bank's Clean Technology Fund be used to finance coal-fired power plants without carbon capture and sequestration technology, and (ii) ensure that the World Bank employ comprehensive carbon accounting for all of its relevant projects that reflects the global economic, social, and environmental cost of carbon emissions.

In addition, we urge President Obama and Secretary Geithner to take a stronger and more proactive role in ensuring that the broader funding carried out by multilateral development banks and export-import banks, including the World Bank as well as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank, pursue their objective of promoting economic growth in developing countries in a way that supports international efforts to address climate change.

We look forward to working with Members of Congress and the Administration to achieve these goals as the legislation moves through Congress."

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This action by the House Subcommittee and the signals emerging from the US climate bill are a good start. Of course, the "check isn't written" on either until they are passed out of both the House and Senate and signed by President Obama so we still have some work before these investments will actually help solve these challenges.

And the US will have to increase its investment if we are going to secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen and one that encourages significant reductions in developing country global warming pollution and addresses the impacts of global warming on the most vulnerable.

So some work to still to be done, but some steps in the right direction.

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News coming out of China provides some hints that they might adopt a domestic limit to reduce their global warming.  As China Daily is reporting: “China will put in place carbon dioxide emissions targets for its economic and social development programs, the central government has promised.It also signals that China may be considering national goals for carbon dioxide levels when it maps its 12th five-year national development plan (2011-15).”

The central government announced the plan at the State Council meeting that was chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.  The State Council is the highest executive and administrative body in China and is equivalent to China’s cabinet.  So this announcement was made at a very high-level within the Chinese government.

Inclusion in the “5-year” plan would be significant as this is the governments overarching strategy.  Achieving the objectives of this plan becomes the main focus of the central government as achieving them often becomes a metric for determining whether or not government officials move up in the ranks.  And, inclusion of such a goal in the 5-year plan drives the implementation of Chinese government policies, regulations, programs, etc. over the course of the 5-years.  This has occurred as a result of the inclusion of an energy-intensity target in China’s current 5-year plan -- to cut energy intensity by 20% between 2005 and 2010 -- as the government has implemented a number of policies and regulations to achieve it.

If you haven’t noticed, getting an agreement with China on global warming pollution is at the top of the U.S. international global warming agenda.  Key members of Congress were just in China and now some of the Obama Administration’s key policymakers on global warming are headed to China -- including senior global warming officials from the Department of State, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Treasury Department, and the President’s Science Advisor.

So this announcement comes at a critical time as it provides a potential opening to firm up a bilateral agreement on global warming between the U.S. and China.  This has been in the works since President Obama was elected as signaled by Secretary Clinton when she went to China in February.  As Special Climate Envoy Todd Stern recently said: “Certainly no deal will be possible if we don’t find a way forward with China.” [PDF]

NRDC made a series of recommendations on actions that the U.S. and China should do together, including address the key sticking points to reaching a meaningful agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009.  While the international global warming negotiations are focused on starting to flesh out the “text” of the agreement (as I discussed in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), getting agreement between the U.S. and China has become an even a stronger “key to success” in getting a strong international agreement to address climate.  The text can’t have “life” without these two countries resolving some differences.

High on the agenda of this U.S. delegation headed to China needs to be three key things to lay the groundwork for agreement with China on global warming.  The U.S. and China need to get agreement on the:

Not to hold up to high expectations, but we need one of those “Nixon goes to China” moments when the dynamic between the two countries completely shifts.  We need a moment where the two sides break the stalemate on global warming.  This moment would have a huge ripple effect on the rest of the negotiations to Copenhagen and on our path to secure an international effort to solve global warming.

Both the U.S. and China need such an agreement to materialize soon!  Each for different reasons, but there are strong reasons why both need a mutual agreement on this important issue.  And there are some openings emerging that this isn’t just wishful thinking. 

So stay tuned for more news out of China and the U.S.

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I’ve been participating since last Monday in the global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany.  This is the second session of the year. There are 53 days of official negotiations before Copenhagen and Monday was day 17 (the first 10 days were held in the first session in Bonn in March -- as I discussed here -- and days 11-16 were held last week).

The first week slowly worked its way through the things that need to be addressed at this stage in the negotiations.  The pace will need to pick up the rest of the week and, most importantly, the rest of the year if we are to secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen.  (As an aside, there is a clock that sits on the front screen of every session that is the “Countdown to Copenhagen” reminding delegates of how little time is left.)

Granted, not all the negotiations are occurring in the official sessions as a number of key efforts are occurring outside the UNFCCC framework -- such as the Major Economies Forum which brings together the 17 largest emitting countries (as I discussed here) and the U.S.-China bilateral effort (which I discussed here).

So what has occurred in day 11-16 of the global warming negotiations?

Starting to Stake out Firm “Opening” Positions
We’ve been slowly going through the draft negotiating text that was released prior to the session (as I discussed in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) -- the so-called “first reading.”  This is where countries flagged which issues they want deleted (by suggesting that it be [bracketed]), where they have an issue that isn’t reflected in the existing text (by suggesting they will bring forward a specific proposal), and where they are open to discussion (“we can work with this option”). 

This can be painfully slow (especially to outsiders), but it is a necessary process.  After all, you can’t get agreement if you don’t know exactly where you disagree or where there might be room to talk.  And that is just what occurred.

Divisions, [Brackets], and Some Consensus
Countries are clearly in “opening bid” mode.  At this stage in the negotiations you have to take everything with a dose of reality: “Are they flagging that because it is a real concern or is that just their opening position which they will trade in exchange for movement on other things?”  These are the thoughts that are running through every negotiator’s head.  Of course this is not a game, but securing a deal amongst 180 plus countries requires these dynamics, especially at this stage.

As we get closer to Copenhagen and as Heads of Government start to make some tough decisions, consensus on things will start to emerge more clearly.  Here are the things that I think have some [division right] now but where there is a potential emerging consensus.

“Binding” Commitments.  As I discussed in a separate post, there is a debate right now on the “nature of developing country commitments” -- are they internationally binding, only domestically binding, or somewhere in between?   I don’t see this getting resolved this week (and maybe not until either this is resolved between the U.S. and China in a bilateral agreement or in the final moments of Copenhagen).  But there is a large amount of focus (and in some cases anger) on the push to get some developing countries to undertake “binding commitments.” 

In one exchange I had with a delegate (who I know very well) he was furious at the U.S. for pushing “binding commitments” for developing countries so front-and-center as he was concerned that the U.S. was just trying to blow up the agreement by pushing the rest of the world way past where he thought they would go.  When I told him that President Obama, the U.S. negotiating team, and U.S. environmental groups were committed to pushing adoption in U.S. law of an international global warming agreement, he was less mad.  This is just one example of the huge toll that eight bad years has had on the U.S. ability to lead in this negotiations.  Everyone thinks the U.S. has some sneaky motive ... after all that is what they did for eight years.

Incentives for Cutting Deforestation Definitely in the Copenhagen Agreement.  While there has been an emerging consensus for awhile that incentives for reducing deforestation emissions has to be a part of the new agreement, it wasn’t until we actually went through the text that this became really clear. 

No country suggested completely eliminating incentives for deforestation reductions for the negotiating text.  Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of differences on how best to do that, but no country essentially said: “if deforestation incentives are included in the agreement I walk.”  That is huge progress since 1997 when that is effectively what occurred.

Developing Countries will Undertake Action to Reduce their Emissions.   Some countries are playing semantic games (such as the Philippines and to some extent other developing countries) and still trying to hold back this consensus, but most major developing countries are hinting at: “we will undertake some action to reduce our emissions.”  This is sort of what China said at a very high level last week as I discussed here. 

How much action developing countries do without developed country incentives and how much is supported with incentives is still under serious debate.  But there is still progress as this notion -- that developing countries will (1) take some action on their own and (2) go further with incentives -- is at the heart of the developing country negotiations.

Waiting for Clarity from the U.S.
This isn’t surprising to say, but it is still worth repeating: “without clarity from the U.S. by capping its own global warming pollution, no serious agreement in Copenhagen is possible.”

While the passage of the bill out of the House Energy and Commerce committee provides some serious momentum in the U.S., it is like having a megaphone but with a lid on the end.  The U.S. negotiators can’t take pieces of this bill and start to negotiate on this basis until the consensus in Congress crystallizes more. 

And that is kind of how I feel right now: the U.S. can’t help lead this process to solving this challenge if it can’t get its own house in order.  I believe the world is waiting for U.S. leadership, but the question in everyone’s mind is: “will they lead us to a higher ground” to solve global warming.  It is clear from conversations I’ve had with both developed and developing countries that the more the U.S. does, the more they will be willing to do. 

Clamoring for More Clarity from the Other Developed Countries
It isn’t just the U.S. that other countries are still waiting for as some other developed countries are holding out on what additional emission reduction targets they will commit to -- namely Russia, Ukraine, Japan, and Canada.  And what some other countries are putting on the table -- such as the range proposed by Australia -- has sparked some grumbling. 

Some of these countries are hiding behind the lack of clarity from the U.S. and others are using the efforts under discussion in the U.S. as an excuse for not taking stronger commitments.

Push for Urgent! Action
A number of brave souls (not me as I was at another meeting) suffered in the rain of Bonn to pose in the shape of an exclamation point that said “YES YOU CAN!”  

I have to think optimistically that if these people can brave “rough weather” and “get organized” to form such a picture, then the world’s leaders can brave the rough weather of different negotiating positions and organize around a deal that puts the world solidly on the path to solve global warming.  [Sorry for the cheap analogy but I couldn’t resist].

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This week negotiations will be focused on getting a negotiating text that includes all the key proposals, [brackets] the contentious issues, and lays out clearly the work ahead.  This way all the countries can move towards consensus and then commit to serious actions to solve global warming.

But much more global political will need to be generated over the next months if the world is to truly move in a clean energy direction, and one that begins to solve global warming.

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I've discussed in part 1 -- shared vision and developed country emissions reduction commitments -- and part 2 -- developing country emissions reductions and the incentives to encourage them to go further -- key proposals that have now been produced in a new draft negotiating text for the Copenhagen agreement.

I'll now discuss the last 2 of the six key elements of the Copenhagen Agreement contained in these texts -- deforestation emissions reduction efforts and adaptation assistance.

Deforestation Emissions Reduction Efforts

Providing incentives to slow the loss of the world's tropical deforestation is an essential component of the world's efforts to solve global warming (as I've discussed here and here).  So not surprisingly, incentives to reduce deforestation emissions will be an important part of the agreement in Copenhagen (as NRDC has identified here).  And that is reflected in the draft negotiating text (reminder there are a number of options and {brackets} which implies that there isn't exactly agreement on these pieces yet).

Incentives for forestry and {other land-use emissions}.  Since the Bali Roadmap was agreed there has been a push from some countries to ensure that forest degradation, increased forest cover, {forest management}, and {other land-use emissions} are also eligible to directly receive incentives for their emissions reductions or increased sequestration (I put in the brackets, partly to reflect avenues that I believe have a “proof of concept” internationally before they are ready for a full blown set of incentives).  Not that these bracketed pieces aren't important, but rather that these actions have some work ahead on their methodologies, data, etc. before these activities are ready for large incentives.  This is why people now talk about Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) Plus (or REDD+).

This difference of vision on the land-use activities that should receive which type of incentives and when those incentives should be available still exists as the negotiating text proposes several options:

The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) act that just passed out of the House Energy and Commerce committee directly approves incentives for deforestation and some elements of forest degradation through both the set aside of allowances and the offset provisions (as I discussed here and here).  Protection of existing forest cover (e.g., leakage avoidance) is available for incentives under the set aside of allowances.  If recommended by the Offset Integrity Advisory Board (as I discussed here) and if approved by key government agencies, other emissions sources and sequestration activities would be eligible for offset generation.

Need for Market and Non-Market Based Funding Sources.  There has been a debate about whether or not emissions reductions from deforestation and forest degradation should be supported through market incentives (i.e., as offsets) or through a non-market approach (e.g., through setting aside a portion of the allowance value under a cap-and-trade program).  Different countries have aligned themselves with different positions on this (as was witnessed at one negotiating session last year and is witnessed in the European Union proposal which largely called for a non-market approach).  This difference is reflected in the negotiating text.

The ACES bill includes both types of incentives through the set aside of allowance value and the eligibility of credible reductions for offsets (as I discussed here).  Both of these incentives are critical as outlined by a new coalition that NRDC is involved with.

What does a country receiving incentives have to do?  The text includes some elements that a country would have to implement in order to receive incentives:

The ACES bill (as I discussed here) provides more detail on a number of these elements including the need for a land-use plan, development of a declining baseline to zero emissions, and accounting for all significant sources of emissions.

Incentives for National Reductions or Subnational Reductions.  For deforestation and forest degradation emissions, countries have proposed that market incentives should be eligible only for national level reductions or subnational level reductions under an interim phase.  There is general agreement that non-market incentives should be available for both subnational and national reductions.

The ACES bill contains provisions for high-quality forest carbon offsets at several scales: national, state and province, and program and project.  State/province and program/project level programs are phased out over time for countries with different sizes of deforestation emissions.

Strong monitoring, reporting, and verification provisions.  All incentive mechanisms should undergo some level of monitoring and verification, but there is some emerging consensus that activities that receive market incentives through offsets must meet a higher level of requirement.

This is reflected in the ACES bill and the consensus on deforestation that NRDC just joined as carbon offsets from deforestation must meet a rigorous set of rules.  Of course many of the rules have to be written, but the bill sets up a strong framework towards this end.

Adaptation Support

Some levels of impact are already occurring or will likely occur as a result of existing global warming pollution.  And many of these impacts will increase in the future.  So there is a need to support developing countries (especially the most vulnerable) in addressing the impacts of global warming pollution.  This is reflected in the negotiating text and has been a strong emphasis in the international negotiations.

The ACES bill recognizes this need and sets aside a dedicated source of allowances (funding) for the most vulnerable by supporting bilateral and multilateral adaptation assistance (as I discussed here and as a powerful coalition of religious and military leaders is calling for).

Supporting the Most Vulnerable.  There has been a general agreement that the majority of developing country adaptation assistance should go to the most vulnerable countries and populations.  However, actually getting agreement on who qualifies as the most vulnerable has been complicated.  The text begins down this path by outlining a set of “criteria” for the most vulnerable including: least developed countries, small island developing states, countries in Africa experiencing certain impacts, and particularly vulnerable populations.

Implementation, implementation, implementation.  While it is important to develop adaptation plans to focus funding on the most important needs, the developing countries have been arguing for years that what they really need is support for implementation of adaptation actions.  After all, many of them are feeling the impacts now.  So the text contains a number of elements that identify implementation actions that would be supported in an effort to expedite the deployment of actions on-the-ground.

Financial support.  The key piece of the adaptation discussion often boils down how much money is provided to support adaptation actions, where this funding is sourced from, and how is it structured.  This text proposes a variety of sources, but still contains a number of options as there isn't agreement on any of these aspects at this stage.

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So a blueprint for Copenhagen is beginning to emerge (as I've discussed in part 1, part 2, and now part 3.  A draft negotiating text has emerged and this will encourage countries to begin to focus on what they really want, how much they are willing to move from their current negotiating position, and how all the pieces will fit together into a coherent international strategy to solve global warming.

The text of that agreement is beginning to emerge.  But now we need to turn it into a working engine that drives solutions to global warming pollution.  That engine won't get started without being fueled by real political commitments from leaders around the world.

I'm sure it looks like a lot of pieces that need to come together in a short amount of time -- less than 6 months.  But I'm still confident it can be done if countries decide to “move past rhetoric” and to agreement.  The fate of the planet and our future depends on countries committing to a strong set of actions that put the world solidly on the path to solving global warming.

So let's get texting...a strong international solution to global warming!

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Soil carbon—a blind spot in the debate on carbon

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

I really like Title VII Part E of the Waxman-Markey bill, which puts aside some pollution permit value to reduce international deforestation. (It's separate from Part D, Offsets.)

There are plenty of set-asides in the bill for energy producers, industrials, refineries, all sorts of private interests. VII-E is one of the few set-asides for public interests, another being the 15% of credits set aside for low-income consumers. All the economists insist that we shouldn't be "picking winners," but until that shining day when rationality overcomes sectarian conflict, I'm glad to see a few good picks to balance the bad ones.

This gives you a flavor of the Part:

"SEC. 752. FINDINGS.

"Congress finds that—
"(1) as part of a global effort to mitigate climate change, it is in the national interest of the United States to assist developing countries to reduce and ultimately halt emissions from deforestation;
"(2) deforestation is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, amounting to roughly 20 percent of overall emissions globally;
"(3) recent scientific analysis shows that it will be substantially more difficult to limit the increase in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels without reducing and ultimately halting net emissions from deforestation;
"(4) reducing emissions from deforestation is highly cost-effective, compared to many other sources of emissions reductions;
"(5) in addition to contributing significantly to worldwide efforts to address global warming, this assistance will generate significant environmental and social cobenefits, including protection of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and forest-related livelihoods; and
"(6) Under the Bali Action Plan, developed country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the United States, committed to 'enhanced action on the provision of financial resources and investment to support action on mitigation and adaptation and technology cooperation,' including, inter alia, consideration of improved access to adequate, predictable, and sustainable financial resources and financial and technical support, and the provision of new and additional resources, including official and concessional funding for developing country parties.

'SEC. 753. SUPPLEMENTAL EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS THROUGH REDUCED DEFORESTATION.

"(a) REGULATIONS.—

Not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this title, the Administrator, in consultation with the Administrator of USAID and any other appropriate agencies, shall promulgate regulations establishing a program to use emission allowances set aside for this purpose under section 781 to achieve the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries in accordance with the requirements of this part.

"(b) OBJECTIVES.—

The objectives of the program established under this section shall be to—
"(1) achieve supplemental emissions reductions of at least 720,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020, a cumulative amount of at least 6,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by December 31, 2025, and additional supplemental emissions reductions in subsequent years;
"(2) build capacity to reduce deforestation in developing countries experiencing deforestation, including preparing developing countries to participate in international markets for international offset credits for reduced emissions from deforestation; and
"(3) preserve existing forest carbon stocks in countries where such forest carbon may be vulnerable to international leakage, particularly in developing countries with largely intact native forests.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

The Waxman-Markey "American Clean Energy and Security Act" (HR 2454) is now out (see here for the full bill and here for NRDC's top line summary of the entire bill).  The House Energy and Commerce Committee is focused this week on intensive sessions to pass the bill (you can watch it all live on the Committee's website).

Passage of a cap on global warming pollution - THIS YEAR - will put the US in a solid position to help secure a strong international global warming agreement in Copenhagen, Denmark this December.  And as my colleague David Doniger said, this bill will begin a week-long marathon to pass long-overdue clean energy and climate legislation.   

We have very few tools to help secure a strong agreement, so we have to use them effectively.  And this bill does just that!  It arms the US negotiators with a powerful set of tools.  In some cases those tools aren't quite big enough to get the job done, so we'll have to work hard to make them more powerful as the bill progresses through Congress.

This bill uses the same five key tools to help secure a strong international agreement as were in the discussion draft but added more detail in several places.  The most significant change was to spell out the specific amount of allowance value that would be dedicated to the clean energy export and international adaptation provisions.  But they also made noticeable changes to the deforestation crediting provisions.

I'll discuss each of those tools in more detail below and any changes that were made from the discussion draft.  This post should be read alongside my post from the discussion draft.

The five key tools that have been included are:

Driving energy and global warming solutions.  This discussion draft proposes a set of energy and climate policies which will result in US emissions sources being reduced to:

The 2020 target was changed in the negotiations with other Members from a 20% cut from 2005 levels (7% below 1990 levels).

And, this bill adds to these emissions reductions in two ways:

The discussion draft proposed that all offsets provide these extra reductions, but this was changed to only require that international offsets must generate 5 tons of reductions for every 4 tons that a company used to comply with its cap.

The combination of these efforts is estimated to produce emissions reductions resulting in US emissions being 28-33% below 2005 levels in 2020 (or 17-22% below 1990 levels) - according to analysis by the World Resources Institute.

International carbon offset access rules.  International offsets will be issued only to developing countries that are part of a multilateral or bilateral agreement with the US.  International offsets may be issued from an international body (e.g., the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) if they meet the same requirements as established in the Act.  This will provide an important safeguard against less stringent rules and an incentive for the international community, working with the US negotiators, to design strong provisions for international credits.

There are three different ways that international offsets are designed. 

Sector-based program.  The Act would have the EPA Administrator in consultation with the Secretary of State and Administrator of the Agency for International Development identify sectors of specific countries where emissions credits can be generated only on a sectoral basis (as I discussed in the discussion draft).  The program could be applied to the same sectors as covered by the US cap so this would include electricity, industrial sources, and transportation. 

Deforestation.  Offset credits can be generated from deforestation emissions reductions, as I'll discuss in more detail below.

Other offset types.  Sectors not covered by the sectoral regulation would still be available to generate credits, if the Administrator determines the offset category eligible.  These sources wouldn't have to be controlled at a sectoral level before they can generate credits.

These provisions create important tools to help encourage emissions reductions by developing countries and to help reduce global emissions.

Incentives for reductions in deforestation emissions.  The bill contains two incentive mechanisms -- dedicated set aside of allowances and carbon offsets -- to reduce emissions from deforestation (as in the discussion draft, with some changes).  These two provisions will play a critical role in beginning to address the global warming pollution from deforestation.  And NRDC just released principles with a major coalition of businesses, environmental NGOs, conservation, and development groups to support these efforts as the progress through Congress.

Market readiness and emissions reductions through the "supplemental".  The bill sets aside 5% of allowances to aid in achieving deforestation reductions from 2012-2025.  The amount declines to 3% from 2026-2030 and 2% for 2031-2050.  This dedicated source of funding for deforestation will help provide needed incentives to slow the loss of the world's tropical deforestation and the associated 20% of global warming pollution from its loss.  And this funding will help to supplement emissions reductions achieved by the cap.

In addition to achieving emissions reductions, the program is designed to prevent emissions leakage where deforestation shifts from participating to non participating countries.  And it is to prepare developing countries to participate in international offset systems for deforestation.  The program is designed to support a variety of activities, including supporting national and subnational emissions reduction activities, forest governance, illegal logging prevention, and enforcement.

Funds generated through this program may be distributed to an international fund to reduce deforestation emissions or through bilateral assistance.

Carbon credits for deforestation reductions.  International offsets may be issued from efforts that reduce deforestation emissions.  As in the discussion draft, the program allows offsets to be generated for national level deforestation reductions.  Countries that generate credits must have established a baseline that declines to zero net emissions after 20 years, account for nationally appropriate mitigation commitments, and cover all significant sources of deforestation emissions.  Eligible countries also are required to have developed a "land use or forest sector strategic plan". 

This bill adds a new program that allows subnational emissions reductions.  In countries that are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, subnational crediting is only allowed for states and provinces that reduce their state/province deforestation emissions.  For smaller emitters, projects and programs that generate emissions reductions are eligible to generate carbon credits provided that they meet strong environmental criteria.  Subnational emissions reductions are phased out in order to ensure a transition to a national crediting system, with the possibility of extending the program for an additional time period for the least developed countries.   

The program can be extended to other sources of forestry emissions (e.g., degradation and peatland carbon loss, as appropriate). 

Incentives for clean energy export to developing countries that take on their own commitment.  The bill includes the creation of an International Clean Technology Fund by dedicating a defined portion of the allowances to support the export of clean technologies to developing countries and encourage developing country actions.  The amount of allowances dedicated is 1% from 2012-2021, increasing to 2% from 2022-2026 and 4% 2027-2050.

This investment will help provide tools for US global warming negotiators to secure strong actions from major emitting countries and create opportunities for US companies to export our clean technologies to these markets.  This is an important signal of the need for this effort.  It will need to be built upon as the climate bill progresses this year in order to help secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen.   

The program recognizes that protecting Americans from the impacts of global warming requires global reductions and outlines a program to:

In order to receive incentives, the developing country has to: (1) have entered into a multilateral agreement where they undertake measurable, reportable, and verifiable emissions reduction actions; (2) have put in place national policies and measures to reduce their emissions; and (3) developed a mitigation strategy that seeks to achieve substantial emission reductions.  Least developed countries are excluded from these eligibility criteria.

An interagency group, overseen by the Secretary of State, designs the implementation of this program.  It is to be designed to encourage countries to undertake sector-based and cross-sector policies and measures and only to support programs that achieve substantial emissions reductions.  The program can support: carbon capture and storage technologies to retrofit existing facilities and pay the incremental cost of new facilities, renewable electricity, energy efficiency, reductions in transportation emissions, black carbon reductions, and capacity building activities.

Funding can be provided through bilateral assistance or multilateral funds and institutions agreed under the international climate agreement.  If funding goes to an international fund or institution the program can only be used for the eligible countries and activities specified.  No more than 15% of bilateral assistance is to go to any single country.

The costs of the supported activities are to be shared by the developing country recipient, private sector, or multinational development bank.  This cost-share is not required for least developing countries recognizing their different circumstances.

The supported activity is to be subject to a system to monitor and evaluate its performance.  An annual report is to be submitted that details the amount of funding distributed, the activities supported, and an estimate of the emissions reductions achieved.

Developing country adaptation and reducing national security threats.  The bill sets aside a dedicated source of allowances for an International Climate Change Adaptation Program.  The amount starts at 1% of allowances from 2012-2021, increases to 2% for 2022-2026 and 4% for 2027-2050. 

This investment will provide some needed resources to help reduce future national security  challenges expected to arise from the impacts of global warming (as a new study from retired senior military officers and national security experts points out), help the most vulnerable populations adapt to global warming, and provide some funding necessary to secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen.  More will need to be dedicated to these efforts, but this is an important signal of the need for these resources.

Funding can be provided through bilateral assistance or multilateral funds and institutions agreed under the international climate agreement.  Between 40 and 60% of the allowances dedicated for this program are to provided to a multilateral fund or institution.

Multilateral funds or institutions receiving funding have to meet certain program requirements.  These programs have to be governed by a body that includes representatives from the most vulnerable developing countries, protects local communities and indigenous peoples in areas that receive funding, and provides an annual report on the support activities.

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As one of our advertisements said at the beginning of the year: "It is time to get working"!  Get working on clean energy solutions, a cap on global warming pollution, and the tools necessary to help secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen, Denmark later this year.

As this debate unfolds, we will be working to help provide the necessary tools for US global warming negotiators as they go into Copenhagen.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Where is all the damn climate data?

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Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Martha Stewart blisters meat industry in Thanksgiving show

The New York Times has a great story about Chevron hiring a former CNN reporter to produce a "news" report to counter a 60 Minutes segment on the oil company's contamination of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

On May 3, 60 Minutes ran a story on the $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron for environmental damage, featuring footage of the rainforest and interviews with the Ecuadorean judge handling the case and a Chevron manager. Chevron hired Gene Randall, a former CNN correspondent, to tell its own version of the story, featuring the Chevron manager and five professors who are consultants to the oil company, but no plaintiffs involved in the case.

The two videos are below. First, the 60 Minutes segment, and second, the Chevron video, where you can see the "journalistic integrity" of Chevron and Randall in all its glory:

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

On ‘climategate’

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

Planting trees in Kenya is about more than just helping the environment.
Alan Dater

Planting trees in deforested areas brings a host of benefits, as any good environmentalist knows. Trees provide cleaner air, richer soil, wildlife habitat, and shade. They conserve water and protect lands against floods. They absorb carbon dioxide.

Under the rule of an oppressive regime, tree planting can also be a profoundly subversive act.

This is the focus of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, a documentary about the Kenyan activist that premiers on the PBS series Independent Lens this Tuesday, April 14.

Wangari MaathaiMartin Rowe

By now the story of Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been well told. (Read Grist’s profile from 2004.) After becoming the first woman in East Africa to earn a PhD, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977. The women’s group has planted 30 million trees across the country, employing thousands of women and providing them with education and solidarity.

In Taking Root, by independent filmmakers Alan Dater and Lisa Merton, Maathai says, “When the women started, no one took them seriously, because who takes women seriously? Then the government realized we were organizing women. And they started interfering.”

The film spans Maathai’s life, from her rural childhood and Catholic-school education to the present, but it focuses most heavily on the ways she challenged the Kenyan government, particularly the 24-year dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi.

The interference began with Kenyan officials demanding licenses and restricting meetings from the Green Belt Movement. It grew much more dramatic when Moi proposed replacing Nairobi’s only major public park with a skyscraper and a statue of himself. Maathai and Green Belt organizers successfully appealed to Moi’s international funders to help defend the park.

“In all her fights, that was the biggest fight, because that also was the turning point in this country that no matter how small you are, you can make a difference,” says human rights activist Ngorongo Makanga.

The filmmakers unearth truly impressive archival footage, including scences of the police brutality at Uhuru Park and Kenya’s Karura Forest. It makes for disturbing moments, though they feel necessary to the story, not gratuitous. Some of the most gripping moments are the more pastoral scenes of women working to restore forests and, later, of soldiers in uniform planting trees.

Taking Root has more to say about social change than about forest ecology--I’m not sure it even mentions the types of trees being planted. But it makes abundantly clear the connections between environmental health, human rights, and democracy. I haven’t read them, but Maathai’s autobiography, Unbowed, and her just-released call to action, The Challenge for Africa, look to offer much of the same.

Truth be told, Taking Root often has the good-for-you feel of so many documentaries, the sort of thing you’d watch in civics class. Then again, a college dorm-mate once said that to me about Gandhi. I’m glad I didn’t listen to him and watched it anyway.

Related Links:

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau