International
Time to ditch climate policies’
An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.
The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail.
They want G8 nations and emerging economies to focus on an approach based on improving energy efficiency and decarbonising energy supply.
Critics of the report’s recommendations say they are a dangerous diversion.
The report is published by the London School of Economics’ (LSE) Mackinder Programme and the University of Oxford’s Institute for Science, Innovation & Society.
LSE Mackinder programme director Gwyn Prins said the current system of attempting to cap carbon emissions then allow trading in emissions permits had led to emissions continuing to rise.
He said world proposals to expand carbon trading schemes and channel billions of dollars into clean energy technologies would not work.
“The world has been recarbonising, not decarbonising,” Professor Prins said.
“The evidence is that the Kyoto Protocol and its underlying approach have had and are having no meaningful effect whatsoever.
“Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.”
The report has drawn an angry response from some environmentalists, who acknowledge the problems it highlights but fear that the solutions it proposes will not work.
Tom Burke, from Imperial College London and a former government adviser, said: “The authors are right to be concerned about the lack of urgency in the political response to climate change.
“They are also right to identify significant weaknesses in the major policy instrument currently being negotiated.
“But nothing could be more harmful than to propose that the world stop what it is doing on climate change and start again working in a different way,” Professor Burke contested.
“This is neither practical nor analytically defensible – and it seems to have been born more out of frustration than understanding of the nature of the political processes involved.
“This is a far more complex, and urgent, diplomatic task than the strategic arms control negotiations and will require an even more sophisticated and multi-channel approach to its solution. Stop-go is not sophisticated.”
G8 leaders will discuss climate change on Wednesday before joining leaders of emerging economies on Thursday for a meeting chaired by President Obama.
source:bbc
Road to Copenhagen: The Need for a New Framework
It’s official: India won’t accept binding caps on its emissions of greenhouse gases. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh made the case clearrlast Thursday:
“India will not accept any emission-reduction target–period,” Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”
India’s announcement is the latest frustrating news for those following the efforts of climate negotiators as they struggle to eke out an international agreement by this December’s UN summit in Copenhagen. It’s frustrating because the fundamental dissonance between what developed countries demand and what developing countries are willing to give appears to be the single most intractable roadblock standing in the way of a successful treaty. In fact, this very problem has impeded progress on international climate negotiations for decades.
China is also predictably inflexible when it comes to emissions reduction targets. Its May 20 position paper on the Copenhagen conference makes no mention of reduction targets, and instead demands that industrialized nations cut their emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Chinese officials have repeatedly stated that China will not adopt binding targets because it does not bear the same responsibility as the developed world for historic greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU and the US favor domestic cap and trade systems and seek to expand them into a global carbon market. But in the developed world, this model hasn’t worked. Under Kyoto, participating nations promised to reduce emissions below 1990 levels by 2012–instead, their emissions have been rising steadily. From 1990-2006, emissions increased in Japan by over 5 percent; in the US by 14 percent; in Canada by 20 percent; and in Australia by 30 percent.
The cap and trade model isn’t likely to start working, either. Though supporters of ACES (the latest attempt to establish a domestic cap-and-trade system in the US) claim it will reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, analyses by the EPA and the Breakthrough Institute reveal that the bill will not require any emissions reductions below projected business-as-usual growth for at least another decade.
Meanwhile, the developing world is looking on, and not surprisingly, they’re opting out of the failed cap-and-trade model. China, for instance, has consistently argued that such a system would be incompatible with its institutions.
They might not be jumping on the emissions reduction bandwagon, but major developing countries are not dragging their feet either. Recent weeks have seen China and India sharpen their focus on another approach to addressing climate change: investment. The Indian government plans to invest $100 billion in solar energy production over the next decade, with a target of 20 GW by 2020. In China, officials will soon unveil a massive ten-year renewable energy investment plan on the order of $440-660 billion. This new stimulus spending will dramatically expand China’s renewable energy capacity, and could triple the nation’s 2020 targets for wind and solar power.
China is pulling ahead as the world’s first renewable energy superpower, and India is poised to join it. This means they’ll come to Copenhagen with major leverage over finger-wagging Western countries that press for emission cuts from developing nations but do little to invest in renewable energy at home. If China and India can point to substantial domestic renewable energy investment, they’ll bolster their case for continuing to reject emissions reduction targets.
So surely it’s time to stop fighting a battle we’re not going to win. Instead, hope for achieving a successful agreement in Copenhagen lies in adopting an alternative framework that eschews emissions targets in favor of something more workable.
Fortunately, there are already indications that the outlines of such a framework may be emerging, at least for developing countries. China appears open to the idea of carbon intensity targets–essentially slowing the growth of emissions–and India has proposed creating global innovation centers for the rapid development and diffusion of zero-carbon technologies. Both nations have called on developed countries to share clean technologie to foster low-carbon development.
This alternative framework could focus on targets for clean energy investment and deployment. The greenhouse gas emissions displaced by new energy technologies could be calculated relative to a projected business-as-usual trend. By pushing for emissions reduction through targets for clean technology investment, such an approach would mollify developing country leaders wary of setting binding emissions targets, and also result in real emissions reductions in the short term.
Senior U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing hintedithat negotiations could move in that direction when he proposed that, instead of emissions targets, developing countries like China could be asked to commit to actions such as energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment:
“We’re saying that the actions of developing countries should be binding, not the outcomes of those actions.”
This week in L’Aquila, Italy, the Major Economies Forum on Climate Change will bring together the world’s largest emitters to continue climate policy negotiations. The meeting will foreshadow the likelihood of achieving a global agreement in December. If US negotiators put forth an alternative framework based on investment rather than emissions targets, there’s still hope of aligning the interests of developed and developing nations in a binding agreement in Copenhagen. But if they stick to the failed framework of the past 20 years, prospects for achieving a global treaty will remain exceedingly grim.
source: Watthead ,posted by Jesse Jenkins
Going Local In An Era Of Globalization
Unlike previous global environmental problems such as the depletion of ozone via CFC’s and excessive pesticides (DDT), greenhouse gases are not something we can phase out. First off, there is the problem that previous years of releases are with us and will stay with us for quite some time. Second off, greenhouse gases are a product of a lifestyle that we all can not just give up. This is even truer now that we have a global economy where we ship food, materials, consumer products, and other resources all around the world. So how do we get to stabilizing GHG’s in the face of an expanding population and more importantly, global economy? While the era of globalization is often looked at a cause for enhanced GHG’s (which I would support), we may have to look at how this phenomena can be an opportunity for climate change action. I’ll come back to this later.
But to get the question posed above, many advocates, most notably the ‘locavores,’ have been advising that we must turn our heads towards our local economies as a response to globalization. Local economies generate jobs, keep cash flow within regional boundaries, build communities, and reduce greenhouse gases. In essence, a more sustainable region can be created, as multiple reinforcing benefits are found with such an economy. While there is no hard-fast rule (see the often cited example where it is less carbon intensive to raise a sheep in New Zealand and ship it – and many others – to London, than it is to raise one in the UK), local economies generally cut emissions due to less transportation and potentially, less fertilizer used. So in essence we have a conundrum…. start generating local economies in a globalized world. Does this make sense?
It has the potential to, depending on what we ‘globalize’ and what we ‘localize.’ Figuring out how to globalize and/or localize the complex array of systems (agriculture, water, consumer products, technology, transportation, international trade, etc) within this world is not easy. Globalization continues to provide a wide range of benefits (see ‘The World is Flat’), but also creates more avenues for GHG emissions. However, bringing more communications technology to areas in need creates more opportunities for fast and free distribution of knowledge (good and bad) that can be helpful in climate change action.
A great example of the potential of global communications can be found in San Francisco’s EcoMap project . Urban EcoMap, which was launched as a part of the Connected Urban Development program’s, went online this past Earth Day 2009 as the first worldwide site (Seoul & Amsterdam are to follow). Working with the global consulting arm of Cisco, San Francisco has put forth a platform for its urban communities to post, track, and monitor its GHG contributions regarding transportation, waste, and energy. It organizes all this data under zip codes, allowing users and policymakers to determine if and where success is occurring. At the same time, it provides a wide array of actions to help improve one’s score in the three categories.
It also provides a social networking tools to bring people together within regions and across the globe to innovate and share in climate change strategies. For example, a resident can generate a profile, input their methods of transportation, energy usage, and waste generation (i.e. how often do you bike, do you compost, do you recycle? etc), and see how their zip code collectively compares to others, creating a small competition. Also, you can display what ‘green’ activities you do, so others can access your profile and potentially ask you questions. For instance, your neighbor down the street (or across the globe) started a vermiculture bin and now you could access this person and the information via the web, or even meet up. For a less convoluted explanation, see the video .
Urban EcoMap Visual Preview from Connected Urban Development on Vimeo .
This type of globalization provides excellent opportunities for us to collectively address climate change. Globalization, while it is often easy to beat down, provides excellent opportunity gaps where we can begin to generate sustainable communities. At the same time, our local economies can bring us closer together, and Bill McKibben argues, make us more happy and healthy. But to advocate localizing to a point where we isolate ourselves is not sustainable. We must continue to move and produce reputable information, technology, and decision-making processes in a global arena, while functioning within our local economies. This will keep us healthy and happy in our community, yet continue to bring necessary change to global problems. It’s not as simple as phasing out CFC’s, so we must think systematically in approaching local economies in a global context.
source: celsias, by Riley Smith
Global warming tops agenda of economic powers summit
President Barack Obama will go to a summit of top economic powers hoping to push for a consensus to stop global warming.
WASHINGTON — One question could dominate this week’s gathering of the world’s top economic powers in Italy: Will the United States and Europe act by themselves to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are causing long-term global warming and will they be able to persuade fast-developing nations such as China and India to go along?
President Barack Obama will lead a gathering of nations called the Major Economies Forum, looking to forge a consensus for a global pact to stop global warming ahead of a climate meeting in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.
He’ll arrive Wednesday in Italy reportedly prepared to embrace the broad goal of limiting global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — in the global average temperature. Many scientists see 2 degrees C as a dangerous threshold that shouldn’t be crossed.
Obama also will arrive at the Wednesday-Friday meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, armed with the tentative promise of U.S. action to cut its own emissions, a dramatic shift after years of opposition by the Bush administration. The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would put the first mandatory limits on U.S. emissions and reduce them if it becomes law.
However, the president faces a challenge winning Senate approval even for a proposal that environmentalists call watered down and Europeans consider short of what’s needed. Even if the core group that’s meeting in Italy — the world’s eight top economic powers, called the G-8 — agrees to the goal of curbing global warming, it’ll still find major countries such as China reluctant to sign on to specific emission cuts.
”It is premature to expect any major breakthroughs on contentious issues like targets for emissions reduction,” said Sarah Ladislaw, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center in Washington.
Still, White House aides said that Obama hoped that the Major Economies Forum, a gathering of economic powers that produce roughly 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, would build momentum toward an international pact in which all nations took action to fight global warming, though not all in the same way or on the same timetable.
The first test could be reaching broad agreement on the goal of capping global warming at 2 degrees Celsius. Global temperatures already have risen about 1 degree C. Keeping them from rising more than 1 to 3 degrees C this century would require aggressively reducing greenhouse gases.
Although the magnitude of change is difficult to predict, scientists forecast that if the world takes the least aggressive approach to reducing emissions, the global average temperature will increase by another 2.5 to 6.5 degrees C (4.5 to 11.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week that she expected the G-8 to endorse the 2-degree C goal and suggested that the United States will go along for the first time.
”We cannot do this without the United States,” she said in Berlin of the fight against global warming. “That’s why it will be important to have a clear acknowledgement of the 2-degree goal in the documents from the L’Aquila summit.”
source: miamiherald
National
Obama touts new lighting rules, energy policy
Push follows House approval of climate bill that now moves to Senate
WASHINGTON – Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy.
“I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.
Obama said the new efficiency standards he was announcing for lamps would result in substantial savings between 2012 and 2042, saving consumers up to $4 billion annually, conserving enough energy to power every U.S. home for 10 months, reducing emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars a year, and eliminating the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants.
The president also said he was speeding the delivery of $346 million in economic stimulus money to help improve energy efficiency in new and existing commercial buildings.
Republicans took issue with Obama’s pitch.
“Conservation is only half the equation. Even as we use less energy, we need to produce more of our own,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We have to admit there’s a gap between the clean, renewable fuel we want and the reliable energy we need.”
The White House added the event to the president’s schedule at the last minute, just three days after the House narrowly approved the first energy legislation ever designed to curb global warming. The measure’s fate is less certain in the Senate, where Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to block a certain filibuster.
Still, in an interview with a small group of reporters, Obama energy adviser Carol Browner said: “I am confident that comprehensive energy legislation will pass the Senate.” But she repeatedly refused to say exactly when the White House expected the Senate to pass the measure, and she wouldn’t speculate on whether Obama would have legislation sent to his desk by year’s end.
The White House is working to keep energy in the spotlight even as Congress takes a break this week for the July 4 holiday. Obama has spent the past few days pressuring the Senate to follow the House while also seeking to show that the administration is making quick, clear progress on energy reform without legislation.
In February, the president directed the Energy Department to update its energy conservation standards for everyday household appliances such as dishwashers, lamps and microwave ovens. Laws on the books already required new efficiency standards for household and commercial appliances. But they have been backlogged in a tangle of missed deadlines, bureaucratic disputes and litigation.
The administration already had released new standards on commercial refrigeration. Lamps were next.
source:msnbc
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Food
Progress Shown in Latest Greenpeace Sustainable Seafood Scorecard
In the third edition of Greenpeace’s seafood sustainability scorecard –Carting Away the Oceans – more than half of the leading supermarket chains in the U.S. have now made some sign of progress in increasing the sustainability of their seafood operations. – some of the world’s most critically imperiled species. None of the companies featured in the report guarantee that they won’t sell seafood from fisheries that are harming sea turtles, dolphins, seals, sea lions, or other marine mammals.The supermarket chain Wegmans received top ranking followed by Ahold USA, while Whole Foods dropped to third place from its December 2008 first place ranking. Trader Joe’s remains ranked at # 17, the worst ranking of the national supermarket chains surveyed. Three regional chains ranked at the bottom.
Of the 20 largest supermarket chains in the United States, nine remain that have made no visible effort to increase the sustainability of their seafood operations and continue to ignore scientific warnings about the crisis facing global fisheries and the marine environment. These include: Aldi, Costco, Giant Eagle, H.E.B., Meijer, Price Chopper, Publix, Trader Joe’s, and Winn Dixie. Despite the progress of many companies, all continue to stock “red list” seafood like orange roughy, swordfish, or Chilean sea bass
“The good news is that seafood sustainability is now on the radar of many major retailers so we are seeing a shift in practices, but much more progress is needed,” said Greenpeace’s Senior Markets Campaigner, Casson Trenor. “Unfortunately, our oceans remain in crisis and retailers that ignore this fact are contributing to the collapse of our marine ecosystems.”
The rankings follow:
1. Wegmans
2. Ahold USA (Stop & Shop, Giant)
3. Whole Foods
4. Target
5. Safeway (Dominicks, Genuardi’s, Pavilions, Randall’s, Von’s)
6. Harris Teeter
7. Walmart
8. Delhaize (Bloom, Food Lion, Hannaford Bros., Sweetbay)
9. Kroger (Baker’s, City Market, Dillon’s, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, King Soopers, Ralph’s,
Smith’s, Quality Food Center – QFC)
10. Costco
11. Aldi
12. A&P (Food Emporium, Pathmark, Super Fresh, Waldbaum’s)
13. Supervalu (Acme, Albertson’s, Bristol Farms, Jewel-Osco, Save-A-Lot, Shaw’s)
14. Giant Eagle
15. Publix
16. Winn-Dixie
17. Trader Joe’s
18. Meijer
19. Price Chopper
20. H.E. Butt (H.E.B., Central Market)
To help ensure the long-term sustainability of fisheries and marine ecosystems, Greenpeace advocates the creation of a worldwide network of marine reserves and fisheries management based on a precautionary, ecosystem-based approach. Today, supermarkets can help the oceans and meet consumer demand for sustainable products by refusing to sell seafood from fisheries that:
- exploit endangered, vulnerable and/or protected species, or species with poor stock status
- cause habitat destruction and/or lead to ecosystem alterations
- cause negative impacts on other, non-target species
- are unregulated, unreported, illegal or managed poorly
- cause negative impacts on local, fishing dependent communities
source: celsias
Defining ‘Sustainable Agriculture
Bloomberg NewsAgreeing on a definition of “sustainable agriculture” is easier said than done.
Perhaps not for long.
The Leonardo Academy, an environmental think tank in Madison, Wisc., is busy refereeing a debate over a new “National Sustainable Agriculture Standard,” under the guidelines of the American National Standards Institute.
One outcome of this effort could be a new “sustainable agriculture” label stamped on food — similar to the way some food is now marketed as organic. It could also create a system that rewards farmers for doing things like reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer they use.
In late May, members of the 58-member standards committee met in St. Charles, Ill., to make the first decisions about the scope of the voluntary standards they hope to create. The committee includes a variety of stakeholders such as the National Corn Growers Association, General Mills, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and American Farmland Trust.
One early point of contention has been genetically modified crops.
A preliminary “draft standard” from 2007 used organic agriculture as a starting point for sustainability, and it prohibited crops that had been genetically modified.
But groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and the United States Department of Agriculture balked at the draft, which was ultimately scrapped. The new goal is to find a standard that makes room for “any technology that increases agricultural sustainability,” according to press release from Leonardo Academy earlier this month.
“Organic is basically four percent of the domestic market,” said Russell Williams, director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau, in an interview. “So if you’re going to talk about ’sustainable organic agriculture,’ that’s fine. But if you’re going for ’sustainable agriculture,’ then the standard needs to be much more broad.”
Many organic advocates don’t agree — though they believe developing sustainability standards for use by all farmers could be valuable to their cause.
“I’m of the opinion that it’s going to be difficult to get the average farmer in this country to move in one big step from where they are to a certified organic operation,” says Jeff Moyer, farm director at The Rodale Institute, which promotes organic agriculture. “But if we had a set of standards like a sustainability standard that would enable farmers to be rewarded for moving in the right direction, then I’m inclined to think that’s very positive.”
Among the more general points on which the committee has agreed so far: Any initial standard should cover only crop production (with livestock to come later), and it should only apply to practices on the farm, rather than the entire supply chain. The parties also agreed that the new standard should be performance-based, meaning that all farmers would be rewarded for improving sustainability practices, rather than just those who follow specific practices.
A final standard, if it makes it through the process with enough agreement from all parties, is expected to be completed by 2012.
source: New York Times, Green Inc. by Jared Flesher
Climate Change
Oxfam Details Economic Impact of Warming
Cities like New Delhi in India could see as much as a 30 percent drop in worker productivity because rising temperatures will make it impossible for people to work at the same rate on hot summer days without serious health impacts, Oxfam, the international aid group, warned on Monday.
Oxfam laid out warnings about the effects of climate change on poorer regions of the world as global leaders prepare to meet at the G8 summit later this week. Oxfam said it was seeking to rally leaders to agree to help developing nations adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change. Those effects, groups like Oxfam say, are likely to happen even if a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions is reached later this year.
In a report, Suffering the Science – Climate Change, People and Poverty, Oxfam used information gathered from the insurance industry to warn that “mega fires” and storms are on the rise, and it noted that people in poor parts of the world have no access to insurance.
In addition, Oxfam highlighted how trade patterns are likely shift as climate change takes hold, with many richer parts of the world receiving a boost while many poor regions become even more disadvantaged.
The group, which has posted related images and stories here, said American agricultural profits were set to rise by $1.3 billion annually because of climate change, while sub-Saharan Africa would lose $2 billion annually as the viability of one of the region’s staple crops, maize, declined.
Keeping the rise in global temperature to two degrees above pre-industrial levels (a level the United States may agree to at the G8 meeting later this week) was “economically acceptable” for rich countries, said Oxfam — though such a rise in temperature would still mean “a devastating future for 660 million people,” the group warned.
source: New York Times, Green Inc. by James Kanter
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