Consequences of Copenhagen, Part I: The stakes

Today we present part 1 of a 4 part series on the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, where leaders from around the globe will come together to negotiate a new global climate treaty.

An 'all-in' bet for the planet.

The planet's quickening pace toward irreversible climate change grows far more dire if world leaders fail to find a way to stem emissions this December, experts warn.

By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate Editor
 

This is the consequence of failure at Copenhagen: A marked shift in scientific effort from solving global warming to adapting to its consequences, a hodge-podge of uncoordinated local efforts to trim emissions – none of which deliver the necessary cuts – and an altered climate.

Climate experts, scientists and negotiators say that, absent international agreement, the children and grandchildren of those living today will negotiate a world where planetary geo-engineering is a part of daily life, sea-walls defend coastal cities, the world's poor are hammered by drought, floods and famine and our planet is heading toward conditions unseen for the last 100 million years.

The December talks are, in other words, the last, best chance to change course before chaos descends.

"The choice facing the present generation is an awesome one," said former Vice President Al Gore during a speech before the Society of Environmental Journalists last month. "Never before has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions that will have implications for all succeeding generations."

Failure, Gore added, would be "catastrophic" – not only given the urgency of changes already underway, but because it challenges the efficacy of the rule of law as "an instrument of redemption."

Collapse in Copenhagen could not just become an obstacle to further progress, however. It also might force society to confront choices and decisions few in the scientific and policy world want to face.

"Copenhagen is mitigation," said Guy Brasseur, director of the Climate Service Center in Hamburg, Germany. "If that fails, we move to adaptation and geo-engineering."

Adaptation will require hundreds of billions of dollars on the low end. It will force a vast transfer of wealth, technology and aid from industrialized counties to developing ones. That buys no more than a Band-aid for those most at risk, said Saleemul Huq, head of the climate change group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

"We've failed our primary task of preventing harm," said Huq, lead author of the adaptation and mitigation chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report. "Now we are going to be tasked with protecting those most vulnerable to harm. And soon we are going to be confronted with globally catastrophic harm."

"There really is nothing to do but adapt today."

That's where Copenhagen comes in.

The diplomatic gathering, from Dec. 7 to 18, has one goal: create an "ambitious global agreement incorporating all the countries of the world" to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

It will be the 16th in a line of negotiations extending back 20 years, some more successful than others, all aimed at curbing humanity's appetite for fossil fuel.

There is deep pessimism that it will succeed. Deep divides on how best to tackle the problem exist between developed countries. Even deeper divides separate developed from developing worlds.

But there have been surprises before.

At the 2007 talks in Bali, all signs pointed to failure until delegates awoke the day after the talks were to end and discovered key players had worked through the night to reach an agreement.

"You don't know the answer before you actually get there, and very often you don't know the answer before the last couple of days," said Doug Boucher, a climate expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has participated at several international talks.

"It's really the extreme pressure of the final deadline that gets countries to make the compromises, make the bargains necessary to get to the final agreement."

And there will be pressure.

Previous negotiations all pointed to 2009 as the year to draw a line in the sand, but it's more than just a diplomatic deadline. By virtually every metric – emissions, deforestation, fuel use, land development, economic growth – business-as-usual projections point to catastrophe.

"Civilization will experience the greatest disruption in its history," said Jeffrey Kiehl, a senior scientist at NCAR's climate change research program. "We're applying a forcing to the planet that it hasn't seen for tens to hundreds of millions of years, ... when there was no ice at either pole."

"I don't think we want to go down that path."

The effect of those forcings is a matter of much speculation and study. What has become increasingly clear is that many of the most sophisticated climate models have underestimated the earth's capacity for abrupt and radical shifts – swings that make many of the worst-case economic and climate forecasts from just a few years ago look almost rosy.

A recent report by the United Nation Environment Programme found many upper-range predictions deemed probable over the long term by its climate change panel two years ago are already occurring.

Author and reporter Dianne Dumanoski noted in her recent book, "The End of the Long Summer," that the only thing certain about the coming century is "its immense uncertainty."

"It will take conscious effort to resist taking refuge either in despair – in the conviction that 'it's too late' – or in the alternative, to bask in groundless, sunny optimism that 'we'll figure out something, because science always does.' "

Addressing this planetary emergency will require a new map, Dumanoski said – a rethinking, in effect, of civilization itself. Social systems must be retooled to withstand severe disruption. Climate change must be seen as far more than just an "environmental" dilemma or even an energy issue. Indeed, she added, humanity must come to see that seemingly small, inconsequential choices in every aspect of modern society can have – and are having – a profound and deleterious impact on the planetary system.

"There is no hope for accommodation in the current path," she said.

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Efforts to change all this are already falling far short of what many analysts consider necessary, said David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego's Laboratory on International Law and Regulation who studies climate policy. These failings, he wrote in an essay published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, arise from "a political logic that will soon be difficult to rectify." Deep cuts are costly. They are difficult to sustain, require radical change, and will, for many countries, be hard to administer.

Hence the need, many experts agree, for the pressure of a global agreement.

The status quo isn't working, they add: Countries and companies are eyeing each other warily, floating proposals for tepid cuts with the promise of steeper reductions if the rest of the world antes up as well. Australia in August tried to commit to the globe's most aggressive reduction scheme: a modest 5 percent cut in emissions from 2000 levels by 2020 with a promise of a 25 percent cut if other developed nations went along. It never got out of the country's Senate.

In Washington, D.C., climate legislation has been eclipsed by the health care debate, and key Democratic lawmakers say a far-reaching House bill should be sharply scaled back. California's progressive efforts to reduce emissions have been swamped by budget crisis.

"Countries need to have a sense that other main contributors to the problem ... are moving together toward a solution," said Jennifer Morgan, director of climate and energy policy for the World Resources Institute. "Countries will likely not go to the outer edges of what's possible."

But what's possible? The list of chores is daunting.

Scientists say greenhouse gas emissions must be cut 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid the worst disruption. By comparison, the maligned Kyoto Protocol called for the industrialized world to trim emissions between 6 and 8 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Emissions from the 40 industrialized nations agreeing to binding cuts are down five percent – on target to meet Kyoto. But that's only because the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic decline of much of the Eastern Europe that has sent emissions in those countries plummeting.

Take out those countries and add developing nations, and global emissions have jumped 10 percent since 1990, according to the United Nations.

What's more, by 2050 the world population is expected to near 9 billion. That's the equivalent of adding 10 more United States to the globe – along with all the roads, fast food joints, sewage treatment plants, factories and power plants, homes and stores that accompany growth.

Indeed, it's the growth that's the problem, most climate experts argue. America's average per-capita carbon footprint is about 20 tons of planet-warming emissions a year. A typical European's is 10 or 12 tons. In China, 4 tons and growing. But some three billion people worldwide emit less than a ton a year. (A sustainable global per-capita footprint – one that avoids the worst warming – is about 4 tons per person, scientists figure.)

Those three billion are the poorest of the poor: they heat with wood, cook with dung, have little or no access to electricity or clean water.

How to let them partake in a First World economy without cooking the planet is another major stumbling block awaiting delegates in Copenhagen.

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For the scientists, their job in some ways is done. Climate disruption is now a political question, an economics issue, a security threat.

"Clearly it's hard to think how we could better present the case," said Brasseur, the Climate Service Center director. "The science has been very clear."

"It is now up for society to decide."

And signs do suggest society is starting to decide: China is talking with the U.S. on emissions reductions and has launched a Green Revolution with the goal of catching Europe by 2020. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, who assumed the EU presidency in July, has called on European nations to tax carbon emissions regardless of global negotiations.

There is time, Brasseur said, but not much: If delegates cannot seal the deal in Copenhagen but can make sufficient progress to deliver an agreement within five years, the talks can be considered successful.

WRI's Morgan, who has spent a decade playing key roles at UN climate talks, takes a harder line. After December, there is not enough time to get a treaty ratified and in place by 2012, when Kyoto expires, she said. Countries and industries need to know what market mechanisms and signals will be in place post-Kyoto.

Amid the contention, there is one bright spot: Industrialized countries have realized they have an obligation to help the world's poor, said Huq, the London-based adaptation expert.

Of the many pieces to the climate treaty puzzle, this is the area closest to agreement, Huq said. He is confident Copenhagen will produce some consensus on this point.

"There is simply no way (delegates) can look themselves in the mirror and not do anything about it," he said. "This now is no longer disputed territory."

In some ways, that's the great irony of climate change. So many of the initial impacts from a carbon-intensive lifestyle are first hitting those who use the least amount of carbon: Drought in the Sahel, floods in Bangladesh, changing agriculture patterns in India, parts of Asia and Africa, increased water stress for millions living downslope of the Andes and Himalaya.

That will change, scientists predict, and discussion over how to adapt will move quickly from the Third World to the First.

Soon – absent steep cuts and the pressure of a global treaty – politicians across the United States will confront questions that make budget woes and health care costs seem downright quaint, said Brasseur.

"Where will I get my water? What is my strategy (for adaptation)? .... How am I going to have enough food to feed all of California?" he said, rattling off a hypothetical list.

By then the solutions may carry a frightful cost.

"The later we take action, the more we have (climate) impact," Brasseur said.

"And that impact is going to be irreversible."

Two New Reasons to Break Our Oil Addiction - Now

We're getting two major reminders this week about how urgent it is for America to break its addiction to oil. First, Tropical Storm Ida came ashore along the Gulf Coast, cutting energy production:

Marathon Oil Corp (MRO.N) had shut its Ewing Bank production platform after evacuating workers, a spokeswoman said on Sunday. The Ewing Bank platform can produce 11,700 barrels of oil and 10.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, which takes in an average of 1 million barrels of foreign crude from cargo ships daily, stopped offloading tankers shortly after noon CST Sunday (1800 GMT) due to deteriorating sea conditions, according to a spokeswoman.

The news sent already-jittery oil markets jumping, pushing prices up $2 a barrel. And the problem is only expected to get worse, as global warming fuels more intense hurricanes.

If all that wasn't scary enough, the Guardian (UK) reported a whistleblower's warning that the world doesn't have nearly as much in oil reserves as we think:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

Learn more about how you can protect our future -- for our children and for America's wildlife -- at the National Wildlife Federation's Climate Action Center.

Kids Ask: Will President Obama Lead at UN Climate Summit?

Tribal Leaders Address Climate Impacts, Clean Energy Bill

PHOTO: (from left) Mike Williams, chairman of Alaska Inter-Tribal Council; Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico; Jerry Pardilla, executive director of the National Tribal Environmental Council; and John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund.

Sitting in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, I was impressed to see dozens of powerful leaders from American Indian tribes all across the U.S. gathered together discussing the serious concerns they have about how climate change will impact tribal lands, as well as the great potential they see for how tribes can benefit from a clean energy economy that reduces carbon pollution.

NWF partnered with three major tribal organizations: the National Congress of American Indians, the National Tribal Environmental Council and the Native American Rights Fund to host a lunch meeting to discuss congressional action on climate change.

The tribal leaders are in town for the White House Tribal Nations Conference to discuss a host of issues important to Indian Country, but they took time out to convene on Wednesday to share perspectives on climate change’s impacts to tribes, climate legislation, tribal efforts to adapt to climate change impacts and how tribes are prepared to provide clean energy solutions.

Jacqueline Johnson-Pata, executive director of National Congress of American Indians said that renewable energy is one of the most significant economic development opportunities available to tribes during these difficult economic times, particularly tribes in remote areas, many of which have never experienced meaningful economic opportunities.

John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, pointed out that Indigenous Peoples have contributed very little to the global carbon footprint, yet they are suffering disproportionately from the effects of climate change. And  Jerry Pardilla, executive director, National Tribal Environmental Council, said that it is incumbent upon the Obama Administration and Congress to include Indian tribes and their leaders in the development of policies and strategies to reverse these impacts.

The lunch meeting really highlighted how important the tribes are in finding solutions to climate change that also bring much-needed jobs and economic security to communities most vulnerable to its impacts.

For example, the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy estimates that the total tribal wind generation potential is about 14% of the total U.S. electric generation – based data from the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Greening Our Schools: The Challenge For NWF Eco-Schools USA

America's increasing focus on things that are "green" most certainly extends to our K-12 schools -- all 130,000 of them. The new NWF Eco-Schools USA program will help many U.S. schools to become more effective at educating and preparing students for new, greener, ways of thinking, working and living.    It offers a proven system for organizing people and priorities at a school for more energy efficiency, water efficiency, improved waste management, eco-landacaping, nature study, climate change study and more.

Importantly, Eco-Schools USA, like its counterparts in 46 other nations, teaches a participatory and democratic process for young people to address important environmental subjects and, in due course, to also learn to solve the problems of life.  The Eco-Schools USA system includes: 

* Seven core steps to complete school greening, 

* Eight exciting study, project and community servcice pathways, and

* Access to a diverse and growing international network of 30,000 existing ecoschools from around the world.

To learn more about Eco-Schools USA and how you and your schools can participate, please visit our Eco-Schools USA self-guiding website  

Senate Progress for Clean Energy & Climate Action

The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee passed the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act yesterday on an 11-1 vote. Committee Republicans boycotted the vote, but even if all had voted against it, the bill would've passed comfortably. Even the one Democrat who voted against the bill, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), went out of his way to emphasize he hoped to vote for a final bill when the full Senate considers it.

Here's how National Wildlife Federation Senior VP Jeremy Symons reacted to the vote:

The bill’s success in committee today, combined with yesterday’s announcement by Senators Graham, Kerry and Lieberman of plans for a bipartisan bill, add up to a big boost for action in the Senate. A month ahead of the global climate talks in Copenhagen next month, Senators have sent a signal to the President and the nations of the world that Congress is getting closer to the finish line.

The National Wildlife Federation thanks Sen. Boxer for her unwavering leadership and the bill’s supporters for their commitment to clean energy jobs, energy security, and protecting America’s natural resources for our children and grandchildren. It’s unfortunate Senator Inhofe kept his team on the bench for today’s markup, proving once again he’s the oil industry’s biggest ally in Congress. But the focus now shifts to Senators Graham, Kerry and Lieberman as they work to deliver bipartisan clean energy and climate solutions.

Learn more about the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act in NWF's Climate Action Center!

Report from Barcelona UN Climate Talks

The following is a guest post from Eric Palola, senior director of the National Wildlife Federation's Forests for Wildlife program. It is cross-posted from NWF's Forest Justice.

The Mediterannean Sea is no more than a stone’s throw from the train whisking me north to Barcelona from the little port town of Sitges. I am a simple commuter this morning, joining thousands of Catalonians, some sleeping and some bantering in the heavy lisp of the Catalan dialect.

The train is the second stage of a commute that started with a bike ride and will finish with bus ride to the vast conference center holding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in a recently redeveloped industrial zone of Barcelona. Fabric billboards suspended from lampposts herald the talks as “securing a global deal on climate change”. But most of Spain seems ambivalent. Unemployment hovers near 20%, the highest within the European Union, and the country’s national daily El Pais is preoccupied with estimates that Spain may actually see negative growth in 2010.

Against this backdrop thousands of delegates and observers have converged to set the stage for a Copenhagen climate deal. The talks are struggling but there a still several days to go. As seems typical of these meetings, the most affluent and influential countries, the ones who hold all the cards in terms of needed greenhouse gas reductions and future climate financing are being non-committal. Maybe it is just a diplomatic game, but the developing countries are furious.

Alongside the big issues of future targets and timetables for emissions reduction, one of the key fault lines in the negotiations for REDDs – the acronym for Reduced Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation. (Check out NWF's REDD fact sheet [PDF].)

Emissions from poor land use, especially from forest loss and conversion have risen to the top of the agenda in the post 2012 commitment period. At issue is how the tremendous rates of deforestation occurring in many tropical regions, some 13-15 million hectares per year, can be slowed if not stopped altogether. The stickiest issues involve what forms of payment to developing countries will provide enough incentive to leave forests standing, and in turn, what assurances the international community can extract to confirm their money wasn’t simply wasted on graft and corruption and those forests are in fact still standing.

REDDs is a hot topic here. At least a dozen formal “side meetings” touch on the subject covering the nuances of financing schemes, deforestation monitoring and verification systems, determination of deforestation baselines and trends, and the development of “multi-stakeholder and transparent” forest governance systems. Acronyms fly like butterflies on the wind: RIL (reduced impact logging) MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) or IFM (independent forest monitoring). The negotiation of REDDs has generated it own vernacular. Yet, a strong underlying concern is how valuing forests purely for their carbon may trump other social and environmental aspects, especially in forest regions with strong cultural histories of indigenous forest peoples.

Later tonight, after many REDD meetings, I’ll do my bus, walk, train, and bike commute in reverse. My Catalonian hosts have noticed the string of dry days and unusually warm weather. They’re worried about global warming, but just as worried about local water quality. I’m told that beach erosion is high on the town’s list of concerns. The signs of global warming are everywhere, yet the signs in Barcelona are still mixed despite the euphoria of the billboards.

Photo via Flickr's adoptanegotiator

Save Ice Cream! #HelpHoneyBees

Häagen-Dazs knows the importance of honeybees to ice cream. Pollination is "essential for ingredients in nearly 50 percent of our all-natural superpremium flavors," according to their website, HelptheHoneyBees.com.

In an effort to raise awareness for the decline in honeybee populations around the world, they are helping fund research for scientists to learn more about the problem and find solutions. Over the last three years, one in three honeybee colonies has died. Scientists are calling the phenomenon CCD for Colony Collapse Disorder. In CCD cases, all of the bees in a colony abruptly disappear, deserting the hive.

Fast Honeybee Facts:

• One of every three bites the average American eats is directly attributed to honey bee pollination.

• Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of more than 100 crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

• They provide 80 percent of the country's pollination services.

• Without honey bee pollination, one-third of our food supply would be in jeopardy.

How You Can Help Honeybees:

• Tweet using #helphoneybees: For every tweet between Nov. 5-11 that includes #HelpHoneyBees, Häagen-Dazs will donate $1 to the University of California at Davis, which is doing great research into Colony Collapse Disorder. The donations are capped at a maximum of $500 for each of the 7 days (a total of $3,500). Find out more...
  
  For easy copying and pasting:
  

  Häagen-Dazs to donate $1 for every #HelpHoneyBees tweet Nov. 5-11 to fund Colony Collapse Disorder research http://su.pr/5oMnCY (via @NWF)

  
  ** UPDATE FROM TWITCAUSE ** "Following our extremely successful first day of #HelpHoneyBees, Häagen-Dazs has generously decided to DOUBLE their maximum daily donation, from the initial $500 to a new maximum of $1,000 per day (for a new grand total of $7,000)! We're super excited with the news and want to send a special thank you to all of you that have been tweeting! Keep it up!"
   

• Learn more about Häagen-Dazs' efforts to "Help the Honeybees": Not only can you spark donations through Twitter, but also with your "bee built" ice cream purchases. They even created a special flavor as a tribute: Vanilla Honey Bee.

• Turn your garden into a Certified Wildlife Habitat™: Provide habitat suitable for bees, birds, butterflies and other pollinators.

More Honeybee info:

"The Buzz on Native Pollinators" - National Wildlife® magazine: As European honeybees decline, indigenous bees and other pollinating animals can provide a backup--with a little help from their human friends.

"Busy with Bees" - National Wildlife® magazine: In Bavaria, a team of industrious scientists uses high-tech tools to study the secret lives of honeybees--work that could shed light on the pollinators' mysterious disappearances.

Three Ways to Plant for Pollinators

Get more tips from this National Wildlife® magazine web exclusive.

1. Select plants that provide a lot of nectar and pollen. Many ornamentals have been specifically bred to produce little or none of these essential foods.

2. Plant a diversity of species so your yard will provide bees, butterflies and other animals with nectar and pollen from spring through fall. To attract bats and nocturnal moths, consider night-blooming plants in addition to day-bloomers.

3. Be a "messy" gardener: Leave some patches of unmulched soil and brush piles that bees, birds and other animals can use to construct nests. Consider building or purchasing a bee house for wood-nesting wasps and bees.

Chamber Softening Anti-Clean Energy Stance?

Republicans on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee are continuing their boycott today, refusing to work on amendments to the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act. But the bill's supporters got some good news late yesterday:

The prospects of enacting a Senate bill got a tiny boost Tuesday when R. Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter to Boxer and the committee's ranking Republican, James M. Inhofe (Okla.), suggesting that a bipartisan approach along the lines of the compromise Kerry is trying to forge with Graham might work.

"The challenge of drafting comprehensive climate legislation is not 'whether' to do something, but 'how,' " Josten wrote.

It remains unclear whether the missive will translate into a shift in the trade association's policy, however. Jeremy Symons, senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, said he remains "cautious," given the chamber's historic opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

Is the Chamber getting serious on clean energy & climate action? Will they support a cap on global warming pollution that holds polluters accountable for their emissions? We'll find out.

Katie Couric Interviews Al Gore

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