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Keith Kloor

The U.S. Congressional climate bill will be tabled until next year, reports The Wall Street Journal. Says Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus:

"It's common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year."

Just how important is the U.S. climate bill to a climate change agreement in Copenhagen? It’s everything, argues Geoffrey Lean in Grist:

“Never before has such a vital, international treaty depended so crucially on the 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Even previous environmental breakthroughs, such as the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer or the Washington Convention on Endangered Species, were preceded by U.S. legislation. As such, the rest of the world is experiencing for the first time how its vital interests can be affected by American politics, as senators from coal or oil states object to legislation that would curb emissions from fossil fuels.”

In lieu of this, “the Obama Administration is considering endorsing a limited short-term climate pact,” reports Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post. She writes:

“Backing an interim agreement -- which would fall far short of what many European and developing nations envisioned when President Obama took office -- would be an attempt to keep the U.N.-sponsored talks from being viewed a failure, say administration and congressional officials.”

Enough of all this gloomy talk, admonished European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, in a press conference yesterday. As Green Inc. reports, Dimas:

“criticized world leaders who had played down the possibility of a strong outcome at the Copenhagen meeting, suggesting they were too pessimistic.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 13, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

Passing climate legislation through the US Senate may be tricky, but that hasn’t scared off the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from doing its part. As Stephen Power at the WSJ’s Environmental Capitol notes:

“Congress might be a long way from passing legislation to fight climate change, but the Obama administration appears one step closer to creating its own regime for controlling greenhouse gases.”

Now the President has said he may even attend the UN conference in Copenhagen ---if a deal is at hand. The AP has the scoop:

"If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge, then certainly that's something that I will do."

But if an accord isn’t reached this year, the global climate-change negotiations may be “headed toward the same aimless end” as the notoriously endless ‘Doha round’ of global trade talks, writes Bryan Walsh at Time magazine.

Speaking of something once thought endless, it’s been 20 years since the cold war crumbled in a heap. Now, a certain key historical figure from that time has emerged to implore today’s leaders to “tear down” another kind of wall. In a guest commentary at The Times of London, Mikhail Gorbachev writes:

“Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War.”

If there’s going to be such a paradigm shift, it’s safe to say that most environmentalists weren’t betting that the UK would approve a new fleet of “clean coal” and nuclear power stations. As energy secretary Ed Miliband puts it in The Guardian:

"The threat of climate change means we need to make a transition from a system that relies heavily on high-carbon fossil fuels, to a radically different system that includes nuclear, renewable and clean coal power.”

Ready for another puzzler? What’s going on with that Indian government report claiming there is no evidence that global warming has shrunk Himmalayan glaciers? Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, is hopping mad over this, and gives The Guardian an earful, and then some.

"We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."

Finally, in the feel-good story of the day, Politico reports that two U.S. political combatants know how to set aside their differences at the end of the day and share warm and fuzzy gifts. "We are really very good friends,” Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer tells Politico, referring to Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.' Adds Boxer: “It’s a good working relationship we have. People are very surprised about it.”

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 10, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

Prospects for the U.S. congressional climate bill appear grim, writes Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post:

“With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.”

David Roberts at Grist offers a similar prognosis for a bill he says that is already “far weaker than what’s needed.” Because of America’s institutional “political dysfunction,” Roberts predicts:

“There’s every chance it will a) get weaker still and b) fail to pass in the end.”

Amidst this backdrop, cap-and-trade, which is the basis for the congressional climate legislation, is getting raked over the coals again. Two attorneys for the U.S Environmental Protection Agency penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, in which they asserted:

“The House and Senate climate bills are not a first step in the right direction. They would give away valuable rights in cap-and-trade permits and create a trillion-dollar carbon-offsets market that will not lead to needed reductions. Together, the illusion of greenhouse-gas reductions and the creation of powerful lobbies seeking to protect newly created profits in permits and offsets would lock in climate degradation for a decade or more.”

Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs in the November/December issue of Scientific American takes a similarly dim view of “the cumbersome cap-and-trade system proposed by the House of Representatives. Too much is at stake, argues Sachs:

“We’ll need to spend trillions of dollars over time to save the planet from climate change. All the more reason not to let lobbyists make a financial game out of this deadly serious effort.”

Did American politicians thus bet on the wrong horse, muses Keith Johnson at the WSJ’s Environmental Capitol? He suggests it might be wise to set aside the conventional wisdom about carbon taxes being “a political dead-end.” Johnson lays out how environmentalists can find common ground with deficit hawks on a climate bill centered on a carbon tax.

Whatever policy instrument eventually gets put in place to reduce carbon emissions, it may still be too late to save the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As The Times of London reports:

“The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will be gone within two decades, according to scientists who say that the rapid melting of its glacier cap over the past century provides dramatic physical evidence of global climate change.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 03, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly. These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely.”

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, tells the meeting to make progress (AFP).

“A good deal for the climate is still possible. All that is missing is political will, not least from the US, which under President Obama has fallen far behind the rest of the world, and is threatening to undermine a planet-saving agreement in Copenhagen.”

Damon Moglen, of Greenpeace US, comments after his organisation stormed the town’s Sagrada Familia to unveil banners (AFP).

“I feel it [is] very hard to imagine how the US president can receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10 in Oslo only a few hundred kilometres [from Copenhagen] if he has sent an American delegation to Copenhagen with no offer.”

Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, takes aim at America (Guardian).

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb. Global leaders need to act now to stop the needless deaths of millions of children.”

David Mepham, Save the Children’s policy director, says climate change could kill 250,000 children in 2010 and over 400,000 by 2030 (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 02, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

So if Copenhagen doesn’t produce a global warming treaty next month, which now seems likely, what about setting up a global environmental body? The environmental ministers for Italy and Kenya float this idea in a Guardian op-ed. They note that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Sarkozy of France are lobbying to have the idea taken up at Copenhagen:

“In a letter to the UN secretary general [Merkel and Sarkozy] emphasised that we must overhaul environmental governance and use Copenhagen climate talks in December to progress the creation of a world environmental organisation.”

In their op-ed, the two environmental ministers argue:

“History has proven that strong international institutions are the precondition for building any successful international cooperation. The global financial crisis and the collaboration through the G20 and the International Monetary Fund are recent examples.”

Anyone familiar with the bad environmental press Canada has been receiving of late will be surprised to learn that the country has agreed to preserve vast tracts of its Boreal Forest from development, which will helpfully soak up huge amounts of carbon. The action, as the Guardian notes:

“is somewhat of an anomaly for Canada, whose government has been accused of sabotaging the global climate change talks by its development of the Alberta tar sands and its refusal to make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.”

Three days of hearings on climate legislation in the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee concluded on Thursday. The big story to emerge, according to Politico, is a key moderate Democrat’s “serious reservations” about the bill. Recalcitrant Republicans, meanwhile, heard about the national security implications of climate change from retired military brass and former Republican Sen. John Warner, who is a close ally of the military. He cautioned:

"We are talking about energy insecurity, water and food shortages, and climate-driven social instability. We ignore these threats at the peril of our national security and at great risk to those in uniform."

Committee Republicans, for their part, seem more interested in winning additional time to study the bill’s cap-and-trade program.

The African Union takes up the issue of "climate refugees" in a new treaty that addresses the plight of displaced people. According to IRIN, a U.N. news service:

“the inclusion of displacement by natural disasters was informed by the global debate on the need to develop a framework for the rights of ‘climate refugees’ - people uprooted from their homes and crossing international borders - because the changing climate threatened their survival.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 30, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Hopes that the UN conference in Copenhagen will result in an ambitious climate treaty have faded, with UN climate chief Yvo de Boer now conceding that reaching a legally binding agreement will be impossible this year.

If December’s summit fails to deliver a strong accord, there will be some obvious culprits: the global recession, which has made nations reluctant to commit cash to the problem, and the US Senate, where horn-locking among lawmakers has delayed the passage of domestic legislation.

But even without these bumps in the road, some say the challenge set for negotiators in Copenhagen may simply have been too great from outset. In a feature out today on Nature Reports Climate Change (free access), Mason Inman looks at the UN summit from the perspective of researchers who study cooperation, some of whom argue that trying to get an effective multi-faceted treaty agreed between 192 nations is a waste of time. Many behavioural economists say — and common sense dictates — that a strong agreement would be more easily negotiated between fewer parties.

The legitimacy of this claim is perhaps evidenced by the recent bilateral talks between two of the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters, China and India, who last week signed a five-year pact to present a united front at international climate negotiations. Now, the US is now seeking to broker similar agreements, and according to some reports, US climate envoy Todd Stern says that such bilateral deals — with Russia and Brazil also — could be the building blocks for an international agreement in December.

From the perspective of political haggling, this makes sense. Cooperation in Copenhagen will only be achieved if those responsible for the majority of emissions can agree on how to apportion responsibility for climate change fairly, as well as on the incentives and deterrents that will ensure compliance, rather than encourage free-riding.

And according to those who study cooperation, it’s all about the carrots and sticks. Writes Inman:

Suppose there’s a country — call it Slackistan — that is emitting loads of carbon dioxide, and doesn’t want to cut back. If Slackistan can somehow convince all the other countries to take action, but do nothing itself, it gets all of the benefits of a cooler climate with none of effort. In game theory lingo, that’s called free riding.

An effective global deal on climate change has to, therefore, use carrots or sticks to nudge countries away from the default strategy — that of Slackistan — and towards cooperation. Figuring out how to create these incentives is the key, many game theorists say, to breaking the current stalemate and to keeping a strong agreement running for many decades.

Continue reading "Climate games: small pacts are no big deal" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 29, 2009
Categories: Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

The public battle starts anew on the U.S. congressional climate & energy bill, as senate hearings get underway today. Keith Johnson over at the WSJ’s Environmental Capital believes that three camps will shape the debate:

“Those that believe climate legislation will actually strengthen the economy, those that figure it will have significant but manageable costs, and those that figure it will further burden a recession-challenged economy. Much of the opposition in the Senate—both from Republicans and Democrats—centers on how big the final bill is and who picks up the tab.”

While the proposed legislation is slated to cut greenhouse gases by about 80 percent by 2050, Grist predicts there will be plenty of concessions to coal, nuclear, and natural gas proponents, and even then:

“Reaching a compromise, as the debate over health care reform is already showing, will come down to a key question: How much are the Democrats willing to give away in order to secure one or two votes from the other side of the aisle?”

Despite the tough congressional slog, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he was hopeful the U.S. congress would pass the bill before the upcoming Copenhagen climate change conference in December. At a press conference on Monday, the Secretary General said he would be personally calling Senators to pick up the pace.

Whatever happens in Congress, pressure is mounting for President Obama to bring his prestige and Nobel aura to Copenhagen. That’s not likely to happen, reports The Times. According to this story:

“a source close to the Administration said it was ‘hard to see the benefit’ of his going to Copenhagen if there was no comprehensive deal for him to close or sign. Another expert, who did not want to be named, said he would be ‘really, really shocked’ if Mr Obama went to Copenhagen, adding that European hopes about the power of his Administration to transform the climate change debate in a matter of months bore little relation to reality.”

Despite the increasingly bleak outlook for a comprehensive deal at Copenhagen, people around the world on Saturday expressed their concern about global warming. At over 5,000 events, signs and banners were unfurled that read 350, a symbolic number in reference to 350 parts per million, which many scientists have said should be the limit for carbon dioxide concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere. (We’re currently topping out at 387 parts per million.)

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 27, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

If all the maneuvering in advance of Copenhagen is beginning to resemble a high-stakes poker game, then the European Union has thrown its cards down on the table this week. As the Guardian reported:

“The EU negotiating position offers to slash greenhouse gas emissions by between 80-95% by 2050 and to deepen cuts from 20 to 30% by 2020 if other world powers sign up for similar action.”

That’s a pretty big if, especially in the case of the United States, since the U.S. official position is that it won’t commit to any targets until its Congress passes a climate change bill that is now in the senate. “Without such a commitment,” the New York Times writes, “other nations are loath to make their own pledges.”

Except the EU, that is. There’s still plenty of deal-making happening on the sidelines, though. For example, the border between China and India may be heating up over competing land claims, but that hasn’t stopped the two countries from inking a deal to cooperate on energy and climate issues ahead of Copenhagen.

As Keith Johnson over at the WSJ's Environmental Capitol notes:

"The battle over the Senate climate bill starts in earnest today, with more details on the Kerry-Boxer bill, fresh economic analysis from the EPA, and a speech by President Obama backing the measure."

Greens are thus wringing their hands over a new Pew Research Center poll that finds:

“There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.” Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research center, tells AP that the poll's results probably reflect the bleak economic landscape:

“The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things.”

Still, as Grist observes, there is a sliver lining:

"There were two small (and puzzling) bits of consolation in the poll: many respondents support limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, and many want the U.S. to join an international climate-change plan."

That's precisely why people should look at the poll in a larger context, Roger Pielke, Jr., argues, in his analysis of the data:

"One reason to stop focusing on what people think about the science of climate change is that a majority of the public supports action on emissions as well as international cooperation on climate change. The policy challenge is thus to design policies that can be effective given the strong political support that has existed on this topic for some time. The realities are that support is about as strong as it is likely to be, and really hasn't changed much over a decade or longer."

Ironically, the Poll came out a day after 18 scientific organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Congress, reaffirming “the multiple independent lines of evidence” for climate change:

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.”

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 23, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Keith Kloor, Opinion, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reaching a climate deal in Copenhagen will depend on rich nations’ proactive commitment to making mandatory emission cuts at home, prominent experts from India and China reiterate in a couple of opinion pieces in Nature [subscription] today. And it will require exceptional diplomatic skill, adds a veteran climate negotiator.

While accepting the United Nation’s principle of ‘common but differentiated’ responsibility, India cannot yet agree to mandatory domestic emissions limits, says Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. At the most, India might offer “at an appropriate stage of the negotiations” the country’s National Action Plan on Climate Change as part of a global package of commitments.

In return for voluntary domestic action, India will expect from the developed world technical and financial aid for switching to low-carbon technologies and adapting to anticipated climate change, Pachauri explains. “India feels strongly that on the basis of historical responsibility and consideration of equity, developed countries should provide financial support for adaptation in developing countries,” he says.

Jiahua Pan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies in Beijing follows a similar line of thought in outlining China’s position. The G8’s intention to halve global emissions by 2050, with 80% cuts by the developed and 20% by the developing world, translates into lasting inequity, he argues. A fair deal, says Pan, would require wealthier countries, which currently emit greenhouse gases at almost five times the per capita rate of developing nations and economies in transition, to cut their emissions by at least 40 % by 2020.

“The developing nations will have every reason to follow suit if the rich nations demonstrate leadership,” he says.

A successful deal at Copenhagen will furthermore depend on financial resources for adaptation measures in poorer countries, including technology transfer, he says. He points out that China already invests more heavily in low-carbon energy than most rich nations. But he cautions that the shift to carbon-free energy sources comes with competitive disadvantages. Fears that a premature shift will slow economic development are virulent throughout the developing world, he says.

“Developed countries are concerned with immediate negative economic effects, whereas the developing countries are worried about their future well-being if they sign up to a legally binding, but unrealistic, target.”

In a third piece, Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, the Argentine diplomat who led the negotiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, argues that success in Copenhagen will critically depend on the skills of the lead negotiator.

Estrada-Oyuela recounts the delicate international diplomacy, seasoned with episodes of near-failure and last-minute breakthroughs, which brought about the all-too modest Kyoto treaty. Inexperience on the part of the Danish minister of energy and climate, Connie Hedergaard, who will officially preside over the Copenhagen talks, could prove a stumbling block on the road to a more ambitious successor agreement, he warns.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 22, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Opinion, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Quirin Schiermeier

The European Union’s environment ministers have reportedly agreed on a negotiation mandate for Sweden for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. Sweden currently holds the EU presidency, which rotates every six months. (German).

The EU has previously said it will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 % by 2020. At a speech to the European Parliament, Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish environment minister, yesterday reiterated that the EU will agree to 30 % cuts only if other parties make sufficient commitments in Copenhagen.

“We see the 30 per cent target as a lever to convince other parties to join us in being more ambitious. By 2050 emissions should have dropped by at least 80 per cent,” he said.

At today’s talks in Luxembourg, environment ministers of the 27 EU member states also called for the Copenhagen climate talks in December to set targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from ships and airplanes. By 2020, global emissions from aviation should be cut by 10 %, and emissions from shipping by 20 %, compared with 2005 levels, the group said according to news reports.

Meanwhile, at a meeting yesterday of EU finance ministers, Poland and other eastern EU member countries blocked a decision on climate adaptation aid for developing countries. The group is concerned that their national contribution to the planned adaptation fund will overburden their economies.

Andreas Borg, the Swedish finance minister, complained about “a lack of commitment by certain member states”.

The EU’s heads of states will now attempt to resolve the issue at a council meeting next week in Brussels, when the EU’s negotiation position for Copenhagen is to be rubber-stamped.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 21, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, In the News, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Has continuing criticism of the controversial Superfreakonomics book taken an ugly turn? Co-author Stephen Dubner believes so and fires back at his NYT blog, asserting that critics have:

“given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not.”

Roger Pielke Jr., never one to shy away from a battle, believes that Dubner and his co-author Steven Levitt have indeed been critized by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress. Dubner's charges have been denied by Romm, who has written multiple, lengthy posts in just the last 24 hours to defend himself. Regardless of who claims the high ground in this episode, Bradford Plumer reminds us over at The New Republic's website that Dubner has yet to "address any of the errors that scientists like William Connolley have pointed out," which Olive Heffernan summarized here:

Meanwhile, Real Climate’s Gavin Schmidt has scolded the Superfreakonimics authors for embracing geoengineering, which Schmidt asserted:

“is neither cheap, nor a fix, and the reasons why it is very likely to be a bad idea are ethical and legal, much more than its still-uncertain scientific merits.”

Incidentally, the book is being published today. Eric Pooley, former managing editor of Fortune magazine, who is friendly with one of the co-authors registers his disappoinment in the book over at Bloomberg. The controversial book, Pooley writes:

“turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.”

In recent weeks, the big news on the U.S. business front has been about all the companies, such as Apple, quitting their membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the latter’s hostility to regulatory action on global warming. Now it seems that the climate issue is dividing energy producers as well. The NYT reports:

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 20, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Getting a climate deal agreed in December will require an ‘uphill battle’ said UK energy and climate change Secretary Ed Miliband in London yesterday, despite incremental progress from the world's largest economies on agreeing the way forward.

Miliband addressed the press following a two-day meeting of the Major Economies Forum, a US-inspired initiative that includes 17 of the world's developing and emerging economies. The meeting aimed to address some of the key obstacles to securing a global treaty and involved six guest nations, including some of the world’s poorest such as Ethiopia.

Although the forum is not part of the formal UN negotiation process, its members collectively account for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so any shift in their positions will significantly affect prospects for reaching an agreement in Copenhagen.

I attended the press conference and reported the story for Nature News [subscription]. It’s interesting, as Andy Revkin points out over on Dot Earth, that the final communiqué from the meeting was seen by some observers as empty rhetoric but by others as containing substantial signs of progress.

Miliband certainly gave the impression that the meeting was successful, saying “there was a sense that substantial progress had been made”. That was reflected to some extent in the press coverage.

But Miliband was scant on the details of what exact progress had been made. He highlighted three areas where agreement had been reached: the need to substantially increase funding for adaptation and mitigation in the developing world (but he didn’t say by how much or by when), how that money will be transferred (this presumably relates to the decision that the UN, rather than the World Bank, will administer the fund) and the need for an international deal to reflect current commitments by both rich and poor nations (an issue that’s important to the US; Stern said there won’t be an agreement without this).

A cursory look at the communiqué suggests that progress by the MEF this week was incremental, and perhaps even insignificant, given the larger issues on the table. The address by US climate change envoy Todd Stern last night suggested that getting a deal that involves the US will be tricky.

I’ve elaborated on this in the full story, but in short, the US is unlikely to sign up to targets if the Waxman-Markey bill hasn’t passed through the Senate by December. And if it has passed, the issue of the legal framework of the treaty will be contentious: many developing nations want a Kyoto-style protocol, whereas the US isn’t keen on such an agreement, instead favouring one that commits both developed and developing nations to mid-term targets for 2020.

Speaking yesterday in London, Stern said that the US is “historically the biggest emitter, but the capacity of the world to get where we need to go [will] be more determined by what happens in China and other major developing nations in the future. It has to involve the major developing economies – that’s the only way it’s going to work”.

Olive Heffernan

Image: PurestockX

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 20, 2009
Categories: In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, here's the YouTube version of the Nature film on climate change:

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 19, 2009
Categories: Atmospheric Science, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The United Nation’s upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen threatens to get caught in a trap between high expectations and the immense complexity of the task at hand, warns the author of an opinion piece in Nature today [subscription]. Since diplomats cannot possibly produce a useful treaty for the December meeting in the remaining twelve weeks, negotiations should focus on a small number of realistic goals, and leave the rest for later, says David Victor, an expert on international relations at the University of California in San Diego.

A rushed and over-ambitious agreement in Copenhagen, even if it had the superficial appearance of success, could in fact prove a “legal zombie” – neither delivering nor dying – and might be counterproductive for long-term climate protection efforts, argues Victor.

He suggests that negotiators in Copenhagen focus instead on few topics, such as reiterating and extending existing emission targets by developed countries and continuing the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, whose expiration would shatter the very credibility of international climate diplomacy. A ‘standby’ agreement, shallow though it might appear, could within two years be developed into a fair and efficient global climate strategy.

The post-Copenhagen process, says Victor, would best be led by the small number of rich nations that account for the bulk of global emissions. Given the endlessly cumbersome UN diplomacy that resulted in the meagre 1997 Kyoto Protocol and that weighs heavily on pre-Copenhagen negotiations, “smaller, more flexible approaches offer the only realistic expectations for making progress in 2010 and beyond,” he says.

Global warming, says Victor, is ultimately a problem of economic cooperation, and must be dealt with using the tools and negotiation strategies that have proved most successful in global trade agreements. In trade issues small forums and even unilateral action have indeed shown to be more efficient than global talks.

But is a last-minute ‘plan B’ for Copenhagen simply a polite paraphrase of the climate summit’s foreseeable failure – and an apology in advance?

No, says Victor. A well-managed disaster in Copenhagen is ultimately more likely to pave the way for effective climate protection than a stapled-together deal.

Quirin Schiermeier

Image: Getty

What do you think? Must climate diplomats change their strategy? Join the discussion here on Climate Feedback.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 15, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Opinion, Quirin Schiermeier, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The G8 meeting last week – the last get-together of the leaders of the world’s major industrialized nations before the United Nations climate summit in December - was loaded with expectations as to what Obama & Co might give climate negotiators to take with them to Copenhagen.

The answer, in a nutshell, is two degrees.

Is that enough? The Nature news story here has the context and offers two opposite expert views.

“The G8 announcement is depressing,” says economist Gwyn Prins, a co-author of the pointed anti-Kyoto polemic ‘How to get climate policy back on course’ (pdf file), whom I interviewed last week for the article.

“Politicians are mistaking making statements for actually doing something. We really need to try something different,” he says. He believes the prospect is “vanishingly small” for developed and developing nations to agree on a meaningful deal in Copenhagen.

Others are not so pessimistic. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the German PIK and something of an elder statesman of science-led global change diplomacy, is actually quite enthusiastic about the G8’s two degrees target, which he believes will breathe new life into international climate politics.

“Now we can calculate precisely how much greenhouse gas we can still afford to emit if we don’t want to exceed a given probability of getting into dangerous territory,” he says.

Continue reading "What the G8 target means" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on July 15, 2009
Categories: Categories, Climate Policy, GHG emissions, Major Economies Meeting, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Russia has been a rather puzzling actor in the complicated diplomatic game which resulted in the Kyoto protocol, and which will be played out again in Copenhagen in December. Climate warming doesn’t make headlines, and has so far not been a big concern, between Moscow and Vladivostok. What prompted Russian leaders to ratify Kyoto was the prospect of making good money from emissions trading, rather than conviction that man-made climate change is a real phenomenon and a threat to society.

Now they have changed their minds. In April, Vladimir Putin and his ministers approved a new climate ‘doctrine’ – well, that’s how they call these things in Moscow – which for the first time officially recognizes severe risks of global warming and calls for immediate action. My story over at Nature News explains the nature and significance of the baffling doctrine, details of which are beginning to leak.

Critics point out that Russia plans to focus on adaptation to climate change, while putting less emphasis on actually reducing its emissions. Others say Russia’s new climate policy has been quietly constructed behind closed doors, without any involvement from industry, NGOs and the public. That’s all true; but Russia’s recognition of the scientific basis of climate change, and its apparent willingness to pro-actively partake in international climate protection efforts, outweighs these flaws. Let’s see what Moscow will put on the table in Copenhagen.

Sure, all eyes in December will be on China, and Russia’s taciturn climate diplomacy has in the past been a fickle and half-hearted affair. Even so, one must not under-estimate Moscow’s influence at international negotiation tables.

The climatic importance of Russia’s natural landscape, in particular its boreal forests and its permafrost soils, is beyond doubt anyway. For example, huge amounts of old carbon that accumulated over thousands of years are stored in permafrost soils which occupy more than 60% of Russia’s 17 million square-kilometre land area. How much of it will be released as the southern permafrost boundary shifts northwards as a result of climate warming, possibly by up to 100 kilometres in the next 20-25 years?

A paper in Nature this week suggests that, globally, permafrost thawing may lead to the release of an extra billion tonnes of carbon per year into the atmosphere. The team measured carbon flows at a tundra site in Alaska where permafrost has been thawing for 20 years, and then calculated from the data the likely trajectory of global carbon release from thawing permafrost. Here's an editor's summary.

Russian scientists were not involved in the study, led by Edward Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s a pity. If Moscow’s new interest in climate led to more frequent east-west collaborations in science, such as on permafrost, it would be a boon.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on May 28, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Climate Policy, Climate Science, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Economist Nicholas Stern released his new book just a couple of weeks ago, in which he updates his assessment of the costs of tackling climate change from his 2006 review for the UK government. In Blueprint for a Safer Planet, Stern frames this as an affordable, effective global deal that could be adopted at the UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Fellow economist Frank Ackerman, who has written extensively on the costs of climate change, and who has critiqued Stern’s 2006 Review, gives his take on the new book over on Nature Reports Climate Change. Here are are some excerpts on the science. Ackerman writes:

Stern’s latest offering updates his arguments from 2006. For a start, the science has grown even more ominous, prompting him to revise his recommendation for the upper limit at which we should aim to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. Now he says they should be held below 500 parts per million (p.p.m.) of CO2-equivalent (roughly 450 p.p.m. of CO2 alone) — compared to 550 p.p.m. CO2-equivalent in the Stern Review — and then reduced further over time if necessary.

Ackerman later questions whether Stern’s analysis understates the severity of the problem and the extent of the action required:

Climatologist James Hansen, among others, has argued that stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 p.p.m. would leave them at a dangerously high level and has called for a safer limit of 350 p.p.m. Stern responds that his global deal, putting us on track to 450 p.p.m., is at the outer limits of what is politically feasible in the near term; achieving Stern’s goals for 2050 would position us to revise global targets downward in the future, if needed.

Overall, Ackerman gives the book the thumbs up, writing:

This book is not fundamentally aimed at advancing knowledge of either science or economics. Rather, it uses what we know about those fields as the basis for a sweeping policy proposal. With the Copenhagen conference fast approaching, the book outlines a vision for a global deal that could be acceptable to all major parties to the negotiations.

His conclusion highlights the striking congruence between parts of the Stern proposals and parts of UK climate policy:

It is not clear which came first: earlier government policies may have shaped Stern’s sense of what is possible; conversely, the Stern Review has served as a basis for revisions of some government positions. Coming from a country that has done less on the issue than Britain to date, I don’t view this as a mark against either Stern or his government. The British Empire was rarely so skilfully and persuasively served by its citizens and scholars.

Read the review in full here.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 09, 2009
Categories: Economics, Olive Heffernan, Reviews, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In the latest issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, economists Nicholas Stern and Michael Grubb, along with European Commissioner Janez Potočnik, share their views on whether governments will agree a global climate deal at the UN climate change conference in December in Copenhagen. Check out the interactive video available here or read the transcript.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 24, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s well accepted that the upcoming climate talks in Poznan will not be the time or place for agreeing the architecture of a new deal on climate change. An idea that is less well received, but one that is gaining traction, is that the same could be true of the negotiations in Copenhagen a year from now.

While the election of Barack Obama as US president brings renewed energy and hope to the UN process, President Bush will be holding court when environment ministers from some 192 nations meet next week in Poznan. And with Harlan Watson in place as the US chief climate negotiator, any serious shifts in the US position will be on hold until January. In addition, some are speculating that even the modest ambitions of the talks — to settle how to finance emissions cuts and aid adaptation in developing countries — are likely to be eclipsed by the world's financial woes.

But of far graver concern are the growing reports that the US won’t be ready to sign a global deal on climate change in Copenhagen either, given the time needed to enact domestic climate legislation.

As far back as October, Elliot Diringer, Director of International Strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, wrote the following in an op-ed for the Transatlantic Climate Policy Group:

Any near-term action may come in the form of energy legislation that, while helping to reduce U.S. emissions, will not achieve the levels of reduction envisioned under a cap-and-trade scenario. Enactment of a comprehensive climate package, including cap-and-trade, is unlikely in 2009. It may come at the earliest in 2010.

The world can ill afford a replay of Kyoto, with Europe demanding more than can be delivered and the United States ultimately walking away. We need realism, not brinksmanship. Instead of a full and final deal in Copenhagen, we must aim for what is in fact feasible, and set expectations now so that it is received as a success. The risks and consequences of failure are otherwise far too great.

Just last week Senator Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, reflected this sentiment, saying that the financial crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a federal cap-and-trade system would likely preclude action in 2009.

Continue reading "Will the US be ready in Copenhagen? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 28, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen, UN Conference on Climate Change, Poznan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)