In a bold move (critics would say an "about-face," but it's not really), US President George W. Bush outlined his plan for reducing global carbon emissions. He urged 15 major countries to agree by the end of next year on a global emissions goal for reducing greenhouse gases.
He wants a series of meetings to begin this fall and to include countries such as China and India, as well as major European nations and the United States.
Some say this is a salvo designed and timed to get ahead of criticism the Bush administration was likely to receive at next week's Group of 8 (G8) Summit in Germany. Climate change is to be a leading topic on the agenda there.
But President Bush said, in announcing his plan, "The new initiative I'm outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany next week."
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair applauded President Bush's announcement on climate change as "a huge step forward," saying also that the true "significance of this is America accepting this is a real problem now, accepting it's got to offer real leadership on this issue and being prepared to be part of a global deal at the heart of which will be the reduction of emissions."
Environmentalists from World Wildlife Fund and liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress attacked Bush for "trying to leapfrog next week's summit" and push "aiming for 2008." In an extreme reaction, one critic claimed it was "morally unacceptable" for Bush to preempt the G8.
But according to people familiar with the situation, Bush has had not so much a conversion on the issue of climate change as his thinking has evolved. Bush himself said today in his remarks that "science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it."
He went on to suggest that "the United States will work with other nations to establish a new framework on greenhouse gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."
Let's hope the critics are wrong on this one and that the G8 meeting will be a productive next step, following on the heals of the President's proposal.
Read President Bush's full remarks to the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign
30 May 2007
Global Climate Change: HSBC Backs $100m Climate Partnership
From the BBC Wednesday: HSBC is setting aside $100m (£50m) for an initiative to tackle climate change.
The funding by the UK's largest bank will help charities and environmental groups to research some of the global causes and effects of climate change.
The partnership will look at ways to protect the world's most important rivers and identify how cities can respond to environmental threats.
HSBC also said it would create "a green taskforce", to ensure climate awareness was central to its own business.
HSBC is the latest UK company to pledge changes to the way it operates in the face of calls for big business to do more to prioritise environmental concerns.
HSBC is teaming up with climate campaigners the Climate Group, environmental groups the Earthwatch Institute and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and the conservation charity WWF in a five-year partnership
"We believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change," said HSBC chairman Stephen Green.
HSBC, which will spend $5m of the $100m on managing the project, said it would enable the four bodies to expand their climate-related research and undertake work in new countries such as China and India.
Read the full article in BBC: HSBC Climate
The funding by the UK's largest bank will help charities and environmental groups to research some of the global causes and effects of climate change.
The partnership will look at ways to protect the world's most important rivers and identify how cities can respond to environmental threats.
HSBC also said it would create "a green taskforce", to ensure climate awareness was central to its own business.
HSBC is the latest UK company to pledge changes to the way it operates in the face of calls for big business to do more to prioritise environmental concerns.
HSBC is teaming up with climate campaigners the Climate Group, environmental groups the Earthwatch Institute and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and the conservation charity WWF in a five-year partnership
"We believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change," said HSBC chairman Stephen Green.
HSBC, which will spend $5m of the $100m on managing the project, said it would enable the four bodies to expand their climate-related research and undertake work in new countries such as China and India.
Read the full article in BBC: HSBC Climate
Global Climate Change: Nature.com Featuring Climate Change Forum
In May 2007, nature.com is launching a news website dedicated to providing thorough investigative reporting on global climate change. Nature Reports: Climate Change will be a one stop-shop for in-depth news, features, opinions, commentary and analysis.
As the latest addition to the Nature Reports series (which includes Avian Flu and Stem Cells), Nature Reports: Climate Change will explore 'the news behind the science and the science behind the news' of important areas of scientific research. This resource hub on global warming will cover the science of climate change through reviews, research highlights and features, as well as casting a wider net to cover the larger implications of climate change for policy, society, and the economy.
A key feature will be its interaction with the wider community, initiating dialogue, debate and discussion through regular blogs and podcasts.
Here, are links to nature.com's existing resources on climate change: news@nature.com's climate change in focus, Nature's web focuses on climate change topics, and news@nature.com's special on regional climate change.
As the latest addition to the Nature Reports series (which includes Avian Flu and Stem Cells), Nature Reports: Climate Change will explore 'the news behind the science and the science behind the news' of important areas of scientific research. This resource hub on global warming will cover the science of climate change through reviews, research highlights and features, as well as casting a wider net to cover the larger implications of climate change for policy, society, and the economy.
A key feature will be its interaction with the wider community, initiating dialogue, debate and discussion through regular blogs and podcasts.
Here, are links to nature.com's existing resources on climate change: news@nature.com's climate change in focus, Nature's web focuses on climate change topics, and news@nature.com's special on regional climate change.
29 May 2007
Global Climate Change: Professor Summers' "Practical Steps" to Tackle Global Warming
Lawrence Summers, the the Charles W. Eliot university professor at Harvard, writing in the Financial Times on Monday, offers a five point agenda for taking on climate change. He starts with the premise that the Kyoto Protocol may be as weak in controlling climate change as the League of Nations was in promoting peace. (A sad, but poignant commentary, with which we agree.)
Here are the main points of professor Summers' agenda (highlighted by The Green Skeptic):
"First, the US must engage in an energy efficiency programme that takes effect without delay and has meaningful bite. As long as developing countries can point to the US as a free rider there will not be serious dialogue about what they are willing to do. I prefer carbon and/or gasoline tax measures to permit systems or heavy regulatory approaches because the latter are more likely to be economically inefficient and to be regressive. The key point is that after Kyoto, where there was US vision in setting goals but no on-the-ground action, there must be real policy commitments.
"Second, the major industrial countries should commit to a very large increase in funding for research in technologies that offer the prospect of reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases, such as renewable energy, carbon sequestration and energy efficient engines. They should also learn a lesson from the pharmaceutical experience and commit to making intellectual property relating to clean energy available to developing countries on preferential terms. It may be that ambitious emissions- reduction targets can be achieved with existing technology, yet new technologies could help.
"Third, the World Bank, and probably the regional development banks, should be reconstituted by their shareholders as “Banks for Development and the Global Environment” and take on as a major mission the provision of subsidised capital for projects that have environmental benefits that go beyond national borders. There is much that can be done to encourage energy efficiency in almost every sector within developing countries, yet national governments have inadequate incentives to take account of global impacts. Moreover, the institutions need a new role with respect to countries other than the poorest ones at a time when the leading developing countries are actually exporting rather than importing capital.
"Fourth, a goal should be set of eliminating by 2025 the more than $200bn the world spends each year on energy subsidies, and enforced through strategies such as those used for inappropriate subsidies in trade. This is a clear case where environmental and economic imperatives coincide and it is one where external political commitment is likely to be desirable in many countries, just as in the trade area. This will require considerable work on the definition of and measurement of total energy subsidies. Such work will lay a foundation for the more ambitious efforts that may be needed in harmonising world energy prices above market levels in the future.
"There is a final critical process element in the policy response. Given that viable solutions depend on significant changes in developing country policies and that these countries are unlikely to make them unless they see their own interests as at stake, it is essential that they be full participants in setting the global direction. They are surely likely to do more if they can help shape policy than if it is simply the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations seeking to bring them along."
We like this kind of thinking at The Green Skeptic.
Read the full article in FT: Summers
Here are the main points of professor Summers' agenda (highlighted by The Green Skeptic):
"First, the US must engage in an energy efficiency programme that takes effect without delay and has meaningful bite. As long as developing countries can point to the US as a free rider there will not be serious dialogue about what they are willing to do. I prefer carbon and/or gasoline tax measures to permit systems or heavy regulatory approaches because the latter are more likely to be economically inefficient and to be regressive. The key point is that after Kyoto, where there was US vision in setting goals but no on-the-ground action, there must be real policy commitments.
"Second, the major industrial countries should commit to a very large increase in funding for research in technologies that offer the prospect of reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases, such as renewable energy, carbon sequestration and energy efficient engines. They should also learn a lesson from the pharmaceutical experience and commit to making intellectual property relating to clean energy available to developing countries on preferential terms. It may be that ambitious emissions- reduction targets can be achieved with existing technology, yet new technologies could help.
"Third, the World Bank, and probably the regional development banks, should be reconstituted by their shareholders as “Banks for Development and the Global Environment” and take on as a major mission the provision of subsidised capital for projects that have environmental benefits that go beyond national borders. There is much that can be done to encourage energy efficiency in almost every sector within developing countries, yet national governments have inadequate incentives to take account of global impacts. Moreover, the institutions need a new role with respect to countries other than the poorest ones at a time when the leading developing countries are actually exporting rather than importing capital.
"Fourth, a goal should be set of eliminating by 2025 the more than $200bn the world spends each year on energy subsidies, and enforced through strategies such as those used for inappropriate subsidies in trade. This is a clear case where environmental and economic imperatives coincide and it is one where external political commitment is likely to be desirable in many countries, just as in the trade area. This will require considerable work on the definition of and measurement of total energy subsidies. Such work will lay a foundation for the more ambitious efforts that may be needed in harmonising world energy prices above market levels in the future.
"There is a final critical process element in the policy response. Given that viable solutions depend on significant changes in developing country policies and that these countries are unlikely to make them unless they see their own interests as at stake, it is essential that they be full participants in setting the global direction. They are surely likely to do more if they can help shape policy than if it is simply the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations seeking to bring them along."
We like this kind of thinking at The Green Skeptic.
Read the full article in FT: Summers
Global Climate Change: Energy Giant Backs Climate Trading at APEC Forum
Angela MacDonald-Smith of Bloomberg News reports that Russell Caplan, chairman of Royal Dutch Shell in Australia called for global carbon trading to set a price on carbon and allow for investments in new energy-supply projects while reducing emissions. According to the article, which appeared in yesterday's International Herald Tribune, Caplan said Monday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation energy business forum in Darwin, "that while the European Union's carbon trading system is 'a good start,' a worldwide plan is required."
"'Market mechanisms are likely to be the most effective means of implementing change,' Caplan said at the forum. 'Trading needs to become global to become truly effective and establish a clear market price for CO2 that will be factored into the investment evaluations of the new technologies and energy conservation measures that we need for a low-carbon future.'"
Read the full article here: Energy
Access Mr. Caplan's speech: Caplan
"'Market mechanisms are likely to be the most effective means of implementing change,' Caplan said at the forum. 'Trading needs to become global to become truly effective and establish a clear market price for CO2 that will be factored into the investment evaluations of the new technologies and energy conservation measures that we need for a low-carbon future.'"
Read the full article here: Energy
Access Mr. Caplan's speech: Caplan
Global Climate Change: Going to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks?
Stefan Rahmstorf of RealClimate posted this morning about the notorious millennial temperature curve, stating that new IPCC report compiles a dozen reconstructions for the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere, confirming that Northern Hemisphere temperatures are now higher than at any time during the past 1,000 years (see above image) and strengthening the conclusions drawn in the previous IPCC report of 2001. This despite opinions to the contrary such as those in the Wall Street Journal.
The authors also note that climate skeptics have long cited a graph from the 1990 IPCC report that was meant to illustrate an estimate for central England, but was not identified as such in the report. See also RealClimate's "Dummies Guide to the Hockey Stick."
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