U.S. President Barack Obama tours the Great Wall in Badaling, China on Wednesday, November 18.  This is a CAP repost by Julian L. Wong and Andrew Light.

The United States and China announced on Tuesday a package of cooperative agreements on clean energy and climate change that are remarkable in both breadth and ambition. The cluster of seven initiatives, partnerships, action plans, and research centers covers a range of low-carbon energy strategies from electric cars to energy efficiency technologies.

These agreements follow on the heels of last Sunday’s announcement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting that the United States has embraced the Danish proposal for finalizing an interim international climate agreement in Copenhagen in December. The U.S.-China summit help further signal a positive shift in expectations for Copenhagen between the two countries responsible for 40 percent of the planet’s anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Perhaps the most important, and most overlooked, achievement at this week’s summit was the commitment to promote greater transparency on efforts to reduce emissions. This should increase confidence for the prospects of creating a robust international agreement on climate change.

Transparency, accountability, and verification

It is now clear that China is signaling its increasing willingness to meet the standards of transparency, accountability, and verification that will be necessary to create an acceptable global agreement on climate change. This will be critical to reassure skeptics of domestic climate pollution legislation in the United States that China will keep any promises it makes to reduce its carbon emissions.

China pledged to cooperate with the International Energy Agency to establish “principles for improving data transparency” and continue to “strengthen China’s energy statistical system.” The U.S.-China Joint Statement released at the end of the presidential summit builds on that previous initiative by committing both sides to “provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures.” In addition both sides “resolve to take significant mitigation actions” and “resolve to stand by these actions.” This is bold language for China, and demonstrates its willingness to be held accountable for commitments on climate pollution reduction, including targets on energy efficiency, renewable energy, forest coverage, and now carbon intensity.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also signed a memorandum of cooperation in connection with the summit with China’s National Development and Reform Commission to help China develop a robust, transparent, and accurate inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama had already announced a commitment to such an inventory for the United States at the U.N. leaders summit on climate change in September. And previously the International Capacity Building Branch of EPA’s Climate Change Division had provided a relatively small amount of money to help Chinese provinces take first steps toward creating a carbon inventory in 2008. This new joint program however allows for more ambitious levels of cooperation moving jointly toward a common regime, which should build greater international confidence that these two hold outs from previous similar initiatives will catch up with the rest of the world.

The significance of these developments cannot be overstated. It is a common worry in American policy circles that we should not trust China’s commitments on mandatory emissions reductions to be “measurable, reportable, and verifiable.” A standard for measuring emissions is an absolutely necessary condition for any effective reporting regime. And establishing this carbon inventory in China and the United States provides just such a standard.

Broad scope of clean energy technology cooperation

China and the United States once again formalized their joint belief that a “transition to a green and low-carbon economy is essential and that the clean-energy industry will provide vast opportunities for citizens of both countries in the years ahead.” The focus articulated here for cooperation on on-the-ground, bottom-up clean-energy projects—including those in electric vehicles, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and cleaner combustion of coal and shale gas—demonstrates the beginning of a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship on clean energy. The newly established U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center will see real money to the tune of $150 million over the next five years committed equally by both sides. Public-private partnerships involving 22 U.S. companies in the newly formed Energy Cooperation Partnership will have the opportunity to co-develop technologies and markets with Chinese partners.

Such measures move beyond the now-tired narrative of developed versus developing country responsibilities on climate action, which has dominated the history of the Kyoto Protocol. The world cannot hope to hit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s goal of cutting global emissions in half by 2050 if reductions only come from developed countries. In that respect, these new joint initiatives are evidence that the driver toward a low-carbon future will not be a political compromise, but a reconciliation of sustained and meaningful international collaboration in the deployment of clean-energy solutions with the realities of atmospheric physics and chemistry.

All of the world’s major emitters, both developed and developing, must make significant contributions to hitting IPCC’s “50 by 50” goal, and that can best be accomplished through cooperation and healthy competition in the race for the best alternatives to our carbon loaded energy economy. As we argued in our recent report with Asia Society, we can develop low- and zero-carbon technologies more quickly through cooperation. And in the short run, such cooperation can create millions of jobs and save consumers millions of dollars.

Noticeable shift in expectations for Copenhagen

Prospects had been diminishing until this past weekend that the next U.N. meeting on climate change in Copenhagen would result in a positive outcome. It is now clear that the U.S. Senate will not finish a climate bill before the meeting to pair with the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed last July by the House of Representatives. And it was widely expected that the Obama administration would not be willing to negotiate a new international climate treaty in December without such a bill.

But the surprise announcement this past Sunday at the APEC meeting in Singapore dramatically increased the prospects of a good outcome in Copenhagen. The United States announced at that meeting its intention to seek an interim agreement at Copenhagen and commit to turning that into a fully fleshed out legally binding agreement at a later date in 2010. This interim agreement will likely include everything from midterm emissions targets, to short-term financing for developing countries to transition to a low-carbon pathway, to substantive progress on provisions for technology transfer and taking on global deforestation.

It was clear this week in Beijing that China will stand with the United States in being “committed to working together and with other countries in the weeks ahead for a successful outcome at Copenhagen.” President Obama was unambiguous when he declared at the joint press conference in the Great Hall of the People that both countries’ goal at Copenhagen is not just “a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect” even while a full and final agreement will take some months to complete. The agreement to stand by their mitigation actions, and the acknowledgment in their joint communiqué that developing countries should take “nationally appropriate mitigation actions,” reiterated that China is more willing than ever before to reflect its domestic actions in an international agreement.

Altogether these declarations suggest that Copenhagen is still very much alive contrary to media reports that an agreement has been dead for some time. Heading into the Denmark meeting in only a few weeks, the Beijing summit provides a sound basis of hope for a strong outcome.

“Very exciting day here in Beijing.  There’s enormous interest in both governments in working together to fight climate change.  The package announced today is far-reaching and can make a real difference in cutting emissions.”

That’s an exclusive quote from David Sandalow, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, who just emailed me from China about the newly announced U.S.-China cooperation plan.  Sandalow is going to be in Copenhagen, so I hope to have a real interview with him then.  For details on this plan (with links) and what it means, here is analysis by Andrew Light and Julian L. Wong of the Center for American Progress.  Note that the deal goes beyond “obvious” areas like efficiency and renewables to include things like shale gas, which appears to exist in abundance in China and could allow repowering of existing Chinese coal plants and more rapid medium-term reductions than people have thought possible.

This morning, a comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change was announced in Beijing by President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao. The overall plan is much more ambitious in scope and depth than we had anticipated and contains directives to create various institutions and programs addressing a wide array of cooperation on clean-energy technologies and capacity building, including very important efforts on helping China build a robust, transparent and accurate inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions.

These efforts include cooperation in the following areas:

1.  Greenhouse Gas Inventory.  A memorandum of cooperation between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and China’s National Development and Reform Commission sets out avenues for collaboration on capacity building in climate change, with an initial focus on helping China to develop a robust, transparent and accurate greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

2. Joint Clean Energy Research Center. Originally announced this July, more details were provided on the joint center that will “facilitate joint research and development of clean energy technologies by teams of scientists and engineers from the United States and China, as well as serve as a clearinghouse to help researchers in each country.”  Financial support from public and private sources of at least $150 million over five years, split evenly between the two countries, will be provided.  The Center’s research will initially focus on building energy efficiency, clean coal including carbon capture and storage, and clean vehicles. (Factsheet)

3.  Electric Vehicles. Those initiative will “include joint standards development, demonstration projects in more than a dozen cities, technical roadmapping and public education projects.”  (Factsheet)

4. Energy Efficiency. Building on the Ten Year Framework on Energy and Environment Cooperation, government officials of both countries will “work together and with the private sector to develop energy efficient building codes and rating systems, benchmark industrial energy efficiency, train building inspectors and energy efficiency auditors for industrial facilities, harmonize test procedures and performance metrics for energy efficient consumer products, [and] exchange best practices in energy efficient labeling systems.” (Factsheet)

5.  Renewable Energy.   The two countries will develop roadmaps for wide-spread renewable energy deployment in both countries.  The Partnership will also provide technical and analytical resources to states and regions in both countries to support renewable energy deployment and will facilitate state-to-state and region-to-region partnerships to share experience and best practices.  (Factsheet)

6.  21st Century Coal. The two countries will “launch a program of technical cooperation to bring teams of U.S. and Chinese scientists and engineers together in developing clean coal and carbon capture and storage technologies.”  The Presidents also welcomed a package of announcements on public-private partnerships in advanced coal technologies. (Factsheet)

7.  Shale Gas. Under a new Shale Gas Initiative, the U.S. and China will “use experience gained in the United States to assess China’s shale gas potential, promote environmentally-sustainable development of shale gas resources, conduct joint technical studies to accelerate development of shale gas resources in China, and promote shale gas investment in China through the U.S.-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum, study tours, and workshops.” (Factsheet)

8.  Nuclear.  The two countries reaffirmed the goals of the recently-concluded Third Executive Committee Meeting of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to promote the peaceful use of civilian nuclear energy, and “ agreed to consult with one another in order to explore such approaches—including assurance of fuel supply and cradle-to-grave nuclear fuel management so that countries can access peaceful nuclear power while minimizing the risks of proliferation.”

9.  Public-private partnerships on clean energy. A new U.S.-China Energy Cooperation Program (ECP) will “leverage private sector resources for project development work in China across a broad array of clean energy projects, to the benefit of both nations.”  The ECP, consisting of at least 22 founding member companies, will work on collaborative projects in renewable energy, smart grid, clean transportation, green building, clean coal, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.

In a joint statement, President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao agreed on a common approach to achieve a successful outcome in international climate negotiations (emphasis added in bold):

Regarding the upcoming Copenhagen Conference, both sides agree on the importance of actively furthering the full, effective and sustained implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in accordance with the Bali Action Plan. The United States and China, consistent with their national circumstances, resolve to take significant mitigation actions and recognize the important role that their countries play in promoting a sustainable outcome that will strengthen the world’s ability to combat climate change. The two sides resolve to stand behind these commitments.

In this context both sides believe that, while striving for final legal agreement, an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries. The outcome should also substantially scale up financial assistance to developing countries, promote technology development, dissemination and transfer, pay particular attention to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to climate change, promote steps to preserve and enhance forests, and provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support.

Taken together, these commitments and statements represent an important step forward towards agreeing on a protocol for accurate accounting and verification of China’s policies for achieving the necessary emissions reductions that science requires. They will also hopefully start to satisfy those skeptical that China will agree to a protocol for accurate accounting and verification of its impressive array of policies for achieving emissions reductions.

The announcements also suggest that the United States and China are on the same page when it comes to both the necessity of aggressively moving forward on an affirmative agenda to reduce carbon pollution and create millions of new clean energy jobs. The agreement contains concrete measures for sustained and meaningful collaboration and demonstrates that the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases are prepared to move beyond the tired narrative of developed versus developing country responsibilities on climate action toward a more “positive, cooperative, and comprehensive” relationship on clean energy and climate change.

We hope that the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen will follow this example and focus as much on bottom-up technological strategies for achieving real reductions in emissions as it will on top-down targets for carbon caps.

JR:  For more on shale gas and its implications for U.S. emissions reductions, see There appears to be a lot more natural gas than previously thought (Part 1) and therefore unconventional gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet (Part 2).

If there is a bright side, however, the deliberate downshift in expectations for Copenhagen could make it easier for world leaders, including Obama, to attend the summit and draft a stronger political agreement. In addition, diplomats could build out the framework of a future agreement, with the hope that, should the Senate pass carbon legislation early next year, a deal with real numbers could be finalized relatively quickly.

But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality. “We don’t want a global suicide pact,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming – caused flooding. “We want a global survival pact.” But the world’s most influential leaders still aren’t ready for that.

During a hastily convened breakfast meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from the moribund negotiations by aiming for a broad political agreement and postponing contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer….

The deferral plan was outlined to 19 leaders, including Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao, who were in Singapore for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

“Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible,” the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told the leaders after flying in overnight for the unscheduled discussion. “The Copenhagen agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion.”

… This would give breathing space for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, allowing the Obama administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table at a UN climate meeting in Mexico or Germany in mid-2010.

This is no big surprise to CP readers or anyone who follows international negotiations or domestic politics.  For 8 years, U.S. negotiations were run by hard-core anti-scientific conservatives, who not only blocked any domestic action and opposed any international deal — but the Cheney-Bush negotiators actually actively worked to undermine the efforts of other countries to develop a follow on to the Kyoto Protocol.

It was never possible that team Obama — in just a few months — could undo that and simultaneously develop a final international deal and pass bipartisan U.S. climate legislation — a very slow process, given the experience with our last major domestic clean air bill, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.

As the NYT’s Revkin blogs this morning, “Many seasoned participants in nearly two decades of treaty negotiations aimed at blunting global warming had predicted this outcome.”

The new plan for Copenhagen makes the prospects for a successful international deal far more likely — and at the same time increases the chance for Senate passage of the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill that Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen Lieberman (I-CT) are negotiating with the White House.  The NYT print story reports:

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “I don’t think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact.”

Indeed, had leaders gone into Copenhagen without this recognition of the obvious and let the whole effort collapse under the weight of unrealistic expectations, that would have been all-but-fatal to the domestic bipartisan climate bill.

Now it will be obvious when the Senate takes up the bill up in the winter that the rest of the world is prepared to act — that every major country in the world has come to the table with serious targets and/or serious commitments to change their greenhouse gas emissions trajectories.  Every country but ours, that is.

The few key swing Senators will understand that they are the only ones who stand in the way of strong US leadership in the vital job-creating clean energy industries and stand in the way of this crucial opportunity the world now has to preserve a livable climate through an international deal.  Their role in history will be defined by this one vote.  And, yes, I do think that matters to people like Dick Lugar (R-IN) and perhaps even John McCain (R-AZ).

UPDATE:  One can expect those who have long opposed serious action on climate change to trumpet this good news as bad news.  The WSJ, for instance, writes, “International efforts to combat climate change took a significant blow when the leaders of the APEC forum conceded a binding international treaty won’t be reached when the U.N. convenes in Copenhagen in three weeks.”  What do you expect from a paper that has long trumpeted disinformation on climate science and the economic impacts of climate action?  Yes, this was a “news” story, but consider this line from the story:  “The election of Obama, a believer in strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, had raised hopes among environmentalists that Copenhagen would produce a tough, binding treaty to follow the Kyoto accords of 1997.”  Notice how Obama is framed not as someone who believes in climate science, but merely in regulations.  And again, notice how for the WSJ, the only people who care about those regulations are “environmentalists” rather than, say, all of humanity or even those who understand the climate science laid out by the IPCC that sets the basis for international climate agreements.

Related Posts:

• Ban Ki-moon climate deputy says Copenhagen deal may take two stage approach;
• Clinton calls Copenhagen “steppingstone”
• E&E News: “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

The top climate lieutenant to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that a major — though perhaps preliminary — international agreement to curb global warming is still possible in Copenhagen. One leading option is to set low targets for emissions reductions initially and to boost them if global warming gets worse.

Janos Pasztor, director of the climate change support team under Ban, told reporters that the Copenhagen global warming conference could yield a breakthrough on greenhouse gas reduction targets and financial aid to poor countries. A binding agreement would be written in 2010, he said….

Ban visited Washington last week to meet with Obama officials and with senators, and said he was optimistic about the chances for a bill to pass the Senate sometime next year. Two of the three senators working to build a bipartisan coalition for the legislation — John Kerry, D-Mass. and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. — said after the meeting they would try to release an outline of their proposal before the Copenhagen conference.

That’s the news today from The Washington Times Washington Insight/Energy (sub. req’d).

It is no surprise to CP readers that “administration officials have stressed that it will not agree to a global treaty that cannot win approval in the Senate.”  For a related story, see the WashPost’s “U.S. weighs backing interim international climate agreement.”  And this is similar to the “Statement by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen at the GLOBE Copenhagen Legislators Forum on 24 October 2009,” which I’ll excerpt below.

First, more from the Insight story:

A potential agreement could set modest requirements in the early years, he said, but mandate more aggressive actions if the planet gets warmer faster than expected. “It’s extremely important to get this system going, in all countries, even if the immediate numbers, the mitigation targets are not as high as you’d like them to be,” Pasztor said. “We just have to find a way to ratchet those numbers up later, to respond to what science tells us.”

“The fact that we cannot come to a conclusion on the legally binding treaty at Copenhagen doesn’t mean we are lowering the bar, that we’re lowering our ambition. It’s actually the opposite,” he added. “It’s actually the time to increase the level of ambition as much as possible, to get the best deal we can possibly get.”

He said countries can still agree on emissions targets, mitigation aid to poor nations and reporting requirements, while leaving leaving the details for later. “It is possible and we expect that it will be done,” Pasztor said.

Pasztor’s comments were more optimistic than the consensus of many observers. Despite extensive negotiations over the last two years, disagreements have persisted among nations over the level and pace of greenhouse gas reductions needed to halt global warming at an additional 2 degrees Celsius, a level that environmental scientist say will head off massive climate changes.

Here are excerpts from the recent speech by the Danish Prime Minister:

I suggest that we lock in the determination to act already by Copenhagen and seek political commitments for immediate implementation.
I believe that all the key components of the deal can be achieved in Copenhagen.

In order to achieve this, the Copenhagen Agreement should be ambitious; it should binding and it should be concrete.

It should build on the principles established by the existing legal framework, most notably the principle of a common but differentiated responsibility.

It should capture and encourage the contributions individual countries are willing to undertake within all areas of the Bali Road Map, including specific and binding commitments on mitigation and finance. In the context of immediate action, significant up front finance for both early mitigation and adaptation efforts of the poorest and most vulnerable countries will be of particular importance.

In order to ensure transparency and that the individual countries are standing behind their commitments and deliver on their promises, we shall also need a system of measurement, reporting and verification.

This is the agreement we must reach. It will both provide guidance for our lawyers to finalize the details of the internationally legal binding agreement and for world leaders to commit to specific immediate action, starting January 2010.

In this way, Copenhagen could provide for immediate action based on a comprehensive set of binding, political commitments from world leaders.

The Copenhagen Agreement would thus serve two purposes:

1. to direct further negotiations towards concluding outstanding details in a new legal climate regime;
2. to capture and encourage political commitment in order to provide for immediate action to combat global warming.

Political commitment to immediate action will also serve to focus and strengthen the negotiations on the legal agreement. It is important that these two purposes will merge in one decision at COP15.

The devil, as always, will be in those “outstanding details.”  Stay tuned.

A report by the European Environment Agency released today shows that the European Union and all Member States but one [Austria] are on track to meet their Kyoto Protocol commitments to limit and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Whereas the Protocol requires that the EU-15 reduce average emissions during 2008–2012 to 8% below 1990 levels, the latest projections indicate that the EU-15 will go further, reaching a total reduction of more than 13 % below the base year.…

Looking further ahead, almost three quarters of the EU’s unilateral target to cut emissions to 20 % below 1990 levels by 2020 could be achieved domestically (i.e. without purchase of credits outside the EU).

The report highlights the importance of the EU ETS in helping Member States meet their targets.

That is today’s news release from the European Environment Agency.  The full report is here.  The report notes:

Five EU‑15 Member States (France, Germany, Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom) have already achieved average GHG emission levels below their Kyoto target….

The EU ETS is expected to result in important reductions of domestic EU emissions.

The EEA analysis concludes the EU-15 will not need to rely on offsets to meet their Kyoto target and “foresees a variety of factors contributing to the EU-15’s total reduction of more than 13%”:

• Existing policies and measures for the period 2008–2012 could account for 6.9 percentage points of the total reduction.
• If Member States implement additional measures as planned, the total reduction could reach 8.5%, although this will largely depend on combined efforts in four main emitting countries (France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom).
• The use of Kyoto’s flexible mechanisms by governments could contribute an additional 2.2 percentage points reduction.
• Absorbing carbon dioxide through enhanced carbon sinks (e.g.improved forest management) will contribute with an additional 1 percentage point reduction.
• Purchase of emission allowances and credits by EU ETS operators is expected to deliver a further 1.4 percentage point reduction.

No doubt some will try to ascribe this success to the global economic collapse, but as E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reported:

The emissions projections should be a sign to the rest of the world, said Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency.

“E.U. emissions reductions far exceed our commitments,” Carlgren said in a statement. “This is taking place without the full impact of the economic crisis yet being evident in the figures. This shows that considered policies and concrete measures are effective in the fight against climate change.”

In fact, the Kyoto budget period covers 2008 to 2012, so it will extend over a period of significant economic growth, and much higher GDP than in the 1990 base period.  The United States, by comparison, has also been hit by the same global economic downturn, and our emissions remain significantly above 1990 levels.

The EEA also reports the reductions of the broader EU-27:

The EU‑27 is making good progress towards its 2020 emission reduction target of – 20% and the implementation of planned additional measures is expected to bring domestic emissions down to 14 % below 1990 levels.

The European Trading System, which “covers large carbon-emitting industries, which represent about 40 % of EU greenhouse gas emissions,” is far from perfect.  That’s why Climate Progress previously discussed a major August report detailing lessons for U.S. climate bill.

But the bottom is clear:  Conservatives and other opponents of the climate bill have been insisting for years the Europeans won’t meet their Kyoto targets and that the ETS was a failure, proof that the U.S. shouldn’t adopt a similar approach.  They were wrong on every count.  The EU-15 will exceed their Kyoto target, and the ETS is helping them do it. An even better designed trading system in this country, such as is found in both the House and Senate climate bills, can help the U.S. reduce its emissions in a timely and cost-effective manner.

This is a guest post from David Childs with The International Boreal Conservation Campaign. For terrific graphics and images, click here.

When we think about forests and climate change, we tend to think about tropical forests. This is not without undue reason – some of the highest rates of deforestation are happening in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia Pacific. But one source of carbon, which happens to be the world’s largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon, has been mostly overlooked in international climate discussions to date. I’m talking, of course, about the boreal forest.

The global boreal forest circles the northern portion of our globe, carefully edging along the southern arctic through Russia, Scandinavia, Canada, and Alaska. A report out today by the Canadian Boreal Initiative and Boreal Songbird Initiative states that the boreal forest stores as much as 703 billion tons of carbon in its trees, peatlands, and soils – this amounts to nearly twice the storage capacity per unit area as tropical forests.

So what makes these numbers so high? The main difference with boreal forests is that a significant portion of its carbon is stored below vegetation level whereas tropical forests tend to store the majority of their carbon in the trees and plants themselves. Because boreal forests reside in much colder climates, much of the carbon stored in its vegetation never fully decomposes and is gradually pushed into thick layers of peat and permafrost to be stored for thousands of years.

The report also argues that the intactness of the boreal forest will be vital in coming years for species adapting to the effects of global warming.  A report earlier this year by the Audubon Society found that many North American birds have shifted their wintering ranges further north over the past century as a result of climate change. Species like the Woodland Caribou have seen drastic declines in numbers in recent years due to a combination of climate change and habitat destruction. Maintaining healthy, intact ecosystems for these species battling with changing environments will be crucial for their long-term viability.

While rates of deforestation in boreal forests tend to be lower than tropical forests, this is no cause for indifference. Around 30% of Canada’s Boreal Forest has been designated for logging, and this number becomes much higher when including mining and oil and gas leases.  A recent report by Global Forest Watch Canada (link 3) found that the oil extraction technique of strip-mining large underground deposits of bitumen (often called ‘tar sands’ due to its thick texture prior to being separated from clays and soils) has devastated a landscape in Alberta of 686 km2, holding up to 21 million tons of carbon. Approved and proposed mining projects account for another 29.6 million tons of biotic carbon, and under a full development scenario of surface and insitu bitumen in the region, it has been estimated that 238 million tons of carbon would be released from tar sands industrial development.

The co-benefits of climate change mitigation and adaptation for species make the boreal forest an ideal place for large-scale conservation. Some success has been achieved at domestic levels, but the international push for boreal conservation has been slow to wake up. Global leaders should not halt their focus on tropical forests in favor of boreal forests, but rather adopt the boreal forest as the next frontier for climate-focused forest conservation.

Related Posts:

• Climate-Driven Pest Devours N. American Forests
• Nature on stunning new climate feedback: Beetle tree kill releases more carbon than fires
• Canada’s Forests: Another tool to use against climate change
• Memo to Baucus: Your state’s trees are being ravaged by warming-driven pests now and Montana faces 175% to 400% increase in wildfire burn area
• Indonesia pledges CO2 cut of 26% to 41% by 2020, “We will change the status of our forest from that of a net emitter sector to a net sink sector by 2030.”

Sometimes change can happen much faster than people expect.  If we pass a domestic climate bill, as Sen. Baucus (D-MT) and other key swing Senators now believe is likely, and that enables an international climate deal, then I do think that will usher in a much more rapid decarbonization than most people expect.  Continuing the Veterans Day theme, I’m going to repost this Huffpost piece from my friend Joe Cirincione, President of Ploughshares Fund, about a signature event in the end of the Cold War.

I was in Berlin 20 years ago this week. I saw the impossible first-hand: the people of Germany taking down the Wall.

I was then working on the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee. We were on a staff tour of NATO military bases and arrived in Berlin during this critical week by pure coincidence. When our delegation took off from Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington the Warsaw Pact was alive and apparently formidable. By the time we landed in Europe, it was falling apart.

It is amazing how quickly structures, paradigms, and ideologies that experts believe unchangeable can change. Forces can build undetected for decades, then explode in rapid, transformational movement.

I arrived in Berlin a couple of days after November 9. I was one of the last people to walk through the famous Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. When I passed through in the morning, East German guards were still checking passports. When I strolled back down Unter den Linden, after having a scotch with some Cubans in an East Berlin bar, marveling at the Ishtar Gate from Babylon in the Pergamon Museum, examining World War II bullet holes still peppering some buildings, and joining a student protest over required courses in Marxism-Leninism, the guards were gone. The checkpoint was open for free passage in both directions. As far as I know it never re-opened. Today, it is a tourist attraction.

At a German NATO base we got the standard briefing on NATO military strategy. But when the map went up showing how NATO forces would react to an offensive lead by East German tank divisions, we just looked at each other. We asked the general briefing us what the strategy was now, that the Eastern European forces would not be part of a Soviet offensive. He couldn’t answer. We didn’t know.

It took years for the West to understand that the events of 1989 were not a fraud or a feint. David Hoffman describes in this new book, The Dead Hand, how President George H.W. Bush “lost” the year 1989.

The fall of the wall was a European earthquake, but in Washington and Moscow, miscommunication and suspicion meant the leaders were badly out of sync. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was eager to move on cutting nuclear arsenals, President George H.W. Bush was cautious and uncertain, and a promising moment slipped away.

We cannot let another policy moment slip away. Twenty years after, we are at another historic point, ripe with transformational possibility. Domestically, we see it in issues like health care. Internationally, we see it in potentially profound changes in nuclear forces and policies, and in the very structure of global relations.

The transformation will be resisted. The forces of reaction are strong, as they were in 1989, arguing against change, clinging to the tired policies and weapons of the past. They tell us now, as they did before November 9, that change is impossible, that we are naïve to question the Cold War weapons and strategies, that diplomacy is appeasement, that they are the realists and we, the idealists.

But I have seen the impossible happen. I have a chunk of the wall in my bookcase to prove it. I have seen what the determined action of millions of people can do. I have seen decades of history change in days. These moments are not flukes; they are more the norm than we acknowledge.

We are in such a moment now. We must, like the Berliners of 1989, make the most of it.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he would travel to Copenhagen next month if a climate summit is on the verge of a framework deal and his presence there will make a difference in clinching it….

“If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that’s something that I will do,” Obama told Reuters in an interview.

I had written back on October 9, after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, that it looks like Obama will be going to Copenhagen after all.

The only question is whether there will be enough progress to motivate him to come.  Reuters notes that the President remains optimistic n spite of the too-slow movement in the Senate:

Obama, who has faced resistance from opposition Republicans and even some fellow Democrats to setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions, acknowledged that the U.S. Senate would not pass climate change legislation before Copenhagen.

Delays in the U.S. Congress have rankled European allies and added to questions about how significant the deal that emerges from Copenhagen will ultimately be.

But Obama insisted he remained optimistic that the December 7-18 summit could yield a “framework” agreement.

“I think the question is can we create a set of principles, building blocks, that allow for ongoing and continuing progress on the issue and that’s something I’m confident we can achieve,” he said.

Finally, it has been obvious for a while that a framework deal between the U.S. and China was key to enabling both domestic and international action (see “Does a serious bill need action from China?“).  The Administration has been pursuing it aggressively for a while (see “Exclusive: Have China and the U.S. been holding secret talks aimed at a climate deal this fall?“).

Now the president has publicly stated he expected such a framework deal to be achieved this month:

Obama made clear he considers his talks with Chinese leaders during an Asia tour later this month to be crucial in clearing remaining obstacles to some kind of accord.

“The key now is for the United States and China, the two largest emitters in the world, is to be able to come up with a framework that, along with other big emitters like the Europeans and those countries that are projected to be large emitters in the future, like India, can all buy into,” he said.

“I remain optimistic that between now and Copenhagen that we can arrive at that framework,” he added.

If he succeeds, then I do think Copenhagen will achieve what is needed to advance the prospects for international deal, the President will come and a global framework will be agreed to — with a follow-on global meeting set for six months later — then the U.S. Senate and then the entire Congress will pass a climate bill, and we will finalize the international agreement by the end of next year.

And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL).  Why is he going?  The Ada Evening News reported Monday:

Inhofe said he still intends to attend the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference.

“I’m always the spoiler at this thing. Last night I was on the Larry Kudlow show. He said, ‘Inhofe is the one-man truth squad going to Copenhagen.’ So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,’ ” Inhofe said.

Sadly, the U.S. Constitution restriction — “No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years” — applies only to physical age.  The senior junior-high-school Senator from Oklahoma is proof of that.  What’s next for Inhofe?  Perhaps during the Senate floor debate he plans to say “La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you”?

Inhofe makes other equally revealing nonsense statements in the interview:

“The far left is trying so hard to get a cap-and-trade now,” Inhofe said

Yes, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are the “far left” — see Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman “will be working closely with the White House” to develop separate tripartisan climate bill to get 60 votes; Graham rebukes fellow Republicans saying, “The green economy is coming!”

That statement just shows you how far, far, far right Inhofe is.

Inhofe said the Committee on Environment and Public Works passed the John Kerry—Barbara Boxer global warming bill without any Republican votes.

“We set up the rules of the Environment and Public Works Committee way back in 1970—a long time ago. The rules say that you can’t report a bill out of the committee to go to the floor of the Senate unless there are two members of the minority there,” Inhofe said. “What we did was I told all of the Republicans not to go so they couldn’t have an official mark-up.”

It’s good that he finally admitted the truth that the GOP claim this was all about waiting for more EPA analysis was as bogus as everyone thought.  He just wanted to kill the bill.  But since that bill isn’t going to the floor, his whole effort was wasted.

The entire article makes clear that Inhofe channels Groucho “Whatever it is, I’m against it” Marx.  It opens:

Although the healthcare bill made it through the House of Representatives on Saturday, United States Senator Jim Inhofe said it would face a harder road in the Senate.

“We will kill it in the Senate,” Inhofe said. “I think the main thing I want to get across is it doesn’t really matter because it (the healthcare bill) is not going anywhere.”

That’s The Audacity of Nope.

Ironically — or is that “tragically”? — if we don’t have a climate bill, future generations are going to need a lot better health care:

• Climate change endangers human health
• NRC: Burning fossil fuels costs the U.S. $120 billion a year — not counting mercury or climate impacts!
• Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency”: Hellish heatwaves to harm health of millions
• The Lancet’s landmark Health Commission: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”
• Climate change helps spread dengue fever in 28 states

The article ends with even more irony:

Inhofe said he has secured many funds for Ada, including $440,000 for a water tower for the city, $500,000 for the Ada Public Works Authority to treat Ada’s wastewater/sewer system, $250,000 for the Wintersmith Dam along with other funds for the city.

Imagine that — Inhofe has brought in more than $1 million for water-related projects for the city.

Well, Ada is going to need those projects even more if the nation and the world actually listens to Inhofe and fails to take serious action on climate and clean energy, since on our current emissions path most of Oklahoma is projected to turn into a permanent dust bowl in the second half of this century.

Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” on our current emissions path — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas and Oklahoma to California.  The Bush Administration itself reaffirmed this conclusion in December (see US Geological Survey stunner: SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050.)

But hey, the newspaper’s website notes it has been “Serving Ada, Oklahoma since 1904.”  So it’ll be able to rerun those old Dust Bowl stories — for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

h/t Media Matters.