by David Steven | Jun 15, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
US climate envoy, Todd Stern has tried to clarify exactly what the Obama administration wants from China on climate at Copenhagen (see post from Leo and me on the confusing signals the US has been sending out).
So here it is:
- “Very considerable” reductions on China’s business as usual emissions.
- These reductions to be binding, transparently measured and verifiable.
- No absolute emissions reductions but (preferably at least) a designated year when China’s emissions should peak.
- China’s commitment to be consistent with the world stabilising its emissions at around 450 ppm (“we don’t know whether it’s 445 or 460 or… but in that general range”).
- The package to be backed up by carbon offsets from the US to China – but these offsets should have “real environmental integrity” – and technology cooperation.
Obvious questions to ask Stern –
- Do you believe that President Obama’s domestic commitments on climate are consistent with a 450ppm stabilization target?
- Will the United States be pushing for a 450ppm target to be enshrined in the Copenhagen agreement?
- When does the United States think Chinese emissions should peak to meet 450ppm?
- When does the United States expect global emissions to peak?
by David Steven | Jun 12, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity
The Guardian headline was unequivocal: “The US will exempt China from binding greenhouse gas targets.”
Guardian environment correspondent, David Adam, had had a chat with Jonathan Pershing, who leads the American climate delegation, and Pershing had told him that only developed countries need take on binding targets to reduce emissions. “We’re saying that the actions of developing countries should be binding, not the outcomes of those actions.”
Now, that’s a big deal. After all, back in 1997, the US Senate made it crystal clear that it had no intention of ratifying Kyoto unless the agreement included “new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions” for all developing countries, and China, Mexico, India, Brazil, and South Korea in particular.
Now, you can argue the toss about the merits of the US position (my personal view is that China should bind itself at Copenhagen to an agreed date by which its emissions will peak), but for Obama’s team to say at this stage – do a bit more on energy efficiency and renewables, and we’ll give you a free pass on targets – would be astounding.
Turns out Der Spiegel has a more detailed and much clearer interview with Pershing.
SPIEGEL: But the Chinese don’t want to accept legally binding reduction targets for CO2. Does the US still insist on such a commitment?
Pershing: Yes, definitely. We are still asking them to commit to legally binding CO2 reductions as part of a Copenhagen agreement.
SPIEGEL: With only five months left until the Copenhagen summit, do you think such a compromise will be possible?
Pershing: We are working very hard to achieve a good solution. The US remains focused on a legally binding agreement and on concluding that agreement in Copenhagen. We expect all developed nations to commit to comparable reduction targets and we want more countries to belong to the group of industrialized countries than today, for example Korea. Major economies with large total emissions like China should take additional steps, including a quantitative and quantifiable set of actions with a legal requirement to implement those actions.
So what gives? A fine line between ‘reductions’ and ‘targets’? Pershing going off script? Or sloppy reporting from the Guardian’s journalist?
(Via @tancopsey on Twitter – follow me @davidsteven.)
Update – And we have our answer – sloppy Guardian reporting. Its original story went up online at 14.53 BST, but was extensively revised and corrected at 18:31 (the old version simply disappeared, but there’s a copy below).
The new headline: “US says it will not demand binding carbon cuts from China.” So targets are still on the table; immediate absolute reductions are not (and they never were – the idea is utterly implausible).
(more…)
by Alex Evans | May 21, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
A while back, David did a post extolling the virtues of biochar as a potentially important – but widely overlooked – element of the response to climate change. Well, here’s another: black carbon.
As Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development notes, black carbon is “the dark soot that comes from old diesel vehicles and burning biomass for cooking”. It accelerates global warming in two crucial ways: first, by absorbing more heat while particles of it float around in the atmosphere, and second by darkening snow and ice surfaces after it falls to the ground, thereby absorbing still more heat.
It’s a big deal. One recent study cited by Zaelke suggests it’s responsible for 50% of Arctic warming; another that it reduces springtime Eurasian snow cover by as much as CO2 does. Black carbon’s also a major part of the recent why the MIT study published 2 days ago is so gloomy (it predicts “a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees” – great).
The good news? This is eminently tackle-able, especially through pretty basic technologies like better cooking stoves and smoke hoods. More good news? Undertaking a major push on this would not only deliver immediate progress on reducing climate change, but would also save millions of lives and make a tangible difference to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
As Practical Action (one of the best NGOs in this area) summarise, more than a third of humanity (2.4 billion people) use biomass as their main cooking fuel, of whom 800m depend exclusively on crop residues and dung. Smoke in the home from these fires kills 1.6 million people a year – mainly women and kids. That’s more than malaria, and almost as much as poor water and sanitation. This WHO graph shows worldwide causes of death and illness:
While this one shows causes of death among under-fives:
So sorting out such stoves is one of those rare things, a genuine win-win. It’s also something the development community could actually deliver. As a rule I’m sceptical when I see the aid world cheerfully adopting a throw-money-at-it approach – but one area where resource transfer can clearly achieve results is when (a) it’s geared towards getting stuff distributed, and (b) the stuff in question doesn’t depend on complex delivery systems (such as a functioning health sector). In those conditions, donors can be extremely effective: look at distribution of bed-nets to combat malaria.
So: someone needs to initiate a major push on universal access to basic stoves and safe cooking technology. But who has the standing to unite the climate world and the development world in this endeavour, and could also bring it to G8 or G20 summits for high level political cover?
Sounds like a job for the SG to me.
by Alex Evans | May 10, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Global Dashboard, Global system
Tomorrow sees the launch of a new Center on International Cooperation report on the subject of international institutions and climate change, co-authored by David and me (see also this story on the report in tomorrow’s Guardian).
When we were commissioned to do the paper a few months ago by the UK Department for International Development, it quickly struck us that although the world has invested a massive amount of time and money in understanding both the science and the economics of climate change, we’re a long way behind in thinking through the kind of institutions that we’ll need in order to tackle the issue successfully.
It’s a strange oversight, when you think about it: after all, the challenge of climate change is above all one of leadership, of co-ordination and collective action – all of which come straight back to the question of institutions. The report is therefore a intended as a small contribution to the nascent global discussion about the new kinds of institution we need to tackle a new kind of global challenge.
The paper starts by setting out three scenarios for how institutions evolve to manage climate change – with varying degrees of success – between the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009 and the year 2030. Subsequent sections turn to the drivers that underpin the scenarios; an assessment of the multilateralism that we have now and its inadequacies for dealing with climate change; an exploration of the multilateralism that we’ll need, in order to tackle climate change successfully; and finally, how we might chart a path towards it.
The report argues that the most important thing that global institutions must deliver in order to stabilise the climate is what we call “signals from the future”. What we mean by this is that the way countries, companies and citizens behave today fundamentally depends on what they expect to happen in the future – so institutions must shape those expectations towards the desired outcome, and create a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy.
For if countries, companies and citizens expect a slow, tortuous transition to a low-carbon world, then it makes sense for them to free-ride on emissions reductions undertaken by others, to hedge their bets, to slow the process down. If, on the other hand, they expect the low-carbon transition to happen quickly, then the incentives are instead for them to lead the change – in effect, to take part in a race to get out of carbon. It’s either a virtous spiral or a vicious circle, in short – and institutions are the factor that can make the difference between the two.
To be able to send such signals from the future, we argue that radical global institutional change will be needed. We need a framework that manages climate change over the full term of the challenge, based on a scientifically derived stabilisation target; a transparent, equitable formula – an ‘algorithm’, as we think of it – for sharing the global carbon budget out between the world’s nations; and a far more rigorous compliance and enforcement regime than the one agreed for Kyoto. As we argue in the report,
It seems inevitable that a long-term climate deal will ultimately require an ‘all or nothing’ approach to international participation. Either countries play a full part in the system (and thus have access to international frameworks on finance, trade, development, energy and other resources, and perhaps even security); or they sit outside the international system and are effectively barred from all forms of international co-operation.
Carbon default, in other words, would be become as weighty an issue as sovereign default, or failure to comply with a Security Council resolution. That this should currently seem inconceivable indicates the extent of the shift in understanding that is still needed.
by David Steven | Apr 29, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity
Avaaz must be delighted with this spoof of Exxon’s climate change ads.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ql38W-vduM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Not only has it raised enough money to show its spot on CNN ($110k at time of publication), it’s already managed to provoke this self-pitying response from Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers:
They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don’t understand. If someone chooses to use our approach as a way to generate revenue or to make a point, I guess they’re free to do that.”
Memo to Jeffers: limping around like a harpooned walrus won’t make anyone love you.
