Kyoto in Bali

The Kyoto Protocol climate agreement is up for discussion at the UN International Climate Summit currently being held in Bali, according to this article from the Christian Science Monitor (see excerpt below):

Efforts to start two years of talks aimed at crafting a new global pact on climate change enter their most intense phase this week. Ministers from more than 180 countries arrive Wednesday to give final shape to a framework for the talks, which could begin as early as next June.
But even as they look to the future, ministers also will be dealing with the present – giving a final burnish to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol before turning it loose next year. The protocol's first – and perhaps only – enforcement period begins Jan. 1 and runs through 2012.
UN officials here say they are cautiously optimistic that industrial countries as a group will meet – and perhaps beat – the pact's goal for trimming greenhouse-gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide.
But critics of the 10-year-old agreement have already written it off as a failure, even before it takes full force. To some, Kyoto's projected results are based on accounting tricks and fundamental economic changes that predate the agreement. At issue is how the structure of the original accord will shape future agreements.
Critics and proponents agree that from the climate's perspective, Kyoto's impact will get lost in the weeds. Under the agreement, industrial-country participants must reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of more than 5 percent relative to 1990 levels. But that will have a negligible effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Moreover, compared with 1990 levels, carbon-dioxide emissions from industrial countries are at an all-time high, observes Yvo de Boer, who heads the secretariat overseeing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the 1992 treaty that gave rise to the Kyoto Protocol. Rising emissions "would give you the impression that things are going completely in the wrong direction," he acknowledges.

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UN Climate Talks Underway

According to this article from the Voice of America (see excerpt), there is a lot for the reps of 180 nations to talk about:

Representatives of more than 180 nations gathered on the Indonesian island of Bali today to kick off a United Nations-sponsored conference on global climate change. The U.N. hopes the meeting will conclude with a road map toward a new agreement on reducing the types of air pollution many scientists believe are driving changes in the earth's climate. From Bali, Trish Anderton reports.
The Bali meeting aims to get countries to commit to working out a new agreement on emissions cuts to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Conference president Rachmat Witoelar of Indonesia told reporters that a detailed proposal is not necessary at this stage, but participation by all nations is vital.
"We will be happy if this Bali road map is general so we will not push for a very detailed in this short time," he said. "The introduction, the process is important."
As the conference opened, Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, signed the Kyoto Protocol, limiting his country's greenhouse gas emissions. That act earned a standing ovation in Bali, and focused attention on the failure of the United States to sign the protocol - the only developed nation not to have done so.
A woman walks past a huge paper thermometer ontop a globe, made by Greenpeace at the venue of the UN Climate Change Conference 2007, 03 Dec 2007Alden Meyer of the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists accused the Bush administration of obstructing progress on climate change.
"While the current U.S. delegation will not join in serious negotiations over mandatory limits on global warming pollution, they won't be around when the final deal is made in 2009. A new team will be on the field with a very different game plan," he said. "The other nations must not allow the U.S. to derail, delay or water down the Bali mandate."
Senior U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson denied his country was blocking progress, saying the U.S. had merely chosen a different course.
"It's up to each country to do the analysis and analyze for themselves if the target is do-able. Obviously the U.S. came to a different conclusion," he said. "We respect the decisions other countries have made and of course ask them to respect the decision that we've made."
President Bush says that the Kyoto Protocol threatened U.S. economic growth, and believes that any future climate-change agreement will be ineffective unless it includes rapidly developing nations such as China and India, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases.
Other subjects on the agenda in Bali include saving the world's remaining forests, and sharing technologies to help developing nations grow in less-polluting ways.

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What's Next for the Kyoto Protocol

According to the BBC World News,

Delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol are meeting in the German city of Bonn.
The two-week summit of about 2,000 delegates from 190 countries will focus on how to forward the Kyoto Protocol.
Kyoto binds 35 nations to cut carbon emissions in a first phase until 2012.
Officials will look at how to widen the deal to include the world's richest nations and the growing economies, such as the US, China, Brazil and India.
With Germany holding the presidency of the G8, Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to put climate change at the top of the agenda when leaders of the world's richest nations gather at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm next month.
Kyoto follow-up
Experts meeting in Bonn are set to outline guidelines for limiting national greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries.

China had argued against anything which could affect its growthThe main focus will be on what happens when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which sets out legally binding emission targets, ends in 2012.
European nations hope the US and Australia, which have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, will agree to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases under a new deal.
UN officials say the challenge is to come up with an international agreement which brings together the world's richest nations and the growing economies of China, India, Brazil and Mexico.
During two weeks of talks, there will also be workshops on energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy and technologies to develop clean fossil fuels.

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Reducing US Emissions Daunting

An article in the New York Times reports,

Electric power companies, which emit about one-third of America’s global warming gases, could reduce their emissions to below the levels of 1990, but that would take about 20 years, no matter how much the utilities spend, according to a new industry study.
The study also calls for cutting the growth in demand for electricity, which the Energy Department expects to increase at 1.5 percent a year. The study assumes growth of just 1.1 percent a year, which implies a steady decline in electricity use for each unit of economic production.
It also calls for vast growth in wind energy and some solar energy. Renewable energy (leaving out hydroelectricity) now comes to only a little over 2 percent of kilowatt-hours generated; by 2030, it would be 6.7 percent.
The biggest slice, though, is from coal plants that would capture their carbon dioxide, compress it and pipe it underground for sequestration. This is a technology that has been barely demonstrated at this point. But in a little over 20 years, it would have to produce 14.6 percent of electricity supplies.
The technologies required do exist, at least at laboratory scale. But the study does not predict costs and stipulate what is economically feasible.
Many of the changes forecast by the utility group depend on prices and on consumer attitudes. For example, it projects that 10 percent of new vehicle sales by 2017 will be plug-in hybrids, which would carry enough batteries to run a car for the first 20 or 30 miles daily; on days when a motorist went farther, the fuel would be gasoline.
There are no commercially available batteries for that task, however, and hybrids sold today constitute a tiny fraction of the market.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Will You Be in Bali?

The island of Bali will host the next major UN climate conference, to be held December 3-14, according to Monsters and Critics.

Thousands of representatives from the world's governments will discuss ways to protect the planet's climate during the December 3-14 gathering at the resort of Nusa Dua.

One of the main tasks will be to set out a framework for climate protection after the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions expires in 2012.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Emergency Climate Summit?

On Tuesday the UN environment agency pressured new Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call an emergency climate summit. The summit, which would likely take place in September, would include about twenty world leaders and push for a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

According to a Reuters article in the NY Times,

On Friday, the broadest scientific study of the human effect on the climate is set to conclude there is at least a 90 percent chance that human activities, mainly burning fossil fuels, are to blame for most of the warming in the last 50 years.
In a previous report in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the link was at least 66 percent certain. IPCC experts are meeting in Paris to discuss and approve the draft report.
The report is also set to warn that average global temperatures will rise to 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 8.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100, with a ''best estimate'' of a 3.0 C (5.4 F) rise, scientists say.
Another section of the report, due in April, is expected to warn that between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people will face water shortages by the end of the century and hundreds of millions will go hungry, according to Australia's The Age newspaper.
Coastal flooding will hit another 7 million homes.

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US Businesses, States May Force Climate Policy

Al Gore says that the many US businesses and states that have embraced the aims of the Kyoto Protocol may force President Bush to reverse his unwillingness to require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore is currently in Japan promoting his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

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Will Bush Do a 180 on Climate Change?

Senior government officials in Britain have leaked the news that President Bush plans to reverse his previous position on global climate change. The Blair administration hopes this will lead to a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, according to the Mail and Guardian.
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2007 Will Likely be Warmest Year Ever

Global Warming and El Nino make it likely that 2007 will be the warmest year ever, surpassing the previous record set in 1998. The ten warmest years ever have been within the past twelve years, according to this article from the Reuters news service.

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US Ratification of Kyoto Unlikely

So said Stuart Eizenstat, lead negotiator for former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the Kyoto Protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. While concern about Climate Change is increasing in the US Government, President Bush refuses to back the Kyoto Protocol and even though the balance of power has changed in Congress, the numbers simply do not add up because a two-thirds majority is required to override a presidential veto-- and that looks unlikely given most Republicans' ideological hatred of Kyoto.
"With the changeover in Congress we really do have the potential for greater interest but not really legislation. It hasn't changed the dynamic," Eizenstat said.

Read the full article in Reuters.
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US Cities and Towns Back Kyoto Agreement

Tiny Milan, Minnesota, pop. 350, has become the latest municipality to sign on to the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. The little community joins 53.5 million Americans in 333 cities whose governments have voluntarily agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol, according to a release issued by the city. Read the story in the West Central Tribune.
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Progress at UN Climate Change Conference?

Was there progress at the UN Climate Change Conference in Kenya that wrapped Nov. 17? It depends who you ask. An article in the Epoch Times International cites an agreement that greenhouse gasses need to be cut 50% as a breakthrough. Forbes sees the glass as half-full at best. Read both stories to get a fuller picture.

New Global Pact not expected until 2010

A new global pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions is not likely until 2010, the UN now says. Environmental groups are pushing for it to happen in 2008 or 2009. Read the story here.

Pollution as a drastic solution to global warming

At the UN Conference on Climate Change in Nairobi, Kenya, a group of scientists discussed their drastic short-term fix for climate change--spewing enough pollution to draw a "shade" over the sun temporarily. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself ''not enthusiastic about it.''
''It was meant to startle the policy makers,'' said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. ''If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this.''

Read the full story here.