Climate Change and Conflict -- Ragnhild Nordås* & Nils Petter Gleditsch1--Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)

"...some of the recent writings on climate change and security

are focused largely on consequences for the rich countries. If climate change leads to more deprivation in the Third World, it could also generate additional  terrorism that impacts on the security in the wealthy part of the world."

read the article HERE

Is Cap-and-Trade Kaput?

Eco Energy Sources & How To Be Green //Rocket NEws

Written on March 22, 2011 by Editor
‘Cap-and-trade has become a political anathema,’ says Jennifer Smokelin, a US environmental attorney with Reed Smith who specialises in climate issues. ‘I think it is safe to say anything called cap-and-trade, and anything that functions substantially like cap-and-trade, will not be passed as a legislative act in this Congress,’ says Smokelin.

What does US abandonment of cap-and-trade mean to the world, specifically Europe, which has the only major functioning carbon market? And will the renewable energy industry still thrive, without a US carbon trading programme?



Obama has failed to push through controversial carbon legislation (Source: White House)

The U.S. is crucial in any worldwide attempt to reduce greenhouse gases because it is such a high emitter. Even with the rapid advancements in China’s economy, the U.S. is expected to remain the largest source of petroleum-related carbon dioxide emissions for many years, emitting 2.6 billion tonnes to China’s 2.2 billion in 2035, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Similarly, when it comes to carbon emissions from natural gas, the U.S. bests China by almost three times with 1.3 billion tonnes in the next 25 years. China does outdistance the U.S. for carbon emissions from coal, with forecasts showing it responsible for 10.5 billion tonnes in 2035, 55% of the world’s total. Still, the U.S. contributes a hefty share from coal as well: 2.4 billion tonnes, or 12% of the total in 2035.

From an economic perspective, Europe and the U.S. would have created a sizable trading market, had the U.S. gone forward with cap-and-trade, a programme that caps carbon dioxide emissions at a pre-set level and allows trading of permits for compliance. The European Union is the world’s largest economy and the U.S. the second largest; together they represent US$29.61 trillion in gross domestic product, as measured in purchasing power parity. Paired they comprise about three-fourths of carbon emissions from developed countries and roughly one-third of worldwide emissions.

EU Demoralised?

U.S. abandonment of cap-and-trade leaves Europe, alone, with the world’s only major carbon allowance and offset market. ‘European markets are the only game in town,’ says Lisa Zelljadt, senior analyst at Point Carbon, an Oslo-based marketing and trading analytics company. ‘They were expecting that there might be other large sources of demand around the world and other carbon markets they could link to, creating a global market which is more liquid. That’s not going to happen. So the European Union Emissions Trading System, this $2 billion programme, is going to go forward, and it is the only programme of that size.’

Smokelin says that for the EU this is demoralising: ‘When you move onto a course from a national standpoint, you want to see your like-minded countries move that way too’. Equally important, any part of the world going it alone faces singular economic pressure by putting a price on carbon at a time when fossil fuel use remains high. ‘Every widget made in Europe becomes more expensive than a widget made in a country without a cap-and-trade plan. That would then in turn build political pressure in the EU to take a look at whether a cap-and-trade system is the way to be going,’ Smokelin says.

The U.S. failure to pursue a carbon emissions trading market also gives good excuse for wavering nations to pause. For example, Canada is unlikely to move forward without its closest trading partner, the U.S., Smokelin says. And while Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol, it does not appear to be moving quickly toward cap-and-trade either.

That’s not to say no one will join Europe. Indeed, smaller regional efforts are underway in provinces in China, certain U.S. states and other parts of the world. ‘There will continue to be carbon markets but they will be more fragmented. It will be more regional programs at various levels,’ says Point Carbon’s Zelljadt.

Renewables Go Their Own Way

But while enthusiasm may be tenuous for carbon emissions trading markets, support for renewable energy remains strong. The industry framed itself as not only a solution to climate change, but also as an economic and job building resource. The message has stuck. The U.S. resisted cap-and-trade, but it added 16 GW of new electric generating capacity from wind, solar, and geothermal energy over the last two years, an increase of nearly 60%.

Even political foes of cap-and-trade seem to support renewable energy. With or without cap-and-trade, renewable energy is expected to continue its US expansion. Renewable energy will account for 45% of the growth in electric generation by 2035. If the federal production tax credit is extended for 25 years, renewable energy will expand even faster, with growth between 61% and 65%, according to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2010. Worldwide, renewable energy use is expected to triple between 2008 and 2035, driven by the power sector where green energy’s share in electricity supply could rise from 19% in 2008 to 32% in 2035, according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2010. IEA based its forecast on a ‘new policies scenario’ where governments live up to commitments they have made.



Annual global support for renewables in the New Policies Scenario (Source: IEA, World Energy Outlook 2011)

‘A lot of it has to do with the economy. When you are going through bankruptcy, you are really not interested in carbon credits,’ says Mark Thimke, a partner with Foley Lardner and member of the environmental and energy team. ‘But renewable energy seems to have traction in Congress. It seems to be divorced from climate change and able to go forward in the political world,’ he adds.

President Obama appeared to be very aware of the shift in political winds during his state of the union address on 25 January. He never mentioned climate change. This contrasts with last year’s address, where ‘climate’ came up at least three times, including his proclamation that the US has ‘gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change’.

Nonetheless, in this year’s speech, innovation was a central theme, not environmentalism. Obama strongly reiterated his clean energy goals, devoting several minutes to the importance of green energy technologies. He called for increasing the nation’s research and development investments as a share of gross national product to its highest level in nearly 50 years. The US President also announced an aim to make clean energy, including wind, solar, nuclear, clean coal and natural gas, 80% of America’s electricity by 2035. In all, he said he wants to see an 85% increase in renewable energy with an eye toward making solar $1 a watt.

And while Obama may not be going after carbon dioxide emissions through cap-and-trade, he has made clear he is pursuing other methods. For one, he said he wants to end the $4 billion per year in tax subsidies to oil, gas and other fossil fuel producers. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own’, he said, prompting laughter from Congress during the speech. The commitment is part of a G-20 pledge made in Pittsburgh in 2009 to phase out ‘inefficient’ fossil fuel subsides.

Further, Obama continues to pursue greenhouse gas restrictions through the Environmental Protection Agency, which has begun rolling out a series of rules under the federal Clean Air Act that require emitters to install best available control technology for greenhouse gas reduction. The authority of the EPA to impose such rules does face legal and Congressional challenges, however.

Should these initiatives continue — the removal of fossil fuel tax subsidies and EPA regulation of carbon dioxide — they still may not be enough, say some industry obeservers. Without a price on carbon, the playing field will continue to be unfair for renewable energy, they argue. Even if Congress passes a proposed national renewable energy standard (RES) — a requirement that a percentage of power come from renewable sorces — renewable energy may not ovecome the price inequity it faces. This inequity stems from externalities, like health care costs from polluted air, that fail to get factored into fossil fuel prices. In fact, a RES may heighten the problem, Smokelin says. ‘Without having a price on carbon, a RES is doomed to failure because renewables become just too expensive’.

California: A Game Changer

But is the U.S. really out of the game when it comes to carbon trading markets? Will individual states come to the rescue as they often do on green energy policy?

Already, 10 U.S. Northeastern states have a mandatory carbon cap-and-trade programme, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI. The initiative is too small, however, to have any significant impact on world carbon trading markets, in part, because it is confined to the power sector, capping its emissions at 10% by 2018.

But RGGI could be used as a prototype to exhibit the benefits offered through a market of its type, according to Stephen Cowell, chairman and CEO of Massachusetts-based Conservation Services Group. Under the RGGI model, about 80% of sales from allowance auctions go back to states for energy efficiency, renewable energy and other consumer benefits. The idea is to use allowance money to invest in technology that will reduce consumer energy costs. As of early 2011, the auctions had raised $775 million. While RGGI has not been without problems — some state governments diverted funds from clean energy to pay down their debt — it is largely seen as a cap-and-trade success story.

The message might spread if RGGI is described as cap-and-invest. ‘We undersold the benefits. We don’t articulate the true merits when we say “put a price on carbon” or just “cap it.” RGGI is the classic cap-and-invest strategy and the result is that total energy costs with RGGI are lower than without RGGI’.

RGGI may be too small to contribute significantly to a worldwide trading market; but California’s upcoming cap-and-trade market is not. The state’s voters expressed their continued support for the programme in the November 2010 elections by rejecting an attempt to delay it. About 60% of those voting turned down a measure that would have postponed cap-and-trade until state unemployment had dropped to 5.5% for four consecutive quarters.



The development of California’s carbon cap-and-trade scheme (Source: Point Carbon)

Now the state is clear to begin carbon trading effort in 2012. The programme is modeled after the European Union Emissions Trading System, and is expected to have a significant impact on world markets because of California’s size. California intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and secure 33% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. Different from RGGI, California’s cap is economy wide, meaning the cap applies to a host of emission sources, such as industrial processes, not just power.

California’s programme starts small, initially only encompassing power plants, and then gradually adding the other resources, until the emissions caps cover 85% of its economy. The Point Carbon chart (see below) shows how California’s cap expands over the years. It reveals that once emissions from transport fuels are included in 2015, the scope of the programme (and thus size of the carbon cap) nearly doubles.

After Europe, California will be the second largest carbon market in the world. Point Carbon expects it to be worth $1.7 billion dollars in 2012, the first year of compliance, grow to close to $10 billion by 2016, and possibly as high as $50 to $80 billion in 2020.

‘RGGI for all its good intentions is not regarded as something that will have global impact in terms of driving a carbon market. The California cap-and-trade programme, coming down the track like a freight train, I think is going to be very different,’ says Larry Goldenhersh, founder of Enviance, a company that offers information technology to companies worldwide to track and manage environmental assets, including carbon dioxide allowances.

Goldenhersh points out that with a population of about 37 million, California is home to one in nine Americans and is the world’s eighth largest economy. What’s impressive, he says, is that California’s voters decided to move forward with cap-and-trade during one of the nation’s worst economic downturns: ‘It is a very important example of a clear judgment of a large body of people in America who said that they will vote for the environment. That is real political will.’



The sheer scale of California’s carbon cap-and-trade will exert global influence (Source: E.ON)

Given California’s size and worldwide economic clout, it will force the US federal government to rethink its stand on a national programme, he adds, saying: ‘The eighth largest economy is going to tell the world what it thinks the price of carbon is. You can’t just ignore the eighth largest economy in the world. From a regulatory perspective it is very, very important. I don’t think this is going to be lost on the Congress one bit. I think there is going to be an immense amount of pressure to do something on energy and climate’.

CSG’s Cowell also remains confident that Congress may still act in favour of a carbon cap-and-trade initiative. ‘I’ve been at this for 30 years; it’s never too late. I’m not ready to throw in the towel. And as the President said, we have to invest the clean technology of the future. Or we will even more quickly fall behind countries that are seeing the future.’

So Is Cap-and-Trade Really Dead in the U.S.?

Two years ago it seemed likely the U.S. would join the EU and institute cap-and-trade. But political sentiment shifted radically. Two years from now the same could happen again with a turn back toward a market-based greenhouse gas reduction programme. For now, however, world excitement has ebbed about cap-and-trade, but not renewable energy, a resource that has successfully positioned itself as the solution, whether the problem is environmental or economic.

Trendspotting: the next big sustainability issues

James Goodman and Martin Wright track the trends which will influence the coming year's sustainability debates


Transparency: no place to hide
There will be nowhere to hide, as the open society finally arrives. Wikileaks is just the start. When anyone can tweet and be tweeted, keeping the lid on is no longer an option.

2011 will see transparency become the new normal, thanks to the unprecedented rush of digital empowerment. Three in every four people on the planet have a mobile phone, and the use of Twitter is growing at over 1,000 percent a year.

In the last few months alone, we've seen consumers able to monitor working conditions in one of Asda's Bangladeshi clothes factories via a live cam feed; compel Gap to abandon ditching its new logo; and use their mobiles to pull sustainability information from a product's barcode and then add their own subversive messages saying "this product's rubbish", or "cheaper in the shop across the road", using Stickybits software.

Command and control won't cut it any more. The result will at times be messy, barely manageable: think Wikileaks again. Scared companies will try, and fail, to stuff the genie back in the bottle. Smart ones, by contrast, will seize it as a golden opportunity to get close to their market and learn from their customers.

Africa: from basket case to boomtime?
It may still be wracked with civil war and failed states, but Africa is fast emerging as the world's unlikeliest opportunity. Rich in resources and people, its economies are set to grow by 6% next year, pulling in record levels of investment. By 2020, McKinsey says, there will be 128m Africans with discretionary spend. And the continent is on track to have the lowest dependency ratio in the world by 2030 – something associated with rapid development. Around that time, too, the Sahara could be the powerhouse of Europe, thanks to concentrated solar power.

By then, of course, China – which has already grasped Africa's potential both as a market and for resources – could well be the world's largest economy. And if present trends continue, its biggest investor in green technology, too. If you'd made that prediction a couple of decades ago, you'd have been cast as a hopless Maoist dreamer. It's a salutary reminder of the speed with which a settled world can shift.
So 2011 will surely see new markets, new influences – and new competition for resources.

Biodiversity: it's a business issue
Business is used to counting carbon; now it may have to start counting bees.
Biodiversity is shrinking fast, and the economic consequences are just starting to bite. According to a study by TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), natural pollinators like bees are worth over $200bn a year to the world economy. (If that sounds a lot, imagine pollinating crops by hand, as some Chinese farmers had to when bee populations were wiped out by chemicals.)

Against a backdrop of growing uncertainty and rising fuel costs, meanwhile, food prices soared in 2010. Although volatility is increasingly the rule, they seem set to rise further this year, triggering concerns about commodity speculation and wider food security – not to mention fears of food riots.

So how are we responding to these twin, related threats? So far, so slow. Take one example: ICCAT – which in any sane world should stand for the International Commission for the Collapse of Atlantic Tunas. It's agreed a catch quota for 2011 that scientists say gives the species a 1 in 3 chance of commerical collapse. It's an all too typical example of our governance systems' failure to manage ecosystems. Of us reaching environmental limits, and not knowing what to do about it.

One thing is for sure: we certainly can't tackle it in isolation. Burning forests to grow more food would boost the global warming which will lead to less food in future. And some misguided efforts to tackle climate change – such as the mass conversion of cropland to biofuels – means more food insecurity in the here and now. We are facing the acid test of our ability to tackle threats at a systemic level, rather than try to pick them off one by one.

If you're looking for a silver lining, try this. The threat of climate change helped spark the cleantech boom; could business take a similarly entrepreneurial response to the conservation crisis? The UN thinks so. It estimates that the battle to avert ecosystem collapse could generate a $5tn industry. And McKinsey's reports that leading CEOs are now thinking of biodiversity in the same way they thought of climate change in 2007: a worrying issue on the horizon that they ought to start planning for now.

Climate change scepticism: will science strike back?
2010 was the Year of the Sceptics. By contrast, 2011 could just see the triumph of science, for two reasons.
First, the facts are increasingly stark. 2010 looks set to equal or exceed 1998 as the warmest year on record. And it doesn't stop there. 1998 hit record levels in part because it coincided with the warming impacts of 'El Nino'. By contrast, 2010's highs have happened despite the cooling influence of 'La Nina'.

Second, in the wake of Climategate, scientists are realising that pure research ain't enough: they need to communicate much better, too – and engage openly with their adversaries. The more that happens, the more threadbare the rhetoric of denial will appear. The grudging agreement reached at Cancun will help; all the more so because both China and India have come on board as never before.

Thist doesn't mean scepticism will melt away overnight. With the impacts of global warming, as ever, lagging behind the rise in temperatures, the sceptics will still find a hearing. And they'll be fired up by a new kind of energy. For years, advocates of bold action on carbon cuts have argued that energy insecurity strengthens their case. That'll be harder to maintain now that shale gas has entered the mix. Not only is it relatively cheap, but there is a truly humungous amount of it in the USA.
The science may be settled, but the coming year will show that the debate is far from over.

They've finally got it – now what?
As the year turned, there was growing evidence that virtually every CEO worth their salt saw sustainability vital to future business success. Ninety-three percent of those surveyed by Accenture agreed with that statement. Other polls reported similar results.

More intriguingly, nine out of ten CEOs questioned by the Echo consultancy on behalf of the International Business Leaders Forum believed their companies would have to employ new sustainable technologies to remain competitive five years from now.

James Goodman is head of futures at Forum for the Future and Martin Wright is editor in chief of Green Futures at Forum for the Future

Climate Talks End With Modest Deal on Emissions ? NYTimes

CANCÚN, Mexico — The United Nations climate change conference began with modest aims and ended early Saturday with modest achievements. But while the measures adopted here may have scant near-term impact on the warming of the planet, the international process for dealing with the issue got a significant vote of confidence.

Envoys from more than 190 nations in Cancún were given a year to decide whether to extend the frayed Kyoto Protocol.

The agreement fell well short of the broad changes scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous climate change in coming decades. But it lays the groundwork for stronger measures in the future, if nations are able to overcome the emotional arguments that have crippled climate change negotiations in recent years.

The package known as the Cancún Agreements gives the more than 190 countries participating in the conference another year to decide whether to extend the frayed Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that requires most wealthy nations to trim their emissions while providing assistance to developing countries to pursue a cleaner energy future.

The agreement is not a legally binding treaty, but the success of these talks allows the process to seek a more robust accord at next year’s climate conference in Durban, South Africa.

“This is not the end, but it is a new beginning,” said Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who serves as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “It is not what is ultimately required, but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition.”

The agreement sets up a new fund to help poor countries adapt to climate changes, creates new mechanisms for transfer of clean energy technology, provides compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and strengthens the emissions reductions pledges that came out of the last United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen last year.

The conference approved the package over the objections of Bolivia, which condemned the pact as too weak. Bolivia’s chief climate negotiator, Pablo Solón, said that the emissions reductions laid out in the plan would allow global temperatures to rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius over the next half century, twice the stated goal of the agreement and a level that would doom millions in the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

But his protests did not block acceptance of the package. Delegates from island states and the least-developed countries warmly welcomed the pact because it would start the flow of billions of dollars to assist them to adopt cleaner energy systems and adapt to inevitable changes in the climate, like sea rise and drought.

But it left unresolved where the $100 billion in annual climate-related aid that the wealthy nations have promised to provide would come from.

Todd Stern, the American climate envoy, said the package achieved much of what he had hoped, including a more solid commitment by all nations to take steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and a more formalized international program of reporting and verification of reductions. It adds needed specifics to the fuzzy promises of last year’s Copenhagen Accord, he said.

“This is a significant step forward that builds on the progress made in Copenhagen,” he said in a news conference after the package was adopted. “It successfully anchors mitigation pledges of the Copenhagen Accord and builds on the transparency element of the accord with substantial detail and content.”

Mr. Stern had been particularly insistent that the agreement include a consistent formula for countries to disclose their emissions, report on the measures they are taking to reduce them and provide detailed statements of economic assumptions and methodology. Although a number of large developing nations like China, Brazil and South Africa balked at the intrusiveness of the system, Mr. Stern helped devise a compromise they could live with.

Yvo de Boer, who stepped down this year after four years as executive secretary of the United Nations climate office, said that the success of this year’s conference was in large measure attributable to the modesty of its goals.

“This process has never been characterized by leaps and bounds,” he said in an interview. “It has been characterized by small steps. And I’d rather see this small step here in Cancún than the international community tripping over itself in an effort to make a large leap.”

In all, the success of the Cancún talks was a shot in the arm for a process that some had likened to a zombie, stumbling aimlessly but refusing to die.

“None of this, of course, is world changing,” said Michael A. Levi, who follows climate issues at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “The Cancún agreement should be applauded not because it solves everything, but because it chooses not to: it focuses on those areas where the U.N. process has the most potential to be useful, and avoids other areas where the U.N. process is a dead end. The outcome does not change the fact that most of the important work of cutting emissions will be driven outside the U.N. process.”

John Collins Rudolf contributed reporting from New York.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 12, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition..

Evaluating Sustainability of Projected Water Demands in 2050 under Climate Change Scenarios

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)


Climate change will impact water supplies, exacerbating existing pressures on water resources caused by population and economic growth. Given the combination of these stressors, the sustainability of water resources in future decades is a concern in many parts of the world. This study presents an integration of water withdrawal projections and future estimates of renewable water supply across the United States to assess future water availability in the face of a changing climate.

 The water demand projections in this work are based on business-as-usual trends in growth, particularly of population and energy demand, and renewable water supply projections are based on the average results of an ensemble of sixteen established climate models. The analysis is performed using annual water use data at the US county level, and using global climate model outputs for temperature and precipitation, both projected 20-40 years into the future. The analysis provides a national-scale evaluation of the results of changing water demand and supply, and helps identify regions that are most susceptible to climate change.

As part of this analysis, a water supply sustainability index composed of five attributes of water use and growth was developed, and used to compare impacts across regions.
We found that, under the business-as-usual scenario of demand growth, water supplies in 70% of counties in the US may be at risk to climate change, and approximately one-third of counties may be at high or extreme risk.

The geographic extent of potential risk to water supplies is greatly increased when climate change is considered (Figure ES-1). This calculation indicates the increase in risk that affected counties face that water demand will outstrip supplies, if no other remedial actions are taken. To be clear, it is not intended as a prediction that water shortages will occur, but rather where they are more likely to occur.

As a result, the pressure on public officials and water users to creatively manage demand and supply--through greater efficiency and realignment among competing uses, and by water recycling and creation of new supplies through treatment--will be greatest in these regions. In addition to developing national-scale maps of potential climate impacts, this work serves as a starting point for more detailed analysis, either at more local scales, or by consideration of specific sectors of the economy that are directly dependent on sustainable water resources.

Contact

Sujoy Roy
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Tetra Tech, Inc.
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Reports & Presentations
Evaluating Sustainability of Projected Water Demands under Future Climate Change Scenarios, July 2010.
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Os numeros da Mudança Climática - O Preço do Carbono

No Brazilian carbon market soon /// Point Carbon

Brazil will not establish a domestic carbon market in the short term, an official said today.
Published: 27 May 2010


The creation of a cap-and-trade scheme in Brazil will require strong institutions and transparency, which will take time to develop, Thiago Mendes, a technical advisor at the country’s inter-ministerial commission on climate change, told the Carbon Expo conference in Cologne.

“To develop new institutions, registries and the internal bureaucracy is very complex and has to be verifiable at the international level,” he said.

“I would like to state that it is not for the short term,” he added, without specifying any particular timetable for a domestic emissions trading scheme.

On 6 May, Brazil’s O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported details of a report commissioned by the finance ministry into how a carbon market could be used to target greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s power, transport, agribusiness and industrial sectors.

Mendes said that, in the short term, the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM) will continue to be an asset for the country and could play a role in any future nationally appropriate mitigation actions (Namas).

Namas is a term coined at 2007’s Bali UN climate change conference and is written into last December’s Copenhagen accord.

It refers to voluntary actions that developing countries could take to reduce emissions under a future international climate change agreement.

Late last year, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a law that adopting the country’s international commitment to voluntarily cut domestic GHG emissions by between 36.1 and 38.9 per cent by 2020.
This reduction commitment was also part of Brazil’s submission at the start of the year to the Copenhagen accord, which also outlines potential areas for Nama activity in the country.
By Robin Lancaster – rla@pointcarbon.com
Cologne

Aviation Q&A: the impact of flying on the environment /// The Guardian,uk

Flying is a heated topic. But if there is no such thing as an 'eco-friendly' flight, is grounding planes the only option?

Duncan Clark guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 April 2010 12.08

Does air travel really have a big environmental footprint?

There's no way around the fact that flights are bad news for the environment. It's not just that planes are worse than most other forms of transport in terms of the impact of greenhouse gases per passenger mile. Just as important is the simple fact that flying allows us to travel a far greater number of miles than we otherwise could. Thanks to these two factors, individual trips by air can have a remarkably large carbon footprint – which helps explain why aviation has become such a heated issue in the climate change debate.


What is the total impact of flying on the climate?
As the aviation industry is usually keen to point out, planes account for only around 1.5%–2% of global CO2 emissions. However, this figure is somewhat misleading. For one thing, most flights are taken by the wealthy, so in developed countries the slice of CO2 emissions caused by flying is higher – around 6.3% in the UK, according to Department for Transport figures for 2005. Even this figure underplays aviation's environmental footprint, however, and not just because the number of flights has risen since 2005. There are at least three other reasons why 6.3% is likely to be a strong underestimate.

First, the total global warming impact of each flight is thought to be around twice as high as the CO2 emissions alone (see 'What's an aviation multiplier?', below). Second, the figures are skewed in favour of British travellers. The standard way to account for the emissions for an international flight is to allocate half to the country of departure and half to the country of arrival. But UK residents take up two-thirds of the seats on the average plane landing at or taking off from a British airport. This means the official statistics are effectively offloading the emissions of British holidaymakers and businesspeople on to the countries they're visiting. Third, the aviation industry causes emissions over and above those of the planes themselves. The processing and transportation of the aviation fuel, and the manufacture and maintenance of planes, airports and support vehicles all create extra carbon dioxide.

There's not enough data to say for sure, but it seems likely that aviation's true impact in the UK is around 13%–15% of total greenhouse gas emissions. If that still sounds fairly low, compared with the massive amounts of attention heaped on aviation by climate change campaigners, bear in mind that most people in the UK don't regularly fly. The average British resident takes a short-haul leisure flight only every two years, and a long-haul leisure flight only every five years. In other words, the air travel of a minority of regular flyers causes a substantial slice of UK emissions.


Is the UK government's aviation policy compatible with its carbon targets?
It's very hard to reconcile the British government's plans for increased aviation capacity with its plans for carbon cuts. The UK is seeking to reduce its emissions by 80% by 2050, relative to 1990 levels. At the same time it predicts a rise in the number of flights sufficient to use up more than half of the remaining 20% of emissions.


What about greener planes?
A number of technologies designed to reduce the environmental impact of flying have been researched, tested and implemented. However, compared with greener cars, where the technologies are proved and the carbon saving huge, the potential for eco-friendly flying looks rather limited. There will be some further gains in engine efficiency over the coming decades, and larger planes with more seats will allow slightly lower emissions per passenger. But there is nothing in the pipeline with the transformative potential of the electric car.

The problem is that electric motors can't produce enough power to get a plane off the ground, so the only alternative to regular kerosene-based aviation fuels are special kinds of biofuels. These aren't an ideal solution, since biofuels can be environmentally problematic in themselves, and anyhow it would take a huge chunk of the world's arable land to grow enough crops to fuel all the world's planes. (A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it might require as much as a fifth of all cropland.)


What can individuals do?
For anyone concerned about their contribution to global warming, cutting back on air travel is an obvious goal. This might mean giving up flying altogether or it might mean taking fewer flights and picking destinations that are closer to home. It's true that short flights tend to be more harmful to the climate per mile travelled than long-haul flights are (because they have more empty seats, and because taking off and landing burns more fuel than cruising) but this doesn't change the fact that the further you travel, the greater the emissions that will result.

If you do fly, you can in theory make some small difference to the carbon impact by favouring day-time flights. This at least means that any contrails (see 'What's an aviation multiplier?' below) caused by the plane will reflect some sunlight away from the Earth in addition to locking warmth into the atmosphere. Also consider limiting your luggage.

Finally, you might want to consider which airlines you use. People often assume that budget flights are somehow more eco-unfriendly than expensive ones. In fact, the opposite tends to be true. Budget airlines pack more passengers on each flight and typically have younger, more fuel-efficient fleets than longer-established airlines. Indeed, the least eco-friendly tickets of all aren't the cheapest but the most expensive. Business-class and first-class seats take up more space on the plane, thereby reducing the number of people who can fit on each flight.


Is it really greener to go by train?
As a rule, taking the train instead of the plane will substantially reduce your carbon emissions – perhaps by a factor of five to ten on a domestic trip. The benefits will be somewhat reduced as the journey gets longer. That's partly because shorter flights are more polluting per passenger mile than longer ones, but it's also because long train journeys usually necessitate sleeping onboard. Sleeper cars usually carry fewer passengers than regular carriages, so their emissions per passenger are higher. If, as is common in some countries, the train is powered by diesel rather than electricity, then the emissions will typically be higher still. Indeed, an old diesel sleeper train travelling a long distance might emit nearly as much CO2₂per passenger as a plane. Even then, the train will typically be greener once you consider the plane's non-CO2 warming effects, but the fact remains that long-haul rail is not by any means inherently eco-friendly.

Unfortunately, almost every long-distance train journey will cost you far more than flying would. Indeed, the difference in price is often so great that for some unavoidable trips it would arguably make sense to take the plane and spend the savings on something more environmentally beneficial than a train ticket, such as insulation at home.


What's an 'aviation multiplier'?
The impact of planes on the climate is complicated and not perfectly understood. The CO2 emissions are straightforward enough, but plane engines also generate a host of other "outputs", including nitrous oxide, water vapour and soot. At flying altitudes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, these outputs produce a range of climatic effects, multiplying the plane's environmental impact. For example, nitrous oxide causes the formation of ozone — a greenhouse gas that warms the local climate — but at the same time undergoes reactions which destroy methane, thereby removing another greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

Even more complicated is the impact of soot and water vapour, which together can cause contrails (vapour trails) and in cold air can lead to the formation of cirrus clouds. The science surrounding this topic is not yet rock solid, but researchers believe that contrails add to the greenhouse effect – especially at night, when their tendency to stop heat escaping from the Earth isn't offset by their tendency to reflect incoming sunlight.

Today, most experts favour an aviation "multiplier" of around two. In other words, they believe that the total impact of a plane is approximately twice as high as its CO2 emissions. The exact multiplier, however, will always depend on the individual plane, the local climate and the time of day.

• This article is adapted from The Rough Guide to Green Living by Duncan Clark

James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change /// The Guardian-UK

In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action

guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010 13.15 BST

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, according to the British scientist James Lovelock. Illustration: Murdo Macleod

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Lovelock, 90, believes the world's best hope is to invest in adaptation measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most vulnerable to sea-level rises. He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

"That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion," he said. "Or a return of the dust bowl in the mid-west. Another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report won't be enough. We'll just argue over it like now." The IPCC's 2007 report concluded that there was a 90% chance that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing global warming, but the panel has been criticised over a mistaken claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2030.

Lovelock says the events of the recent months have seen him warming to the efforts of the "good" climate sceptics: "What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic."

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism – the so-called Gaia theory – added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal. He said he had not read the original emails – "I felt reluctant to pry" – but that their reported content had left him feeling "utterly disgusted".

"Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science," he said. "I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards."

The Traits of a Highly Effective and Successful Chief Sustainability Officer /// The Green Economy Post

The Traits of a Highly Effective and Successful Chief Sustainability Officer


Verdantix, recently released a free report, that explains why the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is needed, defines the role of the CSO, and provides a profile to guide the appointment of the CSO. It also explains why organizations face a climate change and sustainability management deficit, why fixing sustainability governance gains is becoming a major priority by a growing number of firms, how the CSO can spearhead business transformation, who the ideal candidate for the chief sustainability officer role is, and what are the three priority areas of domain expertise.

by Tracey de Morsella, Green Economy Post

The independent research firm, Verdantix, recently released a free report, Who Should Be The Chief Sustainability Officer, which explains why the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is needed, defines the role of the CSO and provides a profile to guide the appointment of a CSO.

Case studies of the following companies used in the study: Allianz Insurance, British Airways, BT, CA, Carbon Systems, CH2M Hill, Chrysler, Cisco, Deloitte, The Dow Chemical Company, ECX, Fiat, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Hara, IBM, IHS, Kroger, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, Norman Broadbent, Orange, SAP, Shell, Siemens, Tesco, Toyota, Unilever, UTC The responsibilities for the CSOs in these organization are similar: develop climate change strategy, improve sustainability governance, launch climate change and sustainability products and implement policies that move the organization on a global basis towards strategic sustainable business goals. These organizations have appointed senior executives to lead their companies’ sustainability initiatives.



Organizations Face a Climate Change and Sustainability management Deficit because of:

A combination of new regulations and uncoordinated climate change and sustainability initiatives.

• Ambitious climate change and sustainability plans initiated prior to the economic meltdown, suffered when it came to implementation because many organizations had hiring freezes. This forced them to overload staffing and forego bringing in the necessary expertise.

• C-suite disinterest in sustainability risks and opportunities has created huge competitve gaps.

• Lack of attention and understanding of boards of directors regarding the long-term impact of climate change often leads to a piecemeal approach to climate changes and sustainability challenges, which over the long run will disrupt value chains.

Fixing Sustainability Governance Gains Urgency in 2010

Transforming an organization’s business model often takes decades. Creating a low carbon business model is no exception, so it is likely most companies will not achieve their target emissions goals by 2020.

Climate change and sustainable growth markets offer many organizations an opportunity to rebuild profits after a global trend of cost cutting with companies seeing untapped operational efficiencies dwindle.

Global adoption of climate change regulations has raised compliance risks, with company director being held responsible for the compliance data reported to government. Most companies are increasingly exposed to inaccurate carbon reporting risks as they are still using Microsoft Excel.

Firms with less developed climate change and sustainability strategies will become less competitive as an increasing number of organizations appoint senior executives to lead climate change and sustainability programs, as well as back them with the finding to drive competitive advantage.


The Chief Sustainability Officer Spearheads Business Transformation

Firms who address climate change with stop gap measures will find that they are not adequate to implement necessary complex sustainable business strategies. This management deficit is exacerbated by market trends which increase risks and highlight opportunities. To tackle these issue organizations need to abandon tactical approaches and switch to a strategic program. They should also appoint a senior executive who

Defines a five to 10 year sustainability strategy with the executive team, which will establish the missing interface between funding priorities and the pool of business cases circulating in functional areas like supply chain and IT.


Implements a CEO backed multi-year sustainable business transformation program.

Identifies significant revenue opportunities requiring C-Level investment, making it a strategic priority, which is necessary for the climate change and sustainability to gain traction with the organization.

Creates organization-wide sustainability data management and metrics initiatives to ensure accuracy and consistency, which ultimately enables him/her to set targets and make operational improvements.

Ensures that the firm achieves energy efficiency and carbon reduction goals

Engages with policy makers to align strategy with forthcoming policy and regulatory decisions.



Who is The Ideal Candidate For The Chief Sustainability Officer Role

The Chief Sustainability Officer requires board functional experience and a strong personal network within the firm based on at least 10 years of services.

• Business transformation experience (post-merger integration or restructuring) to management complexity.

• Ten Years of general management experience in the same firm so that he or she knows what makes key decision-makers tick and the climate change and sustainability program with existing priorities and big personalities.

• Innovation expertise to evangelize disruptive change as he or she needs to work with with product, marketing and sales leaders to design, launch and succeed with new climate change and sustainability offerings.
• Industry expertise have also prioritized three areas of domain expertise
• Corporate social responsibility for reporting and communications to stakeholders
• Understanding of energy management to deliver efficiency gains and CO2 reductions which supports initiatives to identify and report back on energy cost savings and to ensure data collection for GHG reporting and brand communications.
• Manufacturing expertise to enhance natural resource efficiency

So who is the idea candidate for the Chief Sustainability Officer Role? Download the Verdantix free document Who Should Be The Chief Sustainability Officer? to view the five key capabilities and example behaviors, as well as the CEO Checklist to Appoint The Ideal Chief Sustainability Officer

China’s CDM market: Will Shanghai say goodbye to CERs? /// Energy Risk

Author: Lianna Brinded

Source: Energy Risk

03 Mar 2010

With China widely blamed for the failure of Copenhagen, some experts believe CDM investors could now shun the country in favour of India and Brazil, or that the EU may even take action again Chinese CDM certificates, creating a two-tier market. Lianna Brinded reports

The Climate Change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) rounded off 2009 on a sour note, following a lack of collective will to determine a binding agreement. Although, none of the 140 countries signed a much-talked about agreement, the blame for the de-railing of the Copenhagen talks was put mainly at the door of China.

Some analysts believe China may suffer a backlash as a result, with Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project investors choosing to put their money into projects in countries that have a better green track record. The European Union may also take punitive measures intended to dilute China’s top slot in the CDM market in favour of other players such as India and Brazil, some analysts say. There is even talk that the EU could decide not to recognise certain Chinese CDM certificates (Certified Emissions Reductions – CERs) which would create a two-tier CDM market.

“China is no doubt the largest issuer of CERs on the market and some of its largest projects may be objected to by the EU in the future,” says Emmanuel Fages, head of market analysis at French emissions trading house Orbeo, when asked about whether the EU will be taking punitive measures on China following COP15. “Also, people may find that their portfolios are loaded with these kind of CERs and will be forced to diversify.”

Phase III (2012–2020) of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) starts in less than two years and already analysts and law firms say this could be the turning point for the Chinese CDM market.

“CERs generated in Phase II can be carried over in Phase III up to 2020,” says Fages. “However, the issue now is what type of CERs will be eligible for the carry-over. The EU may force only CERs from certain countries to be eligible for compliance use in Phase III.”

If this were to happen, there would be glut of CERs left over that could not be used in the EU ETS system. This has caused a wave of concerns that a two-tier system may be implemented, leaving China out in the cold.

People are certainly upset with what has been seen as China’s lack of commitment at the Copenhagen talks.

“China behaved appallingly throughout the duration of COP15,” says William de Lucy, director at financial instrument trading house Amplify Trading. “Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier representative at the conference, acted on two agendas. First, to limit the impact of any international agreement on China’s growth and second to make the point that they are to be respected and will not be coerced into deals under other nations agendas, especially that of the US and EU.”

If action, whether direct or indirect, were to be taken against China’s CDM market, it would certainly hurt the country and upset the existing balance in the CDM market. China is the largest supplier of CERs in the world, issuing 47.67% of all CERs, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Analysts say China will make $8 billion by 2012 from the sale of all CERs it issues.

In addition, the latest data from the China’s National Development and Reform Commission shows the Chinese government has approved 42 new CDM projects, estimated to generate more than 3.7 million CERs, with 67% purchased by Western buyers from December 24 to January 19 alone.

Some people believe that drastic action against China is very unlikely. “Excluding China as a whole would have negative effects on the markets, the cost containment functions of the mechanism and the ultimate objective of the CDM – fostering technology transfer and reducing global emissions,” says Alexander Sarac, General Counsel – Carbon Transactions Associate Director EcoSecurities. “In terms of the climate change debate, it would make little sense to ban China CDM generated CERs from the EU ETS market.”

Alternatively, analysts say that indirect ways for the EU to curb China’s hold over the CERs market is by allowing only CERs generated from new CDM projects, in the least developed countries, which would of course exclude China.

Analysts say this could be the key. While a complete ban on Chinese CERs seems very unlikely, despite market rumours, it appears that the EU could take this more indirect approach to “throttling back” CERs from the major developing economies, says Vitelli. “I can fully understand why the EU now feels that the Chinese do not deserve the rewards from the EU ETS, but I do not see a change in the rules as likely, as member states still need the CERs from China to commit to their targets,” says De Lucy.

Diluting China’s presence in the CDM markets is another focal point. According to the UNFCCC, China is still expected to provide the largest amount of CERs in the market, with an average annual forecast of CERs from registered projects by host party at nearly 60%. India comes in second with nearly 12% (see figure 1).

However analysts say that the EU may start concentrating on other participants, such as Brazil, which currently has over 6% of the market and is in third place, by developing its technology transfer and investments into CDMs, in order to cool off the Chinese stronghold.


The COP15 cop-out
China was an easy target to blame for the failure of the Copenhagen talks, but many believe the US is equally culpable. US President Barack Obama took the opportunity late last year to openly criticise China in a speech on the country’s lack of commitment. But here lies the problem.

“It is like the chicken and the egg situation. The US won’t do any more, if China doesn’t do any more and vice versa. Under the UNFCCC, the US is a developed country and China is not, so therefore they are not ‘equals’,” says Alessandro Vitelli, director at independent advisory and strategy for carbon finance group IDEAcarbon.

“But this is an advantage for China, as it does not need to participate in mandatory emissions cuts. So why would China want to agree to this if nothing is happening from the US, who is under obligation to cut emissions [due to the US being a major emitter and a developed country].”

The US is an Annex 1 country and China is a non-Annex 1 country under the UNFCCC definition. Annex 1 countries mainly refer to developed nations and carbon emission limitations are only placed on these parties. However, non-Annex 1 refers to developing countries and these nations only participate in the Kyoto Protocol by investing in CDMs or Joint Implementation (JI) projects that earn them CERs. These CERs are subsequently sold onto Annex 1 countries, in order for them to fulfil their compliance obligations.

“If we look at the large political picture, what was clear was that the EU and UN were marginalised in Copenhagen,” says Bjarne Schieldrop, head commodities analyst at SEB Bank. “The US concentrated on large emitters like China and Brazil rather than a broad UN agreement.”

While many UNFCCC-defined ‘developed countries’ continue to focus on China to agree on a deal, analysts say its economic backdrop stops it from inking an agreement.

“The living standards for the majority of China’s population are below the world average and the per capita GDP is lagging behind that of other nations,” says Armand Cao, consulting analyst and Chinese CDM specialist at research consultancy Frost & Sullivan. “So for European countries to try to compel China to bear more obligation than its capability is unreasonable. The Chinese government and people can not afford it. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in China’s position.”

Analysts say combined with this and its awareness of how the EU ETS depends largely on its CER input, China holds political clout and is ‘confident’ it will not be left out of the EU ETS system.

One analyst who did not want to be named says: “China knows it’s the largest supplier in the market. However because of this, it knows it has an inseparable position in the CER market and the EU ETS will really lose out if it excludes them.”

China’s economy expanded 10.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009 from a year earlier, picking up from 9.1% growth in the third quarter and bringing full-year growth to 8.7%. Some analysts argue its exponential growth should allow it to be considered as an Annex 1 country.

And despite the argument that China is staying within its means as a developing country, analysts say that China could prevent the EU limiting, removing or cooling down its CDM development and market stronghold and therefore CERs, by agreeing to a deal.

“If the Chinese sign a legally binding agreement, it is likely that most of their CERs will be eligible post-2012,” says Fages. “However, if there is no bilateral agreement, certain CERs and certain CDM projects may be banned.”


Investment digression
While the lack of clarity over Phase III of the EU ETS is enough to make investors wary, China, which is the cornerstone of the CER market and depends heavily on Western money to develop projects, could see the fear of uncertainty suppress developing the market further.

“The wider issuer is not just the Chinese CDM market but CDM projects in general,” says Vitelli. “It will all depend on whether investment into new projects will still be flowing and whether CERs generated from these will be used as a compliance tool.”

Project specialists and analysts say that the fate of the Chinese CDM project will be more determined by the flow of investment, rather than by fears that the EU ETS will disallow a large number of China-generated CERs.

“We are going to see a major shift. I do see investments moving away from CDM projects and being diversified elsewhere, such as in renewable and sustainable energy with no reliance on carbon credit-based revenue,” says Richard Burrett, partner at environmental investment advisors Earth Capital Partners. “Financial capital is relatively fungible and can be earmarked to wherever delivers the best return.”

Burrett sees investors looking beyond the CDM and eyeing up forestry and renewable energy sectors for a more “sustainable” return.

According to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, after years of sustained growth, 2009 saw companies cut back aggressively on spending to reduce carbon emissions, which means the offsets from CDM or JI offsets stalled last year. So to tackle this, some analysts say that China will find a way of seeking revenue elsewhere in the green sector.

“If China’s revenue from CERs is impacted in the long term, they will no doubt find others ways to broaden their emissions securities, like more development in renewable energy and finding other routes for technology transfers,” says Fages.

The future of the Chinese CDM still hangs in the balance.

If China does leave the CDM sphere, as the EU tries to promote CDM development in other countries, analysts predict project investments will flow into other countries and therefore other CDM projects, which would further dilute China’s market presence.

“If China leaves the market, other countries such as India, South Africa, will look to take up the market,” says Cao. “India is one of the biggest CER suppliers now, so it will take up the proportion where China leaves off. Without a mature market of their own, technology and adequate funding, emerging markets are a good helper for many countries developing CDMs to solve the problem of emission reduction.”

“Also, the governments of these countries encourage their companies to apply for CDM projects,” he adds.

The CER futures market price currently does not inspire much confidence in the long term.

CER future prices have taken a hit following COP15. The December 2010 CER futures contract, the most liquid on the market at the moment, traded at €11.78 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (/tCO2e) at the time of going to press, and between €10.98 and €13.27/tCO2e during the month before Copenhagen.

The United Nations (UN) agency UNEP Risoe also cut by 5% its forecast for the total volume of CERs likely to be available up until the end of 2012 for the sixth time. The UN issued 123.4 million CERs in 2009, 11% less than the 137.9 million distributed in 2008 (see figure 2).

While China may have another fight on its hands to maintain its relative freedom in the CDM and therefore CER market placement, the country may be forced into a corner for a legally binding deal under the Kyoto Protocol. Although, a two-tier system has been discussed in the markets, this seems unlikely in the end.

The uncertainty of Phase III has only exacerbated the situation, but it could be the ticket for China to diversify its revenue base in the environmental arena and see it broaden into different sectors to maintain its rapid economic growth. And if China does take a step back from its CDM participation, it could pave the way for many other countries to develop and heavily contribute to the EU ETS system.

World economic growth at odds with climate targets///The Guardian

"Estudo apresentado pelo NEF, New Economics Foundation, dias atrás aponta que a retomada economica do mundo, para sair da atual crise financeira global não é compátivel com estabelecimento do aumento de temperatura global em 2 graus centigrados para os países ricos.
Em outras palavras; caso os paises ricos assumam este patamar-limite de aumento de temperatura, não crescerão economicamente."

As the UK is expected to emerge from recession, the New Economics Foundation says endless growth is pushing the planet's biosphere 'beyond its safe limits'


Kathryn Hopkins The Guardian, Monday 25 January 2010
Economic growth is not compatible with climate change targets for rich countries, according to a new report out today.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) warns that global economic expansion is not possible if the world is to restrict the temperature rise to 2C – the EU's agreed political objective.

The NEF found that this would require unprecedented – and probably impossible – reductions in the carbon intensity of a growing economy. None of the models or variations it looked at could square the circle of global economic growth with climate safety.

Andrew Simms, policy director at the NEF, said: "Endless growth is pushing the planet's biosphere beyond its safe limits. The price is seen in compromised world food security, climatic upheaval, economic instability and threats to social welfare. We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget. There is no global, environmental central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt."

As economists and politicians expect the UK to emerge from recession tomorrow after a year and a half, Roger Bootle, Deloitte's economic adviser, warns today that fiscal policy will be a greater drag on growth than elsewhere. He expects Britain's economy to grow by just 1% in 2010, compared to growth of 1.5% in the eurozone, 3% in the US and Japan and 3.5% globally.

"The constraints on the strength of the global recovery over the next couple of years look set to bite particularly hard in the UK," he says. However, he added that after a difficult period over the next couple of years, he sees no reason why the UK cannot return to being a "relative outperformer".

Meanwhile, Ernst & Young said that despite profit warnings from British companies tailing off during 2009, UK plc still faces a "bumpy ride".

Andrew Wollaston, restructuring partner at Ernst & Young, said: "Given the depth of the slump, recovery has certainly come quicker than we might have anticipated. This rapid economic recuperation, along with previously depressed earnings forecasts, is helping companies beat expectations and keep profit warnings low. Good news for UK plc, but this is not the end of the story. Rapid recovery costs and 2010 is when we start paying. Brace yourselves for a bumpy recovery."

No global climate change treaty likely for up to a year, negotiators admit//////The Guardian-UK

cJohn Vidal in Barcelona, Allegra Stratton in London and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009 20.52 GMT


A global treaty to fight climate change will be postponed by at least six months and possibly a year or more, senior negotiators and politicians conceded today.In a day of gloomy statements, the world's key industrialised nations said they had abandoned hope of a legally binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit next month and had begun to plan only for a meeting of world leaders.

The stark statements follow weeks of pessimism and represent a significant downgrading of the summit's goal.

In London, Ed Miliband, the UK climate change secretary, became the first British politician to acknowledge publicly that Copenhagen would produce no legal climate change treaty.
Speaking in the House of Commons, he said: "The UN negotiations are moving too slowly and not going well." He went on to describe a "history of mistrust" between developed and developing nations with negotiators "stuck in entrenched positions", an impasse that prompted African nations to stage a walkout at the negotiations this week.

In Barcelona, where last-ditch negotiations are taking place, it became clear today the best hope for Copenhagen is a "politically binding" agreement, which rich countries hope will have all the key elements of the final deal, including specific targets and timetables for greenhouse gas emissions cuts and money for poor countries to cope with climate change.

A British government official said: "It would be substantive. It would set timelines, and provide the figures by which rich countries would reduce emissions, as well as the money that would be made available to developing countries to adapt to climate change."

But, she said, a legally binding agreement "could take six months, up to a year, but we would want it to be [signed] as soon as possible."

Sources said a meeting in Mexico in December 2010 would be more likely to see the legal treaty sealed.

The news of the delay was met with resignation by developing countries and NGOs. "Politically binding agreements are worth very little," said Lumumba Di-Aping, chair of the G77 group of developing countries. "Tell me of any politician who delivers a politically binding agreement."

The delay was said to be caused by a combination of time running out in the increasingly rancorous UN negotiations and the inability of the US – the world's biggest cumulative emitter – to commit to specific targets and timetables by passing a domestic law.

The Obama administration made clear on Wednesday it thought a legal treaty was impossible in Copenhagen. Today it further inflamed opposition to its Senate bill when Barbara Boxer, chairman of the environment committee, defied a Republican boycott to vote through a sweeping plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20% over 2005 levels by 2020.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, said on Tuesday a delay of a year would be too long, while developing countries were dismayed tonight that they had not been formally told of the delay. "We cannot afford delaying tactics in any way. It's a matter of life and death," said Makase Nyaphisi, the Lesothan ambassador speaking on behalf of the UN's least developed group of 49 countries.

Speaking in Barcelona, Artur Runge-Metzger, the European commission's chief negotiator, said: "It is a Catch-22 situation. People are waiting for each other so it is difficult to blame anyone. [But] the US position is significant. Clearly the US has been slowing things down."

Both Miliband and the prime minister, Gordon Brown, are to attend Copenhagen, with Brown calling it the last chance to prevent "catastrophic" climate change.

Brown, President Lula of Brazil, President Sarkozy of France and other heads of state have already said they will go.
It is now more likely that President Obama will go because he will not be forced to sign a legally binding agreement which the US Senate could reject.

Miliband's comments were the first public reappraisal of the British position since officials began to shift the line following downbeat comments last week from the Copenhagen host, Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

Government sources said it had become increasingly obvious amid slow negotiations that a legally binding treaty in December was unlikely.

But one insisted that political commitments would move to legal ones, pointing out that the Kyoto protocol followed the same course from political to legal agreement. "I don't think we are downbeat about this," said one.

They also said pledges made at Copenhagen would be as difficult to escape as if they were legally binding, because nations would have made their commitments at the very public forum of a UN meeting.

The world's future is being decided this weekend///The Guardian

by Nicholas Stern The Observer, Sunday 18 October 2009

We must agree to halt deforestation and curtail air travel now if the Copenhagen summit is to succeed

Energy and environment ministers from the world's major economies are meeting in London today to try to accelerate crucial negotiations over an international treaty on climate change.

Strong progress has been made in the past few weeks, with Japan, for example, announcing that it will cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 25% by 2020 relative to levels in 1990.

read the complete article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/oct/18/nicholas-stern-carbon-emission

Bangkok climate talks end in recrimination//The Guardian

Bitter delegates say no agreement on money or emissions cuts means a deal at Copenhagen will be weak at best.

John Vidal in Bangkok

Global climate change talks came to an end in Bangkok today in an atmosphere of distrust and recrimination, with the rift between rich and poor countries seemingly wider than ever. After two weeks of negotiations there have been no breakthroughs on big issues such as money or emissions cuts.


With just five days of negotiating time now left before the concluding talks in Copenhagen in December, delegates said it appeared a weak deal was the most likely outcome, and no deal at all was a possibility.


However, President Obama's expected visit to Oslo to receive the Nobel peace prize in the middle of the climate talks raised hopes that he would make the short journey to Copenhagen to galvanise governments.


"World leadership is now vital if the talks are not to fail completely. It is inconceivable that Obama could now ignore the climate change talks," said one diplomat.


The citation for the prize specifically mentions the president "now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting".


However, China, India, Brazil and other major developing countries lined up with environment and development groups to condemn both the US and EU for demanding a brand-new climate agreement.


This would bring the US aboard an agreement but in the eyes of most countries would mean the effective end of the Kyoto protocol and possibly allow countries to set their own targets and timetables for cuts.


"It's irresponsible to even contemplate the idea of discarding the Kyoto protocol. It's the lifeblood of any future agreement. It is the only legally binding agreement that gives the certainty of moving rapidly to addressing the climate concerns of billions of people," said said Di-Aping Lumumba, Sudanese chair of the G77, a group of 130 developing countries.


"Developed countries have a massive leadership deficit. It's now up to their leaders to intervene and give a direction to the negotiations rather than waste everyone's time," he said.


Shyam Saran, Indian special envoy on climate change, said: "The EU must change its position. There have been inadmissible attempts to abandon the Kyoto protocol. This would mean rewriting the key principles. This is not what we agreed by consensus."


But the EU and UN brushed off concerns. "We are not killing Kyoto," said Anders Turesson, chair of the EU working group in the negotiations. "We want to preserve the contents [of the protocol]. The only way to do that is to find a new home for it in a new single legal instrument."


"This is trying to build something bigger and better than Kyoto. The fear is that there would be a race to the bottom. It is the opposite," he said.


Yvo de Boer, executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted there were now "serious" problems. "The spirit remains constructive and we have seen advances in Bangkok, but there is a strong fear that there is an attempt to kill the Kyoto protocol. That is causing great dissatisfaction," he said.


Environment and development groups accused the EU and US of holding poor countries to ransom. "The rift between rich and poor has intensified because rich countries have not put serious money on the table to help poor countries adapt to escalating impacts of climate change," said Oxfam senior climate adviser Antonio Hill. "The US has been silent on the scale of finance it will commit to."


"Both the US and the EU have tried to shift the burden on to developing countries, arguing that they should even pay towards the costs of adapting to climate change despite their minimal contribution to the problem," said Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change. The only bright spot in the negotiations was Norway's decision to increase its emissions reduction target to 40% on 1990 levels by 2020, he said.


"The EU has only increased developing country mistrust and the US is trying to impose its own domestic limitations on the world. It's time for President Obama to be the climate leader he says he is," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace International climate policy adviser.

Link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/09/bangkok-climate-talks-end

HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE//The Lancet

Expectations are running high for the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December. But will we get the global commitment for radical cuts in CO2 emissions that the world so urgently needs? The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.1 There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce CO2 emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050,2 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2°C, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper is also widely accepted after the Stern report in 2006.3 The election of President Barack Obama has shifted US policy from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.

So the chances of success should be good. But the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem: why should the poor world pay to put it right? Can the rich world do enough, through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor, to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate does not help, giving rich world sceptics arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global CO2 emissions.

These arguments need to be addressed head on. Climate change is global. Emissions know no frontiers. And the necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity. Coal-fired power stations pollute the atmosphere and worsen health. So does the internal combustion engine. Deforestation destroys biodiversity. Saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets. Drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agricultural technology is strong.4 Climate change makes it unanswerable.

The threat to health is especially evident in the poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent report by The Lancet and the University College London Institute for Global Health Commission shows.4 These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, make them far more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan. And the implications for the health of local populations are acute—on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies, on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse, and on malnutrition where food is scarce.5 And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.6

Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands.7 Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences, and the poorer the chances of meeting the MDGs.
Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what is good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.4 Opportunity, surely, not cost.

This is an opportunity too, to advance health equity—increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon-rich and carbon-poor within and between countries. The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care.8 It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and on the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.

A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part. It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right—the achievement of the MDGs in poor countries and a healthier, more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.9