Details

Yesterday some of the groups opened the conference by having their plenary sessions. The beginnings of the meetings can be as mind-numbing as any University-related meeting with the organizational matters and various housekeeping that needs to be done with any group. But after the initial introductions, approval of the agenda and points of order, that's when groups and countries have the opportunity to make general opening statements which can be fascinating to hear. In these opening statements you can hear what is important to the different players and how passionately they feel about it.

In the afternoon I attended the opening plenary of the Ad-hoc working group on long-term cooperative action (the aptly named AWG-LCA). This is the group that is charged with the actual implementation of Convention agreements, the sticky logistics that come with any complicated negotiation. Business is conducted very formally, whenever someone is speaking they normally make reference to Mr. Chairman (or Madam) every other sentence. There are few offhand comments or off the cuff remarks. However, it was actually funny when at one point during discussion of a semantic detail that didn't seem to make any difference the Chair of the group said very sarcastically, "may I welcome the presence of details in our midst."

The catch

There seem to be some structural issues emerging that threaten the possibility of a formal agreement coming out of the Copenhagen negotiations. First, there is the reticence of the U.S. delegation to agree on anything that cannot be passed in Congress. The Obama administration is in a bind: they clearly would like to move forward with some sort of binding agreement on climate change but their ability to do so is restricted by the fact that they do not ultimately have the authority to approve American involvement in any treaty agreement. That is the responsibility of Congress. While the executive branch negotiates the treaty, they are restricted to what Congress will accept.

While the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1997, it was rejected by Congress because there wasn't enough domestic support at the time for the agreement. As a result, U.S. scientists have been in the lead in warning about the dangers of climate change but the U.S. government has been seen as dragging their heels on any sort of binding resolution concerning climate change. From a political perspective, Kyoto was a failure. It is exactly the kind of situation that the Obama administration would like to avoid.

The second major stumbling block comes from developing nations. The Group of 77 (G77), which actually has 130 member nations, has been at the forefront of making the argument here in Copenhagen that developed countries are trying to shift the costs of climate change over to those nations least able to afford it. They have a point. Greenhouse gases have been accumulating in the atmosphere and, according to the IPCC, are responsible for the changes in climate causing all the problems we are here to fix. The countries primarily responsible for emitting these greenhouse gasses since the beginning of the industrial revolution are the major economic powerhouses today: mostly the U.S. and Europe.

While we think of China and India as being major parts of the problem because they are some of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases today, they have only recently joined the ranks of big polluters. From the perspective of the developing countries, asking them to now shoulder an equal part of the burden in fixing climate change is like expecting someone arriving after the party is over to help clean up. It's just not fair. From China's perspective, they are being asked to subsidize two centuries of atmospheric pollution by industrialized nations.

There is also the fear these countries have that a new climate agreement would continue to put them at an economic disadvantage and would prevent them from being able to scratch their way out of poverty. The rationale goes something like this: any treaty which restricts greenhouse gas emissions will necessitate new technologies and the ability of a country to install these new technologies. Industrialized countries are in the best position to develop these new technologies. Developing countries will then have to pay to import and install these technologies or face punishments from the international community for being in non-compliance. After all, the cheapest energy sources such as coal and wood are often the dirtiest.

Which brings us to the third major stumbling block to an agreement here at Copenhagen: developing countries in the midst of a worldwide recession are extremely reluctant, to say the least, about having to pay for upgrading their own economies and those of the developing world at the same time. "Why should we pay to develop all this new green technology and then pay for developing countries to install it?"

Alphabet soup

FCCC, COP15, G77, LDC, EU, AWC-LCA, AWC-KP, SBSTA, SBI, EGTT, REDD, REDD+, and that's not including all the NGO's and IGO's with a presence here in Copenhagen. If you have an allergy to acronyms, this is not the place to be. There are six different sessions convening at the main meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (I'll spell it out) and it can quickly become confusing as to what is happening and how it is all related. The only way that I can keep everything straight in my head is to keep a crib sheet with all the acronyms spelled out. Once you cut through these shorthand notations, the meeting becomes far more understandable.

Most of these various acronyms are either subsidiary groups that are used to gather information or wrestle with particularly challenging aspects of the negotiations that will need to take place prior to any international agreement being reached. Some of the acronyms represent action programs being funded by the UN to implement agreements or support party nations in their implementation. I normally have a problem with this many acronyms but with so many complex issues all floating around and everyone being so formal and precise, I can actually see their utility.

How do you convince the man on the street that global warming is real?

James Balog of the Extreme Ice Survey is convinced that perception is key to collectively accepting and acting on climate change science. His photographic project to document the rapid erosion of glaciers around the planet - including “witnessing the deflation of the Greenland ice sheet” as seen in this video (click the photo) – is aimed at documenting the process and allowing people to visualize the abstraction of climate change.

Balog stated at a US ‘Science on a Sphere’ presentation in Copehagen that the resistance among the general public to the concept of climate change is because it is so revolutionary. “For years people have assumed that the Earth is a passive and stable stage on which humans are dancing” and that we can continue to dance however we please without consequence. The counter-understanding that huge impacts are indeed underway is just as difficult for many to accept as it was to the people of the 16^th century when Copernicus’ announced that the Earth no longer revolves around the sun – it’s the other way around. By making this revolution more tangible through his collection of video documentaries, Balog hopes that this revolution will be televised.

Where is our Einstein?

In the height of the Cold War in 1955, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell joined together to appeal to the world's most powerful nations to cease the nuclear arms race that threatened to spin out of control. The idea that scientists and intellectuals would have the moral authority to make such statements and influence public perceptions of issues as important today seems quaint. Where are those public intellectuals such as Einstein that had the power to influence people outside of their small specialty areas? Who do we look to from science and academia for leadership in helping to solve some of the most critical problems the world faces today?

Since 1955, there has been a clear erosion in the credibility of science and a downright dismissal of most intellectual pursuits in the U.S. This is highlighted in the recent "scandal" where email records were stolen from University of East Anglia servers and are now being used in an attempt to undermine the Copenhagen negotiations. But what are the fundamental reasons behind this public distrust in science? Perhaps more importantly, how can this rift be overcome in a world of polarized media? With such a huge laundry list of big, complicated problems humanity is struggling with at this moment in history, American society seems to be handicapping our prospects for finding solutions if those that have spent their lives in pursuit of ideas and truths (scientists and intellectuals) are dismissed or diminished.

Sea Change

The meetings are underway, and already many fascinating things going on. This morning Mike and I attended presentations sponsored by the US Delegation on the state of climate change science, among which the most striking of which was one on ocean acidification. Acidification happens quite simply as CO2 from the atmosphere is taken up by ocean water (which incidentally is where half of anthropogenic carbon emissions end up - reducing the buildup of atmospheric CO2 well below what it would otherwise be).

Dr. Richard Feely (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) summarized research on this process of acidification, a topic that has received very limited attention in all the discussions of climate change, and as the panel pointed out, is essentially ignored in the Convention's treaty language. In true scientific fashion, Feely was restrained and empirical in style while conveying truly alarming observations. Global ocean pH has declined (i.e. acidification) in parallel with the rate of CO2 emission increase, to the point where in places (including all along the west coast of North and South America) ocean water has become corrosive of the shells of marine organisms. Models predicted that this should have begun occurring around 2016, but is now already regularly observed. These effects at the bottom of the marine food chain will of course ripple up through the entire system with potentially devastating impacts. Similar acidification is projected to spread from these local hotspots to the entire world ocean within a few decades. The human implications are equally stark: 1 billion people depend on the oceans as their primary source of protein; 30% of global protein is from this source.

Acidification thus goes hand-in-hand with the process of global warming - that is, both stem from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide - but as a process is entirely decoupled from the climatic effects: acidification would occur even if there was no climatic change. This creates significant policy distinctions: there are far fewer options for mitigating acidification other than CO2 reduction. As filmmaker Sven Huseby (A Sea Change) stated, even if we are to come up with clever tricks for reducing future temperatures (outer space mirrors, reducing other greenhouse gasses), the only way to reverse acidification is by lowering CO2. The panel suggested that 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 is a safe level for oceans (which we passed in the early 1990s); today we are at 390 ppm, and rapidly approaching the 400-450 that would likely be catastrophic for ocean chemistry (well below the targets for mitigating climate change). This makes the timing of addressing ocean health even more urgent than the already urgent climatic considerations.

Jeffrey Short of Oceana suggested that the simplest and most effective policy is a carbon tax. Users of carbon would pay a tax (eg when buying gasoline) - because such a tax is regressive, it would then be 100% rebated to all individuals (carbon users and non-users alike), thereby creating a strong incentive to conserve energy while simultaneously reducing C emissions.

Climatologist Jim Hansen recently advocated a similar policy: "As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they’re going to continue to be used and their use will increase. So we have to put a price on carbon. And the money that is collected from this price must be returned to the public 100 percent, either as a monthly dividend or a payroll tax deduction or a combination of those. If we do those things, the problem becomes solvable. If we don’t, it is the biggest inter-generational injustice in the history of the world. We’ll be leaving our children and grandchildren with a situation out of their control. So we’ve got to begin to influence the polices that are being talked about. And what is being talked about in Washington now and in Copenhagen now is totally inadequate. It’s greenwash. It’s cap and trade with offsets, which will be just like the Kyoto Protocol. It will do nothing to reduce global emissions.”

Opening ceremonies

As part of the welcoming ceremony this morning the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, made some brief comments to underscore the urgency felt by many scientists and what is at stake in the political negotiations here in Copenhagen. He spoke about many of the impacts of climate change (both being witnessed now and expected in the future) such as the depletion of sea ice in the Arctic, increases in drought intensity and frequency and the number of species at risk of extinction or extirpation because of a loss of habitat as background conditions change. Human factors are expected to exacerbate all of these effects as population, urbanization, and land use modifications increase worldwide.

He highlighted a number of key elements that signaled the shift from science to policy. As for the so called "climategate" issues that has been shadowing the Copenhagen meetings for the last week, he re-asserted that the IPCC has concluded that the empirical evidence for the occurrence of changing climate conditions is now "unequivocal". These smears meant to discredit the IPCC miss the point that there is a large body of independent research and investigators that have consistently generated research supporting the main message that climate change is now being seen on land, in the atmosphere and oceans, and in the ice-bound areas of the world. This research has been extensively peer-reviewed and vetted before being published or released. He concluded by saying "I have no basis for any objections" about the scientific basis for climate change.

Listening to Dr. Pachauri speak followed by many of the party nations as they are making their opening statements is a sobering experience. It is clear what is at stake. Less clear is whether the political consensus exists or can be forged in the next two weeks to make meaningful change.