Some hope and ambition found

The very last speaker at the COP 17 plenary session, American student Anjali Appadurai, speaking on behalf of the Youth NGO:

Occupy Climate

One of the ruptures bubbling under the surface and threatening to tear negotiations apart every year at the climate talks is the divide between the have's and the have-nots.  In a formal way, this is one of the reasons why the biggest bloc of countries is the G77 and China representing about 130 countries falling into the broader UN category of "developing".  In many ways, this is simply a euphemism for "poor".  While individually the countries that make up the G77 (except perhaps China) have an equal voice in the UN process, they do not have the same sort of economic gravitas of countries like the United States, Germany, Japan, etc.  Speaking as a unified bloc ensures that they have some sort of coherence and influence beyond their GDP's.

In Durban, there have been some interesting challenges to the traditional north-south, rich-poor divide.  The BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) are a bloc of the largest economies of the developing world.  There have been rumblings that the normal unity that these countries share with the G77 is starting to fracture.  Because of their growing economic interests the BASIC countries seem to have a bit of an identity crisis. While they steadfastly hold to the position that the Annex I countries (the developed world) are historically responsible for the accumulation of Greenhouse Gasses in the atmosphere and therefore should be primarily responsible for funding any solution, they are also starting to realize the tangible benefits of becoming leading economic powers in their own right.  We now have rich, poor, and aspirational nations of the BASIC bloc. 

Many of these discussions come down to interpretations of fairness and justice. In many ways these same impulses are behind the Occupy movements that are occurring in various cities worldwide.  So it shouldn't be all that surprising perhaps that the two have been combined in Durban.  OccupyCOP17 has a presence outside the talks and is trying to link the broader Occupy movement more explicitly to the issue of using markets and the commodification of carbon to the processes of mass industrialization which generated this problem in the first place.With slogans like "keep the oil in the soil and the coal in the hole", OccupyCOP17 is another voice trying to maintain pressure on the industrialized countries to play fair. 


Carbon Markets: Trading with our Future from Occupy Cop17 on Vimeo.

Its not about climate

The COP/UNFCCC process has become a perpetual rerun of some kind of Jennifer Aniston movie: the dysfunction between the characters ends up not being about yogurt flavors - even though that's what they keep arguing about - but their insecure childhoods.

As we have often blogged about here, the ambassadors negotiating at COPs are doing so from positions of narrow, immediate economic and political self-interest, and seem increasingly divorced from the underlying reality of the climatic situation itself. Rajendra Pachauri, the chief scientific spokesman for the UNFCCC, makes this point in an interview yesterday with Amy Goodman - saying that there is "a complete absence of the discussion on scientific evidence," and that he would like each daily negotiating session to begin "with a very clear presentation on where we are going, what it’s going mean to different parts of the world, and what are the options available to us by which, at very low cost and, in some cases, negative cost, we can bring about a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases."

Certainly the ambassadors have heard these presentations, but they don't really seem to have sunk in. One of the things that bothers me the most when ambassadors do speak directly to climate is that it almost always lacks any climatological nuance - most often they describe a goal like "keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius" as if they could simply tell climatologists to turn the planet's thermostat dial once the bickering over the number had settled.

It's almost enough to make me long for the good old days of nuclear arms negotiations. At least in that case, the ambassadors had a black & white picture of the consequences of failure: planetary annihilation. That kind of scary vision does not seem to seriously hang over climate negotiations, even though that is exactly what the science points to. So perhaps Pachauri is right - for ambassadors to get serious, they have to constantly be presented with the gravity of their failure. We need something like cigarette packages with pictures of corroded lungs on them - something that will get into the political psyches and deter them from their short term fixes by making them face up to long term reality.

Environmental Outlook: Durban

This morning on the Diane Rehm radio program their environmental outlook series focused on the Climate talks in Durban. Given the relative lack of mainstream coverage of the issue in the American media, it's worth a listen.

It is a pretty good intro into the talks and especially the U.S. position on the talk even though there is the usual tangential drivel about the science being "unsettled".  

NGO's call for greater US involvement

On Tuesday the over a dozen environmental organizations sent an open letter to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling out the Obama administration for not living up to what he promised prior to taking office. Despite the economic free-fall since moving into the White House, President Obama has been criticized openly since the Copenhagen talks for not being aggressive enough in pushing for an international solution as well as not using the bully pulpit of the presidency to offer more leadership even if US commitments are restricted by what Congress will tolerate.

An excerpt from the letter states:

In November, 2008, President-elect Obama gave an inspiring video address to the Bi-Partisan Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, California. He said that "Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” and pledged that “once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

Three years later, America risks being viewed not as a global leader on climate change, but as a major obstacle to progress. U.S. positions on two major issues – the mandate for future negotiations and climate finance – threaten to impede in Durban the global cooperation so desperately needed to address the threat of climate change.

The Politics of Climate

There are few concepts in science that I can think of that are more politically polarizing than climate. The story behind why this has occurred in some places (the US and the UK) and why it has never been the same kind of political issue in others (the rest of the world) is complicated. Most science focusing on the environment, in has some type of public policy element to it because people have an enormous impact (collectively and individually) on the world around us.

Climate is different. It has been elevated to the same level of political partisanship as the theory of evolution during the monkey trial of 1925. Though most scientists cringe at the notion that anything as complicated as a changing climate should be distilled down to simple binaries, it is nevertheless interesting to see how perceptions among Americans change over time. The Pew Research Center has been survey populations about the issue for years and their latest polling (released Dec. 1) shows some interesting results.

Global Forest Update

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently completed their latest global forest survey. In it, they conclude that while deforestation is indeed continuing around the world, it is not necessarily as bad as expected. Not surprisingly, most of the forest loss is concentrated in the tropics worldwide. The clip below is a short interview with Adam Gerrand of FAO describing the methodology and some of the major findings. Of note to Geographers, the latest assessment relies heavily on satellite surveys.



Given the prominence of the REDD program in the last couple rounds of climate talks, the ability to quickly and accurately assess forest cover (if not forest composition or density) is a valuable form of objective measurement that can be used to assess country claims regarding forest protection, degradation, and reforestation.

Path Dependency

In comments today, the US negotiator in Durban Jonathan Pershing clearly illustrated the American strategy and why so many other countries are so frustrated with us. Last year in Mexico, there was a target adopted by the conference of limiting warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). While a great number of small and poor countries are trying to convince others to lower this target to 1.5 degrees C, most developed countries are debating how this target should best be reached. Responding to a question about whether the current commitments made by the US are sufficient to reach to the 2 degrees C target Pershing stated "...one has to marry a politically pragmatic outcome with a scientifically important conclusion. If you demand more than the politics can deliver, you don't succeed."

Remember the Maldives

Interesting video clip of a short interview by Laura Flanders of The Nation of Mohammed Hassan, the vice-president of the Maldives. We've blogged before about the impassioned way representatives of the Maldives have, over the years, tried to put a face on the issue human vulnerability to climate change. The Maldives is a small island state in the Indian Ocean that does not receive much notice by the Western media yet, like parts of Africa, they are currently experiencing the types of changes in the landscape expected to occur more frequently in a warming world. It's worth a listen and a good reminder that to many people around the world, this is not a strictly academic issue.

Fake Plastic Trees

I teach a Freshman and Sophomore level class at the University of Missouri on climate change. The first two thirds of the course are devoted to the science that grounds what we know about climatic conditions, patterns and trends. The last third of the course involves looking at what is involved in making the transition from science to public policy. How does science actually inform what we do. It is a fascinating class to teach because the content we move through during the course of a semester covers both science and policy.

White noise

One of the things I remember as so striking when I lived abroad was the realization of just how insular the U.S. really is. Despite the fact that we are constantly inundated with news stories twenty-four hours a day and there are few respites from some sort of media, most Americans know shockingly little about the rest of the world. When we do happen to pay attention to international issues, you can be sure that there is some reason that can be traced back to how it affects us. Wars in the middle east, financial crises in Europe, Arab spring, we know about them to the extent that they affect us. It would be easy to dismiss this because every nation does the same thing. Maybe to a certain extent that is right but it seems fair to say that here in the U.S. we live in our own little bubble and are further removed from international engagement than other nations can afford to be.

Do we go to Qatar?

It's official. The next meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is to be held next November (2012) in Doha, Qatar. Personally, I was pulling for South Korea but they didn't ask my opinion. At least in Doha, negotiators will have a ready illustration of extravagance and living beyond your means.

So the real question is virtual Qatar or real Qatar? Or will it matter at that point?

Analyzing Commitments

If there is a theme to the climate meeting in Durban it may just be a quote taken from a member of the Climate Analytics group, "the ambition level is not sufficient". A cynic might suggest that this has actually been a fairly consistent theme since the UN process began in 1992. Despite the high hopes that the international process would be able to overcome this lack of ambition prior to the Copenhagen talks, it remains an open question whether this process can ever really produce the kind of overall impact that would reduce or forestall the worst effects expected from warming in the next century.

Climate Analytics is a non-governmental organization based in Germany that has dedicated themselves to quantifying the ability, or lack thereof, of the political process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions leading to increasing temperatures and climatic instability. Most of their work can be found on the Climate Action Tracker website.

Survey says...!

Today the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a provisional statement on the status of global climate in 2011.  At this point it seems appropriate to point out that we have been here before and heard the same things stated over and over again.

Based on data collected from the WMO around the world, they are concluding that despite the fact that 2011 was a La Niña year, it is currently tied as the 10th warmest year on record globally. As you can see on the graph above during La Niña events global temperatures typically cool. The data also shows that the average temperatures seen during La Niña events is trending upwards as well meaning the cool years are getting a lot less cool. 

A carbon-neutral experiment

This year is different for Mark and I in that we are experimenting with a (mostly) carbon-neutral experience. In 2009, we both traveled to Copenhagen. Last year I was in Mexico while Mark blogged from Columbia. This year we are both stateside and attending the climate talks on a virtual basis.

The obvious advantages to this is the fact that we are not traveling around the world to attend the meetings in person. The net result is a savings in fuel and real costs as well. It also takes it's own mental toll to be constantly on the move and eating not much more than granola and almonds for two weeks straight. I look forward to eating real meals and being able to tuck my daughter into bed at night.

Having attended the talks for a couple of years we are in a pretty good position to be able to interpret what we are seeing and hearing via the live webcasts. Things make much more sense to me now than they did that first year in Copenhagen. In that sense, I anticipate there will be little content lost due to our virtual attendance.

Another one bites the dust

Tom Toles of the Washington Post has been publishing editorial cartoons about climate change for many years - here is today's, dead-on as usual.

Kicking the Can

In the Opening Plenary of the latest round of climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, South Africa's president Jacob Zuma reiterated an increasingly ineffectual plea:

"For most people in the developing countries and Africa, climate change is a matter of life and death."

While few who understand the problem doubt the truth of this statement, the power it has to motivate political action has ebbed significantly in the years since Copenhagen. For many delegations the sense of urgency has all but disappeared. For both the European Union and the United States, success in Durban will be primarily defined by setting into motion some of the agreements made in principle last year in Cancun. In effect, this is settling on wallpaper before the house is built.

What can we expect from Durban?

The Elephant in the conference room

Last month, demographers from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report which estimates the population of the world now exceeds 7,000,000,000 people. This is a critical context for any solution or remedy to anthropogenic climate change. 

The fundamental challenge of climate change is that traditional means of social and economic development reinforce the release of greenhouse gas emissions leading to global warming trends and changes in local and regional climatic conditions.  It is a Catch-22.  The more people there are in the world and the more they are raised from poverty the worse the climate crisis becomes.

Where did Hope and Ambition go?... not the middle way

COP17 opens today in Durban: it's amazing to see how quickly expectations for serious progress through the UN process have fallen - from the precipice of an ambitious treaty to being drowned in the bathtub. Two years ago in Copenhagen there was a strong sense that world political leadership would have to see the writing on the wall, step up to the plate and agree to a treaty; certainly (it was thought) that these leaders would not arrive to simply preside over failure. In hindsight, it's clear that they were there to deliver eulogies.

By last year's meeting in Cancun, some hopes lingered that talks might be rescued, but now even those with the rosiest tints in their glasses are depressed and the cynics seem vindicated. What happened?

The US role is central, and the path President Obama has taken is indicative of the failings. Back in Copenhagen, Obama was still fairly fresh from winning election by promising Hope and Change, and was optimistic that Congress would support greenhouse gas legislation. He arrived sporting the Nobel Peace Prize from the previous week; surely, we had emerged from decades of stalemate and quagmire!? Flash forward to 2011 - after innumerable drone attacks and with military spending rising as inexorably as CO2 levels - the title "Nobel Peace Laureate" is rarely applied if not forgotten, a symbol of misguided hope. Obama's pursuit of a 'sensible' and practical middle way on all other fronts has led to similar ends: lame reforms of the health insurance system, hollow Wall Street reforms, brinksmanship over debt ceilings...in other words, Washington business as usual.

Jevons Paradox

Can energy efficiency be bad for the environment?  How can electric cars and LED lighting result in higher rates of overall energy usage when they are meant to have the exact opposite effect?  This is the crux of the Jevons Paradox which indicates it is going to be even harder than previously thought for society to reduce the overall amount of energy usage (and therefore CO2 emissions).  

William Stanley Jevons was a British economist who argued way back in 1865 in his book The Coal Question that energy efficiencies designed to save or reduce the amount of fuel used tend to have the paradoxical effect of increasing energy consumption in the long-term. Jevons noted that the introduction of James Watt's innovative steam engine resulted in each individual engine using less coal. A good thing. But because each individual engine used less coal, they were more cost-effective to use. This resulted in steam engines being rapidly employed in a wide range of industries where they had previously not been used. In the long-run, Watt's development of the steam engine led to a dramatic increase in the overall amount of coal being burned because steam engines were now all over the place.