Working in a coalition of roughly 500 organizations from nearly 80 countries can be tough. With so many different points of view and unique perspectives and expertise, coming to agreement on something as complex as solving climate change can be difficult to say the least. But then again, isn't that what we're asking over 180 countries to do next month in Copenhagen?

Well, I'm happy to say that at least as far as the Climate Action Network - International (CAN) is concerned, we've done our job and it's in the form of CAN's "Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal." In this document just released today ahead of the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen, we, as the world's largest network of organizations fighting for solutions to the climate crisis, share our collective views on the key elements of a successful climate agreement. Now it's up to the leaders around the world to do their part in Copenhagen.

This vision has not come easily, but in the effort it has taken comes its strength. We have brought together within CAN some of the most dedicated and expert analysts and advocates in world to come together around the key essentials for a successful outcome from the United Nations climate negotiations. While some specifics may still be debated by even our own members in CAN, this document serves as the collective voice of what is needed from our leaders in Copenhagen and beyond. And it's a powerful vision coming from hundreds of experts around the globe.

The thing that's amazing is that-while we've been as ambitious as we believe is necessary to address this challenge and as true to the science as we possibly can be -- we know that what we've laid out is achievable.

Some highlights of what we're calling for include:

When leaders come to Copenhagen next month, CAN's "FAB Essentials" will be our yardstick for measuring our leaders' success in their steps along the path towards climate stabilization and a sustainable world. We know that what we've put forward is ambitious, but what's more important is that the elements found within CAN's FAB Essentials are both essential and achievable.

For more information on the Climate Action Network and "Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal," please visit our website. An official press release can also be found here. And finally, as the conference in December moves along, be sure to stay tuned at our blog for updates on how the nations of the world are doing in meeting the FAB Essentials.

Related Links:

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

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

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

As Copenhagen prepares for December, a strange combination of Christmas lights, clean energy expos, evergreen wreaths, and security barriers have begun to crop up around the city. It's an exciting time to be in Copenhagen reflecting on a year of intense pressure, activity, and engagement around the world.

Over the past several months (and years), a growing movement has coalesced around the conference here next month and it's hard to believe it's finally almost here. In June, the sleepy German town of Bonn saw hundreds of activists descend in the rain upon the normally quiet Subsidiary Bodies negotiations at the UNFCCC's home. Thousands around the world participated in the September 21 Global Wakeup Call. Then in Bangkok in October thousands marched outside the UNESCAP building calling for climate action. October 24th saw the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet's history, spearheaded by 350.org, with over 5,000 events in 181 countries around the world.

And now, rumors of tens of thousands are looming on Copenhagen, including, by my count so far, at least 15 Heads of State who have committed to attending the talks (although Yvo de Boer said in Barcelona that he expects at least 40). [UPDATE: The AP is reporting a Danish official has suggested 65 Heads of State are planning on attending as of Sunday the 22nd of November.]

The last time I wrote, it was a dark and gloomy day in Copenhagen. But today was beautiful -- the sun was out, the weather warm, and the bustle on the street was electric.

The last time I wrote, I was convincing myself, and others, that all was not lost for December. Now, on this bright and sunny day, I'm as convinced as ever that world leaders can achieve an ambitious outcome in Copenhagen if they try.

Even in the past week, we've seen movement around the world. The Alliance of Small Island states continue to raise its collective voice of conscience against a weak outcome in Copenhagen. We've heard that the Chinese would be willing to bring a number to the table in Copenhagen. We've seen South Korea confirm a voluntary emissions reduction target of 30 percent below business as usual by 2020. The European Union has said that it would like a binding agreement in Copenhagen. France and Brazil came out with a "climate bible" -- an agreement between two nations to work together on climate change. This follows Brazil's previous announcement of voluntary emissions cuts of 36-39% by 2020 below business as usual in a "political gesture" some weeks ago.

Even the Danish government, which had caused so many hearts to sink with its proposal of a "politically binding" outcome in Copenhagen, seemed to change its tune ... if only just a bit. The Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, Connie Hedegaard (who will chair the negotiations in December), spoke in a press briefing at the close of the preparatory meeting last week, assuring the world that her aim is a legally binding outcome from the negotiations.

Finally, eyes continue to focus on the U.S. In the joint announcement between the U.S. and China, President Obama indicated his team could bring further commitments to the table in Copenhagen. As Copenhagen creeps towards December, the question remains, will Obama come to Copenhagen? And if so, will he come bearing gifts ... or a lump of coal?

Related Links:

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

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

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

In his latest column, Bill McKibben lays a wide range of sins at the feet of Barack Obama, accusing him of "fibbing and spinning" on climate change. He says Obama is "not particularly focused" on climate (while linking to coverage of an Obama speech dedicated to climate). He says that by putting health care ahead of climate change, Obama "guarantee[d] that health care would occupy most of the year." He says that by focusing on green jobs and energy security rather than climate change, Obama has "left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day." Obama's administration is "spinning" by focusing on the still-common 450 ppm number for atmospheric CO2 rather than the 350 ppm favored by some activists and scientists.

I could not be more sincere when I say that I wish Obama were responsible for health care reform dragging on, for climate deniers and delayers, for the lack of ambition U.S. negotiators can promise the international community. If these things were a matter of Obama simply not trying hard enough, perhaps he could be persuaded to try harder. He's a reasonable guy!

Alas, despite the far-reaching powers people tend to ascribe to the U.S. presidency in general and Obama specifically, it seems to me the real culprit is -- yes, I'm going to say the same thing again, I'm boring! -- the U.S. Senate.

Bill says Obama is using the Senate like Bush used China, as an excuse for delay. The analogy is apt insofar as China was out of Bush's control and the Senate is out of Obama's. But it's inapt in that there's plenty Bush could have done without China and he didn't; there's plenty Obama can do outside the Senate and he's doing it. When it comes to matters under executive branch control, the progress over the last 10 months has been amazing -- new fuel-economy rules, new enforcement of efficiency standards, EPA moving forward on CO2 regulations, energy standards and goals for all federal departments, tons of green stimulus money, national retrofit programs, delay of mining and drilling permits, sustained bi- and multi-lateral international climate diplomacy ... the list goes on. Obama is doing what a president can do -- more than any president has ever done.

Ultimately, then, Bill's beef comes down to Obama's supposed refusal to "push the Senate as hard as [he] possibly can." Tellingly, there are no details offered on what this pushing might involve, just some handwaving at "spending political capital."

But how to push the Senate? That's the most important question! Surely it deserves a little more attention.

Bill Clinton tried getting out ahead of Congress to prod it to action. He sent Gore to Kyoto promising ambitious action on climate. He handed Congress a health care reform bill that he (or rather his wife) had hashed out behind closed doors in the White House, ready to go.

Conservative Democrats bridled; they felt no loyalty to his agenda; they rejected the Kyoto treaty; they picked at the health bill and were happy to let it die.

Obama has been trying the opposite strategy. He is very carefully instructing his international negotiators not to promise anything that the Senate hasn't already signed on to. (That means waiting for the Senate to pass a bill.) On both health care and clean energy, he has laid out a set of broad principles and let members of Congress work out their own bills, cheerleading occasionally from the sidelines. On health care, the progress has been impossibly slow, dragging out longer than anyone not totally cynical about the Senate could have predicted. But it's been progress. On clean energy, the strategy worked like a charm with the House clean energy bill. Obama mostly let Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) handle it, with some crucial behind-the-scenes help. The administration strongly endorsed the bill when it passed. A roughly similar bill got to the Senate and raced through Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) progressive Environment and Public Works Committee.

And ... conservative Democrats bridled; they felt no loyalty to Obama's agenda; they're trash-talking Copenhagen; they're picking at the clean energy bill and are happy to let it die. (See: Jim Webb.)

That's two very different executive strategies that ran into similar wankery from conservative Senate Dems. Maybe our conclusion should be that the problem is conservative Senate Dems. Many such Dems come from states that voted for McCain and/or Bush. Obama has no leverage over them; support from Obama isn't important or necessarily helpful for their electoral prospects. Unless they feel constrained by party discipline like their colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or God forbid feel the pull of conscience, they have no incentive to work to pass the progressive agenda Obama campaigned on. Nor do they have reason to accept any treaty his administration signs that goes beyond what they've already agreed to. Dems desperately need their votes, but they don't desperately need other Dems, and there's just very little in Obama's arsenal with which to "push" them. The dysfunction of the Senate is structural; it's not in Obama's power to change, no matter how much he tries, no matter how much capital he spends.

The difference between Clinton's flamboyant rhetorical pushing and Obama's relatively laid-back style is this: Obama's still has a chance to work. However frustrating it may be to activists who want bigger words, bolder promises, and faster action, the fact remains that the Dems are within reach of passing a health care reform bill and have at least laid out a path to passing a clean energy bill and ratifying a binding international climate treaty in 2010. It's too early to deem Obama's leadership a failure.

Yes: political realities can be changed. The kind of broad grassroots movement that Bill McKibben himself has been so instrumental in creating can shift the tectonic plates. But a crucial step in that process is to accurately identify what and who is blocking progress. It's not Obama who deserves the ire of the 350 army. It's Max Baucus (D-Mont.). It's Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). It's Jim Webb (D-Vir.). It's Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). It's the filibuster! These targets are harder to reach and in many ways less satisfying to battle, but they are the real locus of delay and inaction.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Waking up on a dreary Sunday morning this weekend in Copenhagen (where I've recently moved to prepare for the upcoming climate talks in December), I was met with a barrage of headlines, mostly from U.S. media, telling me that Copenhagen is doomed to total failure and I might as well head off to Mexico City where next year's summit will be held. The New York Times cried out: World Leaders Agree to Delay a Deal on Climate Change. The Washington Post bellowed: Copenhagen talks unlikely to yield climate accord, leaders told. Not the best way to start a Sunday morning.

Is Copenhagen really over before it begins? Had I moved to this dark, rainy (but beautiful!) city for no reason? Should we all just pack it up and hope that political declarations will solve it all?

The answer, thankfully, quickly became a resounding "no." As Grist's own David Roberts is often the first to point out, the mainstream media clearly got it wrong. There's still hope -- a lot of it, at that.

Let's start with those headlines. Who are these "world leaders" who agreed to delay? Well, the plural may be accurate, but just barely.

In the 48 hours since initial reports, as Ministers and other government representatives have trickled into Copenhagen for the "pre-COP" preparatory meeting, it's become clear that while the media reported that all 19 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders were in agreement on the so-called "one agreement, two steps" approach, that's not at all the case.

The real story occurred at a hastily arranged APEC breakfast. Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen made a last-minute visit and surprised the room with a speech that was only vetted by a few of the so-called "leaders." One can only imagine a room full of bleary-eyed Heads of State sitting around a big table sipping their coffee and politely nodding at Rasmussen's climate change speech without really understanding how their nods would be translated by the media.

Rasmussen began his speech by saying:

...I would like to share with you how I believe a Copenhagen Agreement could be constructed to serve the dual purpose of providing for continued negotiations on a legal agreement and for immediate action...

And later towards the end of the speech he says:

Some of you might have wished for a different format or for a different legal structure. Still, I believe you will agree with me on one fundamental point: What matters at the end of the day is the ability of the Copenhagen Agreement to capture and reinforce global commitment to real actions.

Doesn't sound like consensus to me; it sounds like a man trying to convince an audience to go along with him. It's not entirely clear who actually did agree with the Prime Minister, but what is clear is that there is nowhere near consensus on such a delay approach; in fact, dozens of countries oppose it and are still wishing--and fighting--for more.

Now, what about the actual plan itself -- the "one agreement, two steps" plan? Two steps to an agreement doesn't sounds so bad, right?

As NRDC's Jake Schmidt wrote, the strategy might not be so bad if you actually thought that the second step would ever be taken. Unfortunately, what Rasmussen has put forward is a cynical approach. It's becoming clear that all he cares about is getting a "positive" result in Copenhagen, and that the second step could just be for show.

If you look closely at Rasmussen's APEC breakfast speech, there's very little incentive to actually finish the job in 2010 (as in, to take the "second step"). Rasmussen explains his vision thusly:

The Copenhagen Agreement should capture progress already achieved in the negotiations and at the same time provide for immediate action already from next year.

The Copenhagen Agreement should be political by nature, yet precise on specific commitments and binding on countries committing to reach certain targets and to undertake certain actions or provide agreed finance.

The Copenhagen Agreement should be global, comprehensive and substantial, yet flexible enough to accommodate countries with very different national circumstances.

The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion.

Why would any developed country with high emissions want to go back to the table and flesh out a legally binding deal after the pressure of Copenhagen has passed and there is no real obligation to do so? Despite his lip service to "continued legal negotiations", there's no clarity nor firm deadline. Rasmussen's invention of "politically binding"--a term no one seems willing or able to define--is also repeated here.

Furthermore, there is only a passing mention of the Kyoto Protocol later in the speech. Despite what some would have you think, however, the Kyoto Protocol does not expire in 2012. In fact, in 2005, the parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to negotiate a second commitment period (2013-2017) and further committed in Bali in 2007 to reaching a conclusion on what that second commitment period would look like. In Rasmussen's vision, this goal seems to disappear in favor of a "politically binding" outcome.

Indeed, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper--one of the leading climate negotiation blockers now that George W. Bush is out of the picture--has been positively beaming in the press about this announcement. Not a sign of a positive development.

Luckily, there's still time to push for more. The Alliance of Small Island States, the African Group of nations, and other vulnerable and least developed countries will surely be pushing back on this plan during the prep meetings in Copenhagen this week. In fact, 11 Pacific Island States already have. Some European nations are also likely to stand up to this plan.

The planet and its people need a fair, ambitious, and binding outcome from this process. Countries should be working on such a document in Copenhagen and they can and should finish it there. After all, it's what they committed to in Bali just two years ago.

Related Links:

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

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

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

Conventional wisdom says that the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill faces a long uphill slog against unlikely odds. Many Senators, especially those in the "center," think it's unpopular. They think it will raise prices during a recession. They think it will unfairly hurt their states. They see little political upside and lots of possible downside.

Here's the thing about Beltway CW, though: it always forecasts delay, difficulty, and failure. And it's always right. Until it's wrong. As Al Gore is fond of saying, politics, like climate, is nonlinear. An accretion of small changes can build beneath the surface of the news cycle and emerge unexpectedly as a rapid shift. The odds in Vegas may still be against the bill, but there are reasons for cautious optimism. Seven of them, actually.

-----

1. Key Republican support is already in place, as Sen. Lindsey Graham takes to The New York Times editorial page with John Kerry to offer full-throated support for passing clean energy legislation this year:

It’s true that we come from different parts of the country and represent different constituencies and that we supported different presidential candidates in 2008. We even have different accents. But we speak with one voice in saying that the best way to make America stronger is to work together to address an urgent crisis facing the world.

Graham has been making noises, but this is thunder. The Kerry bill will not be able to pass without at least a little Republican support giving cover to conservative Dems. Graham is offering that cover early in the legislative process.

He's also made the price clear: more support for nuclear and offshore drilling. That's odious, but less odious that it appears at first blush, and an affordable price relative to the benefits of passing a bill.

Snowe and Collins are likely yes votes. With Graham so far out ahead on this, McCain may be shamed into joining him (though he's far from a sure thing). Together they could get a second hearing from other Senators like Isakson who love nuclear power. (Alexander's probably a lost cause now that he's in leadership.) Their combined influence, coupled with his longstanding relationship with Obama, could pull Lugar over. In Florida, Crist could see this as part of his legacy and influence LeMieux to get behind it. At some point you can imagine a snowball effect, though the odds of breaking five Republican yea votes are still fairly low.

2. Health care reform might just work out after all. The Finance Committee finally passed a bill, it was scored favorably by the CBO, and floor debate approaches. After what seems like an eternity, there's finally some consensus and momentum. It's possible to imagine a bill passing in the next couple months. When that train leaves the station it will (finally!) free up much-needed Senate staff attention for when the clean energy train pulls in. It will clear the deck for Finance to mark up the Kerry bill (if Baucus decides he wants to, God help us all).

If a good healthcare bill is signed into law, it will have an enormous boost on morale and generate further momentum.

3. The public wants this bill. Conservative Dems are behind the times. They haven't been keeping up with the latest polling, which shows that clean energy reform is broadly popular, even in swing states. Recent focus groups show that the right's "energy tax" attack isn't working. It gets crushed by the message that America needs to take control of its future, cut dependence on unfriendly countries, and create new jobs. Americans want it to get done and they're willing to pay for it. Clean energy in particular is wildly popular -- a recent poll found that "77% of Americans feel the federal government should make solar power development a national priority, including the financial support needed."

There's a good story to tell even about the most carbon intensive states. They are protected in the bill by consumer rebates and allowance money for trade-exposed industries. Every state has enormous potential for efficiency, and according to a new report:

At least three-fifths of the fifty states could meet all their internal electricity needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders. Every state with a renewable energy mandate can meet it with in-state renewable fuels.

Clean energy reform has potential benefits for every state and area of the country. It's a winning political issue.

4. International pressure is becoming intense. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize can be seen, at least in part, as a reward for taking the U.S. in a new direction on climate change. Accepting the prize will put him in Oslo on Dec. 10, right next door to Copenhagen, just as international climate talks begin there. Hint, hint.

Once upon a time the lack of action in China and other rapidly developing countries could be used as an excuse for delay in Congress, but that too is quickly changing. China is moving. Japan is moving. Indonesia is moving. Even India is moving (see also). Developing countries have made it clear that they're willing to be part of a global system of emission reductions. Global green campaigns like 350.org and TckTckTck are building cross-cultural consensus around a set of baseline metrics. Everyone is waiting for the U.S. to step up. That puts enormous pressure on Obama to deliver the goods, which he can't do without Senate support.

5. The administration is engaged. The administration has been criticized by greens for neglecting clean energy in favor of health care, and it's true that with the exception of his U.N. speech Obama has mostly focused his public remarks elsewhere. Still, the accusation isn't entirely fair: there's an extraordinary level of engagement on clean energy legislation at the cabinet level, probably more so than on health. Browner, Chu, and Jackson have been advocating for the bill and meeting individually with Senators for months.

What's missing so far is the full force of Obama's personal popularity and persuasiveness, the most powerful forces in American politics. Everyone agrees the outcome in the Senate will at least somewhat turn on the level of his involvement.

6. Greens are getting their act together at last. The formation of the Clean Energy Works coalition a month ago presaged a period of relatively happy media news for greens. Some of it was the Chamber of Commerce stepping on rakes, but some credit goes to a more consistent message and concerted efforts to highlight stereotype-busting greens like veterans and business execs. There are targeted ad campaigns, media stunts (from groups like the Avaaz Action Factory, Greenpeace, and MoveOn), and a growing grassroots youth movement (see: Energy Action Coalition's PowerShift 09) making noise. It's getting loud enough that even Congress can hear.

7. The business community is divided, as recent defections from the Chamber of Commerce demonstrate. More and more CEOs realize that the demographic they most covet -- young people -- cares about climate change, expects companies to be environmentally prudent, and expresses that opinion in purchasing decisions. Being backwards on climate is bad branding and bad business.

Ten years ago, every hot-sh*t entrepreneur, engineer, and investor wanted to change the web. Today they want to change the grid. They understand that clean energy legislation will unlock enormous business opportunities. Big companies want to get their hands on those opportunities, which is why they're actively lobbying for a bill.

When Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donahue, a guy sitting comfortably at the center of an old boys network of long standing, finds himself offering defensive, incoherent pabulum on the subject of climate change and whining about big mean environmental groups ... something has changed.

----

Given the brittle system by which legislation is passed in the U.S., with all its chokepoints and 60-vote mega-majority minimums, failure is always a safe bet. Despite all the heated talk about what Obama must "demand," the truth is that the fate of this bill (and everything that hinges on it) lies with a small handful of Senators, Republicans and conservative Democrats who aren't accountable to him or his agenda. Their political concerns are more idiosyncratic.

Nonetheless, there is a clear path from here to passage. If everything goes right and the Senate is willing to step up to history, it could happen.

Related Links:

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

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

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

I had a dream about watching one of those high stakes poker games that you see on TV these days. There were bit players who you knew, from the few colored chips in front of them, would soon fold -- but the two “whales” at the table were Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. They each had so many chips on the table that you could barely see their cowboy shirts, but the purpose in their deadly stares could not be obscured, even by the dark black Ray Bans that shaded their eyes.

Obama wasted no time putting his ante smack in the middle of the green felt for all to see -- roll back greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% lower by 2050 (a statement made just 14 days after he was elected). Hu countered with a commitment to reduce energy consumption by 20%. Cards were dealt and the players tugged on their caps (Hu’s read “Made in China” and Obama’s proclaimed “Copenhagen," an obscure reference to either the failed Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics or the upcoming climate talks).

The American Prez made the first bet -- adopting California’s greenhouse gas limits on tailpipes as the national standard. The crowd murmured as they realized this meant he was betting on executive power instead of Congress. The Chinese Prez countered with a commitment to replace 15% of dirty fossil fuels with clean energy, like wind and solar, by 2020. The crowd gasped audibly, realizing that this would double China’s current renewable energy supply.

Mr. Cool and Mr. Harmonious took and tossed cards, each betting bold plans to measure and register greenhouse gas sources; out-compete each other on a carbon market; and save more trees than anyone thought possible -- raising the stakes higher and higher, a pile of loot that made it hard for one to even see the other, let alone get a real read of their respective poker faces. Aides tugged at the sleeves of each man, whispering words of advice or caution, but the shrewd observer knew these competitors needed no guidance -- they were playing for keeps.

As often happens in dreams, reality and fantasy merged -- the closer I looked at the loot on the table, the more it resembled a blue, spinning globe. Were the Presidents playing for wealth, the future of a planet, or both?

I awoke with adrenaline pumping, the final result unknown, wondering if anyone else had distilled the words and deeds of these two world powerhouses into anything resembling my dream, or if most people had failed to see the high-stakes poker game that was going on in world capitals, UN speeches, and government announcements day by day. The media has largely failed to add up what’s going on in both countries already, which allows Hu and Obama to make these pledges, so how would average citizens or investors know?

Yes, carbon will soon have more than a penny-ante price, but if we play the game shrewdly at Copenhagen and beyond, this may be a game with many winners and a dream for a more sustainable, resilient economy come true.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) plan to introduce their climate bill tomorrow. Here are a few brief notes on what to watch for.

Just as a reminder, for the non-wonks, here's how the process works: 1) House passes bill, 2) Senate passes bill, 3) House and Senate bills reconciled via conference committee, 4) House and Senate both vote on resulting bill, and, finally, 5) president signs bill. Yes, it's a torturous, somewhat ridiculous process, with dozens of points at which it can go off the rails.

The thing to remember is that #2 -- which begins tomorrow -- is a very different process than #1. In the House, just one committee was involved: Energy & Commerce. That committee has a fairly diverse membership, so Sens. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) had to contend with a broad array of interests, but ultimately Waxman's hand was on the tiller through the whole journey. The committee produced a bill and it went to the floor for a vote.

It's not so simple in the Senate. (Is anything simple in the Senate?) There, up to five committees may hold hearings and mark up legislation, which will ultimately have to be incorporated into one comprehensive bill by Majority Leader Harry Reid. Potentially weighing in: Environment & Public Works, Energy & Natural Resources, Finance, Agriculture, and Foreign Relations.

It's possible Foreign Relations (which Kerry chairs) will bow out. Ag, now chaired by the climate-hostile Blanche Lincoln (D-Agribiz), will likely want to extract its chunk of flesh on carbon market regulation and agricultural offsets. Finance, chaired by the dread Max Baucus (D-Mont.), will want to have a hand in allowance allocation, though Boxer (or Reid) may yet convince him to back off. Energy, under Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), has already passed its bit, the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, a comparatively weak energy title relative to what's in the House bill.

Boxer's committee, EPW, is one of the Senate's most progressive, and what Boxer and Kerry will introduce tomorrow is widely expected to mark the left edge of the debate -- everything that follows will push the bill in a weaker direction. They've said that they'll model their bill on the House-passed American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES), which is somewhat unfortunate since ACES already represents the result of numerous compromises in the House. But such is the U.S. Senate.

Boxer and Kerry have signaled that they'll make a few improvements on ACES. For one thing, they're expected to bump the 2020 target from 17% (below 2005 levels) to 20%. They're also expected to restore the EPA's New Source Review authority over CO2, which could be quite contentious.

A few things worth keeping an eye on:

There's likely more I'm forgetting, but that's a start.

Related Links:

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

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

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

Was the U.N. Climate Summit held in a marble bathroom?Photo: U.N./Marco Castro It was no barnburner of a speech, but President Obama’s address at the U.N. Climate Summit Tuesday morning amounted to the boldest climate change speech of his presidency. That's because it was essentially the only climate change speech of his presidency.

Until now, President Obama's message about energy has been all clean-tech innovation, green jobs, and economic growth, with just passing mentions of climate change. Candidate Obama, to be clear, had plenty to say about climate (example: his interview with Grist in July 2007). On Tuesday he finally returned to the topic.

“No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change,” he said in the address to world leaders. “Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.  More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.  More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.  On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees.  The security and stability of each nation and all peoples—our prosperity, our health, our safety—are in jeopardy.  And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”

By comparison, Obama’s Earth Day speech in April was all about the economic potential of clean energy:

Now Obama may have just been telling leaders at the U.N. what they wanted to hear, making the right gestures without committing to much. As my editor points out, the only hard number in the speech was G20—Obama didn’t pressure Congress to commit to specific emissions cuts. And he hasn’t yet given a climate-focused speech like this directly to Americans. But he still spoke about the underlying reason for an energy revolution, and that’s significant.

In green circles, there are endless discussions about what messages play best—the green jobs stuff, the think-of-our-children appeals, the moral reminders that the Third World poor will bear the brunt of our pollution’s impact. There is room for all of them, of course, but conventional wisdom is that jobs and prosperity talking points are much safer than the buzz-kills about suffering. Tuesday’s speech was a tentative departure from that script.

Full text of the speech.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has promised to make ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, months before world leaders meet for crucial climate change talks.

Hatoyama, who will take office next week, said Japan would seek to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, but said the target would be contingent on a deal involving all major emitters in Copenhagen in December.

“We can’t stop climate change just by setting our own emissions target,” he said at a forum in Tokyo. “Our nation will call on major countries around the world to set aggressive goals.”

The announcement today by Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is not a big surprise (see “Japanese opposition easily wins elections — running on a much stronger climate target“).  But it is nice to see politicians keep their promises — or try to.  The business lobby opposes the target.

Today’s Guardian story notes:

The commitment places Japan firmly among countries committed to aggressive CO2 emissions cuts, despite mounting opposition from business and industry groups, which claim the measures will put jobs at risk.

“We have concerns about its feasibility in view of the impact on economic activities and employment, as well as the enormousness of the public burden,” said Satoshi Aoki, the chairman of the Japan automobile manufacturers’ association.

Harufumi Mochizuki, the outgoing vice minister of trade and industry, said Hatoyama had chosen a “very tough road ahead for the Japanese people and economy”.

Hatoyama said his plan would create jobs in sectors such as renewables and manufacturing amid an expected rise in demand for solar energy, home renovations and energy-efficient cars and consumer electronics.

“There are cautious people who worry that it will hurt the economy and livelihoods, but I think it will change things for the better,” he said.

To help achieve the reduction, Japan will create a domestic emissions trading market and introduce a “feed-in” tariff – financial rewards for industries that expand their use of renewable energy sources.

The Copenhagen talks will be dominated by attempts to persuade China, India and other big emerging economies to sign up to emissions targets.

I’m not certain I’d put it that way.  China, India and the other big emerging economies are not going to sign up to hard emissions targets, but if the rich countries make real commitments — and the U.S. Senate can pass something similar to the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill — then I think China will take on binding commitments that take them sharply off the business as usual emissions path (see “ ‘China will sign’ global treaty if U.S. passes climate bill, E.U. leader says“).  And other key countries are also willing to embrace targets (see “South Korea, a ‘developing’ country, embraces 2020 emissions cap, with important implications for a global deal in Copenhagen“).

The target brings Japan, the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, alongside the EU, which is committed to a 20% cut by 2020 from 1990 levels and 30% if other nations agree to match the target. But it is still at the lower end of the 25-40% cuts recommended by the UN climate change panel.

Hatoyama will have to reconcile his bold initiative with election pledges to eliminate road tolls and petrol surcharges.

As host of the Kyoto summit in 1997, Japan is keen to reposition itself at the forefront of the battle against climate change. Its emissions rose 2.3% in the year to March 2008, putting it 16% above its 2012 Kyoto target.

The target is certainly an impressive one, and the DPJ deserves kudos.

If Japan can do a 25 percent cut, surely the United States can do a measly 4 percent.

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Fair, Ambitious & Binding: Essentials for a Successful Climate Deal

Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in the September/October Foreign Affairs, finds “vanishingly small” odds that December’s international negotiations in Copenhagen will produce a comprehensive climate treaty.

From the journal’s summary (emphasis mine):

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

This column from Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times really pushes my buttons. There's something beneath the surface that is downright pathological, and not at all unique to Rachman. It besets most political pundits on this issue. I'll try to dig it out.

The premise of Rachman's column is that while everyone accuses climate change skeptics of being in denial, in fact climate activists are in denial as well. They keep hanging on to the U.N. negotiation process long after it's become clear that developing countries aren't going to budge. The politics of an international climate accord are incredibly difficult, possibly insoluble.

That's an arguable point, but a fair one. The U.N. process is open to criticism. And the politics really are difficult. But listen to this conclusion:

The state of international negotiations presents a huge dilemma for climate change activists. Most genuinely believe that a failure to achieve an international agreement in Copenhagen would be catastrophic. But they also know that, even if a deal is reached, it is likely to be feeble and ineffective. If they admit this publicly, they risk creating a climate of despair and inaction. But if they press ahead, they are putting all their energy into an approach that they must know is highly unlikely to deliver.

It is a horrible dilemma. But, in difficult situations, it is best to start by facing facts. The trouble is that -- in different ways -- both sides of the climate change debate are in denial.

This kind of language is so familiar that you have to step back a moment to recognize that there's something bizarre about it.

Climate science indicates that a business-as-usual path will lead to at least 5 degrees of warming by 2100, which represents utter catastrophe. Many scientists believe that we are near (or have passed) tipping points after which positive feedbacks become self-reinforcing and climate changes are irreversible. If we want to avoid that, we have very little time to peak and start reducing global emissions. No one has proposed a credible way of doing that aside from international negotiations.

All that is either true, or it's not. The mainstream science and policy communities think it's true.

If it is true, then millions of people, and possibly civilization itself, are threatened by climate shifts, within the lifetime of people alive today. If it is true, then the difficulty of getting an international agreement is not a "dilemma for climate change activists." It's a dilemma for human beings. "A climate of despair and inaction" is not a risk to activists. It's a risk to the lives and welfare of hundreds of millions of people and future generations.

So I want to ask Rachman, and all the pundits who address climate politics: Do you believe it's true? Do you believe the mainstream scientific consensus that climate change poses massive risks for humanity, and that urgent international action is necessary to reduce those risks?

If so, it is incoherent, even immoral, to go on treating this issue as though it were merely a clash of interest groups. It's not like climate policy is for "climate activists" what card check is for unions, or financial regulations are to the banking sector, or subsidies are to farmers. It's not a parochial issue.

Do you believe it's true? If not, say so, clearly. If so, then it's your fight too. You cannot stand on the sidelines in the pose of a savvy, above-it-all observer. There are no sidelines.

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City preps and countries posture ahead of Copenhagen talks

FOX News and TrollCat agree: Global warming is BUNK!

The Obama administration once again convened a Major Economies Forum in Italy this week after the G-8 meeting, which included the world’s 17 major carbon emitters, to press forward on a global deal on climate change and the transformation to a clean-energy economy. One of the most important announcements to come out of this meeting is the formation of a formal “Global Partnership” on “low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies.” This program aims to double the current commitments on technology assistance by 2015 and sets a deadline for mapping actions for achieving a range of important goals on this cluster of issues by November 15, 2009.

Achieving success in this program could potentially be key for engaging the major emitting developing economies, such as China and India, on accepting meaningful measures for reducing their carbon emissions. Such assurances are necessary for negotiating a successful new international treaty responding to climate change this December at the U.N. climate change meeting in Copenhagen. The countries composing the Major Economies Forum have, with this movement, recognized that the struggle against climate change will not be won without a revolution in the use of existing, low-carbon technology and a tidal wave of new inventions.

The Center for American Progress, working jointly with eight other progressive think tanks from around the world in our Global Climate Network, today launches a report, “Breaking Through on Technology,” to help to pave the way for a successful global deal on the transfer of clean-energy technology. Together with our partners in India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom, we think a new focus on technology will not only help to avert a climate crisis, but also transform the ongoing international negotiations into a forum focusing on shared opportunities rather than arguments over historically differentiated carbon emissions.

Our research involved speaking to more than 100 leading business people, government officials, and academics in eight countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States. We reached three key conclusions through these discussions, which leaders should consider in enacting the new technology partnership mandate of the Major Economies Forum.

First, we argue, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also said, that a low-carbon technology revolution will not simply happen—it requires government intervention. Our research demonstrates that one of the major barriers to low-carbon technology is the lack of coherent policy at the domestic level in both industrialized and developing countries.

Conventional wisdom points to the importance of establishing economy-wide programs to price carbon emissions through taxation or trading, such as the cap-and-trade program passed recently by the House of Representatives as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This may indeed help low-carbon technology over the longer term, especially when innovations are more firmly established.

But right now more keenly targeted government policies are urgently needed, particularly because many of the barriers have to do with a lack of skills and know-how, including knowledge of how to make good policy, as well as the availability of technology. Such policies might include phasing in carbon standards for specific products or sectors, providing tax incentives to drive investment in low-carbon energy, and generally creating stable investment climates and supporting the research, development, and deployment of new technologies.

The need for finance is the second conclusion of this study. Almost all of those interviewed identified the lack of upfront finance and financial mechanisms to help meet the higher costs of deploying new technology rapidly as being a major barrier to low-carbon technology. The private sector should become the major source of low-carbon finance, but government money is needed early on to make new technologies cheaper and less risky. We at CAP advocated the establishment of a new national green bank to help achieve this outcome within the legislative architecture of the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

But beyond this domestic initiative we suggest that an international framework for reducing emissions should contain a mechanism to reward robust, comprehensive policymaking at the national level with new finance. Developed countries have an obligation under the existing U.N. climate agreement to be the major contributors to this effort.

Third, we call for an international technologies initiative, which could help accelerate the collaborative development of new technology and realize the brightest and best ideas through the difficult demonstration stage to full commercial production and deployment. The so-called “valley of death” in which many great ideas perish for want of finance cannot be allowed to kill off important low-carbon innovations. We will argue for such an expanded function as part of the MEF’s Global Partnership on technology.

Again, many of the experts we consulted in our study highlighted the perilous state of research and development funding. We propose that governments, key academic institutions, and companies work together in regional hubs and under the umbrella of such a clean technology initiative to share equipment, know-how, and skills in an urgent drive to find the climate-saving technologies of the future, especially those that will also help bring energy services to poor people.

Some will balk at the suggestion that government should have such a strong role in driving new, low-carbon technology. And yet our study shows that while there are some differences of view among public servants, politicians, and people in the private sector, the overwhelming conclusion is that governments have to steer the low-carbon technology revolution, and do so with more purpose than has hitherto been the case.

Cooperating on technology will not be easy; the bailing out of banks and resuscitation of economies has led to large fiscal deficits in some countries, even if some of the money has helped deploy low-carbon technology. But our message in this research is clear: put technology at the heart of negotiations; agree on an international mechanism that rewards robust low-carbon development strategies; pool resources to plough into research, development, and project demonstration; focus on know-how as much as equipment; share knowledge across borders; and propagate skills.

Success at Copenhagen in December depends on reaching consensus in each critical area currently under negotiation. A clear commitment by developed countries to support robust, internationally approved, national plans with new finance and agreement and a commitment to make the new MEF initiative on technology successful could lay the foundations for the low-carbon revolution we need.

Read the report: Breaking Through on Technology: Overcoming the Barriers to the Development and Wide Deployment of Low-Carbon Technology

For more information, see:

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This article was co-written with Erwin Jackson, Director of Policy and Research at the Climate Institute, Australia’s leading independent policy think tank on climate change.

The U.S. House of Representatives has joined the Obama administration in its resolve to finally move forward and address the problem of global warming by recently passing the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACESA. With this legislation the United States will begin the process of achieving energy independence and transforming to a clean-energy economy. Just as important, however, passage of ACESA signals that the United States has rejoined the community of nations on addressing the critical issue of global climate change.

As this legislation moves to the U.S. Senate, we can expect to see a series of arguments emerge aimed at international cooperation on this issue. Worries about China are always at the top. We can’t do something about climate change, the opposition opines, because China will do nothing. But we’ve recently seen a new twist on this mantra going in the opposite direction. Our closest allies—namely, Australia—who are ahead of us on addressing global warming are in fact reversing their course and having second thoughts. Or at least that’s the impression conveyed last week in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel. This argument is as false as the claim that China is doing nothing.

Strassel claims that Australia’s legislation on climate change, now making its way through their Senate, “is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for winter,” and she compiles a hodgepodge of half truths to make the case that this turn is at the front of a rising tide against the veracity of climate science. Her advice to American lawmakers is to reengage with the science because “you won’t be alone.”

Stassel, who also wrote last weekend on the supposed censorship of EPA economist Alan Carlin’s discredited report debunking climate science, is fixated on reviving climate skepticism. She has many admirers, such as U.S. Senator John Barasso (R-WY), who used her column in today’s hearings on climate legislation in the Senate as the basis of a demand to investigate the matter. James Inhofe (R-OK) then had her column inserted in the official record for the hearings. But at best there is a wisp of smoke here being called a wildfire.

She claims that a “growing number of Australian politicians, scientists, and citizens” are doubting “the science of human-caused global warming.” Such reports are largely based, however, on the views of one Australian senator, Steve Fielding, and one Australian geologist, Ian Pilmer. Pilmer does receive generous coverage in some sections of Australia’s media, but such contrarians do not represent the views of the majority, who remain concerned about climate change and are frustrated at political wrangling that is delaying further action.

So what is really going on in Australia? For the nearly 20-year history of the climate debate, Australia’s domestic and international policy has been monopolized by unfounded fears that concerted domestic action to reduce emissions would have devastating impacts on the country’s export coal and energy-intensive industries. Sound familiar?

Recently this has slowly but surely begun to change.

The last federal Australian election in late 2007 attracted international attention as one of the world’s first climate change elections. Exit polls showed climate change was a top-tier issue, seen as second only to industrial economic policy as a key difference among critical swing voters who embraced Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in response to his championing of the issues.

What’s more, climate change’s effects weren’t framed only as hypothetical models of problems that may occur in the future but more as immediate observable impacts at home. Australians overwhelming endorsed climate action, driven by ongoing drought across much of the country and a future-looking electorate intent on addressing this problem. In response the new prime minister ratified the Kyoto Protocol in his first official act after taking office. When Rudd journeyed to the annual U.N. meeting on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, shortly thereafter he was greeted by the assembled delegate with thunderous applause. By moving so quickly to carry out his campaign promise Rudd had not only responded to the Australian people’s will but announced in one swift move that his country was back among the ranks of those determined to do be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Recent polls show climate concern remains strong among over 70 percent of Australians despite rainfall in northern Australia and the global financial crisis. And numerous polls show large Australian majorities back the passage of the cap-and-trade bill and Australian action ahead of other countries, including the United States and China.

Within Australian policy circles a new definition of national interest has also recently emerged. The current government has accepted a review commissioned by all of Australia’s state and territorial governments in 2007 by Professor Ross Garnaut, “to examine the impacts of climate change on Australia and to recommend policy frameworks to improve the prospects of sustainable prosperity.” In particular the government has embraced Garnaut’s principle conclusion that it would be in Australia’s interests to stabilize global greenhouse gas concentrations and equivalents at 450 ppm or lower. This acceptance was driven by a recognition that Australia is the advanced economy most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Australian national security agencies have also been considering the implications of major climate change events and impacts on Australia’s close neighbors. The government’s recent Defense White Paper identified climate change as a new security threat and suggested that the best defense against such developments will “need to be undertaken through coordinated international climate change mitigation and economic assistance strategies.” The paper goes on to suggest that should these policies fail “the government would possibly have to use the [Australia Defense Force] as an instrument to deal with any threats inimical to our interests.”

The new government, driven by these considerations and its election mandate, has been moving forward with an imperfect but positive policy agenda that includes a cap-and-trade program, called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, or CPRS; a more constructive multilateral climate diplomacy strategy; an expanded Renewable Energy Target to ensure 20 percent electricity comes from clean-energy sources by 2020; a national energy efficiency strategy and the investment of around AUD14 billion (U.S. $11.5 billion) over eight years in programs aimed at energy efficiency; and research, development, and deployment in large-scale solar and carbon capture and storage with a major international CCS research facility in development in Canberra. This legislation is not without its problems, but it includes a national target to reduce emissions by up to 25 percent from 2000 levels by 2020—conditional on comparable global efforts. As with ACESA, the CPRS passed the Australian House of Representatives in June.

There are critical differences, however, between the shape of the Australian and U.S. legislative debate from here on as both country’s bills hit their respective senates. Importantly, the emission targets in CPRS, if not the legislation, are supported by the conservative opposition party. And because the Labor government does not control the Australian senate, it will need robust bipartisan support from the conservative Liberal party or members of the Greens party plus two additional independent senators to get the cap and trade legislation through.

One of these additional votes would come from Senator Fielding, featured in Strassel’s WSJ editorial, who is the lone representative of the Family First Party in either Australian legislative house. Fielding does not vote with the larger party blocks, so calling his newfound worries about climate change science a turning of the tide in the Australian senate is a stretch, to put it mildly—unless he is a tide of one vote. His climate skepticism is not shared by the main body politic of the Australian Parliament.

So what are the actual prospects for the Australian legislation once we strip away such exaggerated descriptions? Admittedly its fate is still uncertain though prospects are very good. While the Rudd government has not ruled out negotiating the bill through with the Greens and independents it is more likely to do so with the conservative Liberal party.

As the Liberals support the government’s emission targets the main focus of the debate in the senate will be how to treat trade-exposed industries, electricity generators, and the agricultural sector within the cap-and-trade scheme. Or, to put it another way, exactly the same issues that will dominate the debate in the U.S. Senate. Contra Strassel the question of climate science’s veracity will not influence the outcome of the Senate deliberations.

But at the end of the day it is highly likely that Australian mainstream business groups will exert significant pressure on the Liberals to pass the legislation. Media reports suggest that the CEOs of Australia’s largest companies are telling the Liberals to eventually pass the bill. This will be driven by real concerns that investment in Australia will be damaged if uncertainty over climate policy continues. This same argument in the United States has successfully driven many CEOs to push for passage of ACESA.

So the political shoals of the Australian senate will still require some negotiation. But it is more likely than not that come December and the U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen, Australia will have legislated a cap-and-trade system and be ready to play its full and fair part in global action to avoid dangerous climate change. When the United States follows suit, we will join our ally in taking up both the most important problem of our time and moving forward down the most viable economic path before us.

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

International climate negotiations often seem like some sort of cosmic science fair project -- an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors. There's a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat, but in the end, very little light.

Faith in the UN climate process has dimmed. Joe Romm calls it a "dead man walking." The Copenhagen talks in December are generally discussed with the same dissonant mixture of urgency ("You have to do it in Copenhagen," says UNFCCC chair Yvo de Boer) and fatalism ("There is no movement," says German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel) as the last dozen rounds of international talks.

The Obama administration knows the danger of sclerosis and is working on several fronts to regain a sense of momentum. A good bit of that work will happen during this busy week, which will take the president to Russia to meet with President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; he'll deliver a major speech on U.S.-Russia relations today. On Wednesday, he heads to Italy for the latest meeting of the G8 countries (US, France, UK, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada). On Thursday, on the sidelines of the G8, Obama will convene a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (the G8 plus Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa). On Friday he'll head to Ghana and on Saturday he'll deliver a major speech on development and democracy.

At all these events the issue of climate change will play a role. All will reveal something about the Obama administration's approach to international climate negotiations.

The Grand Plan

International climate negotiations have primarily been channeled through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but many in the international community are losing faith in that process, or at least in its monopoly on negotiations. Getting 192 countries to sign on to a meaningful treaty is nigh impossible; the lowest common denominator among 192 wildly diverse countries turns out to be pretty damn low.

Oddly, it was the Bush administration that first saw a way around the thicket. In May 2007 it announced a series of Major Economies Meetings on climate and energy security. The idea was that the largest greenhouse gas emitters could more easily find areas of agreement working directly with one another, and that what consensus they could find would help break the logjam in the UNFCCC process.

The sincerity of Bush's effort was widely doubted -- he (in)famously advocated for purely voluntary measures -- but the basic wisdom of the strategy is apparent to, among others, the Obama administration. In fact Obama seems to be taking it even farther, working not only with smaller groups like the Major Economies Forum (MEF) and the G8, but bilaterally with other large emitters. What shape these smaller deals take could vary, from shared targets to technology R&D agreements, but again, the idea is to show that big emitters are finally acting, taking real steps. This will, it is hoped, cut through the Gordian you-go-first knot sure to bedevil the Copenhagen climate talks.

The strategy began with Todd Stern's initial efforts in China, but "you can definitely say we are looking for other partners," an administration official said.

Russia

Most members of the international community had written Russia off when it comes to climate change. It grudgingly ratified Kyoto back in 2004, serving as the crucial final signatory needed to put the treaty into effect. But since then it's focused on nothing but often dirty and inefficient means of expanding its economy. Just last month, in what many interpreted as a thumb in the eye of the UN process, it announced a "climate plan" that would increase its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020.

The reason Russia, a Kyoto signatory, can grow its emissions so heedlessly is that emission baselines for the UN process were set at 1990 levels. Of course in 1992 Russia's economy cratered, and with it the country's emissions. The damage was so great that the economy would need to grow substantially to meet a target of 10-15% below 1990 levels by 2020 -- and that's what it plans to do.

Most observers expected Obama to focus exclusively on arms control and the financial crisis when he goes to Russia, since progress on climate seems so hopeless. But as The Guardian reports, the administration fully intends to forge a deal on joint climate action. It's been pulling its ideas from a new report from the Center on American Progress.

The goal is to coax Russia into accepting strong sticks (mandatory targets at the Copenhagen talks) by offering it carrots. One is help entering carbon trading markets. The country is thought to be sitting on some 1.9 billion euros worth of carbon credits -- one of the main reasons it signed Kyoto -- but the government does not have the capacity or infrastructure to monitor emissions and approve projects. The U.S. could help with that, since it has considerable experience with such markets.

The other carrot is efficiency. Russia's energy intensity -- energy use per unit of GDP -- is twice America's, and the highest among the world's high energy consuming countries. Targeted exchange of efficiency technology and know-how could not only bend Russia's emissions curve but make its economy more productive. It's a win-win, but again, the government needs help. (Interestingly, Russia just announced that it will ban some incandescent lights by 2011.)

No big U.S.-Russia agreements on climate are expected this week, but Monday saw the introduction of a working group on energy, formed as part of a high-level bilateral commission created out of the summit. Steven Chu will chair the group on the US side.

G8 + MEF

The MEF is a smaller group of countries than the full UNFCCC, but it's still large and diverse, and there are enormous challenges in the way of getting a substantive agreement this week. Here are a few:

China + India

The overwhelming short-term priorities for developing countries are poverty reduction and economic development, driven in part by coal-based power. That's why China and India have both recently signaled that they will not commit to any binding GHG reduction targets. No, seriously, they won't. Says Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh, “India will not accept any emissions targets -- period. It is the bottom line; a non-negotiable stand. This is not something that India is going to budge on, under any circumstances." OK then!

Both countries (India; China) have also recently expressed ostentatious outrage about the possibility that the United States will impose "carbon tariffs" on imported goods. (A border adjustment provision was inserted in the Waxman-Markey bill before it passed the House.) Developing countries warn of an incipient trade war. Of course, as John Kemp points out, the provisions in the bill are not actually carbon tariffs but "carefully structured as import permits specifically to ensure they are consistent with World Trade Organisation rules." And sure enough, the WTO has signaled that the import permits are legal. China and India fear them.

Obama has spoken publicly against the border adjustments, but as Brad Plumer notes, it's helpful to have that stick in hand to make the carrots look better. (Todd Stern didn't have it when he went to China early last month.)

Of course China is hardly sitting on its hands. It's green stimulus package was both larger and greener than America's. Just this month it boosted its renewable energy targets to 15% by 2020. It looks set to swamp the U.S. in both wind and solar investment this year; between now and 2020, it's expected to spend more on renewables and nuclear than on oil and coal.

The central government has established the State Council's Expert Panel on Climate Change Policy to work on energy development plans that will involve trillions in investment. "Roughly, we need to spend an extra 1 trillion yuan every year to raise energy efficiency," said panel member Bai Quan. Just as importantly, maybe more so, it announced that regional government officials will be judged by reductions in carbon intensity instead of purely by economic growth. Getting career bureaucrats on board is essential to making sure the central planners' schemes become reality. The green shift is dispersing into rural areas as well.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke will head to China later this month to talk turkey. Says Chu, "It's in our interest and China's to explore ways to cooperate for our mutual benefit--by promoting renewable energy, encouraging energy efficiency and cutting pollution." Chu's assistant secretary David Sandalow is hosting a high-level discussion on engaging China on CCS this Thursday in D.C.; a second, focused on finance and political barriers, will happen soon thereafter.

You can imagine Chu announcing a splashy post-combustion CCS development project, or an investment in solar thermal projects, in exchange for back-channel agreements on a timeline for the country to accept hard emission reductions targets (and back off on border adjustment fussing).

What's next

Japan and Brazil are among the other countries with which Obama may pursue bilateral deals, possibly before Copenhagen. The big sticking point with Brazil is avoided deforestation. They don't want it paid for via carbon credits, through the Reduced Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) program -- they want it paid for with cold hard cash (so old-fashioned!). So far, no one except Norway is biting.

If all goes well -- an enormous if, of course -- the U.S. negotiating team arrive at Copenhagen with a web of bi- and multi-lateral side deals on clean energy technology sharing, adaptation research, development assistance, trade deals, and more. The world's biggest polluters will arrive with agreements in hand. Developing countries will see signs of real movement on the part of developed nations and soften their rigid opposition to targets.

And out of it all will come a stronger, more robust climate treaty, scaffolded by the self-interest of the many countries invested in side deals premised on continued international action.

That's the hope anyway. Needless to say: domestic achievements notwithstanding, if Obama can pull it off he'll be assured of a place in history.

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This piece was co-written with colleagues from the Center for American Progress: Julian L. Wong, a Senior Policy Analyst, and Samuel Charap, a Fellow.

The summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow on July 6-8 comes in the middle of a packed international schedule of bilateral and multilateral meetings for the United States on climate change. In the run up to the critical U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen at the end of this year, when the extension or successor to the existing Kyoto Protocol must be agreed upon, it is crucial that the United States and Russia—both major emitters of greenhouse gases and potentially leaders on this crucial issue—explore ways of working together to ensure a positive outcome at these talks. Enhancing cooperation on climate change and energy efficiency should be a major plank of U.S. Russia policy and should be discussed at the highest levels when President Obama meets with President Medvedev next week.

Russia,like the United States,is a significant contributor to global warming. If the European Union is disaggregated Russia is the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide behind the United States and China and still currently ahead of India. More importantly Russian per capita emissions are on the rise, and are projected at this point to approach America’s top rank as per capita emitter by 2030. Russia is also the third-largest consumer of energy and one of the world’s most energy-intensive economies. Making Russia a partner on these issues could be critical in order to advance a sound global climate change agenda.

The Center for American Progress report “After the ‘Reset’: A Strategy and New Agenda for U.S. Russia Policy” will be released on July 2 and outlines three avenues of U.S.-Russia bilateral cooperation on climate and energy issues: cooperation on a new international climate change agreement, building Russia’s capacity for carbon trading, and cooperating on energy efficiency. Here we expand on these proposals.

Our approach is based on the principle that the best way to engage Russia on global warming is to frame cooperation as a form of advancing economic modernization. We must convince the Russians that joining the community of nations on this issue is in their best economic interest.

Cooperation on Copenhagen

The United States should directly engage Russia on reaching a new international climate change agreement.

The build up to the climate summit in Copenhagen is making it clear that broad-based involvement by all countries—but especially the developed countries and major emerging economies in the developing world—is needed to create a consensus on global climate change action. Most of the attention is focused on the United States, the European Union, China, and India as the major players necessary to forge a global deal, and there is insufficient thought given to the role Russia could play in a post-Kyoto agreement. There are however at least two reasons—besides the fact that Russia is a Kyoto signatory and a major emitter—to engage Russia directly in Copenhagen.

First, we should expect some resistance to a Russian embrace of an extension to or replacement of the Kyoto Protocol given the unique history of the relationship between the original assessment of their 2012 Kyoto targets and the transformation of their economy following collapse of the Soviet Union.

Our approach is based on the principle that the best way to engage Russia on global warming is to frame cooperation as a form of advancing economic modernization.

The agreed-to carbon reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol were indexed to 1990 emission levels. Those countries signing the treaty were obliged to reduce their emissions to an agreed-upon level by 2012 relative to the baseline of their 1990 emissions. Russian emissions dropped considerably because of the economic contraction that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, without any additional efforts Russian emissions will not return to their 1990 levels before at least 2020 and Moscow will not be required to curb its emissions by the end of the Kyoto commitment period in 2012.

This means the Russians are likely to oppose stronger caps on emissions, which will be a necessary part of the hoped-for Copenhagen treaty. Indeed, Russia was the last major economy to announce its proposed post-Kyoto targets of 10 to 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Such a proposed range has left many observers underwhelmed because it will actually allow for absolute increases in emissions from Russia’s current state, but the international community should view this as an opening bid rather than final offer by actively engaging with Russia in constructive dialogue.

If we cannot strengthen the treaty and move progressively toward gradual but greater emissions cuts then we will not reach the goal of halving global emissions by 2050, something the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change argues is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Given the sheer quantities of Russian emissions—regardless of their dip below 1990 levels—the Obama administration should work with the Russians to demonstrate that abatement measures are in Moscow’s long-term economic interest.

Improvements in energy efficiency and energy intensity, for example, further economic modernization—one of the Kremlin’s oft-repeated goals—and they will promote more sustainable economic growth. But for the United States to make this argument we must take the lead and make steady progress in adopting strong domestic clean-energy and climate policy, such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act that passed in the U.S. House last week. We must also be prepared to listen to our Russian counterparts and not lecture, since a finger-wagging approach will only backfire in the Russian context.

Second, Russia could be one of the unacknowledged keys to success at Copenhagen given the likely structure of the treaty. According to the architecture of the first U.N. climate treaty the Kyoto Protocol could not have been enacted unless at least 55 countries signed and ratified it representing at least 55 percent of global carbon emissions. When the first round of commitments were announced enough countries were willing to ratify the treaty but their emissions did not add up to the required amount for implementation. So if Russia had not ratified the treaty in November 2004 it would have not gone into effect. Russian participation could again be critical this time because we can expect a similar proviso in the post-Kyoto treaty.

We need to bring the Russians on board for an ambitious agenda before Copenhagen sooner rather than later to avoid a deadlock in the international climate negotiations. Immediate bilateral cooperation and engagement is key in making Russia a partner in addressing climate change—it is not in the U.S. interest for Russia to be a spoiler.

But this cooperation faces significant challenges. There are many in the Russian political establishment who believe that the effects of climate change will be positive for their country. What’s more, policymakers tend to view climate agreements in exclusively economic and not environmental terms. Russian policymakers, like their Chinese counterparts, emphasize that any emissions caps should not threaten Russia’s economic development. However, Russia has recently released a draft climate doctrine that acknowledges the threat posed by climate change—a positive sign.

Building capacity for carbon trading

The United States should help Russia capitalize on the substantial amounts of emission credits it now possesses with the goal of ultimately reducing its emissions.

Russia currently sits on a veritable treasure of tradable carbon credits—by some estimates 1.5 billion euros. Russia is not linked to any existing emissions trading system, such as the European Trading Scheme, and it lacks the institutional capacity to do so. The United States is in a good position to provide capacity building expertise to Russia in establishing an emissions trading market because of our experience in establishing emissions trading markets, most notably the highly successful sulfur dioxide trading scheme in the 1990s and more recently regional (Western Climate Imitative, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and Midwestern Initiative) and voluntary (Chicago Climate Exchange) carbon emissions trading initiatives.

We need to bring the Russians on board for an ambitious agenda before Copenhagen sooner rather than later to avoid a deadlock in the international climate negotiations.

The administration should also create incentives for these U.S. trading centers to collaborate with the Russians to launch a pilot emissions trading scheme in one or more of Russia’s heavy industry sectors. Such efforts can include guidance on how to set up inventory systems for tracking greenhouse gas sources and sinks and to establish the architecture and infrastructure for the actual trading of emission credits, with the long-term goal of linking Russia (or specific sectors) into broader trading systems.

Developing Russia’s capacity in emissions trading will help it to be in a better position to join a large trading scheme as a full participant if and when it agrees to begin stemming its current emissions. This proposal is likely to be met with support from major Russian enterprises, including the state-controlled oil major Rosneft, which has already demonstrated interest in related emissions trading projects. The larger objective of such cooperation should be clear: demonstrating to the Russian government that joining international efforts to solve global warming can be profitable to them by providing a way of joining the international carbon market. The revenues from carbon credit trading will offset the cost of taking on additional cuts at home.

Cooperation on energy efficiency

The United States should also propose a series of cooperative agreements on increasing Russia’s energy efficiency.

One of the most striking features of Russia’s energy profile is its energy intensity—the amount of energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product—which is higher than any of the world’s 10-largest energy-consuming countries, 3.1 times greater than the European Union, and more than twice that of the United States. This massive potential for improvement makes working with the Russians to increase their energy efficiency the most effective short-term way to help them reduce emissions and points toward the clearest path for demonstrating the economic advantages of taking on climate change.

It is important for the United States to adopt this stance to take advantage of the opportunity that has recently opened up in Russia. For the first time the Russian government has demonstrated an interest in increasing efficiency. President Medvedev signed a decree in June 2008 that includes measures aimed at reducing Russia's energy intensity by at least 40 percent by 2020 compared with 2007 levels. And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued a government order earlier this year that calls for a significant increase in the energy efficiency of the Russian electric power sector. Medvedev has on several occasions publicly acknowledged the economic benefits of energy efficiency for Russia’s economy. As such energy efficiency represents an enormous opportunity for collaboration between our two countries.

Fortunately the United States has a ready and successful model for such collaboration in its experience in working with China on industrial energy efficiency. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a research institution supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, has worked with Chinese scientists and the Chinese government to establish an industrial energy efficiency program that benchmarks China’s top 1,000 energy-consuming industries to global best practices.

We recommend that the Obama administration propose a similar type of program that targets Russia’s industrial sectors given the potential for substantial financial savings through energy efficiency in Russia’s industrial sector and the Russian government’s interest. Funding for such a project would come from both the U.S. and Russian governments, working through public-private partnerships, and that any potentially new energy-saving technologies that could emerge from this collaboration be fully shared. We should also frame this project as an opportunity for U.S. and Russian scientists to collaborate on contributing to Russia’s innovation agenda and produce technologies that benefit both countries because of the sensitivity of U.S. involvement in the Russian economy.

Further, the United States can play a role in increasing Russian efficiencies by offering expertise to improve energy conservation at Russia’s end-user level. The United States has had considerable success with a domestic energy efficiency program called Energy Star, which is administered jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Energy Star adopts the public-private partnership model—a concept gaining traction in Russia—by pairing up with businesses to develop energy efficiency compliance codes for a full range of products and practices, which now cover buildings and facilities and over 60 product categories, such as home appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more.

In over 17 years of operation Energy Star has engendered collaboration among 15,000 private- and public-sector organizations, and led to estimated energy savings that translate to $19 billion in 2008 alone. It will be further strengthened by the aforementioned American Clean Energy Security Act should a companion bill in the Senate also pass. We recommend that the United States and Russia use the American experience with Energy Star to develop long-term Russian institutional capacity for establishing best practices, setting energy performance standards, and monitoring energy consumption across a wide range of end uses in Russia.

Russia and the United States were incapable of discussing important issues in the final months of the Bush presidency. The Obama administration now has the opportunity to build a relationship of trust and cooperation to fight a common threat. Working together on advancing energy efficiency in Russia and demonstrating the economic advantages of attending to climate change offers both countries an ideal platform for a new era of constructive diplomacy and joint action. Climate and energy efficiency can also expand the U.S.-Russia relationship beyond the traditional areas of arms control and nonproliferation. President Obama should capitalize on this opportunity starting next week in Moscow when he meets with Medvedev. Confronting this neglected challenge may very well wind up being a key to solving the climate crisis.

See "After the Reset" for a full report on CAP's recommendations for US-Russia relations.

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Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

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

A coalition of 47 environment, science, and faith-based groups have sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to pursue a goal of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees Celcius in upcoming international meetings.

"Failure to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius will have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable nations and communities and will dramatically increase the need for adaptation in the future," they write.

The groups include those on the left side of the green spectrum like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as more moderate groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. The letter represents a notable show of unity between groups currently at odds over climate legislation -- Greenpeace and FOE opposed the bill that passed the House last week, arguing that it is too weak, while EDF and NRDC were key players in brokering the deal.

The organizations call on Obama to endorse the 2-degree threshold next month in Italy at the G8 Summit and the Major Economies Forum on Climate and Energy, to set the playing field for the global climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December. The groups note that 124 countries have agreed on the 2-degree limit, and that the goal is endorsed in the House climate bill.

Here's the letter, and the full list of signatories:

Groups signing the letter:

1 Sky
ActionAid USA
Avaaz.org
CARE
Center for International Environmental Law
Center for Biological Diversity
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Clean Water Action
Climate Action Network International
Climate Solutions
Climate Law & Policy Project
Conservation International
Defenders of Wildlife
Earthjustice
EcoEquity
Education for Global Warming Solutions
Environmental and Energy Study Institute
Energy Action
Environment Northeast
Environment America
Environmental Defense Fund
Environmental Law & Policy Center
Fresh Energy
Friends of the Earth
Green For All
Greenpeace
ICLEI-USA
Institute for Policy Studies
Interfaith Power and Light
International Forum on Globalization
International Rivers
League of Conservation Voters
National Audubon Society
Natural Resources Defense Council
National Wildlife Federation
Oceana
Oil Change International
Oxfam America
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Pew Environment Group
Sierra Club
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Sustainable Obtainable Solutions
The Nature Conservancy
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Climate Action Network
World Wildlife Fund

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

The Climate Post is a weekly roundup of climate news, produced by the The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.

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The word "Copenhagen" hangs over climate discussions everywhere from Washington to Wagga Wagga. That’s because in December the world travels to the Danish capital for the 15th Conference of Parties meeting, affectionately referred to as COP15. There, nations large and small hope to reach a new international agreement that would ratchet down global emissions beginning after 2012.

Expectations for a conclusive deal have diminished over the last several months. But negotiations of every stripe continue, and will accelerate through the summer and fall. This week saw nations, businesses, and advocacy groups ramp up activity.

Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, traveled to Paris, where he met with representatives from 15 other major economies and the European Union. Together these nations contribute more than 80 percent of industrial CO2 emissions. European officials pressed the U.S. for a stronger emissions reduction program than the one outlined in current climate legislation. Europe’s own goals are tied to the rest of the world. Leaders there have committed by 2020 to a 20 percent reduction in their emissions, below 1990 levels. If negotiators produce a new agreement in Copenhagen, the E.U. has vowed to raise that target to 30 percent.

Stern told his counterparts that pollution reductions below targets in the current House of Representatives climate bill are politically unfeasible: "We are jumping as high as the political system will tolerate."

Sino the Times: A more promising note rang from Beijing, where the government has issued draft car fuel economy standards tougher than those President Barack Obama announced last week, according to the New York Times. Chinese cars currently average about 35.8 miles per gallon and would be required to reach 42.2 mpg in 2015 (Obama’s new standard is 35.5 mpg by 2016). Chinese officials have yet to address a loophole large enough to drive a Hummer through: Standards apply only to cars produced in China — not imports.

In Beijing, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Chinese leaders that the "climate crisis is game-changing for the U.S.-China relationship." Pelosi visited Beijing days after the Chinese government issued its formal negotiating stance for Copenhagen, which asks major emitters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 40 percent by 2020. It’s hard to come up with a precise analogy for how difficult such a target would be. But certainly Americans could meet it easily by, uh, eliminating all household and commercial refrigeration.

Fortunately, striking a deal might ultimately cost much less than our entire national store of popsicles, ice cream, and frozen vegetables. Reuters interviews Gao Guangsheng, a top official in the National Coordination Committee for Climate Change, who acknowledges flexibility in the Chinese position. "I think Copenhagen may not be the final negotiation. It may set policy intentions so that we can keep negotiating," he said.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who also went to China, put a finer point on current negotiations between the world’s two largest emitters: "Copenhagen will be defined by what the U.S. and China agree on in the next few weeks."

Other nations admit little or no such sunlight between their formal and informal negotiating positions. India has said it will look to the developed world for definitive leadership before considering a rigorous climate policy. ClimateWire explores the task facing climate advocates in India tilting at this particular windmill. "The Indian government’s agenda will not change until Indians want it to change," Malini Mehra, the founder of the Indian nonprofit Centre for Social Markets told U.N. Foundation audience in Washington, DC.

Climate glasnost?: Even intransigent national positions on climate change can change abruptly and dramatically, as they did after the 2008 U.S. election. They can also do so without warning.

Russia surprised the climate world by finally acknowledging the potentially catastrophic threats of manmade warming, Nature reports. The magnitude of this change might not be immediately apparent. Imagine that Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.) jettisoned his longstanding ridicule of basic science and climate policy, and adopted a position as rigorous as that of Rep. Henry Waxman, the powerful House committee chairman and lead author of that chamber’s current climate bill. That’s what happened when the natural resources minister briefed the Russian Cabinet in April. Officials calculated that the economy already takes nearly a $2 billion hit every year, because of climate-related flooding, droughts, and storms.

This thaw in climate politics amounts to a major political shift in Russian attitudes. And its intended result is to prevent actual thaw that would amount to a climate shift in Russian latitudes. Edward Schuur of the University of Florida and colleagues write in Nature that warmer temperatures unleash soil carbon stored for many thousands of years in permafrost. Over the next few decades, carbon release from tundra could "overwhelm" the amount that plants use to grow, creating another accelerator for warming.

"If it isn’t boring, it isn’t green": Stern and Pelosi are not the U.S.’s only world travelers this week. Some 500 business leaders convened in the state of Denmark itself, calling on nations to halve their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a target much lower than the 80 percent or so advocated by Obama and congressional allies.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a London audience that whitewashing the world’s roofs would reflect enough solar energy back into space to match emissions reductions from taking 11 million cars off the road. This is worth keeping in mind in coming weeks and months as Congress considers climate legislation (Legislators have the week off for Memorial Day). Little things, aggregated globally, mean a lot.

"Cap and trade" or no "cap and trade," the White House and Capitol are unlikely to ever change how they address global warming. That’s because both buildings reflect about 240 watts per square meter of solar energy right back up into the sky. (It’s the same principle behind parental encouragement to wear light shirts on sunny summer days. White and light colors reflect energy; black and dark colors absorb it.)

That’s just one approach. These buildings’ whiteness comes from heavy, hydrocarbon paints, which given the size of the buildings probably store several tons of carbon. The buildings themselves keep many tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. The Capitol Rotunda alone, made of Triassic and Cretaceous period sandstone, keeps carbon locked away in rock.

Climate Post is, of course, kidding in pointing out these relatively paltry stores of carbon. But maybe as elected officials and policymakers consider paths forward, they’ll take a moment to meditate on or marvel at the bigger picture — the much bigger picture — of the history they are making (either way), the common U.S. history that led them to this episode, its role in the community of nations, and the community of nations’ current, consequential role in the history of the Earth’s climate and life. How "cool" is that?

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

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

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

This piece was co-written by Nina Hachigian and Julian Wong of the Center for American Progress.

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We are now entering the six-month period before the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, which are intended to hammer out a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012. Progress on climate policy domestically will increase U.S. leverage in these talks, but President Barack Obama should look for additional ways to improve the American negotiating position than what we currently have on the table.

In particular we need a better accounting of what the United States—and other countries as well—are doing to achieve meaningful carbon reductions. Importantly, a more detailed analysis would reveal that the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACES, recently passed through committee by Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), would achieve more carbon reduction than first meets the eye.

The soft underbelly of ACES is its 2020 midterm carbon cap targets, which have been assailed by some environmentalists. At 17 percent below 2005 levels these targets apparently give the Obama administration precious little to meet global expectations about U.S. action on climate change. For starters these caps fall below the European Union’s agreed-upon 20 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2020. If we were to meet our allies at these goals then the European Union will increase their midterm reductions to 30 percent. At its current levels ACES does not trigger this critical shift.

More troubling, there are already clear signs that ACES’s targets are far less than we need to garner China’s full engagement in an international agreement on capping emissions. China, now a larger emitter than the United States, will not sign on to any sort of hard limits to its emissions without a clear commitment by the far-richer United States to do so. To create some negotiating room for itself, Beijing has publicly called for much more aggressive cuts from the developed world—a 40-percent reduction by 2020 from 1990 levels. The U.S. State Department negotiating team, under the leadership of Center for American Progress’ former Senior Fellow Todd Stern, has already indicated that this is an untenable goal for the United States, regardless of what some may consider the possibility of such cuts. This is disappointing especially now that China is taking these issues more seriously than ever before and is showing signs that they may be prepared to commit to some sort of mandate under a new treaty. The coming summer of climate negotiations is already looking long and hot.

Are we then at an impasse? Possibly not. If we look beyond the stated target caps in ACES at the potential reductions in greenhouse gases from its complementary requirements for energy efficiency and intensity improvements, as well as the additional reductions that could potentially be captured by other parts of the legislation in verifiable offsets, then the picture improves. What we essentially need is a different accounting measure which will show the full potential of the legislation to make reductions in emissions below business-as-usual, or BAU scenarios by the energy provisions of the bill plus a flexible architecture in the legislation which can get more cuts down the road. We suggest measuring such progress using “carbon cap equivalents” as a way of profiling a country’s commitment to meeting emissions reductions.

With this carbon cap equivalents approach the better measure of what each country is doing is derived by adding up the full range of supplemental and complementary proposals to each country’s carbon cap and converting this into one comparable figure of what these emissions reductions would effectively amount to if they had been the result of a carbon cap alone. The modeling will be complex, but we should open up the language of the hoped-for Copenhagen treaty so that signatory nations can demonstrate their acceptance of the treaty goals through such equivalents—representing the full range of their policy profile to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—above and beyond their formal cap.

A recent proposal by the Australian delegation to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action calls for something similar to what we are suggesting. Namely, they propose that in Copenhagen we allow countries to meet their nationally appropriate mitigation targets through measures over and above a carbon cap. This is not an attempt to side-step the goals of the UNFCCC process, but rather to provide a more honest comparison of what we are all doing in ways that are not only appropriate for our particular economic histories but also are compatible with the restrictions and opportunities provided by our individual policy frameworks.

If we were to take this broader view, and take measure of the full breadth of complementary actions contemplated by the proposed Waxman-Markey legislation, then we get a different picture of the potential impact of this legislation. According to a recent study by the World Resources Institute, if one considers the full range of complementary provisions in the Waxman-Markey bill, in addition to the “cap-and-trade” portions, such as international forestry projects, industrial performance standards, residential energy-efficiency measures, and international offsets, then emissions reductions of up to 23 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 are realizable—an outcome that would actually meet the European Union’s standards. WRI further projects that such a full range of actions under the bill would lead to emissions reductions of 77 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a result consistent with what is needed by the international community as a whole to contain the increase of average global temperatures to the catastrophe-averting limit of 2°C.

So too for the way we should approach our negotiating position with the major emitters in the developing world. China appears to be making steady progress toward its goal of achieving a 20-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2010. But because we have framed the solutions to global warming only in terms of the formal carbon caps that have been accepted by a given country, the American media and policymakers don’t generally count other improvements in a country’s carbon profile in their assessment of the country’s commitment to the process or of their real improvements. This needs to be changed in order to get a fair comparison of what everyone is doing.

For example, if one were to look at the last major attempt to push legislation through on climate change in the United States—the Lieberman-Warner Act, which failed in the U.S. Senate last summer—analysis at that time by the Center for Clean Air Policy suggested that the combined unilateral activities of China, Brazil, and Mexico in improvements in energy efficiency and energy intensity would achieve greater effective reductions in carbon emissions below BAU by 2010 than the emissions targets the proposed U.S. legislation would achieve by 2015.

Nonetheless, one of the major objections to Lieberman-Warner, which we are hearing again today in the debate over Waxman-Markey, was that it wasn’t worth doing in a world where China was doing nothing. A more rigorous assessment of what they were doing then could have produced a different assessment of that legislation. A clearer-eyed view of what we all are doing now to make progress could produce a different assessment of what we can get out of the U.S. Congress, and next, the Copenhagen meeting.

So, where do we stand now? ACES is most likely as good as the politics of this moment can possibly deliver. And when a full accounting is given of what can be achieved in terms of its carbon cap equivalent, it becomes a more attractive piece of legislation than it at first may appear. This legislation is not too ambitious for the House and Senate to eventually pass. It could be sufficient as a positive incentive to move along Copenhagen or other international treaties on climate change as well so long as we open up the playing field and allow everyone to count the full measure of their improvements in energy efficiency, intensity, and other complementary polices as part of the demonstration of how they are pulling their weight.

The community of nations needs to be open to such creative solutions to continue to make progress on climate change. In many ways, the Copenhagen process is already far more advanced, nuanced, and realistic than the Kyoto negotiations ever were. Countries are discussing the nitty gritty of greenhouse gas limits, sector by sector, and discussions of registry and verification techniques are far more detailed than ever before. The deadline that the world set for itself this coming December has become the mother of diplomatic invention. Now is the time to step up and deliver from this enormous bounty of creativity that has been spurred by this deadline.

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Punctuation can be the greatest impediment to getting nations to see eye-to-eye on any issue.Jennie Faber via Flickr

It was only a comma, albeit a hotly disputed one. For me, the single punctuation mark represents a major reason why the world may fail to get to grips with global warming in time, and why a meeting this week may provide the best chance of a breakthrough.

The comma sat there, in all its splendor, deep in a UN negotiating text, penned in square brackets to show it was a matter of dispute. For days top diplomatic talent from the world's capitals argued about whether it should remain, or be removed, without getting anywhere near agreement. And I was trying, as a reporter, to make sense of it.

Eventually, I had enough. My wife was with me at the negotiations, in New York, and we decided it was time for a break. I had to give a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, if I remember rightly, about a book I had written, and so we hired a car and set off slowly through New England.

It was just after Labor Day; the weather was lovely, prices were down, and the pound was reasonably strong. We headed for Cape Cod, stopping off on the way in Mystic and Stonington in Connecticut. We rode on scooters around Martha's Vineyard, went birding at dawn on Nantucket, and enjoyed arguing with the actors playing the pilgrims at the Plymouth Plantation. After ten glorious days we returned, much happier, to Manhattan -- only to find the bracketed comma still the center of high-level international debate.

I remember that Ronald Reagan's campaign for the presidency was getting into full swing, so it must have been 1980. I know that the presence or absence of the comma changed the meaning of the sentence it adorned, but cannot begin to remember what that sentence was about. The talks were the so-called "global negotiations," now long forgotten, on establishing a "new economic order" between rich and poor countries. Predictably, the talks ran -- if such a word can be used to describe their snail's pace -- into the sand.

Little, alas, has changed in the three decades since. I have, I admit, yet to spot a bracketed comma in the texts of coming out of the various international climate negotiations, but their pace seems no faster. Week after week alarming evidence piles up about the impact that global warming is already having around the world. But to say that progress is glacial is to do an injustice to the rapidity of what is happening to the world's rivers of ice.

Early this month, ten days of negotiations in Bonn made almost no progress, even though the scientists have convincingly shown that time is getting desperately short if a new agreement is to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December. The next round of climate talks, not much more than a month away now, is not expected to get much further.

The negotiating conferences are strange events. Enclosed in a tight bubble in almost identical conference halls around the globe, they quickly lose contact with the world outside their air-conditioned anonymity. High passions arise over apparantly arcane phrases. Days pass in fruitless stalemate, and success or failure depends on whether last minute sessions headed by ministers, who have flown at the last minute, achieve breakthrough in punishing all-night sessions -- or whether the need to vacate the center to make way for the next event (in one case an underwear convention) forecloses on saving the world.

All the same, there have been stunning successes when the international community gathers to confront a shared threat. Perhaps the greatest was at the other end of the 1980s, when the world managed, just, to agree on the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer. The wording of the agreed treaty was so sensitive that the organizers prohibited its translation into the other official UN languages, like French and Spanish, for fear that the resulting minute changes in meaning would wreck the consensus. But it led to the world phasing out ozone depleting services far faster than anyone thought possible.

The breakthrough happened because the negotiations had two vital elements. One was a determined headbanger, Mostafa Tolba -- at that time the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme -- who thought nothing of cooping up the key negotiators for talks in an airless room, and refusing to let them out until they has reached agreement. The other was the drive for success by a powerful nation, in this case the United States under Reagan (though it is thought that this was partly because the old boy did not know what was going on). Most of the other successes have had similar vital ingredients.

And there lies the importance of this week's meeting in Washington. Barack Obama invited the world's key nations -- responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions -- to try to inject enegy into the global climate negotiations and prepare for a special climate summit in July, to be held in concert with the G8 meeting.

The U.S. is back in the lead on climate, and the meeting that happened on Monday and Tuesday might just provide the top-level impetus needed to get things going. If it doesn't, we may end up less concerned with the commas than with a full stop. Period.

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

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The international global warming negotiations in Bonn, Germany have just wrapped up. They began with a loud applause as U.S. Special Climate Envoy Todd Stern announced that the U.S. is back. And they ended with the reality of the work that needs to be done over the next 8 months to ensure a strong agreement in Copenhagen. There is a lot to be done, but there are hints that with strong leadership the pieces can fall into place.

While little progress was concluded at this meeting, some signs emerged of how the pieces will fall into place for the four key elements essential to getting a strong agreement:

Here are some issues that arose that will need to come together over the next couple of months if the world is to commit itself to a strong path to solve global warming.

The U.S. is "back"

Special Envoy Todd Stern's remarks provided a strong signal of President Obama's commitment to reengage the U.S. in international negotiations (full remarks are available here). Or as he put it:

... I want to say on behalf of President Obama and his entire team that we are very glad to be back, we want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us.

His speech also reaffirmed two key pieces that the U.S. will be bringing to the negotiations:

Implications of the emerging international elements in the U.S. climate legislation

Only a day after Todd Stern's remarks, the "sprint" began to pass a clean energy and global warming bill in the US. Chairman Waxman and Markey from the U.S. House of Representatives released a discussion draft which contains a number of key tools to help secure a strong international agreement in Copenhagen later this year.

How these provisions play out in the U.S. debate (and other capitals around the world) will be a preview of what can be agreed in Copenhagen as these are crucial elements that countries will have to bring to Copenhagen.

Developing country action and relation to incentives

While there are still a number of proposals by countries for the "developing country emissions reduction package", there was a lot of frank conversation about the development of "low carbon strategies" by developing countries. While the specifics of these strategies are still under discussion, they essentially outline a medium-term strategy of where the country can head in a carbon constrained world while meeting their development objectives, what actions they can implement on their own, and what actions they could achieve with assistance from the developed world.

Under these strategies developing countries could commit to reduce emissions in key sectors of the economy and receive incentives for further action through the carbon market and technology agreements. This would mean evolving from "offsets" to sectoral approaches for developing countries.

Unfortunately this aspect is being debated at the moment as a "chicken and egg scenario" (as I discussed here) -- with developing countries not willing to show what actions they can do until the developed countries detail what assistance they can provide and developed countries not outlining what assistance they will provide until they know what actions the developing countries will undertake. It is a dangerous dynamic with the future of the planet hanging in the balance.

It is essential to include deforestation reduction efforts in the Copenhagen agreement

While deforestation reductions weren't central to the negotiations in Bonn, Germany there was a surprising moment where a large number of countries signaled quite forcefully that they want deforestation reductions included in the Copenhagen agreement. This is a strong sign that we might finally help create the tools to reducing the deforestation emissions that account for about 20% of global emissions.

We need the political leaders at the highest level to come together before Copenhagen for a strong agreement

Climate negotiators will need their leaders to point them in the right direction if we are going to get a strong agreement. There are a lot of very difficult political decisions that will need to be agreed before and during the Copenhagen meeting. And these will require decisions "above the pay grade" of climate negotiators if we are to have any chance.

A number of venues are emerging for these leaders to start to send the signal that there is space for a strong agreement…that countries are ready to set aside their differences and get into the business of designing the workable strategies. These world leaders will be meeting a number of times, including at the Major Economies Forum just announced by President Obama, the G20, the Summit of the Americas, and a number of key bilateral engagements such as the US-China dialogue (that will bring together countries representing most of the world's global warming pollution). I hope that time is used wisely.

World leaders want an agreement in Copenhagen

At the recent G20 meeting in London the leaders of the largest 20 economies in the world (and the world's biggest emitters) agreed to the following direction for their negotiators (PDF):

Closing the gap over the coming months … it can be done

There a number of promising ideas that are beginning to emerge. But we'll need to quickly get past the posturing and into structuring the strong agreement by making some of the necessary difficult choices.

Over the next month or so, developing a strong international response to global warming will focus on the discussions occurring in the Major Economies Forum and back in Bonn, Germany in June. At the June meeting, countries will have to start to "show their cards" as they'll have a draft negotiating text which will focus the negotiations.

So there is still a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time, but some promising signs are emerging that it can still be done. All paths will inevitably lead through the U.S. as countries are waiting for U.S. leadership.

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