Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Emily, how do you feel about Bates's comments regarding the effect of
Obama's actions on the UN negotiation process/framework? That i thought
was the essence of his piece.
  

    
I think that a) it wasn't just Obama's actions, but b) yes, possibly
the UNFCCC framework is on its way to kaput.

The next question might be: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
  

    
Here's a piece on how the response to climate change might evolve in
the absence of a Copenhagen deal. It sounds promising, but I think even
under the rosiest scenario won't come close to touching the radical
cuts required to rein in climate change:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/business/economy/01views.html?scp=1&sq=%22th
e%20copenhagen%20call%20to%20arms%22&st=cse
  

    
This is another positive piece about the conference, David Doniger
which I picked up at Climate Progress. He thinks it should have a
positive effect on the Senate debate.

"The Copenhagen climate deal that President Obama hammered out Friday
night with the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa broke
through years of negotiating gridlock to achieve three critical goals. 
First, it provides for real cuts in heat-trapping carbon pollution by
all of the world’s big emitters.  Second, it establishes a transparent
framework for evaluating countries’ performance against their
commitments.  And third, it will start an unprecedented flow of
resources to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with climate
impacts, protect their forests, and adopt clean energy technologies."

<http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/28/the-copenhagen-accord-a-big-step-forward
/#more-16721>
  

    
Real cuts? Per the analysis of the UN secretariat's own people, the
cuts would result in a 3C increase in the average global temperature, a
downright catastrophic rise, and other analyses by climate scientists
see the increase as even worse (i've posted items on both viewpoints).

The "commitments" are totally unenforceable and subject to all sorts
of fudging, the evaluation framework is loose, to use a generous term.

And the "flow of resources", for which no hard commitments have been
given, will under the best of circumstances amount to $100 billion a
year, a fraction of the $500-800 billion said to be necessary. 

And why is the accord called an "agreement"? The conference did NOT
adopt it, it merely noted it. 

>I think that a) it wasn't just Obama's actions, but b) yes, possibly
the UNFCCC framework is on its way to kaput.

The next question might be: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?<
In the opinions expressed by folks from nations other than the 5 which
agreed to this deal, it's a really bad thing, it represents a complete
 overturning of the entire existing framework for negotiations, and a
freezing-out of the vast majority of the world's nations out of the
process. Of course, decision-makers in the 5 members of the "in crowd"
may see this as a good thing. So i suppose it depends upon the
perspective.
  

    


These are all nations that failed, with 24 months of lead time, to walk
into the Bella Center with an agreement largely mapped out and ready for
their heads-of- state to sign.  So however one asseses the pros and cons of
the "Copenhagen Accord," it really does not seem as if the Framework
Convention on Climate Change has proven itself a good long-term vehicle for
dealing with global warming.

I really don't think it's impossible for nations to come to terms on even
complex environmental problems.  Look at the success of the Montreal
Protocol to protect the ozone layer.

The major difference between Kyoto and Montreal is the heavy influence of
the fossil fuel industries, afaict.
  

    
<is the heavy influence of
the fossil fuel industries>


This, together with more centrally-controlled countries like China and
India not wanting to curtail their burgeoning industrial growth, is
the real "Climategate."
  

    
The powers-that-be in China and India realize that without rapid
economic growth, they face social and political upheavals, the only way
they have been able to keep their immensely impoverished populations
in line is with the carrot of growth to get people to think better
times are in their future. 
  

    

Should they be compelled to curtail their industrial growth?  There are
still millions upon millions of Chinese and Indian and Brazilian citizens
living in brutal rural poverty.

The argument is not about curtailing; it's about leapfrogging to low-carbon
industrial growth.  Which at the moment is a more expensive endeavor.  And
the rich nations are not exactly overflowing with generosity about
transferring technologies at no or low costs, even as they make demands.

If by some chance some of the early suppositions of CO2 impacts had been
widely understood, back in the 19th century, and an argument arose that the
US and Germany (such as it was) and the UK should curtail their industrial
growth because of it...well imagine the reactions.
  

    
Yes, and flash-forward to the present, when most of us understand what
the impacts of CO2 are, and we still can't be moved to help poorer
countries make the transition to a low-carbon economy. We're the
eat-drink-and-be-merry planet, whose tomorrow looks increasingly bleak.

Right now the only half-way plausible scenario involves the emergence
of new technologies to combat climate change. But I wonder whether such
technologies will invariably come with unintended consequences that
will neutralize their advantages. (Not to mention that the Earth faces
so much other potentially crippling environmental threats such as the
impending collapse of the oceans and disappearance of forests that must
also be addressed.)

So, Emily, any thoughts on the likelihood of new technologies that
might rescue us from the worst impacts of climate change?
  

    
Some folks think it would help if we all (ie the world) didn't have an
economic system which required growth in order to function, a
different system would be far more capable of adjusting to the new
material realities we're coming upon, such as global warming and peak
oil.
  

    
Why are international treaties important for technology transfer?
China is becoming the world's largest supplier of windmills and is
rapidly catching up on technology. I suspect they won't rely on
treaties to catch up in other areas.

It seems like the real question is who is going to invest in the R&D
for inventing new technologies and proving their feasibility; once it's
proven to be a promising area, it doesn't take a treaty for multiple
countries to decide that it's an important business to be in.
  

    
>It seems like the real question is who is going to invest in the R&D
for inventing new technologies and proving their feasibility

That would be the US I hope. We have decaying infrastructure
ourselves. It would be nice to leapfrog to some low-carbon industrial
growth. More stimulous for green industry hopefully will be a part of
any energy reduction plan in the Senate. Design needs to come into
play. And education. The important thing at this point I think is to
push for some Senate action, pump up green infrastructure R&D and
national investment and keep the environment in the news.
  

    
Jacques: So, Emily, any thoughts on the likelihood of new technologies
that might rescue us from the worst impacts of climate change?

Well, we already have plenty of proven technologies and techniques to
take us over the first several hurdles.  They're pretty obvious, from
existing wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and passive lighting, cooling,
and heating technologies, to low-energy lighting, to "green" building
techniques and weatherization of existing structures, and improved
energy efficiency standards and practices for appliances, industrial
machinery, and cars.

(I bought a new, EnergyStar-rated fridge this summer, to replace my
20-odd year old one [inherited about eight yrs ago when my parents sold
their apartment]. 

Even with the problems within the EnergyStar ratings system, my
electricity bill plummeted. This ain't rocket science.)

Any nation that combines sense with political will (or authoritarian
say-so -- that's you, China) is bringing on these technologies and
reforms as fast as possible, combined with something like natural gas
to provide steady energy.  That combo could cut carbon emissions
significantly while the next gen of energy technologies is developed.

I'm not completely up to date on advances in nuclear technology, but
my understanding is that there are some maximally safe and minimally
waste-generating (and non-breeding) technologies coming on.  

From a purely rational standpoint, that of needing to cut carbon
faster than fast, it seems to me that unless some astonishing act of
globally distributed political will happens within the next 12-24
months, we'll have passed the point where we can rule out expanded use
of nuclear.  It's a rock/hard place thing.

The problems with nuclear are a) it takes a good while to build a
nuclear power plant; b) they're very expensive, and the allocations of
funding typically need to outlast most political careers; and c) the
nuclear industry is about as mendacious, unevenly managed, and rife
with sweetheart dealings as the fossil energy industries.

Nuclear policy is a major source of divisiveness in enviro advocacy
circles, needless to say.

If by "new technologies that might rescue us from the worst impacts of
climate change," you mean geo-engineering and biotechnologies: Be
afraid.  Be very afraid.

I agree with Jamais Cascio, aka <cascio> on The WELL, that it's all
but inevitable that we're going to give them a try in coming decades.
We've probably delayed too long to do things the slow and safe way, and
won't want to live with the consequences; we'll think we can handle
any (un)anticipated side impacts. 

A lot of people won't be *able* to live with the consequences, as
jstrahl has noted in his hyperbolic way.

(I'm trying to dig up an article from December, about Russia releasing
some or other engineered organism into the wild to test its climate
change mitigation powers.  I suspect there will be a lot of this sort
of thing in coming decades.)
  

    
"The problems with nuclear, ASIDE FROM THE ETERNALLY RADIOACTIVE
WASTE, are..."
  

    
>It seems like the real question is who is going to invest in the R&D
for inventing new technologies and proving their feasibility

>>That would be the US I hope.

I feel fairly grim about the prospects for the US to remain a global
leader in innovation and industry.  

We're rich.  Even if we're less rich in the future, we'll be less rich
from the perspective of having once been over-the-top disgustingly
wealthy.

And we're creative.  

So between the two, there will still be gobs of good stuff coming out
of centers like MIT and Carnegie-Mellon, a gajillion
venture-capitalized energy firms, and the cooperative workspaces and
studios of citizen makers and scientists. (If they don't get arrested
as domestic terrorists, that is).    

But our political, media and civic spheres seem to be de-evolving into
permanent adolescence.  

People who try to act and lead like grown-ups, like President Obama --
 who try to govern complex problems and situations with subtlety and
thoughtfulness -- get punished both immediately and eventually.  

I mean: Why is Dick Cheney getting a free ride in the press every time
he pops up to castigate Obama for, say, taking time to think through
an Afghanistan policy?  Cheney was part of the administration that
botched two foreign wars, brought the world's biggest economy to its
knees, failed to prevent the murder of 3,000-odd Americans on US soil
by terrorists, and then failed to get the guy who master-minded the
plot.

(You don't have to be progressive, liberal, or center to call
Bush/Cheney a failed administration.  You just need to be
intellectually honest.)

Why does the US press still take climate change skeptics seriously? 
It's akin to giving creationists equal time in every story about
evolutionary biology.

What, exactly, will be left of the US press in five or ten years? 
With so many beat and investigative journalists leaving or being forced
out of the profession,  particularly at local and regional levels, we
are likely moving into one of the most phenomenal eras of corruption
that the nation has ever seen.
  

    


<Should they be compelled to curtail their industrial growth?  There
are still millions upon millions of Chinese and Indian and Brazilian
citizens living in brutal rural poverty. The argument is not about
curtailing; it's about leapfrogging to low-carbon industrial growth.>

<But our [American] political, media and civic spheres seem to be
de-evolving into permanent adolescence.>


Emily, these are your two statements from this excellent discussion
that really jumped out at me.  You've laid out, very succinctly, what
the pragmatic/viable goal should be for humankind on this thorniest of
issues.  Then, as an American, you make me seriously wonder if our
Nation, or at least those with the real power to affect change, are
already throwing a bullying, adolescent tantrum against the needed
innovation.  

The carrot simply needs to be monetized. In this, incentives
(profits/subsidies) are always more effective than disincentives
(taxes/fines).  At least that's the American way.
  

    


On tech transfer, btw: The issue is less the technologies themselves (other
than nuclear energy).  The issues are cost, scale, and appropriateness.

First, it must be noted that without a carrot, there's no incentive for
rich nations to help poor nations develop.  That carrot is typically return
on investment.  For signatories of the Kyoto accord, there's also the
carrot of having such projects count toward carbon targets.  Under the
UNFCCC, there is a "clean development mechanism" (CDM) which is supposed to
facilitate investment by industrial nations in low-carbon development in
developing nations.  The industrialized nations effectively get credit
toward their emissions reduction mandates in return.

In transferring any kind of venture across borders, international trade
policies also come into play.  As the Doctor might say, "It's complicated."

There's also a big contingent within the developing nations, and their
allies in nations like the USA, who say bringing the practices of the
global North to the cultures of the global South is destined to fail.  They
are advocating for "appropriate technologies" that take into account the
particular cultures that will be adopting them.

Sometimes they are even inventing these technologies.  Unfortunately,
typically these Forces for Good have inadequate and intermittent funding,
while projects that meet the criteria of the CDM have ready access to lots
of money, comparatively speaking  Sometimes, I have discovered in
reporting, CDM projects displace or quash local appropriate tech projects.

And then there's the issue of whether CDM actually lowers carbon emissions
in the aggregate.  There are a lot of gaps in the CDM process that suggest
they don't.  There's corrpution in implementing the projects.  And there's
next to no monitoring of the projects during or after development.

You'll recall that one of the major planks in the US climate platform is
that projects funded by that new pot of adapation and mitigation aid money
be subject to international reporting and monitoring.  The G77 nations were
opposed to new monitoring standards, and wanted the conditions to remain
the same as they have been under the Kyoto protocol.
  

    
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5929 
Michael Dittmar, a nuclear physicist with CERN in Geneva and the
Institute of Particle Physics of ETH Zurich, on nuclear power in its
various forms and its unviablity in energy terms (aside from the issue
of waste products). My first post-graduation job was in the nuclear
industry (Bechtel Corp), Emily's comment on the industry, part c, is if
anything an understatement. I would not trust anything coming out of
it. 

On the topic of viability of alternative technologies, see
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/57473 
This morning (1/3/10), Scoop Nisker interviewed Jerry Mander of the
International Forum on Globalization (and well-known author), he spoke
extensively about the recent report from IFG and the Post Carbon
Institute, "Searching for a Miracle", which concludes "No combination
of sustainable alternative energy systems can replace fossil fuels." A
pdf of a press release is available at  
http://www.ifg.org/pdf/Searching_PressRelease_web10nov09.pdf   
A pdf of the report is at http://www.ifg.org 
Principal author of the report is Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon,
Jerry Mander is the editor. (the release date was 11/10/09)   
Mander talked of the three aspects of the crisis: global warming, peak
oil (and also peak coal, peak uranium), and the depletion of critical
resources such as water, forests, soil and vital metals/minerals.
Unlike in the press release, he also used the C word, said capitalism,
which depends upon ever more growth, cannot be continued, likewise
industrial society. Good presentation.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-as-china-clamps-down-on-r
are-earth-exports-1855387.html

Cahal Milmo, 1/2/10. These rare earths are vital for "green
technology", the supply of these metals is in a state of crisis. 
  

    
There is plenty of doomsday to go around. The prospect that humans can
destroy life as we know it on the planet looks real. It seems to be
the death of a thousands cuts with a variety of tipping points. Every
energy source does need to be evaluated based on total environmental
footprint. Nuclear has those storage problems. A major dam may provide
nearly "free" electricity while completely destroying the highly
specialized salmon population, for example. Commonsense would say a
wide variety of sources on the grid while moving away from megaplants.
The developing world can be flooded with appropriate technology
projects, heavily fuel research and development here. It should be easy
to improve on charcoal, twigs or dung as a fuel source. That and water
are the primary problems I see. Unless we are going to flood the new
markets with cheap microwaves and wire everyone into system. Here at
home weatherization is the low hanging fruit. And it works as a jobs
program. Pride in that work, making life better for old and poor
people. Improve their quality of life and get some efficiencies too.  
  

    
My Inkwell time is winding down -- we're scheduled to wrap this up on
Jan. 6.  So please get your questions in about Copenhagen and related
subjects!

I'll take this moment to plug my outlets, thank my editors, and link
to my coverage:

At Oxfam America, Andrea Perera has been a very supportive editor, who
helped maintain the distinctions between journalism and advocacy.
Laura Rusu was my support on the ground in Copenhagen, and Vicky Rateau
has been a big administrative support.  

My COP15 articles and slideshows, along with posts from Oxfam
staffers, combined at:

http://actionhub.oxfamamerica.org/index.php?utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=web
&utm_campaign=climate
 


At OnEarth, where I'll be continuing to blog as a correspondent, my
editor Scott Dodd was very supportive during the talks.  In addition to
editing with a light and acute touch, he was upbeat about my
late-night-sleep-deprived inspiration to illustrate climate change
coverage with images of kittens and puppies (anything to lighten up
this dire topic):

http://www.onearth.org/copenhagen

Our OnEarth articles were picked up by the Copenhagen News
Collaborative, an aggregation of COP15 coverage from several
progressive and/or environ-sci news outlets including Mother Jones,
Treehugger, Discover, The Nation, The UpTake, the Pulitzer Center on
Crisis Reporting, Grist, In These Times, and the HuffPo.  

Thanks go to Monika Bauerlein at Mother Jones for support in working
with the collaborative: 

http://www.publish2.com/newsgroups/copenhagen-news-collaborative
  

    
Thanks for being here, Emily, i had no idea inkwell has a limited time
on such things. 
  

    
Emily, in the absence of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, what
happens to the CDM? Does it simply continue on, or does it go out of
business? Given the incredible corruption that you allude to and that
I've heard lots about, its passing might not be a bad thing.
  

    


Well, if Kyoto expires with nothing to replace it, then I guess the CDM as
framed under the Kyoto accord goes with it.

Here's a pretty good write-up of where CDM stands in the wake of
Copenhagen:

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2255410/copenhagen-green-
lights-plan

This quote in the article is the takeaway, at least for me:

"Speeding up a few bits of paperwork won't have a huge effect if investors
don't know for certain what will happen when Kyoto expires in 2012," he
said.

"It will take 18 months to two years to get a project up and running, so
what investor is going to invest in a new project when the whole mechanism
could change a few months after the project is completed?"

One big arena of negotiations at Copenhagen was the restructuring of the
mechanisms to preserve and restore forests in the global South.  That's
called REDD, for "United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing
Countries."

REDD is a UN program, but not under the UNFCCC (Framework Convention on
Climate Change) -- it's a joint program of FAO and UNEP and UNDP.  It's got
facets similar to the CDM, particularly in that richer countries can fund
REDD programs and get "credits" toward their own emissions.  Its problems
are also similar: how to accurately account for the carbon storage; how to
be sure the projects actually happen and are effective; how to ensure the
money gets to its intended targets.

One unique facet of REDD has been attempts to struture it such that South
nations have incentives to not convert forests to palm oil or other
plantations.

Some of the more dogged reporting on REDD that I've seen was by Robert
Eshelman in The Nation.  According to Eshelman, it seems that the US played
a significant role in weakening the revised REDD agreement.


HIs links:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/copenhagen/_by-rob
  

    
Interesting discussion. I was so happy to hear about things as they
were there at Copenhagen.