International Action
Climate at the G20: Fossil fuel subsidy phase-out is go in "medium term"
Published September 25, 2009 @ 06:03AM PT
Above: Silver sheen and black streamers of oil on Mississippi River, following the collision of a 600-foot chemical tanker and 200-foot fuel barge just north of the Crescent City Connector Bridge in New Orleans, La., July 2008. Credit: NOAA.
The Group of 20 will announce today that there is overall agreement on phasing out subsidies on oil and other fossil fuels -- which would cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution by around 10% by 2050.
The major wealthy and up-and-coming world economies will not set a firm schedule for the phase-out at this meeting, however. Advance word has it that they're looking to do it in "the medium term," and will come up with a more definitive schedule at the next G20 summit. The nations are also committing to more transparency in energy market data reporting, including oil production, consumption, refining, and reserves.
Still, the move is seen as a major win for President Obama, host of the Pittsburgh edition of this confab, and could bolster opinions that he's got the mojo to move an international climate agreement forward as well.
"Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change," says the statement leaked from the G20.
The nations also commit to "intensify our efforts" to achieve an agreement at December's international climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark: "We underscore anew our resolve to take strong action to address the threat of dangerous climate change."
Climate at the G20: Obama to press cuts in fossil fuel subsidies
Published September 24, 2009 @ 09:10AM PT
After three days of an all-climate schedule in New York City, featuring Tuesday's all-day United Nations Climate Summit, I'm now in Pittsburgh to cover the meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies. My thanks to Grist and G20Voice for helping me to be here.
Given that the heads of state chewed over global warming at the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday, where will climate figure into tomorrow's G20 agenda of meetings?
According to reports, it's on the list of confab issues -- "Fresh from the UN general assembly in New York, heads of government and a vast diplomatic entourage will descend on Pittsburgh today to kick off two days of talks on economic stability, financial regulation, climate change and bankers' bonuses," reports the Guardian.
President Obama is expected to put a stunner of a demand on the G20 table, as my Grist colleague Dave Roberts notes: that nations stop subsidising fossil fuels, which could cut 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Since fossil energy subsidies dwarf those going to renewables, such a move would also likely transform energy prices, better reflecting the true costs of dirty energy while making clean more competitive.
There's also the not-small matter of how much aid wealthy nations will provide to poorer nations to help them mitigate and adapt to climate disruptions -- buzzworded as "climate financing." "Wealthy nations promised in 2001 to provide the 49 least developed countries $2 billion for immediate climate change adaptation, but they only funded about a 10th of that," reports Solve Climate. "Since then, the UNFCCC has estimated the cost of global adaptation to be between $40 billion and $170 billion a year through 2030, and more recent studies now suggest the costs will be far higher — with the price growing each year the world delays action on climate change."
UN Climate Summit: No breakthroughs, but rays of hope
Published September 23, 2009 @ 11:43AM PT
China proved to be the hero of the day at yesterday's United Nations Climate Summit, while the United States stayed more or less in its new version neutral.
In one of the sharpest breaks with its predecessor on the international stage, the Obama administration has promised that the United States is in the game on climate change policy, ready to cut emissions, fund research and development, and help developing nations both adapt to the worst impacts of global warming, and avoid using the energy technologies that got the world into to the sweaty spot we're in today.
President Obama did not make any firm commitments to emissions cuts or other actions in his speech to the summit yesterday, however, while President Hu Jintao of China did come very close, listing a series of steps his nation is prepared to take if other major economies will act as well.
Hu vowed that China would curb the growth of its greenhouse-gas emissions by a “notable margin” from 2005 levels by 2020, as I write at Grist. He also said the nation would generate 15 percent of its power from renewables and nuclear by 2020, and plant 150,000 square miles of new forest over that same period. Hu committed to improving energy efficiency and integrating climate action into domestic economic development plans, as well.
I came away from various conversations with the impression that for any international treaty to succeed, it is still considered vital that the U.S. make well-defined commitments to slashing its greenhouse gas pollution, as well as helping other nations with both aid dollars and technical assistance to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
President Obama lauded US accomplishments to date, exhorted the room to act, and affirmed that the US is in the game to play well -- if hard-- with others, rather than to block the ball.
But it's by no means a unilateral situation. China stepped out as a leader yesterday, earning praise across diplomatic and non-governmental fronts. Japan's new prime minister has committed that nation to 25% cuts by 2020, more than is required under the Kyoto climate agreement. Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have offered up firm dollar amounts for climate aid to developing nations. They may be debatable figures, but at least they're on the table.
Overall, the Climate Summit does seem to have increased the pressure on nations and negotiators to make big strides toward a new treaty, when they meet in Copenhagen in December.
Next up: the Group of 20 major economies meeting in Pittsburgh. It's unclear at the moment how central climate issues will be to that meeting, which is largely to be about trade and other policies in relation to the ongoing global economic recession. But given the financial agenda, developing nations are expected to bring up their case for working adaptation and mitigation financial aid into the picture.
#Climate Summit: Obama's UN speech broad rather than deep
Published September 22, 2009 @ 07:20AM PT
President Obama's speech to the UN Climate Summit was, in a way, a coming-out moment, an opportunity to sweep aside any remaining tatters of the Bush administration's refusal to get with the international program on dealing with climate change.
But the president's remarks were, perhaps predictably, long on generalities and short on substance. He may be saving the big rhetorical guns for the meeting of the Group of 20 leading economies later this week.
Still, there were a few potentially significant signals woven into in his remarks:
- The industrial nations that have caused most of the damage to the climate to date "still have a responsibility to lead" -- very broadly, this could refer to Europe, the US, Canada and other industrial powers committing to deeper greenhouse gas pollution cuts than developing nations. One figure that is in circulation is an 80 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2050 (with a targeted 50 percent cut overall, across all nations).
- Rapidly-growing developing nations, which will produce nearly all the growth in global carbon emissions going forward, must also commit to strong emissions reduction targets and meet them. The developing world's two greatest emitters, China and India, have balked thus far at being held to any emissions reductions targets, since they are still combatting widespread poverty in their quests to expand their economies.
- "We cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together. There is no other way." The largest emitters in the world are the USA and China, with India, Brazil and Russia coming up from behind. A hint that the US may break from the Kyoto Protocol's architecture, which makes different demands on industrial and developing nations regardless of their actual emissions?
- Leading industrial nations "have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development." Just how, and by how much, the developed nations will help poorer nations cope with and mitigate global warming is one of the most divisive debates happening on the road to December's climate talks in Copenhagen.
- Development and growth can happen in concert with a global transition to low-carbon energy: Perhaps a tiny jab at conservatives opposed to climate policy reform in Congress, who have been asserting that slashing dependence on fossil energy sources will kill the economy, vaporize jobs, and leave families across the nation huddled and shivering in dark, unheated living rooms.
New York Wake-up Call for Climate Action
Published September 21, 2009 @ 10:59AM PT
Around 30 people turned out today in Union Square, in Manhattan, for one of the Avaaz.org/tcktcktck campaign's Global Climate Wake-up Call, meant to be one of several happening around the city to kick off Climate Week.
After holding up their phones to "ring the alarm," participants, like the three women above, set about calling President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to ask that they support a strong international climate treaty.
Did you flash mob for climate action today? Tell us how it went.
What Are You Doing at 12:18 on Sept. 21? Global climate wakeup call circles the world
Published September 21, 2009 @ 08:33AM PT
Climate Week Digital Media Center -- A staffer from the activist group Avaaz has stopped by to remind us to watch the results of the "Global Wakeup Call" for climate action come in live -- via online photos and real-time updates, such as this one:
Janet here in Baldoyle, Dublin, Ireland. I made a call to our Energy Minister Eamon Ryan and spoke to his secretary Clare Byrne who was happy to take call and talked for at least five minutes about the Green Party's and the Government's commitment to pushing for serious changes to Climate change in Copenhagen and generally and also to changes here in Ireland. She was very nice and had been taking Wake Up calls all day.
In brief, the goal has been that at 12:18 local time on Monday, Sept. 21, alarm clocks would ring, cell phones would beep and trill, people would gather in groups, and and also call their nation's leaders, to show their support for strong action to stop climate change.
12:18 wha? See, December's climate treaty talks in Copenhagen end on the 18th day of the 12th month this year. That's the moment, it's hoped, that the world will have come together and created a worthwhile international agreement to slash greenhouse gas pollution.
As the minutes tick down toward the first instance of 12:18 in North America, one imagines the incipient flash mobbers checking for text messages...
'Climate Week' Kicks Off in NYC: Activism, Politics, Pranks To Come
Published September 21, 2009 @ 07:11AM PT
Hundreds gathered in Central Park on a Sunday to wake up global leaders to climate change with an energetic "human countdown" to action -- the activist kick-off to the coming week, which includes the UN General Assembly's Climate Summit, and the Group of 20 (G20) major economies meeting in Pittsburgh.
The city's going to be chock-a-block with meetings, demonstrations, art, film, and more.
With the assistance of the Climate Voice project, I'll be covering Tuesday's Climate Summit, and the G20 meeting, both here and at Grist, where my intro to some of the week's political intrigues is up:
While climate is not formally on the G20’s agenda, some are hoping that President Obama will come off his speech at the New York event ready to signal to other world leaders that the U.S. will lead on forging a strong replacement to the Kyoto Protocol treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which expires in 2013. Its successor is supposed to be largely finalized at December’s global-warming talks.
...however, the Obama administration may be hamstrung by sluggish Senate progress on passing climate legislation. Senate leaders keep pushing back the timetable for action on a bill, with Majority Leader Harry Reid suggesting last week that it could be bumped all the way to next year. Republicans are almost universally opposed to a cap-and-trade system for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, and many moderate Democrats aren’t enthusiastic about cap-and-trade either.
If the Senate doesn’t pass a climate bill by early December, U.S. influence in Copenhagen may well be diminished, though if the EPA takes action to regulate greenhouse gases with its existing authority, that could give the Obama administration something to take the table.
Meanwhile, the administration is working toward a bilateral climate agreement, which could circumvent the Kyoto treaty framework. Where the world’s two greatest greenhouse-gas polluters lead, the rest of the world will probably have to follow, no matter how strong or weak the results may be.
Keep your eyes on this space, and on this space, and on my twitter feed, for ongoing updates and reports.
