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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

Things are winding down here in Barcelona. The latest negotiating text is out, and everybody is waiting for the final plenary session.

Negotiators seem to have coalesced on what needs to come out of Copenhagen, as opposed to what many would like to see. The basic idea, covered in a bit more detail in my last post, is that leaders could sign an agreement providing decisions on the big issues, including emissions targets, financing, technology, adaptation and deforestation, and then come back early next year to get the details for a formal treaty in place. That might not sound like much, but it eliminates the sense of doubt that was clouding the talks earlier in the week.

There's a bit of confusion in some places, particularly among greens and representatives from developing countries, about what that means, but most see it as a viable solution given that securing a complete, ratifiable treaty might not be possible. Indeed, despite what might be called an air of cautious optimism, the gap between rich and poor countries remains substantial and apparently unbridgeable.

This stark truth was on full display as the G77 group representing developing countries, the European Union and then the United States held back-to-back press conferences giving their assessment of where we stand. I'll take a closer look at the implications of all this in next week's issue, but here's a quick summary: The G77 said it won't support any agreement unless rich countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the EU said its offer to go up to 30 percent is already aggressive; and the US said its unofficial numbers, which appear in legislative proposals that would reduce emissions to just a few percent below 1990 levels, are both unlikely to change and in line with the science.

I say "apparently" because these are negotiations, and there is a sense that everybody wants a deal. I briefly cornered Alf Wills, a G77 leader from South Africa, to talk about the issue, and he acknowledged that developed countries could always try to bridge the divide with offers of things like money and technology. "That's part of the negotiation," he told me.

Continue reading "Copenhagen conference: Call it a wrap" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 06, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, acknowledged this afternoon that Europe might have to settle for a political agreement rather than a binding legal treaty in Copenhagen (see my post this morning for a quick discussion of the issue). Everybody else has been talking about this possibility for some time, but it's not insignificant when the EU, which has always been the primary driver of this process, starts talking about it. Indeed, one environmentalist told me that once Europe gives up on the idea of a fully ratifiable deal in Copenhagen, the game is over.

As noted by The Associated Press, the official European position on the need for a ratifiable treaty remains in place. When I asked a spokesman about some kind of plan "PlanContentRecord B", he squirmed and said this represents more of an acknowledgement of what other people are saying than anything else. In fact, people in the United States started saying this last year, shortly after US President Barack Obama's election, citing the monumental difficulty of establishing a new climate policy in less than a year. Interestingly enough, I talked to one former negotiator who said that many Europeans have been thinking along these lines for just as long but simply chose to maintain pressure by pushing for a full deal.

As it happens, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer and Malta's Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs the non-Kyoto negotiations that include the United States, both outlined their vision of a political deal in Copenhagen in a closed-door session with non-governmental groups on Wednesday. For a summary of their positions, check a blog posted by Elliot Diringer at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group that drew criticism from ncomprehensive one other than Yvo de Boer himself for making the very same assessment last year.

The problem, once again, is that the United States is not ready to commit because it doesn't have, and isn't likely to have before early next year, domestic climate legislation in place. The US and the EU discussed the issue at a climate summit this week in Washington but were unable to reach any agreement on how to move forward.

Continue reading "Barcelona climate: Momentum builds for a "political agreement" in Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anjali Nayar, an International Development Research Centre fellow at Nature, recently visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. About 90% of the species in Madagascar's rainforests are found nowhere else on Earth, but efforts to save the island nation's forests are about more than conserving biodiversity.

It's hoped that projects like this will provide a model for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Under a proposal, known as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), wealthy nations could meet their emissions targets in part by buying carbon credits from developing countries such as Madagascar. REDD is one of the topics up for discussion at the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen this December. Countries will negotiate whether REDD should be included in the global climate deal that takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.

But as Anjali reports, to be successful these projects must overcome the poverty and political upheaval common to most developing countries. Read Anjali's full report here. Or see a slideshow video version, here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Anjali Nayar, Biodiversity and Ecology, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Deforestation, Features, GHG emissions, Notes from the Field | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam - and just one of many put on by various activist groups each day - intended to raise awareness of the danger that rich countries will simply reduce development aid as they increase funding for adaptation and mitigation. Developing countries have made this a central part of their platform going into Copenhagen - any climate financing must be in addition to existing development aid.

Things are rolling along at the conference. Two days left, and nobody is panicking yet. I haven't heard of any all-night meetings, although short days at these conferences tend to start with business meetings at breakfast and run straight through late dinner meetings, which basically translates into 12-14 hour days. It's easy to say that they aren't getting enough done, but one certainly cannot claim that they aren't spending a lot of time on the effort.

So I just bumped into Ned Helme, who heads the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington, and he seemed newly optimistic about the way things are going. He says things appear to be headed toward a political agreement in Copenhagen, which would then be followed up with a binding legal agreement next year. And although he was initially sceptical, the idea has grown on him after talking to the negotiating teams in here in Barcelona. A broad agreement on the core principles from on high would free up the technical negotiators to work out the details that are currently bogging things down, Helme says, namely the ongoing architectural dispute over what to do with the Kyoto Protocol (see the first post below).

One of the other ideas floating around is to just pause the negotiations without producing an agreement and then hold another meeting in the first half of next year, but many here say there will be too much pressure on politicians for them to leave Copenhagen without producing anything. A political statement that spells out the basic commitments on financing, REDD and perhaps even emissions targets - likely requiring a range to allow some flexibility for the United States, which is unlikely to have worked out its domestic policy - would allow everybody to claim success while leaving the details for later. That's one theory, anyway.

Now it's time for lunch. It's a good time to try and catch delegations between meetings. More later, including an update on Brazil and developing country commitments promised yesterday.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was in "Non-paper No. 11" but was left out of "Non-paper No.18" when negotiators gathered for a final session before departing Bangkok last month.

"Non-papers" are basically papers with new negotiating text, compiled by facilitators, that are periodically released in order to assess progress and move things forward. Apparently the logic when the practice began was that nobody wanted to give too much weight to unapproved language. At any rate, when this particular section was winnowed down, the phrase was lost.

For the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, a coalition of interest groups that is tracking the REDD debate, this safeguard is critical to ensure that payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) do what they are intended to do, which is protect forests. Because plantations can also meet the legal definition of a forest (a separate issue that many are pushing to change), they say countries could get paid to clear native forests and replace them with plantations, which actually increases emissions.

I discussed the issue with a REDD expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Doug Boucher, after the Bangkok meeting, and his assessment was that the massive spike in emissions from clearing forests would be enough to prevent such activities. And indeed, it's hard to believe such a practice would be allowed, or that companies or countries would want to invest in it even if it were.

But it also depends on what, exactly, is being measured: overall emissions or forest cover. Non-paper 18 has three options for tracking deforestation, including one that is based on forest cover alone. If that language moved forward, based on the current definition of "forest," the loophole would remain, says Peg Putt, who works on forest and climate issues for The Wilderness Society, itself a member of the alliance.

In the end, the Europeans took the blame for removing the forest-conversion safeguard but claimed it was an accident. The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, says they have since proposed something to plug the gap, and environmentalists expect to see the new language when the next non-paper is released tomorrow morning.

"There is agreement from all but one party," Putt told me. "I've heard it may be the United States, but that might be pure speculation."

Such speculation is unfortunately common here, due to the fact that the formal talks generally take place behind closed doors. Perhaps we'll find out more tomorrow morning.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with that issue in my next post and move on to a Nature Geoscience commentary that has caused quite a buzz here in Barcelona by downgrading the relative contribution of carbon emissions from deforestation.

The commentary by Guido van der Werf and colleagues (reported by the Guardian here) suggests that emissions from deforestation and degradation are closer to 12 percent of global carbon emissions, rather than the oft-stated 20 percent.

It's an important finding, although not entirely surprising. Folks at the World Resources Institute in Washington have been looking into the issue as well, and their numbers seem to point in the same direction. Indeed, their assessment of 2005 greenhouse gas emissions, illustrated in a flowchart here, shows deforestation making up just 11.3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions; separate out carbon dioxide, and the contribution of deforestation comes out below 15 percent.

I recently chatted about the issue with WRI's Tim Herzog, who works on greenhouse gas inventories, and he said the problem is that the numbers are still a bit squishy. WRI's initial analysis converged on 15 percent, with the high end of the range coming in around 20. The report in Nature Geoscience also shows a sizeable uncertainty, ranging from 6-17 percent. It will be interesting to see how these numbers hold up.

Questions quickly arose about whether these new numbers would undermine efforts to include forest carbon in a future climate treaty, but it's not at all clear why or how better information would stall the debate. Forests are being chopped down, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, and stopping this practice remains a relatively cheap and possibly fast way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The only question is how much of the problem we would be solving were we to accomplish that goal.

The van der werf commentary also assesses emissions from peatland fires and degradation in southeast Asia. Including peatland emissions brings the total to 15 percent of global emissions, according to their analysis. As it happens, the conservation group Wetlands International released a new report in Barcelona looking at global peatland emissions. They said their analysis on Southeast Asia is similar to that in the Nature Geoscience, but adding in the rest of the world doubles the impact. Surprisingly, the results suggest that the European Union has the second-highest peatlands emissions, behind only Indonesia.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented myself at the conference centre, gathered the requisite daily briefing documents and then found a bathroom to deploy a newly purchased toothbrush. It was there, after bumping into a colleague, that I learned the African Group had announced at the opening session on Monday that it would boycott the Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries get serious about their climate commitments.

The Associated Press covered the story, and our coverage of the last climate meeting in Bangkok has additional background. But the important thing to understand here is that the talks are split into two main tracks. One is designed to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the other is under the original 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main difference is that the United States is party to the latter but not the former. Developing countries have taken the stance that the Kyoto Protocol should retain its central role going forward – particularly as there is as yet no alternative - but Europe is seeking a new agreement under the convention.

After brushing my teeth, I met with a representative of the conservation group WWF, Keya Chatterjee, who proceeded to fill me in. What followed the African protest was a full day of informal talks intended to restart negotiations (Chatterjee called them “trust-building sessions”). We then proceeded to a plenary session where a new agreement was announced. Henceforth, negotiators under the Kyoto track would dedicate at least 60 percent of their time talking about emissions targets for industrialized nations; the rest of the time would be used to talk about offsets and land-use and forestry issues that affect the emissions calculations.

So. Here we are at the end of day two, with three days of formal negotiations before the big climate summit in Copenhagen this December, and we have an agreement on how to structure negotiations on one of two tracks. Not exactly promising, but it’s clear that the African countries – largely supported by the G77 representing most developing countries – have made their point. Now we’re back to core issues, such as who does what, how to ensure that it gets done, where the money comes from and how to bundle everything into a single package.

The thought of ironing out all of this by December is daunting, and conventional wisdom posits that it’s now virtually impossible. As a result many are starting to think about minimum requirements for success in Copenhagen, which is perhaps as it should be. But for perspective, it took WWF about a week to piece together a sample treaty (based on language already on the negotiating table) that would resolve the architecture issue by allowing the Kyoto Protocol to continue while including the United States and additional commitments by developing nations in a separate agreement.

The copy Chatterjee gave me is 37 pages; just fill in the numbers. Point being that there is plenty of room for compromise, Chatterjee says. From this perspective, what is missing is trust and political will, but she says one shouldn’t forget about a third factor: shame. Indeed, the idea of shame leads her to a remarkably optimistic conclusion: countries will manage to fill in the numbers in Copenhagen, simply because nobody wants to be responsible for blocking a deal. “There’s not a single country in the world that wants to take the blame for failure in Copenhagen,” she says.

There’s been no shortage of challenges to this view, but it’s worth noting that not everybody has given up on Copenhagen here in Barcelona.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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)

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)

As promised, Nature’s film on climate change went online last week on October 1. You can view the film in full on nature.com (it lasts about twenty minutes in total). It will also be on YouTube next week, at which stage I’ll embed it here.

The film was shot this July on location in Lindau at the 59th meeting of Nobel Laureates, and follows three young researchers – Brian Krohn, Faroha Liquat and Brandi Kiel Reese – on a journey to discover how their work on various aspects of chemistry can help solve the climate change problem.

Brian Krohn is interested in how algae can be used as a source for biofuels. He was based at the company SarTec Inc. in Minnesota at the time of filming, where he was converting oil extracted from algae to biodiesel using a novel process that is more economical and more environmentally friendly than traditional methods. Now Brian is at the University of Oxford studying for a degree in Environmental Change and Management, for which he received a Rhodes scholarship. He’s going to use this opportunity to look at how governmental policies can best stimulate alternative energy research.

Faroha Liquat, a PhD researcher based at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, is interested in devising novel ways to harness the power of the sun for the benefit of mankind. She’s especially interested in developing cost-effective photovoltaic cells. During the film, she has a very valuable interaction with the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri on whether developing countries can prosper and be part of the climate change solution. She’s currently visiting Pachauri’s institute, TERI, in Delhi.

Brandi Kiel Reese is also doing a PhD and is based at Texas A&M. Having previously worked as an environmental consultant, Brandi is now looking at how humans are impacting the Gulf of Mexico, a region that has become increasingly devoid of oxygen due to the massive influx of nitrogen fertilizers and due to warming.

During their week at Lindau, our young researchers hear about the changes already underway from climate experts, they challenge (and in some cases agree with) the views of political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, and they learn about the social responsibilities of scientists from the Nobel Laureates who first discovered the danger of CFCs.

Through these interactions, they explore the challenge of keeping global temperatures to within the 2 °C target. Their take: we have the brains and the tools to solve this problem, we just need the political willpower. Despite the expert nature of many of our interview subjects, the film provides a great overview of the climate change problem for anyone in need of an update in the run-up to Copenhagen.

What are the chances of staying within 2 °C? Let us know what you think.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 09, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Communicating Climate Change, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen this December, talk will turn to scientific, political and economic issues with a global reach and a long history — not easy to pick up from the daily news. We asked select experts on climate change what books we should be reading ahead of the big event.

Here's a peek at some well-informed desks, bookshelves and bedside tables. Read the full roundup here - and join in our pre-Copenhagen book club by commenting below.

When your last work led to an Oscar and Nobel Prize, anticipation is high on the sequel. And Al Gore's new book delivers, says Joe Romm, the voice of Climate Progress at the Centre for American Progress. Gore's Our Choice collects the most effective climate change solutions that policymakers could put in place now.

Tony Juniper, the campaigner and onetime director of Friends of the Earth, picks out Mark Lynas's Six Degrees (also a favorite of the Royal Society). The book vividly paints the changes expected as the world warms - revealing the practical implications of compromises we could see at Copenhagen.

A lively new book by an ex-oilman and geologist tells some of the insider history behind the UN talks - an eyewitness account of shifting views on climate change within the oil industry. Lord Ron Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell, says Brian Lovell's Challenged by Carbon is an instant tonic for 'climate change fatigue'.

Roger Pielke, Jr., a University of Colorado science-policy expert, argues that climate negotiators are failing to learn from history. He recommends the 1998 book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, which recites a litany of failed attempts at centralized planning.

Oliver Tickell's climate policy proposal Kyoto2 is just the thing a truly intelligent species would come up with, according to Mark Lynas, environmentalist and Six Degrees author. But it's nothing like what's on the table for December.

Can we 'solve the climate crisis'? In Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia asserts that "climate change is not 'a problem' waiting for 'a solution'" but rather is an idea whose shape can differ completely depending on one's political and cultural biases. New York Times reporter and Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin recommends the book and sketches out its implications for Copenhagen.

In turn, Mike Hulme points to a book that looks beyond the usual dichotomy of climate change 'believers' and 'sceptics' to find a more fundamental split in thinking. John Foster's The Sustainability Mirage explores some crucial social and psychological realities of climate change that you won't be hearing much about during the conference.

Another good read when you want to lift your head from the trenches, the new book Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand takes an overview of environmental issues in the twenty-first century. Former Nature editor (and sun-eater) Oliver Morton dubs it a lucid big picture put together with experience, wisdom and optimism.

Could you call yourself ready for Copenhagen without taking a look at the IPCC report? Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says their 2007 Synthesis Report - a sum-up of the masses of policy-relevant research reviewed by the three working groups - has perhaps been the panel's most effective report thus far in creating awareness across every section of society.

Here are the book reviews in full. What do you think - are these the right reads to get ready for the conference? What others should be on the list?

Anna Barnett

Image: © iStockphoto / Pertunisas

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 02, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Politics, Society | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

If we are trying to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less but 4 degrees is possible even within some of our lifetimes, which world do we prepare for? Talks at today's session on adaptation took on the problem of the multiple futures that decision-makers have to face. Mark Stafford-Smith of CSIRO in Australia talked specifically about long-term decisions - such as planting and managing forests - where the best option depends on which way the climate goes later this century. If you expect strong mitigation that holds down warming, then you try to preserve today's forests and nurse them through, protecting them from fire and other threats. If a moderately high temperature is in store, forest composition will have to change and you can plant new species to facilitate that. With runaway climate change the best option could be opening up the forests to invading weeds and rapid, radical transformation.

This is no hypothetical choice. During February's raging wildfires in southeastern Australia, it appears that even the seed stores in the forest floor were destroyed in some burnt areas. Stafford-Smith recommends that conservation managers trying to bring these areas back to life should divide their efforts to follow all three approaches above. Such a hedging strategy may mean two-thirds of forest plans need to be abandoned and altered as the future unfolds, but it's better then putting all the trees in one basket.

Rob Swart of Wageningen University, The Netherlands, looked at hedging on a much larger scale - the plan Bs we could prepare in case of a true planetary emergency. From geoengineering schemes that risk severe side effects to extreme emissions reductions that would affect the climate only slowly and probably require tight government control, none of the options are attractive. But Swart thinks there should be an international process - separate and parallel to current UN climate policy - for countries to work out ahead of time how they would cooperate on such schemes. If left to a moment of panic, they're unlikely to be carried out thoughtfully and equitably.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 30, 2009
Categories: 4 Degrees and Beyond, Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After a banner week of international summits, a great leap forward on climate policy has yet to materialize, and some players are expressing a growing frustration.

US President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao both gave big speeches at a UN meeting in New York on Tuesday, but they didn’t make any bold leadership moves.

Jeff Tollefson has a briefing in Nature News on what went down:

Everybody is looking for signs of progress from the two biggest emitters, who together account [for] roughly 40% of emissions, but neither president offered the kind of commitments needed to re-energize the talks. Obama was in the unenviable position of needing to make bold promises before the US Congress has weighed in on the issue. Nonetheless, he declined to acknowledge, let alone address head on, the challenges he is facing on the domestic front.

For his part, Hu largely underscored existing policies, promising to expand forests, produce 15% of the country's power using renewable energy and decrease energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product by a "notable margin" between now and 2020. All of these would substantially reduce Chinese emissions compared with baseline forecasts, and China is beginning to win some praise for its energy policies. Nonetheless, cumulative emissions are expected to continue rising, and Hu made no reference to any specific emissions targets or a date by which the country might try to stabilize its emissions.

As Jeff explains, almost everyone agrees with these statements, but they are old hat. And the clock is ticking. Says campaigner Steve Howard, founder of The Climate Group, in a New York Times story on the summit: “It was really great to have the vision, but with just 70 days left to Copenhagen, it is time to put some substance on the table. The two most important countries on this issue are being guarded in their positions.”

Obama’s speech did impress one observer, at least. Fidel Castro praised him as “brave” for acknowledging that the US has been slow to act on climate change.

Following closely was the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which started yesterday evening and continues today. With financial policy expected to take up much of the agenda, hopes aren’t high for a climate breakthrough there either.

Continue reading "Climate summits underwhelming, say leaders" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 25, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | 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)

Over on Nature News, Declan Butler has a detailed briefing on the new carbon tax unveiled in France last week:

France is set to become the first major European economy to implement a carbon tax — a levy on activities that emit substantial amounts of carbon dioxide.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced on 10 September that the tax would come into effect at the start of 2010. The tax draws largely on recommendations made on 28 July by an expert panel commissioned by the government, and chaired by the former Socialist prime minister, Michel Rocard.

Nature discussed the tax with Jean Jouzel, a member of the Rocard panel, director of the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute near Versailles, and also the French representative on the executive of the International Panel on Climate Change.

The French carbon tax will be levied at a rate of €17 (US$25) per tonne of CO2 — the current market price. Is that enough to change people's carbon-emitting habits?

What's most important is that a carbon tax of some sort is going to be introduced. Starting at €32 per tonne, as our report recommended, would have been more courageous. The economists on the panel considered that €40 was the minimum for the carbon tax to be effective in changing consumer behaviour, so €32 was itself already a compromise. It's true that the plan is to phase in higher carbon prices over time, but Sarkozy failed to give further details. In the longer term, by around 2020, we need to reach a price of €100–€200 per tonne.

Read the full interview here.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 14, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oxford economist Dieter Helm co-edits an upcoming book, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, that he says takes "a colder and harder look at the challenge". In a Q&A on Nature Reports Climate Change this week, Helm gives his take on a long-term strategy for reducing emissions. Here's an excerpt:

Where, in your view, has policy gone wrong?

Let's remember what lies behind Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol measures countries' production of carbon, not consumption. It's no accident the Europeans like Kyoto. It's a set of measures which, as they de-industrialize and production moves to countries like China, makes them look good. But the carbon consumption record of Europe, once you take those imports back, is pretty awful. That's why Kyoto looks like a success, and yet it hasn't caused even a blip in the emissions path.

Do we also need to re-think climate economics?

What we have learnt is that politicians tend to choose the most expensive options first. Faced with climate change, what's our solution? In Europe, it's to devote most of our energies to a rapid build-out of wind power. This is the sort of thing that makes nuclear power look cheap. Climate change is about the massive increase of coal burning internationally, especially the growth of China and India fuelled by coal-based energy — and America too, where the Obama plans are also small relative to the problem.

What exactly will windmills across Europe do to address that overwhelmingly dominant effect? Of course they'll play some role, but it'll probably take a couple of weeks for China to add sufficient new coal power stations to cancel out any renewables effort in Britain. It's time to grow up. It's time to realize that coal is where the core of the problem lies, and to think cleverly about solutions towards that.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 07, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Economics, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Twenty years after the Montreal Protocol came into effect to regulate substances that deplete the ozone layer, the annual ozone hole above Antarctica shows no signs of recovery.

A feature article and editorial in Nature today explain why this is so, and why the Montreal Protocol has been a unique success nonetheless.

As things stand, scientists expect the first signs of recovery of springtime ozone depletion in the polar stratosphere around the year 2065. Outside polar regions, where chemical ozone destruction is less pronounced but potentially harmful to human health, it appears as if ozone levels are beginning to increase.

Globally, the recovery of ozone will occur in a changing atmospheric environment. Greenhouse gases have a cooling effect on the stratosphere, and climate change is likely to also alter atmospheric transport and circulation patterns.

What this means for the ozone layer is not exactly clear. It appears that the changes will in some places delay its recovery, while elsewhere they might lead to a ‘super-recovery’ of ozone.

But not only must models of ozone loss and recovery factor in global warming – abnormally low stratospheric ozone has also a marked effect on climate change here and now. Most strikingly, extreme seasonal ozone depletion over Antarctica seems to explain why the Antarctic Peninsula is warming at an alarming rate while the rest of the continent has actually cooled over the last 30 years.

Quirin Schiermeier

Image: View of the South Pole from NASA's TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) satellite. Credit: NASA

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 12, 2009
Categories: Atmospheric Science, Climate Policy, Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There’s an update over at Nature News on efforts to get a regulatory handle on carbon dioxide emissions from the shipping industry. I noted last month, when the International Maritime Organization was taking criticism for not moving faster on the issue, that an IMO official had said a July meeting might come up with ideas.

No such luck. The meeting wrapped up last week, and though progress was made on regulating pollutants that harm air quality, the issue of climate went unresolved. Although ships emit a variety of greenhouse gases, CO2 is the main culprit, outweighing other sources by almost ten-thousand-fold.

The accusation in June was that the IMO should have taken control of ships’ carbon footprints - a duty assigned to them by the Kyoto protocol - well before the Copenhagen conference. Coming to the IMO’s defense, an industry representative says they’ll find it easier to do it after December:

"The fact that the IMO cannot come to such agreement this year doesn't mean in any way that it's somehow hopeless," says Bryan Wood-Thomas, vice-president for environmental policy at the World Shipping Council, a trade group that represents about 90% of the cargo-container shipping industry. "Quite to the contrary, I think it will arrive at an agreement in the next year and a half," he says — once countries assess whether the results of the Copenhagen meeting change the context of the IMO's climate negotiations.

But if the IMO doesn't make this switch from crawl to sprint, the European Commission has said it will impose regulations on its own. The full article has more details.

Anna Barnett

Image: Flickr user "helmuts", Creative Commons license

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 20, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shrug-worthy, disappointing, too slow, reactionary, lacking ambition, could-do-better: the scientist’s attitude to most UK politicians’ policy statements on reducing carbon emissions.

Today’s “low-carbon transition plan” looks different – although we could have done with it a lot earlier.

In a collection of four strategy documents which together proclaim themselves “the most systematic response to climate change of any major developed country”, the UK government plots out exactly how it plans to meet its legally binding targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband says that by 2020 he wants 40% of electricity to come from low-carbon sources: over 30% from renewables – overwhelmingly wind power, but also biomass, and tidal energy – and the rest from nuclear and carbon capture and storage. Heat and transport will also see vastly-boosted renewables contributions. By 2020, there will be 3,000 offshore wind turbines across the country and every home will have a smart meter. Every government department has been given its own carbon budget to follow. Thousands of ‘green jobs’ (undefined) will be created.

The ambition on paper is praiseworthy. It leaves only sizeable doubts about whether the government can match deeds to fine-sounding words – and whether they can persuade households and firms that they must pay increased costs on energy bills.

“Eventually the Government must move from analysis paralysis to doing and building," says Stuart Haszeldine, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh. “All the right plans are there, but it’s hard to believe that this is actually going to happen.”

Continue reading 'UK low carbon drive: at last the right sounds; now let's see it happen' at Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 16, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, In the News, Richard Van Noorden | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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)

Cross-posted from Jeff Tollefson on The Great Beyond

An international crew of academics this week boldly declared that the world is headed down the wrong track in trying to put a lid on global greenhouse gas emissions. But with global leaders pressing the issue in Italy this week, it's not clear that anybody is listening.

The team includes Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University, who made a splash with their 2007 indictment of the Kyoto Protocol, dubbed The Wrong Trousers (Nature also published a summary of the article). Their latest paper, which includes additional authors, including Roger Pielke, Jr. at the University of Colorado in Boulder, maintains a hard line and advocates policies that directly promote energy efficiency and decarbonization in place of a messy global carbon market that might or might not do the work it is intended to do. The researchers see a model in Japan, long a leader on energy efficiency thanks in part to a dearth of domestic resources.

Although the BBC posted a story and the New York Times' Andrew Revkin included a blurb in his blog, the paper hasn't garnered much traction. To be sure, Japan has lessons to teach the world, and carbon markets are unlikely to solve all of the world's problems. But like it or not, given the amount of time and political capital that has been invested in the current negotiations, there's little appetite for radical new ideas.

This perspective was nicely summed up in the BBC's coverage by Tom Burke of Imperial College. He acknowledged that many of the authors' criticisms are valid but suggested that "nothing could be more harmful" than the solution they propose, which is to reverse course.

So far, however, that doesn't appear to be a danger. On Wednesday, G8 leaders backed the establishment of a global carbon market as part of a commitment to curb their emissions by some 80 percent by 2050. They also signed on to a goal, long held by the European Union, to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The question facing the Major Economies Forum, to be convened Thursday by US president Barack Obama, is whether major developing countries such as China and India will agree to the 2-degree goal and commit themselves to halving global emissions by 2050 in order to make it happen.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 09, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the better part of two decades, international climate policy has held industrialized countries responsible for the world’s carbon habit. But today developing-country emissions make up more than half the world’s total and are climbing faster than emissions in the wealthy North. A paper just out in PNAS offers a new argument that aims to bring these troubling emissions into the fold of a global climate deal - while preserving a sense of equity and the right of the planet's poorest to seek prosperity.

The work comes from Princeton’s Shoibal Chakravarty and a team of colleagues including Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, who previously brought us the handy concept of stabilization wedges. The principle: instead of asking the wealthiest nations to shoulder the burden of greenhouse gas cuts, ask the wealthiest individuals in both developed and developing countries to do so.

They aren’t suggesting that the UN hand out carbon ration cards or ground private jets. Instead, nations would be given emissions targets based on how many high-earning, high-emitting citizens they have. That means that although developed countries would still have to cut their emissions most quickly, developing countries with a growing middle class, such as China, would also be required to veer away from business as usual.

While Reuters headlined their story “New climate strategy: track the world's wealthiest”, Scientific American hits the real bottom line with “Who's to Blame? Making Poor Nations Share the Cost of Fighting Climate Change”. Socolow says, “I think the world understands that ... the size of the job required and the speed at which we have to proceed is incompatible with a further granting of a free pass to the developing world.”

But for those countries to relinquish their free pass, they would have to see the burden sharing as fair. That’s where the paper’s economic formula comes in.

Take a country at any point in the future, say the authors, and you can estimate how its projected greenhouse gas emissions are distributed among its citizens by assuming that people with higher incomes emit more. You then put all these high and low emitters of the world into a single distribution and chop off the top of the curve (see right) - taking out a bigger or smaller section depending on how much gas you want to exclude from the atmosphere. This yields a recommended ceiling on individual emissions - in this example, about 10.8 tons CO2 per person per year - that applies equally to all countries. To then come up with a national target, follow the cartoon below.

The authors also try a scenario with an added twist: an emissions floor as well as a ceiling. The idea here is to alleviate extreme poverty by letting people who are now using less than, say, a ton of CO2 per year come up to that low level. The group at first had doubts about this complication, says Socolow, “but we found that if we allow fossil fuels where they’re useful, the extra work that the rest of us have to do is very small.”

Continue reading "Climate equity with an economic twist" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 07, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although billions of dollars have been set aside for climate change projects to benefit developing countries, they have "not taken off in Africa in any significant way", says Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and also the least likely to be able to afford the costs of adapting to it.

Out of the 1643 “clean development” projects registered with the UNFCCC, only 30 (less than 2 percent) are within Africa. In comparison, 72 percent of projects are in Asia and the Pacific and 26 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 80 percent of the projects in Africa are in Northern Africa and South Africa. The needs of African nations are often side-stepped in international negotiations because their voices are drowned out by the developing nation powerhouses: China, India and Brazil.

The only way African nations can get their voice heard is by working together. But that’s not easy. Africa is politically, economically, environmentally and culturally very diverse. The biggest division is probably South Africa, which is basically a developed nation in a developing continent. But the Arab countries in northern Africa also tend to align themselves with the Middle East; Oil-rich countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, are part of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and share their interests; and Sub-Saharan Africa is further divided into English-, French- and Portuguese-language regions.

To improve Africa’s climate game-plan, more than 300 negotiators, ministers, experts and organizations related to Africa converged in Nairobi last week at the third African Ministerial Conference on the Environment. On 29 May, ministers announced they had forged a “shared vision,” asking industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and for more financial and technical support to help Africa cope with climate change. Beyond that, the 'Nairobi Declaration' contains few specifics.

And it's unclear whether the vague political statement will give Africa a stronger voice this week in Bonn, or during the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December this year. "It was difficult to agree on how much to ask for," says Sputnik Ratau, a spokesman for Buyelwa Sonjica, South Africa's minister of water and the environment, who chaired the ministerial meetings. "Different countries have different needs."

"Saying Africa is vulnerable and needs a lot of money is easy," adds Saleemul Huq, who works with developing-country negotiators through the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. "But coming up with more nuanced negotiating texts is not that easy."

A longer version of this story is available to subscribers on Nature News.

Anjali Nayar is an intern reporter on Nature News.

Image: Punchstock/Digital Vision

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 04, 2009
Categories: Anjali Nayar, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Commercial ships steaming through international waters are pumping out increasing amounts of greenhouse gases that are out of the reach of the Kyoto Protocol and national regulatory schemes. A new report from the UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee warns it could take years to bring these emissions under control.

The UN’s International Maritime Organisation - tasked under Kyoto with figuring out how to regulate emissions from shipping - has failed to move fast enough, says the report. An IMO meeting on the issue held in October 2008 did not get as far as formulating a proposal that could be part of the negotiating text for a new global climate deal, now under discussion in Bonn.

Not that it’s a simple problem to solve. To deal with gases released on international routes, either various countries must divide responsibility, or else the gases have to go into a separate “international” basket that’s regulated on its own somehow. Both are thorny approaches. Nevertheless, says the committee:

There can be no excuse for the lack of progress within the International Maritime Organisation since the Kyoto protocol was signed. That the IMO has yet to reach agreement even over the type of emissions control regime to take forward, let alone decide any details, suggests it is not fit for purpose in this vital area.

Continue reading "Shipping emissions up in the air" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on June 02, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Climate Policy, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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)

Republicans and Democrats have been wrangling this week over proposed legislation to tackle climate change. In the course of this spat it emerged that the former were considering frustrating the latter by forcing the entire 900 page bill and its 400 amendments to be read aloud.

Faced with this perceived ‘delaying tactic’ Democrat Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, did what any self respecting person in his position would do … he hired someone who can read really, really fast.

Via TPM, here is a video of what happened next:

Continue reading 'Climate change: the need for speed (reading) ' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 22, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If the UN conference in Copenhagen succeeds in hammering out tough limits on greenhouse gas emissions around the world, how can they ensure that nations will keep their climate vows in good times and bad, for better or for worse?

The Guardian’s Julian Borger flags up a new report, commissioned by the British government in preparation for the negotiations, that recommends sweeping changes to international institutions so that the policing can begin.

The authors, Alex Evans and David Steven of the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University, say this would include the creation of powerful new UN bodies. They suggest an “International Climate Control Committee” that would do for climate policy what the International Monetary Fund does for fiscal policy, pulling together and auditing data about how well countries are performing. A bit more glamorously, they also envisage a “coercive inspection regime” that - like the International Atomic Energy Agency hunting for nuclear weapons in the works - could show up unannounced to sniff out any illicit emissions.

Continue reading "Calling all wannabe climate cops" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 12, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite pressure from many environmentalists, the Obama administration upheld a Bush administration rule limiting the regulatory impact of last year's decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species.

The rule would essentially prevent the Endangered Species Act from becoming a venue for arguments about greenhouse gas emissions. And the logic is simple enough: Bear biologists hopefully have better things to do than analyze greenhouse gases from, say, a cement plant in Georgia, even if emissions from that plant contribute to global warming and the retreat of sea ice, which ultimately translates into hungry bears.

"We already are doing everything we can to protect the polar bear," US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters Friday. "The Endangered Species Act, however, is not in my view the proper mechanism for controlling our nation’s carbon emissions."

Continue reading 'Obama backs Bush on polar bear' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 11, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After months of saying that recession wouldn’t stop climate policy plans in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced yesterday that the country’s cap-and-trade program is in fact going to be delayed a year and will not roll out until July 2011.

As Roberta Kwok wrote in Nature last month, Rudd’s Labour party government had called for a 5% emissions cut from 2000 levels by 2020 - to be raised to 15% if an ambitious global climate deal is reached in Copenhagen - but the proposed legislation was under fire from both the right and left. The Financial Times notes that Greens in the Australian Senate had demanded a 40% cut with a global deal, while conservative opposition parties wanted the plan delayed to cushion the impact on businesses. Rudd met the Greens halfway, raising the conditional 15% target to 25%. Industry got extra soothing with a new tweak: fixed carbon prices for the first year (The Age has details).

Rudd, who had called any delay in cap-and-trade “reckless and irresponsible”, now says "I believe (this) is the most sensible, rational, balanced response to a fundamental change in economic circumstances."

Halfway around the world, British Columbia may also be about to take a U-turn on a climate policy milestone. Nicola Jones reports in Nature today that the province has been uneasily bearing the burden of North America’s first carbon tax. The BC Liberal Party started the tax in July, but their challengers in an upcoming election on 12 May are against it. Jones writes:

Continue reading "Hard times for climate plans in Australia and Canada " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 05, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A group of ambassadors from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) stopped by the IHDP conference yesterday and held a panel discussion on dealing with the leading edge of dangerous climate change. For AOSIS countries that stand to be swallowed by rising seas or devastated by droughts and storms, their continued existence is on the line in this year's climate negotiations. At the UN meeting here in Bonn in March, the group issued a statement saying, "The survival of the small island states should be the benchmark for the success of the Copenhagen agreement." I nabbed AOSIS chair Dessima Williams of Grenada for a quick interview on the island states' agenda.

What kind of agreement is needed for small island states to survive?

Continue reading "IHDP: No time for pessimism, says small islands leader" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 30, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, IHDP Open Meeting 2009, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

China’s forests, shrublands and soils have absorbed a third or so of China’s fossil fuel emissions from 1980 to 2000. Sequestering up to 260 million tonnes of carbon per year, the Chinese land sink is more than twice as large than that of geographic Europe, and comparable in size to that of the United States.

There has been quite some controversy over the total size of the Northern Hemisphere’s terrestrial carbon sink, so this first comprehensive estimate, published in Nature today, is filling a real gap. Given China’s 1.2 billion population and rapidly growing economy, knowledge of how much of its emissions are actually staying in the atmosphere is pretty valuable information. Globally, around 40% of annual emissions stay in the atmosphere; the rest is sequestered by plants, soils and oceans.

The Chinese data come at a time of growing speculation and guesswork over the People's Republic’s future climate and energy policies. Needless to say, the study is of no small relevance with a view to upcoming climate negotiations. The very fact that China’s land carbon sink is large is good news. But the results will also strengthen the Chinese government’s negotiation position at the United Nations climate summit in December in Copenhagen.

Continue reading "EGU: China's carbon sink - it's large" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 22, 2009
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Climate Policy, Earth science, Mitigation, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When Kevin Rudd was elected prime minister of Australia in 2007, hopes were high that climate action might soon follow. And Rudd indeed ratified the Kyoto Protocol his first day in office, which his predecessor John Howard had not done. (See this earlier Nature story for context about the role of climate in that election.)

Things are looking a lot different these days. Australia's nascent stab at creating cap-and-trade legislation to create regulate* greenhouse gases -- introduced as a white paper last December and then as draft legislation last month -- is running into political trouble, as Roberta Kwok reports in this week's issue of Nature. Perhaps not surprisingly, the problem stems in part from struggles among parties; Rudd's Labor party does not have a majority in the Senate and only a slim majority in the House of Representatives, so he needs either opposition Liberals or the Greens on board to make the legislation reality. And that's a long way from happening; the Liberals cite the costs of such restrictions in the economic downturn, while the Greens think its target of 5 to 15% reductions doesn't go far enough.

On the other side of the world, the United States is just starting to embark on its own version of the same political game. On Tuesday, Congressmen Henry Waxman (Democrat, California) and Ed Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts) introduced their first draft of extensive climate and energy legislation -- including an outline of a cap-and-trade system. You can read the bill in all its gloriously gorey detail here.

Alex Witze

*Corrected 2 April 2009.

Posted by Alex Witze on April 01, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | 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)

The loss of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), which last week ended up in the ocean rather than in orbit, is a hard blow not only to the team who devoted much of the last decade to getting it off the ground but to scientific – and especially climate - research.

There is quite literally of sense of grief among the climate research community, evident in the story by Jeff Tollefson and Geoff Brumfiel over on Nature News. My colleague Anna Barnett interviewed David Crisp, OCO Principal Investigator, ahead of the launch. His excitement about the mission was palpable as he spoke of how the NASA satellite would measure atmospheric carbon dioxide at a resolution 3 times higher than any previous space measurement of a trace gas.

The Japanese space agency successfully launched their Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) in January and undoubtedly this will provide some of the data that OCO would have collected. But OCO would have provided an unprecedented spatial resolution. Taking half a million carbon dioxide measurements per day, the satellite would have located specific sources of the greenhouse gas, differentiating cities and freeways from adjacent forested areas.

Not only is this a huge loss for exploratory science, the timing of the incident is especially unfortunate. With emissions rising and a global climate deal in the balance, pinpointing the origin and fate of carbon dioxide has never been more urgent — a task that the US$280-million mission would have accomplished skillfully.

So what’s next for NASA? Personally, I think the agency should make every effort towards a rapid re-launch, as I’ve detailed in my latest editorial. Getting an OCO replacement into orbit within the next few years would offer at least a brief period of data verification with GOSAT – one advantage of having two CO2 trackers in space simultaneously – and would have the added advantage of monitoring carbon heavyweights from space during the early stages of a post-2012 global climate deal.

Continue reading "NASA’s next challenge " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 03, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Climate Science, Features, GHG emissions, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

Jim Hansen, the earth scientist known for his outspokenness about global warming, is marching today as part of a climate protest against burning coal. The focus of all the attention is the Capitol Power Plant, a coal-burning monstrosity just blocks from the US Capitol building that is one of the biggest sources of emissions in the District of Columbia. Hundreds of protestors have reportedly turned out, even in the snow that coats Washington several inches deep and snarled commutes this morning.
Over at Nature's Twitter feed, reporter Jeff Tollefson notes that Hansen says he is willing to get arrested. Check out the action live as Jeff reports it.

Image (sans Darryl Hannah): Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Alex Witze on March 02, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The US could soon offer one-stop shopping for climate information, in the form of a central National Climate Service (see Nature story here) that would consolidate data and forecasts from multiple sources.

The idea of a National Climate Service is old, dating back to the late 1970s, but Jane Lubchenco might finally make it a reality. At her 12 February nomination hearing, Lubchenco said she would work toward creating such a service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency she is slated to lead.

What exactly would a National Climate Service do? For starters, it would synthesize climate data that is currently fragmented across multiple NOAA programmes, the US Geological Survey, the US Department of Agriculture, and university research groups. It would also take a "user-oriented" approach, tailoring new research and data analysis toward urgent problems such as drought, flood risk, agriculture, and vector-borne disease transmission. Finally, it would attempt to improve predictions of climate-change impact at the local or regional level, where demand for information is growing.

Translating global forecast data to the community level is key, says Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in Madison, Wisconsin. Scientists are predicting climate change and sea level rise worldwide, he says, but the question he often gets from members is: "What does that mean to me?"

Providing answers will require a better climate observing system, says Chet Koblinsky, director of NOAA's Climate Program Office. Existing systems are ad-hoc because many of them were originally set up for other purposes, he says, and some parameters such as soil moisture are not well-monitored. Ed Sarachik, a climate scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle, warns that "without a climate observing system, you're going to hit a wall."

A National Climate Service might also invite a larger role from the private sector, says Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Companies could do the work of analyzing data for specific uses, the same way the Weather Channel interprets NOAA's National Weather Service data for the public.

Posted by Alex Witze on February 19, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I noted that the new bosses in Washington DC, in their swift stride towards distinctly post-Bush environmental policies, had yet to touch the outgoing administration’s 11th-hour battle against applying the Clear Air Act to greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

They didn’t maintain the suspense very long.

Yesterday the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, said the EPA would put up for review a December memo on the issue from ex-EPA admin Stephen Johnson - and that the agency is set to announce new thinking on this type of regulation.

Continue reading "Greenhouse gases up for a rethink at the EPA" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 18, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Signs of our interesting times: airlines and oil companies are apparently now queuing up to have their greenhouse gas emissions regulated.

A communiqué to the upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen has been signed by three European airlines and an Asian one - British Airways, Air France/KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific - along with the European airport operator BAA. Calling themselves the Aviation Global Deal Group, they say they recognize “the need to find a global solution to our emissions that meets environmental and developmental needs whilst ensuring a level playing field in our markets.” Namely, they want carbon dioxide emissions from aviation to be regulated with a sectoral approach that applies to their overseas competitors.

As things stand, the EU’s emissions trading scheme is due include plane exhaust starting in 2012, which should make it more expensive to fly through Europe. For long-haul flights from Asia by carriers like Cathay Pacific, the EU will count total emissions rather than just gases released in European airspace, Reuters notes.

Across the pond, the New York Times reports that oil companies are in much the same mood, aiming to shape low-carbon policies they see as inevitable under Obama.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 12, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UK will get an intriguing new climate research centre next week, with the launch of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and the University of Leeds. In a Q&A for Nature Reports Climate Change, I've interviewed Andrew Gouldson, who will co-direct the centre with Judith Rees under chairman Lord Nicholas Stern - and who envisions a strong focus on regional impacts of climate change.

CCCEP's experts will be closely in touch with policymakers and other local stakeholders, Gouldson says, in a way that "builds both their capacity and ours — ours to do good research, and theirs to use that research to take better decisions on climate change." One of the stakeholders, and a funder of one of the five research streams at the new centre, is the insurance company Munich Re. As I wrote last month, another new project that aims for the cutting edge of policy-relevant research is a hurricane model projection that Greg Holland is now wrapping up at NCAR - also partly insurance industry-funded. Could these academic-public-private three-ways be the way forward? Let us know in the comments.

I thought the most interesting part of the interview was what Gouldson had to say on the new UK Climate Change Act, which imposes a legally binding requirement to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. Here's an extract:

AG: At the national level, I think Britain's been very proactive indeed. The government has been quite brave signing up to this medium- to long-term target which is really quite ambitious. But I don't think there's a public understanding, or possibly even a public acceptance, of what a low-carbon economy might look like — one which is 60, 70, 80 per cent decarbonized.

AB: Does that make it less likely that the policy will actually come through with results?

AG: In the next 10 to 15 years, not necessarily, because there are lots of mitigation options that are relatively affordable and technologically viable. I think the question is what happens in the phase after that. Is there a political appetite to do some really quite painful things which would involve some powerful people or parties losing out? I think there's a need now, in the next few years, to build some sort of broad consensus on the need to shift towards a low-carbon economy.

Read the full interview here.

Anna Barnett

Image: Andrew Gouldson, photographed by Stevie Kilgour at the University of Leeds.

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 23, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Economics, Politics, Regional climate, Research, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

More than two years have passed since Nick Stern’s report on the economics of climate change was published, yet the question of how to weigh the costs against the benefits of acting on climate change – and whether such an approach in even ethical – is still being hotly debated.

Stern's adherents, on the one hand, support the stance of the former World Bank economist who argues that taking strong, early action on climate change outweighs the costs of doing nothing, or of delaying action. On the other hand, some of Stern’s detractors – most notably ‘skeptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg - argue that although climate change is happening, major reductions in carbon emissions are simply not worth the money. (Others argues that Stern was right for the wrong reasons, but I won't go into that here).

The latest to weigh on the issue is Frank Ackerman, a research economist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, whose new book Can We Afford the Future?: the Economics of a Warming World is reviewed by Yoram Bauman over on Nature Reports Climate Change. Bauman teaches at the University of Washington, but he is perhaps better known for adding levity to such impenetrable topics as climate economics with his stand-up comedy routines.

Bauman picks out some highlights of Ackerman's analysis, namely his policy prescription for massive government-funded clean-energy R&D and his coverage of Harvard economist Martin Weitzman's work on improbable, but not impossible, catastrophic climate change.

Ultimately though Bauman concludes that Ackerman is the perfect odd couple match for Lomborg.

Continue reading "Ackerman: Odd-couple match for Lomborg? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 15, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Economics, Olive Heffernan, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

After eleven months of legislative work, the European Parliament gave its backing today to the European Union’s (EU) climate change package which aims to ensure that the EU will achieve its self-set climate targets by 2020: a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels, a 20% improvement in energy efficiency, and a 20% share for renewables in the EU energy mix.

EU heads of states, who had hammered out the agreement last week, called the legislation "historic". But critics say the reduction targets are less ambitious than they appear, basically a bluff. What bothers environmentalist most are the many far-reaching concessions to power plants and other emission-intensive industries participating in the EU’s mandatory emissions trading system.

More about this is in my story over on Nature News.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on December 17, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, GHG emissions, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Heliophage

I’ve just been reading some advice for Obama (pdf) from the Institute for 21^st century energy, an organism of the US Chamber of Commerce. It's pretty standard (and depressing) stuff of the “must be win-win, mustn’t hurt business, do nothing until there’s an international agreement” sort, sometimes spot on in its prescriptions but overall tainted by a failure to really engage with the climate issues. So far so standard, but it takes new salience from the fact that the person whose signature is at the top is General James L. Jones. Jones, it was announced yesterday and widely leaked before that, will be the new National Security Adviser. The shocker here – and it really is quite shocking – is that the executive summary of this document makes no mention of climate as a factor in energy policy and planning at all.

In the body there is climate stuff, but it's mostly not good; Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room gets into the details

The institute deserves credit for having its first strategic priority be energy efficiency, but its other priorities and specific policy suggestions are wrongheaded and reflect the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s typical anti-regulatory, pro-pollution industry agenda. Jones’ Transition Plan calls for billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear and coal industry, a dramatic expansion in domestic oil and natural gas drilling into protected areas, and massive new energy industry tax breaks and loopholes.

Continue reading "James Jones's poor energy policy" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on December 02, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

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)

Cross-posted from Heliophage

Prodded by Andy Revkin at the Times, Joe Romm offers a list of "Pearl Harbors" that might lead to the second-world-war scale of effort against climate change that he (and to an extent I) see as necessary. Here it is:

1) Arctic goes ice free before 2020. I have bets out on this. It would be a big, visible global shock.
2) Rapid warming over next decade, as recent Nature and Science article suggests is quite possible
3) Continued (unexpected) surge in methane
4) A megadrought hitting the SW comparable to what has hit southern Australia.
5) More superstorms, like Katrina
6) A heatwave as bad as Europe’s 2003 one.
7) Something unpredicted but clearly linked to climate, like the bark beetle devastation
8) Accelerated mass loss in Greenland and/or Antarctica, perhaps with another huge ice shelf breaking off, but in any case coupled with another measurable rise in the rate of sea level rise,
9) The Fifth Assessment Report (2012-2013) really spelling out what we face with no punches pulled.

Continue reading "Is it a Pearl Harbor if it has to happen twice?" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on November 26, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama's Environmental Protection Agency may not have a director yet, but it already has its hands full. In the final year of the Bush administration, the EPA has simply procrastinated on greenhouse gas control: the Supreme Court in 2007 ordered the agency to assess the dangerous impacts of emissions under the Clean Air Act, or else justify its lack of action, but the result was a hopelessly conflicted report with a comment period that outlasts the presidential turnover. Now adding pressure to sort this out, pronto, are an EPA decision on coal plants last week and the threat of a new lawsuit over ocean acidification.

On Thursday the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board rejected the permit for Utah’s new Bonanza Coal Power Plant - a ruling that could halt as many as 100 other coal plants on the EPA docket until the agency can decide how to regulate their carbon dioxide output. For details, see the thorough coverage on Wired Science and Climate Progress. AP summarizes:

The panel said the EPA's Denver office failed to adequately support its decision to issue a permit for the Bonanza plant without requiring controls on carbon dioxide, the leading pollutant linked to global warming.

The matter was sent back to that office, which must better explain why it failed to order limits on carbon dioxide. This is "an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting process," the panel said.

The Sierra Club conservation group filed the Bonanza appeal and argued it on the basis of the Supreme Court ruling. Their victory wasn't absolute, explains Alexis Madrigal on Wired Science:

The Board did not actually side with the Sierra Club's interpretation of the Clean Air Act, but in deciding to send the decision back to the EPA with the instruction to come up with a nationwide plan for regulating greenhouse gases, the Sierra Club effectively stopped new coal plants in their tracks.

"It's going to stop everything while EPA mulls over what to do next," Sierra Club lawyer David Bookbinder told the AP. "And that will be decided by the next administration."

Meanwhile, the Center for Biological Diversity has appeared to the EPA as the Ghost of Lawsuits Yet to Come. Skipping the Clean Air Act (and other federal laws cited in past cases against carbon, as noted by Dot Earth), the CBD say they will invoke the Clean Water Act in defense of acidifying oceans. The group petitioned last year for an update in the EPA's pH standards, which haven't been revised since 1976 - a problem flagged in a July 2007 Science commentary (subscription required).

Their followup is a notice of intent to sue. A win in court could open yet another door to EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions - something the CBD is going after explicitly in separate, state-level petitions.

Continue reading "Bonanza of carbon cases at the EPA" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 17, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Energy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Though experts have pegged China as the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter for well over a year, it was only two weeks ago that the government first openly admitted China's emissions have caught up with the US (just barely, they insist).

This acknowledgment came the day after a senior Chinese climate policy official said rich nations should earmark a wopping 1% of their GDP to help the developing world tackle climate change. Swift to follow was an international climate conference in Beijing, run jointly by China's government and the UN, which ambitiously proposed a new international agency to push technology transfer. Jane Qiu reports the meeting’s outcome in Nature this week (subscription required).

In short, it’s not just the rather ghastly Christmas tree in my hairdresser’s window that’s signaling December is around the corner. Next month ushers in the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, a major stop on the road between Bali and the Son of Kyoto treaty to be hammered out next year in Copenhagen. The formerly reticent China seems to be after a louder voice at the table.

Reuters reports:

"There's growing external pressure on China and also its own problems with energy and the environment, and these factors are coming together to make it more active and focused on climate change," said Goerild Heggelund, an expert on Chinese climate change policy at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway.

President-elect Barack Obama's entry into the White House early next year, vowing greater action on climate change, will also lift expectations of China, said Guan Qingyou, a climate policy researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

"With U.S. policy changes, there will also be more pressure on China to show initiative," he said. "Eyes will be on us."

The 1% of GDP demanded last month, Qiu says, would cash out at US$284 billion - more than twice what the eight largest economies pledged to the climate-challenged developing world at July’s G8 summit. Even if the North agreed to such a sum - or the 0.5% or 0.7% the Chinese have previously suggested - countries heading toward a global recession seem unlikely to improve on their poor records of delivering foreign aid.

Perhaps more UN-friendly is the new plan for stepping up the transfer of technologies that would allow the South to produce clean energy and adapt to unavoidable climate change. Writes Qiu:

Under the framework proposed in brainstorming sessions at the Beijing conference, the new inter-government agency would be an independent body able to make and implement decisions and monitor compliance. It would oversee and verify mitigation targets of developing countries, identify barriers to technology transfer, and propose countermeasures. Developed countries would commit to providing it with a steady stream of income for its primary operating budget, possibly supplemented with money from the private sector and other sources.

Continue reading "Pre-Poznan: China makes the first move " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Mitigation, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Following Obama’s landslide victory in the US presidential elections last night, pundits are already speculating on how he will deal with the formidable challenges in his in-tray, not least of which will be reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving the economy into clean-energy mode.

The news that Obama will be the 44th President of the US has been met with jubilation by environmentalists (as reported here and here), who are hopeful that the new administration will come good on promises to protect the planet.

Over on the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, James Kanter reports that hopes have soared in Europe toward global cooperation on climate change following Obama’s appointment as President-elect. Earlier today, Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the European Parliament, welcomed a new start for transatlantic relations on issues including climate change and invited Mr. Obama to address the European Parliament next spring. That would be the first time a U.S. president has spoken at the European Parliament since Ronald Reagan’s address in Strasbourg in 1985, writes Kanter.

Back on the home front, corporate carbon giants are less happy about the potential impacts of an Obama administration. CNNmoney says that companies such as ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp are concerned that policies such as windfall profits tax and market intervention will target the fossil fuel industry unfairly. Some southern utility companies, such as Duke Energy Corp have lobbied against a federal renewable portfolio standard, though some encourage state mandates, writes Ian Talley.

Continue reading "Obama victory brings new hope for climate policy, dark days for fossil fuels " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2008
Categories: Business, Climate Policy, Energy, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Is the global financial crisis good or bad for green issues? The ongoing controversy over the European Union’s ambitious climate and energy package suggests the latter might be the case. But political and economical analysts seem to be increasingly confident that the current crisis might give rise to environmentally healthier policies and investment decisions.

The EU heads of state are still determined to finalise the package before the end of the year, but they expect tough negotiations with a group of reluctant countries led by Poland.

An editorial in this week’s Nature lays out the options and prospects for EU climate policies in light of the financial crisis:

“Striking the required bargains may require more time than the remaining two months under French presidency. But a well-weighed set of rules is far and away preferable to a rushed political compromise that would substantially water down the EU’s ambitious climate plan. (…) Meanwhile, the current economic turbulence cannot be allowed to serve as a pretext for lessening climate protection efforts.”

Meanwhile, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said in a statement that the EU plan “could also be a boon for the economy, generating millions of new jobs at a time when the world is suffering from the financial crisis.”

Any agreement will come too late for the international climate talks next month in Poznan, Poland (of all places). But a strong European commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 % would be a much-needed signal to the UN climate meeting in Copenhagen 2009, where nations hope to conclude on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

Continue reading "From greed to green?" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on October 23, 2008
Categories: Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, GHG emissions, Opinion, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Parliament’s environment committee yesterday voted largely in favour of the ambitious European climate action plan (subscription) proposed in January.

The decision, although preliminary, allows the European Union (EU) to go into the upcoming next round of international climate negotiations with a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across Europe by at least 20 % by 2020. The European commission, Council and Parliament must yet formally agree on details of the plan, but substantial changes are now considered unlikely.

Power plants in Europe will no longer receive free allowances for their greenhouse-gas emissions.TRAVELPIX/GETTY

Most hotly contested were the amendments to the EU’s emission trading system (ETS) which the European commission had proposed in January to strengthen the effectiveness of the scheme.

Introduced in 2005, the ETS is as yet the only mandatory emissions trading system in the world. Until now, power stations and other large European industries have benefitted from generous supply of free permits to release carbon dioxide. Much of the commission’s proposed reform was aimed to end the over-allocation of emission allowances.

The compromise now agreed upon in parliament doesn’t pull the teeth out of the original plan. As of 2013, power stations will not receive free emission allowances anymore. Instead, they will have to obtain 100% of allowances at auction.

Other energy-intensive industries, such as steel and cement facilities which, unlike the power sector, have to compete with suppliers outside the EU, will in a first phase merely have to obtain 15% (rather than 20 % as the commission had initially proposed) of emission allowances at auction. But the allocation of free allowances to manufacturing industries is to be gradually phased out by 2020.

The environment committee did make some concessions to industry, though. The threshold for facilities – currently around 10,000 - which participate in the ETS is to be raised from 10,000 to 25,000 tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions.

Continue reading "EU Parliament backs climate plan" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on October 08, 2008
Categories: Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Energy, GHG emissions, In the News, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow’s been dubbed Super Tuesday for EU climate policy, with the EU Parliament set to vote on proposals that follow up the climate change legislation proposed at the start of the year.

But what was once touted as a cutting-edge vision has turned into a tough sell. By the end of last week, Polish leaders announced they’d added a sixth country, Greece, to the coalition they’ve been building against parts of the plan - creating a large enough minority to block a decision.

Their beef is with auctioning of emissions permits under a revamped European carbon-trading system, scheduled to start in 2013. The financial turmoil that’s muddied the political path in the US is also having an effect here, sharpening countries’ concerns about their high-emissions industries - whose lobbyists have protested all along that the cost of buying permits will push them out of Europe. “This crisis changes priorities,” said German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier last week. “One cannot rule out that interest in protecting the climate will change.”

So various cushions are on offer. Companies may be allowed to buy half their permits from carbon-offset projects in the developing world, which makes them cheaper; and there’s a leaked list of industries that could get their emissions rights spooned out for free, though such get-out clauses weren’t supposed to be inked until after the UN attempts a global climate change deal in Copenhagen in December 2009.

These solutions don’t work for Poland. Its problem is reportedly not manufacturers that have to compete with Chinese and Indian counterparts, but its electricity industry, overwhelmingly based on Polish coal. As The Economist explains thoroughly and sympathetically, making coal too expensive - which is the whole point of the policy - will push Poland toward natural gas supplied by the increasingly scary Russia.

Continue reading "Super Tuesday for the EU" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 06, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote here yesterday that ‘I don’t think that anyone knows for sure how close we are to reaching tipping points in the climate system’. As it so happens, a pair of articles published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week illustrates this point nicely.

The first is a Perspective by atmospheric scientist V Ramanathan and postdoctoral researcher Yan Feng from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, who argue that the Earth is now committed to a 2.4°C rise in temperature above pre-industrial levels.

Anything above a 2°C increase is generally considered to be ‘dangerous’ climate change and would likely trigger several of the Earth’s tipping points, such as the complete loss of Arctic summer sea ice and melting of the Greenland ice sheet. And according to the IPCC, a rise in global temperature by 1-3°C will commit the planet to widespread loss of biodiversity, widespread deglaciation of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and a major reduction of area and volume of Hindu-Kush-Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers, which provide the head-waters for most major river systems of Asia.

The authors argue that for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to remain constant at 2005 levels for the rest of the century, aggressive emissions reductions would be required – yet emissions are rising.

Currently, the warming effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is being masked by the cooling effect of other air pollutants – such as smoke from cooking and agricultural waste burning – that create a dimming effect at the Earth’s surface.

Assuming policies to reduce these air pollutants are successful, the full warming potential of greenhouse gases will soon be realized. So as air pollution measures become effective (and much headway is being made here), the need for reducing carbon dioxide emissions becomes even more urgent, say Ramanathan and Feng.

Continue reading "Could tipping happen any time soon? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 26, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Climate Science, Features, GHG emissions, Journal Club, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Heliophage

Commuting in this morning on the boat, I was struck by a Guardian article on a new McKinsey report (pdf) about carbon capture and storage:

The study shows that such plants could be economically viable by 2030 at the latest. But it would require substantial public subsidies to get 10-12 plants running by the EU target date of 2015...McKinsey said that, with coal still likely to make up 60% of EU power generation by 2030, CCS could be a vital solution to ensuring security of energy supply and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It could reduce emissions by 400m tonnes a year by 2030, or a fifth of planned European savings. The consultants' report, published yesterday, showed that with an aggressive commercial push from the middle of the next decade, CCS costs could come down from as much as €90 for a tonne of CO2 initially, to about €30-45 in 2030 - or in line with expected carbon prices then.

But of course we can't; not now. Spending $700 billion + on bailing out banks is going to make the US, at least, less able to spend comparatively small amounts on other things. As my old boss Bill Emmott but it, also in the Guardian:

The true impact of this expansion of public spending lies in politics, and in what this rescue will now make more difficult or perhaps impossible: the expansion of other areas of public spending, such as healthcare or public programmes for alternative energy. If Barack Obama is elected president in November, he will find his fiscal hands tied a lot tighter than he may have hoped, even with a Democratic Congress alongside him - unless, of course, he wants to raise taxes.

Continue reading "Damn, a trillion dollars would have come in handy" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on September 24, 2008
Categories: Business, Climate Policy, Energy, Oliver Morton, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the IPCC’s twentieth birthday party Sunday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon urged the diplomats present to get moving - now - on the post-Kyoto climate treaty. "We must fight the urge to postpone everything until Copenhagen,” where the treaty is to be finalized in 2009, he said. “Surely we can make concrete progress on some issues."

How much progress? The glass-half-full view is that the latest talks, wrapping up in Accra, Ghana, last week, already took some modest but visible steps forward - particularly on reducing emissions from deforestation and heavy industry. On the other hand, the major climate conference in Poznan, Poland, this December happens while President Bush is still in office, meaning that any change in the US stance is on hold until 2009.

And if this year’s meeting prepares the ground well enough to avoid bitter eleventh-hour struggles over crucial divisions in Copenhagen, it will be a historic first.

To mark the IPCC’s anniversary, NRCC debuted a timeline of the international policy debates that first gave birth to the IPCC, and then were shaped by its findings. In sifting through accounts of past climate negotiations while working on the timeline, I was struck by the invariable tales of gruesome battles into the wee hours. The classic was Kyoto in 1997, as reported by the Washington Post:

Continue reading "Graphing climate policy progress" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 03, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This week on Nature Reports Climate Change, we have a news feature on a topic that has been considered something of a conservation taboo: assisted migration – in other words manually relocating species that are under threat of extinction from climate change.

There’s been a spate of coverage on assisted migration the last year, but as Emma Marris reports, experts are now starting to give serious consideration to how it might work in reality.

Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from August 1 to 3 ahead of this year’s Ecological Society of America was a group of scientists, lawyers, land managers, economists and ethicists, some of whom feel that relocating species would most likely be a disaster. But it looks like even those opposed to the idea are concerned enough to consider it an option.

Ok, so no-one is really suggesting we move polar bears to the Antarctic (I just liked the cartoon)! More likely is shifting the quino checkerspot butterfly several hundred kilometers north.

But with climate change impacting biological systems throughout the globe, the reality is that many species may have to adapt to climate change in situ or say sayonara as part of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. And for those that could up and leave to a better place if they were not hemmed in by human barriers, giving them a helping hand could make all the difference.

But as Emma details in her news feature, proposals to relocate species are likely to meet some significant barriers - and not just of the physical kind.

Continue reading "It’s conservation – but not as we know it " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 29, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is one contestant in a ‘climate war game’ taking place this week in Washington, where four teams representing China, India, Europe and the United States are negotiating a new deal on curbing global greenhouse gas emissions.

As Daniel Cressey reported yesterday on The Great Beyond blog:

"Today the participants woke up in the year 2015, and the outlook on global warming is significantly worse than it was just seven years earlier. ... Droughts, heavy rains, floods and other extreme weather events are on the rise. Some 250,000 refugees from Bangladesh are camped out on the border of India, two years after their country was ravaged by a typhoon." “It feels a bit like a grown-up version of Dungeons and Dragons to me, but I'm willing to give it a try,” says Tollefson.

If yesterday's roleplay scenario is anything to go by, it seems the EU and US may completely swap stances on climate policy by 2015! For an explanation of just how that might happen, check out Jeff's progress over on Nature's conference blog.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 29, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Notes from the Field, Olive Heffernan, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In case anyone doubted the Bush administration’s resolve on climate policy during these last lame-duck months, they’ve just used the thump of a 500-page EPA report hitting the bin to hammer it home.

Continue reading "EPA trashes its own report" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ross Garnaut, the down-under equivalent of Nicholas Stern, offered up a draft report Friday on the costs of climate change in Australia and an emissions trading scheme for dealing with it.

The reaction? Garnaut mania, says Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond. The report's server was overloaded at the time of this blogging - despite the gauntlet of rewrites that still stands between this document and actual legislation, as Daniel points out.

If global warming goes unmitigated, Garnaut figures projected GDP will drop 4.8% and real wages 7.8% by 2100. Agriculture is one sector set to take a beating - and that's in the context of droughts that have already dug into Asia's rice supply (thanks to Grist for link; more on climate, energy and global food supply here).

The proposed emissions market has a broad scope, including transportation and petroleum products. It won't be a revenue-raiser though - households are supposed to get half the proceeds to offset rising prices, businesses another 30% against international competition, and the last 20% goes to developing and commercializing new technologies. For wonkier details, see Reuters' factbox.

Worth noting: At the national level, what Garnaut's recommending is a short-term band-aid plan. From the report summary:

Australia's mitigation effort is our contribution to keeping alive the possibility of an effective global agreement on mitigation.

Any effort prior to effective, comprehensive global agreement should be short, transitional, and directed at achievement of global agreement.

Image: Coal-fired power plant in Western Australia. If carbon consumption goes unmitigated, says the Garnaut report, coal-addicted Oz can expect quadrupled emissions, mostly from power. Credit: Nachoman-au on Wikimedia.

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 07, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“People are broadly concerned, but not entirely convinced”, concludes the latest poll on public opinion of global warming by social marketing group Ipsos Mori.

Despite the deluge of media reports in the last year documenting the scientific consensus on climate change and the startling rapidity at which impacts are being seen around the world - most notably perhaps the ever-decreasing Arctic sea ice - 60% of the British Public is uncertain that climate change is caused by humans, and many others believe that scientists are overstating the problem.

Writing in Sunday’s Observer, Juliette Jowit provides the following explanation:

There is growing concern that an economic depression and rising fuel and food prices are denting public interest in environmental issues. Some environmentalists blame the public's doubts on last year's Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, and on recent books, including one by Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, that question the consensus on climate change.

While it’s reassuring to know that the public questions the status quo, if Jowitt is correct, what’s frustrating is the ability of blatantly misrepresentative arguments to sway public opinion.

The Great Global Warming Swindle resulted in a record 250 complaints to regulatory watchdog Ofcom (including the first ever peer reviewed complaint), but that’s still a fraction of the 2.5 million viewers. Like many of those who saw the Channel 4 documentary, readers of Lawson’s offering on climate change ‘An Appeal to Reason’ are probably unaware it has been scientifically discredited in almost every review, including one on Nature Reports Climate Change by Sir John Houghton, Honorary Scientist at the UK’s Hadley Centre.

As Sir Houghton writes:

Promised as a "rare breath of intellectual rigour" and a "hard headed examination of the realities" of climate change, this offering is neither cool nor rational….and is largely one of misleading messages.

Lawson’s fundamental misunderstanding of basic scientific concepts is first displayed in his interpretation of the temperature records for the first part of this century, with which he attempts to discredit the science of climate change, and the work of many thousands of researchers who’ve dedicated entire careers to the problem. More recently, he repeats this in an amusing attack on the recent Nature paper by NASA’s Cynthia Rosenzweig.

Writing as a guest over on Susan Hills’ blog, Lawson’s piece starts off with a failure to grasp the term 'meta-analysis' – he clearly thinks that this is merely a lumping together of existing data. On the contrary, Rosenzweig and colleagues have used a powerful scientific tool to analyze changes in early 30,000 phenomena in the natural world - no mean feat - and in doing so, have shown that warming is aready having a worldwide impacts.

As Houghton rightly points out, Lawson is in need of climate science 101. But then, it seems, he's not alone - at least on that count.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 24, 2008
Categories: Adaptation, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, Features, In the News, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't grieve the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner climate bill, urges Joseph Romm in a Nature Reports Climate Change Commentary this week. Romm, voice of the Climate Progress blog, writes:

Although hailed as landmark legislation, the proposal, which died after it failed to muster close to the required 60 votes [in the US Senate], would not have put the nation on the path required to help avert catastrophic climate change.

The bill, like most climate plans now up for serious debate around the world, relied heavily on imposing a financial penalty for carbon emissions. But Europe's up-and-running emissions market has done little to curb the continent's appetite for carbon, and that should make legislators and negotiators queasy, argues Romm.

"The United States simply cannot wait another decade to find out whether domestic cap-and-trade legislation will drive carbon dioxide to a high enough price to curb emissions growth sharply," he says. Nor is new technology the answer:

Such is the urgent need to reverse emissions trends by deploying a multitude of low-carbon technologies that we must rely on technologies that either are already commercial or will very shortly be so. Fortunately, venture capitalists and public companies have begun to inject many billions of dollars into the development and short-term commercialization of most plausible low-carbon technologies. Governments should now focus their R&D spending on a longer-term effort aimed at a new generation of technologies for the emissions reduction effort after 2040, but the notion that we need a Manhattan Project or Apollo programme for technology development is mistaken. Instead, what is urgently needed is an effort of that scale focused on the deployment of technology.

Romm said more about this Thursday in a cross-posted entry at Climate Progress and Grist, in the process resurrecting a set-to with Roger Pielke, Jr, on their respective blogs in April and May.

Romm at that time argued for the importance of carbon costs - though only as one prong on the pitchfork he was wielding against a Nature Commentary by Pielke and co-authors.

Meanwhile, the most recent opinion Pielke's offered on our site is that the need for R&D isn't up for debate anymore - it's all about how to price carbon.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on June 23, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Opinion, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Development economist Jeffrey Sachs, famous for the economic turnarounds he's helped engineer as an advisor to Latin American and Eastern European governments, is also known for his optimism that the living standards of the world's poorest can be raised much higher without sacrificing either the wealth of the industrialized world or crucial natural resources. But among analysts of global change, optimism is relative. "I believe that there is most likely a path of sustainable development, but we can't quite be sure," Sachs told a sold-out lecture hall at the London Zoo last night. "It's a question mark."

Sachs spoke on big themes from his new book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, notably the need for expansion beyond market-based thinking to face problems not dreamt of in Adam Smith's philosophy. Before and after this rousing overview (if you'd bet ahead of time that Sachs would quote John F. Kennedy at length, you'd have won), I had the chance to get some nittier, grittier details on how Sachs wants to deal with climate change.

More and better government investment in foreign aid and green tech is the number-one key for Sachs - only the US presidential turnover seemed to run a close second, and cap-and-trading was off in the distance. So he didn't hesitate to offer a laundry list of projects that he thinks need much more political commitment - among them carbon capture and storage, passively heated and cooled green buildings, and super duper climate computers.

Technological solutions often raise ownership problems, though. If, for example, the agrobiotech industry produces new 'climate-proof' crop varieties that survive floods and droughts - an innovation Sachs welcomed at a recent climate modelling summit - can the developing world afford to buy the seeds?

"One of the things we’ve learned from the battle over access to anti-retroviral medicines," Sachs said - and this was a battle he himself fought - "is that it’s possible to create hybrid systems where you have intellectual property rights applied mainly in the high-income markets and you have access at the cost of production, or on a no-profit basis, in the poor countries."

In the case of African food shortages, he added, simple, readily available remedies like chemical fertilizers and high-yield non-GMO crops had been "sitting on the shelf" until the global food price crisis grabbed headlines. We shouldn't have to wait for disasters before we take the equivalent action on climate change, he said.

What about politics? Since Sachs's talk didn't go much beyond sighing relief at Bush's departure, I asked him afterward about his hopes for the upcoming G8 conference in July. More dubious optimism here: "There are a lot of things I'd hope for. That doesn't mean I'm expecting much to happen."

Honoring commitments to monetary aid and technology transfer is the first step, he told me. To get a global climate agreement out of the UN process, he also thinks we need to start by welcoming the economic growth of rapidly developing nations like China and India. "That's the icebreaker on this first date," he said. From that viewpoint, country-specific emissions targets can be set that correspond to growth along the greenest possible paths.

By 2050, he explained, that might mean that the North cuts its greenhouse emissions by 80% while India's emissions are allowed to double - a contraction-and-convergence plan. Because China and India have even more to fear from climate change than does the wealthier world, he said, it's an ultimatum they'll have to accept: "You're going to develop. But you're going to do it with the best technology."

Anna Barnett

Photo: Sachs working in the Millennium Village of Mwandama, Malawi.

Posted by Anna Barnett on June 18, 2008
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For all tree huggers out there, this week’s Science is dedicated to ‘forests in flux’, paying tribute to the trees and their contribution to the greater good. A special collection of articles in print, with complementary and online material, examines the fate of the world’s forests, in the face of climate change and an escalating human population.

If it’s been a while since you’ve had the chance to appreciate the languid leafiness of forest foliage, check out the online video. Or for those of you hoping for a more ‘hands on’ experience, there’s a whole section of Science Careers dedicated to opportunities in forest ecology.

There’s lots of serious science, with six Perspectives and one Review by researchers from all over the globe who give their tuppence worth on what’s needed to better understand forests and manage them properly.

Of particular relevance to discussions on how forests can mitigate global warming, Lera Miles and Valerie Kapos have a Perspective highlighting the risks involved in proposed schemes such as REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) and how to minimize them. Also on this topic, Josep Canadell and Michael Raupach write on what science currently tells us is the best way to manage forests for sequestering carbon.

Drew Purves and Stephen Pacala discuss how forest dynamics remain one of the largest uncertainties in predicting future climate change and detail some of the efforts underway to improve their representation in models. Or for a really solid review of how forests affect climate change, check out Gordan Bonan’s piece here.

Or if that seems like a lot of tree pulp to get through, here are some interesting stats from the issue:

Forests cover ~42 million km2 in tropical, temperate, and boreal lands, and cover ~30% of the land surface

They store ~45% of terrestrial carbon and account for ~50% of terrestrial net primary production.

Forests hold more than double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Carbon uptake by forests in the 1990s contributed to ~33% of anthropogenic carbon emission from fossil fuel and landuse change.

Olive Heffernan

Image: Plantations of Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus nitens in Gippsland (Victoria, Australia); courtesy of Michael Ryan.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 13, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Biosphere feedbacks, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Climate prediction, Deforestation, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Uncertainty | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Whether and how to put a price on carbon has been something of a hot topic this week, primarily due to the proposal of a landmark climate change bill to the US Senate that would "cap and trade" emissions of the greenhouse gas.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, the climate change bill offered by Senators Boxer, Lieberman, and Warner died today in the Senate after Democrat leaders fell a dozen votes short of the 60 needed to defeat Republican obstruction.

Republicans opposed the global warming bill over fears of the economic costs of pricing the greenhouse gas, though Democrats argued there would be no cost to consumers, who would be aided with tax relief. The debate over "cap and trade" legislation is now expected to be postponed until next year, when there is a new president in the White House.

Both presidential nominees back mandatory greenhouse gas reductions and indicated they supported moving forward on discussing the bill offered to the Senate this week, but whether "cap and trade" is the the best way to price carbon remains contentious.

The issue is taken up this week on Nature Reports Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr who reviews Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn of the Environmental Defense Fund. The basic tenet of the book is that a US carbon market with tradable credits would provide the profit incentive needed to energize potential innovators of low or no-carbon technology – thus meeting the world's escalating demand for green energy. But Pielke Jr argues:

By placing their attention on the need for innovative energy technologies, Krupp and Horn have focused on the one area where advocates for action on greenhouse gas reduction are in strong agreement. They have avoided engaging in the real debate over the policies necessary to decarbonize the growing global economy and, crucially, over whether and how to put a price on carbon dioxide.

You can read the full review here.

Meanwhile, over on Dot Earth, Andy Revkin has written about an alternative, though less popular, pricing approach known as “cap and dividend”. The scheme, being strongly endorsed by NASA climatologist James Hansen, is based on the principle of making the polluter pay without placing the burdening of rising costs on the consumer, the most commonly cited down-side of "cap and trade" (discussed by Pielke Jr in the above review).

Revkin explores two proposals for “cap and dividend”: one by Hansen that involves taxing fuels by their carbon content, and another by investment pioneer Peter Barnes that entails selling a steadily declining number of permits for emitting carbon dioxide. The latter would force polluters to eventually pay the full whack of their carbon consumption, and the revenue would be returned to citizens. You can read the full story here.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 06, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cutting global greenhouse emissions by half of 1990 levels by 2050 will not be sufficient to prevent major damage from climate change, say scientists in a Commentary published today on Nature Reports Climate Change.

Earlier this week, environment ministers from the world’s leading industrialised countries, the Group of Eight, called for a deal to slash global greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by mid-century.

This would still commit the world to substantial harm, even if it is “widely considered to be the most stringent politically achievable target”, says Martin Parry, who co-chaired the impacts assessment group for the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, and others.

By analysing the regional and global impacts that would occur by 2050 and 2100 for various greenhouse gas emissions targets, Parry and co-authors argue that compared with 50 per cent cuts, slashing emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by mid-century would substantially reduce the damage caused; for example, halving the number at risk of water stress and flooding.

They call on world leaders at the forthcoming UN climate change talks in Bonn in June and July's G8 summit in Hokkadio, Japan to boldly declare their commitment to dramatically reducing greenhouse gases.

The current global food crisis should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ to G8 and UN leaders, they say, who suffer from “false optimism’ that “we can find a way to fully avoid all the serious threats of climate change”.

They caution, however, than even with 80% cuts, damages will still be large, which is why world leaders must also step up their commitment on funding adaptation. Current efforts are vastly below par, with a mere US$67 million donated to date of the estimated tens of billions needed for developing-world adaptation alone.

At the same time as world leaders are being urged to consider stricter targets for 2050, others are urging them to seriously consider shorter term targets – for 2020 – a goal believed to be important if emissions are to peak within the next 10 to 20 years.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 29, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In debates over how to mitigate the effects of climate change, is the burgeoning human population an elephant in the room? A projected 9 billion people will have to share a warming planet by 2050, yet as Kerri Smith writes in Nature Reports Climate Change this week, the climatic effects of their rising numbers and shifting demographics has received surprisingly little study.

Population is a touchy subject, bringing to mind oppressive campaigns against growth - like China's one-child system, or forced sterilization programs - as well as false past predictions of an imminent catastrophe. But it’s becoming clear that the problem is more complex than a ticking ‘population bomb’. Numbers are exploding in the world’s poorest societies - a trend that CIA chief Michael V. Hayden recently chose above climate or energy issues as one of the key changes facing the 21st century. Because of the low emissions per head in these societies, Smith explains,

Reducing population growth in Niger, for example, where the population size is predicted to triple by mid-century, would not have a dramatic effect on emissions right now. And in many countries in Europe — where reducing emissions levels is more pressing — populations are declining, so a demography-based climate strategy would be ineffective. In a generation's time, however, when developing countries begin industrializing apace, a large population could be bad news.

An aging industrialized world could wrinkle the picture further, as could increasing urbanization. Meanwhile, Hayden fears that the population patterns themselves will precipitate political instability - which climate change is expected to exacerbate.

The solutions to this complex problem could be subtle, or at least subtler than enforcing a small average family size. Fred Meyerson, an ecologist, demographer and environmental policy researcher, told Smith that simply improving access to family planning in the last 50 years has very effectively reduced population growth, and the UN Population Division's Thomas Buettner pointed out the knock-on effect that this has had on greenhouse gas emissions. (A new book by the WorldWatch Institute’s Robert Engelman puts a finer point on it, arguing that in countries where empowerment of women gives them say over the matter, they invariably choose to have two children or fewer on average.)

And this month's headlines show how far-reaching the links are between slowing population growth and preventing climate-induced crises, Meyerson added in an email:

Each million/billion [people] we add puts more people in the path of natural disasters such as the recent Asian cyclone and drought/starvation, some of which are climate change-induced. Adaptation to those changing conditions (including migration, if needed) is obviously much more manageable with 8 rather 11 billion people. And emissions mitigation - for instance, a move from fossil fuels to biofuels - is also much more problematic if the lion's share of the solar energy budget of the terrestrial surface is needed to meet the food needs of a large population and not available for energy production. (That debate is already ongoing with the spike of food prices and the use of corn for ethanol production, but it will surely increase as we add ~75 million people each year to the population over the next few decades.)

Anna Barnett

Photo: Lusi, SXC

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 16, 2008
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In Bangkok last week, the first UN climate meeting since Bali wrapped up after struggling til after midnight Friday - not to hammer out emissions targets or controversial new approaches to climate change mitigation, but just to agree on how long to wait before restarting discussions of such matters.

Planned from the start as a meeting to decide what would be decided at future meetings, it was never expected to yield any big breakthroughs. But the hard slog required even to set the work schedule for the next two years worried NGO observers.

“The talks managed to keep the momentum going … but it’s hard to leave Bangkok confident that the deadline can be met,” said Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies at the Pew Center on Climate Change. Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil agreed, "If we took all these hours to agree on a workplan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place."

Why so slow? For one thing, the G77 group of developing nations finally dug in their heels against Japan's week-long steady pressure to plan greenhouse gas limits for particular global industrial sectors, in addition to Kyoto-style national targets. Sectoral approaches - heralded recently in Nature Reports Climate Change via this commentary by Glen Peters and Edgar Hertwich and this book review by Gwyn Prins - have the advantage of directly pushing the dirtiest industries to clean up, without leaving less carbon-stringent havens overseas for them to be pushed into. They also distribute mitigation responsibilities to the developing as well as the developed world, something which the US has previously insisted on but which developing countries have warned they cannot afford without more help from the rich North.

An attempt Thursday to summarize the first few days of talks noted emerging views that sectoral approaches could be used to support national targets, though they should not replace them. Made sense to me: sectoral limits could make deep emissions cuts less painful, while national emissions targets maintain a bottom line necessary for keeping the temperature down. But according to ENB, the summary raised a concerned buzz among delegates. That's generally how things were going, though: the day before, ENB had reported that "Some delegates realized that they didn't have a shared vision on a workshop on shared vision."

By Friday, Japan met surprisingly fierce opposition to holding a workshop on sectoral approaches at the next climate conference, to be held in Bonn, Germany, in June. G77 countries, including China, had been pointing to promises from Bali that rich countries would set new national targets and provide mitigation and adaptation funds enabling the South to share the burden of industrial emissions cuts. After wrangling at length, they compromised on a sectoral workshop in August.

The difficulties raise a post-Bali paradox. With the the US back at the table and all eyes on a new deal to dwarf Kyoto, stakes are high. The greater the political will for change, the more there is for each party to gain or lose in the shakeup. We'll see in Bonn whether the cautious rehashing of familiar arguments - typical of first negotiation rounds, as Diringer points out - gives way to actual steps forward.

Anna Barnett

Image: The closing session, just after midnight on Friday; photo courtesy of IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 07, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canadians are set to slap the first price tag on their greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to some very different initiatives in the works.

Reuters reported Friday that the long-awaited Montreal Climate Exchange will open on May 30, buying and selling voluntary emissions reductions in the same fashion as the Chicago Climate Exchange, its US partner.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government had a few days earlier put out the details of its plan for mandatory emissions reductions, which had likewise been in the works for over a year (a good summary is here; registration required). They're proposing to cut absolute emissions 20% from 2006 levels by 2020 (for those scoring at home, 20% down from 2005 levels would be 0% below 1990 levels, compared to the standard-bearing EU's 20% cut from 1990 levels).

But absolute emissions isn't what they'll limit - they're talking about regulating emissions intensity, or the amount of emissions per unit of production, from 2010. That could make it tough to integrate into a global climate deal, since the EU caps absolute emissions and all three US presidential candidates want to do the same. Interestingly, the plan also mandates carbon capture and storage for oil sands, a carbon-intensive economic lynchpin of the country.

Besides the voluntary market, local measures could already be in play when and if these limits come down. British Columbia is leading the way with what is to be the first carbon tax implemented outside of Europe. Although the tax hasn't been looking very popular and faces the same too-much-is-never-enough criticism that the EU climate bill came in for, liberal leader Stephane Dion now says he'd like the national strategy to be a carbon tax - or something. Anything. "We can talk about what the best model for putting a price on carbon across Canada might be –– but the fact is we need to JUST DO IT. That is what this provincial government has done, and that is what a Liberal government will do," Dion said in a speech in Vancouver.

Conservatives, who will be defending their control in the next election, countered with praise for the Montreal market. And while other provinces remain skeptical of the carbon tax, B.C. and Manitoba are considering joining western US states in a new cap-and-trade system - so a regulatory patchwork looks likely. As in the US recently, though, the question is no longer whether the Canadian government should intervene to raise fossil fuel costs, but how.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on March 19, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Nature Reports Climate Change , Gywn Prins of the LSE has reviewed The Hot Topic by science writer (and once climate change editor at Nature) Gabrielle Walker and former UK chief science advisor Sir David King.

The book has with the odd exception, received mostly favourable - and a few oustanding reviews - namely Chris Mooney's for New Scientist and Dave Reay's in the March 6 issue of Nature.

Indeed, Reay compares it Rachel Carson’s celebrated Silent Spring in its ability to engage millions and commends its even-handed coverage of the ‘climate debate’. Reay writes:

The Hot Topic has an authoritative clarity that scythes through the junk science and brushes aside the brigades of doom-mongers and overly earnest environmentalists.

Over on The Intersection Chris Mooney refers to it as "the best global warming book I've ever read", and has a similar stance to Reay. Of Walker and King, he writes:

Their overview of the science and policy of climate change is a model of clarity, comprehensiveness and, above all, sanity. It truly does find a middle ground in the climate debate.

On the contrary, Prins (who authored a Commentary in Nature last year with Steve Rayner calling for a radical alternative to the Kyoto Protocol) argues that the book is both “troubling” and “relentlessly normative” in that it represents “an unquestioning acceptance of the received wisdom”.

Prins is especially disgruntled with how Walker and King, in his view, polarize perspectives on the way forward on climate policy:

[They] have no scintilla of doubt that the Kyoto Protocol is the road to follow and that anyone who deserts it is wrong and possibly corrupt. So we have as heroes the EU, which doesn't "duck" the problem, and as villains the US, languishing under the rule of "President Bush and his fiercely partisan advisers". They lump all "sceptics" — anyone who disagrees with them — together like the damned in a Hieronymus Bosch painting of heaven and hell.

He then compares The Hot Topic to Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist (albeit at the other end of the polemical spectrum) in it’s treatment of uncongenial information, essentially making the point that the authors choose their supporting arguments carefully and disregard the rest.

Continue reading "Review of The Hot Topic: The road well travelled " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 17, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Climate Science, Features, Olive Heffernan, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last year on Climate Feedback, Kevin Vranes wrote about some of the unintended consequences of climate policy – namely how the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism was increasing greenhouse gas emissions through the burning of HCF-23 in developing countries – as well as increasing ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere.

Now, the drive to tackle climate change – and fast - has landed us back in the land of unintended consequences, though for a whole host of other reasons.

A few particularly noteworthy examples have come across my radar in the past couple of weeks.

First up, is the increasing demand from alternative energies on the world’s water supplies, a factor not helped by the complete lack of cohesion between energy, water and climate policy. A prime example, as reported by Brian Hoyle on Nature Reports Climate Change, is the extensive irrigation required for those waving fields of midwest grain that supply the ethanol for biofuels.

“At least 40 gallons [of water] go into every mile travelled by an ethanol-powered vehicle” according to Michael Webber of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Texas-Austin.

And gas-electric hybrid vehicles fare little better. “We need to move from our old way of thinking — miles per gallon — to gallons of water per mile," says Webber.

Not only do these golden fields of corn pose a threat to water supplies, the massive amounts of fertiliser used in growing them are increasing nitrogen run-off into the Gulf of Mexico and worsening the existing ‘dead zones’ in the Gulf associated with fish kills. The paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , notes that this is in direct conflict with existing policy targets to reduce the oxygen-depleted area in the region.

And on an unrelated topic…the trail of unforeseen outcomes continues overseas…as highlighted last week in The Washington Post, which reported the toxic waste being left behind by solar energy companies in China, posing a severe threat to human health.

As much as climate policy is urgently needed, it seems it would be worth remembering that climate is not the only sustainability issue.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 14, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Energy, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Judging by the press coverage, it would appear that the Bush administration just turned green. A flurry of stories has hit the press after James Connaughton, a senior environmental advisor, suggested the White House would be willing to “enter into an international agreement” on climate change, “if other countries do, too.” That’s according to the New York Times. The BBC focused on three words - “binding international obligations” - uttered by Daniel Price, a national security advisor to President George W. Bush.

Although it remains unclear what, exactly, this means, it is perhaps telling that such statements could grab headlines around the world. The administration seems eager to clarify what it considers misunderstandings about its position on global warming (namely the general perception that it will stop at nothing to quash or at least cripple any international treaty to protect its industry friends). Bush’s critics aren’t going to buy it, of course, but they appear to be more than happy to watch the president try to wiggle out of what has become an increasingly lonesome political corner.

The problem here is that there isn’t much new. In trying to explain the president’s call for “aspirational” climate goals last year, Connaughton used similarly vague language. Under Bush’s plan, countries could institute various voluntary and regulatory measures at the national level. Those commitments would become binding under an international treaty, he said.

So are those the same “binding international obligations” that Connaughton discussed this week? The answer would appear to be no: Most stories suggest that “binding obligations” refers to various proposals to reduce emissions by some percentage by a specific date.

If that were the case, this might be newsworthy. But Connaughton’s suggestion that major developing nations (think China and India) would have to do the same is, if interpreted literally, a tad unrealistic. It also goes against the administration’s entire strategy for global warming, which has up until this point emphasized a decentralized approach based on various national strategies that could be developed by countries according to their specific needs and resources.

Oddly enough, this is one area where the Bush administration’s arguments seemed to (quietly) resonate. Following the principle of “common but differentiated” responsibilities for poor and wealthy nations, many in the climate community had already come to accept the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach simply would not work. If, on the other hand, Connaughton meant to say that major developing nations could sign up for various national policies as opposed to strict emissions targets, the question is then whether the United States would be able to do the same thing. If that were the case, nothing would have changed.

Where does all this leave us? I’m not sure. Connaughton says he is trying to reframe the administration’s position on climate change by emphasizing what it is willing to do, rather than what it is not willing to do. If would be easier to evaluate if the administration would offer some numbers.

Cross posted from Jeff Tollefson on The Great Beyond

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 28, 2008
Categories: Recent contributors, Climate Policy, In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Following on from Jeff's post on Supercallifragalistic Tuesday, Chris Mooney has a post on his blog and a column elsewhere on the differences between McCain on one side and Obama/Clinton on the other on matters climatic.

Writing before Romney dropped out of the race but after it was fairly clear he had little reason to stay in, Chris's point is that while it's true that all three of the people who might be the next President support real action on climate change, which is an undeniably good thing, they don't all support quite the same sort of action. Specifically, while the Deomocrats are talking about cap and trade measures that would lead to 80% reductions in emissions by 2050,

There are many reasons to think [McCain would] settle for a policy that is more lenient and compromise-oriented. Notably, McCain worked closely with Senator Joseph Lieberman on climate legislation in the past, and the current bipartisan Lieberman-Warner bill sets a lower target for emission reductions – a 70 percent reduction in capped emissions by 2050 (and not all emissions would be capped).

Continue reading "And then there were three" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on February 08, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The primary election results from “Super Tuesday” are still trickling in, but one thing is clear: all of the leading presidential candidates in the United States endorse mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Given the past seven years of obfuscation and, many claim, outright obstruction from the administration of President George W. Bush, this will come as a relief to scientists and many policymakers in the US and abroad.

The news comes from the right side of the political spectrum. While leading Democrats have formulated official and strong positions on global warming, the Republican field until now has been a bit of a mixed bag – in part because little attention has been focused on the issue. But with voters in 21 states weighing in, the GOP candidate with the strongest and clearest position on global warming, John McCain (pictured), came out with a commanding lead. (NY Times).

The Arizona senator bucked Republican leaders on the issue long ago, and is currently sponsoring legislation that would create a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to roughly 60% below 1990 levels by 2050.

On the Democratic side, the battle between New York senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois senator Barack Obama will continue in the coming weeks – and perhaps months. Both, however, have endorsed cap-and-trade programs to cut emissions 80% below 1990 levels by mid-century.

Cross-posted from Jeff Tollefson on The Great Beyond

Image: John McCain 2008 / www.JohnMcCain.com

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 06, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, In the News, Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission's draft blueprint for tackling climate change, announced January 23rd, is praised in today's Nature editorial for hitting "the sweet spot" between politically pragmatic but shortsighted proposals and implausably idealistic ones. Other groups - idealists and pragmatists alike - have reacted differently.

Continue reading "EU climate plan "hits the sweet spot"?" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 31, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Energy, In the News, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Royal Society today released a report on the future of biofuels, which have recently been the subject of intense debate, as Kurt Kleiner reported in Nature Reports Climate Change last month. New UK rules to begin this April require transport fuel suppliers to include a small percentage of 'renewable fuel' in their fuel sales, working up to 5% by 2010. But according to the Royal Society report, this policy intiative (called the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation or RTFO) is not guaranteed to meet its climate-preserving goals. When it comes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the report points out, there are biofuels and biofuels. That is, while some plant fuel sources promise as much as 80% greenhouse gas savings over fossil fuels, it's also possible to keep trashing the planet by using unsustainable methods to produce and supply renewable fuels. Unless the UK sets emissions targets per se in its fuel policy, warns the report, the new UK rules and the EU Biofuels Directive that they reflect "will do more for economic development and energy security than combating climate change".

Continue reading "Making biofuels sustainable" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Energy, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you resolve to use less energy for your home appliances in 2008? In a study released yesterday, a lab within the the US Department of Energy found that lots of Americans (or at least lots of Pacific Northwesterners) want to do the same - and given more information, tools, and sophisticated market incentives, they'll actually do it. To the tune of 15% less peak power use and 10% lower household electric bills.

Continue reading "Technology lessens Americans' power hunger " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 10, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Energy, Personal action, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the road that will lead from Bali to Copenhagen in December 2009, where the world is set to agree a new global climate deal, and the euphoria of seeing the US yielding under global pressure has begun to fade, the question is emerging of whether Bali actually accomplished what it set out to achieve.

So, was Bali a success? I give my take on Bali on the latest Climate Podcast from Nature, which covers highlights from the two weeks of talks as well as a round-up on what was agreed at the eleventh hour.

On ClimateBiz, James Murray takes the pragmatic view that it’s too early to tell:

There are still plenty of reasons to be confident that a solid successor to Kyoto will be agreed in 2009, but at the same time any Chinese leader commenting in 200 years time on whether the Bali conference was a success or not may sadly be doing so from a coastal resort in the Himalayas.

Murray rightly points out that whether you judge Bali as a success depends on whether you had realistic expectations to begin with:

The fact is Bali has achieved everything it was ever going to achieve. This was always going to be a meeting about future meetings and the environmentalists and European politicians who worked themselves up into a frenzy of excitement over the prospect of getting emission targets agreed were always going to be left disappointed.

Over on Open Democracy, which features a diversity of informed views on the outcome of the Bali conference, Oliver Tickell of the Kyoto 2 initiative gives a far bleaker take on Bali:

And is the world saved? Far from it. It is going to hell in a handcart….If this is success, well, give me failure! At least failure would give us a chance to start again and devise an effective framework that really could cut greenhouse-gas emission effectively, while delivering the goods on adaptation, forests, soils, peatlands, farming and the decisive shift we need to a low carbon global economy.

Continue reading "The road from Bali" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 03, 2008
Categories: Climate Policy, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

In the disabling humidity of Bali, former US vice president Al Gore last night urged delegates gathered here at the UN conference on climate change to continue efforts towards an international climate change deal, despite attempts by the US delegation to stall progress.

Gore said, to loud applause, that the US was “principally responsible for obstructing progress” at the UN conference, which aims to set out an agenda for how negotiations on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol should proceed over the next two years.

Delegates have now reached agreement on a number of key issues for the ‘Bali roadmap’, including reducing deforestation, providing financial assistance for adaptation and transferring technology to developing nations.

But there are fears that the science that has informed the process is now being sidelined.

The main bone of contention is how the most recent findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, will be acknowledged in the final text agreed to in Bali.

Most delegations believe that the text should refer to the need for developed nations to reduce emissions by 25-40% on 1990 levels by 2020. But the US says that to do so would be ‘prejudge the outcome’ of the process. Japan and Canada agree with the US and Australia agreed with this stance earlier in the week, though it’s position is a little less certain at the moment.

The EU is standing strong behind the need to include specific numbers on future emissions reductions, arguing that it would be pointless to agree on a roadmap without a destination. “It is crucial for us that we must have an idea where we are heading to – it’s not only to science to show us the destination, but the destination must be consistent with the science”, said Portuguese secretary of state for the environment, Humberto Rosa yesterday in Bali.

European commissioner Stavros Dimas warned US under secretary of state Paula Dobiansky in a meeting yesterday morning that unless a substantive agreement was reached in Bali, there would be little point in the EU attending the Major Economies Meeting to be hosted by the US in February in Hawaii. Rosa and Dimas said this was not a threat, but an acknowledgment of the fact that the Major Economies Meeting is designed to feed into the UN process.

In his address last night, Gore advised negotiators to move beyond their anger and frustration at the US and to recognize that a new US administration, which will take over from Bush in little over a year, will likely embrace more climate-friendly policies.

"Do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large, open, blank space in your document and put a footnote by it [that says] this document is incomplete, but we are going to move forward anyway."

But this morning, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo De Boer, said that option would be unfeasible.

“It would be impossible to advance here without the US, as this is a consensus”, said De Boer. “It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to craft a climate change regime without one of the major economies and the major emitter”.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 14, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

As anticipated, deforestation has emerged as something of a thorny issue at the UN conference on climate change, currently nearing a close in Bali.

It was announced yesterday that measures to avoid further destruction of tropical forests, such as the Amazon, will be included in the agreement to come out of the talks at the end of this week. The Bali agreement is expected to act as a guideline for negotiations on an international climate change deal up until the end of 2009.

Daniel Nepstad of Woods Hole Research Centre, US said today in Bali that the Amazon rainforest is expected to see a 55% dieback by 2030 through deforestation, logging and drought. Rainforests in other nations, such as Indonesia are facing similar pressures. So, any effort to avoid deforestation, which accounts for an estimated 20-25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is to be commended. But the solution being put forward to in Bali , known as REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, is being met with opposition on many sides.

Under the proposed scheme for ‘avoided deforestation’, carbon sequestered by forests in developing countries that are not being cut can be traded on the carbon market, where developed countries can buy the credits and ‘offset’ them against their own emissions targets.

A draft text on deforestation is ready to go forward for discussion by the high level ministers, who arrived at the Bali conference today, said executive secretary of the UN conference on climate change, Yvo De Boer.

Countries such as Indonesia and numerous conservation NGOs are celebrating inclusion of the scheme. And given that emissions from deforestation were omitted from the Kyoto Protocol, it is the first such international effort of its kind.

But much remains to be agreed upon. The issue of whether such a scheme should include forest conservation is a remaining “bone of contention”. As reported in the Hindustan Times, the Indian delegation wanted to add 'conservation' to 'avoided deforestation' , owing to the fact that India is one of the few developing countries where the forest cover is going up, not down. “We should not be penalised for that” said secretary of the ministry of environment and forests, Meena Gupta

Continue reading "Deforestation a ‘thorny’ issue at the Bali talks " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 12, 2007
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

As celebrations got underway to mark the tenth anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol, disputes over whether its successor will be a bigger, better deal intensified at the UN climate-change conference in Bali, Indonesia.

I've reported the full story over on Nature News,

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 11, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister who won his recent election on a green platform (Nature News - subscription required) and signed Australia onto the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office, now refuses to support a proposed 25-40% cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020. The worst part: he rejected the cut days after an Australian delegate to the UN climate conference in Bali promised support for it (Herald Sun).

What's holding up Rudd's vision of a greener Australia? A bad case of sticker shock -- specifically, fear of spiking electricity prices. According to the Herald Sun, the Energy Supply Association of Australia has reported that cutting 30% of 2000 emissions levels by 2030 would raise power costs by 30%, and energy industry representatives are telling Rudd that a faster cut would be much more expensive because of current technological obstacles. So it turns out that Rudd is happy to agree to deep long-term cuts whose price tag is harder to predict, but he won't ask Australians to get out their checkbooks in the next few years. For that, he says, he'll need more economic advice.

A BBC survey (PDF) this year found that worldwide, "most people say they are ready to make personal sacrifices – including paying more for their energy – to help address climate change". A whopping 81% of Australians agreed that prices needed to rise -- a majority second to none in the developed world. But like Rudd's long-term emissions pledge, the poll didn't mention any specific price.

How high an electric bill would you pay - and insist that neighbors and businesses pay - to meet the 2020 target?

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 08, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The chances of the world’s major emitters agreeing to mandatory emissions reductions are becoming an increasingly unlikely outcome of the UN talks on climate change here in Bali.

“Nothing has been ruled out yet”, said Yvo de Boer, secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) today in Bali, but he described the possibility of binding emissions cuts for developing nations such as China and India as “crawling towards the edge of the table”.

China has been receiving praise for its proactive role on addressing climate change and its willingness to enter into talks on a post-Kyoto agreement, but De Boer said that India has not been at the forefront of the discussions this week in Bali.

Both India and China have introduced strategies to mitigate climate change this year in a notable departure from historic concerns that to do so would threaten economic growth. Rajenda Pachuari, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that neither China nor India has had sufficient time to act on climate change since introducing their respective strategies and expects that they will demonstrate more significant efforts in the coming months.

In the meantime, NGOs are hoping that the passage of two climate relevant bills through the US House of Representatives this week will put increasing pressure on the Bush administration to sign up to binding emissions targets.

First up is the Energy Bill, which is the only piece of legislation in over 30 years to require a rise in vehicle fuel efficiency. Designed to improve energy security while reducing emissions for transport, the bill would raise fuel economy by 40% by 2020. Second is the Liebermann-Warner Climate Security Act, which would cut emissions from the power and industrial sectors by 70% by 2050 relative to 2005 levels.

The passing of these bills sends a clear signal to the world that the political centre of gravity in the US has shifted on global warming, but all signs indicate that domestic policy is unlikely to sway the stance of the US on the international front.

Both bills have yet to pass through the Senate and White House, and President Bush has already threatened to veto them. But according to Angela Anderson of the National Environmental Trust in the US, this would be rather ironic given that these are exactly the kind of measures that other major emitters have enacted into their own legislation - the very nations that the US is currently engaging with a serious of talks parallel to the UN process.

Yesterday, Harlan Watson, head of the US delegation, said that neither the passing of these acts to limit US domestic emissions nor the move by Australia to ratify Kyoto would change their stance in Bali. "We're not changing our position," he said.

Given that the US is the only nation that appears to be cutting its fossil fuel emissions, while those signed up to Kyoto have failed to meet their targets, some say that binding cuts may not be the way to go after all.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 07, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The road to building a Bali roadmap was looking increasingly rocky today, as the vastly differing expectations of what will emerge from the two weeks meeting of the 13th conference of parties (COP) to the UNFCCC became increasingly apparent.

One of the biggest bones of contention, of course, is whether the roadmap will include an agreement on the need for binding emissions targets from 2012, which signals the end of the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the opening plenary talk on Monday, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary said that “A marriage contract is not something to discuss on a first date”, eluding to the fact that the willingness of nations to co-operate must first be established here before they get down to the nitty gritty of asking parties to act on their promises.

But many feel this is a COP-out. Today, Matthias Duwe of Climate Action Network, a worldwide association of some 400 NGOs, retorted to De Boer’s comment, saying “These parties have been dating for over 15 years now, so we’re not exactly on a first date here”.

Duwe is one of many who believe that a process without an end date and without specific substance will be insufficient for the enormity of the task at hand.

But others feel that pushing for targets now will rock the boat…and possibly capsize it.

Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth International basically agrees with De Boer. She believes that there needs to be more evidence of good will from industrialised nations before we can reach that point. “To put the targets on the table right now would be going in the wrong direction”, said Raman.

There’s also the argument that you need to have the right tools for the job, lest we (again!) agree to targets we fail to meet.

De Boer compared setting targets first to being asked to swim across the Atlantic without knowing whether you’d have a team, be allowed breaks, use rescue equipment etc. Basically, you’d hardly sign up for the task without knowing the details beforehand.

This approach, however, would be a flip on the order in which the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, which set targets first and then looked at how to achieve them. And that’s bound to ruffle feathers.

Among all the political wrangling and finger pointing, there has been some light hearted relief takes on the Bali talks, such as the giant thermometer erected by Greenpeace outside the conference venue and the Fossil of the Day Awards announced each evening by the Climate Action Network. The prize is in recognition of the efforts of countries that block progress at the conference.

Yet again, Saudi Arabia won first prize today for complaining that the protocol has an unfair focus on CO2 (and then called for prioritisation of CCS, which is concentrated on CO2). And secondly, for saying that article A "should not attach an economic element to the noble cause of fighting climate change"--when for years, they have been trying to undermine the fight against climate change specifically by campaigning by alleging adverse economic effects!

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 05, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

The second day of the UN conference on climate change has seen some diverse opinions emerge on what the immediate priorities should be for a 'Bali roadmap'.

Environmentalists claimed today that a group of obstructionist nations, including Saudi Arabia, Canada, the US and Japan, was forming against binding emissions targets.

Steven Guilbeault of Environmental NGO Equiterre cited Canada’s “abandonment of it’s targets under the Kyoto Protocol” and Japan’s statement today that it is time to move away from a Kyoto approach to addressing climate change as reasons for their inclusion.

“Canada and Japan are saying nothing about legally binding emission reductions after 2012," said Guilbeault.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo De Boer said that although Saudi Arabia had expressed concern about whether the time is right to enter formal negotiations, no other nation has openly backed this stance in Bali. Though that’s not to say that others don’t agree.

Describing the mood today in Bali as “mixed”, however, De Boer said that there was a clear divergence of opinion between industrialised and developing nations on where the focus should now lie. Whereas developed nations are honing in on the long term goals for addressing climate change, many developing nations are concerned that this will diverge attention from the need to address immediate priorities, such as establishing a sufficient fund for adapting to climate change and transferring technologies from developed countries, objectives which have not been realised under the Kyoto Protocol.

A open ‘special group’ was established today to address these issues and others that will shape the Bali roadmap, including whether the negotiations up until 2009 will include targets and measurable objectives, or will comprise a looser period of informal dialogue that could faciltate buy-in from major emitters such as the US, China and India.

One thing is clear: as of yet, there is no consensus on what shape the roadmap will take; for now the son of Kyoto is still gestating.

For direct live webcasts of the conference, visit the UNFCCC website.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 04, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Starting today, Second Nature -- the Second Life space for all things Nature -- hosts a series of climate change talks to coincide with the UN conference in Bali. Avatars can attend with a carbon-clean conscience.