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  • Economics hits commitment to climate change

    President-elect Barack Obama and the European Union have vowed to stick to commitments to cap emissions of carbon dioxide and invest in new green technologies, arguing that government action could stimulate the economy and create new jobs in producing sustainable energy.

    But as the United Nations prepares to gather the world’s environment ministers in Poznan, Poland, next week to try to agree on a new treaty to reduce emissions, both the political will and the economic underpinnings for a much more assertive strategy appear shakier than they did even a few weeks ago.

    “Yes things have changed,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a phone interview. He is organizing the meeting in Poland.

    “European industry is saying we can’t deal with financial crisis and reduce emissions at the same time,” he said. “Heads of government have other things on their minds.”

    The economic decline also could complicate the political calculus of limiting emissions in developing countries, especially China.

    China overtook the United States as the largest producer of greenhouse gases in 2007. But the surge in heavy industry there that produced a sharp increase in its emissions already has given signs of turning into a bust.

    Some experts argue that China’s emissions — and the pressing need to limit them — may recede until economic conditions improve.

    No government has officially repudiated climate goals; in Bali last year, all the nations of the world promised to pursue an emissions control treaty. Mr. de Boer said he remained optimistic that major powers would ultimately stick to pledges to reduce emissions.

    “I don’t think anyone will show the stupidity to focus on the short term and ignore the long-term issue because these decisions will be with us for 30 years,” he said.

    Even so, there are signs of considerable backpedaling in at least near-term commitments to invest in green technology and alternative energy.

    Italy’s environment minister, Stefania Prestigiacomo, said last month that “profound changes” were needed in the European Union climate package because of the global economic crisis. Coal-based economies like Poland’s have expressed similar worries.

    Theolia, one of France’s largest alternative energy companies, has canceled plans for a subsidiary devoted to emerging markets, and pulled back on its goals of how much energy it could produce by 2009.

    In the United States, T. Boone Pickens, the Oklahoma oil tycoon who leased hundreds of thousands of acres in West Texas for a giant wind farm, has now delayed the project. He told reporters at a recent news conference that fossil fuel prices would have to rise again before it was economically viable.

    Barbara Helfferich, the European Commission spokeswoman on the environment, said, “Investing in reducing emission is more difficult to do in times of economic downturn than when you have money to spend.”

    Mr. Obama, Mr. de Boer and Stavros Dimas, the European Union environment commissioner, all argue that by promoting new green jobs, even with heavy government subsidies, they could create an engine of economic growth that would help countries pull themselves out of the recession.

    Mr. Obama, without releasing specifics of his proposed economic stimulus package, called on the country to build “wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

    The European Commission says it is planning to stay its course toward lower emissions — a 20-percent reduction by 2020 — and in so doing hopes to have a “first mover advantage” in terms of job creation, renewable sources and energy innovation once the global economy rebounds.

    “I know it sounds counterintuitive, but our argument is that because there is an economic turndown, it is just the time to tackle the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy,” Ms. Helfferich said.

    Recessions can be good or bad for achieving environmental goals, and it remains uncertain how this one will play out.

    In the short term, economic declines tend to reduce emissions, because industrial production slows down. Retrenchment will certainly curb fast-growing emissions from China, for example, where double-digit economic growth has been based partly on production from the most polluting industries, such as steel, cement and aluminum. But such reductions are inevitably temporary, rebounding when the economy picks up.

    Against this, the current economic slump could have serious long-term environmental consequences, because it may reduce investment in greener production technologies without fundamentally changing the longer-term emissions picture. With so many renewable energy projects and programs in their nascent stages, their success is easily undercut by lack of credit or financing.

    Centrica, a British company that has been building wind farms to meet its target of having 15 percent of that country’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020, has put three planned offshore wind farms on hold, in part because of rising credit costs. Without projects like these it is unclear if Britain’s ambitious emissions reductions target can be met.

    At the same time, the price of buying permits to emit carbon dioxide in Europe — a system the European Union uses to discourage companies from polluting — have fallen by half compared with the price a year ago, largely because of slower growth.

    Wind costs more than $2.5 billion per gigawatt to build, compared with $600 million for gas. Carbon permits and subsidies can narrow that gap, but the current low prices mean that it is cheaper to burn coal, even after paying penalties for the carbon dioxide emissions.

    The United Nations says that 40 percent of the world’s power generating capacity has to be replaced in the next 5 to 10 years. Six months ago, high oil prices, easy credit and political pressure led many governments to promote biofuels, wind farms and nuclear projects and phase out fossil fuel plants. But the logic of spending more on such plants has at least partly evaporated.

    “If because of the current economic scenario, you choose cheap and dirty, we’ll be in big trouble,” Mr. de Boer said.

    Paradoxically, it may not look that way, at least at first. One big short-term effect of the economic situation is likely to be a reduction of emissions from the developing world. In the decade after the Eastern bloc countries gained independence in 1989, pollution dropped precipitously, as Soviet-era heavy industry shut down.

    Emissions dropped sharply between 1990 and 2000, only to start rebounding in the boom years after 2000. By 2006, for example, emissions dropped by 1 percent in industrialized countries (mostly those in Western Europe) that report their emissions to the United Nations. At the same time, they increased by 3 percent in the so called “economies in transition,” including the former Soviet bloc states of Eastern Europe.

    In the current global recession China could follow a similar trajectory.

    The number of cement plants in China rose to 7,000 from 3,000 from the year 2002 to 2007, as China built new cities at a record pace. That catapulted China to top of the list of global emitters, more than a decade earlier than scientists had anticipated just a few years before.

    Yet straight-line projections about China’s emissions are now again in question, said Trevor Houser, a visiting fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

    “Demand for goods like steel, cement and aluminum is contracting severely, so the energy used to produce them is also severely down,” he said.

    Last month, he said, China’s energy use fell by 4 percent compared with the same month in 2007. A year ago, use was growing at an annual rate of 15 percent.

    That may ultimately be a good thing for the Chinese economy as well as the environment, because heavy industry produces heavy emissions, but very few jobs.

    Indeed, the slowdown may provide an opportunity for China, too, to reinvent itself with investment in a greener economy. “Slower energy demand provides an opportunity to move away from coal,” he said.

    Still, such benefits may be more apparent to environmentalists than to factory owners and finance ministers trying to meet budgets and make profits. The European Union estimates that it will cost Italian industry 13 billion euros, about $16.7 billion, to reduce emissions. Italy puts the cost up to 27 billion euros, which is says it cannot afford.

    “Transitions are expensive, but this one will help avoid the ups and downs we’ve recently seen,” Ms. Helfferich said. “This is a short-term bitter apple to create new sectors that are conducive to fighting climate change and jobs as well.”

  • Recession hits US green energy

    Second, a byproduct of this recession is the freeze of capital for investment, lending, mortgages and consumer credit. This negatively impacts access for investments in clean energy industry expansion as well as electric generation projects and home buying, second mortgages and renovation loans.

    Third, as energy demand drops, electric utilities are beginning to shelve planned electric generation projects. As economic growth slows, so does need for extra electric generation, peak power and electricity grid upgrades.

    Fourth, while both the Investment Tax Credits for energy efficiency and renewable energy and the Production Tax Credits for utility-scale renewables are important — their value is substantially diminished because less businesses have a large tax liability at year end in this harsh recession. The renewable trade groups are rightly asking for a policy change to have these newly won tax extensions be refundable or transferable so as to have more usefulness in this harsher environment.

    And finally, the clean energy industries are predominantly small businesses, and the expected large and prolonged dip in sales and installation may undercut their ability to supply due to problems with cash flow and carrying costs of inventorying equipment and components. Stories are beginning to proliferate in the national media, such as a recent front page story in the November 25, 2008 New York Times, “Economic Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy” by Elisabeth Rosenthal.

    Now this recent set of financial challenges as outlined above, make the articulated national priorities of President-elect Obama even harder to achieve. To meet large-scale reductions in energy imports (petroleum, natural gas, uranium), reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (and those mandated under the Clean Air Act such as SO, NOx, and particulates) and create millions of green jobs, this country needs a rapid influx of high value energy efficiency and renewable energy — everywhere and in every market sector.

    There are two sets of policy tools that will keep the green industries afloat during this extremely hard economic time.

    First, there are a host of already-funded capital programs throughout the federal (and state) government that can be directed to green industries and their consumers. These programs include the Department of Agricultures Rural Utility Service, Department of Energy Loan Guarantee and State Grants programs, EPA’s State Grants programs, Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure grants to States, Small Business Administration loan programs, and IRS’s Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBS) that in aggregate are billions of dollars of rather flexible capital flow.

    Second, under a series of Executive Orders signed by a series of U.S. Presidents from both political parties — all have set goals for federal purchasing. The past two energy bills (EPACT05 and EISA 07) have also mandated purchasing goals by Congress. The U.S. government is the largest user of energy in the world and the largest owner of buildings in the world. For instance, the Department of Defense has 316,238 buildings and another 181,591 structures. Currently because of slow processing, nearly US $2 billion worth of energy renovations within the federal sector is slowly moving through the procurement pipeline.

    Many of us have been advising federal procurement managers, Members of Congress and the Obama Transition Team staff to not only accelerate the federal procurement pipeline now, but to add to it for the next three years and leverage procurements regionally with state and local governments. Such an action could create a rather large and sustained market pull for the clean energy industries.

    This multi-year sustained government procurement effort would be multi-technology including materials, energy systems, vehicle fleets and green power purchases. Not only would this sustain the clean energy industries, it would keep them vibrant all across the United States. And of course, US taxpayers pay the energy bills for buildings and facilities that can last a century — virtually every improvement in buildings, vehicles or energy inputs — will reduce taxpayer supports of the energy costs for these government uses.

    We don’t want this short term economic chaos to undermine the survival of the breadth of the clean energy industries across the U.S., undermine goals to cut energy imports and emissions and undermine the initiative by our new President to fundamentally shift our economy to green jobs.

    To reorient existing federal capital (loan, guarantee and bond programs) and existing procurement programs would requite a totally new approach by the Obama Administration. New procurement tools would need to be fashioned not only to accelerate procurements but aggregate procurements and leverage them regionally in concert with other state and local government procurement programs.

    This would require White House coordination with mandatory participation by OMB, GSA, DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program, and even DOD to insure these procurement and coordination tools could be realized. This is a tall order, because federal procurement specialists and lawyers like their own turf and autonomy. And while some of these existing rules and bureaucracies insure good projects and prevent fraud, many of them increase costs, increase delays and reduce modularity and standardization goals of these emerging technologies and applications — a long standing problem within the marketplace.

    The energy efficiency and renewable energy industries need to clearly plot their near term future so as not to be a casualty of the global economic recession. Leveraged government procurement programs along with changes in utilization of federal tax credits (so as to have refundability and transferability) seem to be the critically appropriate measures. This is surely the time to express our industries’ needs before the new Administration and Congress take office. The clock is ticking.

  • Capturing the ocean’s energy

    These inventors would disappear into the mists of history, and fossil fuel would instead provide an industrializing world with almost all its energy for the next two centuries. But Girard et fils were onto something, say a growing number of modern-day inventors, engineers, and researchers. The heave of waves and the tug of tides, they say, are about to begin playing a significant role in the world’s energy future.

    In the first commercial-scale signal of that, last October a trio of articulated, cylinder-shaped electricity generators began undulating in the waves off the coast of Portugal. The devices look like mechanical sea snakes. (In fact, their manufacturer, Scotland’s Pelamis Wave Power Ltd., takes its name from a mythical ancient Greek sea serpent.) Each Pelamis device consists of four independently hinged segments. The segments capture wave energy like the handle of an old fashioned water pump captures the energy of a human arm: as waves rock the segments to and fro, they pump a hydraulic fluid (biodegradable, in case of spills) powerfully through a turbine, spinning it to generate up to 750,000 watts of electricity per unit. Assuming the devices continue to perform well, Portuguese utility Energis expects to soon purchase another 28 more of the generators.

    The completed “wave farm” would feed its collective power onto a single high voltage sea-floor cable, adding to the Portuguese grid about 21 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power about 15,000 homes.

    In a world where a single major coal or nuclear plant can produce more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, it’s a modest start. But from New York’s East River to the offshore waters of South Korea, a host of other projects are in earlier stages of testing. Some, like Pelamis, rely on the motion of waves. Others operate like underwater windmills, tapping the power of the tides.

    Ocean-powered technologies are in their infancy, still technologically well behind such energy alternatives as wind and solar. Necessarily designed to operate in an inherently harsh environment, the technologies remain largely unproven and — unless subsidized by governments — expensive. (Portugal is heavily subsidizing the Pelamis project, with an eye to becoming a major European exporter of clean green power in the future.) Little is known about the effects that large wave or tide farms might have on marine ecosystems in general.

    Despite the uncertainties, however, proponents say the potential advantages are too striking to ignore. Eight hundred times denser than air, moving water packs a huge energy wallop. Like solar and wind, power from moving seas is free and clean. But sea power is more predictable than either wind or solar. Waves begin forming thousands of miles from coastlines and days in advance; tides rise and fall as dependably as the cycles of the moon. That predictability makes it easier to match supply with demand.

    Roger Bedard, who leads ocean energy research at the U.S. utility-funded Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, says there’s plenty of reason for optimism about the future of what he calls “hydrodynamic” power. Within a decade, he says, the U.S. could realistically meet as much as 10 percent of its electricity needs from hydrodynamic power. As a point of reference, that’s about half of the electricity the U.S. produces with nuclear power today. Although he acknowledges that initial sea-powered generation projects are going to be expensive, Bedard believes that as experience grows and economies of manufacturing scale kick in, hydrodynamic power will follow the same path toward falling costs and improving technologies as other alternatives.

    “Look at wind,” he says. “A kilowatt hour from wind cost fifty cents in the 1980s. Now it’s about seven cents.” (That’s about the same as producing electricity with natural gas, and only about three cents more than coal, the cheapest — and dirtiest — U.S. energy choice. Any future tax on carbon emissions could narrow that gap even more, as would additional clean-power subsidies.)

    For some nations, wave and tide power could pack an even bigger punch. Estimates suggest, for instance, that the choppy seas surrounding the United Kingdom could deliver as much as 25 percent of its electricity. British alternative energy analyst Thomas W. Thorpe believes that on a worldwide basis, waves alone could produce as much as 2,000 terawatt hours of electricity, as much as all the planet’s major hydroelectric plants generate today.

    Although none are as far along as Pelamis, most competing wave-power technologies rely not on the undulations of mechanical serpents, but instead on the power captured by the vertical bobbing of large buoys in sea swells. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), based in New Jersey, drives the generators in its PowerBuoy® with a straightforward mechanical piston. A stationary section of the mostly submerged, 90-foot buoy is anchored to the ocean floor; a second section simply moves up and down with the movement of sea swells, driving pistons that in turn drive an electrical generator. The Archimedes Wave Swing, a buoy-based system developed by Scotland’s AWS Ocean Energy, harnesses the up-and-down energy of waves by pumping air to spin its turbines. Vancouver-based Finavera Renewables uses seawater as its turbine-driving hydraulic fluid.

    Although Pelamis beat all of these companies out of the commercialization gate, OPT appears to be right behind, with plans to install North America’s first commercial-scale wave power array of buoys off the coast of Oregon as early as next year. That array — occupying one square-mile of ocean and, like other wave power installations, located far from shipping lanes — would initially produce 2 megawatts of power. OPT also announced last September an agreement to install a 1.4-megawatt array off the coast of Spain. An Australian subsidiary is in a joint venture to develop a 10-megawatt wave farm off the coast of Australia.

    Meanwhile, Pelamis Wave Power plans to install more of its mechanical serpents — three megawatts of generating capacity off the coast of northwest Scotland, and another five-megawatt array off Britain’s Cornwall coast.

    The Cornwall installation will be one of four wave power facilities plugged into a single, 20-megawatt underwater transformer at a site called “Wave Hub.” Essentially a giant, underwater version of a socket that each developer can plug into, Wave Hub — which will be connected by undersea cable to the land-based grid — was designed as a tryout site for competing technologies. OPT has won another of the four Wave Hub berths for its buoy-based system.

    Other innovators are trying to harness the power of ocean or estuarine tides. Notably, in 2007, Virginia’s Verdant Power installed on the floor of New York’s East River six turbines that look, and function, much like stubby, submerged windmills, their blades — which are 16 feet in diameter — turning at a peak rate of 32 revolutions per minute. The East River is actually a salty and powerful tidal straight that connects Long Island Sound with the Atlantic Ocean. Although the “underwater windmills” began pumping out electricity immediately, the trial has been a halting one. The strong tides quickly broke apart the turbines’ first- (fiberglass and steel) and second- (aluminum and magnesium) generation blades, dislodging mounting bolts for good measure.

    Undeterred, in September Verdant Power began testing new blades made of a stronger aluminum alloy. If it can overcome the equipment-durability problems, the company hopes to install as many as 300 of its turbines in the East River, enough to power 10,000 New York homes.

    A scattering of similar prototype “underwater windmill” projects have been installed at tidal sites in Norway, Northern Ireland, and South Korea. (In addition, interest in moving into freshwater sites is growing. Verdant itself hopes to install its turbines on the St. Lawrence River. At least one other company, Free Flow Power of Massachusetts, has obtained Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permits to conduct preliminary studies on an array of sites on the Mississippi River south of St. Louis.)

    The environmental benefits of hydrodynamic power seem obvious: no carbon dioxide or any other emissions associated with fossil-fuel-based generation. No oil spills or nuclear waste. And for those who object to wind farms for aesthetic reasons, low-profile wave farms are invisible from distant land; tidal windmill-style turbines operate submerged until raised for maintenance.

    There are, however, environmental risks associated with these technologies.

    New York state regulators required Verdant Power to monitor effects of their its turbines on fish and wildlife. So far, sensors show that fish and water birds are having no trouble avoiding the blades, which rotate at a relatively leisurely 32 maximum revolutions per minute. In fact the company’s sensors have shown that fish tend to seek shelter behind rocks around the channel’s banks and stay out of the central channel entirely when tides are strongest.

    But a host of other questions about environment effects remain unanswered. Will high-voltage cables stretching across the sea from wave farms somehow harm marine ecosystems? Will arrays of hundreds of buoys or mechanical serpents interfere with ocean fish movement or whale migrations? What effect will soaking up large amounts of wave energy have on shoreline organisms and ecosystems?

    “Environmental effects are the greatest questions right now,” EPRI’s Bedard says, “because there just aren’t any big hydrodynamic projects in the world.”

    Projects will probably have to be limited in size and number to protect the environment, he says – that’s a big part of the reason he limits his “realistic” U.S. estimate to 10 percent of current generation capacity. But the only way to get definitive answers on environmental impact might be to run the actual experiment — that is, to begin building the water-powered facilities, and then monitor the environment for effects.

    Bedard suggests that the way to get definitive answers will be to build carefully on a model like Verdant’s: “Start very small. Monitor carefully. Build it a little bigger and monitor some more. I’d like to see it developed in an adaptive way.”

  • Widely differing agendas at Poznan

    by Wei Jianhua & Zhang Zhan, Xinhua – China View

        POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) — Delegates from some 190 countries continued to focus on a shared vision on fighting climate change and adaptation to its adverse effects on Friday, but differences remained largely unresolved between developed and developing nations.

        Countries were still wrangling over a variety of issues related to the global fight against climate change, trying to seek ways to seal a deal in Copenhagen, Denmark, next December to succeed the first period of the Kyoto Protocol, which is to expire in 2012.

    LINGERING DIFFERENCES

        The developed countries are seeking to set up a shared vision on long-term goal for emission cuts, saying that such a goal will set the direction for future actions.

        Some industrialized countries believe that a 50-percent cut of emissions against the 1990 level by 2050 is necessary for the goal of preventing rising temperatures.

        The developing nations, however, rejected such a global goal at this stage, arguing that such a vision is not feasible since there are no concrete plans for providing finance and technology required by the developing countries.

        Brazil said a shared vision should be guided by the provisions and principles of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

        Su Wei, deputy head of the Chinese delegation to the Poznan talks, said a shared vision on long-term cooperative action shouldnot be a single-dimension objective only for mitigation, but a multi-dimension objective including mitigation, adaptation, technology, financing, and sustainable development.

        A mid-term reduction target for developed countries is key to any long term goal, Su said, noting that cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels should be a goal observed by developed countries.

        India, another major developing country, said U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s target of cutting U.S. emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 is inadequate to avoid global warming.

        U.S. emissions are still running about 14 percent above 1990 levels. While acknowledging Obama’s target as a progress, Indian Foreign Ministry official Dinesh Patnaik said the U.S. target “is not ambitious enough.”

        On the adaptation fund, the developing countries believe that there is a need to scale up finance and technology transfer for poorer countries, while the developed ones only stressed the importance of technology needs assessment.

        Calling on delegates to advance funding for climate change projects, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer told a press conference on Thursday that “the developing countries are especially vulnerable and will be the hardest hit” as they have limited capacity to cope with climate change and need financial and other assistance to implement adaptation actions.

    LITTLE PROGRESS

        From the very beginning, many people have low expectations on the Poznan talks, saying no major outcome will be achieved due to this year’s financial crisis and pending U.S. positions.

        Cheng Qian, advisor on Climate Change from the research organization German Watch, told Xinhua late Thursday that the Poznan talks are still crucial to the whole process despite the fact that no major outcome might be achieved.

        “It is reasonable we don’t have any substantial outcome from Poznan because Poznan is only serving as a half way mark from Balito Copenhagen.. all the achievements are left for next year in Copenhagen,” Cheng said.

        Despite this, Cheng, who has been following the conference from the very beginning, still saw some progress on the issue.

        “I see progress, but I believe the progress is not taking place in Poznan, but it is taking place in the process before underway to Poznan, ” she said.

        “We have a lot of documents here in Poznan. From those documents, I have read a lot of innovations, new ideas, ambitious target as well,” she said, stressing that this process is very crucial as “we are now solving a lot of barriers, political hurdles in order to channel understanding.

        “Some experts, however, still doubt that the Poznan talks will lead nowhere to Copenhagen, largely due to the U.S. power transition and the financial crisis, which will limit governments’ room for concessions.

        It is believed that the U.S. under the Obama administration cannot complete a domestic legislation to bring commitments to the table in Copenhagen as the Congress would not have enough time to ratify anything by December 2009.

     

  • Poznan goes nowhere slowly

    Climate talks in Poland this week have been characterised by a widely different agendas and a failure to reach agreement on the hard targets necessary to halt emissions and reverse global warming. This debate is taking place in the Polish city of Poznan against protests by thousands of young people from across Europe. Promoters of renewable energy, such as the designer of the Solar Taxi that toured the world earlier this year have used the opportunity to promote potential solutions to reducing carbon consumption. Developed countries have argued for a global target to halve emissions (from 1990 levels) by 2050, developing countries have argued that developed countries have to set aggressive targets for the next decade. The US, for example, has agreed to reduce emissions to 100 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, Australia has refused to announce a target, but flagged that 95 percent is realistic. Developing countries have emphasised the need to provide financial and technical support to implement post-carbon solutions.

    Other sources

  • 4degree rise means extinction

    Tickell’s Guardian article appears below. Read it at the Guardian

    There’s no ‘adaptation’ to such steep warming. We must stop pandering to special interests, and try a new, post-Kyoto strategy

    We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, “the end of living and the beginning of survival” for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

    The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world’s coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world’s most productive farmland. The world’s geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth’s carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

    Watson’s call was supported by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that “if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase”. This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years – captured under melting permafrost is already under way.

    To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.

    But what are we to do? All our policies to date to tackle global warming have been miserable failures. The Kyoto protocol has created a vast carbon market but done little to reduce emissions. The main effect of the EU’s emissions trading scheme has been to transfer about €30bn or more from consumers to Europe’s biggest polluters, the power companies. The EU and US foray into biofuels has, at huge cost, increased greenhouse gas emissions and created a world food crisis, causing starvation in many poor countries.

    So are all our efforts doomed to failure? Yes, so long as our governments remain craven to special interests, whether carbon traders or fossil fuel companies. The carbon market is a valuable tool, but must be subordinate to climatic imperatives. The truth is that to prevent runaway greenhouse warming, we will have to leave most of the world’s fossil fuels in the ground, especially carbon-heavy coal, oil shales and tar sands. The fossil fuel and power companies must be faced down.

    Global problems need global solutions, and we also need an effective replacement for the failed Kyoto protocol. The entire Kyoto system of national allocations is obsolete because of the huge volumes of energy embodied in products traded across national boundaries. It also presents a major obstacle to any new agreement – as demonstrated by the 2008 G8 meeting in Japan that degenerated into a squabble over national emission rights.

    The answer? Scrap national allocations and place a single global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, applied “upstream” – for instance, at the oil refinery, coal-washing station and cement factory. Sell permits up to that cap in a global auction, and use the proceeds to finance solutions to climate change – accelerating the use of renewable energy, raising energy efficiency, protecting forests, promoting climate-friendly farming, and researching geoengineering technologies. And commit hundreds of billions of dollars per year to finance adaptation to climate change, especially in poor countries.

    Such a package of measures would allow us to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and long-term stabilisation at 350 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. This avoids the economic pain that a cap-and-trade system alone would cause, and targets assistance at the poor, who are least to blame and most need help. The permit auction would raise about $1 trillion per year, enough to finance a spread of solutions. At a quarter of the world’s annual oil spending, it is a price well worth paying.

    · Oliver Tickell’s book Kyoto2 has just been published kyoto2.org