Learn more about geo-engineering in the WorldChanging archives:

Geoengineering and the New Climate Denialism
Science on the Risks of Climate Engineering
Geoengineering: A Worldchanging Retrospective
Why Geo-Engineering is a Debate Whose Time Has Gone
Planktos, Geo-Engineering and Politics
Directed Evolution, Natural Sequestration and Terraforming the Earth
Geoengineering Megaprojects are Bad Planetary Management

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(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Climate Change at 11:13 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/b1HZK2zCOrM/010446.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:55:00 +0000 Yale Environment 360 http://www.greendesign.com/2009/09/03/europe-cuts-emissions-imposes-ban-on-incandescent-bulbs/

For the fourth year in a row, Europe has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions, with CO2 output falling by 1.3 percent in 2008. The recession appears to be the main factor in the emissions reduction, as factories were idled across the continent. But European Union Environmental Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the EU’s emissions trading scheme and development of renewable energy sources also is playing a part in the reduction. “This is a timely message to the rest of the world in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference,” said Dimas. The EU has now cut emissions 6.2 percent over 1990 levels and is on track to meet a target under the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions 8 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008 to 2012. Meanwhile, the EU began restricting the sale of incandescent light bulbs, requiring that stores no longer be allowed to buy or import most incandescent bulbs. Once current stocks are exhausted, merchants will only sell more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

This piece originally appeared on Yale Environment 360
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(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Climate Change at 9:55 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:55:00 +0000 Yale Environment 360 10445@http://www.worldchanging.com/

For the fourth year in a row, Europe has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions, with CO2 output falling by 1.3 percent in 2008. The recession appears to be the main factor in the emissions reduction, as factories were idled across the continent. But European Union Environmental Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the EU’s emissions trading scheme and development of renewable energy sources also is playing a part in the reduction. “This is a timely message to the rest of the world in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference,” said Dimas. The EU has now cut emissions 6.2 percent over 1990 levels and is on track to meet a target under the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions 8 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008 to 2012. Meanwhile, the EU began restricting the sale of incandescent light bulbs, requiring that stores no longer be allowed to buy or import most incandescent bulbs. Once current stocks are exhausted, merchants will only sell more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

This piece originally appeared on Yale Environment 360
CC photo credit

Related posts:
Europe Poised To Meet Kyoto Target: Does This Mean The Much-Maligned European Trading System Is A Success?
Cap And Trade Works!
Europeans Form Renewable Energy Agency
World Governments Adopting A Bright Idea

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(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Climate Change at 9:55 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/AjQWhQmGXWg/010445.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/JFZE1N_TMHU/010442.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/JFZE1N_TMHU/010442.html#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:00:21 +0000 WorldChanging Team 10442@http://www.worldchanging.com/

by Ashley Seager

• £300bn needed by poor nations to tackle carbon emissions
• Failure to give could reduce world gross product by 20%

The world's rich countries need to embark on a huge transfer of funds to developing countries in order for both groups to grow richer and reduce their carbon emissions significantly, a United Nations report urges today.

Delaying spending on mitigating climate change in the developing world "runs the real danger of locking in dirtier investments for several more decades", says the annual survey from the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

Ahead of this weekend's meeting of G20 finance ministers in London, the report estimates that developed countries need immediately to transfer around 1% of world gross product (WGP), or $500-600bn (£300-370bn), to poor countries.

Carrying on with business as usual, or making only minor changes, could lose 20% of WGP so doing nothing would be an expensive mistake, it argues.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon says the report "makes the case for meeting both the climate challenge and the development challenge by recognising the links between the two and proceeding along low-emissions, high-growth pathways".

The report adds, using unusually strong language, that "by any measure, the amounts currently promised for meeting the climate challenge in the near term are woefully inadequate".

It continues: "The failure of wealthy countries to honour long-standing commitments of international support for poverty reduction and adequate transfers of resources and technology remains the single biggest obstacle to meeting the climate change challenge."

The survey estimates that about $21bn (£13bn) in official development funding is set aside to addressing climate change, mostly for fighting problems such as drought or flooding. The total amount of climate financing that is required is a large multiple of that figure, it says.

"If the international community is serious about a 'global new deal', it should be just as serious about committing resources on the same scale as was needed to tackle the financial crisis and defeat political extremism."

The report challenges the thinking that the climate problem can simply be addressed by across-the-board emission cuts by all countries or by relying exclusively on market-based solutions to generate the required investments. Its central point is that developing countries can only make a meaningful contribution to combating climate change if their economies continue to grow strongly.

In turn that would require satisfying the growing energy needs of developing countries, which are projected to double that of the developed world over the coming decades.

"This raises the question for climate change negotiators of how poor countries can pursue low-emissions, high-growth development," it says, with an eye on the Copenhagen climate change conference in December.

The report argues that the technologies that would allow developing countries to switch to a sustainable development path do exist. These include low-energy buildings, new drought-resistant crop strains and more advanced primary renewables.

But they are often prohibitively expensive and, the report says, such a transformation would require "a level of international support and solidarity rarely mustered outside a wartime setting".

Poor countries, the report says, are facing "vastly more daunting challenges than those confronting developed countries and in a far more constrained environment".

Economic growth remains a priority for them, not only to reduce poverty but also to bring about a gradual narrowing of the huge income differentials with wealthy countries.

"The idea of freezing the current level of global inequality over the next half century or more (as the world goes about trying to solve the climate problem) is economically, politically and ethically unacceptable," the report says.

The study's authors believe that they could be pushing on a door that is starting to open with world policymakers becoming increasingly aware of the dangers posed by rapid climate change.

Professor Nicholas Stern, who carried out a seminal study into the economics of climate change three years ago, recently published a book arguing for speedier action on a bigger scale than before.

This piece originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 1:00 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/JFZE1N_TMHU/010442.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/54g5Bf6XiZQ/010438.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/54g5Bf6XiZQ/010438.html#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:00:00 +0000 Joe Romm 10438@http://www.worldchanging.com/

The scientific literature paints a hellish future if we don’t quickly reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends (see "Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s"). Even the watered down, consensus-based 2007 IPCC report acknowledged the danger:

A warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster spread. Westerling et al. (2006 — see here) found that, in the last three decades, the wildfire season in the western U.S. has increased by 78 days, and burn durations of fires >1000 ha have increased from 7.5 to 37.1 days, in response to a spring-summer warming of 0.87°C. Earlier spring snowmelt has led to longer growing seasons and drought, especially at higher elevations, where the increase in wildfire activity has been greatest. In the south-western U.S., fire activity is correlated with ENSO positive phases, and higher Palmer Drought Severity Indices….

Insects and diseases are a natural part of ecosystems. In forests, periodic insect epidemics kill trees over large regions, providing dead, desiccated fuels for large wildfires. These epidemics are related to aspects of insect life cycles that are climate sensitive.

Now brutal heat and drought are fueling massive California wildfires once again (see, for instance, the BBC piece “Heat fuelling California wildfire“). We can’t expect much from the status quo media (see “CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story — never mention climate change“). So here is CAP’s Tom Kenworthy explaining “What a 1-Degree Temperature Increase Means for Wildfires” — and I’ll end with some comments on this positive or amplifying carbon-cycle feedback:

To the average person a 1-degree rise in average spring and summer temperatures may not seem like much. But for residents of the western United States—including California, which is fighting at least eight fires right now—it could mean a staggering increase in the extent and cost of fires according to a recent study.

In their report, researchers at Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group in Bozeman, MT, predict that climate change and the accelerating movement of western residents to areas near or in undeveloped forests will likely prove to be a devastating combination. That 1-degree increase in spring and summer temperatures, they conclude, will increase the area burned by seasonal fires in Montana by more than 300 percent and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire.

Though the Headwaters paper focuses on Montana, using data from 18 large fires in the state during 2006 and 2007, it has implications for fire-prone areas throughout the Rocky Mountain West. And it builds on a growing body of evidence that inaction on climate change will cost the western United States dearly.

Earlier this summer, for example, Harvard University scientists published a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research predicting that areas burned by wildfires in the West could increase by 50 percent by 2050, with even larger increases of 75 percent to 175 percent in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain West. Those increases could have “large impacts on human health” because of the added smoke and particulates released into the air, the study said.

Federal and state agencies responsible for fighting western wildfires, particularly the United States Forest Service, are already struggling to cope with the rapidly increasing costs of protecting lives and property. Since 2000, wildland fires in the United States have burned an average of more than 7 million acres a year, about double the average acreage for the previous four decades.

Federal firefighting costs have also risen dramatically, according to the Government Accountability Office, averaging $2.9 billion per year from fiscal 2001-2005 compared to $1.1 billion in the previous five-year period.

The Headwaters study predicts that state wildland firefighting costs in Montana will double to quadruple by 2025.

The increasing popularity of building homes in or near forested areas, known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, is a major factor in the escalating costs of fire suppression. A 2006 report by the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General found that “the majority of [Forest Service] large fire suppression costs are directly linked to protecting private property in the WUI,” with Forest Service managers estimating between 50 and 95 percent of large fire costs spent on that purpose alone. Though federal agencies shoulder the major financial burden for protecting those homes, development decisions in wild areas are made by local and state officials.

“While fire-prone lands are being developed, the climate is warming, leading to more large fires,” write the authors of the Headwaters Economics report, which notes that with just 14 percent of the wildland urban interface developed in the West, the cost of protecting those areas will increase significantly. “More development in these sensitive areas would lead to more wildfire suppression costs, even in the absence of climate change. Climate change will only exacerbate this effect.”

Climate change and its impacts on temperature, drought, and snowpack runoff will affect fires as well as many other aspects of life in the West.

Climate models predict that global warming will significantly reduce snow runoff in the West, the region’s major source of water. A study published in April by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography estimated that the Colorado River, the lifeline for 27 million people in the Southwest, will not be able to produce its allocated water supply 60 percent to 90 percent of the time by mid-century. That would have major impacts on food production, recreation, and development in the fastest-growing region in the nation. It will also mean forests will dry out sooner, with a likely increase in fire activity.

And in recent years, a widespread and so far unchecked epidemic of mountain pine beetles that has killed millions of acres of trees from Colorado north into Canada has laid the foundation for a potentially large increase in catastrophic fires. Climate change has played a role in that outbreak, too, as warmer winters spare the beetles from low temperatures that would normally kill them off, and drought stresses trees.

In the western United States, mountain pine beetles have killed some 6.5 million acres of forest, according to the Associated Press. As large as that path of destruction is, it’s dwarfed by the 35 million acres killed in British Columbia, which has experienced a rash of forest fires this summer that as of early this month had burned more than 155,000 acres. In the United States to date about 5.2 million acres—an area larger than Massachusetts—have burned this year.

Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide adds to climate change, which raises temperatures, stresses forests, and makes more and bigger fires more likely.

It’s a frightening prospect, as British Columbia’s Forests Minister Pat Bell told an International Energy Agency conference last week. “I am not a doomsayer,” said Bell. “I am not one who wants to say we are beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close to that.”

The final reason to worry about the climate-wildfire connection is that wildfires are a classic amplifying feedback, since burning forests release carbon dioxide that accelerates global warming. As the 2006 Science article, “Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity” (subs. req’d), concludes soberly:

… virtually all climate-model projections indicate that warmer springs and summers will occur over the region in coming decades. These trends will reinforce the tendency toward early spring snowmelt and longer fire seasons. This will accentuate conditions favorable to the occurrence of large wildfires, amplifying the vulnerability the region has experienced since the mid-1980s. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s consensus range of 1.5° to 5.8°C projected global surface temperature warming by the end of the 21st century is considerably larger than the recent warming of less than 0.9°C observed in spring and summer during recent decades over the western region.

If the average length and intensity of summer drought increases in the Northern Rockies and mountains elsewhere in the western United States, an increased frequency of large wildfires will lead to changes in forest composition and reduced tree densities, thus affecting carbon pools. Current estimates indicate that western U.S. forests are responsible for 20 to 40% of total U.S. carbon sequestration. If wildfire trends continue, at least initially, this biomass burning will result in carbon release, suggesting that the forests of the western United States may become a source of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide rather than a sink, even under a relatively modest temperature-increase scenario. Moreover, a recent study has shown that warmer, longer growing seasons lead to reduced CO2 uptake in high-elevation forests, particularly during droughts. Hence, the projected regional warming and consequent increase in wildfire activity in the western United States is likely to magnify the threats to human communities and ecosystems, and substantially increase the management challenges in restoring forests and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We are simply running out of time to stop all of the carbon-cycle feedbacks from intensifying and to stop these devastating, record-breaking wildfires from becoming the normal climate.

This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Climate Change at 1:00 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/54g5Bf6XiZQ/010438.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/BRuOr3ru184/010439.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/BRuOr3ru184/010439.html#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:26:56 +0000 WorldChanging Team 10439@http://www.worldchanging.com/

by Ian Katz

The world's response to global warming is a classic case of all mouth and no trousers. This new initiative aims to show that we can all act now - and achieve something significant

Future generations writing the history of climate change may be struck by an apparent paradox: while millions of educated people – perhaps most of them – alive in the first decade of the 21st century acknowledged the threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gasses and their part in creating it, only a tiny number did anything about it. Poll after poll underlines this disconnect; one extensive survey carried out by the Department for Transport last year found that 81% of adults were very or fairly concerned about climate change and three quarters said they were willing to change their behaviour to help combat it. But go looking for examples of that changed behaviour beyond putting out the recycling and you're likely to be disappointed. With the exception of a small, saintly portion of the population, our response to global warming is a classic case of all mouth and trousers.

And seen from this end of the century it's not hard to see why. Even if most of us appreciate, as my colleague Leo Hickman describes it, that sawing away at the branch we are sitting on can't be a good idea, actually doing something about it requires us both to execute a leap of imagination and to stretch our ideas of self-interest and moral responsibility. We are asked to make real sacrifices now to protect future generations from a risk, the precise nature of which is still uncertain. Homo sapiens has never been terribly good at this kind of long-term thinking – some evolutionary biologists suggest the very wiring of our brains conspires against it – and the rise of liberal individualism has made it harder, if anything, to forge collective responses to problems that do not threaten our short-term self-interest.

Then there is the awkward reality, often glossed over by the those seeking to promote action on climate change, that the children and grandchildren of those of us in the rich north will not be among those worst hit by the effects of warming. In fact, how many Britons do not hear talk of a two- or three-degree increase in average temperatures and secretly wonder if a climate more like Seville than Stockholm might be rather pleasant?

Even those well-intentioned enough to want to do their bit, can quickly find themselves feeling powerless and paralysed in the face of an issue of this scale. What's the point of acting individually to reduce your emissions if most other people carry on just as they are? In fact what's the point of doing anything in Britain when it accounts for just 2% of world emissions? What about that new coal-fired power station the Chinese are building every week? Doesn't it make a mockery of anything I, or even Britain, might do?

Climate change is perhaps the most extreme example of what the American ecologist Garrett Hardin called a tragedy of the commons. Hardin considered the example of herders raising cattle on a shared field. It was in each herder's narrow interest to keep adding more cows, since each enjoyed all the benefits of an extra cow, while the effects of the extra cow on the pasture were shared by all. And so the herders moved ineluctably towards disaster.

At the same time, much of the discourse about climate change does little to convey a sense of urgency. Scientists and politicians talk about "stabilising" carbon dioxide levels some time later this century. Diplomats wrangle over targets for 2020 and 2050. It all sounds like something we can afford to put off worrying about until next month or next year. The penny that has not yet dropped with most of us is that we have arrived at a make-or-break moment: if we are to have any real chance of avoiding dangerous warming, the scientists now agree, global emissions must peak within the next five to 10 years and then begin to fall. And if we are to have any chance of achieving that goal, we need to start cutting now. Tomorrow, next week, next month.

The environmental thinker Tim Helweg-Larsen explains the urgency by likening climate change to a bath with the tap running. Since warming is caused by the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it is the volume of water in the bath, rather than simply how much water is flowing into it, that we must worry about. If the bath is close to overflowing and we are still running water into it quicker than it can flow out of the plughole, we need to begin closing the taps immediately, or our chances of stopping it overflowing will be far slimmer.

A gathering of some of the world's most eminent scientists in London in May was quite precise about how quickly we must begin turning the taps: unless world carbon emissions begin falling within just six years, they concluded, we have little chance of avoiding warming beyond the critical level of two degrees. Above that level, scientists fear so-called "feedbacks" could kick in, leading to runaway warming and extreme weather events such as droughts and floods that would leave millions homeless and starving.

The 10:10 campaign, which is launched today in partnership with the Guardian, is designed both to answer the call for immediate action, and to offer individuals and organisations a meaningful way of taking it. It is the brainchild of Franny Armstrong, the irrepressible film-maker behind The Age of Stupid, a powerful docudrama about our failure to tackle climate change. The idea is compellingly simple: by signing up, individuals and organisations from multinational companies to schools and hospitals commit to doing their best to cut their emissions by 10% by the end of 2010, precisely the sort of deep, quick cut the scientists say is needed.

A modest challenge

Central to the 10:10 campaign is an acknowledgement that the kind of action we are typically urged to take to combat climate change is all too often either footling or forbiddingly hair-shirted. As the environmental writer George Marshall has powerfully argued, focusing on easy, "achievable" targets such as recycling has both distorted public understanding of the impacts of our lifestyle and risks trivialising the issue. At the same time the kind of scorched-earth lifestyle transformation some environmentalists demand is more than most of us are willing to embrace. At least yet. "You are being asked not only to change your life but to make your life very different to the people around you," says the low-carbon expert Chris Goodall. "It's almost an aggressive act. All of a sudden you move outside the mainstream milieu."

At the risk of evoking Blair's third way, 10:10 aims to find a space between these poles by promoting action that is both achievable and meaningful. While collectively cutting 10% of emissions in the next year or so would represent a significant step on the road to a low carbon Britain, it is for each of us – and for most businesses – a relatively modest challenge. The first 10% is what the experts call the low-hanging fruit, the savings we can make through relatively small sacrifices such as changing lightbulbs, insulating our homes more effectively, turning down our central heating or swapping one or two flights a year for rail journeys. Even for those of us who have already taken these easy steps, the next 10%, as some of our case studies show, is within reach without wholesale renunciation of a western consumer lifestyle. A group of Oxford householders who recently embarked on a carbon diet managed to reduce their emissions by between 25% and 30% during the course of the last year.

Over the next 16 months we'll be offering plenty of advice on how to do it and following the progress of a number of families, businesses and other organisations as they try to hit the 10% target. We'll also create space online and in print for you to swap your own know-how, experiences and support. The emphasis will be on properly quantifying the changes you can make so you can decide what is meaningful and what is simply symbolic.

The campaign has already created a remarkable degree of buzz and excitement. Even before it is formally launched today, it has attracted a diverse and formidable legion of supporters ranging from the online grocer Ocado, three major energy companies, a Premiership football club, unions and NGOs to influential figures in the arts, showbusiness, religion, TV and politics.

One measure of the power of its central idea is the improbable alliances it has forged. CEOs of energy companies find themselves in bed with activists who a few months ago might have been chained to the fences outside their power stations. The Women's Institute marches to the rhythm of painfully cool indie bands Stornoway and Reverend and the Makers (who will play for free at this evening's launch event at Tate Modern).

A moral obligation

Over the next few months, the 10:10 team hope tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands more will don a 10:10 tag made from scrap metal salvaged from retired aircraft. (The hurried manufacture of large numbers of these over the summer produced one of the campaign's moments of black comedy when a rumour began circulating that they were tags which would be used to label the thousands of fatalities the government was expecting to be caused by swine flu.) The 10:10 team have no intention of stopping there; once they have amassed a significant number of pledges from individuals, companies and institutions, they plan to challenge the government to match their commitment.

Though the British government has recently taken some significant steps towards decarbonising the economy, the fact that we find ourselves in need of something close to a miracle to avert disaster reflects a profound failure of leadership by the political classes of all the world's major nations. Most governments and their electorates have been locked in a disastrous standoff, neither willing to take action till the other shows they are serious about the problem. 10:10 is partly about breaking that destructive impasse.

Sceptics will retort with the usual questions: why take any form of unilateral action when we are months away from what has been billed as a critical international climate conference? How can any campaign in marginal little Britain have an impact on the ultimate global problem?

Reflecting the pluralism of the 10:10 coalition, different answers emerge from different corners of the campaign. Talk to Goodall and he will answer unashamedly in terms of simple moral responsibility: "If there is a problem that has been caused by us and is being caused by us then we have a moral obligation to do something about it. As individuals we have to live our lives as we want other people to live their lives." The trouble, Goodall reflects a little sadly, is that the rise of aggressive materialism has made such a categorical position look quaint, if not outright lampoonable.

Ideas have power

Armstrong has a more pragmatic view of the role 10:10 could play in bringing about significant global action. Few who know anything about it believe the best deal on the cards in Copenhagen, the key conference in December at which world leaders will attempt to hammer out a global climate change treaty, is anything like tough enough to avert dangerous warming. Armstrong believes forcing the British government to move faster could put it in a leadership position that would enable it to push for a tougher deal. It is an optimistic but not completely far-fetched vision. Developing nations – in particular China and India – have consistently argued that they won't submit to binding carbon limits until they see real evidence of the rich world tackling the problem it substantially created. I have heard Chinese diplomats talk about the importance of seeing meaningful action from Britain and Europe. Helweg-Larsen talks compellingly about the value of taking an inspirational lead: "We have to demonstrate progress and we have to be inspiring each other with action. Ideas have power."

More radical critics will argue that 10:10 is just "feelgood" window dressing designed to paper over the cracks in a broken economic model. Even the moving spirits of the campaign would not claim it was more than a useful first step towards the deeper transformation of our lifestyles that will be required. But it is significant that some of the most exacting experts in the field have endorsed the campaign as being in line with what the science demands – figures such as outspoken British climatologist Kevin Anderson who has criticised both politicians and his colleagues for failing to be honest about the perilousness of our position.

A while ago I had a dispiriting conversation with another eminent European scientist. He is a natural optimist but sounded unusually low. He had recently been asked to brief a leading European political figure on the latest scientific understanding of climate change. The leader listened then described the best deal he believed possible at Copenhagen: a 50% global cut in emissions against 2000 levels – by 2050. The scientist explained that such a deal would give us only a 50% chance of avoiding a temperature rise above the critical two-degree level that experts believe could trigger runaway warming, but the politician insisted that a tougher deal would never get off the drawing board. "I asked, who would fly on an airline that had a 50:50 chance of crashing?" the scientist told me.

10:10 is about declaring that we do not accept those odds. It is about grabbing the wheel from the bus driver who is steering us directly towards an oncoming juggernaut. It is about old-fashioned ideas of responsibility, but also about a more enlightened understanding of our collective self-interest. It is about an optimistic view of what ordinary people can achieve, and of human nature itself. Now over to you.

• Sign up for 10:10 now

This piece originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Planetary Boundaries and the New Generation Gap
Zero, Now.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 2:26 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/BRuOr3ru184/010439.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:00:15 +0000 Alex Steffen http://www.greendesign.com/2009/08/31/japans-yukio-hatoyama-and-climate-change-2/

Good news, potentially, for those of us who've been looking to Japan for more leadership in the lead-up to Copenhagen: today's landslide for the Democratic Party of Japan means that Yukio Hatoyama will be the next prime minister.

Hatoyama is no radical outsider, but he has promised "revolutionary change" and is a strong advocate for the idea that Japan's best hope for the future can be found in building a bright green economy. He has promoted green technology and renewable energy (albeit with a regrettably heavy focus on nuclear power), talked about making Japan's cities more livable and, perhaps most importantly, has pledged real action on climate change: a 25 percent cut in Japan's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (below 1990 levels).

Though he has also pledged to cut the gas tax and highway tolls, that target puts Japan near the forefront of the climate debate. "I want Japan, as a leading technological power, to show more leadership," Hatoyama says.

As someone who once worked as an environmental journalist in Japan, I can say that Hatoyama's election is pretty thrilling. While there are huge structural and cultural barriers to progress on climate and other environmental issues, the Japanese also have enormous innovative capacities that the world needs brought to bear on sustainability challenges. A Japan committed to transforming itself into a bright green powerhouse is good news for us all.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Climate Change at 5:00 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:00:15 +0000 Alex Steffen 10421@http://www.worldchanging.com/

Good news, potentially, for those of us who've been looking to Japan for more leadership in the lead-up to Copenhagen: today's landslide for the Democratic Party of Japan means that Yukio Hatoyama will be the next prime minister.

Hatoyama is no radical outsider, but he has promised "revolutionary change" and is a strong advocate for the idea that Japan's best hope for the future can be found in building a bright green economy. He has promoted green technology and renewable energy (albeit with a regrettably heavy focus on nuclear power), talked about making Japan's cities more livable and, perhaps most importantly, has pledged real action on climate change: a 25 percent cut in Japan's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (below 1990 levels).

Though he has also pledged to cut the gas tax and highway tolls, that target puts Japan near the forefront of the climate debate. "I want Japan, as a leading technological power, to show more leadership," Hatoyama says.

As someone who once worked as an environmental journalist in Japan, I can say that Hatoyama's election is pretty thrilling. While there are huge structural and cultural barriers to progress on climate and other environmental issues, the Japanese also have enormous innovative capacities that the world needs brought to bear on sustainability challenges. A Japan committed to transforming itself into a bright green powerhouse is good news for us all.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Climate Change at 5:00 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/-Q4AThBWPAE/010424.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/-Q4AThBWPAE/010424.html#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:47:07 +0000 Joe Romm 10424@http://www.worldchanging.com/

As the risks of climate change and the difficulty of effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions become increasingly obvious, potential geoengineering solutions are widely discussed. For example, in a recent report, Blackstock et al. explore the feasibility, potential impact, and dangers of shortwave climate engineering, which aims to reduce the incoming solar radiation and thereby reduce climate warming. Proposed geoengineering solutions tend to be controversial among climate scientists and attract considerable media attention. However, by focusing on limiting warming, the debate creates a false sense of certainty and downplays the impacts of geoengineering solutions.

So begins, “Risks of Climate Engineering” (subs. req’d), an important piece in Science this month by Gabriele Hegerl and Susan Solomon. Hegerl was a coordinating lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report. Solomon is an atmospheric chemist working for NOAA and “one of the first to propose CFCs as the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole.”

Solomon was lead author of the even more important February PNAS paper, “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions,” which, as I noted at the time, gives the lie to the notion that it is a moral choice not to do everything humanly possible to prevent this tragedy, a lie to the notion that we can “adapt” to climate change, unless by “adapt” you mean “force the next 50 generations to endure endless misery because we were too damn greedy to give up 0.1% of our GDP each year” (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe). No surprise, then, that she co-authored a paper skeptical of geoengineering.

I remain dubious of geo-engineering (see Geo-engineering remains a bad idea” and “Geo-Engineering is NOT the Answer“ and British coal industry flack pushes geo-engineering “ploy” to give politicians “viable reason to do nothing” about global warming, which includes an excellent analysis by Prof. Alan Robock). Science advisor John Holdren told me in April that he stands by his critique:

“The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.“

The new analysis by Hegerl and Solomon is sufficiently significant — Science itself featured it early in Science Express — that I’ll excerpt it below:

Discussions of “dangerous” levels of interference with the climate system often use warming as a proxy for the seriousness of greenhouse gas–induced climate change. However, climate change impacts are driven not only by temperature changes, but also by change in other aspects of the climate system, such as precipitation and climate extremes. If geoengineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible “cures” will not be evaluated appropriately. Here, we present an example illustrative of the need for greater emphasis not only on possible benefits but also on the risks of geoengineering—in particular, the risks already suggested by observations of climate system change.

Carbon dioxide increases cause a reduction in outgoing longwave radiation, thus changing the heat balance of the planet. Several proposed geoengineering solutions aim to avoid the resulting energy imbalance that will lead to warming by reducing incoming solar radiation. This may be achieved by, for example, increasing the number of atmospheric reflecting particles in the stratosphere or by placing reflecting “mirrors” outside the atmosphere.

Kind of ironic that the two most widely discussed geo-engineering strategies are, literally, smoke and mirrors.

These measures are indeed expected to reduce the projected warming (1, 2). Blackstock et al. focus on this particular example of geoengineering, with the rationale that it may allow rapid action to be taken if a threat of catastrophic climate change emerges. Such emerging threats could, for example, be rapidly disintegrating ice sheets, or warming that is more rapid than expected (4). One of the attractions of shortwave climate engineering is the effectiveness and rapidity with which it could reduce warming, but it is also connected with considerable risks.

It is clear that reducing incoming shortwave radiation would lead to decreases in temperature. Volcanic eruptions in the 20th century led to substantial coolings that occurred within months after the eruption and lasted several years (5, 6). Strong volcanic eruptions have in the past led to anomalously cold conditions: The year without a summer (1816) noted in North America and Europe followed the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia the year before, which was the largest volcanic event observed in recent centuries (5). However, volcanic eruptions also affect precipitation (7). The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo led to substantial decreases in global stream flow and to increases in the incidence of drought (see the figure) (8). An analysis of 20th-century observations indicates that volcanic eruptions caused detectable decreases in global land precipitation (9, 10). The reason is that with reduced incoming shortwave radiation and surface cooling, less energy is available for evaporation.

Greenhouse gas increases also influence precipitation, through two mechanisms: directly through reducing outgoing longwave radiation, and indirectly through warming (11–13). Warming increases evaporation, thus making more water available globally for precipitation. However, because greenhouse gases reduce outgoing longwave radiation, they also reduce the effectiveness with which the atmosphere radiates out latent heat of condensation. This reduces precipitation. The net result of the two mechanisms is a relatively small increase in global precipitation in the early stages of greenhouse warming simulations (12).

That’s a nice, simple explanation of something I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

The 20th-century climate record shows the different effects of shortwave and longwave forcing on temperature and on precipitation. Global surface temperature responds in a quite straightforward way to changes in the energy budget, irrespective of whether shortwave or longwave radiation changes are involved. Thus, temperatures in the latter part of the 20th century were dominated by anthropogenic warming (interspersed with short-term cooling after volcanic eruptions) (14). In contrast, precipitation reacts more strongly to reductions in incoming shortwave radiation, such as volcanic eruptions or shortwave climate engineering, than to reductions in outgoing longwave radiation associated with greenhouse gas forcing…. Models have been able to capture the patterns of precipitation changes with greenhouse warming (14, 15) but appear to underestimate the magnitude of precipitation changes over the 20th century in response to both shortwave and longwave forcing…. Similarly, the observed global land precipitation response to volcanic forcing over the 20th century was much stronger than that simulated by present climate models (9, 10).

Satellite data also suggest that climate models underestimate the magnitude of forced changes and of variations in precipitation extremes (16, 17). Although these data are limited (13), they all suggest that precipitation changes are being underestimated. Missing external forcings (such as by absorbing aerosols) or errors in observations could contribute to the discrepancy between observations and model simulations. However, until these discrepancies are fully resolved, models cannot reliably predict how shortwave engineering can target precipitation and temperature simultaneously (18), implying that very large risks are associated with any such geoengineering scheme.

Some models suggest a large degree of cancellation between changes in warming and in precipitation in a shortwave climate-engineered world (18). However, models have been shown to have problems simulating past precipitation variability as well as trends. Furthermore, the combination of a strong greenhouse effect with a reduction of incoming radiation could have substantial effects on regional precipitation (19), including reductions that would rival those of past major droughts (20). Geoengineered changes in the environment could thus lead not only to “winners and losers” but even to conflicts over water resources (19) and the potential for migration and instability, making shortwave climate engineering internationally very controversial.

I see the liability issue as enormous. Right now, we’re all liable for climate change, though obviously the rich countries are far more to blame. But the bulk of the liability extends back many decades and involves many hundreds of millions of people and thousands of industries. A major geo-engineering effort, however, would put all of the liability for any adverse impacts on those who undertake it. The liability could be huge but the number of parties involved might be small if it proves impossible to get a global agreement to adopt that strategy. Yet if we fail to aggressively pursue mitigation, then the very countries who would likely be the leaders on geo-engineering are going to be global pariahs for having greedily refused to spend a modest amount of money needed to reduce emissions in the first place. So if there were, say, a massive drought in India and Bangladesh in the few years after a geo-engineering effort a particulate-based effort began (the mirrors strategy seems likely to be too expensive and impractical), those behind the effort would bear tremendous responsibility.

Thus, from a purely practical perspective, a true geo-engineering strategy is going to be much tougher to pursue than is widely realized. That goes double if we don’t keep emissions near what is required to stabilize below 450 ppm.

Blackstock et al. call for a study phase, during which the possible impacts of geoengineering options could be investigated. This is clearly necessary, and optimism about a geoengineered “easy way out” should be tempered by examination of currently observed climate changes. Climate change is about much more than temperature change, and using temperature alone as a proxy for its effects represents an inappropriate risk to the health of our society and to the planet.

References

• 1. J. J. Blackstock et al., Climate Engineering Responses to Climate Emergencies (Novim, 2009), available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.5140.
• 2. P. J. Crutzen, Clim. Change 77, 211 (2006). [CrossRef]
• 3. A. Robock, Bull. At. Sci. 64, 14 (2008).


• 4. G. A. Meehl et al., in Climate Change 2007: The Fourth Scientific Assessment, S. Solomon , Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 747–845.


• 5. A. Robock, Rev. Geophys. 38, 191 (2000). [CrossRef]
• 6. G. C. Hegerl et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 1242 (2003). [CrossRef]


• 7. A. Robock, Y. Liu, J. Clim. 7, 44 (1994). [CrossRef]
• 8. K. E. Trenberth, A. Dai, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L15702 (2007). [CrossRef]


• 9. N. P. Gillett, A. J. Weaver, F. W. Zwiers, M. F. Wehner, Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L12217 (2004). [CrossRef]


• 10. F. H. Lambert, N. P. Gillett, D. A. Stone, C. Huntingford, Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L18704 (2005). [CrossRef]
• 11. J. F. B. Mitchell, C. A. Wilson, W. M. Cunnington, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 113, 293 (1987). [CrossRef]


• 12. M. R. Allen, W. J. Ingram, Nature 419, 223 (2002).


• 13. F. H. Lambert, A. R. Stine, N. Y. Krakauer, J. C. H. Chang, Eos 89, 193 (2008).
• 14. G. C. Hegerl et al., in Climate Change 2007: The Fourth Scientific Assessment, S. Solomon , Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 663–745.


• 15. X. Zhang et al., Nature 448, 461 (2007). [CrossRef] [Medline]
• 16. F. J. Wentz, L. Ricciardulli, K. Hilburn, C. Mears, Science 317, 233; published online 30 May 2007.[Abstract/Free Full Text]


• 17. R. P. Allan, B. J. Soden, Science 321, 1481; published online 7 August 2008.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
• 18. K. Caldeira, L. Wood, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. A 366, 4039 (2008).


• 19. A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16101 (2008). [CrossRef]


• 20. G. T. Narisma, J. A. Foley, R. Licker, N. Ramankutty, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L06710 (2007). [CrossRef]

This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress

Learn more about geo-engineering possibilities and pitfalls in the WorldChanging archives:
Geoengineering and the New Climate Denialism
Geoengineering: A Worldchanging Retrospective
Why Geo-Engineering is a Debate Whose Time Has Gone
Planktos, Geo-Engineering and Politics
Directed Evolution, Natural Sequestration and Terraforming the Earth
Geoengineering Megaprojects are Bad Planetary Management

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Climate Change at 11:47 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/-Q4AThBWPAE/010424.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/TNuNpr1_1mM/010421.html#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:57:15 +0000 Alex Steffen http://www.greendesign.com/2009/08/30/japans-yukio-hatoyama-and-climate-change/

Good news, potentially, for those of us who've been looking to Japan for more leadership in the lead-up to Copenhagen: today's landslide for the Democratic Party of Japan means that Yukio Hatoyama will be the next prime minister.

Hatoyama is no radical outsider, but he has promised "revolutionary change" and is a strong advocate for the idea that Japan's best hope for the future can be found in building a bright green economy. He has promoted green technology and renewable energy (albeit with a regrettably heavy focus on nuclear power), talked about making Japan's cities more livable and, perhaps most importantly, has pledged real action on climate change: a 25 percent cut in Japan's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 (below 1990 levels).

Though he has also pledged to cut the gas tax and highway tolls, that target puts Japan near the forefront of the climate debate. "I want Japan, as a leading technological power, to show more leadership," Hatoyama says.

As someone who once worked as an environmental journalist in Japan, I can say that Hatoyama's election is pretty thrilling. While there are huge structural and cultural barriers to progress on climate and other environmental issues, the Japanese also have enormous innovative capacities that the world needs brought to bear on sustainability challenges. A Japan committed to transforming itself into a bright green powerhouse is good news for us all.

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by David Adam

A chocolate maker and music promoter aim to create a £1bn biochar industry, in a controversial effort to fight climate change

In a patch of woodland on the outskirts of Hastings, on the English south coast, a group of men huddle around a brick laboratory as smoke curls from its two chimneys. The men are trying, with some chemical trickery, to bring a lucrative piece of South America to Sussex, to spark what they believe could be a £1bn industry in Britain.

The business is controversial. Some maintain it should be outlawed, and others say that only full-scale legalisation would control the risks. Until the fuss dies down, the men have decided to bury the powder they make in a nearby field.

Craig Sams, a millionaire chocolate maker, and Dan Morrell, a former music promoter and entrepreneur, are producing charcoal, and their aim is to get rich by selling it to tackle global warming.

Together Sams and Morrell make Carbon Gold, a company they have set up to exploit the growing interest in green solutions to climate change. The brick laboratory is, they claim, Britain's first dedicated facility to produce biochar, which is what you call charcoal when you are selling it as a solution to global warming.

Their idea is a low-tech take on the futuristic concept of carbon capture and storage. Carbon, in the form of wood from trees and agricultural waste, can be turned to charcoal and buried in the ground, so storing it away from the atmosphere. If enough carbon can be buried in this way, then it could bolster so-far feeble global attempts to address climate change through cuts greenhouse gas emissions.

Making and burying biochar to help reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere has some heavy green backing, including scientist and author James Lovelock and Jim Hansen of Nasa. The journal Nature Reports Climate Change said that biochar "could be the closest contender yet for a silver-bullet solution to climate change".

But it also has some high profile critics. Writing in this newspaper in March, George Monbiot said: "The idea that biochar is a universal solution that can be safely deployed on a vast scale is as misguided as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Backwards." He added: "According to the magical thinkers who promote it, the new miracle stops climate breakdown, replaces gas and petroleum, improves the fertility of the soil, reduces deforestation, cuts labour, creates employment, prevents respiratory disease and ensures that when you drop your toast it always lands butter side up."

Good idea or bad, if Sams and Morrell have their way, green consumers who want to offset the damaging emissions from their flights or cars will soon be able to pay Carbon Gold to make biochar on their behalf. Within weeks, the company expects to be approved by the offset industry's unofficial watchdog. Bigger markets could follow: the firm is among those lobbying for biochar credits to be included in the UN's clean development mechanism - a global carbon trading scheme used by countries such as Britain to meet ambitious carbon targets. A decision could be made as soon as December, at key climate talks in Copenhagen.

Morrell, who founded Future Forests, which later became the Carbon Neutral Company, said: "Biochar is the only technology that enables us to take invisible carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, transform it into black lumps of pure carbon and, by ploughing it into the soil, prevent it from going back into the atmosphere."

He added: "We don't want to clear-cut woodland and turn it to dust. That's slightly alarmist. We're not saying this is the answer to global warming, but I don't see why it can't be one of a suite of solutions."

The duo's biochar facility runs on wood from surrounding trees, part of a woodland owned by Sams. By lighting a fire in a chamber beneath and fiddling with the way air flows through the device, the team says it can convert about a third of the carbon locked in the wood to charcoal in 24 hours. The wood part burns and is part baked, in a process called pyrolysis.

Biochar is not emissions free - the rest of the carbon from the wood goes up in smoke, but Morrell says it is better for the climate than burning or leaving it to rot, which can produce methane. He says their primary targets are large agricultural sites such as vineyards and olive producers, which have large amounts of waste cuttings.

Under Carbon Gold's business model, the firm would supply the technology to farmers and others, and take a cut of the valuable carbon credits generated by each tonne of carbon they store. It is already working on a similar project in Belize.

"It's almost like a franchise," says Sams, a founder of Green and Black's chocolate and former chair of the Soil Association. "It's the same principle as McDonalds," he adds, then wishes he hadn't.

Morrell's answer to the critics of biochar is a rule book produced by the company that is currently being considered by the Voluntary Carbon Standard, which regulates carbon offsets. Morrell says it includes safeguards to make sure wood and other feedstocks used are sustainable, as well as to preserve biodiversity and to give work to local people. "Of course it will be easier to just clear cut forest, but we think we can set the bar high enough to keep those people out."

There could be other benefits too, he says. Biochar could help make more soil productive, because it offers a surface for bugs to thrive. Charcoal mixed into the ground by Indian tribes centuries ago is often credited for the acclaimed rich and dark terra preta soils of the Amazon basin. If benefits can be proven, and Carbon Gold says local soil scientists are investigating, then biochar could perhaps claim extra carbon credits based on reduced fertiliser use. Sams is already experimenting with charcoal sprayed and ploughed onto a field next to the Sussex woodland.

Mike Childs, climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: "The problems with biochar are largely the same as biofuel. If you manage it properly then making limited amounts is OK, sensible and useful. But there is massive pressure on forests for land and protecting ecosystems, and the potential to produce lots [of biochar] comes up against those pressures. In the short term it is not the answer to climate change."

This piece originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
CC photo credit

Related posts:
Graphic Series: Earthly Ideas, Biochar
Terra Preta: Black is the New Green
A Carbon-Negative Fuel

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 4:20 PM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/Q2nbnWis0kY/010414.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_4J_C29cp2Q/010409.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_4J_C29cp2Q/010409.html#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:08:46 +0000 Joe Romm 10409@http://www.worldchanging.com/

Much of the fate of the U.N. climate treaty talks now rests in the U.S. Senate, according to a leading E.U. official, who says China would “lose its last reason” not to support an international pact if the United States passes a cap-and-trade bill.

“I know for the American Senate it’s absolutely crucial to know that China will sign the treaty,” said Sweden’s environment minister, Andreas Carlgren, whose country currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency. “I understand that. We fully support that. We have the same expectations.”

“The difference is that we [Europeans] have done so many things already, and the Senate is still deciding on cap and trade,” Carlgren said yesterday in an interview at the Swedish embassy. “If the Senate would pass it, there would be no reason for China not to sign up.”

The pressure is building on those swing Senators, as E&E News PM (subs. req’d) makes clear in its reporting tonight. It is increasingly clear that a handful of senators — maybe 3 to 5 (see “Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?“) — hold in their hand not just the fate of domestic climate action, but the fate of an international climate deal.

China is pushing hard to become the clean energy leader and is strongly considering major emissions commitments (see “Peaking Duck: Beijing’s Growing Appetite for Climate Action“). Europe is obviously prepared to make a stronger climate commitment than the United States. We are the linchpin.

Interestingly, Carlgren makes clear that the Waxman-Markey bill contains elements that make up for its relatively weak 2020 target — so it will be crucial for the Senate to keep those pieces:

Carlgren was recently in China, and said “it seems the Chinese are very serious” about climate change and, while “it is not very easy to turn a tanker around, the first step is that the captain has to understand that he has to make a move.” China understands that, he said, and the efficiency goals it has already set in its five-year plan will reduce emissions.

E.U. and U.S. officials want a firmer commitment, signed into international treaty, that will expand and possibly raise China’s efficiency and renewable commitments until 2020. They are unlikely to ask for hard caps, officials have indicated.

In the ongoing climate treaty talks, the European Union expects more from the United States than its current proposals on midterm emissions targets and adaptation funds for developing nations, Carlgren said.

“We expect much from the United States, certainly more than we saw in President Obama’s first bid for the midterm perspective,” Carlgren said. Establishing a “sufficiently ambitious” target remains a key issue between Europe and the United States, he added.

European negotiators have insisted that comparable steps to reduce climate change be taken on both sides of the Atlantic. (E.U. states are set to trim emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.) However, given that the U.S. 2020 target is unlikely to exceed the limits proposed in the House’s climate bill — which, under rosy projections, would drop emissions by no more than 13 percent below 1990 levels — the bloc is open to broadening its view on what is considered comparable, Carlgren said.

It’s good to see some flexibility by the EU. The 10% in additional emissions reductions the climate bill gets from a massive investment in new national-accounting based efforts to stop deforestation are certainly one of the best features of Waxman-Markey.

Among other areas, “efforts on financing could also be taken into account,” he said. Also, “if America could really go for a steeper pathway after 2020, that could also be taken into account.”

And indeed the climate bill does in fact make steeper emissions reductions post-2020, hitting a 42% reduction in 2030 and then 83% in 2050. Again, these our crucial features of the bill that the Senate needs to retain.

The Swedish minister has been flummoxed by some of the debate he has heard over the climate bill as it is set to be discussed next month in the Senate.

“There are some crazy calculations going around here in America” and largely distributed by lobbyists, he said. “But we can show that there is no alternative [to cap and trade] that would lower emissions at a lower cost.”

If he’s been flummoxed by the House debate, he is really going to be baffled by the Senate debate.

Are there 60 Senators who understand the stakes, understand that cap-and-trade lowers emissions at the lowest cost, understand that this is the most important vote of their career? Let’s all keep working as hard as possible to make sure there are.

This article originally appeared on Climate Progress
CCphoto credit

Related posts:
China's Growing Appetite for Climate Action
Barack Obama Seeks US-Chinese Deal on Global Warming
China and U.S. Sign Pledge To Cooperate on Climate and Energy

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(Posted by Joe Romm in Climate Change at 11:08 AM) ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/_4J_C29cp2Q/010409.html/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/6TvI6mrv7wM/010398.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/worldchanging_fulltext/~3/6TvI6mrv7wM/010398.html#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:50:56 +0000 Joe Romm 10398@http://www.worldchanging.com/

We’re starting to see more and more work on the health impacts of global warming (see “The Lancet’s landmark Health Commission: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century” and “Climate change helps spread dengue fever in 28 states“).

One source of those impacts, hellish heat waves, will become commonplace in the coming decades if we don’t reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends sharply and soon, as the figure above makes clear (see “Definitive NOAA-led report warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!“). By 2090, it’ll be above 90°F some 120 days a year in Kansas — more than the entire summer. Much of Florida and Texas will be above 90°F for half the year. These won’t be called heat waves anymore. It’ll just be the “normal” climate.

Based on two recent studies: By century’s end, extreme temperatures of up to 122°F would threaten most of the central, southern, and western U.S. Even worse, Houston and Washington, DC could experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year. Much of Arizona would be subjected to temperatures of 105°F or more for 98 days out of the year–14 full weeks.

Coincidentally, the WSJ reports today, “Austin on Monday recorded its 64th day of 100-plus degree weather since June 1.” That won’t be news at all in a few decades on our current emissions path.

The Hadley Center notes one related impact, “By the 2090s close to one-fifth of the world’s population will be exposed to ozone levels well above the World Health Organization recommended safe-health level.”

The rest of this post is a reposted guest blog from Brad Johnson on a new Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) report, “More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call”:

As the debate over rising health care costs reaches a fever pitch, PSR warns that “global warming is a medical emergency.” In a press teleconference unveiling a new report on the human cost of increased heat waves, PSR executive director Peter Wilk, M.D. described global warming as “one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today”:

Global warming is one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today. It’s life threatening, it’s affecting us now, and if we don’t take bold and effective action, it could dramatically affect how we life on earth.

“More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call,” jointly issued by PSR and the National Wildlife Federation, explains that scientists have found that global boiling will disproportionately threaten the health of the very old and very young, as well as the poor and those who live in big cities:

Global Warming Will Bring More Extreme Heat Waves. As the United States warms another 4 to 11°F on average over the next century, we will have more extremely hot summer days. Every part of the country will be affected. Urban areas will feel the heat more acutely because asphalt, concrete, and other structures absorb and reradiate heat, causing temperature to be as much as 10°F higher than nearby rural areas.

Urban Air Pollution Will Be Exacerbated By More Extreme Heat. Warm, sunny conditions accelerate the formation of ground-level ozone, a major component of smog. Even if air pollution is improved, as required by the Clean Air Act, global warming could mean an extra 10 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone during heat waves in the Midwest and Northeast, forcing some cities to take even more aggressive steps to meet the 75 ppb ozone standard.

Heat Waves Disproportionately Impact The Most Vulnerable. Heat waves disproportionately affect the very old and very young, as well as people who are poor, have asthma or heart disease, or live in big cities. With often diminished health and a greater likelihood of living alone, the elderly are especially vulnerable. As the U.S. demographics shift toward an older and more urban population, efforts to protect these at-risk communities from extreme heat will become increasingly important.

Natural Habitats And Agriculture Are Also Vulnerable To Extreme Heat. More extreme temperatures are already pushing wildlife and their habitats beyond their normal tolerance levels. Heat-related declines have been documented for wild salmon and trout, moose, and pika. Livestock and crops have lower productivity and increased mortality associated with heat stress and drought.

We Can Reduce The Severity Of Heat Waves And Their Impacts On Vulnerable People. Curbing global warming pollution as much and as quickly as possible is an essential first step. Shifting to clean solar energy is an especially promising option because sunlight is plentiful during heat waves, when electricity demand for air conditioning peaks. At the same time, we must make our cities cooler and greener; for example, introducing more green space — parks, trees, and “green” roofs — can greatly reduce the urban heat island effect. Furthermore, cities must implement public health measures to reduce the impact of extreme heat that we can not avoid.

Because blacks are disproportionately urban and poor, the rising tide of heat waves will affect them more severely than the U.S. white population. As NAACP’s president Benjamin Todd Jealous explained, “Climate change is a civil rights issue.”

Finally, here is the full chart from the NOAA-led impact report:

This article originally appeared on Climate Progress

Related posts:
The Heat is Happening
Global Warming, Global Health, Global Ethics
Climate Model Sees Extreme Future

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Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says he supports the goal of cutting atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million, a highly ambitious target supported by many environmental activists. Speaking with Agence France Presse, Pachauri said that he cannot officially endorse the 350 target. “But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal,” said Pachauri. “What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.” Current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are close to 390 ppm, and if emissions are not brought under control, scientists say, levels could exceed 500 ppm this century, nearly twice as high as pre-industrial levels. Leading environmental activists, such as Bill McKibben, say that reducing CO2 levels to 350 ppm is the best way to avoid highly disruptive effects of global warming. Key climate talks will be held this December in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, 300 environmental groups and other organizations — including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth — have written a letter to U.S. Senate leaders urging them to strengthen a climate bill that has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and is now before the Senate.

This piece originally appeared on Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: Matthew Garrett

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Worldchanging Interview: IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri
IPCC Chief: Benefits of Tackling Climate Change Will Balance Cost of Action
350 ppm

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by Claus Leggewie

Negotiations on emissions in the run-up to the UN climate summit show no sign of the radical change we need

Limiting global warming to 2C above preindustrial levels is absolutely crucial, says the G8 and most of the world's best climatologists. If this is to be more than lip service, the consequences will be radical.

For starters, until 2050, only about 700 gigatons of carbon dioxide can be emitted into the atmosphere. At the current rate of emissions, this "budget" will be exhausted in 20 years; if emissions increase as expected, the world will become carbon "insolvent" even sooner. So reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions must begin as quickly as possible. Wasting any more time will cause costs to skyrocket and render the 2C limit obsolete.

Rich nations cannot continue as before, emerging industrial countries must leave the old industrial-based path to prosperity, and the rest of the world may not even embark upon it. Yet the negotiations on emissions limits with each of the 192 signatory countries in the run-up to the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 have so far given no indication of so radical a change.

A global climate deal must be simpler, fairer, and more flexible than is today's Kyoto Protocol. To achieve this, the Global Change Council of Germany (WGBU) suggests that a budget formula be adopted. The idea is that, in the future, all states will be allocated a national per-capita emissions budget that links three core elements of a fair global climate deal: the major industrial countries' historical responsibility, individual countries' current performance capacity, and global provision for the survival of mankind.

The task is immense. On a global level, quick and comprehensive de-carbonisation of the world economy is necessary. All countries must reduce their use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources as soon and as much as possible. But, since the OECD-countries (led by the United States and Australia) will soon overrun their carbon budgets even after far-reaching emissions reductions, they must cooperate with developing countries that still have budget surpluses. Breaking the Gordian knot of climate negotiations requires offering technology and financial transfers in exchange for the ability to overrun a national budget.

A responsible global climate policy thus entails a fundamental change of international relations, and making the necessary institutional innovations in global governance requires courage. Until now, the wealth of nations has been based upon the combustion of coal, gas, and oil. But, if the 2C target is taken seriously, the 21st century will see countries that are not so far down the path of carbonisation (such as large parts of Africa), or that leave it in time (such as India and Pakistan), able to become wealthy by helping societies that must de-carbonise rapidly.

For the moment, all this is still utopian. In its current state, cap-and-trade schemes to reduce emissions are far from being fair and effective; a major improvement would include establishing a central climate bank to register and supervise the transfer of emissions credits. This bank would also ensure that emissions trading did not run counter to the goal of remaining within the entire global budget, for example via the complete sale of unused emissions credits by individual developing countries at the beginning of the contract period.

In order to achieve this, the central climate bank must have the power to do its job. That, in turn, implies that it is accountable and that it has democratic legitimacy – something fundamentally lacking in multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.

Additional changes to global governance will also be needed. These changes include the consolidation of face-to-face negotiations between old and new world powers (the US, the European Union, and China) and developing and emerging countries, including new regional powers like Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia.

In this framework, the old G7/8 can no longer function as a hegemonic centre, but rather as a kind of broker and preparatory body. Simultaneously, within a variable architecture of negotiation, there must be links to the numerous conference institutions of the UN, as well as to political-economic regional associations such as the EU, Mercosur, or the African Union.

This flexible (and, alas, fragile) architecture of multilevel negotiation can function only as long as it is oriented towards clear moral bases for negotiation, has sufficient democratic legitimacy, and is supported in national and local arenas of action. Global leaders will find it significantly easier to steer towards big cooperation targets if they are supported by visions of the future within civil society.

A low-carbon society is not a crisis scenario, but rather the realistic vision of liberation from the path of expensive and risky over-development. In 1963, when the world narrowly escaped nuclear catastrophe, the physicist Max Born wrote: "World peace in a world that has grown smaller is no longer a utopia, but rather a necessity, a condition for the survival of mankind." Those words have never been truer.

• Claus Leggewie is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen (KWI) and a member of the Global Change Council of Germany (WBGU).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.

This piece originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
CC photo credit

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Australia’s Parliament has passed a law requiring that 20 percent of the country’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020, an increase from the current level of 8 percent. The standard, which matches the European Union’s, means that the households of all 21 million Australians could be powered by renewable energy in a decade. Green Party leaders said, however, that the standard should be 30 percent, and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong noted that even with the new renewable standard, the nation’s CO2 emissions are expected to be 20 percent above 2000 levels in 2020 because of the growth of the Australian economy. Meanwhile, a new report shows that electricity generated by renewable sources in the U.S. reached an all-time high in May, with alternative energy accounting for 13 percent of total electrical generation. That’s 7.7 percent higher than May 2008, with most of the growth coming from wind and solar power. Hydropower remains the largest source of renewable energy, accounting for 9.4 percent of U.S. electricity production.

This piece originally appeared on Yale's e360 Digest

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by Anna Fahey

Quick polling note:

A new Zogby poll released last Tuesday revealed that 71 percent of likely voters support the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES--a.k.a. Waxman-Markey) passed by the US House of Representatives at the end of June. A majority of those polled also said they want the Senate to take similar action. The poll also asked people about how "efforts to reduce global warming and promote energy" will impact American jobs, and 51 percent of respondents said they believed these efforts would lead to new job creation.

Of course, as the Keith Johnson at the Wall Street Journal points out, "when it comes to surveys on things like global warming, clean energy and the like, a lot depends on how the questions are phrased." To keep things as clear as possible, Zogby asked potential voters to self-identify into one of two broad camps ahead of Senate action on the energy bill, explicitly echoing the language (and claims) of proponents and opponents:

The first camp—“I think the Senate should take action because I believe we need a new energy plan right now that invests in American, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, in order to create clean energy jobs, address global warming and reduce our dependency on foreign oil“—mustered 54 percent support.

The second camp—“I think the Senate should wait on this proposal, I believe the House energy bill is a hidden tax that will cost thousands of dollars every year in increased energy prices, weaken our economy further, and cause America to lose jobs to China and other countries”—got 41 percent support.

The idea that the energy and climate bill is actually an engine of job creation is gaining traction with the public too. Some 51 percent of respondents figure it will create jobs, while only 29 percent figure it will cost jobs, and 17 percent think legislation would have no impact.

Finally, the energy and climate vote may not be the political hot-potato some would have us believe when it comes to next year’s mid-term elections. Only 29 percent of respondents said they would have an “unfavorable” view of their representative for having voted for the bill; while 47 percent would have a “favorable” view.

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score

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Donald A. Brown

Okay, maybe the most crucial missing element in US media coverage of climate change is an actual understanding of the dire nature of the issue or maybe the still unjustifiable “balance” whereby the other “side” is treated as serious sources, rather than as long-wrong disinformers or maybe how they are blowing the economics issue (see Must-read (again) study: How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and countless examples here). Still, Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State University has a case to make — and his excellent blog ClimateEthics (a Time magazine Top 15 pick) is the source of this guest post.

I. Introduction: Scottish Versus The US Climate Change Debate

In March, the U.S. State Department asked me to speak to the Scottish Parliament about climate-change policies as they were debating a new climate-change law.

Before I spoke, a Scottish Parliamentarian made an argument that I have never heard any US politician make. The topic of this speech is also curiously largely absent in US media climate change coverage. The Parliamentarian argued that Scotland should adopt this tough new legislation even though it might be expensive because the Scotts had an obligation to the rest of the world to do so. In other words, those countries most responsible for causing climate change have ethical duties to reduce their emissions even if it costs are significant. That is, high-emitting developed countries like the United States must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of justice.

In late June, Scotland passed the landmark climate change law that was being debated during my March visit, a law that requires a 42% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, rising to 80% by 2050. (BBC, 2009) On the day the law passed, Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney told the Parliamentarians that passing the world-leading legislation was justified because the climate change affects all the people on of our planet and the Scots had a duty to make the commitments in the law. (TWFY 2009)

The US Congress is striving to pass legislation that would for the first time create binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions 12 years after most of the rest of the developed world bound themselves to reduce emissions in the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, there is not the faintest murmur in the US climate-change debate or in the media’s coverage of the unfolding US legislative fight about duties and responsibilities that the United States has to the rest of the world to reduce the threat of climate change. This is so even though the legislation that has passed the House would require 17% reductions by 2020, a commitment that is only 40% of the Scottish requirement.

It can be seen that the Scottish commitment is even more ambitious compared to the US proposed legislation given that Scotland has already reduced its climate change causing emissions by 16% compared to 1990 levels while the US performance amounts to a 17% increase in emissions during the same period. (Devine and Bristow, 2009)(USEPA, 2009). If you measure GHG emissions on a per capita basis, the Scots’ emissions are already only about a half of the US emissions. (10.69 tons CO2e per capita for Scotland, 19. 78 tons CO2e per capita for the US) (FOES 2009, UCS 2009) For these reasons, the 42% Scottish reduction target by 2020 compared to the US House’s proposed legislation of 17% reduction by 2020 must be seen as a huge commitment motivated by Scotland’s acknowledged duty to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions.

The climate change debate in the US shows no sign of acknowledging that US climate change policy should be guided by duties to the rest of the world. On August 8th, the New York Times reported that climate change legislation in the United States Senate was being opposed by 10 moderate democrats because it threatens to add to the cost of goods like steel, cement, paper and aluminum. (Broder 2009)

With the exception of waning arguments against climate-change law on scientific grounds, opposition to climate-change policies in the United States is almost always based on claims that climate-change programs are not in the national, state or local economic interest.

For instance, U.S. Congressmen Tim Holden, D-Pa. (17th district), recently explained his opposition to federal cap-and-trade legislation because it would increase transportation, energy and business costs while reducing manufacturing jobs. Again and again, politicians opposing climate-change policies justify their position by pointing to some increased costs to their constituents. (Holden 2009)

II. Why Climate Change Must Be Seen As An Ethical Issue

Yet, climate change is a problem that clearly creates civilization challenging ethical issues. This is so because several distinct features of climate change call for its recognition as creating ethical responsibilities that limit a nation’s ability to look at narrow economic self interest alone when developing responsive policies.

First, climate change creates duties because those most responsible for causing this problem are the richer developed countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to the problem’s harshest impacts are some of the world’s poorest people in developing countries. That is, climate change is an ethical problem because its biggest victims are people who can do little to reduce its threat.

Second, climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world. Climate change, for instance, directly threatens human life and health and resources to sustain life, as well as species of plants and animals and ecosystems around the world.

Climate change harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, heat, and intense storms and damage to homes and villages from rising oceans, adverse impacts on agriculture, social disputes caused by diminishing natural resources, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, and the destruction of water supplies. Climate change threatens the very existence of some small island nations. Clearly these impacts are catastrophic.

In fact, there is growing evidence that climate change is already causing great harm to many outside the United States while threatening hundreds of millions of others in the years ahead. For instance, a recent report by the Global Humanitarian Forum found that human-induced climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is now affecting 300 million people around the world. (Global Humanitarian Forum, 2009) This report also projects that increasingly severe heat waves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030.

The third reason why climate change is a moral problem stems from its global scope. At the local, regional or national scale, citizens can petition their governments to protect them from serious harms. But at the global level, no government exists whose jurisdiction matches the scale of climate change. And so, although national, regional and local governments have the ability and responsibility to protect citizens within their boarders, they have no responsibility to foreigners in the absence of international law.

For this reason, ethical appeals are necessary to get governments to take steps to prevent their citizens from seriously harming foreigners.

Despite the fact that climate change creates obligations, the U.S. continues to debate this issue as if the only legitimate consideration is how our economy might be affected.

The US press almost never challenges those who oppose climate change on the basis that policies will increase cost. This is curious because the debate at the international level has created a consensus among all countries that those developed countries most responsible for climate change should take the first steps to reduce its enormous threats. In fact the senior George Bush administration in 1992 agreed that the rich developed countries including the United States should take the lead in combating climate change when it negotiated and finally ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (UNFCCC Art. 3, 1992)

In the United States, however, even those supporting climate-change policies often follow the same implicit reasoning on cost by responding that climate-change policies will create jobs. Although this may be true, depending upon the actual policies implemented, this limited focus on job creation undermines the need to help Americans see their ethical duties while giving unspoken support for the notion that the reasonableness of climate change policies turns on whether they will create jobs.

Because the majority of climate scientists believe the world is running out of time to prevent very dangerous climate change, a case can be made that there is a urgent need to turn up the volume about American duties to others to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

Economists can help us figure out how to meet our obligations at lowest cost, yet increased cost alone is not a sufficient excuse for failing to meet our responsibilities.

This piece originally appeared in Climateprogress.org

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John Holdren, the president’s top science adviser, is playing a key role in shaping the Obama administration’s strategy to combat global warming. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Holdren discusses the prospects for achieving key breakthroughs on climate change, both in Congress and at upcoming talks in Copenhagen.
by Elizabeth Kolbert

Six weeks after he was elected, President Obama nominated John Holdren to be his chief science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Many scientists hailed the timing of the nomination — George W. Bush waited almost a year before naming Holdren’s predecessor — and the choice of Holdren, too, was seen as encouraging: He was trained in plasma physics, is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard, is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, served as director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and is a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award.

The New York Times called Holdren’s nomination an affirmation of “Mr. Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.” Now, Holdren is one of several high-ranking Obama administration officials moving aggressively to combat global warming and to wean the country off fossil fuels. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, conducted by New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert, Holdren talked about the cap-and-trade bill that recently passed the House, the crucial role America and China will play in the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and how the administration plans to convert the U.S. “from the laggard that it has been in this domain” into “the leader that the world needs” on global warming.

Yale Environment 360: The issues that are on your plate right now — energy consumption, the environmental consequences of energy consumption — you’ve been thinking about them your whole career. I’m wondering if you could just talk about what you think is the most important thing that the administration could do — on its own — about energy use.

John Holdren: Clearly in the energy domain, both the use side and the supply side are very important. They’re important from the standpoint of environment, from the standpoint of economy, from the standpoint of national/international security. Clearly we have to provide the energy goods and services that people need and that the economy needs.

We need to do that while reducing our dependence on imported oil, which is both expensive and potentially disruptive. We need to do it while sharply reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and that’s from a starting point in which — in the United States — about 88 percent of our primary energy is coming from fossil fuels, whose combustion is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the biggest driver of global climate change.

And so we’ve got all these criteria that we have to meet at once. When you look at the options for doing that, the cleanest, fastest, cheapest, safest, surest energy supply option continues to be increasing the efficiency of energy end use — more efficient cars, more efficient buildings, more efficient industrial processes, more efficient airplanes. We have gotten more new energy out of energy efficiency improvements in the last 35 years than we’ve gotten out of all supply side expansion put together in the United States. That’s even without trying all that hard. For most of that period, we haven’t had anything that you could call a really coherent set of energy policies supporting increasing energy efficiency. We need... a more coherent set of policies.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, sometimes just called the [economic] stimulus, got huge amounts of investment, not only in R&D, but in actual on-the-ground activities to insulate people’s homes and other aspects of improving end use efficiency. We’ve already had the biggest boost in federal support for innovation in energy supply-and-demand in the history of the country. We have also made permanent research and experimentation tax credits, which adds to the incentive in the private sector to invest in innovation in these domains.

In the comprehensive energy and climate legislation that’s now working its way through the Congress, we have the potential there to get a lot more done, including all the incentives that would come from having a cap-and-trade approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

e360: You’ve said many times that we have basically three options with regard to climate change: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering, and that what’s at issue is what the mix among those three things is going to be. Now we do have finally a piece of legislation that has passed the House at least. I’m wondering if you can just talk about how it does, in terms of that mix.

Holdren: Well, first of all, I want to emphasize that it has long been my position, and it’s the President’s position, that we’re going to have to do a lot of both mitigation and adaptation in order to reduce the amount of suffering that results from climate change in the United States and around the world. I just testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about the work that we’re doing to increase research and application in the domain of adaptation, because adaptation has been, I think, understudied and underinvested in comparison to mitigation.

e360: One of the concerns has always been that too much emphasis on adaptation is going to give people the impression that we can just adapt to climate change. Is that something that concerns you?

Holdren: I don’t really think that’s a danger anymore. People were quite worried about that five years ago, 10 years ago. It’s plausible that one of the reasons that there wasn’t more discussion about adaptation was some people’s worry that that would lead to complacency about the need to mitigate. I think the current view of the vast majority of people who’ve looked carefully at this is that we need a lot of mitigation and a lot of adaptation. The point being that adaptation gets more difficult, more costly, and less effective the larger the changes in climate to which you’re trying to adapt.

Therefore, we need a lot of mitigation in order to hold the changes in climate to the level that adaptation will be able to cope reasonably effectively with. At the same time, we can’t rely on mitigation alone without adaptation because nothing that we could manage in the mitigation domain can stop and reverse climate change overnight. The timeline in the system — both the climate system itself and the energy system — means that there simply isn’t any possibility of stopping it overnight. So you need both.

e360: One of things that you mentioned in your testimony [before Congress] is that we are in fact seeing a lot of climate impacts that are running ahead of projections. Do you think that that message is getting out?

Holdren: We all talk about the acceleration of climate change in its impacts that we’re observing. One sees the incidence of wildfires going up more rapidly than people expected, the incidence of heat waves and droughts going up more rapidly, sea level is rising more rapidly.

The impacts on the ecological side with pest outbreaks, particularly the forest pests, the loss of huge acreages of spruce and pine across the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, Colorado, definitely linked to climate change because the longer warm season has enabled the pest to get in more generations in a single season than they could before. That, combined with drought and heat stress on the trees, is having effects that no one would have predicted a decade ago.

All of these indicators are moving more rapidly. I think that message is getting through. I don’t hear very much in Washington these days any serious people saying we don’t believe this is a problem. The argument is really about exactly what we should be doing about it, how much we should be investing, what kinds of measures we should put in place.

e360: There’s been a lot of talk that the bill in its current form cannot pass the Senate, that there is going to have to be watering down of the provisions. Does that concern you?

Holdren: Obviously I would like to see, and the President would like to see, a strong bill get through the Senate. I think it’s understood that the Senate is bound to make some modifications, and then those will have to be worked out in conference between the Senate and the House. I’m not sure all the modifications that will get made in the Senate will be in the direction of making it weaker. Some folks in the Senate would like to see it made stronger.

So I think we have to watch how this process unfolds before we judge what the bill is going to look like. I’m very hopeful that we will get a bill, and that it will be, at the very least, a strong start on getting the United States converted from the laggard that it has been in this domain into being the leader that the world needs.

e360: You were recently in China with Todd Stern [Special Envoy for the Secretary of State on Climate Change], and other administration officials. Can you speak a bit about what you heard from the Chinese, and what you think the U.S. can do to persuade countries like China and India to agree to some action that will be politically palatable [at the climate talks] in Copenhagen this fall?

Holdren: In these conversations, a couple of things came through very clearly. One is that the Chinese understand that climate changes is real, they understand it’s already harming China, and they understand that it cannot be solved without China’s participation. There’s absolutely no disagreement on that from the Chinese leadership.

I think it’s particularly significant that the Chinese have understood that climate change is already harming them, that this not a problem just for the future. The monsoons have been changing in China in a pattern that the Chinese climate models themselves attribute to global climate change. That change in monsoon has been accentuating flooding in the south, and drought in the north to the detriment of Chinese food production, with considerable property losses.

So the Chinese are starting from a place now which is quite different than they were, say, five years ago. Which is, that this is a problem that China has to participate in solving, for reasons of China’s own self interest. This isn’t a matter of being an altruist, or being a good citizen globally. Their self interest is in solving this problem. That’s a big change.

The second thing is that I would say the Chinese are already doing far more to try to contribute to the solution than they generally get credit for in the West. The Chinese have made enormous advances in energy end use efficiency in recent years. They are the world leaders, both in the pace of improvement in energy efficiency and the pace of deployment of renewable energy technologies.

In their five-year plan that will end in 2010, they had a target of reducing the energy intensity of the Chinese economy by 20 percent. They’re going to make it, which is an extraordinary rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

The real question is whether the Chinese will agree in Copenhagen to commitments that are seen as sufficiently rigorous and that the U.S. Senate will then agree to consent to ratification of whatever global agreement gets reached in Copenhagen. If the Chinese are not willing to make a formal commitment to continuation of the sort of progress that they’ve been making, then the Senate is likely to say, “Look, the United States is not going to take on these binding commitments if the Chinese are not going to follow.”

e360: Right.

Holdren: And there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem there, because the Chinese position, I think quite understandably, is that the United States and the other industrialized nations — having contributed the most to this problem up until now — need to lead. The developing countries then can be expected to follow. The Chinese and other developing countries are also saying, “And by the way, you shouldn’t just lead, but you need to help us follow, because you have more technological resources, more capability, a much higher per capita income. So we want both your leadership, and we want your help.”

I think that it’s going to be very important that the United States make clear, between now and Copenhagen, that we are, in fact, willing to lead and to help.

[Department of Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu, on his more recent visit to China, reached agreement with the Chinese on joint energy research centers between the two countries, which will be a start on ramping up the cooperation on the ground on improving energy efficiency, and deploying clean energy technologies that I think have the potential to persuade the Chinese that we’re serious about helping, as well as serious about leading.

I think to persuade them we’re serious about leading, the best thing that could happen between now and Copenhagen is that the Senate votes out the energy and climate legislation. The most important thing in terms of showing our willingness to help would be getting some substantial clean energy projects going on the ground that are jointly supported by the two countries. I think both of those things are possible, and then we could have the outcome that I think everybody sensible is hoping for out of Copenhage.

e360: You said that the U.S. has to move from being a laggard to being a leader, and sooner rather than later, if we’re going to act in time. Where would you put us on that curve right now?

Holdren: I think it’s the classic case, where the glass is simultaneously half full and half empty. We’ve got a bill that’s a good start out of the House. It’s not perfect, but no legislation ever is, from any one party’s point of view. If we can get something similar, or maybe even stronger, out of the Senate, that would be fabulous.

We also have a very good start on boosting our investments in energy innovation in the United States. This is demonstrating leadership already, and is being widely applauded around the world. What we need in the next step is more on-the-ground successes in joint projects, particularly with developing countries, starting with China. Again, I think the prospects of getting that are quite good.

e360: How important is it that something come out of Copenhagen in December that can get through the U.S. Senate?

Holdren: Well, I think it’s important that the world move ahead with an agreed approach to addressing this problem. Because I think what the science is telling us is that if we want a good chance of avoiding the worst possible outcomes from climate change, we need the global emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants to level off by about 2020 and be declining sharply after that.

And if that is going to happen, and if you allow for the inevitability that the developing countries are not going to be able to level off and start to decline as quickly as the industrialized countries, you really need the industrialized countries to peak and begin to decline no later than about 2015. That would allow the possibility that the developing countries, as a group, could peak as late as 2025 before they have to start to decline.

And if that is so — and I believe that’s what the science is telling us — then we really have to have in place across the industrialized world the agreements and the measures that are going to enable us to peak no later than 2015 and start to decline. We need those things in place no later than about 2012. And if you want those things to be in place no later than 2012, we really should get it done in Copenhagen. That’s the schedule.

I’m not saying it’s the end of the world if we don’t get it done in Copenhagen, but it becomes harder and harder to get on the sort of trajectory we need to be on to reduce the chance of the worst happening in climate change the longer we delay.

e360: The American Meteorological Society recently called for more research into what’s become known as geoengineering. I know that you felt that some comments you made about this at the beginning of your tenure were misconstrued. Is that a reasonable position that we need to do more research on this?

Holdren: The way that I feel I was misrepresented in an interview I gave early in the administration was the proposition that I was saying the White House is considering geoengineering as a part of our national strategy for dealing with climate change. This was made the centerpiece of an article based on a statement I made in which I said as I scientist, I think we need to look at everything. We need to understand what geoengineering might be — what its costs would be, what its effectiveness would be, what its side effects would be, what its shortcomings would be — because as a scientist, we need to know what the options are.

And I said it is certainly possible that if mitigation measures are not sufficiently successful, that increasingly people will become interested in whether there’s anything we can do to compensate for that by trying to intervene in the earth’s system in a way that offsets the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping pollutants.

And as a scientific position, I think that remains true, and that is the position that the American Meteorological Society has taken. We’ve got to study this. The National Academy of Sciences has had some symposia on this subject in which people say we have to study it.

The other thing is one needs to understand that, in a sense, we’ve been practicing geoengineering for centuries, inadvertently. I mean that’s why we have this problem. We have engineered the composition of the atmosphere into a state that is overheating the planet.

And the other thing people need to understand is that there’s a very wide variety of approaches. You know the approach called “white roofs” is a geoengineering approach. Make everybody’s roof white instead of black, and then all of our urban areas will reflect a lot of sunlight that would otherwise be absorbed.

And you know we ought to be doing more of that. Some of the other kinds of approaches that were mentioned in some of the articles that appeared following my interview are clearly nuts — you know — putting giant mirrors in space at the point where the sun’s and the earth’s gravity balance in order to deflect sunlight away from the earth. You look at the numbers on that one and it’s nuts.

e360: It’s nuts because it’s impossible, or because it’s inadvisable?

Holdren: Well, I would say number one, it is impossibly expensive. There was an estimate a few years ago presented at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences that said that offsetting a doubling of atmospheric CO2 in this way would cost $1,400 trillion. I think after that number you don’t even have to ask anymore whether it would have unintended side effects, which it well might. Because nobody’s going to do it.

But again, to say that we need to understand what might be proposed in the way of geoengineering is not to say that we’re going to embrace any of these schemes. And indeed, the administration’s position is that our policies on mitigation through reducing emissions and increasing [CO2] uptake by better management of forests and agricultural soil and the measures that we will be taking in terms of adaptation are going to do the job.

But, that doesn’t say on the research side you shouldn’t look at the options that likely will be considered if the things you expect to do the job fall short.

e360: There was a lot of discussion about how the last administration misrepresented and even suppressed a lot of government scientists in the service of a political agenda. And now, we have a new administration and a new science advisor, i.e. you, and we also have a new political agenda. And it seems that the public can take the impression from this, if they want to, that science is inevitably a politicized activity. How do you avoid that sense that the science can be used by whoever wants to?

Holdren: I am charged by the President in my role as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy with coming up with guidelines for scientific integrity in government. And the intent of having those guidelines — which we’re quite far along on and will be releasing soon — is to provide both the reality and the perception that science is not being misused in pursuit of political agendas in this government. Presumably, if such guidelines can be made a fixture over time, this would carry over to the next administration and other administrations thereafter.

There are a variety of ways to do that, having to do with the freedom that scientists have to discuss their findings without interference from the public relations office. It has to do with the extensive use of peer review to assure that the science that is being put at the service of policy makers is the best science available. And it has to do with the public perception that they are being dealt with honestly by the scientists in this administration, that people are prepared to tell it like it is even when it might be inconvenient.

One of the things that is both important and subtle about this particular matter is that no one should expect that science will determine policy outcomes by itself. Science is often germane and we would not want our policy makers to be making decisions about issues based on faulty science. But at the same time having the best science still doesn’t necessarily specify a particular outcome because economics is going to matter, values are going to matter, preferences are going to matter.

What one wants from science advice to policy makers is that the science is right, that policy makers aren’t making choices on the basis of misconception about science. But people shouldn’t imagine that good science advice is going to take the politics out of policy. It can’t. And that’s a good thing.

This piece originally appeared on Yale Environment 360

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