EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • Australia’s bad faith at climate negotiations triggers Africa walkout

    Australia’s bad faith at climate negotiations triggers Africa walkout

    Launceston, Thursday 5 November 2009

    Kevin Rudd has been singled out by a leading African climate negotiator
    as a leader failing to live up to his political promise as a meeting at
    global climate negotiations chaired by Australian negotiators ended with
    African nations walking out in protest.

    The 55 African nations, supported by all other developing nation
    negotiating blocs (G77 plus China, the Alliance of Small Island States
    (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries group), are calling for
    developed nations to commit to binding targets in the order of 40% below
    1990 levels by 2020 before negotiations continue on other, less critical
    issues.

    “Kevin Rudd cannot claim to be a ‘friend of the chair’ at the global
    climate negotiations while his woeful targets are undermining meaningful
    action,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne said.

    “African representatives are rightly pointing out that their people are
    dying now because of the historic and current behaviour of rich
    countries like Australia.

    “Kevin Rudd’s woeful 5% target and the unreasonable conditions on his
    still too weak 25% maximum offer are part of the problem.

    “The Greens are the only group in Australia’s parliament whose
    commitment to science-based climate action would actually deliver an
    agreement in Copenhagen.”

    Australian negotiators were chairing a ‘trust building’ meeting on
    behalf of the ‘Umbrella Group’, including the USA, Canada and others.
    However, African negotiators led a walkout when it became clear that
    meaningful emissions reduction targets would not be on the table.

    Sudanese delegate and lead negotiator for the G77 plus China, Lumumba
    Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, said in his press conference: ‘If there is
    anything that you know about politics and political manifestos is that
    they are worth very little. Tell me of any politician who delivered on
    his political manifesto. Is it Gordon Brown? Is it Kevin Rudd?’

    “The African nations should be applauded for their courage in standing
    up for what is necessary in the face of climate crisis and their move
    has been vindicated by the decision to focus the majority of remaining
    negotiations in Barcelona on targets,” Senator Milne said.

    “While some such as the Climate Institute in Australia have been keen to
    suggest that financing mechanisms from rich to poor countries is the key
    to negotiations, it is becoming clear that, while financing is vital,
    the targets are the primary and critical piece of the puzzle.

    “Focussing on financing instead of targets is only giving cover to the
    Rudd Government and others who are trying to portray themselves as
    leading on climate change while their actions show they are dragging
    badly.

    “Jeffrey Sachs has added his voice to the growing chorus of global
    experts including Lord Nicholas Stern and Kofi Annan who say that it
    would be better not to conclude negotiations this year than to risk a
    political agreement which will lock in failure on the climate crisis.

    “A failure to agree this year is far better than an agreement to fail.”

    Tim Hollo
    Media Adviser
    Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate
    Change Spokesperson
    Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437
    587 562
    http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au
    <http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

    PROTECTING THE CLIMATE IS A JOB FOR EVERYONE

  • Copenhagen is an opportunity for ethics to trump economics

     

     

    US Senators on both sides of the aisle are doing all they can to block action with talk of danger to jobs and the US economy. Countries in eastern Europe say that contributing too much will wreck their fragile economies, and wealthier westerners are unwilling to fix numbers, hoping to translate silence into a stronger bargaining position with the US and Japan. No one wants to pay too much, and everyone wants someone else to pay more. This is only rational, isn’t it, just part of getting a fair deal for all? It depends on how one counts the cost of climate change.

     

    Some insist that the options on the table are simply too expensive. No deal is better than a deal which costs us too much. Money is the determining factor – not warnings about a grim future or something as wishy-washy as concern for the poor. As idiotic as this sounds, it nevertheless gets you where you live, right in the wallet, and many people actually fall for it. Recall Bush’s excuse for pulling the US out of Kyoto, the world’s first failed opportunity for a climate deal: “complying with those mandates would have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers.” He does at least speak plainly. Relieved of some of the fanfare, the climate talks are in danger of stalling because of thoughts not too distant from plain words like these. Serious action on climate change will damage our current wealth, so we won’t do it.

     

    There is something fundamentally vicious about putting money at the heart of the negotiations. No doubt matters are excruciatingly complex, and reasonable people can argue about how best to spend money on climate change and the world’s other ills, but that’s not what’s happening. We are in danger of failing to act simply because some maintain that the cost of action is too high. Think about the relevant causes and effects of climate change: our easy lives of high-energy consumption and the damage we are doing to the planet. Consider the human beings who will suffer because of our easy lives. Avoiding meaningful action on climate change just because it might be too expensive is on a moral par with harming other people for money. Call it what it is: keeping money in exchange for the suffering of others.

     

    Ethics sometimes has to trump economics. If you have a moral obligation to take action, you don’t get out of it with talk of expense. Would you forgive someone for avoiding a moral duty because he thought it might cost him too much? He’d rather not abandon plans for a festive weekend in Spain, so those child care payments will have to wait. No judge would let a father get away with that. Sometimes we have to tighten our belts and do the right thing, even if it costs us more than we’d like.

     

    The west has a long history of industrialisation, and it has done the most damage to our world. Therefore the west has the largest moral obligation to take action. No doubt all countries, even those industrialising much later, have moral responsibilities too, but the point is that our obligations click in no matter what the rest of the world does, no matter what other countries pay. We have to pay for our fair share of the damage, not fight hard for the cheapest way out.

     

    Some think that talking about moral obligations just makes us feel guilty, and we’ve had enough of that. Others collapse in the face of complexity, groaning that we can’t do enough in the short time that we have. Don’t believe a word of it. Human beings can move mountains in an instant when they see that something is wrong – the obvious examples are the right ones to think about. If our representatives have forgotten the moral demand for action on climate change, it’s up to the rest of us to do something – maybe remind them that they’ve mistaken money for the things which really matter.

     

    • James Garvey is secretary of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and author of The Ethics of Climate Change

  • A melted arctic: gold mine or honey trap ?

    A melted Arctic: gold mine or honey trap?

    Andrew Marszal

    3rd November, 2009

    As the melting Arctic ice cap opens a new ocean to the world, governments and private speculators are rushing to cash in on lucrative resource deposits and shipping lanes. But they may find these virgin waters a dangerous place to do business…

    When the U.N. Conference on Climate Change convenes in Copenhagen next month, one inconvenient truth little discussed will be the benefits Arctic nations – including the Danish hosts – stand to gain from global warming.

    It has become generally accepted that, as ice starts to cover less and less of the north pole each year, an emergent new ocean will offer prospects of untold mineral resources and unparalleled access to distant markets via new, shorter shipping routes.

    Numerous recent reports have made startling predictions regarding the rate of this ice break-up. Last month, introducing the results of the Catlin Arctic Survey, Professor Wadhams of the University of Cambridge declared a new consensus that ‘the summer ice will disappear within twenty to thirty years’, with most of that melt occurring in the next ten.

    He went on to say, ‘That means you’ll be able to treat the Arctic as if it were essentially an open sea in the summer and have transport across the Arctic Ocean’.

    A brave – or foolish – new world?

    Though the ice certainly is thinning and receding rapidly, politicians…

     

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  • Obama to push harder for climate change deal at Copenhagen

    “All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with (a) potential ecological disaster,” Mr Obama said after talks with European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, who holds the EU presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

    Ms Merkel compared the battle against climate change to the struggle to bring down the Berlin Wall two decades ago this week.

    She also backed Western calls for emerging nations to do more. “I’m convinced that once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in,” she said.

    But even as she and Mr Obama – praised by Mr Barroso for having “changed the climate on climate negotiations” – stressed the need for a more concerted effort to solidify a framework agreement at Copenhagen, US Republicans shunned a meeting on an Obama-backed bill to set the first US requirements on curbing carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

    Asked what impact Ms Merkel’s speech might have on the US debate, Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the committee looking at the climate legislation, said: “None whatsoever.”

    Democrat Ben Nelson was similarly blunt, answering the same question with a simple “no”.

    Earlier, Mr Barroso said he was “worried by the lack of progress in negotiations” ahead of the December 7-18 climate meeting, and acknowledged a binding pact would not be ready by then.

    The summit in the Danish capital has been set up to seal a treaty to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations to cut carbon emissions expire in 2012.

    “Of course we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type, by Copenhagen,” Mr Barroso said. “This is obvious. There is no time for that.”

    Mr Barroso said a meeting next year in Mexico could finalise a treaty but said Copenhagen needed to come up with the framework of the deal, and that the world’s largest economy in particular should take a lead role.

    “What we are asking is the United States to show leadership in this, such an important issue,” Mr Barroso said.

    He warned against a protracted process of negotiations akin to the stalled Doha round of global trade liberalisation talks.

    “I think it is important not to give up before, because if we start … now to speak about Plan B in Copenhagen we’ll probably end in Plan F for failure.”

    “Let’s not do to Copenhagen what has been happening with trade in Doha, where systematically every year we are postponing.”

    Sweden’s Mr Reinfeldt said the United States should at least agree on targets for cutting emissions and on financing for developing nations.

    “I said that we need to have a clear commitment on targets and on financing coming from the United States,” Mr Reinfeldt said after talks with key senators.

    “We can understand if it’s not possible to have everything in place exactly now. But we want a full agreement in Copenhagen and we are able to work through details in the months that come after Copenhagen,” he said.

    He spoke as pre-summit negotiations were under way in Barcelona, Spain, where divisions again ran deep between key developed nations and emerging economies.

    An EU summit last week agreed that developing nations will need 100 billion euros per year by 2020 to tackle climate change, but failed to nail down how much it would give.

    The US role in Copenhagen is overshadowed by the debate in Congress.

    The House of Representatives in June narrowly passed the plan to curb carbon emissions but the bill – already criticised by other developed nations as not ambitious enough – is bogged down in the Senate.

    Some Republicans, like former president George W. Bush, resist action on climate change as too costly to the economy and demand further commitments by emerging nations. 

  • US puts climate debate on hold for five weeks despite plea by Merkel

     

    The delay, which would push a Senate vote on a climate change bill into next year, frustrates a last-minute push by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to get America to commit itself at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions before the Copenhagen meeting. World leaders – and US officials – have repeatedly said US legislation is crucial to a deal on global warming.

    Merkel used a historic address to a joint session of Congress today to urge America to act on climate change, stating that success at Copenhagen rested on the willingness of all countries to accept binding reductions in carbon emissions.

    The first German leader to ever address both houses of Congress, Merkel said a deal was comparable in importance to the tearing down of the Berlin wall 20 years ago. “We need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations,” she said to loud applause from Democrats. Republicans largely sat in silence. “There is no doubt about it. In December, the world will look to us: the Europeans and the Americans. I am convinced once we … show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements we will also be able to persuade China and India.”

    Merkel also raised her concerns with Barack Obama in a visit to the White House earlier today. He told reporters: “Chancellor Merkel has been an extraordinary leader on the issue of climate change. And the US, Germany, and countries around the world are all beginning to recognise why it is so important that we work in common to stem the potential catastrophe that could result if we see global warming continuing unabated.”

    Ban is also pressing the Senate to act before Copenhagen. Speaking in London, he said he would next week meet all the US senators involved in the deliberations over the energy and climate bill. Agreement on that bill is seen as vital: without it, the US team in Copenhagen will have little domestic mandate to agree a deal. The announcement of the personal intervention of the UN secretary general is a clear sign of the importance of the matter.

    However, the appeals for urgent action were overridden by political concerns in the Senate, which formally began debate on a proposed climate change law last week. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill in June. But the Senate version has been repeatedly delayed, first by the battle over healthcare reform and now by Republican demands for more time to study the proposals.

    In a move to stem the Republican protest, and quieten Democrat critics, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to spend five weeks reviewing the potential costs of the bill. Opponents of the proposal argue the target of a 20% cut in emissions on 2005 levels by 2020 is overly ambitious, and will be too costly for US businesses and families.

    The five-week delay would all but rule out passage of a bill before the Copenhagen meeting begins on 7 December.

    The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, acknowledged progress before the Copenhagen meeting was likely to be limited: “Of course we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type, by Copenhagen,” he told reporters today, before meeting Obama. “There is no time for that.”

    Ban also pressed another key component to a deal: climate finance. He said countries would have to increase the $100bn (£61bn) a year on offer for developing countries to deal with climate change. “Financial support is the key,” said Ban. “I think this can be a good start, which needs to be scaled up as we go on.”

    Development groups have estimated the money needed at up to $400bn a year. But the amount was uncertain, Ban said: “We have to see how measures are effective. As time goes by we may need to change arrangements.”

    Ban’s senior climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, added: “The needs are obviously much larger over time and [the funding] will need to be scaled up.”Developing countries are demanding significant new funding at the climate negotiations, which are continuing this week in Barcelona, and deep cuts in rich countries’ emissions in exchange for pledges to curb their own emissions. Problems in the talks erupted in public today with African nations boycotting meetings, forcing their cancellation. They want rich nations to promise much bigger cuts in their emissions than they have so far, arguing that African countries will suffer most from global warming, yet are least responsible.

  • We only have months, not years, to save civilisation from climate change

     

     

    And second, since it takes years to negotiate and ratify these agreements, we may simply run out of time. This is not to say that we should not participate in the negotiations and work hard to get the best possible result. But we should not rely on these agreements to save civilisation.

     

    Saving civilisation is going to require an enormous effort to cut carbon emissions. The good news is that we can do this with current technologies, which I detail in my book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

     

    Plan B aims to stabilise climate, stabilise population, eradicate poverty, and restore the economy’s natural support systems. It prescribes a worldwide cut in net carbon emissions of 80% by 2020, thus keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations from exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm) in an attempt to hold temperature rise to a minimum. The eventual plan would be to return concentrations to 350 ppm, as agreed by the top US climate scientist at Nasa, James Hansen, and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC.

     

    In setting this goal we did not ask what would be politically popular, but rather what it would take to have a decent shot at saving the Greenland ice sheet and at least the larger glaciers in the mountains of Asia. By default, this is a question of food security for us all.

     

    Fortunately for us, renewable energy is expanding at a rate and on a scale that we could not have imagined even a year ago. In the United States, a powerful grassroots movement opposing new coal-fired power plants has led to a de facto moratorium on their construction. This movement was not directly concerned with international negotiations. At no point did the leaders of this movement say that they wanted to ban new coal-fired power plants only if Europe does, if China does, or if the rest of the world does. They moved ahead unilaterally knowing that if the United States does not quickly cut carbon emissions, the world will be in trouble.

     

    For clean and abundant wind power, the US state of Texas (long the country’s leading oil producer) now has 8,000MW of wind generating capacity in operation, 1,000MW under construction, and a huge amount in development that together will give it more than 50,000MWof wind generating capacity (think 50 coal-fired power plants). This will more than satisfy the residential needs of the state’s 24 million people.

     

    And though many are quick to point a finger at China for building a new coal-fired power plant every week or so, it is working on six wind farm mega-complexes with a total generating capacity of 105,000 megawatts. This is in addition to the many average-sized wind farms already in operation and under construction.

     

    Solar is now the fastest growing source of energy. A consortium of European corporations and investment banks has announced a proposal to develop a massive amount of solar thermal generating capacity in north Africa, much of it for export to Europe. In total, it could economically supply half of Europe’s electricity.

     

    We could cite many more examples. The main point is that the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is moving much faster than most people realise, and it can be accelerated.

     

    The challenge is how to do it quickly. The answer is a wartime mobilisation, not unlike the US effort on the country’s entry into the second world war, when it restructured its industrial economy not in a matter of decades or years, but in a matter of months. We don’t know exactly how much time remains for such an effort, but we do know that time is running out. Nature is the timekeeper but we cannot see the clock.

    • Lester R Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.