Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

This is a repost of a Center for American Progress report by John Podesta, Andrew Light, and Julian L. Wong.

Report: A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (pdf) (Chinese version)

Fact sheet: Roadmap summary

The United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen is less than 35 days away. Nations will negotiate a framework for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Any successful outcome at Copenhagen will require a commitment from the world’s major economies, not least of which are China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases and two largest consumers of energy. The Center for American Progress launches today a new report with the Asia Society, “A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration,” which sets out a detailed plan for how these two countries can mutually benefit from working together to achieve greater emissions reductions than they can alone.

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The evidence is irrefutable: Climate change poses enormous risks to economic stability, public health, ecosystem services, and national security, as well as to the environment.

How should we manage those risks? The first step is to acknowledge them. The second is to start listening to the experts who manage risks for a living.

Over the past two months, I’ve attended several meetings of military and civilian experts in security, intelligence and risk assessment. They were unanimous in concluding that

1. The risks of climate change are growing rapidly;
2. Those risks are routinely underestimated by policy makers; and
3. Little is being done to plan for contingencies, even in those regions of the world likely to suffer the most and even though the suffering already has begun.

One meeting of security and risk experts was organized by Nick Mabey, a former advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair and now the leader of E3G, a nonprofit organization based in Europe to promote sustainable development. Our mission was to explore how the science of risk assessment and management should be applied to climate change. In a Whitehall Paper written last year, Mabey explained:

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There’s a familiar dance being performed on the world stage. It’s called the Climate Shuffle.  It has been going on for decades, but more people are watching now and every nation is practicing the steps.

The dance is not complicated. The goal is to get everybody dancing together, a kind of Clean Electric Slide. But first, insist you won’t get on the dance floor until everybody does. If you get there and find that everyone is doing his own thing, try the Unilateral Slide (one step forward, two steps back, moving in circles). Most of all, be prepared to dance fast because the music is speeding up.

In this strained metaphor, the music is the increasing pace of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.  As it turns out, the scientific evidence on which negotiators and policy makers have depended – particularly the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – significantly underestimated the speed at which global warming is occurring.

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I hope you have been watching panel 3 of today’s Senate climate bill hearings.  It has been incredibly informative about the international competitiveness issue, especially China’s aggressive efforts to become the clean energy leader and the complete turnaround in the thinking of Chinese business and policymakers since Chinese President Hu Jintao’s UN speech (see “Are Chinese emissions pledges a game changer for Senate action?“).  I’ll do a post on it later.  Here is the testimony of CAP president and CEO John Podesta.  I have reprinted the extensive discussion of China’s efforts to forever seize leadership in clean energy, which we can only match if we pass the clean energy bill.

Madam Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify before you this afternoon. I am very pleased to have this time to share my thoughts on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733, and its power to boost our economy’s competitiveness.

The Senate global warming debate has focused on pollution limits and timetables, carbon markets and allocations. But we have lost sight of our principal objective: building a robust and prosperous clean energy economy. Moving beyond fossil fuel pollution will involve exciting work, new opportunities, new products and innovation, and stronger communities. Our current national discussion about constraints, limits, and the costs of transition overshadows the economic opportunity of clean energy investments. It is as if, on the cusp of the Internet and telecommunications revolution, debate centered only on the cost of digging trenches to lay fiber optic cable.

Many of our economic competitors see investments in clean energy technologies as key to their long-term sustainable economic growth. Germany, Spain, Japan, China, and even India are building the foundation for a prosperous low-carbon future. Many leaders in the American business community realize the competitive threat to the United States if we do not join other nations by investing in our clean-energy sector. Venture capitalist John Doerr and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt warn, “There is still time for us to lead this global race, although that window is closing. We need low-carbon policies to exploit America’s strengths—innovation and entrepreneurs.”

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This guest repost is by CAP’s Andrew Light, Julian L. Wong, and Sabina Dewan.  Above, Secretary of State Clinton and India’s Junior Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh discuss climate change during Clinton’s visit to India in July.

Most of the attention in the lead up to the December United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen has been focused on the United States and China—the two biggest annual emitters of greenhouse gases. But India may be the country that provides the necessary breakthrough in international negotiations to help developed and developing countries reach an agreement. Indian Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh is urging the Indian government to commit to action without the promise of financial and technological assistance, and subject its domestic efforts to international scrutiny. And this change of position could not come at a more critical time.

U.N. climate talks in trouble

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In the Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, an Emperor goes out among his subjects in his underwear. Two swindlers posing as tailors have convinced him he’s wearing a suit made from cloth that’s invisible to anyone who is stupid.  Not wanting to accept that he’s stupid, the Emperor parades through his empire believing he’s fully dressed.

It now is up to the U.S. Senate to make sure Uncle Sam is not only fully dressed, but dressed for success when he shows up in Copenhagen Dec. 7 to work on a global climate deal.

As far as wardrobes go, President Barack Obama and his team have done a pretty good job packing their suitcases with climate initiatives they’ve launched under their own authority this year. As The Economist puts it, “America will now not have to go naked into the conference chamber” at Copenhagen.

Even so, without an affirmative vote by the Senate on a respectable climate bill, Uncle Sam will be only half-dressed in the eyes of the global community.  That’s my reading after a three-country tour of Europe where I spent nine days in meetings with people from 19 nations ranging from Bangladesh to Belgium and Russia to Rwanda. They included a former head of state, former top military leaders, current government officials, scientists, entrepreneurs, academics and other thought leaders in their respective countries.

In my informal sampling of their opinions, I found that a) U.S. leadership remains the linchpin of a global climate deal, and b) the world needs to know that Congress, as well as President Obama, is serious about capping America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Before speculating about why this is the case, let’s review the accomplishments the Administration already can take to Copenhagen:

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Let’s call it The Audacity of hOPEC.  AP reported last week:

Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil.

The hypocritical chutzpah is staggering.  The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban said:

We are among the economically vulnerable countries….

Many politicians in the Western world think these climate change negotiations and the new agreement will provide them with a golden opportunity to reduce their dependence on imported oil….  That means you will transfer the burden to developing countries, especially to those highly dependent on the exploitation of oil.

First off, for decades now, Saudi Arabia has led the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in using monopoly practices to keep oil prices higher than they would have been under strict market economics.  This caused pain for developed countries like ours, but hardly as much, relatively speaking, as that suffered by the non-oil-producing developing (i.e. poor) countries.  I don’t remember Saudi Arabia commenting on the burden that cartel-driven oil prices created for other developing countries.

Second, the Saudi logic about the future impact of a climate deal is exactly backwards from the broad perspective of the burden of all developing countries.  If the rich countries reduce their oil consumption, that will necessarily reduce the price of oil compared to what it would have otherwise been. (more…)

This is really the first year since the launch in 2006 that the blog seems appropriately named!   AFP reports:

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday he will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest by 80 percent by 2020 when he attends December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen. Lula said his pledge will come during high-stakes talks in the Danish capital that aim to push 192 nations towards a climate deal to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“We’re in the process of preparing our proposal for Copenhagen,” Lula said on his weekly radio program, Coffee with the President.  “I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 percent; in other words, we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tons of carbon dioxide gas.”

Brazil’s rain forest, the largest on Earth, is shrinking at the rate of some 12,000 square kilometers (or 7456.454 miles) per year because of deforestation.

The world appears to be coming together to finally address deforestation, one of the biggest single contributor to climate change:

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When we last left GM, they were pursuing buyers for Hummer and Saturn (see “GM in talks to seel Hummer to China — the second mistake by those clueless new owners?“).  So of course, the smaller-car brand dies, but the 7,000-pound gas guzzlers live.  WashPost reports:

General Motors has reached an agreement to sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery….

It recently announced that it would wind down the Saturn brand.

The price for Hummer was not disclosed, but according to sources familiar with the negotiations, it was $150 million, far less than the $500 million price once envisioned.

Seriously, $150 million?  As I wrote back in June:

Less than $500 million?  That’s a rounding error in the cash giveaways to the auto industry these days.  Why couldn’t we just swallow that cost to forever remove from the planet this unsustainable blight?  Who are these clueless new owners of GM anyway?  Oh.  Never mind!

But WashPost buried the lede:

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UPDATE:  Since Obama is in a media down-cycle, the herd has been falling all over itself to turn this amazing honor into some sort of a millstone.  Please, give me such millstones.  The winner of the most inane statement by a major news outlet is also the winner of the most inane headline, “The Last Thing Obama Needs Is the Nobel Peace Prize,” by Time’s Nancy Gibbs, who writes, “At this moment, many Americans are longing for a President who is more bully, less pulpit.” Yes, “many” Americans are longing for bullies like George Bush and Dick Cheney.  We call them conservatives.

In a stunning announcement (full text below), “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize  for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Obama won, in part, for reversing the immoral efforts of the Cheney-Bush administration to block and subvert international climate negotiations:

Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.

We already knew that “Obama was willing to attend Copenhagen climate talks,” if he were invited.  In an exclusive interview, Andrew Light, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and an expert on international climate talks, explained to CP that now, effectively, he has been:

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Last year, Thomas Fingar, then the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst, warned that climate change is among the gravest threats to US national security (see here).  This year, John Warner, the former (GOP) chair of the Senate Armed Services committee has been repeating the same warning to anyone who would listen (see here).

But some Senate conservatives are deaf to the facts, as E&E News (subs. req’d) reports.

The Senate may vote tomorrow on whether to block funds for a new Central Intelligence Agency program to assess the national security implications of climate change.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is offering an amendment to the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that would bar funding for the Center on Climate Change and National Security launched last month.

The center will examine the national security impact of changes such as desertification, rising sea levels and greater competition for natural resources.

Here is Barrasso’s justification, which is intentionally mocking and unintentionally self-mocking [from E&E News (subs. req'd)]:

“We have threats from around the world. The most immediate of these threats is the prevention of future terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. I do not believe that creating a Center on Climate Change is going to prevent one terrorist attack,” Barrasso said yesterday.

“Will someone sitting in a dark room watching satellite video of northern Afghanistan now be sitting in a dark room watching polar ice caps?” he said.

First off, is Barrasso really saying that the entire mission of the Central intelligence Agency is preventing terrorist attacks? Although he sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, he apparently has no conception of what the CIA does.  He strikes me as one of those guys who in the 1990s probably wanted to block the CIA from looking into terrorism, since that was not going to prevent one communist attack on us.

Second, although he sits on the Environment and Public Works Committee, he apparently missed all the hearings about climate impacts and how they pose a major national security threat to us — and yes, will help create conditions that foster terrorism.  In fact, an unusually savvy new intelligence forecast reported last year should have served as a wake-up call for the largely clueless Establishment:

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Today’s guest reposting is by CAP’s Julian L. Wong author of “Peaking Duck: Beijing’s Growing Appetite for Climate Action.”  In the photo, Chinese workers prepare decorations ahead of the 60th National Day celebrations in Beijing, China.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The first 30-year phase was one of revolution, marked by one bloody internal purge after another, but the next 30-year phase was one of pragmatism, which underpinned economic and social reform leading to unrivaled rates of economic growth.

China now finds itself at a crossroads. As the country struggles to come to terms with its imminent status as a global superpower, it is staring in the face of vast, systemic resource challenges. China faces a triple threat to its energy, water, and food security, and there is one common thread: climate change.

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Can Twitter save civilization? We’re about to find out.

As the clock winds down on the big climate negotiation in Copenhagen this December (formally known as the 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP-15), the future of the planet and its inhabitants may be in the hands of tweeters, especially tots, teens and twenty-somethings.

Several groups are attempting to mobilize a worldwide mandate for action in Copenhagen, calling for boots to hit streets and thumbs to hit keyboards, to harness the power of Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, You Tube, FlickR, text messaging and the potential power of the PDA Nation.

One of my favorites (in part because I’ve been a sometime advisor on it) is a campaign called Hopenhagen, launched last week during “climate week” in New York City. At the request of the United Nations, the International Advertising Association is applying its creative powers to a viral effort in which young people will petition for a “definitive, equitable and effective” climate agreement at COP-15.

Led by the global communications powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign urges young people to become citizens of a Hopenhagen community, complete with a virtual passport. With help from corporate giants Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP, and with support from a growing list of “Friends of Hopenhagen” who range from Reader’s Digest and the Wall Street Journal to Mother Jones magazine, Ogilvy will deploy media and billboards in major cities to promote the power of the grassroots.

Rather than complaining about an infringement on its name, the City of Copenhagen has agreed enthusiastically to rename itself “Hopenhagen” in December, replacing Cs with Hs where the city’s name appears at the airport and on highway signs leading to COP-15.

Hopenhagen is one of several current opportunities for youth to help shape the future they will inherit, and for old-timers like me to improve the future we will pass along. Here are some of the others:

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This is a Wonk Room repost.

On the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Wonk Room caught up with Ira Magaziner, the senior advisor for policy development in the Clinton White House and now the chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative. We discussed the Clinton Climate Initiative’s approach to the challenge of global warming, including its work to advance energy efficiency projects in the world’s cities from the Empire State Building to Lagos, Nigeria. Magaziner also directly addressed why critics argue that advocacy of clean energy is a socialistic economy killer, citing Adam Smith’s recognition of the need for governmental action to address market externalities. As we neared the conclusion of the interview, Magaziner tied all the threads of the conversation together into one impressive discourse on building a clean-energy economy:

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION — PAST VS. THE FUTURE

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President Barack Obama, who initially planned to let First Lady Michelle Obama represent the United States in Copenhagen this week, when the International Olympic Committee chooses a site for the 2016 summer games, plans to travel there too….

“There is no greater expression of the support our bid enjoys, from the highest levels of government and throughout our country, than to have President Obama join us in Copenhagen for the pinnacle moment in our bid,” said Chicago 2016 Chairman and CEO Patrick G. Ryan.

This is the best news I’ve heard in a while.

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The usually savvy Mother Jones reporter, David Corn, has published a flawed analysis, “Is Copenhagen dead” (original here, repost here).

The media has a herd mentality when it comes to reporting on all things presidential — either you’re up or you’re down.  Indeed, the media likes to build up politicians and then tear them down.  So it is with Obama now.

Compounding that, the media likes a simple story, either great success or great failure.   Since the media (mis)perceives that both domestic and international climate action are on a down swing, even more piling on is inevitable.  Then again, some in the media believe temperatures are on the down swing, so what the frac do they know?

For eight years, Cheney-Bush not only muzzled climate scientists and blocked domestic action, they actively worked behind the sciences to kill any international deal.  It takes a lot of effort to unpoison a well.  And we’ve only had the possibility of serious international negotiations since January.  Anyone who thought there would be a final deal, signed and sealed in December, a mere 11 months later, wasn’t paying attention to recent history and doesn’t appreciate the nature of international negotiations.

The fact is, the news from China, India, Japan, and this country is far more positive toward the possibility of agreement than it has been for a decade or longer.  This is, finally, the one brief shining moment for action.

Does that mean there will be an ultimate deal that begins in Copenhagen?  Not at all.  The forces of denial and delay in this country in particular are strong and may still kill domestic action, which would in turn make a global deal very, very hard to achieve.

But I remain confident that Obama can and will deliver a domestic bill and an international agreement.   Since Corn based his misanalysis on a column coathored by the CEO of CAP, I’ll let John Podesta have the final word with his reply, “Poised For Progress At The U.N. Climate Summit In Copenhagen“:

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