Being ''green'' is all the rage with technology companies these days, but what's not clear is whether or not the environment-friendly approach is bringing in more greenbacks.Tech buyers say they desire devices that are kind to the environment, but they haven't shown a strong predisposition to buy them - except when it saves them money.''There's high-level awareness and low-level activity,'' said Christopher Mines, an analyst at Forrester Research. ''The goal is to feed into it ... and try to take advantage of the growing concern.''Among those able to successfully tap into those concerns are computer hardware companies like Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp., Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co., Armonk, N.Y.-based International Business Machines Corp. and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which have all been churning out servers or server components that require less power - and thus less money to operate.However, other green initiatives by technology companies, such as running environmentally oriented contests or planting trees, don't have a direct line to the pocketbooks of client companies' chief investment officers, making those initiatives ring a bit hollow.''By and large, the vendors are, of course, trying to differentiate and trying to win goodwill to enhance their brand,'' Mines said. But, he added, ''there's real, legitimate hard-dollar cost-saving to be had.''The hype surrounding being green has even spawned a new word - greenwashing - harkening back to the days when the buzzword was ''dot-com.'' Just like those days, the environment presents an opportunity for technology companies, either by selling into it or using it as a marketing tool.The proselytizing seems to be resonating. Chief investment officers polled by Forrester said they were concerned about the impact their company was having on the environment, although few were doing much about it.The machines with the most success so far have been ones that provide a clear return on the investment, such as energy-efficient servers.With big data centers running out of space and burdened with big energy bills, servers that draw less power have been in demand. For example, Intel and H-P promise to save companies money with lower-powered servers while IBM can make sure everything works together thanks to its services arm.H-P has seen a 120 percent increase worldwide in the number of inquiries connected to the environment since the last half of 2006. In 2005, the company saw $6 billion in requests for proposals that had some environmental element.Pat Tiernan, vice president for corporate social environmental responsibility, said that number continues to climb. Most of the inquiries are about energy conservation, with recycling a close second, Tiernan said.IBM launched its ''Project Big Green'' program in early May, committing $1 billion per year to increase the level of energy efficiency in the information technologies markets, and since then has been bombarded by customer request.While most of the activity is happening on the corporate side, consumers are starting to become a driving force in the green push. So are shareholders of public companies who want to make sure environmental polices are in place. All of these different constituencies give technology companies an opportunity to sell products and services, experts said.''Our consumer research shows that, on both coasts, 7 percent to 11 percent of Americans consider themselves to be green,'' said Richard Doherty, research director at Envisoneering Group. ''Of the consumers we've interviewed, they say one or more purchases is influenced by the more-green company.''In recent months, most technology companies also have been crowing about their green initiatives. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Inc. will plant trees for customers who buy a computer, while Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Corp. recently launched a contest to find the greenest city in America. (The winner: Hastings, Neb.)While it's nice to plant a tree, is it a reason to run out and buy a company's products?''If the computer is up to snuff and the price is about the same, it helps'' to be green, says Howard Anderson, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business, noting that technology companies seem to have different shades of green. ''If Nokia and Motorola are green, then why haven't they invented phones that use less battery-charging?''
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Green movement 'hijacked' by politics
Parts of the green movement have become hijacked by a political agenda and now operate like multinational corporations, according to two senior scientists and members of the House of Lords.
The peers, who were speaking at an event in parliament on science policy, said they felt that in some areas green campaign groups were a hindrance to environmental causes.
"Much of the green movement isn't a green movement at all, it's a political movement," said Lord May, who is a former government chief scientific adviser and president of the Royal Society. He singled out Greenpeace as an environmental campaign group that had "transmogrified" into one with primarily an anti-globalisation stance.
"Maybe they are right, but I wish they would wear the uniform of the army they are fighting [under]," said May, adding that he used to be involved with Greenpeace in the 1970s.
Greenpeace's chairman John Sauven said he did not recognise the characterisation. "I don't know who he is talking about," he said, "As far as I know, no mainstream environmental organisation has been anti-globalisation per se...Frankly that does not represent what we are about."
He said that Greenpeace did, however, campaign against examples of unsustainable trade, such as transporting bottled water between continents. "There are a million and one examples of the madness of globalisation that are having a detrimental effect on the environment," he added.
May also criticised green groups who campaign against initiatives such as wind farms and the Severn tidal barrage scheme, while also proclaiming the need to tackle climate change. He said such groups were "failing to recognise the landscape is human-created".
As an example of how attitudes can change, he cited the poet John Ruskin's angry condemnation of the Monsal Dale railway. The line, built in the 1860s, runs through beautiful countryside between Matlock and Buxton. At the time, Ruskin raged: "The valley is gone and the Gods with it, and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour." The railway is now regarded fondly by many people as an integral part of the landscape, May said.
Lord Krebs, the former chairman of the Food Standards Agency and current principal of Jesus College Oxford also criticised Greenpeace, saying that it had been set up to peddle fear on environmental issues. "Greenpeace is a multinational corporation just like Monsanto or Tesco. They have very effective marketing departments... Their product is worry because worry is what recruits members," he said.
He added that in some areas, such as warning about the effects of climate change, such an approach was justified, but that Greenpeace sometimes chose the wrong issues – for example, nuclear power and GM crops.
Sauven said Greenpeace's resources are a "tiny fraction" of those of Monsanto or Tesco's. "With very few resources, we are a very effective campaigning organisation," he said, adding that he would prefer to take the comments as a compliment. "I can live with that one."
May and Krebs were speaking at a meeting – Science, Policy and Ethics: Potential future flashpoints, for peers and journalists in parliament – which was chaired by the leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Hayman. It was attended by several peers including Lord Cunningham, former agriculture minister and minister for the Cabinet Office in Tony Blair's cabinet, and the broadcaster Lord Bragg.
May said parliamentarians had not done enough to prepare the public for the effect climate change would have on their lives in terms of efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate changes.
"I think there has been a problem of communication," he said. "For some, I think it's the desire not to confront the issue." But, he said, the smoking ban had showed, for example, that public attitudes could change rapidly.
The peers, who were speaking at an event in parliament on science policy, said they felt that in some areas green campaign groups were a hindrance to environmental causes.
"Much of the green movement isn't a green movement at all, it's a political movement," said Lord May, who is a former government chief scientific adviser and president of the Royal Society. He singled out Greenpeace as an environmental campaign group that had "transmogrified" into one with primarily an anti-globalisation stance.
"Maybe they are right, but I wish they would wear the uniform of the army they are fighting [under]," said May, adding that he used to be involved with Greenpeace in the 1970s.
Greenpeace's chairman John Sauven said he did not recognise the characterisation. "I don't know who he is talking about," he said, "As far as I know, no mainstream environmental organisation has been anti-globalisation per se...Frankly that does not represent what we are about."
He said that Greenpeace did, however, campaign against examples of unsustainable trade, such as transporting bottled water between continents. "There are a million and one examples of the madness of globalisation that are having a detrimental effect on the environment," he added.
May also criticised green groups who campaign against initiatives such as wind farms and the Severn tidal barrage scheme, while also proclaiming the need to tackle climate change. He said such groups were "failing to recognise the landscape is human-created".
As an example of how attitudes can change, he cited the poet John Ruskin's angry condemnation of the Monsal Dale railway. The line, built in the 1860s, runs through beautiful countryside between Matlock and Buxton. At the time, Ruskin raged: "The valley is gone and the Gods with it, and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour." The railway is now regarded fondly by many people as an integral part of the landscape, May said.
Lord Krebs, the former chairman of the Food Standards Agency and current principal of Jesus College Oxford also criticised Greenpeace, saying that it had been set up to peddle fear on environmental issues. "Greenpeace is a multinational corporation just like Monsanto or Tesco. They have very effective marketing departments... Their product is worry because worry is what recruits members," he said.
He added that in some areas, such as warning about the effects of climate change, such an approach was justified, but that Greenpeace sometimes chose the wrong issues – for example, nuclear power and GM crops.
Sauven said Greenpeace's resources are a "tiny fraction" of those of Monsanto or Tesco's. "With very few resources, we are a very effective campaigning organisation," he said, adding that he would prefer to take the comments as a compliment. "I can live with that one."
May and Krebs were speaking at a meeting – Science, Policy and Ethics: Potential future flashpoints, for peers and journalists in parliament – which was chaired by the leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Hayman. It was attended by several peers including Lord Cunningham, former agriculture minister and minister for the Cabinet Office in Tony Blair's cabinet, and the broadcaster Lord Bragg.
May said parliamentarians had not done enough to prepare the public for the effect climate change would have on their lives in terms of efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate changes.
"I think there has been a problem of communication," he said. "For some, I think it's the desire not to confront the issue." But, he said, the smoking ban had showed, for example, that public attitudes could change rapidly.
In Confronting Its Biggest Foe, Green Movement Also Fights Itself
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?"
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?"
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.
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