by Andrew Light and Gwynne Taraska
Those who have followed the international climate negotiations over the last few years have had good reason to expect that this year’s UN climate summit in Qatar would be comparatively more quiet. The primary reason is straightforward. Last year, the 194 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change decided in Durban to set themselves on a three year path to create a new climate agreement “applicable to all parties” to be finalized by 2015 and enter into force by 2020.
In the already difficult arena of these negotiations, where every party has an effective veto, a three-year time table for a treaty greatly slows things down, as parties carefully float test balloons for ideas and bits of language and gauge reactions. It can be frustrating to watch from the outside given the gravity of the situation at hand — just as frustrating as watching the paralysis of the U.S. Senate in the face of the filibuster rule — but no party has the power to force a more timely agreement once this clock has been set. The last time something like this happened in this forum, in the 2008 Poznan meeting between the 2007 start of the run-up to Copenhagen and the actual summit in 2009, the result was a staid affair as appropriately dreary as the Polish winter. There was no motivation to push decisions to the brink until the scheduled showdown.
So far, this year’s meeting has followed this predictable pattern except for one noteworthy exception: a steady stream of largely unsubstantiated accusations that the U.S. is somehow blocking progress at a meeting where almost nothing is moving forward except for debates about the future of the Kyoto Protocol which the U.S. does not participate in.
A more extreme example happened this week in Doha at a press conference titled “What Obama Must Do Immediately.” The questions leveled by the participants were reasonable. Will Hurricane Sandy change the dynamic of climate policy in the U.S., especially when polling now indicates that 70 percent of the American people think climate change is happening? How will the U.S. fulfill its pledge to reduce its emissions 17 percent by 2020? Will the U.S. continue its funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries now that the $30 billion fast start period between 2009 and 2012 has ended? And how will the U.S. contribute to the goal of sourcing the new Green Climate Fund, which aims to deliver a significant portion of the promised $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020?
But what struck us as unreasonable, if not a distraction from the hard work that is actually before this body right now, was the repetition of charges that the U.S. is actually doing nothing on climate change now and is determined to shirk any responsibility whatsoever in the global struggle over climate change. The high point, or low point, depending on one’s perspective, was a call by Greenpeace International’s Kumi Naidoo for President Obama to order America’s lead negotiators back to Washington. While Naidoo opined that without a different mandate these negotiators are only “producing more hot air” in the climate talks, the call for recalling them is likely some of the hottest air yet seen in Doha.
The 17% Target
The United States pledged during the Copenhagen climate talks of 2009 to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. In this press conference, Samantha Smith of WWF Global charged that the target is “all talk.”
“We would love to see the US explain how it is going to meet the 17 percent target,” she said, “which, by the way, is completely inconsistent with science and not adequate, because it’s not clear with current policies the U.S. is going to be able to meet even this commitment.”
While it is no doubt the case that all parties need to increase their ambition this decade – a point we will return to below – America’s 17 percent target is actually within range. And while the U.S. negotiators have been criticized throughout this meeting for citing independent studies on the trajectory of U.S. emissions by 2020, the policies that are contributing to meeting this goal so far are in fact quite clear, as are the next steps even without cooperation from Congress.
Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing noted in his opening press conference on November 26 that U.S. energy sector emissions are already at 8.8 percent below 2005 levels. In his press briefing on December 3, U.S. Special Envoy Todd Stern defended the attainability of the 17 percent target by citing the recent Resources for the Future report, “US Status on Climate Change Mitigation (October 2012),” which concludes that the U.S. is “on course to achieve reductions of 16.3 percent from 2005 levels in 2020. The RFF report does require more action than the US has taken so far to meet our 17 percent commitment, though nothing substantially beyond the reach of existing executive authority. And while there are some concerns about how some of the estimates are generated, other reports come to similar conclusions, which gives reason for further refinement of these policies.
What has been done at the national level has happened despite an uncooperative Congress. The RFF report justifies its conclusion by citing 1) regulations of CO2 under the Clean Air Act; 2) “secular trends in fuel prices and energy efficiency” including the resulting move from coal to natural gas in the electricity sector; and 3) subnational initiatives such as the new cap and trade system in California. To be sure, some of the policies assumed in this modeling have not yet emerged, such as the expected regulations on existing stationary power sources, but their absence sets a clear road map for what advocates should push for in a second term of the Obama administration.
Even a less optimistic new report by the Center for Climate Strategies explains how we can approach the 17 percent target. Built on data from DOE, EIA, and AEO and titled “Developing and Assessing Economic, Energy, and Climate Security and Investment Options for the US,” the report finds that projections of CO2 and equivalent GHG emissions in the energy sector through 2020 have dropped 23 percent compared to the projections of 2005. This would bring “the country’s emissions 69 percent of the way to the 2020 climate change goal.”
As Climate Progress previously reported, the economic downturn accounts for a significant portion of this drop, 22 percent on their estimation, but state and federal policies “from city building codes encouraging energy efficiency to state renewable energy standards to national car mileage standards” had a more considerable effect, accounting for 46 percent of the reduction. Here is a selection of specific factors or policies identified in the report and the percentage of the drop they bring about:
- Switching from coal to gas in electricity sector: 6 percent.
- State renewable electricity portfolio standards: 6 percent.
- Renewable fuel programs: 6 percent.
- Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards: 11 percent.
- State energy efficiency portfolio standards: 12 percent.
Furthermore, the report presents a path from the 69 percent mark to the neighborhood of the goal itself. It identifies 20 new policies that would help us “close the gap to the 2020 goal of 17 percent below 2005 emissions by 2023” if they were implemented across the states. These include a national clean energy standard; rebates for electric vehicles; a national renewable fuel standard; more public transportation; appliance standards; and reforestation and forest retention practices. Most if not all of these policies are currently under some level of consideration.
In addition, we would like to point out the importance of contributions from sub-national programs such as California’s new cap and trade system, which would further reduce emissions by 2020. According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “California’s emissions trading system will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from regulated entities by more than 16 percent between 2013 and 2020.”
All that said, given the abject skepticism expressed here on whether and how the U.S. can meet its goal, where is the similar call for transparency on how, say, China will manage to reduce its carbon intensity by 40 percent to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020? Where is the call for more ambition from the world’s largest carbon polluter, which is on track now to become the world’s largest historical emitter some time in the 2030s? Can we expect a companion session to be scheduled later in the week titled “What Xi Jinping Must Do Immediately?” It’s likely not, but consistency would demand that we should.
Climate Finance
U.S. credibility in this process largely comes in two forms: what we can do to reduce our emissions, and how much assistance we can bring to the table for poorer countries to develop sustainably on a low carbon path. Toward that end, during the last three years, the U.S. has contributed $7.46 billion during the fast start financing period, amounting to almost a quarter of the stated $30 billion global goal. During the Copenhagen climate talks of 2009, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton pledged that “the U.S. is prepared to work with other countries to jointly mobilize $100 bn a year by 2020.”
But these contributions to date do not impress Smith from WWF. Sounding as if the U.S. alone must deliver on the 2020 climate finance goal, she said in this session, “What we would like to see is a plan for how the U.S. is going to deliver on this $100 billion commitment. Where’s the money? Or, if there’s no money, where’s the plan for delivering the money and the description of the sources?” Others in the session worried that U.S. negotiators haven’t even signaled whether our current finance commitments will go up rather than down, or continue at current levels.
But again, Todd Stern did in fact provide a response to most of these questions in the U.S. press briefing on December 3, indicating an expectation that the Administration will at least continue on its current level of finance working toward the larger 2020 goal:
“We were part of the commitment that the president himself made in Copenhagen to join with other donor countries in the fast start pledge of … approaching 30 billion dollars in the years 2010, 11, and 12. The most recent numbers that I have seen overall for the donor countries is … 33.6 billion. The US number for that period of time from all sources including appropriated funding as well as the public funding increment of what OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation] does is around 7.5 [billion] which I think is quite good. This is for us, for Europe, for many players obviously very challenging fiscal times. And we have every intention to continue pressing forward with funding of that same kind of level to the greatest extent that we can. Obviously we need to get money appropriated by congress and OPIC needs to be able to continue finding essentially green energy infrastructure deals to finance. But I expect that to continue. We’re committed to it and we’re committed to the longer term goal of mobilizing funding by 2020 in the context of the right kind of mitigation and transparency.”
Nonetheless, the U.S. is coming under fire at the meeting, because unlike other countries, it’s not ready to announce its next year or three years of finance commitment this week in Doha. But this of course says absolutely nothing about the Obama administration’s commitment to near- or long-term climate finance. No one in the Administration could tell us with certainty today what we’re going to be spending next year on anything from school lunch programs to highway maintenance. Unlike the UK, which announced its continuing climate finance pledge this week, America does not have a parliamentary system where the head of government is the head of the legislature. Congress has the power of the purse, and all budgets are a matter of negotiation. This reality can’t simply be wished away. What’s most important is the continuing steady signals that this is a priority for the Administration, which is the most we can get right now.
Increasing Ambition by 2020
As suggested above, we do agree with Smith that the current global pledges to reduce emissions are inadequate. As has been clearly established, the world faces an ambition gap between the current cumulative pledges from 141 countries under the Copenhagen Accord to reduce their emissions by 2020 and where we need to be by then to keep the door open to eventual stabilization at 2 degrees Celsius. In his opening press conference last week, Jonathan Pershing, quoting President Obama, did not deny this but stated flatly, “We haven’t done as much as we need to do.”
Unfortunately though, no parties have stepped up to the plate and offered to increase their ambition this decade. Rather, some of them seem willing only to demand that other parties increase their emission reductions. A submission to the Doha summit last week by Bolivia, China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a handful of other countries called for developed parties to “reduce their aggregate emissions by 40 to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.” This would be twice the highest commitment of any party to these talks to date. Even the most streamlined parliamentary government is unlikely to be able to take it on this week or any time soon.
But not responding to such requests in the affirmative does not indicate a weakness of will. Such calls for action are not laudatory, they are not heroic, and they are not productive. It’s easy to address the current ambition gap toward achieving any hope of climate safety by simply stipulating that other parties take it on entirely. What is harder is to find a cooperative solution that is actually achievable and appropriately divides burdens among the world’s largest carbon polluters.
The final paragraph of the Durban Platform asked parties to submit proposals last February for increasing the level of ambition this decade, to create a work plan for overcoming the ambition gap. While some parties also used the opportunity to insist that global emissions should be stabilized by a handful of countries, others, such as the U.S., generated productive ideas, such as ramping up mitigation on short-lived climate pollutants like HFCs, methane, and black carbon, and fulfilling existing commitments in the G20 to remove subsidies for fossil fuels.
None of these initiatives were discussed in the session on “What Obama Must Do Immediately,” perhaps because the Administration has already been doing them. The U.S. has submitted a proposal every year since 2009 with Canada and Mexico to phase out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol. Last February, the U..S and five other countries created the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to focus on the reduction of a range of short-lived climate pollutants that collectively could reduce warming by half a degree Celsius and maintain those savings if followed by aggressive carbon reduction measures; 20 parties and a variety of NGOs are now part of this coalition. We estimate that together, such measures could cut the current ambition gap in half on the high end of the Copenhagen Pledges.
But most importantly, all of these measures could be pursued outside of the UN climate negotiations among smaller sets of parties who might be less inclined to engage in the Kabuki theatre that seems to be an annual part of these proceedings.
Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow and Gwynne Taraska is a Visiting Research Associate at the Center for American Progress working on international climate and energy policy. Both are also affiliated with the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Podium-silence.
Whatever protestations the authors have made, or might have made, there is one over-riding thing Obama could do for free:
Talk.
Speech it up, buddy!
The public is not impressed with defensive-sounding rattlings-off of statistics, when the commander-in-chief is essentially silent.
We completely agree that the President needs to talk about this issue. We didn’t mean to imply otherwise. We’ve been on record on this elsewhere, and made the case for why now is the best time to do this given the change in public attitudes on how climate change will impact them personally from last March to this past September even *before* Sandy. See the end of our Doha scene setter: http://bit.ly/TkqYfX.
Please free me from the spam trap.
With great respect for Joe Romm, I more and more see his CAP colleague Andrew Light as an apologist for Obama. The metric that I think matters is Obama’s power facing this crisis. He has a solemn responsibility to speak the truth to the country. He isn’t doing this.
I’m with Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo. I believe Light’s calling him full of hot air reflects badly on CAP.
I agree.
There’s no reason to treat so disrespectfully someone who’s pointing out the glaring contradictions between the President’s stated policies, and the on-the-ground realities of the negotiations.
When Amy Goodman raised this question at a press conference (Tuesday?), Pershing just flat-out refused to answer. In that context, Light and Taraska are very directly doing Pershing’s PR dirty work for him.
You don’t have to disagree with the administration’s position to be objective, but you do have to avoid auditioning for the job of press secretary.
We meant no disrespect, but if Naidoo is going to use such caustic language then he puts himself up to the same level of scrutiny. I’d encourage those who doubt our counterclaim that his arguments were vacuous to watch the archived webcast of the press conference that we link to in this piece. After that, tell me one specific thing that Naidoo mentions that the US negotiators are doing to derail this meeting or is counter to President Obama’s statements on climate change to date. I expect you won’t find anything. We didn’t. And so that deserves a response.
And as far as the personal attacks, I’d invite people to read my substantive policy work on the main CAP website (not just climate progress) to see where we’ve challenged the administration to do more.
I find it hard to believe that you meant no disrespect when saying that Naidoo is full of hot air. Maybe that phrase has another, non-pejorative meaning that I’m unaware of.
And to the extent that you’re taking my attacks personally, please do address the fact that you are answering, at length, a question which Pershing dodged at a press conference. I think I’m more justified in accusing you of carrying water than you are of accusing Naidoo of blowing hot air. At least tonally.
But the meat of the problem for me is this: you never really addressed what was at stake in Naidoo’s dramatic demand for the recall of the negotiators. I mean, nobody thinks they were actually going to be recalled, so what’s going on there?
Well, it’s not what you represent it to be, which is simply a matter of claiming that the US is actively derailing negotiations. Note that in the full context, Naidoo’s complaint is about a mismatch of words and deeds: Obama seems to have ramped up his rhetoric on climate change, but the negotiators have not ramped up their efforts.
In other words, Naidoo is pointing out that there has been a change in rhetoric, which would suggest a recognition that the current framework is insufficient; but that the negotiators are not challenging the framework for something more ambitious.
From this perspective, you and Naidoo are saying quite similar things, but in different ways. I don’t know if you couldn’t or didn’t want to hear that. But your response was to call him a windbag, and to defend the US negotiators’ position as though you yourself had been attacked. That sounds like journalistic capture to me.
And apologies for the days-late response. I thought I’d be emailed if there were a reply to my thread.
This is a pretty sad apology for the US’s awful positions. It’s also completely inaccurate. “America’s 17 percent target is actually within range.” Within range of what? A 2C world? Not nearly. And note (as this blog does elsewhere) that the 17% reduction is from a 2005 baseline, which no one else in the world uses. As for climate finance, the US figures are completely fudged, as this report makes clear: http://www.iied.org/rich-nations-fail-meet-8-climate-finance-pledges-analysis-shows
The US is not the only bad actor at the climate negotiations, but it is consistently the worst. Going home is not such a bad idea.
Joe, I expect more of you, and this blog, than to shill for the administration.
First off, we certainly never said the US target of a 17% cut by 2020 below a 2005 baseline is sufficient for stablization at 2C. We don’t imply that. We don’t think it’s true. And I’ve written plenty on the need for the US to ramp up ambition. What we’re answering is the claim by Smith that there is discernable plan in the US to hit our current international commitment, whether you think it is adequate or not. The RFF report shows what we can get out of current policies in place and what else needs to be done. The Center for Climate Strategies report gives another take on that.
Second, the IIED report on climate finance is certainly not the latest word on this subject. It undercounts the US contribution because it doesn’t count the contributions the US has made through OPIC, Ex-Im and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Now, folks can certainly complain that donor countries should not be able to count hybrid public-private finance in their tallies, but that seems remarkably short sighted to me for reasons I’ve written on at great length around the Durban meeting. Do note though that when the US includes OPIC funding, for example, in getting to its $7.5 billion tally it only counts the amount of loans, loan guarantees, and grants from these institutions, not the private capital that flows into developing countries as a result.
Finally, for the record, I think we need to do more on finance. I co-authored a major report with the Alliance for Climate Protection in 2010 around the Cancun meeting calling for US leadership on a ramp up period in international climate finance from 2013-2015, which you can read here: http://bit.ly/TMeEWI.
Thanks for the detailed reply. The 17% from 2005 pledge (which is really about 3.5% from the 1990 baseline that the rest of the world uses) is a red herring. It’s insulting that the Obama administration puts that out there as a serious concession, and Naidoo and others are right to call the US out about that. I don’t see why you’re attacking Greenpeace instead of the US on ambition.
As for finance, the IIED report quite rightly excludes OPIC and similar funding. Subsidies to US corporations, many of which are engaged in fossil fuel exploitation, are simply not climate finance without grossly perverting the term. You can argue that, since the US refuses to use any sticks to propel its own industry towards better behavior, it must generously dole out carrots. But that has nothing to do with providing adaptation and mitigation finance to developing countries.
With AGW condolences,
Report a 5.5 and the dust still hasn’t settled, “Five dead in earthquake in eastern Iran – media reports” (Reuters; swissinfo.ch, 12/5/12). 3 weeks ago, the “northern Iran (6+)” region was predicted under 11/4 – 10/12 and posted in the comments of the blog of http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/16/1201191/gerard-fracking-regulation/#comment-570331.
After being paid to take the form of Aeolus, “Oops–Bill Nye blows the entire warmist argument on national TV with six words … After Morano says ‘every proposal ever done including the UN Kyoto protocol would not impact … science’, Nye actually says ‘We’re not talking about the temperature’” (racketeering found on 12/5/12) (Marc Morano whistle-sucker performing/perfuming the stink at climatedepot.com).
Your dismissal of the economic dimension here is misleading. Your November report did attribute 22% of the drop in carbon emissions to the economic downturn, but:
1. That is some pretty shaky ground to stand on, insofar as
1a. people seem less likely to support green (versus regular) energy investment and carbon taxes during economic downturns and
1b. when the downturn goes away and we start turning our factories back on, they’re not going to be running on solar, because we haven’t invested enough.
2. Another 6% came from switching to natural gas. And it’s very much in the air as to how much natural gas contributes to global warming.
3. Yet another 26% came from unattributed sources, including higher gas prices. Here, we’re depending on oil company and commodity trader price manipulation, as well as increased global demand, to hold down carbon output. These all seem like bad horses to bet on.
So even if one buys your pretty bogus argument that the US is on a good path for carbon reduction, a big chunk of those putative gains are … undependable.
You all need to re-evaluate your priorities. Decide whether you’re going to use your platform and resources to attack those who are standing up for the marginalized voices of the global south, or to criticize those who are slow-walking the process on behalf of the wealthy nations (even admitting the political complexities of the domestic policy debate).
The report your referencing is not ours. We’re citing it. Again, and apologies if this is not clear, we’re not saying that either the RFF report or the CCS report demonstrate that we will get to 17% with current policies and trends in place. We’re saying they lay out a few routes to getting there, which will demand more policy instruments.
Re. “we’re not saying that either the RFF report or the CCS report demonstrate that we will get to 17% with current policies and trends in place.”
This sounds like you’re allowing Naidoo at least one real ground for complaint: i.e., the US has committed to a nonbinding target which you agree should be much more ambitious, but it isn’t demonstrably on track to get even to that point “with current policies and trends in place.” And this despite recent emissions reductions — which may not even be as big as the “energy sector” numbers cited at Doha by Pershing (see also http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/05/1275811/why-claims-about-reductions-of-us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-are-misleading/ ) and may otherwise be flukey or temporary. Gas-price volatility, economic recovery, and other factors could leave us far short of that 17%. Isn’t “too little, too slow, and even that amount uncertain” a fair paraphrase of what critics thinks of US emissions cuts? And I think you would agree that at the moment Obama is not showing any signs of bully-pulpit leadership for new policies that _would_ get the US reliably to 17% by the target date, much less for a more ambitious target commensurate with the urgency of the issue.
So at _best_, it’s “Yay! We’re sort of on track to do too little by 2020!” Yet the US gets up at Doha and says that its climate progress has been “enormous.” When one insults people’s intelligence like that, is it surprising or improper that they react with anger? It seems to me that a bit of urgent complaining at Doha about US behavior is entirely in order.
Re. complaining about China for consistency: (1) Is not the US a more prominent leader in world affairs than China, therefore more damaging when it slow-walks on climate and a more important target for political pressure? (2) As a democracy, is the US not more likely to _respond_ to pressure than China? As of yesterday, Dec. 6, the Union of Concerned Scientists, at least, was claiming to see a last-minute “big shift” in the US stance at Doha ( http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/big-shift-seen-in-us-position-at-doha-climate-talks-20121206-2awmw.html ). Perhaps, if the shift is real, all that “caustic language” from Naidoo et al. has something to do with it. If not now, perhaps eventually. (3) Isn’t China’s climate recalcitrance amply covered in corporate media and constantly trumpeted by the US itself? Is there a ringing silence on China’s self-serving climate politicking that I have somehow missed? Why should a Greenpeace news conference be held to some factitious standard of internal balance? (Note: Google “greenpeace china emissions” to find several hard-hitting reports. It’s not like Greenpeace International doesn’t criticize China, too.)
Look, people are pissed because the US could and should have been _leading change_ at Durban, not treading water. Obama could have shown up in person, or got in front of a TV camera, and fired the world stage with his eloquence. I know you agree that he should do so — so why do you complain when people complain that he won’t? He could have charged his representatives with ambitious proposals instead of talking points touting our iffy progress to date and our admittedly inadequate 2020 target. Instead, the US seems to have spent its time at Doha advocating for national voluntary mitigation targets such as we have had since Copenhagen (oh, that’s going to work), trumpeting its own marginal reductions to date, and being huffy when criticized. After all our “enormous” progress, too!
Your piece strikes me as a mosaic made of factually correct tiles, carefully but oddly assembled. The bits are all right, but the picture is wrong. It’s great, the state-level GHG mitigation efforts and other stuff you point to, the gains — I’m all for them, and three cheers! (Except that fracked natural gas is a devil’s deal.) But I honestly think that the US government would be a far more appropriate target of your critical skills than Greenpeace, at this time.
Popular movements that offend nobody rarely make history.
It’s funny to hear people take bows for the drop in US emissions. Consider: 1) we’ve had a recession, which reduces energy use. 2) Thanks to growth hydrofracking, natural gas has become an economical substitute for coal. 3) Oil prices remain stubbornly high, putting more pressure toward transport efficiency than the CAFE standards. And 4) we export coal we don’t burn – this doesn’t get accounted for in that 17% drop.
The US is wealthy, large, and profligate in its energy use. It’s not surprising we’re a target of GreenPeace.
Instead of worrying about what mean things powerless spectators say at Doha, negotiators should try to get something useful done. Writers should elucidate the real political reasons progress is so slow.
Amen. We’re stuck in a dreamlike slow-motion disaster, and I’ll tell you one thing — it’s not Greenpeace’s fault.
“The United States pledged during the Copenhagen climate talks of 2009 to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. ”
which reduction represents how much percentage of what actually needs to be done, to avert disaster?
I understand it’s a pittance, a small fraction of what’s actually needed.
See my comments above. It’s not enough. But we do think that the right next step is likely to be focusing on short-lived pollutants as the main agenda of the rest of this decade, as the only likely way to close the 2020 ambition gap. If the US doubled it’s 2020 pledge it wouldn’t close the 2020 ambition gap. If we can tamp down HFCs, methane, and black carbon, then the next step is to double down on CO2 reductions hopefully after we get a Congress that doesn’t still imagine this problem as illusory.
Andrew- thanks for taking time to respond. I came to climate change activism through a 25 year history of serious autoimmune diseases resulting in a liver transplant, cancer, colon removal, many hospitalizations, etc (I am doing well now :)) I began my personal journey with 7 years of denying doctors and medical science and ended up in the ER and almost dying for my efforts. It was only after years of experiencing the direct consequences of my denial that I learned to take proactive measures that, subsequently, saved my life- I learned that when in an emergency situation, I had to ACT AS IF IT WAS AN EMERGENCY! Here is where my analogy comes in- I see the root of the climate change problem as one of essential denial/avoidance that we are in an acute (at this point) emergency. The US has disproportiantely benefitted from carbon fuels (and continues to). If the US does not lead by example, then there is NO WAY China and India will follow suit. Your article argues that Obama’s relatively piece-meal efforts have some merit. And indeed they do- especially considering the GOP alternatives. BUT, Andrew, the scientists say we are in an emergency. We are now tracking towards 4-6 C by century’s end (and this is discounting hugely uncertain feedback possibilities)- business as usual, or even ‘somewhat better than usual’ is not NEARLY enough. We need to pressure ourselves (first), and then other nations, to implement emergency footing/lend-lease, Manhattan Project urgency. Obama is the ‘leader of the free world’…climate aware people are dying with sadness and anger and frustration that he has not even come close to making that emergency call. WE- more than any other nation- need to lead the charge. Instead we are cautiously moving forward. You know- we all know – that, absent some kind of undeniable wakeup call (a CAT 5 hitting NYC at high tide on full moon for 7 consecutive years?) that we are consigning our children and grandchildren to world that has been disfigured by our inaction.
This article and Light’s comments tell me CAP should reevaluate. Its policy focus reflects an inside game that has failed, relative to the crisis, in the absence of strong public pressure. This pressure is what 350.org, Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, Greenpeace, etc., are trying to build.
I’m outraged that Obama won’t fundamentally speak to us about and take this crisis on. I wonder if he and Mrs. Clinton are political cowards, or if he and his negotiators think some inside global game is all that matters, or if he believes some real-politic view of the world is bigger than the climate crisis (it is not). I fear he’s the LBJ of our times.
A discussion pertinent to this one is going on at the Nation, with its writer Christian Parenti criticizing the 350.org divestment campaign because, to him, it attacks the fossil fuel industry instead of putting pressure on Obama.
I’m pretty sure 350, which I’m active in, intends to do both, but I agree with Parenti when he writes (very much unlike what Light wrote: “Well, Obama should be humiliated and he should be attacked and he should be called out. He should not be given a free pass on this.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171597/doing-math-better-talk-christian-parenti#
It would be interesting to see Andrew Light propose what would end the climate crisis and state it directly and then explain why the Administartion and the careful, incremental game is failing us. It is pretty predictable that Joe Romm’s readers would expect more powerful prescriptions and less of the tone of someone who is not worried.
I agree with the weight of the comments that suggest we need a well developed outside game to push the envelope on the now maddeningly slow and inadequate inside game.
Damn it. Damn it and damn it again. As an ex-pat vet in Germany, I damned well know how Germany managed to reach a fossil fuel consumption and emission level that is generally 50% lower per capita than the U.S. and the region where I live has a consumption and emission per capita of only 30% of any comparable U.S. region with a higher economic performance. (Munich was rated tied by Mercer in its rating of cities with the highest life quality as numbere 4, and clean air and ever lowering fossil fuel consumption and emissions,)
First,as to financing an “energy transition”. It ain´t cheap. Germany is exiting both nuclear and fossil and that will cost over 2 trillion Euros- which amortizes in radically slashed fossil fuel purchases.
As for consumption and émission reductions, German “Greens” have consequently and consistently pushed for implementing a broad range of synergetic energy efficiency and renewable energy measures that have reduced fossil fuel consumption by over 50% since 1992, and these “classic” methods are still building out at an increasing pace.
The fossil fuel reduction rate has been averaging 2.5 % p.a., which roughly corresponds to the growth of its G.N.P. The sustainability sector passed the automotive sector as Germany´s largest sector in the G.N.P. in 2012, and is expected to be 20% by 2020. The 50% reductions over 20 years reductions were achieved by “energy efficiency measures” (30%) and a massive build out of “renewable energy measures- Renewables already account for 25% of the countries energy needs and are growing exponentially. The country has cut by 50% since 1992, average 2.5% p.a. and the rate is now over 6% p.a. (Some of those major cuts came from the development of air intake microwaving of diesel combined with T.D.I technology which slashed the consumption of busses, trucks and diesel engined cars by 50%.
Other advancements in rail, light rail such as brake enregy recycling also slashed consumption. (It is the sum of the little things.) Power management systems and upgrading motors on automated production assembly lines to A +++ slash power consumption by 55%.) All that stuff is still building out.
Renewables currently account for just over 30% of Germany´s heat-power needs, (including long distance utility heat power-and and by 2025- they will account for 100% of city owned utility power in places like Munich, Frankfurt, Nuremburg, Gottingen, Wolfsburg. (Thier estimates, not mine.)
Now, Germany has both an eco-tax, and it has a three level- city-county, state, and federal parallel public banking system. (The Bismarckean system copied from the Henry Charles Carey parallel public banking system established during the U.S. civil war to finance the Union efforts (privatized in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson.)
There is discussion among the Social Democratic Party – to add another percent to the five percent eco- tax- boosting it to a six percent net eco tax on all fossil fuel based forms of energy. That will boost carbon eco-tax incomes to € 30 billion per annum. Then, the second part of the E-TALLY program, would be to take 33.3 % of that Eco-Carbon Tax… divide it up 3 ways – and send it to the local, state, and federal national parallel public banks… and leverage that
€10 billion euro eco tax sum on a one to ten basic- through those parallel public banks.
This will enable less than 1 % interest p.a. loans to forward finance further production set up, production, and installation of further energy efficiency and renewable enregy measures. i.e. a €100 billion euro per annum non-deficit “sustainability” stimulous program which will increase the rate of slashing consumption under 1992 levels to over 7 % p.a.by 2015, that is by the end 2025, a full further reduction under 1992 levels, the year of reunification and the Kyoto benchmark, that is 120 % cut… (redundacies are necessary in renewable energy systems.) The practical cuts will amount to 85% under 1992 levels- with a broad synergy of energy efficiency, and known, and some often unknown and emerging “renewable energy systems”, which cut both co² and anthropogenic methane emssions by over 90%.
Applied on a pan European basis, the Eco Tax As Liquid Leveraged Equity program, could put up over 600 Billion Euros a year through the parallel public banks… for implementing fossil fuel consumption cutting technologies, that cut consumption at rates of over 7% a year on a pan European basis, correspondingly cutting fossil fuel purchase costs by than amount every year in both the private and public sectors, amortizing the measures and enabling more loans.
After the damage done to the European financing system and parallel public banks by all the “bad paper” resulting from “derivatives” and “collateral rent deals” the leverage eco tax, is also an excellent, non-deficit program for rebuilding European parallel public bank collateral at rates of over 500 billion per annum- (And, as the loans are productive capital energy loans, these loans can themselves serve as “collateral” for further leveraging- and gold purchases as the international finance markets get back on the gold standard starting this January.