Breakthrough Institute Chairman Ted Nordhaus gives the keynote address at the World Climate Solutions conference at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, the very building where international climate negotiations collapsed less than one year ago.
In late September, Breakthrough Institute Chairman Ted Nordhaus gave the keynote address at the World Climate Solutions conference--northern Europe's biggest annual clean tech event. The conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark in the Bella Center, the very place where the international climate negotiations collapsed less than one year ago.
Nordhaus was introduced by Anders Eldrup, CEO of DONG energy. What follows is a video of the introduction and speech, as well as each speaker's full remarks.
In another clear sign of the steadily unraveling pollution paradigm, Yvo De Boer, the former head of the UN climate negotiations, has acknowledged that the long debate over targets and timetables for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is irrelevant. Asked by Bloomberg about emissions reductions targets in the context of the upcoming climate negotiations in Cancun, De Boer replied:
"Discussions about targets have become largely irrelevant in the context of the Copenhagen outcome. I don't think that we're going to see a dramatic increase in the level of ambition."
De Boer was singing a different tune in the run up to last year's Copenhagen climate negotiations, which ended, predictably, without a comprehensive and legally binding emissions treaty. In August 2009, de Boer told TIME Magazine that even if the U.S. didn't show up to Copenhagen with a new climate change law in hand, an ambitious target would be enough to placate the international community:
"The international community is keenly interested in seeing what steps America is making at home to get its emissions under control, but it also wants to see what the Administration says it will do. If the Administration in Copenhagen commits to a target that is good enough for the international community, that will work. It's up to the U.S. to see how the target will be implemented nationally."
The Copenhagen climate talks may have been a symbolic success according to some, but the Accord won't mitigate climate change and the forthcoming Kerry/Graham/Lieberman climate bill will not lead to technology innovation. These failures, notes Michael Lind in a new white paper, show the collapse of the climate paradigm and the need to redefine our approach to climate change in terms of technology
The climate negotiations in Copenhagen resulted in a 193-nation agreement that included 154 policy commitments -- "the highest number of new government initiatives ever recorded . . . in a four-month period," according to Deutsche Bank -- but do they really matter?
In the months since the frenetic, and at times, apoplectic UNFCCC meeting, two conflicting views have emerged.
A report released earlier this month by Deutsche Bank (DB) presented analysis like those from Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) showing the talks were "no failure."
Two months ago, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of activists gathered in Copenhagen to craft a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Green groups put on a spectacle - yes, Greenpeace even docked two of its famous boats nearby to "help in pushing the delegates" - and some observers declared it a make or break event in global climate history.
Today, there is strikingly little to show for the whole affair, momentum has slowed to a crawl and hardly anyone is discussing the aftermath. For good reason: the Copenhagen Accord is basically a voluntary agreement with obscure objectives, and its impact will be negligible. Michael Cutajar, the former chairman of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation group, said that "Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities... Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to two degrees?"
What went wrong at Copenhagen? As I recently argued on BBC World View, the outcome was primarily the result of a flawed UNFCCC process and policy framework. The first and most obvious problem was imagining that 192 countries - some of which represent thousands of times more people than others - could produce a meaningful climate mitigation treaty. The UNFCCC process is kind of like the U.S. Senate (today one of the most dysfunctional national legislative bodies in the world) but at least four times as complicated.
I just joined the BBC World Service for a live, hour-long program called "Copenhagen: Who is to Blame?" reflecting on the outcomes of the negotiations, including BBC's environmental analyst, a Chinese policy specialist, WWF's Campaign Director, India's Vandana Shiva, and other experts (the podcast is available here, and for a cliffnotes version, start at 39 minutes).
One of the central points I make is that we need to understand what happened at Copenhagen in order to move forward successfully. As I wrote on Saturday in an open letter to Bill McKibben, founder of 350, the failure to achieve "legally-binding" emissions targets is not the Obama administration's fault, but rather the result of a flawed UNFCCC framework. If anything, President Obama should be applauded for bringing together the major emerging economies and hitting the "reset button" on the mitigation negotiation framework.
As the dust settles from the remarkable Copenhagen meeting observers are presenting vastly different messages about what has happened and what it means, raising many questions and few answers...
As the dust settles from the remarkable Copenhagen meeting observers are presenting vastly different messages about what has happened and what it means. Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, warns that anyone who criticizes Copenhagen is simply trying to stop action from moving forward: "anyone who just badmouths Copenhagen now is engaging in the business of those who are applying the brakes rather than moving forward." However, efforts to shut down debate are not going to work, as people are engaged in the very useful exercise of sorting out the meaning of Copenhagen.
Here are a few examples from the United States on the left side of the political spectrum:
Declaring "Good Riddance to Copenhagen," Newsweek's Sharon Begley writes: "The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of." Is this another cogent call for a new Climate Realpolitik?
That sound you'll hear in 2010 is a can being kicked down the road. Again. In the wake of the failure of the international negotiations in Copenhagen to reach a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, you'll hear a lot of talk about how the world has two good chances in the new year to achieve what it failed to do at Copenhagen. Don't believe it. ...
The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of.
That's because developed countries are no more likely to work out their differences with developing countries before those 2010 meetings than they did before Copenhagen. Must China, India, and Brazil agree to legally binding, verifiable cuts in their carbon-dioxide emissions? How much will rich countries ante up to help poorer ones segue to noncarbon renewable-energy sources and adapt to rising seas, droughts, dwindling water supplies, and crop failures? Will countries have to accept international monitoring of their emissions, which drives China crazy? Rather than repeating the Copenhagen charade in 2010, then, it's time for creative destruction.
Accept that the 192 nations roped together by the U.N. will not agree on a meaningful climate treaty next year either. Drop the pretense that every country matters equally. Instead, set up bilateral talks and a "club" of the countries that do matter: a mere dozen account for almost all greenhouse emissions.
Sounds like another cogent call for a new Climate Realpolitik actually capable of bending the course of global emissions downwards and putting the world on a clean development path.
Yesterday, in response to the end of the Copenhagen negotiations, you issued a press release with 350.org titled "The President has wrecked the UN (and the planet)," in which you wrote: "The president has wrecked the U.N. and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear."
Afterward, you published an article on the Grist homepage titled "With climate agreement, Obama guts progressive values," in which you wrote: "He blew up the United Nations. The idea that there's a world community that means something has disappeared tonight. The clear point is... when you sink beneath the waves we don't want to hear much about it." This followed a recent post by your organization accusing Obama of "corruption" and "conspiracy" for his climate negotiations with Ethiopia.
I'm writing you today because, as a young clean energy and climate advocate, I believe these words are wrong and irresponsible, and I would like to respectfully request that you issue a public apology to President Obama and young climate leaders across the country.
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations moments before boarding Air Force One and returning to the United States. While the final structure of "the Copenhagen Accord" is still in question, the content and reverberations of President Obama's speech today leave little doubt that the UNFCCC process, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Whether it continues to shamble on like a zombie through sheer force of inertia is yet to be determined.
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations moments before boarding Air Force One and returning to the United States. While the final structure of "the Copenhagen Accord" is still in question, the content and reverberations of President Obama's speech today leave little doubt that the UNFCCC process, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Whether it continues to shamble on like a zombie through sheer force of inertia is yet to be determined...
Breaking free from the auspices of the UN's 190+ nation negotiating framework, major emitters, including the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, appear poised to move forward with or without the rest of the UNFCCC nations.
According to a flurry of tweets and reports from observers on the ground in Copenhagen, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the "G77," a large group of developing nations, is crying bloody murder, declaring that the deal "locks countries into a cycle of poverty forever" and saying "Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush." The EU is grudgingly signing on to the accord "as better than no accord." And protestors, led by increasingly radical activist Bill McKibben, are gathering outside the Bella Center hoisting images of President Obama and crying "shame on you."
"The President has wrecked the UN (and the planet)," declared a press release from McKibben's 350.org.
As a whirlwind of drama unfolded in the 11th hour of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen today, voices from across the climatesphere were quick to report on the outcome thus far, adding their own perspective (read: spin) on the events. Below are excerpts from some of the press releases issued to date, provided without comment:
League of Conservation Voters (press release):
"While there is still much work to be done, the deal reached is a breakthrough for international climate cooperation and provides a path forward towards a binding global treaty in 2010.
Significantly, the United States and China will - for the first time - both be at the table, working to tackle the historic challenge of global climate change. Additionally, the deal allows for more transparency, as developed and developing countries have now agreed to list their national actions and commitments regarding greenhouse gas reductions.
We applaud President Obama for his leadership in helping to reach this important step toward a meaningful agreement...
The Copenhagen climate talks bring to a close a year in which more has been done to curb global warming pollution - both at home and abroad - than ever before."
Sierra Club (press release, statement from Carl Pope, Executive Director):
"The world's nations have come together and concluded a historic--if incomplete--agreement to begin tackling global warming. Tonight's announcement is but a first step and much work remains to be done in the days and months ahead in order to seal a final international climate deal that is fair, binding, and ambitious. It is imperative that negotiations resume as soon as possible."
350.org (press release):
"The President has wrecked the UN (and the planet)"
Bill McKibben and 350.org Response to President Obama's Speech
COPENHAGEN -- Bill McKibben, American environmentalist and founder of 350.org, responds to Obama's press conference this evening:
"This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter. The president has wrecked the UN and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it's at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight."
Greenpeace (press release, statement from Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo):
"Not fair, not ambitious and not legally binding. The job of world leaders
is not done. Today they failed to avert catastrophic climate change.
The city of Copenhagen is a climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty
men and women fleeing to the airport in shame. World leaders had a once in a generation chance to change the world for good, to avert catastrophic
climate change. In the end they produced a poor deal full of loopholes big
enough to fly Air Force One through.
"We have seen a year of crises, but today it is clear that the biggest one
facing humanity is a leadership crisis."
"Climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one -- it isn't even a real one. It's just repackaging old positions and pretending they're new. The actions it suggests for the rich countries that caused the climate crisis are extraordinarily inadequate. This is a disastrous outcome for people around the world who face increasingly dire impacts from a destabilizing climate."
"Despite President Obama's assurances of progress today at the UN Climate Talks, the negotiations continue into the early morning as civil society leaders are left out of the sessions at the Bella Center and protesters gather outside.
For the U.S., which is the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, to come to Copenhagen and try to strong arm the world into accepting a phony accord that will do nothing to prevent climate catastrophe is beyond irresponsible; it is criminal." said John Peck, Executive Director of Family Farm Defenders and member of Via Campesina.
"At the present, before the end of the final plenary, the draft Copenhagen Accord sets dangerously low emissions targets and provides too few resources to stop the unfolding climate catastrophe gripping the planet," said Professor Michael Dorsey with the Climate Justice Now! Network. "The Accord is little more than rhetoric hiding a failure to actually address the climate crisis. This destructive Accord represents a death sentence for Africa, the Amazon, Indigenous Peoples, and small island nations."
How could tiny Tuvalu monkey-wrench global climate talks? By operating in a highly undemocratic institution, one that has re-created the most dysfunctional and outmoded aspects of the United Nations General Assembly. When climate change emerged as an issue in the late 1980s, greens logically looked to an institution equally disconnected from national political economies, which they viewed as part of the problem. But lacking any ability to alter energy trajectories, the UNFCCC became an agency with the effectiveness of UNESCO. The rise of Climate Realpolitik -- confronting global warming in more appropriate institutions under a more appropriate framework -- gives hope that, one day soon, climate policy will be treated as a question of technology and economics, not religious mania, nostalgia, and ideological posturing.
If you were looking for a fitting illustration of why the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was doomed to fail you could have hardly asked for a better demonstration than the show put on by Tuvalu in Copenhagen last week.
For two days the tiny island nation of 12,000 successfully halted negotiations and demanded atmospheric carbon levels be kept to lower levels (350 parts per million) than what the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recommended (450 ppm).
"Tuvalu raises the bar," screamed the leading liberal climate blog, ClimateProgress.org. "Tuvalu Roars," said another. "The big takeaway from the day: it's clear that there are some countries here that will not be afraid to walk away from these talks," wrote Ben Jerveyof the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) at the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) OnEarth blog. Tuvalu wants 350 ppm and "they're not going to accept anything less," Jervey warned observed. (Correction: Jervey notes in the comments below that he did not actually endorse the Tuvalu resolution in his post)
It is hard to say what is more amazing, that Tuvalu -- a former British colonial possession whose economy is virtually entirely dependent upon foreign aid and whose constitutional monarch, the Queen of Tuvalu, is better known to the rest of us as Queen Elizabeth II -- could single-handedly disrupt global climate change treaty negotiations, that prominent greens could keep a straight face while hailing Tuvalu's parliamentary monkey-wrenching as an act of great political courage, or that conservatives could possibly fear that such a farce could ever conceivably result in one world global government.
Today, the notion that there are just two types of countries - developed and developing - is falling apart. As large "developing" nations like China rapidly increase their emissions and grow their economies, we are seeing the old UNFCCC assumptions about who should bear the responsibility of mitigating climate change crumble and the concept of "developing countries" come to an end.
By Yael Borofsky, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger
In 1992, at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world agreed that only developed "Annex I" countries -- the U.S., Europe, Japan, etc -- would have to reduce their emissions. Developing countries were too poor and weren't polluting enough to cause much warming anyway.
But fast forward to 2009 and the very idea of "developing countries" is falling apart.
This post documents Breakthrough's coverage of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen for those looking to understand the significance of this international event.
Anticipated as an opportunity to take unified action against climate change, the climate negotiations in Copenhagen have amounted to nothing more than a postmodern, self-congratulatory global event in which much is promised, but nothing meaningful is accomplished. With an apocalyptic narrative serving as the motivational undercurrent, delegates are focused on empty emissions reductions targets they have no strategy to meet and are distracted from the most important challenge in the effort to mitigate climate change: sustainable global development.
Meeting the global energy challenge does not require empty promises, but instead massive government investment in the clean energy technologies that will transform our global energy system by making clean energy cheap and abundant for developed and developing nations, alike.
What follows is the Breakthrough Institute's coverage of the climate talks in Copenhagen. Understanding why this world effort failed will be the first step in fomenting an internationally tenable plan to put the world on a low-carbon path and ensure clean, cheap, accessible energy on a global scale.
One might argue that global treaty negotiations should be explicitly focused on shared support for sustainable global development, rather than on emissions cuts. Developing and deploying the technologies and tools needed to fuel sustainable development at a global scale is the task of the 21st century. It's time the international community focused squarely on that task, for without solutions to this key challenge, no effort to stabilize the climate will succeed.
Some food for thought here: Nathan Wyeth pens a very thoughtful column on the Copenhagen climate summit focused on the key challenges of fueling sustainable global development and expanded energy-access to the billions of energy poor worldwide, via the new WRI-affiliated blog, NextBillion.net:
From the opening ceremony's video of a little girl running from an earthquake to the promises of emissions reductions, everything taking place in Copenhagen is contrived. The outcome of climate talks -- no treaty, no emissions reductions -- was known in advance. And yet participants pretend there is an unfolding drama. As such, Copenhagen is history's first completely postmodern global event. It's a festival of phoniness. With the ambitions of Versailles but the power of Davos, Copenhagen creates a cognitive dissonance for its creators, which results in ever-more manic displays of apocalypse anxiety and false hope. In the end, Copenhagen tells us more about ourselves -- our post-American world, our fragmented media environment, and our hyper-partisanship -- than about any attempt to slow global warming.
For a brief moment in Copenhagen, the effort to address climate change spoke with a single voice. It was the voice of a middle-class Danish girl, the protagonist of a four-minute film called "Please Help the World," produced for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark to show at the opening ceremonies.
The film begins with the girl watching television news of climate disasters. That night, clutching her polar bear stuffed animal, she dreams a terrifying nightmare: climate apocalypse. She is hit by a flood. She runs from tornadoes. An earthquake, apparently the result of some as yet unknown climate change impact, tears the earth asunder.
Addressing the global clean technology challenge is the crux of the matter in Copenhagen, despite continued international focus on targets and timetables, according to a new article by TIME's Bryan Walsh. Citing recent Breakthrough coverage of climate negotiations in Copenhagen and the energy challenge, Walsh explains why an international treaty should center on technology and include the investments in innovation that will make clean energy cheap.
Addressing the global clean technology challenge should be the focus of climate negotiations in Copenhagen, not carbon emissions reduction targets, writes TIME's Bryan Walsh.
TIME's Bryan Walsh emphasizes the need for the additional investments in clean energy technology highlighting the International Energy Agency's call for $10.5 trillion between now and 2030 and citing a recent blog post by the Breakthrough Institute's Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey:
But there is one number that may not get discussed much at Copenhagen, even though it is as important as all the others: $10.5 trillion. That is the additional investment needed between now and 2030 to set the world on the path to low-carbon development, according to the International Energy Agency -- a number that is far above the pittance the world currently spends on clean energy research and development (R&D). As Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey of the think tank Breakthrough Institute wrote on Dec. 7: "Without measurable progress that dramatically increases global investments in clean energy, we can forget stabilizing global temperatures or atmospheric carbon dioxide at any level."
It is up to the international representatives attending climate negotiations in Copenhagen to save the world from utter destruction -- at least that is the message of the film (embedded below) used to open the much anticipated event earlier this week. The short film focuses on a little girl who, after having an apocalyptic dream in which she experiences climate Armageddon, learns of the Copenhagen climate talks and video tapes herself pleading with the delegates to "Please save the world."
Although clearly intended to be inspirational to the attendees, the tiresome apocalyptic footage of earth's demise combined with the notion that negotiators have the power to alter the course of climate destruction in two weeks is self-congratulatory at best. More accurately, it's strikingly narcissistic (read: delusions of grandeur) given that the premise of these talks, agreeing to internationally binding carbon emissions reduction targets, continues to fixate on empty promises that include no developed, strategic plan to transform the way the world makes and uses energy.
As insidious abstractions, the focus on targets and timetables leaves delegates and world leaders free to give short-shrift to the technology innovation strategies and major clean energy investments required to decarbonize the global energy sector. Wrangling over emissions targets thus paves the way for "bold commitments" that lack the integrity of actions required to truly build a low-carbon global energy system and mitigate climate change.
A cynic might consider this insistence on abstraction intentional; a way for politicians and world leaders to "come together" to demonstrate their "shared commitment" to "climate action" without actually having to wrestle with the difficult task of transforming the world's energy system.
Here's a brief look at the targets outlined by some of the key international players in the Copenhagen negotiations.
Forget 80% by 2050 and 450ppm. Stop fixating on emissions reduction targets and timetables. As UN climate negotiations begin today in Copenhagen, there is only one number that deserves the world's attention: $10.5 trillion. That is the scale of shared investment that the International Energy Agency says is necessary over the next two decades to bring about a clean energy revolution and enable the global community to meet its climate goals. For years, climate activists and government leaders have continued to obsess about emissions reduction targets, while paying short shrift to the critical clean technology investments that we will need to get us there. If Copenhagen doesn't get us closer to closing the massive clean technology investment gap, it will have failed the global community.
Forget 80% by 2050 and 450ppm. Stop fixating on emissions reduction targets and timetables. As UN climate talks kick off in Copenhagen, Denmark, if you want a number to focus the world's attention on, try this one: $10.5 trillion.
That's the scale of additional investment required between now and 2030 to put the world's energy system on a lower-carbon path, according to the world energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.
Without measurable progress that dramatically increases global investments in clean energy, we can forget stabilizing global temperatures or atmospheric carbon dioxide at any level. And as the IEA makes clear, the world's governments must lead the way in making massive public investments to rapidly develop and deploy an array of clean energy technologies capable of sustainably and affordably powering the planet.
So for those following the progress in Copenhagen, keep that sense of scale -- $10.5 trillion -- and just one phrase on your mind: Show me the money!
Enough With the Targets and Timetables
In the days leading up to the UN climate summit beginning today in Copenhagen, the focus has been on pronouncements from world leaders establishing various national targets to reduce or curb the growth of the carbon dioxide emissions principally driving global warming.
In July of this year, the world's 17 largest economies declared support for "an aspirational global goal" to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050. Then, the world watched in recent weeks as first the United States, then China and most recently Brazil and India put their emissions pledges on the table. Each would cut their emissions some amount by some date, with the developed countries outlining targets for absolute cuts to CO2 emissions and most developing countries, including China and India, announcing reductions in the carbon intensity of their economies (aka CO2 per GDP).
As the Times info-graphic clearly illustrates, the "Lessons from Kyoto" are clear: economic trajectories, and little else, determined emissions outcomes under the targets and timetables focused Kyoto Protocol. Without a proactive and massive shared global effort to sever economic growth from emissions by accelerating clean technology innovation and deployment, the Copenhagen summit now underway shouldn't be expected to produce a dramatically different outcome than it's Kyoto predecessor, despite likely "participation" from the U.S. and big developing nations like China this time around.
A new info-graphic from the New York Times, released today as UN climate talks begin in Copenhagen, looks at the "Lessons from Kyoto," the global treaty that's ongoing fate will be the focus of UN climate negotiations beginning today in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The graphic gets the lessons pretty much dead-on, including how little actual progress any nations have made towards meeting their Kyoto "obligations." As the Times notes, "The legacy of the Kyoto Protocol is mixed." Of the 36 wealthy nations who agreed under the 1997 treaty to cut their emissions by an average of 5% below historic 1990 levels, just 18 are on track to meet their targets, almost all of them in Europe.
As the graphic illustrates, the bulk of these "successful" nations are former members of the Soviet bloc, and almost all saw deep economic declines after the fall of the Soviet Union, which conveniently occurred after the 1990 emissions baseline year used in the Kyoto treaty. Deindustrializing Eastern bloc nations, including East Germany, saw big cuts in their emissions and made compliance with the Kyoto protocol easy. Better yet, for these nations, exceeding their Kyoto "obligations" left them with excess credits under the treaty framework that they could sell to other nations struggling to cut their own emissions.
A recent Nature article by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explains why a technology-led policy is the best way to achieve climate stabilization and transition to a future fueled by clean energy technology.
"The fixation on near-term targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions at the climate meeting in Copenhagen has resulted in insufficient attention towards the technological means of achieving them."
So begins "Let the Global Technology Race Begin," an article in Nature by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explaining the need for a technology-led approach to mitigating climate change instead of the emissions reductions target approach that is the hallmark of conventional climate policy.
The authors' focus on a technology builds on the findings of a 2008 Nature article entitled, "Dangerous Assumptions," co-authored by Green, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr., and Tom Wigley. They found that the IPCC had significantly underestimated the emissions reductions necessary to achieve climate stabilization and thus, had seriously underestimated the scale of the technology challenge, concluding:
"enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at levels that are currently considered acceptable... In the end, there is no question whether technological innovation is necessary -- it is. The question is, to what degree should policy focus explicitly on motivating such innovation?"
Here, Green and Galiana answer this question. Their analysis shows:
"cumulative emissions consistent with minimizing the rise in global temperature (climate stabilization) can be achieved by investing US$100 billion a year for the rest of the century in global energy R&D, testing, demonstration, and infrastructure."
The two experts offer three suggestions for how a technology-led approach to policy would work to catalyze the research, development, and deployment of a steady stream of clean energy technologies:
1) Instead of emissions targets, governments would agree to "credible long-term global commitments to invest in energy R&D," technology and infrastructure financed by "a low carbon price of $5 per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide, which would raise almost $150 billion per year globally and $30 billion in the United States alone."
2) The carbon price would "send a forward pricing signal to deploy new or improved low-carbon technologies" by rising gradually over time "doubling, say, every 10 years."
"These would span the technology spectrum: basic R&D in breakthrough technologies, 'enabling' R&D that allows scale-up of existing technologies (such as utility-scale storage for intermittent solar and wind energy); testing and demonstration projects; end energy-related infrastructure, such as 'smart grid' that help to manage intermittent energy sources."
3) Dedicated trust funds should be created to isolate R&D monies from "political interference." These funds would be overseen "by independent committees drawn from the public and private sectors." Countries that do not engage in R&D could use their portion of the funds "to purchase successfully developed technologies from those that do participate [in R&D]."
Galiana and Green explain how a technology-led policy "inverts the usual relationship between carbon pricing and technology, whereby carbon pricing is naively expected to induce fundamental technological innovation."
Global trade issues continue to put the U.S. in a climate conundrum, presenting perhaps the thorniest negotiating point as world leaders prepare to meet for international climate talks in Copenhagen next week. Indeed, on the eve of the global climate talks, the negotiating positions of the United States and major developing economies, including China and India, appear to remain at loggerheads. Here's why...
The United States may be stuck in the middle of a climate conundrum. A proposal to establish border tariffs to account for the carbon associated with the imported manufactured products, like steel, looks critical to securing the support of key swing Senators interested in protecting the competitive position of American manufacturing. ... Yet ... those same tariff provisions that could win passage of a U.S. climate bill are firmly opposed by China and other developing nations and could both damage Sino-American trade relations and fissure international climate negotiations.
Breakthrough's Yael Borofsky wrote that back in October, and this climate conundrum continues to present perhaps the thorniest negotiating point as world leaders prepare to meet for international climate talks in Copenhagen next week. Indeed, on the eve of the global climate talks, the negotiating positions of the United States and major developing economies, including China and India, appear to remain at loggerheads.
In a letter to President Obama today, nine moderate Democratic Senators, all key swings for climate legislation or ratification of any international climate treaty, reiterated their demands that any international climate framework U.S. negotiators sign in Copenhagen must include comparable action from all major economies and allow tariffs to adjust prices on imports from any nation that does not agree to bindings agreements to reduce emissions "in specific trade- and energy-intensive economic sectors."
"Climate change is a serious and growing threat to the United States and the world," the Senators wrote. "Smart climate change policies would guard against these risks while also spurring clean energy investments that promote economic growth and create good domestic jobs."
"Importantly, however, poorly designed climate policies could also jeopardize U.S. national interest," the Senators warned, "by imposing burdens on U.S. consumers, companies and workers without solving the climate challenge."
To address these challenges, the U.S. should seek to negotiate a new international climate agreement under which, "All major economies should adopt ambitious, quantifiable, measurable, reportable and verifiable national actions" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Furthermore, U.S. climate policy, the Senators wrote, should include provisions to implement border adjustment tariffs if necessary to help shield domestic industries facing international competition from countries that have not implemented carbon reduction requirements for their industrial sectors.
Here's the key excerpt from the letter, signed by Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Begich of Alaska:
China has put some numbers on its carbon intensity pledge -- that is, its aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP. China has promised to reduced its carbon intensity of GDP by 40-45% by 2020. While a few folks have been fooled (or are trying to fool you) into thinking that it is meaningful, others including the Obama Administration are not fooled. The reality is a bit more subtle and complex than either of these perspectives.
"The US commitment to specific, mid-term emission cut targets and China's commitment to specific action on energy efficiency can unlock two of the last doors to a comprehensive agreement. Let there be no doubt that we need continued strong ambition and leadership,"
A senior Obama administration official said that the United States had pressed hard for a public commitment from China and was relieved that it had delivered. But the official, who spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of the matter, called the carbon intensity figure "disappointing," and said that the administration hoped it represented a gambit that would be negotiated upward at Copenhagen or in subsequent talks.
Understanding the various receptions of the proposed target from China requires understanding a bit of the geopolitical context. Europeans simply want the US and China to come to the table talking about numbers, so any proposal is a step forward. Meantime, the US wants to avoid being cast as the international climate bad guy so will do whatever it can to portray its own proposed 17% cut from 2005 levels as more ambitious that China's intensity target.
