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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

International delegates to the Montreal Protocol wrapped up their meeting in Port Ghalib, Egypt, over the weekend without taking formal action to curb hydrofluorocarbons, modern refrigerants that are also poised to become a major contributor to global warming.

Some 41 countries joined in a declaration in support of regulating HFCs as greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, according to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and the Environmental Investigation Agency. This is in addition to support in North America and Europe as well as Micronesia and Mauritius, which have led the proposal.

Ozone-friendly HFCs represent the culmination of the Montreal Protocol's original mission; regulating them as greenhouse gases would require an amendment expanding the protocol's regulatory umbrella. In Egypt, Montreal delegates called on a technical committee to analyze alternatives to the chemicals in advance of a potential decision next year. For background, see our previous coverage here and here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 09, 2009
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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
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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 "Plan 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 none 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
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I’m sitting in the plenary session of the Kyoto Protocol, listening to an old debate over the baseline year used to assess emissions. The protocol is currently tied to 1990 emissions, but Japan, Australia and Canada have all suggested that expressing emissions reductions according to multiple baselines might be useful.

The logic is that although the Kyoto Protocol is tied to 1990, many countries – including the United States - are now pegging their climate proposals to more recent years. That has the advantage of providing a picture of what each country plans to do moving forward. The US and European proposals, for instance, actually look similar using a 2005 baseline (for more on that, see our earlier coverage here). On the other hand, many – including Europeans – have long argued that using new baselines would dilute the protocol and potentially let countries like off the hook (in addition to the United States, think Canada, which has acknowledged it cannot meet its Kyoto targets).

Today, like so many other days, the parties were unable to resolve the matter. Japan’s proposal to illustrate the commitments in tabular form drew initial objections, particularly from China, which said any effort to shift away from the legally binding 1990 baseline would be "totally not acceptable." But those backing the proposal's supporters said there should be a way to ensure that the 1990 baseline remains while noting additional baselines. The idea of using “footnotes” came up.

Discussions about the relative merits of footnotes versus charts seem a bit silly, to be sure, but the issue has been a sticking point for a long time. Some kind of resolution will be necessary in whatever emerges from Copenhagen.

The discussion eventually hit the big issue of emissions targets. The Alliance of Small Island States, which fears the dual impacts of acidification and rising sea levels, led the way by adding up all of the developed country targets (including legislation being debated in the United States) for a grand total of 12-19 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That compares to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's analysis indicating that a 25-40 percent reduction might be necessary by 2020. And AOSIS is actually pushing for 45 percent cut, to increase the likelihood of keeping temperature increase below 1.5 degrees instead of the generally accepted 2-degree target.

As expected, no headway was made on this issue either, but it does lead into my next posting.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
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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
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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
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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
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward.

But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb emissions by 40 percent by 2020. Current proposals aren't even close to that number, and most political leaders in the United States and Europe consider that goal unattainable. Asked about a compromise and assessments that achieving a 40 percent reduction could be a "heavy lift," Lumumba cited the massive financial investments that followed the economic crisis in suggesting that developed countries are simply lacking the will to act aggressively in response to the climate crisis.

"It cannot be heavy lifting, unless you say that some people are more equal than others," Lumumba said. "We cannot accept total destruction as a choice for developing countries in order to simply appease some political leaders in the West."

Speaking at a press conference an hour later, European officials fell back on the EU position of unilaterally cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and 30 percent if there is a global agreement. Sweden's chief negotiator, Anders Turesson, said those commitments are in line with the science and urged developing countries to put pressure on other rich countries that have not yet announced positions (read: United States) and others whose current offers are "insufficient."

The talks are now "on track, moving forward," said Artur Runge-Metzger, chief negotiator for the European Union. "But of course we'll have to see during the coming days what kind of resonance we get from the African Group" and other developing countries.

More to come soon on the state of REDD talks ( reducing deforestation and forest degradation) and Brazil's climate change discussions.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
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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
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Robert Corell, chairman of the Washington-based Climate Action Initiative, recently illustrated the appeal of a remarkably simple modelling tool by giving reporters a direct answer to a difficult question: What is the impact of the international climate commitments announced thus far? Citing results from C-ROADS (for Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator), Corell suggested that we are headed toward warming of 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Corell was speaking at a news conference held by the United Nations Environment Programme to release a compendium of the research that has come out since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fourth assessment in 2007. It's a useful contribution to the dialogue, but reporters, like politicians, are often looking for simple answers.

The predictable result was media coverage suggesting that the UNEP report found that current commitments are vastly insufficient to solve the problem. Technically true, perhaps, but the results from this particular model are just a tiny part of the larger compendium, which hardly got a mention. In effect, Corell accidentally hijacked the news conference.

We decided to take a look at the model itself, and the result came out in this week's issue of Nature. It turns out that this tool, which we first encountered at a global warming war game last year, has gone viral in the admittedly small world of international climate negotiators.

One place where the model isn't being rolled out, at least not publicly, is at the US Capitol. Indeed, the global warming debate there seems oddly disconnected from global warming itself. When US Senator John Kerry stepped up to the podium to discuss the newly released climate bill on Capitol Hill Wednesday, he summed up the situation in one word: security.

"Economic security. Energy security. National security."

Climate security? Sure, there's that too, but Democrats are now making their pitch to a different audience that is at least as concerned about the jobs, fuel bills and troops deployed overseas. The first people at this press conference to go into details about what global warming actually means - including rising seas, droughts and volatile weather - were soldiers. Representatives of all of the major environmental organizations were present, but they were not at the podium.

Not new, of course, but it does say something important about the selling power of global warming in the United States. Democrats know they have the votes from environmentalists, but that's not enough. The question now is whether they can make an alternate case for action. For an update on the current state of play, check Nature's latest online new briefing.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on October 01, 2009
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As even the staunchest advocates will tell you, climate insurance is by no means a magic bullet. But clearly the tools of modern finance could certainly help make poor nations prepare for and respond to all manner of natural disasters big and small.

We explore some of these ideas in this week's issue of Nature, taking a quick look at how the insurance debate is playing out in the ongoing United Nations climate talks. The upshot is that some kind of insurance mechanism is likely to make it into whatever climate deal is struck in Copenhagen and beyond.

One commonly cited option is index insurance, which is tied to things like rainfall that can be measured objectively. This cuts down on costs by eliminating the need for audits and investigations. In the case of something like crop insurance, moreover, it could put money in the hands of farmers immediately after the rains fail - and before the hunger sets in.

Today these programs are being paid for largely by the farmers and nations buying the insurance, but industrialized nations would likely subsidize any insurance program deployed as part of an international climate agreement. The logic is that extreme weather variations - including droughts and heavy storms - are likely to increase in a warmer world, which means that both costs and premiums will rise as well.

A key challenge moving forward is how to scale up programs that benefit the world's poorest farmers and communities. Dan Osgood, a researcher at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society, points out the pilot programs that are under way today have generally been deployed in areas where information - regarding weather, crops and the like - is available. This means it will only get more difficult moving forward.

In the case of the Ethiopian project discussed in our story, Osgood only had 15 years of satellite data on rainfall. The team has installed a rain gauge in the village of Adi Ha, which they hope to use in future years, but the team had no choice but to base their rainfall metrics on satellite data this year.

Osgood says the insurance question could also increase pressure on scientists and insurance companies to tease out the long-term impacts of global warming at very local scales. He was forced to grapple with the problem when he analyzed the satellite data and found a slight decline in precipitation around Adi Ha. Scientists can perhaps write that kind of trend off as an uncertainty and wait for more data. Insurance contracts, however, can't ignore such trends, because they are, by their very nature, priced according to uncertainty. The bigger the risk, the more uncertainty, the higher the price.

“It could be a climate trend, it could be just noise and uncertainty, or it could be a decadal process,” he says. "What’s cool about it is we don’t need to know in order to write the contract this year."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 22, 2009
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Cross-posted from the Great Beyond

The world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters are poised to adjourn a series of meetings in Italy without any significant breakthroughs between developed and developing nations. Though hardly surprising, the news certainly reaffirms fears that it could be a long slog to Copenhagen.

In this week's issue of Nature, we take a look at some of the positions and ideas being put on the table by developing nations. The upshot is that many developing countries, recognizing the threats posed by climate change, are doing quite a bit to clean up their economies. Nonetheless, they remain understandably wary of binding requirements that might restrict their ability to lift themselves out of poverty.

Countries like India, China, Brazil and others are focusing on per-capita emissions within a historical context. From this perspective, industrialized nations have pumped far more than their fair share of pollution into the atmosphere, which provides a limited cushion for development powered by fossil fuels. The way China runs the numbers, industrialized nations would have had to stop emitting all together two years ago. Recognizing that it will be virtually impossible to achieve parity under such terms, Bolivia has proposed the concept of a "climate debt," illustrated in this graph, which is basically the difference between what industrialized nations should be allowed to emit on a cumulative, per-capita basis and what they actually emit.

In other words, industrialized nations can use up more than their fair share of the allowable emissions, but they must pay for it. This transfer of wealth is likely to be the crux of any deal that might be struck this year; developed countries know they are going to have to write checks, but they want assurances that those checks will be put to good use. One solution is to start out with sectoral approaches that guarantee certain types of policy and technology changes, which can reliably be counted on to reduce emissions.

As it happens, a PNAS paper out this week takes a different approach to climate equity by targeting wealthy individuals rather than wealthy nations. Although the end result is similar, their proposal does not cover historic emissions, which are at the heart of the proposals outlined above.

One thing is sure: No agreement can be struck unless the gulf between developed and developing nations is bridged. Barack Obama's ascension to the White House makes political progress possible in the United States, but politicians in the US and Europe know that slashing emissions in developed countries alone simply cannot solve the problem. Indeed, this is one of the principle arguments being raised against climate legislation that is poised to be taken up in the US Senate. And from this perspective, it's possible that progress on the international front is just as critical for striking a deal within the US as US participation is at the international level.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 09, 2009
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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
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As the United Nations' global warming talks wound down last week, the tone among those who track such things seemed to alternate between optimism and pessimism, frustration and pragmatic resignation.

Not much got done, but nobody really expected anything important to happen. The negotiating text ballooned as parties sought to insert and clarify countless disagreements and positions, but that's the way it always works. Nobody gave an inch on their negotiating positions, but what kind of self-respecting negotiator would reveal the bottom line at this stage in the game?

As is often the case, the biggest deals are likely to be struck at the last minute. Many of the decisions that need to be made involve money and other commitments that only the top dogs can make, and neither the money masters nor the top dogs are in the room with the environmental ministries at this stage. In the case of the United States and China, as we discuss in our story this week, even the top climate officials elected to forgo Bonn in favor of bilateral talks in Beijing.

All of which makes assessing progress quite difficult. Indeed, UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer held one closing press conference, but reports labeled him alternately confident and doubtful regarding the prospects for striking a deal in Copenhagen come December.

As it happens, both stories say roughly the same thing: de Boer is confident that some kind of agreement will be reached, but doubtful that parties will be able to simply wash their hands, head home and forget about the process afterward. This is pretty much conventional wisdom at this point, particularly in the United States, where the Obama administration is working to put together a domestic policy in order to clarify what it might be able to commit to internationally.

Most observers still believe it's highly unlikely that the United States will be in a position to fully commit itself to a deal in December, but then again, most observers also expected climate legislation to quietly slide off the congressional agenda this year. The opposite has happened: The House of Representatives could vote on climate regulations in the next couple of weeks, and now some are suggesting that the Senate could begin to move a bill next month.

To be clear, getting a bill to the president's desk before Copenhagen would still require Herculean effort, but it increasingly appears that Democrats and the administration intend to try. And if they succeed, the conventional wisdom regarding prospects in Copenhagen might need a few revisions.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 17, 2009
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Cross-posted from Nature's The Great Beyond blog.

The Global Humanitarian Forum certainly attracted some publicity last week when it published a report suggesting that global warming kills 315,000 people each year and seriously harms another 300,000. Total price tag: $125 billion annually.

Such numbers are as appealing to journalists as they are to those who put them out, precisely because they are easy to understand and explain. They should also raise alarms, and for the very same reasons. It's not that anybody really doubts that global warming is impacting ecosystems and communities and thus affecting lives, but these are complex issues that resist quick attempts at quantification.

The New York Times published a quick story about the report while raising some basic questions about the estimations. The story quotes Roger Pielke Jr., who has been researching these issues for years, calling the report a "methodological embarrassment" that simply glosses over socioeconomic factors (like people moving into hurricane-prone coasts). For an in-depth discussion, check Pielke's blog.

Although the GHF didn't shy away from using the eye-catching estimates, the authors do explain their calculations in the report. Among other things, they cite data from Munich Re estimating that 40 percent of the increase in weather-related disasters from 1980 to present is due to climate change. As it happens, Pielke says Munich Re itself has come to the opposite conclusion when it comes to assessing the data and assigning blame.

Pielke's message appears to be getting out there. Reuters followed up its initial story with a second, more thematic piece raising various questions about this kind of research.

Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 02, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The fact that a full-fledged climate regulation bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee is nothing less than monumental. It also means that we now have a baseline document to analyze - or criticize, as the case may be.

The agreement that was struck represents a veritable compromise cobbled together to meet any number of scientific issues, philosophical viewpoints and political realities (for more on all of this, see David Goldston's column). This kind of horse-trading is what makes it real, but the process always leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many observers. And as is often the case with a bill this big and this complex, experts are still sorting through things and trying to figure out what it all means.

Much of the discussion has focused on the impact of the committee's predictable concessions to give away most of the permits in the early years (Harvard economist Robert Stavins delved into these questions in a recent Huffington Post column). Others have focused on everything from emissions offsets in the forestry sector to the definition of renewable energy.

But it's the sheer complexity of the legislation that has many worried. The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein summed up some of the basic fears when the bill came out. Such criticisms have spurred many, including Pearlstein himself, to revive talk of a carbon tax. The top House Democrat on tax issues, Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York, has fueled the fire by saying he wants a crack at the bill and would be open to such an idea (see ClimateWire).

The jurisdictional issues are real and could slow things down, but short of another revolution in political thought on Capitol Hill, the carbon tax proposal isn't going to get much traction. Proponents of cap-and-trade like the cap on emissions, which theoretically guarantees results; a tax only delivers in proportion to the pain it causes those who pay it. Politically, they ask, would it be possible to establish a tax that is free of loopholes and high enough to, say, force an end to conventional coal?

The counterargument is that we are simply deluding ourselves with cap-and-trade, which basically hides a variable tax behind the smoke and mirrors of "market-based regulation." Perhaps, they argue, the appeal of an honest tax will grow as people see what the legislative process produces as an alternative.

Indeed, it's hard to say what kind of deal might ultimately garner the requisite votes, precisely because the dynamic shifts once you move from a theoretical discussion to a process that ends in a law.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 29, 2009
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Most of the biofuels debate as of late has been about the merits and trade-offs of various fuels, be they corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, biodiesel or more advanced second and third generation fuels. But a new study suggests we need to take a step back and consider an alternate pathway for biomass: Electricity.

The research comes on the heels of California's adoption of a low-carbon fuels standard, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency's release of draft rules regarding the federal biofuels mandate. In both cases, regulators calculated indirect emissions from agriculture, but only California's regulatory approach is flexible enough to capitalize on potential bioelectricity (see our story here)

Continue reading "A better pathway for biomass?" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 11, 2009
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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)

The White House this week stepped back from a proposal to shift regulation of hydrofluorocarbons from the United Nations climate convention into the Montreal Protocol, which has been successful in phasing down chemicals that damage the ozone layer (NYT's dot.earth, Reuters).

HFCs are commonly used in things like refrigerants and were first deployed for their ozone benefits. They are also powerful greenhouse gases and were as a consequence included in the climate convention. Now the Montreal crowd is arguing that they can clean up their own mess, saving everybody money and time.

The proposal is part of a broader fast-action climate agenda being promoted by groups like the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington. We first covered the Montreal Protocol piece in depth back in January, but this week marked the deadline for amendments that can be considered under the Montreal Protocol this year.

Clearly it would have been significant if the United States had decided to sponsor an amendment, but the proposal will remain on the table courtesy of a separate filing by Mauritius and the Federated States of Micronesia. Indeed, US State Department notes as much and says it plans to continue studying the issue in a letter to the Ozone Secretariat.

Montreal negotiators will discuss the issue during a workshop in July, but the soonest a decision could be made would be at the annual conference in November.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 06, 2009
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The aerosol story just keeps getting more interesting. In addition to ongoing research about the direct impact of various aerosols on climate and temperature (see here and here, for example), there's also the indirect impact on photosynthesis and carbon uptake. A study in this week's Nature explores the latter phenomenon with regard to sulphur dioxide and comes up with some startling results.

The basic gist is that aerosols scatter light, and indirect light is better at penetrating forest canopies and stimulating growth in the understory (to illustrate, imagine the dark shadows cast on the forest floor by trees blocking direct sunlight). The increase in this understory growth is significantly larger than the decrease in canopy growth, because even on a shady day the tallest trees are going to do fairly well.

The implications are substantial. If you assume that pollution regulations around the world will eventually reduce sulphur dioxide emissions to zero in order to clean up the air and save lives, then solar radiation will become more direct and photosynthesis will go down. Which means plants will pull less carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which means that addressing global warming will be even more difficult than expected.

We covered this, along with a study about China's terrestrial carbon sink, in a news story earlier this week. But before you start thinking we've got it all figured out, you might want to take a look at another story by Quirin Shiermeier, which suggests that the air might be dirtier than we thought. That might be good news for the plants, at least.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on April 23, 2009
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It certainly took a while, but the US Environmental Protection Agency is finally doing the right thing and endorsing the science behind global warming. In doing so, the EPA will also be answering a simple question: Does EPA have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases?

As it happens, the EPA went through this exercise with much less fanfare more than a decade ago, after a Republican lawmaker, worried about the Clinton administration's activism on global warming, popped the question. Under then EPA Administrator Carol Browner (now President Barack Obama's chief climate coordinator), the agency produced an opinion suggesting that indeed, carbon dioxide was a pollutant that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The story plods along from there all the way to the Supreme Court, which basically said the same thing in 2007. It was a long, tortuous, path, but it illustrates how the judicial branch can in fact be used to get around the executive branch, as originally intended. The Bush administration, faced with a difficult decision that would either deny the science or result in regulations that it didn't want to issue, elected to punt (more coverage here)

We covered some of the ramifications of that process in an online story on 17 April, which is when the EPA issued its proposed "endangerment finding." The Supreme Court basically said EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, assuming that there is good reason to do so. The endangerment finding, as it is currently written, answers that question in the affirmative.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on April 21, 2009
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Massive economic collapse is by no means the preferred method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there’s no denying that shuttering plants, halting shipments and laying off workers gets the job done. Indeed, the crisis is poised to provide a reprieve, however temporary, from the alarmingly rapid growth in emissions witnessed in recent years.

It’s too early to assess the overall impact, but New Carbon Finance, a branch of the London-based consultancy New Energy Finance, has put out a pair of analyses ( press releases here and here) that provide a little insight into what is happening in the United States and Europe. Emissions fell by 1.3 percent in the US and by 3 percent in Europe last year, according to NEF's calculations, and things look even better (okay, worse) in 2009.

The estimates are fairly simple in the United States. Gasoline consumption in the transportation sector fell by 3.2 percent thanks to the spike in oil prices. Emissions from the electricity sector declined by 2.4 percent due to lower industrial demand, more renewables and even less use of the nation's remaining oil-fired power stations. And given that emissions track fairly well with overall economic activity, this is just the beginning. Citing projections that the US economy could shrink by 1.6 to 2 percent next year, NEF says it could be several years before emissions return to previous levels.

The picture is more complex in Europe, which has not only a floundering economy but also an emissions trading system at work. NEF suggests the economic downturn is responsible for a little less than a third of the decline (due to reduced industrial output) and attributes the rest to the European trading scheme (including a shift away from coal and toward natural gas-fired electricity).

What all of this means in the long run is anybody's guess at this point. We might not have a global picture for some time, but it's safe to say that emissions in places like China and India and other rapidly developing economies will, at a minimum, slow their previously meteoric rise. On the other hand, the capital we need to fund clean energy technologies moving forward has dried up, and there could be less political will to institute regulations that are really going to drive that investment. The question might well be whether we'll be facing the right direction when we climb out of this hole a few years hence.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on February 20, 2009
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McKinsey & Company has mapped out a couple of conceivable scenarios that would put humanity on a pathway to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations well below 550 parts per million, an oft-cited and somewhat arbitrary target that increases the odds of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius. Whether or not such action would actually guarantee said result is a different matter, but McKinsey suggests it's possible to come in at 480 ppm, which leaves a little room for error.

To see one of the leading global business consultancies putting out such a document (download requires free registration) is encouraging, but conceivable does not mean easy, let alone likely. And to be clear, "Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy," now in its second draft, is not so much a plan of action as an analysis of the options. McKinsey calls it a "greenhouse gas abatement database." They attempt to quantify relative potential and costs of each approach, focusing on abatement schemes that are likely to ring in under 60 euros per ton of carbon dioxide. The company then round things out with a few scenarios illustrating what it would take to reduce global emissions by 35-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

Reading the report, you get a sense that you are looking at a menu. I'll take an order of new insulation for old buildings as an appetizer, and then move on to wind, nuclear, and plug-in hybrids. How about some rice management for desert? As it happens, McKinsey projects that the insulation and rice will pay for themselves, but there are barriers to even the most logical choices: In many cases, the approaches that are the most cost effective over the long-term also require the most up-front capital, which isn't exactly plentiful at the moment.

Continue reading "McKinsey: options for a low-carbon economy" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on January 30, 2009
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The argument for using a cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax for that matter, to control greenhouse gases comes down to marshaling the troops. Everybody needs to play this game, and the surest way to make everybody play is to make winning profitable - and conversely to make losing costly. In other words, make the market work for you instead of against you. It's a noble and likely necessary goal, but it's not necessarily fast, nor perfect.

This served as a starting point for discussions I had with a number of folks at the UN climate meeting in Poland last month who are pushing the idea of using the Montreal Protocol to control hydrochlorofluorocarbons. HFCs are a class of chemicals developed as industry looked for ways to reduce ozone-depleting substances in refrigerants and other applications. They don't eat ozone but, they are potent greenhouse gases. And funny things happen when you plug them into a carbon market; direct regulation might be the way to go.

In this week's Nature, we took a deeper look at that question and whether the Montreal model could be expanded more broadly to deal with the climate problem. The argument is based on precedent: Montreal has effectively done its job by phasing out some 97 percent of ozone eating substances, while simultaneously outperforming the Kyoto Protocol on climate. And according to one scenario analyzed by Dupont's Mack McFarland, phasing down HFCs across the globe could cut emissions by the equivalent of 12.9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2050 (compared to roughly 2 billion tonnes by 2012 under Kyoto).

The same thing could be done under Kyoto, to be sure. The question is how fast and at what cost. Montreal has done all of its work through top-down phase-outs, with industrialized nations helping developing countries pay for the costs. It's an interesting supplement to the market-driven model everybody is focusing on at present.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on January 28, 2009
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Planting trees seems like a cheap and easy way to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while improving land and soil stocks that have been degraded over the decades. The international community recognized as much when it included reforestation in the Kyoto Protocol more than a decade ago.

Since that time, however, very little has been done, in part because translating botany and ecology into economic terms isn't easy. And once you get the translation right, you've still got to establish the regulations and institutions - both government and economic - to make it happen.

In this week's edition of Nature, Paroma Basu takes a look at how that process has unfolded in India, a country that has enormous potential to take advantage of this particular mechanism to address global warming. The story focuses on one of India's first forestry-based projects under the Clean Development Mechanism, painting a picture of a complicated and bureaucratic process that is bound to frustrate and deter the very people it seeks to serve.

Some of this might be unavoidable - early movers in any new program end up clearing brush. But similar complaints have arisen throughout the CDM, leading to calls for a streamlined process that will accommodate the kind of demand many hope to see in a thriving global carbon market. Climate negotiators spent considerable time discussing ways to do just that at the UN climate conference in Poland last month.

The trick, however, is ensuring that the system does what it is supposed to do, which is reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even in its current form, the CDM has plenty of critics who question the veracity - and cost - of many projects.

All of which means the United Nations must both streamline and build confidence in the system. It's a tall but necessary order if the CDM is to become a major mechanism for transferring climate funds to the developing world.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on January 10, 2009
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Cross-posted from In the Field

This according to Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson, who has compared various energy technologies in terms of not only greenhouse gas emissions but also conventional pollutants, land use, water resources and more. Speaking after a news conference here, Jacobson said he is trying to provide a more holistic analysis of the various energy options. "There's a lot of misinformation out there," he said.

A few of the key results follow:

Life cycle emissions -- Wind and solar thermal come out on top; tidal, wave and hydro all beat out solar photovoltaics, geothermal and nuclear, thanks to energy spent on equipment and installation; coal was the big loser, even with carbon sequestration (CCS), thanks to energy spent on mining and transport.

Mortalities due to air pollution from US vehicles -- For gasoline, projected deaths drop from 20,000 to 15,000 annually in 2020 due to improved technology and air quality standards. That figure would remain steady or perhaps even rise if ethanol (corn or otherwise) made up 85 percent of the transport fuels. Assuming electric transport takes off, wind reduces mortalities to almost zero, although the full suite of renewables fared almost as well. Coal with CCS would cut mortalities by upward of two-thirds. Nuclear falls between coal and renewables (assuming non-proliferation regimes hold and there aren't any explosions).

Footprint required to power US vehicle fleet -- Accounting for the base of the turbine alone (not roads), wind could power the entire vehicle fleet using less than 3 square kilometers of land. Corn ethanol and concentrated solar power are the big losers, with each requiring a chunk of land that is larger (and perhaps significantly larger) than the state of California.

Water usage -- Wind, solar photovoltaic, geothermal, tidal and wave all come in around zero; coal, nuclear and concentrated solar do well; hydropower gets a poor rating, thanks to evaporation rates from reservoirs (Jacobson divvies up the losses among energy and other uses). But the clear loser is ethanol, whether the source is corn or something else.

Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 19, 2008
Categories: AGU, Energy, Jeff Tollefson, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Shortly after finishing up this week’s Nature story (subscription required) on the upcoming climate talks in Poland, I finally secured an interview with US Ambassador Harlan Watson, the United States' chief climate negotiator.

Continue reading "Looking forward to Poznan, and beyond" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on November 26, 2008
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Cranking out 11th-hour regulations has become a tradition among exiting US presidents, and despite early hopes to the contrary it looks like this year will be no different.

Topping the list in terms of energy this year is a pair of industry-friendly regulations that critics say would increase pollution from coal-fired power plants. In this week’s edition of Nature, we take a quick look at these and a few others that are moving through the system as the Bush administration prepares to hand the reigns to Barack Obama in January.

The regulations in question are technical in nature, which means the overall result is not always obvious. One of the rules being proposed would change the way power plant pollution is measured in national parks and wilderness areas. By shifting from an annual emissions calculation to a short-term maximum measured over the course of hours, for instance, power plant managers can increase their energy output and effectively put more emissions into the air over the course of a year.

Continue reading "'Midnight regulations' target power plants, and more" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on November 05, 2008
Categories: GHG emissions, Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Climate Change Science Program will revise and reissue its latest report following widespread criticism and a mountain of comments during the official review period. The news has spurred talk of sinister motives from groups like the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, as well as some media attention (Greenwire, subscription required) suggesting undue influence from global warming skeptics.

In truth, it doesn’t sound like anything sinister is going on, although clearly the process could have been managed better.

Agencies within the climate science program have been putting out climate reports on various topics for the past year or so (10 down, 11 to go). The document in question, which is being ushered through the process by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was released last month for public comment and is a synthesis report that is supposed to tie everything together. That has some wondering: How can the summary document be completed before the documents it is supposed to be summarizing?

Fair question, although in defence the document is a high-level review of the entire body of global warming science, and most of the reports are fairly far along anyway. But still.

Groups like CEI and the Chamber of Commerce have made a larger splash, but criticism has come from other quarters as well. Officials with WWF in Washington raised concerns about the report being rushed through for no apparent reason, suggesting that the program has left itself open to criticism from groups like CEI.
And a while back University of Colorado climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. took a few shots at the document on his blog, questioning general content and accusing the authors of sloppiness.

Folks at WWF as well as Michael MacCracken at the Climate Institute in Washington, say problems with the actual document are typical of first drafts and easily resolvable. An official within the Climate Change Science Program confirmed that the document will be revised to deal with the sheer volume of comments and re-released. No time frame was given.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on August 24, 2008
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In this week’s issue of Nature, we look into an ongoing debate about research priorities within the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the United States’ main climate research facilities in Boulder, Colorado.

Our story follows up on an earlier piece in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin, who initially broke the news that NCAR was laying off the well-respected political scientist Michael Glantz. Revkin also covered the story in his Dot Earth blog.

Such stories frequently peel apart like onions, and this one was no different. Glantz is not alone in his belief that NCAR is turning its back on the social sciences. NCAR management says it respects Glantz work but is in a budgetary bind. University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. questions NCAR’s numbers in his blog.

Meanwhile, other NCAR scientists who have worked in the social science program say they are comfortable with their positions. And some are worried that NCAR is falling behind on its basic sciences and climate modelling. Is this not the foundation for such a scientific institution?

Continue reading "Climate research funding slashed " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 13, 2008
Categories: Features, In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Society | Permalink | Comments (2) | 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)

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)