Carbon Footprints

US President -elect Barack Obama gave the first of his weekly addresses to the nation and declared ‘that his administration would mark a “new chapter in American leadership on climate change.”‘

“Few challenges facing America — and the world — are more urgent than combating climate change,” he said. “Many of you are working to confront this challenge….but too often, Washington has failed to show the same kind of leadership. That will change when I take office.”

In his speech Mr Obama made the following commitments

1. A federal cap and trade system
2. Strong annual emissions reduction targets with milestones of 1990 level emissions by 2020 and an additional 80% reduction by 2050
3. $15 billion per year to ‘catalyse a clean energy future’ including solar, wind and ‘next generation’ bio-fuels and to ‘tap nuclear power while making sure it is safe’ and ‘develop clean coal technologies’
4. 5 million new ‘green jobs’ “that pay well and can’t be outsourced.”

He concludes his speech saying

Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option, denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high; the consequences too serious. Stopping climate change won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight. But I promise you this, when I am President, any Governor who is willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that is willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington, and any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America. Thank you.

It’s inspirational stuff and gives me huge hope that the USA can and will show the world how to save the world. — DS

Technorati Tags: Brack Obama, cap and trade, carbon trading, Climate Change, emissions reduction, global warming, Obama, USA

There’s an editorial in the LA Times called “Schwarzenegger and global warming” which is mostly a fluff piece about Arnie’s green-hero status being eclipsed by President Obama, but down the bottom, the author says,

Indonesiawill[sic] announce at the governors’ summit that it wishes to join California’s carbon-trading program. That could mean polluters in California would be granted permission to emit greenhouse gases here in exchange for buying “offsets” in Indonesia that compensate for the damage — for example, a California refinery might buy a chunk of rain forest in Indonesia to act as a carbon sink. Schwarzenegger seems to favor such offsets, but they would undercut the effectiveness of the program. It’s extremely hard to verify whether offsets reduce carbon as much as the amounts claimed, and they discourage innovation because they use existing technology to clean the air somewhere else rather than encouraging new technology to clean it here.

The author is entirely wrong here. For a start the various carbon credit schemes, most significantly the Voluntary Carbon Standard, are extremely detailed, and extremely conservative in their measurements of saved carbon, so to say that “It’s extremely hard to verify whether offsets reduce carbon as much as the amounts claimed,” is simply wrong and he offers no support for this claim at all. Yes there have been some cases where projects failed, or where the numbers were not entirely right, but those projects are the extreme minority.

The author displays an ignorance of the entire basis of carbon offsetting. In the case he describes, Californian polluters could clean up their emissions by buying so called REDD credits, a form of voluntary carbon credit that is issued per tonne of CO₂e locked up in existing tropical rainforests. It’s worth pointing out that rainforest destruction accounts for some 19% of the world’s GHG emissions. REDD stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation and is a rapidly emerging sector for many developing countries whose forests have been under threat for some time. REDD is a way of valuing the forests in place rather than forcing them to only have a value when they have been pulped. REDD benefits flow down to indigenous forest peoples, creating wealth, offering societal independence and helping maintain traditional practices.

A typical logging camp in somewhere like Indonesia or PNG is often little more than a slave pit. Locals are press-ganged into labour that pays them around the same as the fees they must then pay for lodging and food. Disease, sexual exploitation and all manner of predatory behaviours follow these camps about as they chew through the greatest stores of bio-diversity and carbon on Earth, lining the pockets of an elite few.

No amount of carbon tax or direct energy efficiency programme in California will do anything to slow the destruction of the world’s forests, and this the power of carbon credit systems.

Some people who don’t completely understand how carbon trading works tend to regard carbon offsetting, ie paying someone else to reduce emissions on your behalf, as somehow inferior to making emissions reduction yourself. “You have to reduce, then offset,” they say. Alas this idea masks a very child-like view of the world. Offsetting, especially with credits generated under programmes designed to include bio-diversity and social outcomes, can often be much more effective as addressing global climate change than saving on power back home. The atmosphere is global and GHGs can stay in the air for 100 years or more, where they really do mix it up globally. So emissions saved or removed in one part of the world are absolutely equivalent to emissions released near ground level in another part of the world. (Note I say near ground level here because emissions released at altitude have a higher ‘radiative forcing index’ and thus a greater global warming potential. See a discussion of this at flights.carbonplanet.com.)

In-house emission reductions though energy saving or whatever will ultimately save you money, both in terms of the power saved and also in terms of the emissions you then don’t need to pay for. But they don’t offer broader social benefits like some forms of carbon credits can do. For a company wishing to genuinely operate with no carbon footprint at all must, in part, offset. Best that it offsets in a way that creates collateral benefits. This is the power of REDD. — DS

Technorati Tags: California, carbon credits, carbon offset, carbon trading, Climate Change, forests, global warming, Indonesia, REDD, Schwarzenegger, trees

David Gallo, one of the first oceanographers to use a combination of manned submersibles and robots to map the ocean world with unprecedented clarity and detail, gives an astounding talk at TED called Underwater astonishments. It’s important, with all of this talk of the economics of climate change, to remind ourselves of the total awesomeness of Nature. I challenge you not to be amazed by the presentation Mr Gallo gives. — DS

Technorati Tags: David Gallo, fish, TED, underwater

Melbourne’s The Age is reporting Fears mount as Arctic melt prompts historic methane rise.

A global study in Geophysical Research Letters found the first increase in methane levels this century — by about 28 million tonnes since mid-2006 — was in part due to release of gas in and near the Arctic.

CSIRO senior climate scientist Paul Fraser said the data was in line with predictions that rapid melting of Arctic ice would create natural wetlands, one of the most common methane emitters. “This is not good news for global warming,” he said.

The published study comes after British newspaper The Independent reported that scientists aboard a Russian research ship had found millions of tonnes of subsea methane was bubbling to the surface and being released into the atmosphere off the Siberian coast this northern summer.

This is very very bad news. The melting of Siberian and Arctic permafrost is considered one of the nastiest of ‘tipping points’, points at which effects become self-reinforcing and ‘run-away’. — DS

Technorati Tags: arctic, Climate Change, global warming, ice, melt, melt down, methane, Siberia, tipping points

Larry Brilliant, CEO of Google.Org, said a lot of good stuff this week, but perhaps the most profound thing he said was “Today is a good day to choose to save the world”.

“Global warming is something that happens to all of us. We are in this together. It’s critically important for corporations to step up.”

Brilliant admitted that Google and others can only address “a handful of the world’s problems”, but said organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carter Center and the Rockefeller Foundation have the potential to do even more. Speaking on the day of the US presidential election, Brilliant said people should be optimistic about the future. “Today is a good day to choose to save the world,” he said.

Don’t you just love the new optimism that’s blossomed from the news of Obama’s victory. The choices you make each day are what the future is built on. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, global warming, Google, Google.org, Larry Brilliant

The UK’s The Guardian is reporting Obama’s cruise to the White House puts the wind back in green sails.

The election of Barack Obama has put the wind back into the sails of the renewable energy sector, where investor confidence had been badly punctured by the credit crisis. Clean technology and green energy stocks have soared as City analysts predict a major boost from the incoming president.

Solar Integrated Technologies rose by 30% yesterday after increases of 22% by Renewable Energy Corporation and 16% by the wind turbine maker Vestas in the 24 hours before, when they were helped upwards by oil prices returning to above $70 a barrel.

Obama has promised to invest $150bn over 10 years in renewables as part of a wider plan to increase US energy security amid fear of oil shortages, while also reducing the country’s carbon emissions in a bid to tackle global warming - and create jobs during an economic downturn.

Kate Hampton, head of policy at Climate Change Capital, a UK-based investment manager, was one of many who welcomed the poll result as a massive step forward for renewables.

“We cannot overstate how divisive the Bush administration was, how far behind the US now is in the transition to the low-carbon economy and how high expectations are now that Obama is the president-elect,” she said.

First up I congratulate Mr Obama on his astounding landslide win, and full credit to him for recognising that the USA under Bush had simply gone too far, too fast, down a very nasty track indeed. Obama is pretty much the anti-Bush and the whole world celebrated, not only that he is the first Black President, but that, by electing him, the whole world could give America another chance to do the right thing.

There’s a bunch of things the USA could do right now to make up for lost time; ratifying Kyoto, (as well as treaties on the rights of children, treaties opposing manufacture of land-mines,) and signing up to the International Criminal Court in The Haague would make an awesome start. They could pay their debt to the UN, apologise for Iraq and conduct a proper, gloves off investigation of the culture and events that lead to Abu Ghraib. And having done all of that, get to work, with the world’s help, in rebuilding and greening of the USA’s, and thus the World’s economy.

Not wishing to sound like either a militant Marxist or loopy believer in destinies but it’s quite exhilarating when you think about it that we’ve just seen Capitalism skitter onto the footpath as half the world’s banks and financial institutions got bought, for a song, by their respective governments and suddenly financial oversight and industry regulation are recognised as being, not only warm fuzzy concepts to soothe the chattering classes, but essential to the proper running of the system. Rampant industrialisation, fuelled in part by Capitalism’s runaway-train like pursuit of market expansion, and in part by plain old graft and corruption gave rise to the climate problems we face and, just as the clock is about to strike midnight, here comes Obama and with him a vast sea of brilliant minds, unthinkable amounts of money and the world’s most sophisticated economy and the will to actually address both of these fundamental challenges to life as we know it. Life is going to change, and for many in the world it is going to get much much better. The election of Obama has given vent to a amazing outpouring of optimism, just at a time when the outlook seems so bleak. His challenge is to harness that and make clear, bold moves towards a better future for everyone, American or not. — DS

Technorati Tags: Barak Obama, Climate Change, global warming, Obama, politics, US Election 2008

In the UK The Independent is reporting Climate change at the poles IS man-made

Changes to the climate due to human activity can now be detected on every continent, following a study showing that temperature rises in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic are the result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

It is the first time scientists have been able to prove the link between the temperature changes in both polar regions are down to human activity and it also undermines climate sceptics who believe the warming trend seen in the Arctic in recent decades is part of the climate’s natural variability.

The findings contradict the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said that Antarctica was the only continent where the human impact on the climate had not been observed.

The report is called The Arctic and Antarctic: Two Faces of Climate Change. – DS

Technorati Tags: Antarctic, arctic, Climate Change, global warming, meltdown, melting, poles

Reuters is reporting on a recent speech by Nicholas Stern, he of the famed (in climate change circles anyway) Stern Review. Stern was quite explicit, saying the Risks of global warming greater than financial crisis.

“The risk consequences of ignoring climate change will be very much bigger than the consequences of ignoring risks in the financial system,” said Nicholas Stern, a former British Treasury economist, who released a seminal report in 2006 that said inaction on emissions blamed for global warming could cause economic pain equal to the Great Depression.

“That’s a very important lesson, tackle risk early,” Stern told a climate and carbon conference in Hong Kong.

As countries around the world move from deploying monetary and financial stabilisation measures, to boosting fiscal spending to mend real economies, Stern said the opportunity was there to bring about a new, greener, carbon-reducing world order.

“The lesson that we can draw out from this recession, is that you can boost demand in the best way possible by focusing on low carbon growth in future,” Stern said, including greater public spending on mass public transport, energy and green technologies.

Instead of pouring money into the economy in the hope that a societal end-of-year consumption binge will see us all through these economic dark times, we, and by we I mean the Government who, in Australia has just seen fit to promise AU$10 billion to encourage old people buy plasma screen TVs, need to be pouring money into green infrastructure. Here’s some suggestions

• Solar energy for 500,000 homes
• Improved insulation for 500,000 homes
• Improved bike paths and other road enhancements for cyclists
• High speed rail links between Canberra and Sydney (please!)

I could go on but you get the idea. Spending on green infrastructure not only creates skilled jobs right here at home, it sets us on the path to energy independence, with low-cost power for all. And we’d cut our greenhouse emissions by more than our paltry Kyoto targets, which actually allow Australia to increase its emissions by 8% over 1990 levels. Surely that’s a better use of our money than a whole load of grannies with new TVs. — DS

Technorati Tags: Australia, Climate Change, economics, global financial crisis, money, Stern

in the USA, Time is reporting on The Public’s Dangerous Misunderstanding of Climate Change.

In a paper that came out Oct. 23 in Science, John Sterman — a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management — wrote about asking 212 MIT grad students to give a rough idea how much governments need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to eventually stop the increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. These students had training in science, technology, mathematics and economics at one of the best schools in the world — they are probably a lot smarter than you or me. Yet 84% of Sterman’s subjects got his problem wrong, greatly underestimating the degree to which greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. When the MIT kids can’t figure out climate change, what are the odds that the broader public will?

This confusion is hardly surprising given the huge volume of mis-information, obfuscation and outright lies published in many erstwhile responsible newspapers every day. The “damn the planet” movement, comprising of a well funded army of climate change ’sceptics’, deniers and shills, many with respectable enough academic qualifications, has successfully painted global warming as nothing much to worry about. These people could not be more wrong, and deep down I am sure they know it. It’s just that their pay-cheques depend on their denial. The planet is warming, the sea levels are rising; glaciers are, for the most part, in serious retreat all over the world. Arctic ice has hardly been thinner in human history. We are ripping up some 3% of our tropical rainforests every year, with clearance rates approaching the size of Wales every week. Taking action now makes economic sense, it makes environmental sense. Delay costs lives. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, confusion, consequences, global warming, public

Ray Kurzweil is one of my favourite technological optimists. This talk, given at the astounding TED conference, is about the power of doubling and just how quickly huge technological leaps can disrupt the status-quo and change the world in what seems like the blink of an eye. See Mr Kurzweil’s essay on the same topic, The Law of Accelerating Returns. Enjoy — DS

Technorati Tags: doubling, green future, optimism, Ray Kurzweil, technology