Common Wealth

The "Book Club" over at Slate is currently discussing Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffrey Sachs. The "Book Club" features an ongoing discussion about a particular topic in the format of memos to fellow participants. So far only one memo has been posted; to follow the discussion as it develops over the next several days, scroll to the bottom of a memo and toggle between numbered entries. Here is an excerpt of the first entry, by Martin Wolf:

For more than three decades now, you've been tackling big policy challenges as an adviser to many—the United Nations and countless governments around the world, among others—and in your writings. But never before have you taken on a topic of the scope of Common Wealth. I'm delighted to be able to discuss the book with you over the next couple of days.
Yet, first of all, I want to congratulate you on its scope. It concerns nothing less than the future of the world. It is also a call to arms. In this epoch, for the first time in the history of our planet, one species, ours, is in charge of the planet. We have already learned the need for cooperation within national borders. Now, you argue, "the recognition that we share responsibilities and fates across the social divide will need to be extended internationally so that the world as a whole takes care to ensure sustainable development in all regions."

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
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The Next Two Years

An eleventh hour deal at the Bali international talks on climate change gives nations two years to negotiate a new climate treaty, according to the article in the New York Times excerpted below.

The world’s faltering effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions got a new lease on life on Saturday, as delegates from 187 countries agreed to negotiate a new accord over the next two years — pushing the crucial debates about United States participation into the administration of a new American president.
Yvo de Boer, left, and Rachmat Witoelar, leaders of the climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, shook hands Saturday.
Many officials and environmental campaigners said American negotiators had remained obstructionist until the final hour of the two-week convention and had changed their stance only after public rebukes that included boos and hisses from other delegates.
The resulting “Bali Action Plan” contains no binding commitments, which European countries had sought and the United States fended off. The plan concludes that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required” and provides a timetable for two years of talks to shape the first formal addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty since the Kyoto Protocol 10 years ago.
“The next presidential election takes place at the halfway point in these treaty talks,” David D. Doniger, who directs climate policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council and served in the Clinton administration, said on his Web log on Saturday. “So the U.S. will field a new team in the second half. And there are good odds that the next president will get serious on global warming.”
But the White House, while calling the negotiating plan “quite positive” in a printed statement, said the problem lay elsewhere. It described “serious concerns” about the limited steps taken by emerging economic powers.
Without citing China and India by name, it clearly singled them out, saying: “The negotiations must proceed on the view that the problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone. Major developing economies must likewise act.”
In the talks, China and other emerging powers did inch forward, agreeing for the first time to seek ways to make “measurable, reportable and verifiable” emissions cuts. But those countries showed no signs of agreeing to any mandatory restrictions any time soon, saying their priority remained growing out of poverty.

Bali Climate Talks Still Tense

Things are still tense between the US and EU in Bali, according to this article in Bloomberg (excerpt below.)

The European Union and developing nations have pushed for the agenda to state that industrialized nations should reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 25 to 40 percent by 2020. That would give future negotiations a clear goal, they said.
The U.S. argues that talks should first focus on ways to reduce emissions blamed for climate change, and then discuss specific targets. Delegates meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali are trying to bridge the gap between the EU and U.S., the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide gas, and salvage the UN talks on their final day.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who earlier this week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of climate change, urged delegates yesterday to move ahead on the new treaty without the U.S., with the understanding that President Bush will be leaving office in almost a year. Gore shared the prize with a UN panel of scientists that reported global warming is very likely caused by humans.
``The United States is the world's most powerful economy, the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and therefore it has to be part of the solution,'' said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which organizes the talks.
Delegates from more than 150 countries are in the final hours of talks to hammer out a two-year negotiating agenda leading to the signing of a new global treaty to fight global warming to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The conference has made progress in some areas. Delegates agreed on how to manage a pool of money that draws its income from United Nations emissions markets, and will pay grants to developing nations to help them adapt to the effects of global warming such as flooding and drought.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Gore Urges US to Cooperate in Bali

According to an article in the New York Times, Al Gore is adding his voice to those urging to US to stop stalling on climate change action. (See and excerpt of the article below):

By THOMAS FULLER and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 14, 2007
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Amid growing frustration with the United States over deadlocked negotiations at a United Nations conference on global warming, the European Union threatened Thursday to boycott separate talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month.
Humberto Rosa, the chief delegate from Portugal, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said the discussions next month would be meaningless if there were no deal at the conference here this week on the resort island of Bali.
Germany’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, told reporters, “No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting.” He was referring to the formal name of the proposed American-sponsored talks.
The goal of the Bali meeting, which is being attended by delegates from 190 countries and which is scheduled to end Friday, is to reach agreement on a plan for a future deal to reduce greenhouse gases.
The escalating bitterness between the European Union and the United States came as former Vice President Al Gore told delegates in a speech that “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.”
Mr. Gore arrived at the conference from Norway, where he, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to alert the world to the danger of global warming. He urged delegates to agree to an open-ended deal that could be enhanced after the Bush administration leaves office and the United States policy changes.
“Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now,” Mr. Gore said to loud applause. “You must anticipate that.”
There appears to be broad consensus among the delegates that a new agreement on climate change should be ready by 2009, in time to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the current agreement that limits emissions by all wealthy countries except the United States, which signed the Kyoto agreement but has refused to adopt it. Gaping differences remain between countries over how to share the burden of switching from types of energy that contribute to global warming.
The United States and the European Union remain at odds on many major points, including whether an agreement signed here should include numerical targets, a move that the United States and a few other countries, including Russia, oppose.
The emerging economic powers, most notably China and India, also refuse to accept limits on their emissions, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of the gases.
“I’m very concerned about the pace of things,” Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is playing host to the meeting, said Thursday.
The United Nations released fresh data on Thursday confirming what it called the planet’s continued and alarming warming.
The 10 years ending in 2007 were the warmest on record, said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, citing data taken since the late 1800s from a global network of weather stations, ships and buoys.
“It’s very likely the warmest period for at least the last 1,000 or 1,300 years,” he told reporters.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Climate Talks Stall

The New York Times reports on the stalemate in this article (excerpt below):

By THOMAS FULLER
Published: December 12, 2007
This article was reported by Thomas Fuller, Peter Gelling and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Fuller.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — As a United Nations conference on global warming here entered its final stretch, the United States and the European Union remained deadlocked on Tuesday on whether countries should commit now to specific emissions reductions in an agreement that may not be finalized for two more years.
Over the weekend, officials from the United Nations, backed by the European Union and many developing countries, offered a draft plan for talks over the next two years, including a statement that dangerous warming can be avoided only if industrialized countries cut emissions by 2020 to levels 25 to 40 percent below those of 1990.
But on Tuesday the United States held firmly opposed to such language.
This year’s studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that centuries of warming, rising seas and species extinctions would probably result unless there were sharp curbs in climate-warming emissions within a few decades.
“Logic requires that we listen to the science,” said Stavros Dimas, the European Union’s environment commissioner. “I would expect others to follow that logic.”
The Bush administration opposes including hard targets at this stage in the talks. Other countries, including Japan and Canada, are beginning to side with the United States on the need for any new climate agreements to include meaningful steps by fast-growing countries like China and India. And calls for concrete limits have consistently been refused by those nations.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org

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.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Will You Be in Bali with Al?

Al Gore is speaking at the UN Climate Conference in Bali in nine days and he plans to take a petition on stage with him to demonstrate the support for meaningful action on climate change. If you would like to sign the petition, go to http://www.climateprotect.org/standwithal

IPCC Finishes Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has completed negotiations over the content of its third report about global warming, to be released on Friday, according to the New York Times. This report includes recommendations on how goverments should respond to a warming climate.

The world’s established and emerging powers will need to divert substantially from today’s main energy sources within a few decades to limit centuries of rising temperatures and seas driven by the buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the air, the top body studying climate change is poised to conclude.
In an all-night session capping four days of talks, economists, scientists, and government officials from more than 100 countries agreed in Bangkok early on Friday local time on most sections of a report outlining ways to limit such emissions, led by carbon dioxide, an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal and oil.
The near-final report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said prompt slowing of emissions could set the stage later in the century for stabilization of the concentration of carbon dioxide, which, at 380 parts per million now, has risen more than a third since the start of the industrial revolution and could easily double from the pre-industrial level within decades.
Dennis Tirpak, a lead author and former director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate division, declined to discuss details while the report was still in flux, but said the main message was clear: greenhouse gas emissions have soared since 1970 and could nearly double by 2030 if nothing is done.
Carbon dioxide is particularly important not only because so much is produced each year - about 25 billion tons - but because much of it persists in the atmosphere, building like unpaid credit card debt.
To stop the rise, the report’s authors said, countries would need to expand adoption of existing policies that can cut emissions - like a fuel tax or the binding limits set by the Kyoto Protocol - while also boosting research seeking new large-scale energy options. This work would include pushing for advances in solar and nuclear power.
According to several authors, the near-final report estimates that to bring global carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 to levels measured in 2000 would require a cost on released carbon dioxide of $50 to $100 a ton, a cost roughly on a par – in terms of fossil fuel prices – of an additional 25 to 50 cents for a gallon of gasoline.
The report projects that this shift might cause a small blunting of global economic activity, resulting in an overall reduction of perhaps one tenth of a percentage point per year through 2100 in the world’s total economic activity, authors said.
Some of the experts and government officials involved in the final discussions said in interviews and email messages that the costs could be substantially greater than that, adding that the report used very rosy assumptions.
But a variety of participants, including some from the United States government, said in interviews that it was hard to argue against such an investment given the potential costs of inaction.
This is the third report this year from the climate panel, which was formed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1988 to brief nations periodically on risks from human and natural changes in climate and options for limiting dangers.

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