Last weekend's minimalist Copenhagen global climate accord provides a great opportunity. The old deceitful, ineffectual approach is severely wounded and must die. Now there is a chance for the world to get on to an honest, effective path to an agreement.
The centrepiece of the old approach was a "cap-and-trade" scheme, festooned with offsets and bribes – bribes that purportedly, but hardly, reduced carbon emissions. It was analogous to the indulgences scheme of the Middle Ages, whereby sinners paid the Church for forgiveness.
In today's indulgences the sinners, developed countries, buy off developing countries by paying for "offsets" to their own emissions and providing reparation money for adaptation to climate change. But such hush money won't work. Yes, some developing country leaders salivated over the proffered $100 billion per year. But by buying in, they would cheat their children and ours. Besides, even the $100 billion hush money is fugacious. The US, based on its proportion of the fossil fuel carbon in the air today, would owe $27 billion per year. Chance of Congress providing that: dead zero. Maybe the UK will cough up its $6 billion per year and Germany its $7 billion per year. But who will collect Russia's $7 billion per year?
Most purchased "offsets" to fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions are hokey. But there is no need to flagellate the details of this modern indulgences scheme. Science provides an unambiguous fact that our leaders continue to ignore: carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning remains in the climate system for millennia. The only solution is to move promptly to a clean energy future.
The difficulty is that fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, if the price does not include the damage they do to human health, the planet, and the future of our children. "Goals" for future emission reductions, whether "legally binding" or not, are utter nonsense as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. The Kyoto Protocol illustrates the deceit of our governments, which have not screwed up their courage to face down the fossil fuel industry. As the graph here shows, global fossil fuel emissions were increasing 1.5% per year prior to the 1997 Kyoto accord. After "Kyoto" emission growth accelerated to 3% per year. A few developed countries reduced their fossil fuel use. The only important effect of that was to slightly reduce demand for fuel, helping to keep its price down. The fuel was burned in other places, and products made were shipped back to developed countries.
As far as the planet is concerned, agreements to "cap" emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the imagined Copenhagen Protocol, are worthless scraps of paper. As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned somewhere.
The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse. James Hansen talks to Suzanne Goldenberg Link to this audio
In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means." He was speaking as progress towards a deal in Copenhagen received a boost today, with India revealing a target to curb its carbon emissions. All four of the major emitters – the US, China, EU and India – have now tabled offers on emissions, although the equally vexed issue of funding for developing nations to deal with global warming remains deadlocked.
Hansen, in repeated appearances before Congress beginning in 1989, has done more than any other scientist to educate politicians about the causes of global warming and to prod them into action to avoid its most catastrophic consequences. But he is vehemently opposed to the carbon market schemes – in which permits to pollute are bought and sold – which are seen by the EU and other governments as the most efficient way to cut emissions and move to a new clean energy economy.
Ahead of talks in Copenhagen, a group of leading climate scientists has issued a new report summarizing the most recent research findings from around the world and concluding that scientists have underestimated the pace and extent of global warming. The report — titled “The Copenhagen Diagnosis” — finds that in several key areas observed changes are outstripping the most recent projections by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and warns that “there is a very high probability of the warming exceeding 2 °C unless global emissions peak and start to decline rapidly” within the next decade.
The report points to dramatic declines in Arctic sea ice, recent measurements that show a large net loss of ice from both Greenland and Antarctica, and the relatively rapid rise in global sea levels — 3.4 millimeters per year — as particular reasons for concern. Sea-level rise this century, it states, “is likely to be at least twice as large” as predicted by the most recent IPCC report, issued in 2007, with an upper limit of roughly two meters.
“Sea level is rising much faster and Arctic sea ice cover shrinking more rapidly than we previously expected,” Stefan Rahmstorf, department head at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said in a press release accompanying the report. “Unfortunately, the data now show us that we have underestimated the climate crisis in the past.”
According to the report, which was released today, there are several elements of the climate system that could reach a “tipping point” in coming decades if current emissions trends continue. The report notes that even at current greenhouse gas concentrations, it is already “very likely” that a “summer ice-free Arctic is inevitable.” The Greenland Ice sheet, too, the report warns, “may be nearing a tipping point where it is committed to shrink.”
The report’s 26 authors include scientists from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, the U.S., and Australia. Most were also authors of the last IPCC report, and donated their time to draft “The Copenhagen Diagnosis.” The University of New South Wales’ Climate Change Research Centre provided logistical support.
The Nation has an article from Naomi Klein on activist actions planned for the Copenhagen summit (the naming of the "bike bloc" grouping made me laugh) - Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up.
There is certainly a Seattle quality to the Copenhagen mobilization: the huge range of groups that will be there; the diverse tactics that will be on display; and the developing-country governments ready to bring activist demands into the summit. But Copenhagen is not merely a Seattle do-over. It feels, instead, as though the progressive tectonic plates are shifting, creating a movement that builds on the strengths of an earlier era but also learns from its mistakes.
The big criticism of the movement the media insisted on calling "antiglobalization" was always that it had a laundry list of grievances and few concrete alternatives. The movement converging on Copenhagen, in contrast, is about a single issue--climate change--but it weaves a coherent narrative about its cause, and its cures, that incorporates virtually every issue on the planet. In this narrative, our climate is changing not simply because of particular polluting practices but because of the underlying logic of capitalism, which values short-term profit and perpetual growth above all else. Our governments would have us believe that the same logic can now be harnessed to solve the climate crisis--by creating a tradable commodity called "carbon" and by transforming forests and farmland into "sinks" that will supposedly offset our runaway emissions.
Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these "market-based solutions" fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change--as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.
But activists in Copenhagen won't simply say no to all this. They will aggressively advance solutions that simultaneously reduce emissions and narrow inequality. Unlike at previous summits, where alternatives seemed like an afterthought, in Copenhagen the alternatives will take center stage. For instance, the direct-action coalition Climate Justice Action has called on activists to storm the conference center on December 16. Many will do this as part of the "bike bloc," riding together on an as yet unrevealed "irresistible new machine of resistance" made up of hundreds of old bicycles. The goal of the action is not to shut down the summit, Seattle-style, but to open it up, transforming it into "a space to talk about our agenda, an agenda from below, an agenda of climate justice, of real solutions against their false ones.... This day will be ours."
Some of the solutions on offer from the activist camp are the same ones the global justice movement has been championing for years: local, sustainable agriculture; smaller, decentralized power projects; respect for indigenous land rights; leaving fossil fuels in the ground; loosening protections on green technology; and paying for these transformations by taxing financial transactions and canceling foreign debts. Some solutions are new, like the mounting demand that rich countries pay "climate debt" reparations to the poor. These are tall orders, but we have all just seen the kind of resources our governments can marshal when it comes to saving the elites. As one pre-Copenhagen slogan puts it: "If the climate were a bank, it would have been saved"--not abandoned to the brutality of the market.
The 10-year old international project to stop global warming has descended into a complete shambles; we can now only hope that it’s not true, and that the skeptics are right.
But no matter who is right, we can be sure of one thing – there is little hope that an agreement to replace the failed 1997 Kyoto Protocols can be forged in Copenhagen in December. That’s despite the fact that the two Kyoto holdouts – America and Australia – are now on board, at least in principle.
Essentially the world’s politicians have given up on doing something during their lifetimes. They gave up on doing something while they are in power long ago.
All meaningful action has been put off for between 10 and 20 years, by which time the 2009 class of politicians will be safely tucked up in their pensions, living on high ground. Furthermore, the final goal has been pushed out to 2050, by which time they will all be dead.
Like everyone else at the G8 summit in L’Aquila last week, Kevin Rudd joined in the spin that progress had been made and that agreement in Copenhagen remains possible. Unfortunately he was overheard privately telling the truth – it’s actually very unlikely.
At least he got some nice airplay and polite applause by re-announcing an old carbon capture and storage research proposal.
But on the 7.30 Report last night, Al Gore stuck a pin that particular balloon, saying: “I have some scepticism about how big a role that particular technology is going to play…”
Carbon capture and storage is simply one of the phrases used to put off genuine action now, like the emissions trading scheme as currently proposed.
The problem is that the great majority of the world’s political, business and scientific leaders have accepted the Al Gore proposition that there is a climate change crisis, and that if we don’t do something we’ll all be rooned, yet they have reacted indecisively. Far better to disagree and then do nothing, than to agree and then fiddle around.
The result, as revealed on the ABC’s Inside Business on Sunday, is that coal-fired power generators have stopped spending money on maintenance.
I interviewed the managing director of TRUenergy, Richard McIndoe, whose company produces 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity in the LaTrobe Valley. He said: “Without the certainty of how long we're actually going to be able to operate down there, it's very difficult to justify spending $150 million this year on long-term maintenance plans.”
The problem for McIndoe and other coal-fired power generators is the transition over the next 15-20 years.
At the moment there is no certainty, which means not only are the power stations not being maintained properly, but there is no investment in general and the banks are unwilling to refinance debts. That’s a special problem for the debt-laden generators of the LaTrobe Valley like TRUenergy.
Clearly gas is part of the answer, especially during a transition to fully clean electricity, but if carbon capture and storage is Australia’s answer for long-term base-load power…we’re in trouble.
We are just beginning to research it and no one knows if it will work. Nuclear power has been ruled out (read more on this in the KGB TV interview with Ziggy Switkowski, to be published tomorrow) and there is no concerted effort in Australia to find something else.
Last night a group of European firms led by Siemens, Munich Re and Deutsche Bank, announced plans for $US555 billion solar power project in the Sahara desert to supply 15 per cent of Europe’s electricity needs. The business plan will take three years and the project itself decades to build.
Meanwhile China has announced plans for seven mega wind farms and a 2020 target for wind power of 100 gigawatts. The first is a 10GW generator in Gansu province, where construction began over the weekend. The Yallourn power station, by the way, produces 1.5GW.
But China is still building one or two coal-fired power plants every week as well.
And there is little hope that China, or any other developing nation, will sign up to new binding commitments at Copenhagen without a massive cash transfer from the developed world, which of course became developed by burning oil and coal.
The developed world, however, is now financially challenged, having borrowed too much from the future, while simultaneously polluting the present.
The transportation of goods and children through an urban landscape is a universal need. In Copenhagen many our of citizens choose the self-propelled transport option and cycle to work, school and on errands.
On any given day you'll see people moving things about on their bikes. A ladder, a newly-purchased bean bag for the living room, heavy bags of groceries dangling from the handlebars. It's what we do.
In Copenhagen, however, we have our own version of the SUV. We call it 'ladcyklen' or 'the cargo bike'. Often there are goods too large or cumbersome for convenient bicycle transport and if you have a child or two or three, they have places to go and things to do and you are the one who has to get them there.
In Denmark the three-wheeled cargo bike is the vehicle of choice for moving things about and the cargo bike market here continues to enjoy steady growth. A cargo bike is a generic term for any bicycle that is designed to carry 'stuff,' whether it has two wheels or three.
The necessity for cargo bikes is as old as bike culture itself. Since the early part of the last century, cargo bikes have moved things around the city. A little sub-cultural group formed rather quickly in cities, namely 'svejerne'. They muscled their heavily-laden cargo bikes through the streets and were known for their rowdy tone and for whistling at girls. Half a century before the modern bike messengers.
My Dad was a messenger boy during World War II, fetching fruit and vegetables from the market and transporting them back to the green grocer's where he worked. The two most widespread bikes were the Long John and the Short John - or Chimney Sweep bike. Both designs are almost a century old.
Since then, the Danes have expanded their fleet of cargo bikes and there are currently a dozen or so different brands competing for a market share and Denmark has rightfully become the Cargo Bike Capital of the world.
It was in the early 1970's that the first cargo bike of the modern era was developed. It is called the Christiania Bike and named after an abandoned military area which became Europe's largest anarchist town. Large, chunky and functional, with a big box placed in front of the cyclist, the Christiania bike quickly became a generic name for cargo bikes in Denmark.
Inevitably, other brands started to pop up and today the list is long and it includes; Nihola, Sorte Jernhest [Black Iron Horse], Bellabike, Triobike, Esimex, Larry vs. Harry, Long John, Short John and Kangaroo Bike.
At any daycare in the city you'll see parents dropping off and picking up their kids in cargo bikes, with the cargo bays equipped with small benches to sit on. There's room for groceries, too. Deejays and musicians use cargo bikes for transporting gear, kindergartens have them for taking kids on outings and companies use them for moving goods about.
Amazingly, only about 40 percent of Copenhageners own cars, even though this is the capital city of one of the richest countries in the world. Sure, vehicles are taxed heavily but the reason is simply because we have the infrastructure in place for bicycles and we have a rather good public transport system. Even 50 percent of the citizens of Berlin do not own a vehicle, for the same reasons. Fifty eight percent of Copenhageners, when polled, say that they ride their bike because it is easy and fast. Only one percent say they do in order to help the environment. Basically, we're not environmentalists. We're just people who need to get around the city, like anywhere else.
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