Wednesday, December 30, 2009
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Labels: become debt free, debt free, global warming news
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Monday, December 28, 2009
NASA climate expert hopes Copenhagen summit fails
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LONDON (AFP) - A leading scientist who helped alert the world to the dangers of global warming said on Thursday that climate talks in Copenhagen next week were based on such flawed proposals that he hoped they failed.
James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, said attempts to forge a global deal on cutting emissions after the Kyoto treaty expires were based on a "fundamentally wrong" approach.
"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper ahead of the December 7-18 summit.
Hansen is highly sceptical about a favoured measure of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a cap-and-trade system under which a progressively stricter 'right to pollute' is exchanged in a carbon market.
Instead, he has previously argued for a direct tax on fossil fuels as the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.
"The approach that's been talked about is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation," Hansen told the paper.
"I think it's just as well that we not have a substantive treaty, because if it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing, and people agree to that, then they'll spend years trying to determine exactly what that means and what is a commitment, what are the mechanisms.
"The whole idea that you have goals which you're supposed to meet and that you have outs, with offsets (sold through the carbon market), means you know it's an attempt to continue business as usual."
Hansen, who made headlines worldwide in 1988 with his US Congress testimony that climate change was already well under way, compared the current approach to the Catholic Church's use of indulgences in the Middle Ages.
Sinners paid the bishops to give them redemption, a system that was patently absurd but suited both sides.
"We've got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets," Hansen said.
However, he insisted there was still hope, telling the Guardian: "I find it screwy that people say you passed a tipping point so it's too late.
"In that case what are you thinking: that we are going to abandon the planet? You want to minimise the damage."
Labels: global warming news, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, greenhouse gas emissions, James Hansen
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Seychelles getting 'sinking feeling'
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DENIS ISLAND, Seychelles (AFP) - Camille Hoareau stands on Denis Island's beach of creamy-white sand, exactly where trees used to grow a few years ago and where the fish will soon swim if global warming surges on.
"See those? They all went down recently," he says, pointing to the upturned roots of casuarina trees felled by the ever-advancing beach.
Hoareau believes this small privately-owned coralline island in the north of the Seychelles archipelago has shrunk by a few acres already since he became estate manager seven years ago.
"The highest point of the island is about 2.5 metres (eight feet), so it doesn't take long for an island like this one to be swallowed up," he says.
Scientific analyses factoring in melting glaciers and ice caps, added water from Greenland and Antarctica and thermal expansion of warming ocean water predict that sea levels could rise globally by up to two metres this century.
For many, climate change remains a slightly abstract notion that may one day involve minor sacrifices such as driving electric cars and buying solar panels.
But for the Seychellois and other people living on low-lying islands, climate change is a tangible issue that literally knocks on their front door every morning and poses a very existential question.
"Where will the water be in 10, 15 years? Global warming has changed our point of view on a lot of things," says Paul Horner, the manager of Denis Island resort.
"The waves are already lapping my front yard so now I'm building a home for the children in the mountains" on one of the Indian Ocean archipelago's granitic islands.
A two-metre rise in water levels would easily flood the runways of the international airport -- which brings in the tourists that account for 80 percent of the country's foreign currency earnings -- and put the capital Victoria at risk.
As a global deal to radically curb carbon emissions in Copenhagen looks anything but certain, the Seychelles fears that tourists will soon require diving gear to enter their rooms in the archipelago's many luxury hotels.
"Time has run out... Even if we are given a very large sum of money, how are we going to prevent a world heritage site like Aldabra atoll from going under?," asks Seychelles Environment and Transport Minister Joel Morgan.
Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands such as Barbados, Kiribati and the Seychelles feel let down by the world's rich, big-polluting countries whose elites like to spend their holidays on their beaches.
At a summit in New York in September, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) issued a declaration scathing the planet's powerhouses for sealing their doom by pussyfooting around the issue of carbon emissions.
We are "profoundly disappointed by the lack of apparent ambition within the international climate change negotiations to protect... vulnerable countries, their peoples, culture, land and ecosystems from the impacts of climate change," they said.
At the key UN climate talks involving 190 nations in Copenhagen, small islands were the first to put forward a draft calling for huge global carbon emissions and target a cap of 1.5 or two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit ) in global warming.
Several days into the meeting, island states were doing what their best to make their voices heard.
A teenage resident of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific asked Australia to welcome her nation's future climate refugees. The tiny Pacific archipelago Tuvalu took on giants China and India and called for a suspension of the conference, and the president of the Maldives, the famed Indian Ocean tourist paradise, made another passionate appeal, weeks after holding a cabinet meeting under water.
For his part, Seychelles President James Michel hopes to impress on world powers that they too have a lot to lose from unchecked climate changes, albeit a few decades after small islands have been wiped off the map.
"We will lose big, but we will continue to argue our case before the world's powers. We feel that we are seriously underestimating the potential impacts of climate change, which may end up costing the planet a lot more," he said in a statement to AFP.
Michel's special advisor on climate change Rolph Payet, whose role as lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won him the Nobel Peace Prize along with former US vice president Al Gore in 2007, takes the view that small nations can achieve the most by themselves.
"Even if we do something now, we won't see the impact for another 20-25 years, but we have to act," he says. "We are pushing for everyone to do that, to invest in sustainability, like restoring the coastline."
Looking at the fallen trees rimming his shrinking paradise island, Camille Hoareau is wasting no time and working relentlessly to win his own race against the climate clock.
"Here we have a scheme on Denis island, where conservation is integrated in the way the hotel is run. Tourists contribute to the effort in the price they pay and it's becoming more and more important to them," he explains.
"The best protection against erosion is trees, so we have to plant as many as possible... I don't know what's going to come out of Copenhagen, but right now it's about people taking responsibility."
by Jean-Marc Mojon
Labels: Denis Island resort, global warming news, Seychelles
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Saturday, December 26, 2009
US aid offer boosts deal at UN climate talks
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COPENHAGEN - Large pieces of a climate deal fell into place Thursday with new offers from the U.S. and China, but other tough issues remained before President Barack Obama and other leaders can sign off on a political accord to contain the threat of an overheated world.
An announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States would contribute to a climate change fund amounting to $100 billion a year by 2020 was quickly followed by an offer from China to open its books on carbon emissions to international review.
The U.S. delegation did not immediately react to the offer by Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei. But it went a long way toward the U.S. demand that China report on its actions to limit the growth of Beijing's carbon emissions and allow experts to go over its data.
The sudden concessions on the eve of Friday's final session lifted hopes that the 193-nation conference could reach a framework agreement that could be refined into a legal accord next year on limiting greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change.
Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao were to join more than 110 world leaders for the last scheduled day of the conference, which for most of its two weeks was embroiled in angry exchanges, a partial boycott by African countries and another entire day wasted in procedural wrangling. It's also possible that once the world leaders depart, the talks could continue at the ministerial level and stretch late into the night and early Saturday.
A pair of Greenpeace activists crashed a Thursday night banquet hosted by Denmark's Queen Margrethe for the world leaders already in town. The couple, dressed in formal wear, unfurled two banners reading "Politicians Talk, Leaders Act" as they walked on the red carpet reception line, and were dragged from the hall by security guards.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and more than a dozen other leaders returned to work from the banquet to forge a political declaration, and were expected to meet into the early hours of Friday. They were seeking to include a range of emissions targets for rich and developing nations and outline financial commitments, said several European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. It also may set deadlines for reaching a legal binding climate pact by the next U.N. conference in Mexico City next November, they said.
The conference seems likely to fall short of the goal set by many developing countries for a deal that would be legally binding on all parties and guarantee the kind of dramatic emissions reductions by the industrial world that threatened nations feel are necessary.
Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, said a political deal by the small group could be the key to unlocking the negotiating stalemate on a host of issues.
"Leaders came here to lead, and that's what they're doing. They're trying to reach an understanding on the key political components - and that's good," de Boer told The Associated Press well after midnight. "If they can advance on that, it can help unstick a lot of other things in the process as well."
But he cautioned that "people won't accept ... an endless process."
Clinton's announcement on funding was widely welcomed. Yoshiko Kijima, a senior Japanese negotiator, said it sent a strong signal by Obama "that he will persuade his own people that we need to show something to developing countries. ... I really respect that."
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said Clinton added "political momentum," and India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh called it "a good step forward."
Independent agencies also praised the move. "I think we're closer now than we have been in two years," said Tom Brookes, an analyst for the European Climate Foundation.
"It shows that when the U.S. moves, China moves," said Kim Carstensen, the climate director for the World Wildlife Fund.
The White House was lowering expectations ahead of Obama's trip.
"Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty-handed," presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Neither the U.S. nor China raised its commitment on emissions. Clinton repeated the U.S. would cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and China said its voluntary emissions target was nonnegotiable. It announced last month it would cut its "carbon intensity," or the amount of emissions in relation to production, by 40 to 45 percent.
An internal calculation by the United Nations, obtained by The Associated Press, said pledges made so far by both industrial and developing countries would mean a 3-degree Celsius (4.8-degree Fahrenheit) temperature rise. A panel of U.N. scientists has said that any rise above 2 degrees C (3.6-degree F) could lead to a catastrophic sea level rise threatening islands and coastal cities, kill off many species of animals and plants, and alter the agricultural economies of many countries.
But the U.S.-China moves could prompt the European Union to raise its emissions commitment to a 30 percent reduction by 2020 from 1990 levels, and similarly inspire Japan and Australia to lock into the upper end of their previously announced targets - 25 percent each.
Clinton said the U.S. agreement to the annual transfer of $100 billion to developing countries was contingent on reaching a broader agreement that covers the "transparency" of China's measures to limit heat-trapping gases.
"We think this agreement has interlocking pieces, all of which must go together," Clinton said, accusing China of backsliding on deals reached in closed meetings earlier this year. "It would be hard to imagine, speaking for the United States, that there could be the level of financial commitment that I have just announced in the absence of transparency from the second-biggest emitter - and now I guess the first-biggest emitter."
He, the Chinese official who spoke in the same press room a few hours later, said Beijing had no legal obligation to verify its emissions actions, but was not afraid of supervision or responsibility.
"We will enhance and improve our national communication" to the U.N. on its emissions, He said. China also was willing to provide explanations and clarification on its reports.
"The purpose is to improve transparency," He said, adding that Beijing was ready to take part in "dialogue and cooperation that is not intrusive and doesn't infringe on China's sovereignty."
Negotiating committees worked through the day and were expected to continue late into the night on an agreement.
Yet to be decided was how the huge sums of money flowing from rich to poor countries would be handled, and whether a new multinational body should be created to distribute the funds. Dessima Williams of Grenada, who chairs an alliance of small island states, said Obama telephoned her prime minister Wednesday to discuss the governance of the bulging climate fund.
The White House officials said the biggest sticking point in the talks was the form of the final accord, and whether it will be legally binding on everyone.
Developing countries insist Kyoto be renewed and extended while a new pact is drawn up to include the U.S. and others. The U.S. does not want its emissions targets to be binding in an international treaty.
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, John Heilprin, Charles J. Hanley, Michael Casey and Karl Ritter contributed to this report.
Labels: climate change fund, emissions reductions, global warming news, political accord
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Friday, December 25, 2009
Global warming may require higher dams, stilts
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With the world losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature's example: Adapt or die.
That means elevating buildings, making taller and stronger dams and seawalls, rerouting water systems, restricting certain developments, changing farming practices and ultimately moving people, plants and animals out of harm's way.
Adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures is expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen next week, along with the projected cost - hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford it.
That adaptation will be a major focus is remarkable in itself. Until the past couple of years, experts avoided talking about adjusting to global warming for fear of sounding fatalistic or causing countries to back off efforts to reduce emissions.
"It's something that's been neglected, hasn't been talked about and it's something the world will have to do," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Adaptation is going to be absolutely crucial for some societies."
Some biologists point to how nature has handled the changing climate. The rare Adonis blue butterfly of Britain looked as if it was going to disappear because it couldn't fly far and global warming was making its habitat unbearable. To biologists' surprise, it evolved longer thoraxes and wings, allowing it to fly farther to cooler locales.
"Society needs to be changing as much as wildlife is changing," said Texas A&M biologist Camille Parmesan, an expert on how species change with global warming.
One difficulty is that climate change is happening rapidly.
"Adaptation will be particularly challenging because the rate of change is escalating and is moving outside the range to which society has adapted in the past" when more natural climate changes happened, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist, told Congress on Wednesday.
Cities, states and countries are scrambling to adapt or are at least talking about it and setting aside money for it. Some examples:
• England is strengthening the Thames River flood control barrier at a cost of around half a billion dollars.
• The Netherlands is making its crucial flood control system stronger.
• California is redesigning the gates that move water around the agriculturally vital Sacramento River Delta so that they can work when the sea level rises dramatically there.
• Boston elevated a sewage treatment plant to keep it from being flooded when sea level rises. New York City is looking at similar maneuvers for water plants.
• Chicago has a program to promote rooftop vegetation and reflective roofs that absorb less heat. That could keep the temperature down and ease heat waves.
• Engineers are installing "thermal siphons" along the oil pipeline in Alaska, which is built on permafrost that is thawing, to draw heat away from the ground.
• Researchers are uprooting moisture-loving trees along British Columbia's coastal rainforests and dropping their seedlings in the dry ponderosa pine forests of Idaho, where they are more likely to survive.
• Singapore plans to cut its flood-prone areas in half by 2011 by widening and deepening drains and canals and completing a $226 million dam at the mouth of the city's main river.
• In Thailand, there are large-scale efforts to protect places from rising sea levels. Monks at one temple outside Bangkok had to raise the floor by more than 3 feet.
• Desperately poor Bangladesh is spending more than $50 million on adaptation. It is trying to fend off the sea with flood control and buildings on stilts.
President Barack Obama and Congress are talking about $1.2 billion a year from the U.S. for international climate aid, which includes adaptation. The U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said $10 billion to $12 billion a year is needed from developed countries through 2012 to "kick-start" things. Then it will get even more expensive.
The World Bank estimates adaptation costs will total $75 billion to $100 billion a year over the next 40 years. The International Institute for Environment and Development, a London think tank, says that number is too low.
It may even be $200 billion a year or $300 billion a year, said Chris Hope, a business school professor at the University of Cambridge and part of the IIED study.
Nevertheless, Hope said failing to adapt would be even more expensive - perhaps $6 trillion a year on average over the next 200 years. Adaptation could cut that by about $2 trillion a year, he said.
As much as three-quarters of the spending will be needed in the developing world, experts say.
"Those are not the countries that caused the problem," Hope said. "There's a pretty strong moral case for us giving them assistance for the impacts that we've largely caused."
Sending money from rich countries to poor ones raises questions of who will control the spending and whether it will be wasted or stolen.
As for helping plants and animals, British climate scientist Martin Parry said the world will have to create a triage system to figure out which living things can be saved, which can't and are effectively goners, and which don't need immediate help.
"It's a brutal way to go about things," Parry said.
And what about people?
Some islands, such as the Maldives, and some coastal cities will not be able to survive rising seas no matter what protections are put in place, said Saleemel Huq, a senior fellow at IIED who runs an adaptation center in Bangladesh. In those cases, he said, the world will need "planned relocation" of people and cities.
Parmesan said people are going to have to realize that "some areas are not going to be good enough to live in in the next 100 years."
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer, Associated Press writers Michael Casey in Bangkok, Alex Kennedy in Singapore, and Minh Tran in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.
Labels: adaptation, Adonis blue butterfly, global warming news
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Thursday, December 24, 2009
Upfront money needed to ease UN climate deal
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NEW YORK - Money on the table - perhaps $10 billion a year or more - could help close a deal in Denmark next month and keep climate talks moving toward a new global treaty in 2010. But if poorer nations see too little offered up front, the U.N. conference could end in discord.
The money would help developing countries cope with ocean flooding, drought and other effects of climate change, while also helping them cut down on emissions of global-warming gases. The funds might eventually come from new sources, such as a tax on airline flights, but negotiators for now are seeking quicker infusions.
"Rich countries must put at least $10 billion a year on the table to kick-start immediate action up to 2012," the U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters last week in a preview of the two-week conference opening next Monday in Copenhagen.
His goal gathered backing in recent days, including from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said his nation would contribute $1.3 billion over three years.
"The rest of Europe will do so," Brown told a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad on Friday. "And I believe America will do so as well."
U.S. President Barack Obama and the Chinese leadership energized lagging climate talks last week by announcing modest targets for controlling their countries' emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the atmosphere.
Although talks will now be extended, Copenhagen was originally meant to culminate years of negotiation centered on two pillars: emissions reductions and financial aid for developing countries to adapt to climate change.
The proposed emissions targets by industrialized nations for 2020 - and China's plan to slow emissions growth - fall short of what scientists say is needed to head off damaging climate change. But if developing nations accept the quick-start financing, a deal might be reached at Copenhagen on a framework for putting all elements in a binding agreement next year, with an eye toward deeper emissions cuts and heftier financing beyond that.
"Short-term finance would be used as an opportunity to get a political buy-in for the other elements of an agreement," said Athena Ballesteros, a climate-finance expert at the Washington think tank World Resources Institute.
The needs are becoming increasingly clear.
An international scientific update last week said changes are happening faster than anticipated. Global temperatures are rising by 0.19 degrees C (0.34 degrees F) per decade, pushing the world into a time of climate disruption, species die-off and expanding seas. Oceans are rising by 3.4 millimeters (0.13 inches) per year, faster than predicted.
"It threatens to submerge the Maldives. My country would not survive," Mohamed Nasheed, president of that low-lying Indian Ocean island nation, told a conference of vulnerable nations earlier this month.
Offers of assistance thus far have been "so low, it is like arriving at an earthquake zone with a dustpan and brush," Nasheed said.
In scores of nations, money will be needed to build coastal protection, modify or shift crops threatened by drought, build water supply and irrigation systems, preserve forests, improve health care to deal with diseases spread by warming, and move from fossil-fuel to low-carbon energy systems, such as solar and wind power.
The World Bank estimates adaptation costs alone will total $75 billion to $100 billion a year over the next 40 years. The cost of mitigation - reducing carbon emissions in poorer nations - will add tens of billions to that. China and other developing countries say the target should be even higher, in the range of $350 billion.
De Boer's $10 billion a year to 2012 is barely a start. But "kick-start finance is so important because such finance will allow developing countries to plan," he told The Associated Press.
In fact, much of the funding would go to "capacity building" - training, planning, getting a fix on needs, local emissions and related concerns.
Upfront money would also help rebuild trust between the rich north and poor south, eroded by years of relative inaction on climate, particularly by the United States.
Climate conference observers expect the European Union to offer most at Copenhagen, perhaps $5 billion a year or more. Japan might contribute $1 billion or more, as would the United States. Appropriations for 2010 totaling some $1 billion to $1.3 billion related to international climate aid are making their way through Congress.
"Quite simply it's the bottom line for getting a deal," New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key said of the financing package, as he pledged up to $50 million on Sunday at a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad.
Obama might use his Dec. 9 drop-by at the Copenhagen conference - on his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway - to announce a U.S. offer on financing. Some 80 other presidents and premiers are expected to attend the final days of the conference Dec. 17-18.
Finance expert Ballesteros expects Copenhagen to narrow the focus of talks next year on sources for longer-term, richer adaptation funding, such as a levy on international air transport, sharing in proceeds from the growing trade in carbon emission allowances, or even a global levy on carbon emissions.
Most important is that such revenue be "stable and predictable," not dependent on vagaries of budget-writing in national capitals, she said.
Emissions reductions, adaptation finance and other elements would be part of a hoped-for treaty or set of internationally binding agreements next year to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Its limited emissions reductions expire in 2012. The U.S. was the only industrial nation not to accept Kyoto.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Labels: financing, global warming news, mitigation cost, Yvo de Boer
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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Commonwealth talks boost hopes of climate deal
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PORT OF SPAIN (AFP) - Hopes were rising Saturday that a new global climate pact is within reach after rich nations at a Commonwealth summit offered to help poorer countries bear the costs of implementing any deal.
The 53-nation body embracing major global players like Britain, Australia and India, and smaller island states like Nauru and the Maldives, were expected to issue a joint commitment to tackling climate change.
"Success in Copenhagen is in sight," said UN chief Ban Ki-moon, referring to the climate negotiations in the Danish capital December 7-18.
He and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who both made a rare address to the Commonwealth even though they are not members, praised a move by Britain and France to launch a 10-billion-dollar fund for developing nations.
By showing willingness to meet "the need for money on the table," it was now "realistic" to expect Copenhagen to result in the framework for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012, Rasmussen said.
"We should use the momentum out there and convert this momentum into an ambitious deal in Copenhagen."
But he stressed the deal to be hammered out by some 87 leaders including US President Barack Obama must include "commitments, numbers and precise language."
Ban, who has led the push towards Copenhagen, agreed it must not become just another talking shop, saying: "We will come out with a very concrete foundation for a legally binding treaty."
For the first time Indian Premier Manmohan Singh Saturday said that he was willing to commit his country to ambitious global carbon emission cuts, provided others shared the burden.
Much of the new momentum for a climate deal stemmed from a joint overture by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Commonwealth gathering, whose leaders represent two billion people, or a third of the planet's population.
The two European leaders proposed to compensate developing countries for the economic disadvantages they would face in cutting carbon emissions.
Britain said it had already set aside 1.3 billion dollars to be paid into the Copenhagen Launch Fund over the next three years.
"Poorer countries must have an understanding that the richer countries will help them adapt to climate change and make the necessary adjustments in their economies," Brown said on his website.
Sarkozy, who was also specially invited by Brown to address the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad, did not say how much France would contribute.
But he told reporters the fund would operate for the next three years, beyond which an "ambitious mechanism" for continued payments would be established.
Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also welcomed what he called "a fast-start fund."
"Australia is of the view that such a fast-start fund can assist in bringing about a good outcome at Copenhagen, but most critically, assist those most vulnerable states dealing with adaptation challenges now," he said.
The willingness of developed countries to step up their commitments bolstered other moves that suggested nations are now determined to reach an accord.
Important among those were carbon cut pledges by almost all the nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
China, the world's biggest polluter, has vowed to reduce "carbon intensity" as measured by unit of gross domestic product by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels.
The United States, the other major contributor to global warming, is looking at curbing carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
The European Union is unilaterally cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, and is offering to go to 30 percent if other industrialised parties follow suit.
India, home to nearly 1.2 billion people, is the only major greenhouse gas emitting nation yet to announce figures on reining in its carbon output, with just over a week to go until UN climate talks start in Copenhagen.
"India is willing to sign on to an ambitious global target for emissions reductions or limiting temperature increase but this must be accompanied by an equitable burden sharing paradigm," Singh said in a speech, the text of which was released by his office in New Delhi.
by Marc Burleigh
Labels: carbon emissions, carbon intensity, Commonwealth, global warming news
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009
How a Little Town in Peru Is Becoming a Hotspot
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A sure way to get people riled up in Quince Mil, a sweltering outpost in Peru's southern jungle, is to ask about the origin of the town's uncommon name.
There are at least four versions explaining the name, which means "Fifteen Thousand," each more colorful than the one before it. Mayor Mario Samanez claims to have the official version. He says its rains around 15,000 mm (590 inches) each year in the town, hence the name.
"This is the spot with the world's second highest amount of rainfall annually. That is where the name comes from," Samanez says.
Actually the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration does not list Quince Mil among the wettest places in the world. The title goes to Mawsynram, India, with 467 inches, followed by jungle spots in Colombia and Hawaii.
Local residents in Quince Mil have their own theories about the name. Some say a group of explorers passing through lost 15,000 pesos where the town now stands. The place was called 15,000 because that's what the explorers would ask for every time they came back to search for the cash. The town's name has become a synonym for bad luck.
But malevolence may be at the origin as well. Fernando Farro, a local farmer, says Quince Mil takes its name from the amount of money the Peruvian government gave Russian fortune-seekers at the turn of the 20th century to eliminate Amazonian tribes and open the area for sugar plantations.
And that darker explanation may be more relevant now as more and more attention is being paid to the backwater town.
Quince Mil sits at a strategic point on one of the final legs of a new highway that will link Peru's Pacific coast to Sao Paulo on Brazil's southern Atlantic coast. A few years ago it would take a week to get from Cuzco, in the Andes, to Quince Mil, with the road reaching elevations of 14,000 feet and descending fast into thick, tropical forest. The same route, now being paved by a Brazilian construction company, will take around six hours when the road is finished.
"The road means radical change for the population. It is a great opportunity for people throughout the valley to get their products to markets," says Samanez, who expects the blacktop to finally reach the town in mid-2010. (See pictures of Sao Paulo, the 'Clean City.')
JosÉ Bonifaz, an economist at Peru's University of the Pacific, calculates in a new book that the road will generate close to $2 billion for local communities in the coming two decades. The government forecasts that the highway could add a full percentage point to GDP.
Brazil will be the big beneficiary at the start, sending minerals, meat and soybeans through Peru for export to China, instead of using the Panama Canal. But local authorities expect the Peruvian entreprenerus to slowly catch up with exports headed across the Atlantic.
Quince Mil is doing its part to get ready. The number of boarding houses - mainly rooms crafted of plywood and plastic sheets - has jumped from two to more than 30 and the residents say there has been an explosion in restaurants, bars and small shops as folks get ready for the highway, instead of dirt road, traffic.
The population has more than doubled since the last census in 2007, when there were fewer than 1,000 people in the town.
While pleased with the highway, Samanez is worried that it could spark the destruction of the area's pristine forests because of gold found in rivers. There are already more than 100 requests for mining concessions around Quince Mil (five have been formally granted) and with gold prices above $1,000 an ounce a gold rush is already on in the nearby Madre de Dios state. Samanez is hoping the state creates a protected in nearby forests that would curb mining, logging and cattle farming.
U.S. scientists working in the zone share Samanez's concern and believe that Quince Mil could be put on the map for its environmental potential. "This is a biological hotspot. There is so much out there just waiting to be identified," says John Janovec, a botanist from the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. He sees tourists coming down to gawk at birds, tropical flowers and brilliantly colored butterflies.
Janovec, who looks more like a ZZ Top guitarist than an expert on the nutmeg tree, is constantly darting about as he coordinates the Andes to Amazon Biodiversity Project that has documented new species of bugs, birds and plants. He has a revolving door program that continuously brings in other specialists. In early November he was sharing Quince Mil with Russ Van Horn, a leading expert in bears from the San Diego Zoo, and Eric Christenson, a renowned botanist from Florida specializing in orchids.
Their days begin at 4 a.m. and extend late into the night. Christenson has already identified orchids not known to exist in Peru and Van Horn is setting dozens of camera traps to document nocturnal animal activity. Most of the work is done to the constant sound of rain on the tin roof and with spotty electricity, as the town's small electricity generator is constantly on the fritz.
"The development here has been incredible. Things are moving so quickly it is hard to know if Quince Mil will still be surrounded by forests in a few years," says Van Horn.
By LUCIEN CHAUVIN
Labels: global warming news, Peru, Quince Mil, wettest places in the world
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Monday, December 21, 2009
"Climate Express" to Copenhagen lowers footprint
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ABOARD THE CLIMATE EXPRESS - A train splashed with a green stripe carried 450 U.N. officials, delegates, climate activists and journalists from Brussels to the climate summit in Copenhagen on Saturday to symbolize efforts to reduce the convention's carbon footprint.
More trains were leaving from other European capitals, and one was concluding a trip from Kyoto, Japan, through China and the Trans-Siberian route across Russia.
But symbols were all the trains could be. Most of the 15,000 people expected at the two-week conference opening Monday will arrive by plane from opposite ends of the globe.
The journey through Belgium, Germany and Denmark was intended to underscore what campaigners say is the need to switch to low-carbon economies and rely more on public transportation to reduce tailpipe emissions.
"Anyone who thinks it's impossible is wrong," said Achim Steiner, director of the U.N. Environment Program, noting Germany's move away from fossil fuels over the past 10 years toward greater use of wind, solar and hydroelectricity.
Railway officials claimed the trip is carbon neutral. They said the German railroad, Deutsche Bahn, bought the equivalent of the electricity needed to run the train from renewable sources and added it to the Germany electrical grid.
Traveling by train along the nearly 500-mile (800-kilometer) route emits 33 kilograms of carbon dioxide per person, compared with 115 kilograms by air, the officials said.
Led by France, high-speed rail is being extended through much of Europe, with trains moving faster than 155 miles per hour (250 kph). Airlines say they plan to link up with railways to provide alternatives to short European flights.
But train travel is still not glitch-free. A power problem in moving from the Belgian to the German grid delayed the Climate Express by a half-hour at the German border town of Aachen, although railway officials said the transfer problem was unusual and the lost time would be made up.
The 14-hour journey passed rolling hills of eastern Belgium and German farmland and industrial centers. That compared with three hours' flight and about nine hours by car - in the unlikely case there are no traffic jams on Europe's crowded highways.
Steiner called for more investment in public transport and green energy, saying that business investors were looking for signals emerging from the summit.
"Hundreds of billions of dollars are in waiting mode," he said. "In this financial crisis right now, Copenhagen should be one of the biggest stimulus packages."
The summit aims to draw up a political accord among 192 countries for controlling global greenhouse gas emissions causing the warming of the earth. Transportation is responsible for about 27 percent of worldwide emissions.
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer
Labels: Climate Express, Copenhagen, Deutsche Bahn, global warming news
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Sunday, December 20, 2009
Have the greens failed?
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On May 3, 2007, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski realized that the plan was working.
That morning, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), then a presidential contender, attached his name to a model piece of climate legislation that sought to bring U.S. carbon emissions down by an ambitious 80 percent by 2050. Not to be outdone, a few hours later, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) hastily announced she'd support the same bill.
And with that, climate issues seemed - at long last - to have departed the realm of idealism and entered the more fruitful arena of politics, with its results-driven rules of engagement.
Environmentalists would no longer have to appeal to politicians' best instincts by promising they'd be saving future generations and doing the right thing for the globe. Instead, climate activists could draft more-persuasive allies of the electoral variety: fear, ambition and self-preservation.
"It really became a competition. That was the beauty of it," recalled Karpinski. "This became an issue where they were competing to see who was the best."
Yet as green activists converge on the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, their sense of disappointment is palpable, even with the eleventh-hour decision by President Obama to attend the summit on Dec. 9. What was seen in the heady days of 2007 and 2008 as the likeliest venue for a new international agreement on carbon emissions now caps a year of mixed results.
While the American political system has, in many ways, seen a total transformation in its capacity and willingness to tackle such a transcendent issue, some of the traditional obstacles remain - primarily the age-old laws of partisan politics and the limits on how much ambitious legislation Congress can absorb at one time.
At the apex of the 2008 campaign, with the League and other groups leaning hard on a crowded field of presidential candidates, and congressional Democrats shifting steadily toward the view that action would be required, a Democratic victory seemed likely to mean a treaty in the new president’s first year.
In retrospect, though, what had seemed like a political coup was just a partial victory. The populist organizing, the new rhetoric of green jobs and the long-term goals of the campaign season glossed over the concrete terms that have turned 2009 into a season of diminished expectations, making clear that Copenhagen will be, at best, just another step in a long process.
In interviews, environmental leaders made the case that the movement's successes vastly outweigh the setbacks and that they probably never could have predicted the main obstacle to passing major climate legislation this year.
"When someone asks why aren't we going to get a deal in Copenhagen, the biggest reason comes down to two words: health care," said Karpinski.
If the green community is slightly downcast on the eve of Copenhagen, its members still argue that the 12-day conference should set the stage for a major showdown over climate legislation in Congress next year, with victory there being the precursor to a global accord.
"The president is working closely with Congress to pass energy and climate legislation as soon as possible," the White House said in announcing his trip to the summit. Obama hopes his attendance will "drive progress toward a comprehensive and operational Copenhagen accord" that will "serve as a steppingstone to a legally binding treaty."
At the beginning of Obama's presidency, the House of Representatives chose to tackle climate change first, moving swiftly to pass legislation on carbon emissions last summer. But the White House - and, just as crucially, the Senate - went another way. In April, the Senate moved to reserve the procedural fast track known as reconciliation for health and education policy - but not for climate change.
"The administration looked at that and said, 'We can't get a clean win here. Let's go for a clean win. Health care's a clean win," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. Even then, health care legislation "turned out to be a harder win than they thought," he said.
The shift left environmental leaders frustrated and doubting the value of some early commitments.
"I do regret that when Obama made his original short-term commitment, we didn't try to get him to be more ambitious," Pope said, referring to Obama's campaign promise to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020 - a goal that because of the recession and state initiatives could today conceivably be reached without federal action.
"Hillary never trumped him on the short-term goal, so he never had to move it," said Pope, who called Obama's target "pathetically inadequate."
The White House says Obama will offer the 17 percent cut below 2005 emissions during his trip to Copenhagen if China and other less developed countries offer "robust mitigation contributions" of their own.
A day after the president's announcement, China declared that, by 2020, it would reduce emissions relative to its economic output by 40 percent to 45 percent compared with 2005 - a formula that would allow emissions to grow but slow the rate of increase.
Indeed, in the run-up to Copenhagen, countries from Russia to Brazil committed to more aggressive 2020 targets, and climate activists now are pushing the United States and other industrial countries to reduce their emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent from 1990 levels.
With that focus on long term over short came a decision to stress the targets over the mechanics, including how to achieve such deep cuts and how much it would cost.
"They weren't sweating the details," said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for oil and gas industry groups that have fought efforts to regulate carbon emissions. "They were worrying about the aspirational and emotional stuff. And it turns out people care about the details."
Advocates for a strong international treaty on carbon emissions continue to wrestle with a deep disconnect between a cultural moment - in which "green" is both a pop phenomenon and a corporate branding gimmick - and deep congressional skepticism toward actual action. Even oil companies pine for the green brand, and it's almost undoubtedly good public relations for the major companies that have stormed out of the Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to climate legislation.
But the green movement also has been unable to translate the broad popular support for environmental causes into a practical solution that captures the public's imagination and could translate into legislative victory. The mechanism for controlling carbon emissions, known as cap and trade, has turned into an Achilles' heel. And Copenhagen remains, to most Americans, merely the capital of Denmark. At best.
"There are a lot of people in the United States who hear the word 'Copenhagen,' and they think of chewing tobacco," said Tucker, referring to a popular American brand. "There was a disconnect between the folks in Washington and the people on whom this was going to be imposed, and it should have been understood from the start that this was going to be a much heavier lift."
But saving the planet didn't seem too heavy a lift for Democrats campaigning in Iowa in 2007. Throughout the Democratic primary, environmental issues were prominent, and candidates were aggressive. If Clinton and Obama could promise an 80 percent reduction in emissions, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson would distinguish himself by going to 90 percent.
This was no accident: The League of Conservation Voters and its allies had invested deeply in organizing in the early-primary states, making sure that the candidates would be grilled on climate issues at town halls and kitchen tables and that attention would be drawn to those who strayed from the vision of the man who, at the time, was the party's most prominent leader, former Vice President Al Gore.
In August, the League aired a television ad in Des Moines, Iowa, that tinted the candidates’ faces green and that asked - amid chatter about the first black or first female president - who would be the “first green president.”
And then there were the turbines. Windmills were everywhere - at least, everywhere in the television ads candidates ran with promises to revitalize the economy through new, green jobs, the win-win argument developed by Democrats to sell environmentalism to blue-collar workers. That trend had begun in 2006, when the turbine was the "single most common symbol in a political ad," said Sierra Club’s Pope.
"All over the country, people were running ads of wind turbines - and winning," he said. "Americans really bought - probably even more than is true - the notion that clean energy jobs can't be outsourced."
Obama's campaign seemed to vindicate the claims of environmentalists about a changed political environment on climate change when Clinton and Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, responded to high gas prices by calling for a gas tax holiday.
"This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer; it's an idea designed to get them through an election," Obama said, successfully dismissing the notion as political gimmickry.
Obama's victory in the presidential race underscored the importance of the environmental movement's early organizing. He had once been a friend of the coal industry in his home state, Illinois, lavishing praise on "clean coal" technology that environmentalists considered little more than an excuse to keep polluting.
But he quietly reversed that stance, stressing that clean coal was merely an ambition worth funding. He campaigned hard onglobal warming, made the phrase "planet in peril" part of his stump speech and turned the fight against climate change into one of the three pillars of his domestic platform.
Presidential politics wasn't the only place the environmental groups were active. Led by Greenpeace, many activists focused on Congress, running grass-roots campaigns in local districts to pressure lawmakers to back climate legislation that was coming down the pike. The group persuaded 72 members of the House to more forcefully back action on climate change, said Phil Radford, Greenpeace's executive director.
The Democrats' electoral victories in November 2008 were, for the greens, a moment of triumph. In retrospect, however, the movement already was swimming upstream. The economic meltdown pushed climate change - an issue on which voters typically express concern, but not as a top priority - further down the public’s agenda.
The Pew Research Center found that by last January, global warming "ranked at the bottom of the public's list of policy priorities for the president and Congress this year." Independent voters and Republicans ranked it last on a list of 20 priorities, while Democrats ranked it 16th.
Other polling suggests Americans are growing more skeptical of the science behind climate change, with those who blame human activity for global warming - 36 percent - falling 11 percentage points this year, according to Pew.
That skepticism is likely to increase following the embarrassing leak last month of e-mail exchanges among climate scientists dissing the work of peers who doubt that humans are causing global warming.
Those public opinion numbers put the U.S. out of step with its major industrialized partners, Japan and theEuropean Union, and closer to the lower-emitting countries of the developing world.
"The public is in favor of this so long as it doesn't cost anything," said David Victor, a Stanford Law School professor who has argued that the Copenhagen meeting should focus on concrete, politically plausible goals, not a global treaty. "Support was high until a year and a half ago, and then the collapse in the economy happened and got people focused on other things."
What's more, promised "green jobs" - a poll-tested political winner - failed to materialize with the speed hoped for under Obama's economic stimulus package.
"People wanted jobs right now," said Pope. "The administration actively, eagerly wanted to put more of the stimulus money into short-term, fast-start green infrastructure, and they couldn't, because the states hadn't teed it up."
"The timing was terrible," he said. "And the timing of Copenhagen was terrible."
By November, when the White House formally abandoned efforts to create a binding international treaty in Copenhagen, that outcome had been clear to both sides for months. The Senate now has pushed environmental legislation back behind financial reform, to next spring at best, eating away at American leverage overseas.
"The whole thing reminded me of the situation where you're telling everyone you're going to get married, you announce the wedding date, you choose your venue, pick the menu, invite all your friends - all without getting engaged, even without going on the first date,' said Tucker, the industry spokesman.
Privately, environmentalists are arguing among themselves about whether to publicly turn up the heat on the Obama administration, but they are reluctant to do anything that could weaken the president ahead of the climate debates on Capitol Hill. And Democratic officials have begun to express disappointment with the blown deadline.
"Countries see the United States not moving, and they wonder why they should do anything," Sen. John Kerry(D-Mass.) told POLITICO. "They want to know where we are. Everybody asks, you know, 'Are you going to act? What are you going to do? When are you going to do this?"
Expectations remain low for Copenhagen, but there are signs that the climate issue is inching up on Obama's agenda, including his decision to attend the conference and offer specific cuts in U.S. emissions.
Obama made climate talks a priority in a November visit to China, and there are signals that the United States may commit more aid to developing economies to help them meet their emissions targets. His administration, meanwhile, has moved fast on administrative measures that will make the U.S. targets easier to meet.
"You have to lower expectations [for Copenhagen] a little bit from what we would have liked to have seen happen," said the League's Karpinski. "We'll be disappointed that we won't get the final deal we want in Copenhagen, but we'll make significant progress and put in place key building blocks."
Other groups continue to keep the pressure on the president. Greenpeace recently unfurled a banner with his image from atop Mount Rushmore - a statement, it said, to suggest that he could be a truly great president, but only if he leads on the climate issue.
A political agreement short of a treaty in Copenhagen, Kerry said, could be an assertion of the president's primacy over a recalcitrant Congress.
"It's a restatement of the power of the president to direct the [Environmental Protection Agency] to regulate greenhouse gases. He has the power of the budget to make requests of Congress, he has the power of executive orders to order certain behavior in the transformation of energy in buildings, fleet purchases," said Kerry. "But the main thing is that the president is committing to move in a direction, and, of course, where Congress and parliaments need to be brought into play, they are going to be brought into play."
Greenpeace's Radford said Obama's problem is not his position on the climate issue but, rather, his will.
"The question is how much the president will lead," he said. Americans have "overlearned" the lessons of Kyoto, where President Bill Clinton agreed to a treaty that he never submitted for ratification because it faced near-unanimous rejection in the Senate, Radford said.
"They're using that as a reason to hide behind Congress instead of to lead Congress," he said. "The world is watching to see whether [Obama will] step up."
Ben Smith, Politico.com
Labels: environmental movement, global warming news, green movement, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club
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Saturday, December 19, 2009
Australia's global warming bill defeated
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SYDNEY (AP) - Australia's plan to become one of the first nations with a carbon trading system to cut greenhouse gas emissions was dealt a blow Tuesday when the main opposition party chose a leader who vowed to vote it down.
A tumultuous day in politics also means the country could also be one step closer to early elections, with policy differences over global warming placing it as a central issue of the coming campaign.
Debate in the Senate on the government's plans for an emissions trading system continued Tuesday as the conservative Liberal party ejected one leader from the post and elected another. A final vote could come at almost any time.
The conservatives split bitterly and publicly in the past week over the bill, culminating in Tuesday's leadership challenge. Right-leaning Tony Abbott won the vote, ousting Malcolm Turnbull, who had struck a deal with the government to support the bill.
Abbott said his party would now move to defer the bill until after next week's U.N. global summit on climate change in Copenhagen, and possibly longer. If the bill is not deferred, the opposition would vote against it this week in the Senate, he said. The government lacks a majority in the Senate, and the bill will almost certainly fail if the Liberals vote against it.
If the bill is defeated, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is handed a trigger to call an election at any time under constitutional rules meant to be the ultimate resolution to any deadlocks between Australia's two houses of Parliament.
Rudd is unlikely to call elections immediately, for reasons including that political campaigning during the Christmas-New Year holiday season is considered out of bounds. In any case, elections are due sometime in 2010, and opinion polls consistently show Rudd is so popular that - barring major stumbles - he would probably win whenever they are held.
Rudd wants the legislation passed before the Copenhagen summit to help portray him as a world leader on tackling climate change.
Australia is a small greenhouse gas polluter in global terms, but one of the worst per capita because it relies heavily for its electricity on its abundant reserves of coal, which also make it the world's largest exporter of the polluting fuel. As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change.
The European Union has a carbon trading system, as do some U.S. states. Canada and New Zealand are among countries considering them.
Under the government's plan, an annual limit would be placed on the amount of greenhouse gases allowed to be pumped into the atmosphere and permits would be issued to regulate that ceiling. The permits could be bought and sold, setting up a market system that makes reducing emissions potentially profitable for polluting companies.
Rudd wants to slash Australia's emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 if a tough emissions reduction deal is struck in Copenhagen.
Abbott said the proposed system amounts to a massive new tax that would crimp the economy - shrugging off opinion polls that say most Australians want the government to act against climate change.
"I am really not frightened of an election on this issue," Abbott told reporters.
Rudd, speaking in Washington shortly before Abbott was elected his party's leader, said the conservatives were dragging their heels on the issue and that "further delay equals denial on climate change."
Labels: Australia, carbon trading system, global warming news
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'We have a Deal' in Copenhagen
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COPENHAGEN - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says "we have a deal" after a climate conference in Copenhagen decided to recognize a political accord brokered by President Barack Obama with China and other emerging powers.
But Ban says he's "aware that this is just the beginning" of a process to craft a binding pact to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Still, Ban says the Copenhagen Agreement "will have an immediate operational effect."
Many poor nations had bitterly protested the deal because it lacks specific targets for reducing carbon emissions.
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press
Labels: climate conference, Copenhagen Agreement, global warming news
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Friday, December 18, 2009
EU nations commit $3.6 billion to climate fund
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BRUSSELS - EU leaders agreed Friday to commit euro2.4 billion ($3.6 billion) a year until 2012 to help poorer countries combat global warming, as they sought to rescue their image as climate change innovators and bolster the talks in Copenhagen.
All 27 members of the European Union agreed to commit money to a short-term fund for poorer countries, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said after two days of difficult talks at a summit in Brussels.
Britain, France and Germany will each contribute about 20 percent of the money. But with many cash-strapped eastern EU states balking, donations by some were thought to be only a token to reach a unanimous agreement.
Critics said the EU was merely repacking aid promised earlier in different forms and sidestepping key climate change issues to produce a favorable headline.
Britain is promising the most at $650 million each year - saying this reflects its links to former members of the British Empire affected by climate change. It is also is pushing to raise that figure and the overall EU figure higher at the Copenhagen talks next week.
"(This) really does make possible an agreement where Africa and the developing countries can see that their needs are being taken seriously," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
France and Germany followed with pledges of $622 million (euro420 million) each a year.
The money goes toward a global $10 billion annual fund for short-term help to poor countries, particularly in Africa, adapt to the effects of global warming before a new climate treaty being negotiated in Copenhagen comes into force in 2012.
The money would help poorer countries protect their coasts, adjust crops threatened by drought, build water supplies and irrigation systems, preserve forests and move from fossil fuel to low-carbon energy systems such as solar and wind power.
Yet the $10 billion-a-year pales in comparison to the huge stimulus packages and bank bailouts paid by many EU governments in the wake of the global financial meltdown. Financier George Soros, speaking Thursday in Copenhagen, dismissed that figure as inadequate for the scope of change facing poor countries.
Greenpeace was also critical of Friday's announcement, saying EU leaders were avoiding more important decisions on longer-term climate financing for poor nations and on greenhouse gas emissions cuts.
"Climate change will not end in three years ... so neither should the flow of cash," said Joris den Blanken, the environmental group's climate expert.
ActionAid, which focuses on development aid, said the EU was failing to pony up "real money" and that many EU states had "a track record of repackaging or re-announcing existing aid."
Reinfeldt conceded that the commitments announced Friday include new money as well as aid promised earlier.
The EU leaders also pledged Friday to reduce their emissions by 30 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 - but only if other leading polluters make comparable commitments first. Reinfeldt said Europe was waiting for deeper emission cuts from U.S. and Canada.
Two years ago, the EU was ahead of the pack when it pledged to cut 20 percent of emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 and to increase that to 30 percent if other big polluters made similar promises. Japan and Russia have now outpaced Europe with 25 percent cuts. The U.S. is promising a 3 percent reduction from 1990 levels.
Not all EU states are behind the drive to cut carbon emissions. Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk said his nation would only start making major emissions cuts after 2020, when new nuclear power stations could allow Poland to wean itself off cheap - and polluting - coal.
On other issues, EU leaders also called for more debate on a global financial transaction levy, saying banks must do more to contribute to "the society they serve." They didn't say whether the money should go toward development or a global bank bailout fund.
Brown said there was "growing support" across the world for such a levy and that EU leaders also backed Britain's plans for a one-time tax of 50 percent for all bonuses over 25,000 pounds ($40,800). But no firm EU-wide action was taken.
On foreign policy, the EU leaders said they would support new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program and welcomed the injection of new U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
By AOIFE WHITE, Associated Press Writer, AP writers Raf Casert, Mike Corder, Tobias Schmidt and Barbara Schaeder in Brussels and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.
Labels: EU, European Union, global warming news, short-term fund
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
Arctic threats and challenges from climate change
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OSLO (AFP) - Rising temperatures are causing the Arctic's ice sheets to melt, opening the door for an economic boom in the region but also posing a major threat to the survival of its indigenous peoples.
The mercury is rising twice as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere, offering a frightening preview of what the future holds for the planet and prompting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to describe the situation as "a canary in a coalmine."
In what is the most visible effect of global warming, the melting ice cap shrank to a record low of 4.1 million square kilometres (1.58 million square miles) in September 2007. It risks disappearing entirely in the summer months by the end of this century, according to experts.
"That's maybe even a bit optimistic given the latest observations, which suggest that the sea ice is melting even faster than expected," said Paal Prestrud, director of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo (Cicero).
The melting ice is opening up new shipping routes, such as the Northwest Passage off Canada and the Northern Sea route off Russia, which will dramatically shorten routes for ships sailing between the Atlantic and the Pacific, thus avoiding the Panama or Suez canals.
The distance between Rotterdam and Yokohama will be shortened by as much as 40 percent, for example.
Energy groups are meanwhile eagerly eyeing oil and gas riches under the seabed that have long been inaccessible because of the ice -- to the great dismay of environmental activists who fear oil spills in a fragile area.
The region could be home to 90 billion barrels of oil -- worth a whopping 7.0 trillion dollars at the current oil price -- and 30 percent of the planet's untapped gas reserves, according to the US Geological Survey.
The five countries bordering the Arctic (the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark through its territory Greenland) have in recent years ramped up their territorial claims in the region, with Russia going so far as to plant its flag 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) beneath the North Pole.
Their claims have occasionally overlapped, as is the case with Hans Island, a source of dispute between Denmark and Canada.
But according to Frederic Lasserre, a geography professor at Laval University in Quebec, a new Cold War is unlikely.
"There is very little chance that these countries will develop tense relations because of these climate changes," he said, noting that they have shown a willingness to resolve their differences through negotiation.
"Most of the exploitable natural resources ... are located relatively close to their shores, so they are already in the countries' exclusive economic zones" recognised by the neighbouring nations, he added.
Nonetheless, Russia and Canada have already decided to beef up their military presence in the Arctic. Just to be safe.
"The Arctic is a very harsh environment," Canada's chief of defense staff, General Walter Natynczyk, said last month.
"If someone were to invade the Canadian Arctic, my first task would be to rescue them," he said.
While there may not be an armed conflict in sight, global warming has already claimed victims.
It has dramatically changed the lives of the 400,000 indigenous people who live in the region and who depend on fishing and hunting for their livelihood.
Ice that forms later in the year and melts earlier each year shortens the Inuits' hunting season.
Some hunters have drowned, either caught off guard by thin ice or carried away by torrential currents. Others have had to slaughter their sleddogs because they can't hunt enough food to feed them.
"We are people who not only survive, we thrive on the ice and snow," said Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier.
Global warming is accelerated in the Arctic because of the concept known as reflexivity.
Ice reflects more than 80 percent of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere. When the sea ice melts, the dark water does not reflect the heat but instead absorbs it, thereby accentuating the effect of global warming.
In Lapland, the alternating freezes and thaws make it harder for reindeer herders to shuttle their herds to winter pastures.
And some species, such as barn owls, robins and mosquitoes, are moving further north into new habitats.
"The native species now find themselves competing with the new arrivals for survival, and they themselves can't flee further north," Prestrud explained.
Even the king of icecap -- and the food chain -- is at threat.
By 2050, two-thirds of the Arctic's 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears could disappear because of the melting ice, where the bears hunt seals, according to experts.
They have also observed a rise in cases of cannibalism, attributed to the polar bears' difficulty finding food.
by Pierre-Henry Deshayes
Labels: Arctic ice sheets, global warming news, Inuit
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Wednesday, December 16, 2009
UN: 2000-2009 likely warmest decade on record
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COPENHAGEN - This decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and 2009 could rank among the top-five warmest years, the U.N. weather agency reported Tuesday on the second day of a pivotal 192-nation climate conference.
Only the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average, the World Meteorological Organization said, although Alaska had the second-warmest July on record.
In central Africa and southern Asia, this will probably be the warmest year, but overall, 2009 will "be about the fifth-warmest year on record," said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the WMO.
The agency also noted an extreme heat wave in India in May and a heat wave in northern China in June. It said parts of China experienced their warmest year on record, and that Australia so far has had its third-warmest year. Extremely warm weather was also more frequent and intense in southern South America.
The decade 2000-2009 "is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, than the 1980s and so on," Jarraud told a news conference, holding a chart with a temperature curve pointing upward.
The decade has been marked by dramatic effects of warming.
In 2007-2009, the summer melt reduced the Arctic Ocean ice cap to its smallest extent ever recorded. In the 2007-2009 International Polar Year, researchers found that Antarctica is warming more than previously believed. Almost all glaciers worldwide are retreating.
Meanwhile, such destructive species as jellyfish and bark-eating beetles are moving northward out of normal ranges, and seas expanding from warmth and glacier melt are encroaching on low-lying island states.
If 2009 ends as the fifth-warmest year, it would replace the year 2003. According to the U.S. space agency NASA, the other warmest years since 1850 have been 2005, 1998, 2007 and 2006. NASA says the differences in readings among these years are so small as to be statistically insignificant.
The U.N. agency reported that the global combined sea surface and land surface temperature for the January-October 2009 period is estimated at 0.44 degrees C (0.79 degrees F) above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00 degrees C (57.2 degrees F), with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.11 degrees C. Final data will be released early in 2010.
The data were released as negotiators at the two-week talks in Copenhagen turned Tuesday to "metrics," "gas inventories" and other dense technicalities, as delegates worked to craft a global deal to rein in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and stem climate change.
Governments, meanwhile, jockeyed for position leading up to the finale late next week, when more than 100 national leaders, including President Barack Obama, will converge on Copenhagen for the final days of bargaining.
Scientists say without an agreement to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures: The extinction of plant and animals, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather, more drought and the spread of diseases.
On Monday, when the conference opened, the Obama administration gave the talks a boost by announcing steps that could lead to new U.S. emissions controls that don't require the approval of the U.S. Congress.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said scientific evidence clearly shows that greenhouse gases "threaten the public health and welfare of the American people" and that the pollutants - mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels - should be reduced, if not by Congress then by the agency responsible for enforcing air pollution.
As Congress considers the first U.S. legislation to cap carbon emissions, the EPA finding will enable the Obama administration to act on greenhouse gases without congressional action, potentially imposing federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power plants and factories.
The announcement gave Obama a new card in what is expected to be tough bargaining next week at the climate conference. In preparation, Obama met with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel for his climate change efforts, at the White House on Monday.
European climate change officials welcomed the U.S. move.
"This is meaningful because it is yet a sign that the Americans have more to offer. My evaluation is that the U.S. can offer much more," EU environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren told reporters Tuesday in Stockholm.
Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said the EPA finding gives Obama "something to fall back on."
"I think that will boost people's confidence" at the Copenhagen talks in the Americans' ability to offer more, he said.
The European Union has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990, and is considering raising that to 30 percent if other governments also aim high. EU leaders will have an opportunity to make such a move at an EU summit this Thursday and Friday in Brussels.
In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged fellow Europeans to raise their bid on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to pressure the U.S. and others to offer more at the Copenhagen negotiations.
"We've got to make countries recognize that they have to be as ambitious as they say they want to be. It's not enough to say 'I may do this, I might do this, possibly I'll do this.' I want to create a situation in which the European Union is persuaded to go to 30 percent," Brown was quoted as saying by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The European Union had called for a stronger bid by the Americans, who thus far have pledged emissions cuts much less ambitious than Europe's. The U.S. has offered a 17 percent reduction in emissions from their 2005 level - comparable to a 3-4 percent cut from 1990 levels.
Whether the prospect of EPA action will satisfy such demands - and what China may now add to its earlier offer - remains to be seen. And success in the long-running climate talks hinges on more than emissions reductions. Most important, it requires commitments of financial support by rich countries for poor nations to help them cope with the impact of a changing climate.
Swedish negotiator Anders Turesson on Tuesday said the U.S. 17 percent reductions "are insufficient and we hope more would come out of that."
He suggested the U.S. buy more carbon credits on the international market, where emissions reductions by developing countries can be credited and sold to the industrialized world.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Labels: global warming news, warmest decade, warmest year
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Chaos at climate conference
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COPENHAGEN - The Copenhagen climate change conference appeared to be imploding from within and exploding from without on Wednesday.
Police fired tear gas, brandished batons and detained more than 200 protesters who tried to push through the security cordon around the Bella Center, as negotiations inside bogged down, for the second time this week, over differences between China and the West over emissions, funding issues and transparency.
"People around the world [are] actually expecting something to be done from us," red-faced Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen lectured delegates from nearly 200 nations.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the highest-ranking American yet to appear at the talks, urged attendees to put aside their differences and "make Friday our day of success."
Minutes earlier - in a surprise move that captured growing uncertainty over conference - Denmark's climate minister, Connie Hedegaard, stepped aside as president of the conference, handing the gavel to Rasmussen, as head of the host country.
Outside, Danish police - who have been accused of heavy-handedness by human rights groups - clashed with thousands of environmental activists who descended on the complex from a nearby train station and demanded entry to the Bella Center.
BBC video showed truncheon-bearing Danish police shoving the crowd backward as protesters gasped and covered their faces to avoid breathing tear gas.
Inside the building, U.N. officials revoked the credentials of about 100 accredited members of the green group Friends of the Earth for staging a series of small protests on Tuesday.
Despite the gloom, U.S. officials told POLITICO they made incremental progress in a variety of areas during marathon sessions Tuesday night and cautioned that all previous climate conferences have experienced similar turbulence. And late Tuesday, negotiators announced a major breakthrough on a deal to preserve wetlands and forests.
Hedegaard will continue to consult parties as Rasmussen’s special assistant, and it was unclear whether the switch was pro forma, as Hedegaard claimed, or she was forced out by representatives of poor nations who had demanded her removal earlier this week.
"With so many heads of state and government having arrived, it's appropriate that the prime minister of Denmark presides," Hedegaard told the 193-nation meeting.
"However, the prime minister has appointed me as his special representative, and I will thus continue to negotiate the ... outcome with my colleagues," she said.
On Tuesday, Hedegaard made an emotional appeal for countries to put aside their differences to finalize a deal - after the G-77 bloc of developing nations accused her of trying to ram through an agreement amenable to the U.S. and other big industrialized nations.
But no sooner had Rasmussen assumed the presidency than those tensions burst out in the open again, with China, India, Bolivia, South Africa and Sudan saying they would block attempts by the Danish delegation to produce a draft text favored by most Western countries.
Minutes after taking the gavel, Rasmussen angrily denounced developing countries for seeking to delay consideration of the text, accusing them of focusing on "procedure, procedure, procedure."
He was immediately rebuked by a representative of China, a member of the G-77 bloc, who said moving forward too quickly was tantamount to "obstructionism" and a bullying attempt by the West.
"I think the matter isn't 'procedure, procedure, procedure.'... You can't just put forth some text from the sky," the representative said.
Glenn Thrush, POLITICO
Labels: Copenhagen, global warming news, Hedegaard
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Copenhagen: The Crux of the Matter
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Left unresolved are the questions of emissions targets for industrial countries, billions of dollars a year in funding for poor countries to contend with climate change, and verifying the actions of emerging powers like China and India to ensure that promises to reduce emissions are kept.
Labels: Copenhagen, global warming news
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Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Putin's rare Siberian tiger goes missing
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VLADIVOSTOK, Russia - A rare Siberian tiger fitted by Vladimir Putin with a radio-tracking collar has vanished, a Russian environmentalist said Wednesday, dramatizing the plight of a species some conservationists fear may be approaching extinction.
Russia's prime minister drew worldwide publicity in 2008 when he shot the five-year-old female tiger with a tranquilizer gun and helped place a transmitter around her neck. That allowed visitors to his Web site to follow the animal's prowlings through Russia's wild Far East. A video of the episode is on YouTube.
But the satellite tracking device has been silent since mid-September, which could be due to battery failure, a broken collar or poachers, Vladimir Krever of the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday.
Tigers are rapidly disappearing from the far-eastern regions of Russian due to poaching and the loss of habitat, conservationists say.
Their number may have declined by 40 per cent since 1997, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a report released Tuesday, although another major conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund, disputed the figure.
The New-York based Wildlife Conservation Society said only 56 tigers have been spotted in an area of 9,000 square miles (24,000 square kilometers) - about one-sixth of their known habitat in Russia. Based on that, the group estimates the total number remaining in the wild at 300.
A similar estimate in 2005 put the number left in Siberia at 500, a huge increase over the less than 30 that were thought to remain in the 1940s. But the Wildlife Conservation Society said the latest count still shows the animals could face extinction.
"The sobering results are a wake-up call that current conservation efforts are not going far enough to protect Siberian tigers," Dr. Dale Miquelle of the group's Russian Far East Program said in a statement.
The society recommends a greater effort to preserve the tiger's habitat, stronger legal protections and a crackdown on poachers who hunt the animals for hides and bones prized in traditional Chinese medicine.
Krever, of the World Wildlife Fund, disputed the Wildlife Conservation Society report.
"It is absolutely incorrect," Krever told The Associated Press. "There's possibly been a decrease in the last two years, but definitely not 40 per cent."
Krever said deep snow in the last two years limited the tigers' ability to roam, making it harder to count them. His group agreed, however, that the tigers face a loss of habitat.
Sergei Aramilev, of Russia's World Wildlife Fund, said Chinese poachers have begun attaching explosives covered with animal fat to tree branches. When tigers and endangered Amur leopards swallow the bait, he said, it explodes in their mouths.
The World Wildlife Fund's Russian branch has estimated that 30 to 50 Amur tigers are killed every year.
Illegal deforestation in Russia's Far East and corruption among poorly paid park rangers may also be contributing to the tigers' decline, said Sergei Berezniuk of the Fenix Fund, an environmental group in the Pacific coast city of Vladivostok.
Earlier this month, Russian officials and environmentalists said they would hold a "tiger summit" in Vladivostok next September to coordinate multinational efforts to protect tiger populations.
The goal of the program, which could involve as many as 13 countries, would be to double the number of tigers globally to 6,500 by 2022. The total now is believed to be 3,200, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Weighing up to 600 pounds (272 kilograms), Siberian tigers - also known as Ussuri, Amur or Manchurian tigers - prey on wild boars, deer and bears.
They once roamed most of Eurasia from the Black Sea to Central Asia, but now are limited to the forests of Russia's Far East and the Chinese province of Manchuria. In China the killing of a Siberian tiger is punishable by death.
By LIYA KHABAROVA, Associated Press Writer
Labels: global warming news, Siberian tiger, Vladimir Putin
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Monday, December 14, 2009
Soros: Finance gap could 'wreck' climate talks
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COPENHAGEN - The $10 billion a year proposed by rich nations to help the poor adapt to climate change is "not sufficient" and the gap between what's offered and what's needed could wreck the Copenhagen climate conference, American billionaire George Soros said Thursday.
The investor-philanthropist, one in a line of international notables visiting the 192-nation meeting, told reporters he had developed a partial solution. Soros suggested shifting some International Monetary Fund resources from providing liquidity to stressed global financial systems to a new mission of financing projects in developing countries for clean energy and adapting to climate change.
About $100 billion in a one-time infusion could be generated, said Soros, a major supporter of causes in the developing world.
But he acknowledged a major roadblock in Washington.
"It is possible to substantially increase the amount available to fight global warming in the developing world," he said. "All that is lacking is the political will. Unfortunately the political will will be difficult to gather because of the mere fact that it requires congressional approval in the United States."
Soros said he had "informal discussions" with Obama administration officials and they recognized the difficulty of getting congressional approval. But he said the issue was too important to sweep aside.
"I think it is already becoming apparent in the negotiations that there's a gap between the developed and developing world on this issue which could actually wreck the conference," he added.
The international financier dropped in on the two-week conference on its fourth day, as rich and poor nations pressed on behind closed doors and in open forums to bridge wide differences and reach agreements on how to combat global warming.
They have just a week to deliver something for President Barack Obama and more than 100 national leaders to sign on Dec. 18, the final day of the climate summit.
"People are really getting down to work. I sense that there is a real seriousness now to negotiate," Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said Thursday. "Good progress is being made in a number of areas."
He said a growing number of environment ministers will be arriving at Copenhagen this weekend, earlier than planned, to take up higher-level negotiations prior to the arrival of presidents and prime ministers next Wednesday and Thursday.
In one key area, delegates are trying to agree on how much industrialized nations should reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases after the 2012 expiration of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which covered 37 richer nations. The U.S. had rejected Kyoto. An agreement is also expected to include targets by such poorer but emerging economic powers as China and India for scaling back emissions growth.
The second key area involves climate change financing, money for poorer nations to build coastal protection, modify or shift crops threatened by drought, build water supplies and irrigation systems, preserve forests, improve health care to deal with diseases spread by warming, and move from fossil-fuel to low-carbon energy systems, such as solar and wind power.
The World Bank and others project that hundreds of billions of dollars a year, in public and private money, will be needed eventually for the climate change shift.
Yet industrialized countries thus far are talking only about a quick package - three years of funding at $10 billion a year. Much of that would go toward training, planning and getting a fix on needs.
Developing nations are pressing the U.S., Europeans, Japanese and others at Copenhagen for more upfront money and for assurances about long-term financing so they can plan on a stable source for many billions more.
"Financing should be the 'crunch issue' here next week, for the heads of state to deal with," said Alden Meyer of the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists.
Soros said the $10-billion-a-year short-term plan is "more than nothing, but not much, it's not sufficient."
He suggested climate financing be boosted with some $100 billion in Special Drawing Rights, the artificial "currency" of the International Monetary Fund, formulated as a basket of major currency values and held in reserve for lending in financial emergencies.
In response to the recent global financial crisis, the IMF created more than $200 billion in new Special Drawing Rights. But Soros noted that the Obama administration had difficulty getting U.S. approval for that through the U.S. Congress.
He had found "quite widespread support" from other governments, but "other countries are reluctant to do something that is uncomfortable for the United States," Soros said.
On Wednesday, the U.S. and China exchanged barbs at the Copenhagen climate talks, underscoring the abiding suspicion between the world's two largest carbon polluters about the sincerity of their pledges to control emissions.
U.S. chief negotiator Todd Stern urged China - now the world's biggest polluter - to "stand behind" its promise to slow the growth of the country's carbon output and make the declaration part of the Copenhagen agreement.
China rejected that demand, and renewed its criticism of the U.S. for failing to meet its 17-year-old commitment to provide financial aid to developing countries and to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases warming the Earth.
"What they should do is some deep soul-searching," said Yu Qingtai, China's chief climate negotiator.
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Labels: funding, George Soros, global warming news
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