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

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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If you want a stirring stemwinder on climate action, here it is.

The speaker is my good friend Drew Jones, coauthor of this guest blog post (”Only the most ambitious emissions reductions under discussion within UNFCCC can achieve climate goals“).

As you’ll see, Drew took to heart my earlier “Advice to a young climate blogger [and public speaker]: Always use WWII metaphors.

*Technically, this can’t be the world premiere since the video is online.  But Drew has withheld posting it anywhere else so this is the official non-YouTube world premiere.

I’m not quite as optimistic as Drew is in this talk, but more good news keeps coming from key countries like China, India, and Japan.  I am going to launch a multipart series on this important topic this week.

For more of Drew’s work, click here.

China’s emissions pledge shakes up Capitol Hill debate

… “That’s encouraging,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “That will help us make decisions on our emission problems.”

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said … “that’s a step in the right direction.”

That’s the E&E News PM (subs. req’d) headline and a couple of excerpts from their story on Chinese President Hu Jintao’s UN speech.

We already knew that all evidence suggests China will lead (see “Peaking Duck: Beijing’s Growing Appetite for Climate Action“) — if the Congress passes a climate bill (see “ ‘China will sign’ global treaty if U.S. passes climate bill, E.U. leader says“).

Yesterday, Hu said (speech here):

We will endeavor to cut carbon dioxide emissions [per] GDP by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 level.Second, we will vigorously develop renewable energy and nuclear energy. We will endeavor to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020.

Third, we will energetically increase forest carbon … we will endeavor to increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 levels.

Fourth, we will step up our efforts to develop green economy, low carbon economy … and enhance research, development and dissemination of climate-friendly technologies.

Certainly, China is going to eat our lunch on clean energy jobs if we don’t pass the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill (see “Invented here, sold there”).  And certainly we need to hear the specific details about the carbon intensity pledge — I’d like to see them commit to reduce CO2 per GDP by more than 50% from 2005 to 2020.

But is the growing willingness of China to make real commitments going to change the dynamics in the Senate, where China’s suppose an unwillingness to act has been one of the two or three biggest objections?  Here are more some excerpts from the E&E story:

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PRESS AVAILABILITY:  I’ll be in Pittsburgh Thursday night and all Friday as press — but if there are any press who want to interview me, just shoot me an email.

G20 PREVIEW:  I don’t normally go to these sort of meetings — CAP’s Andrew Light is the international climate expert (and he’ll be there, too, and available for interviews).   He moderated a discussion with members of the U.N. and CAP previewing what will be discussed at next week’s G20 Summit.  He explains what to expect in this Clean Skies News interview:

And here’s another video if you want the perspective of Sabina Dewan, CAP’s Associate Director of International Economic Policy, on the broader questions:  What is the G-20 and why is it significant? What are leaders expected to focus on at the upcoming Pittsburgh G-20 meeting? What principles should guide discussions of the global economic recovery?

The webcast will be here:  http://www.un.org/webcast/.

Obama should be speaking round 9:30 am EDT depending on length of ceremonial opening.  Many of the other speeches –IPCC head Pachauri, China President Hu Jintao Nobelist Wangari Muta Maathai — are also must-see.

I wanted to get this out today so would show up in people’s inboxes tomorrow morning.  For some background see, “Obama to speak at U.N. special session on global warming.”

Here is the full program:

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Japan’s target for a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 could include purchases of carbon credits from abroad, the country’s new environment minister said on Thursday.

“I’d like to reiterate our party’s stance that we could use measures including the Kyoto mechanism,” Sakihito Ozawa, told a news conference, referring to a scheme to supplement domestic efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

This Reuters story is not terribly surprising.  The country’s new target was going to require a lot of effort (see “Japan’s new prime minister promises to slash CO2 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 — with domestic emissions trading, clean energy subsidies“).  That’s especially true given that Japan is some 10% above 1990 levels as of last year.  No doubt that’s one reason Japan had already made the climate pledge conditional on China, India.

Still, it’s not like Americans can criticize the Japanese, given our too weak target (see “EIA stunner: By year’s end, we’ll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill’s 2020 target“).  Here’s more:

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The United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago.   And, yes, solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow “from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017.”

But while conservatives  work hard to kill the clean  air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill that is America’s  only real hope of remaining globally competitive, the rest of the world eats our lunch, a lunch we  were kind enough to cook for them using on our own no-longer-secret recipe.  As Tom Friedman explains:

Applied Materials is one of the most important U.S. companies you’ve probably never heard of. It makes the machines that make the microchips that go inside your computer. The chip business, though, is volatile, so in 2004 Mike Splinter, Applied Materials’s C.E.O., decided to add a new business line to take advantage of the company’s nanotechnology capabilities — making the machines that make solar panels. The other day, Splinter gave me a tour of the company’s Silicon Valley facility, culminating with a visit to its “war room,” where Applied maintains a real-time global interaction with all 14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the last two years. I could only laugh because crying would have been too embarrassing.

Not a single one is in America.

Let’s see: five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan and one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto for Applied Materials’s solar business: “Invented here, sold there.”

As the National Renewable Energy Laboratory documents, “From 1980 to 1985, the U.S. industry dominated the world market contributing 50% or more of world production.”  But then President Reagan gutted Jimmy Carter’s renewable energy program (see “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan“).  President Clinton began to increase federal efforts and incentives, so our  market share began to increase.  Then the Gingrich Congress started to roll back Clinton programs, especially those aimed at clean energy deployment or those aimed at increasing the competitiveness of US solar manufacturers.  Finally, the Cheney-Bush administration came in and started a major effort to gut all clean energy deployment programs, just as our competitors were seriously ramping up their efforts.

And so our market share in solar has plummeted in the past decade, as the NREL figure below makes all too painfully clear:

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While Nicholas Stern, the world’s top climate economist, recently endorsed 350 ppm as “a very sensible long-term target,” he laid out two blunt messages about our current do-nothing strategy in a talk to students in Beijing’s People’s University:

Stern warned that if the world continued to emit around the same levels of greenhouse gases every year, there was a 50 percent chance temperatures would rise more than five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) within 100 years.

Stern knows the scientific literature (see “M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C” and Hadley Center warns of “catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path“).

A rise of “five degrees Celsius has not been seen on this planet for 30 million years — we as humans have been here for only 200,000 years,” he said.

“This type of temperature change involves radical dislocation, it involves re-writing where people can live, it would involve the movement of hundreds of millions, probably billions, of people.”

“This would result in extended, serious global conflict.”

It would result in Hell and High Water.

The second message was aimed at China, and equally blunt.  As Treehugger put it:

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Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has promised to make ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, months before world leaders meet for crucial climate change talks.

Hatoyama, who will take office next week, said Japan would seek to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, but said the target would be contingent on a deal involving all major emitters in Copenhagen in December.

“We can’t stop climate change just by setting our own emissions target,” he said at a forum in Tokyo. “Our nation will call on major countries around the world to set aggressive goals.”

The announcement today by Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (pictured above) is not a big surprise (see “Japanese opposition easily wins elections — running on a much stronger climate target“).  But it is nice to see politicians keep their promise — or try to.  The business lobby opposes the target.

Today’s Guardian story notes:

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