The modern environmental movement is having an identity crisis. Staring down its biggest enemy yet, it's fiercely divided over how to beat it.
The global challenge of climate change is tougher than the localized problems the green movement has spent decades fighting. To some environmentalists, it requires chucking old orthodoxies and getting practical. To others, it demands an old-style moral crusade.
The pragmatists have the upper hand. One sign is that the movement is moving beyond small-scale backyard wind turbines and rooftop solar panels. It's calling for technological change at industrial speed and scale -- sometimes to the detriment of local ecologies
In Europe, environmental groups are backing proposals for massive collections of wind turbines off the continent's Atlantic coast that would amount to seaborne power plants. In California, they're endorsing huge solar-panel installations on farmland and in the desert. In Washington, they're lobbying for more spending to develop "clean coal," resigned to the conclusion that scrubbing coal is more plausible than killing it.
"There's a kind of reality check," says Stephan Singer, the Brussels-based director of global energy policy for WWF, an environmental group also called the World Wildlife Fund. The only clean-energy options likely to matter are "large, centralized solutions," he says. "That's the way it is."
Karen Douglas feels the pressure from both sides of the divide. She has spent her career as a green activist in California, and her success has helped move her from outside agitator to inside policy maker. After California passed a law curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped Ms. Douglas early last year to join the California Energy Commission, which has to help figure out how to comply with the law. Recently, she was named chairman.
The commission is trying to figure out where big new solar-energy installations and electric-transmission lines should go. The process is pitting locally oriented environmentalists, whose priority still is to protect California's wilderness, against globally oriented environmentalists whose focus is to get big renewable-energy projects built. "I am in an interesting spot," she says. "It's hard."
Mr. Singer of the WWF is in a similar fix. In Europe, the prospect of large-scale renewable energy means the construction of hundreds of wind turbines off the coast. His organization "strongly supports" that move, he says, despite opposition from some local environmentalists who contend such installations might harm birds or fish.
"We all grew up with this kind of mantra that small is beautiful," he says. But that "is not a model for a highly modernized, global world."
Nothing underscores the green movement's soul-searching more than its conflicted view of coal, which provides about half the world's electricity. Should society pour billions of dollars into trying to perfect a way to turn coal into electricity without emitting greenhouse gases? Or should it reject coal as inalterably dirty and try to replace it entirely with renewable sources like the wind and sun?
Late last year, the influential Natural Resources Defense Council helped sponsor ads ridiculing coal-industry ads boasting about progress toward cleaning up coal. "In reality, there's no such thing as clean coal," said a print version of the ad.
But last month, the NRDC, along with the Environmental Defense Fund, another prominent group, hosted workshops advocating more spending on clean-coal research. The rationale: Coal will remain a crucial fuel for decades, so it makes sense to try to clean it up.
"If NRDC had written all the ads by itself, we probably would have had a more nuanced ad," says NRDC climate expert David Hawkins. "But it probably would have been a nuanced ad that doesn't get noticed."
Industry claims that coal already is clean are "misleading," says Mr. Hawkins. Still, the technology to generate electricity from coal and capture the carbon-dioxide emissions "is both needed and feasible," he says. That was the point of the workshops, he says: that government should implement policies to deploy the technology.
Now, a backlash is building within the movement. Rather than push certain technological fixes, critics say, environmentalists should simply push government to slap industry with a tough cap on greenhouse gases -- and let industry figure out how to meet the mandate.
"It's like we're pushing to invent a better cotton gin as a way to reduce slaveholding instead of just banning slaveholding," says the Environmental Defense Fund's John DeCicco. "The environmental movement has become insiders. Is that actually to our benefit now? Or is that to our detriment?"
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Recycled CDs and Sofa Foam for Your Feet
Shoe manufacturers have been busy burnishing their green credentials over the last few years, incorporating everything from reBut one company appears to be taking the green theme to an extreme, integrating recycled CDs, old sofas, and even water bottles, among other materials, into a new running shoe.
The Green Silence marathon racing shoe, made by the running gear company Brooks and scheduled for release in February 2010, sports heel cups reinforced with recycled CDs; shoelaces, mesh, lining and stitching made from discarded water bottles; outsoles made from recycled rubber; and a collar stuffed with foam from old sofas.
Although Brooks says that the shoe will have half the number of parts of similar lightweight running shoes, those parts will still be shipped from around the world, including water bottles from the United States, Taiwan and Japan, and CDs from Europe — not the sort of “local sourcing” that many environmentalists would prefer.
Still, Brooks says that transportation will account for just 5 percent to 8 percent of the shoe’s total carbon footprint. It also says the midsole of the shoe is biodegradable, although the Federal Trade Commission in the United States has recently expressed skepticism about such claims in general.
Setting aside biodegradability, Brooks said it hopes that runners will retire their used shoes to charities like Soles4Souls, which distributes used footwear to people in need. Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program, which takes all athletic shoes – Nike or not — and turns the soles into artificial turf and other products, is another option.
The Brooks shoe is undoubtedly part of a trend toward funkier — and more environmentally conscious — shoes for the running crowd. Another example is a recently released training shoe with toe sheaths that its manufacturer claims “deepens your connection to the earth” and is lighter than most other running shoes.
But Brooks says it’s not easy to make a shoe that will completely satisfy environmental advocates.
“We call this Whac-a-Mole,” said Derek Campbell, the company’s sustainability chief. “Once you hit one button for sustainability, three pop up.”cycled rubber soles to hemp shoelaces.
The Green Silence marathon racing shoe, made by the running gear company Brooks and scheduled for release in February 2010, sports heel cups reinforced with recycled CDs; shoelaces, mesh, lining and stitching made from discarded water bottles; outsoles made from recycled rubber; and a collar stuffed with foam from old sofas.
Although Brooks says that the shoe will have half the number of parts of similar lightweight running shoes, those parts will still be shipped from around the world, including water bottles from the United States, Taiwan and Japan, and CDs from Europe — not the sort of “local sourcing” that many environmentalists would prefer.
Still, Brooks says that transportation will account for just 5 percent to 8 percent of the shoe’s total carbon footprint. It also says the midsole of the shoe is biodegradable, although the Federal Trade Commission in the United States has recently expressed skepticism about such claims in general.
Setting aside biodegradability, Brooks said it hopes that runners will retire their used shoes to charities like Soles4Souls, which distributes used footwear to people in need. Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program, which takes all athletic shoes – Nike or not — and turns the soles into artificial turf and other products, is another option.
The Brooks shoe is undoubtedly part of a trend toward funkier — and more environmentally conscious — shoes for the running crowd. Another example is a recently released training shoe with toe sheaths that its manufacturer claims “deepens your connection to the earth” and is lighter than most other running shoes.
But Brooks says it’s not easy to make a shoe that will completely satisfy environmental advocates.
“We call this Whac-a-Mole,” said Derek Campbell, the company’s sustainability chief. “Once you hit one button for sustainability, three pop up.”cycled rubber soles to hemp shoelaces.
Are E.U. Climate Ambitions Being Sidelined?
As John Broder and I write in today’s New York Times and International Herald Tribune, the Europeans may be yielding their global leadership on climate policy as the United States and China – the world’s two largest carbon-dioxide polluters – display signs of seeking a bilateral deal the rest of the world might be obliged to accept.
For Europe, the prospect of marginalization in climate talks is a serious concern. European climate policies have been predicated to a far greater extent on sharing the work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a United Nations-brokered agreement.
In particular, Europeans could be forced to downgrade the importance of their flagship policies – including their system for capping greenhouse gases and trading emissions permits – if they lose control of the negotiating agenda over the coming months.
To bolster their Emissions Trading System, which has suffered bouts of volatility and has been criticized for ineffectiveness since its creation four years ago, the Europeans want all rich-world nations like the United States join a global carbon market by 2015, and for fast-emerging economies like China to join by 2020.
But as my colleague Andrew Revkin writes today at Dot Earth, President Obama faces significant constraints in making more ambitious offers from the Senate.
Meanwhile the Chinese are fiercely averse to capping their emissions for the foreseeable future, and that has stoked fears among Europeans that the Americans and Chinese would reach a lowest-common-denominator agreement with widely divergent goals for reducing greenhouse gases even among wealthy nations.
That, in turn, could jeopardize European efforts to link its carbon trading system with other cap-and-trade systems under development in countries like the United States and Australia.
A key concern for European negotiators is that comparatively higher demand for permits to emit carbon in Europe would push up their price, giving other regions little incentive to join an expensive system.
Some senior European officials seem to acknowledge that tussling over comparability may actually be clouding the talks — by encouraging countries to seek the lowest negotiated commitment.
“I think many countries highly underestimate their potential to take action in this field,” Michael Starbæk Christensen, a senior adviser on climate change in the Office of the Prime Minister of Denmark, told a conference in Brussels late last month. “It becomes a negotiation about numbers and it seems that the winner is the one who can get out of the negotiation with the smallest number and it shouldn’t be like that,” he said. “The dynamic should be more a competition for opportunities rather than burdens,” he said.
Climate experts warn that the tussling will become worse and that it may ultimately undermine efforts to reach a deal unless negotiators refocus the debate in the coming weeks on what countries can achieve — rather than on what is comparable.
ClimateWorks, a group based in San Francisco that helps finance projects to limit global warming, suggested that major economies should not be distracted from reaching a deal in Copenhagen by negotiations that bog down in numbers.
At a point where negotiations could be turning into a stalemate, ClimateWorks has produced a study showing that it would be possible to achieve about 70 percent of the emissions reductions by 2020 that are necessary to prevent runaway climate change, using readily available technology and implementing measures that are in nations’ economic self-interest.
The group based its study on an analysis on the potential of nations and regions to cut emissions by McKinsey Global, a consultancy.
According to ClimateWorks, building consensus around universal standards for using clean energy would be far more productive than basing negotiations on obligations for certain countries to shrink each citizen’s carbon footprint or to reduce emissions by the same, or similar, amounts.
In the study, each major polluter would reduce emissions in sectors where it would be easiest to do so and in many cases where national efforts are already underway.
China would deliver the single biggest reduction by improving industrial energy efficiency and building up its renewable energy base. Heavily forested Brazil would deliver the second largest reduction in emissions by reducing the amount of trees it cuts down.
The United States and the E.U. would put most of their effort into fostering new standards for efficient buildings and appliances.
“A global deal that obliges nations to get most of the way to bringing emissions down to levels deemed safe is not all that hard if our leaders simply agree to accelerate – and maybe turbo-charge in some cases – the existing policies that a number of key countries are already pursuing in their national interest,” said Andreas Merkl, the director of global initiatives for ClimateWorks.
By James Kanter
For Europe, the prospect of marginalization in climate talks is a serious concern. European climate policies have been predicated to a far greater extent on sharing the work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a United Nations-brokered agreement.
In particular, Europeans could be forced to downgrade the importance of their flagship policies – including their system for capping greenhouse gases and trading emissions permits – if they lose control of the negotiating agenda over the coming months.
To bolster their Emissions Trading System, which has suffered bouts of volatility and has been criticized for ineffectiveness since its creation four years ago, the Europeans want all rich-world nations like the United States join a global carbon market by 2015, and for fast-emerging economies like China to join by 2020.
But as my colleague Andrew Revkin writes today at Dot Earth, President Obama faces significant constraints in making more ambitious offers from the Senate.
Meanwhile the Chinese are fiercely averse to capping their emissions for the foreseeable future, and that has stoked fears among Europeans that the Americans and Chinese would reach a lowest-common-denominator agreement with widely divergent goals for reducing greenhouse gases even among wealthy nations.
That, in turn, could jeopardize European efforts to link its carbon trading system with other cap-and-trade systems under development in countries like the United States and Australia.
A key concern for European negotiators is that comparatively higher demand for permits to emit carbon in Europe would push up their price, giving other regions little incentive to join an expensive system.
Some senior European officials seem to acknowledge that tussling over comparability may actually be clouding the talks — by encouraging countries to seek the lowest negotiated commitment.
“I think many countries highly underestimate their potential to take action in this field,” Michael Starbæk Christensen, a senior adviser on climate change in the Office of the Prime Minister of Denmark, told a conference in Brussels late last month. “It becomes a negotiation about numbers and it seems that the winner is the one who can get out of the negotiation with the smallest number and it shouldn’t be like that,” he said. “The dynamic should be more a competition for opportunities rather than burdens,” he said.
Climate experts warn that the tussling will become worse and that it may ultimately undermine efforts to reach a deal unless negotiators refocus the debate in the coming weeks on what countries can achieve — rather than on what is comparable.
ClimateWorks, a group based in San Francisco that helps finance projects to limit global warming, suggested that major economies should not be distracted from reaching a deal in Copenhagen by negotiations that bog down in numbers.
At a point where negotiations could be turning into a stalemate, ClimateWorks has produced a study showing that it would be possible to achieve about 70 percent of the emissions reductions by 2020 that are necessary to prevent runaway climate change, using readily available technology and implementing measures that are in nations’ economic self-interest.
The group based its study on an analysis on the potential of nations and regions to cut emissions by McKinsey Global, a consultancy.
According to ClimateWorks, building consensus around universal standards for using clean energy would be far more productive than basing negotiations on obligations for certain countries to shrink each citizen’s carbon footprint or to reduce emissions by the same, or similar, amounts.
In the study, each major polluter would reduce emissions in sectors where it would be easiest to do so and in many cases where national efforts are already underway.
China would deliver the single biggest reduction by improving industrial energy efficiency and building up its renewable energy base. Heavily forested Brazil would deliver the second largest reduction in emissions by reducing the amount of trees it cuts down.
The United States and the E.U. would put most of their effort into fostering new standards for efficient buildings and appliances.
“A global deal that obliges nations to get most of the way to bringing emissions down to levels deemed safe is not all that hard if our leaders simply agree to accelerate – and maybe turbo-charge in some cases – the existing policies that a number of key countries are already pursuing in their national interest,” said Andreas Merkl, the director of global initiatives for ClimateWorks.
By James Kanter
Study: Geoengineering Won’t Help Oceans
A new study has concluded that geoengineering measures designed to reduce global warming will do little to reduce CO2 levels and, subsequently, ocean acidification.
CO2 that dissolves in salt water produces carbonic acid that undermines shell formation in crustations and coral. The world’s oceans absorb a quarter of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to an international oceanography research network.
“This century will see the end of coral reefs for the next tens of thousands of years,” said Ken Caldeira, a professor of environmental science in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a co-author of the paper.
Earlier this week in Britain, the filmmaker David Attenborough joined marine biologists in calling attention to the situation.
In fact, coral depletion has the potential to be a major economic disaster as well as an ecological catastrophe. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs noted that approximately 100 million people living in coastal areas worldwide depend on coral reef ecosystems for their livelihoods. The problem is that attempts to artificially cool the atmosphere, though necessary to avert more polar melting and the release of methane trapped in sub-arctic tundra, won’t slow the build-up of greenhouse gases.
Geoengineering solutions have received a surge of attention in recent months, even though ideas for mechanically altering the atmosphere trace back to the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some scientists are experimenting with techniques to fertilize oceans so increased plankton growth will absorb excess CO2. Others have studied methods for reflecting sunlight, like seeding white clouds with sea water, launching solar reflectors or painting roofs white, as Energy Secretary Steven Chu famously suggested earlier this year.
Professor Caldeira dismissed most of these approaches as either financially unattainable or, in the case of Secretary Chu’s white roof plan, insufficient. On balance, he said the most technically straightforward and cost-effective approach involves attempts to mimic the effect of large volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
Sulfur-based gases can be introduced inexpensively into the upper atmosphere, where they form sulfate particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth’s surface. As the Foreign Affairs essay notes, the cost would be a fraction of emission reduction efforts that take decades to show results.
“Basically, there was cooling despite an increase in greenhouse gases,” he sad. “The earth didn’t come to an end.” But, Professor Caldeira added, these measures “only make sense in an emergency response context.”
CO2 that dissolves in salt water produces carbonic acid that undermines shell formation in crustations and coral. The world’s oceans absorb a quarter of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to an international oceanography research network.
“This century will see the end of coral reefs for the next tens of thousands of years,” said Ken Caldeira, a professor of environmental science in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a co-author of the paper.
Earlier this week in Britain, the filmmaker David Attenborough joined marine biologists in calling attention to the situation.
In fact, coral depletion has the potential to be a major economic disaster as well as an ecological catastrophe. An essay in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs noted that approximately 100 million people living in coastal areas worldwide depend on coral reef ecosystems for their livelihoods. The problem is that attempts to artificially cool the atmosphere, though necessary to avert more polar melting and the release of methane trapped in sub-arctic tundra, won’t slow the build-up of greenhouse gases.
Geoengineering solutions have received a surge of attention in recent months, even though ideas for mechanically altering the atmosphere trace back to the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some scientists are experimenting with techniques to fertilize oceans so increased plankton growth will absorb excess CO2. Others have studied methods for reflecting sunlight, like seeding white clouds with sea water, launching solar reflectors or painting roofs white, as Energy Secretary Steven Chu famously suggested earlier this year.
Professor Caldeira dismissed most of these approaches as either financially unattainable or, in the case of Secretary Chu’s white roof plan, insufficient. On balance, he said the most technically straightforward and cost-effective approach involves attempts to mimic the effect of large volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
Sulfur-based gases can be introduced inexpensively into the upper atmosphere, where they form sulfate particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth’s surface. As the Foreign Affairs essay notes, the cost would be a fraction of emission reduction efforts that take decades to show results.
“Basically, there was cooling despite an increase in greenhouse gases,” he sad. “The earth didn’t come to an end.” But, Professor Caldeira added, these measures “only make sense in an emergency response context.”
Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants
The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following thAs President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.
The G-8 leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other challenging issues. On Friday, Mr. Obama planned to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative by the G-8 to provide emergency and development aid to poor nations.
The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
American officials said they still had made an important breakthrough because the G-8 countries within the negotiations agreed to adopt the 2050 reduction goals, even though the developing countries would not.
And they said a final agreement with developing countries, including China and India, to be sealed on Thursday would include important conceptual commitments by the emerging powers to begin reducing emissions and to set a target date. Now negotiators will have to try to quantifying those commitments in coming months.
While the nations mapped out a general agreement to limit global temperature change, there remained differences between the level of commitment from developed and developing nations. The G-8 draft statement would have the major industrial powers “recognize that global emissions should peak by 2020 and then be substantially reduced to limit the average increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.” The statement by the developing countries would be less definitive, however, saying that scientific consensus supports such a goal.
Mr. Meyer said temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degrees and will likely rise by another 0.6 degrees just based on pollution already in the air, meaning that embracing the 2-degree goal would require major steps starting almost immediately.
While briefing reporters on Wednesday morning, Michael Froman, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser and chief G-8 negotiator, declined to specify what would be in the two agreements, but said they would signal important progress heading toward a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December to craft a worldwide climate change treaty.
“Our view is that it represents a significant step forward in terms of adding political momentum on the key issues to be dealt with in the U.N. process,” Mr. Froman said, “but that there is still a lot of work to be done and these are difficult issues and the negotiators will be meeting going forward to try and resolve them.”
European leaders and environmental activists have placed great hope that Mr. Obama would become a powerful new leader in the struggle against climate change after succeeding President George W. Bush, who long resisted more aggressive measures sought on this side of the Atlantic for fear of the economic impact. At a previous Group of 8 meeting, Mr. Bush agreed to a 50 percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but not to an 80 percent reduction in those produced by industrial countries like the United States. With Mr. Obama’s support, the House recently passed legislation intended to curb emissions, although not by nearly as much as the Europeans want. And China is another challenge.
“Europe wants avant-garde legislation but China is putting up resistance, which I sampled yesterday during my one-on-one with the Chinese president,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the G-8 host, told reporters Tuesday evening.
China, India and the other developing nations are upset that commitments to provide financial and technological help made during a United Nations conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 have not translated into anything more tangible in the interim.
Mr. Meyer estimated that the United States, Europe and other industrial nations need to come up with $150 billion a year in assistance by 2020 to help develop clean-energy technology for developing countries, reduce deforestation that contributes to rising temperatures and help vulnerable nations adapt to changes attributed to greenhouse gases.e talks.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.
The G-8 leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other challenging issues. On Friday, Mr. Obama planned to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative by the G-8 to provide emergency and development aid to poor nations.
The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
American officials said they still had made an important breakthrough because the G-8 countries within the negotiations agreed to adopt the 2050 reduction goals, even though the developing countries would not.
And they said a final agreement with developing countries, including China and India, to be sealed on Thursday would include important conceptual commitments by the emerging powers to begin reducing emissions and to set a target date. Now negotiators will have to try to quantifying those commitments in coming months.
While the nations mapped out a general agreement to limit global temperature change, there remained differences between the level of commitment from developed and developing nations. The G-8 draft statement would have the major industrial powers “recognize that global emissions should peak by 2020 and then be substantially reduced to limit the average increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.” The statement by the developing countries would be less definitive, however, saying that scientific consensus supports such a goal.
Mr. Meyer said temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degrees and will likely rise by another 0.6 degrees just based on pollution already in the air, meaning that embracing the 2-degree goal would require major steps starting almost immediately.
While briefing reporters on Wednesday morning, Michael Froman, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser and chief G-8 negotiator, declined to specify what would be in the two agreements, but said they would signal important progress heading toward a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December to craft a worldwide climate change treaty.
“Our view is that it represents a significant step forward in terms of adding political momentum on the key issues to be dealt with in the U.N. process,” Mr. Froman said, “but that there is still a lot of work to be done and these are difficult issues and the negotiators will be meeting going forward to try and resolve them.”
European leaders and environmental activists have placed great hope that Mr. Obama would become a powerful new leader in the struggle against climate change after succeeding President George W. Bush, who long resisted more aggressive measures sought on this side of the Atlantic for fear of the economic impact. At a previous Group of 8 meeting, Mr. Bush agreed to a 50 percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but not to an 80 percent reduction in those produced by industrial countries like the United States. With Mr. Obama’s support, the House recently passed legislation intended to curb emissions, although not by nearly as much as the Europeans want. And China is another challenge.
“Europe wants avant-garde legislation but China is putting up resistance, which I sampled yesterday during my one-on-one with the Chinese president,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the G-8 host, told reporters Tuesday evening.
China, India and the other developing nations are upset that commitments to provide financial and technological help made during a United Nations conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 have not translated into anything more tangible in the interim.
Mr. Meyer estimated that the United States, Europe and other industrial nations need to come up with $150 billion a year in assistance by 2020 to help develop clean-energy technology for developing countries, reduce deforestation that contributes to rising temperatures and help vulnerable nations adapt to changes attributed to greenhouse gases.e talks.
Climate battle moves to the Senate
President Obama's landmark energy and global warming bill squeaked through the House only after the White House made dozens of concessions to coal, manufacturing and other interests.Now, as the battle moves to the Senate, Obama faces demands for even more concessions -- including pressure to open the nation's coastlines to offshore oil and gas drilling.
The Senate also will take up a series of controversial issues that were glossed over or omitted from the House legislation. Among them: giving the government sweeping powers to approve thousands of miles of new transmission lines to carry electric power to coastal cities from wind turbines in the upper Midwest and solar power generators in the Southwest, regardless of local objections.Aware of the challenge, Obama repeatedly has called attention to the House achievement and urged the Senate to keep up the momentum."There are going to be a series of tough negotiations," he said last week. "But I think the ability of the House to move forward is going to be a prod for the Senate toward action."
Even so, with Republicans forming a near-solid phalanx of opposition and many Democrats concerned about the effects of specific sections of the bill on their constituents, the prospect is for a long, slow legislative process.Senate leaders say they will benefit from lessons learned from the way House leaders built their majority. Chief among them: the need to cut specific deals to ease the effects of new emissions restrictions -- which could translate into higher costs for businesses and rising prices for consumers -- in particular parts of the country."We need to absolutely work this bill one on one," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee that is drafting emissions limits, "because everybody's got different passions about it, different feelings about it, different hopes about it, different fears about it."Making those deals is harder in the Senate than in the House, some analysts say."In the House, you can move blocks of votes," said Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress who works on global warming issues. "In the Senate, it's hand-to-hand combat."Although a climate bill is expected to be hundreds of pages long, it will boil down to an attempt to start weaning the U.S. economy from dependence on fossil fuels.The centerpiece is the so-called cap-and-trade system, which would set limits on carbon dioxide and other emissions that scientists say are a major factor in global warming. The allowed level of such emissions would decline over time. And major polluters, such as power plants and factories, would be required to obtain permits to cover their emissions as a spur to reducing pollution.The original idea was that the government would sell the permits, but the House voted to give out many of them free to ease the economic effects.The Senate bill also is likely to include a variety of provisions designed to encourage development of energy sources, including wind and solar power. Those could include financial and legal provisions to speed construction of transmission lines to move power from the remote deserts and plains -- where it's easily produced -- to coastal cities where it's needed.The quest for new energy sources is expected to reopen the politically explosive issue of offshore drilling.Looming over all the provisions is cost -- a focal point of Republican attacks."The public is especially wary of passing this during a major recession, and public skepticism is growing about the man-made climate fears," said Marc Morano, editor of the global-warming-skeptic website ClimateDepot.com.Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them control 60 Senate seats. But more than a dozen have expressed concern over costs. They include Democrats from industry-heavy Ohio and Michigan, coal-dependent Indiana and oil-rich Louisiana.Only a few Republicans appear open to emissions limits, notably two moderates from Maine -- Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe -- and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who championed emissions limits in his presidential campaign (though he has expressed reservations about the House bill).The Senate bill will emerge from several committees -- including the finance, foreign relations, commerce and agriculture committees -- with dramatically different memberships and priorities.The energy committee already has approved its chunk with wide bipartisan support. It includes a requirement to produce more electricity from renewable sources, but also expands drilling -- a possible deal-breaker for environmentalists.Boxer's committee will center its work on cap and trade. The House bill would cut U.S. emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. Environmentalists expect Boxer, who said she was "looking closely" at those limits, to strengthen them.
The Senate also will take up a series of controversial issues that were glossed over or omitted from the House legislation. Among them: giving the government sweeping powers to approve thousands of miles of new transmission lines to carry electric power to coastal cities from wind turbines in the upper Midwest and solar power generators in the Southwest, regardless of local objections.Aware of the challenge, Obama repeatedly has called attention to the House achievement and urged the Senate to keep up the momentum."There are going to be a series of tough negotiations," he said last week. "But I think the ability of the House to move forward is going to be a prod for the Senate toward action."
Even so, with Republicans forming a near-solid phalanx of opposition and many Democrats concerned about the effects of specific sections of the bill on their constituents, the prospect is for a long, slow legislative process.Senate leaders say they will benefit from lessons learned from the way House leaders built their majority. Chief among them: the need to cut specific deals to ease the effects of new emissions restrictions -- which could translate into higher costs for businesses and rising prices for consumers -- in particular parts of the country."We need to absolutely work this bill one on one," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee that is drafting emissions limits, "because everybody's got different passions about it, different feelings about it, different hopes about it, different fears about it."Making those deals is harder in the Senate than in the House, some analysts say."In the House, you can move blocks of votes," said Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress who works on global warming issues. "In the Senate, it's hand-to-hand combat."Although a climate bill is expected to be hundreds of pages long, it will boil down to an attempt to start weaning the U.S. economy from dependence on fossil fuels.The centerpiece is the so-called cap-and-trade system, which would set limits on carbon dioxide and other emissions that scientists say are a major factor in global warming. The allowed level of such emissions would decline over time. And major polluters, such as power plants and factories, would be required to obtain permits to cover their emissions as a spur to reducing pollution.The original idea was that the government would sell the permits, but the House voted to give out many of them free to ease the economic effects.The Senate bill also is likely to include a variety of provisions designed to encourage development of energy sources, including wind and solar power. Those could include financial and legal provisions to speed construction of transmission lines to move power from the remote deserts and plains -- where it's easily produced -- to coastal cities where it's needed.The quest for new energy sources is expected to reopen the politically explosive issue of offshore drilling.Looming over all the provisions is cost -- a focal point of Republican attacks."The public is especially wary of passing this during a major recession, and public skepticism is growing about the man-made climate fears," said Marc Morano, editor of the global-warming-skeptic website ClimateDepot.com.Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them control 60 Senate seats. But more than a dozen have expressed concern over costs. They include Democrats from industry-heavy Ohio and Michigan, coal-dependent Indiana and oil-rich Louisiana.Only a few Republicans appear open to emissions limits, notably two moderates from Maine -- Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe -- and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who championed emissions limits in his presidential campaign (though he has expressed reservations about the House bill).The Senate bill will emerge from several committees -- including the finance, foreign relations, commerce and agriculture committees -- with dramatically different memberships and priorities.The energy committee already has approved its chunk with wide bipartisan support. It includes a requirement to produce more electricity from renewable sources, but also expands drilling -- a possible deal-breaker for environmentalists.Boxer's committee will center its work on cap and trade. The House bill would cut U.S. emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. Environmentalists expect Boxer, who said she was "looking closely" at those limits, to strengthen them.
Forest fires vs. forest carbon
Should forests be thinned to reduce fires, or should they be tended to store the maximum amount of carbon in their trees to prevent global warming?
It is not a simple question, as researchers at Oregon State University explain in a new study in Ecological Applications, a professional journal.
Stephen R. Mitchell, an OSU researcher now at Duke University, and other scientists studied the Coast Range and the west side of the Cascade Mountains and found that salvage logging, understory removal, prescribed fire and other techniques can reduce fire severity. But these same techniques will almost always reduce carbon storage even if the woody products that are removed are then used to produce electricity or make cellulosic ethanol, they found.
"It had been thought for some time that if you used biofuel treatments to produce energy, you could offset the carbon emissions from this process," said Mark Harmon, an OSU professor of forest ecosystems and society and a co-author of the study. "But when you actually go through the data, it doesn't work."Harmon said that policymakers should consider using forests on the west side of the Cascades, the wetter side, for carbon sequestration, and focus fuel-reduction efforts near people, towns and infrastructure.
However, the Oregon State findings may not be applicable to other forests. "It is a fertile debate," said Andrea Tuttle, former head of the California Department of Forestry and an authority on forest carbon regulation. "But be careful what forest type you are talking about." Studies of other forests have produced different results, she explained, citing a UC Berkeley study of warmer, drier Sierran forests that found that measures to increase fire resistance were also applicable to long-term carbon sequestration.
The study comes at a time when state governments and the U.S. Congress, as well as other nations, are looking to forests to offset emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources of carbon dioxide, which, scientists say, is heating the planet to dangerous levels. Trees suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it for long periods. California recently enacted strict rules to govern the use of offsets for carbon sequestration in forests.
-- Margot Roosevelt
It is not a simple question, as researchers at Oregon State University explain in a new study in Ecological Applications, a professional journal.
Stephen R. Mitchell, an OSU researcher now at Duke University, and other scientists studied the Coast Range and the west side of the Cascade Mountains and found that salvage logging, understory removal, prescribed fire and other techniques can reduce fire severity. But these same techniques will almost always reduce carbon storage even if the woody products that are removed are then used to produce electricity or make cellulosic ethanol, they found.
"It had been thought for some time that if you used biofuel treatments to produce energy, you could offset the carbon emissions from this process," said Mark Harmon, an OSU professor of forest ecosystems and society and a co-author of the study. "But when you actually go through the data, it doesn't work."Harmon said that policymakers should consider using forests on the west side of the Cascades, the wetter side, for carbon sequestration, and focus fuel-reduction efforts near people, towns and infrastructure.
However, the Oregon State findings may not be applicable to other forests. "It is a fertile debate," said Andrea Tuttle, former head of the California Department of Forestry and an authority on forest carbon regulation. "But be careful what forest type you are talking about." Studies of other forests have produced different results, she explained, citing a UC Berkeley study of warmer, drier Sierran forests that found that measures to increase fire resistance were also applicable to long-term carbon sequestration.
The study comes at a time when state governments and the U.S. Congress, as well as other nations, are looking to forests to offset emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources of carbon dioxide, which, scientists say, is heating the planet to dangerous levels. Trees suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it for long periods. California recently enacted strict rules to govern the use of offsets for carbon sequestration in forests.
-- Margot Roosevelt
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