The new AOSIS text, and China’s reaction

By Angel Hsu and Christopher Kieran, part of “Team China” tracking the Chinese delegation live from Copenhagen, re-posted from  The Green Leap Forward.

Plenary sessions were closed off to observers today, which means that we unfortunately cannot beat the Earth Negotiations Bulletin with insights as to what went down on the negotiating floor. Nonetheless, we were able to get quotes from Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs He Yafei (seated center; on his left is Su Wei, leading negotiator in the Chinese delegation) – the highest level Chinese government official that has spoken to date (Premier Wen Jiabao is expected next week). We also acquired the text of the big proposal that hit the COP today: “The Copenhagen Protocol” from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

1) Is “auditing, supervision, and assessment” (ASA) the new “measurable, reportable, verifiable” MRV?

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Barring a major volcano, of course

The UK’s Met Office (originally the Meteorological Office), which is part of its Ministry of Defence, predicted yesterday on its website:

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The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Blame Canada

The mayor of Toronto, Canada, David Miller, accepted the top two Fossil of the Day awards from the International Climate Action Network on behalf of Canada. The climate organizations and Miller criticized Canada’s conservative government for its weak targets and obstructionist approach to the international negotiations. “I’m embarrassed as a Canadian,” Miller said.

Baby Steps For A Post-Kyoto Framework

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The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Blame Canada

The mayor of Toronto, Canada, David Miller, accepted the top two Fossil of the Day awards from the International Climate Action Network on behalf of Canada. The climate organizations and Miller criticized Canada’s conservative government for its weak targets and obstructionist approach to the international negotiations. “I’m embarrassed as a Canadian,” Miller said.

Baby Steps For A Post-Kyoto Framework

The first official draft text for a post-Kyoto international agreement has been released, from the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA). There is another group working on an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, but the “LCA” track is the one which has the participation of the United States. The LCA draft “states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, but it also suggests 80 percent and 95 percent reductions by that year as possible alternative options.”

Halving emissions by 2050 is estimated by scientists to have roughly a 70 percent chance of limiting global warming to two degrees C above pre-industrial levels. An 80 percent cut would increase the likelihood of staying below the two-degree threshold to 85 percent. However, small island nations and many African nations believe the science shows that warming needs to be limited to 1.5 ° C to ensure their survival.

The draft text is replete with brackets enclosing unresolved language, from emissions and warming targets to financing and adaptation.

Stern Said, He Said

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei “lashed out today at U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern,” calling “extremely irresponsible” his recent pronouncement that no American climate change funding would go to China. “I think he lacks common sense when he made such a comment vis-à-vis China. He either lacks common sense or is extremely irresponsible.”

At a later briefing, Stern said his comments about the public funding issue and China were “a bit unfortunate.”

However, both the Chinese and American diplomats agreed that whatever climate financing mechanism there is, the funds should go to the least developed countries and small island nations first, because, China’s He said, “they are the most vulnerable.” “Nobody has more legitimate concerns than they do,” Stern said.

What’s perhaps most interesting about this story is that it is from the conservative Washington Times:

China continues to race ahead of U.S. to invest in clean energy

Regardless of the outcome of this month’s climate talks in Copenhagen, China is sprinting ahead in an effort to develop renewable energy sources – especially solar and wind power – to ease its reliance on carbon-rich coal.

China’s need to sustain strong economic growth means its reliance on fossil fuels will continue to grow, as will its position as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon, analysts say. But it is also investing heavily in windmills, solar panels and hydroelectric power, having doubled its wind generating capacity every year since 2005.

China is already the world’s leading manufacturer of solar panels, Dinghuan Shi, chairman of the government’s China Renewable Energy Society, said at an energy conference in Beijing earlier this month.

Julian Wong, senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, said solar power looks especially promising.

“It hasnt even been a full year since the [Chinese] government made domestic solar deployment a priority. We have seen how government support of wind helped it take off. It could be the same for solar,” Mr. Wong said.

China’s rapid industrial development in the past three decades has been fueled by coal, which supplies 76 percent of China’s electric-generating needs.

“For China to keep its rapid economic growth going, the only economic option is to burn more coal; renewable energy simply cannot compete,” said Tristan Edmondson, founding partner at Mint Research, a Beijing-based consultancy.

Mr. Edmondson estimates that China will use 2.17 trillion [kg] tons of coal a year by 2020, up from 650 billion [kg] tons in 2000.

By then, Chinese planners are counting on non-fossil fuels to provide 15 percent to 17 percent of its electricity, up from about 8 percent today.

China’s new energy development plan, drafted by the National Energy Administration, is expected to be announced shortly after the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen concludes next week.

Home weatherization: One of America’s few industries primed for expansion

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Generating clean-energy jobs through good policy

This week, delegates from 192 countries arrived in Copenhagen to move forward on the terms of a new international agreement on curbing carbon pollution. Nevertheless, many countries, including the United States, are under severe attack that the measures they are taking to address climate change cannot be justified while their economies remain weakened by the global recession. The International Labor Organization estimates that global unemployment in 2009 will increase by between 18 million and 50 million relative to 2007. Stimulating growth, reducing unemployment, and maintaining competitiveness have become top priorities around the world.

Yet growing evidence suggests that investing in a low-carbon economy will not only reduce our dependence on fossil fuels but generate new economic opportunities. In fact, the global recession has increased the urgency of building new industries that can support new jobs and sustainable growth during the 21st century. Policymakers around the world have seized this opportunity, creating renewable energy and energy efficiency provisions in domestic stimulus bills and designing climate legislation to produce dividends in employment and economic growth.

As the Copenhagen climate talks refocus the world’s attention on the environmental imperative for stronger climate policy, member nations should not lose sight of this economic opportunity.

The Center for American Progress, along with eight other progressive think tanks around the world, together constituting the Global Climate Network, or GCN, today launches its third joint report, “Low-Carbon Jobs in an Interconnected World.” Together with our partner institutions in Australia, China, Germany, India, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, we conclude in this report that directed steps to reduce carbon pollution will create tens of millions of jobs worldwide. This is one of the strongest arguments that moving forward this week with an international climate agreement is in the best domestic interests of the parties meeting in Copenhagen today.

For this study, eight of the nine GCN partners surveyed existing research on domestic and international low-carbon job creation, interviewed executives of low-carbon industries, reviewed existing government policies to invest in low-carbon industries, and, where possible, estimated the number of domestic jobs that could result from aggressive climate policies in other countries.

We reached four key findings through our work that policymakers should consider:

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This is a cross post from Think Progress’s Lee Fang.  Rachel Maddow’s take on this is above.

In August, The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson noted that the coal industry had contracted a PR firm to promote its “FACES of Coal” campaign. To attack clean energy reform, the campaign featured pictures of seemingly normal individuals opposed to cap and trade legislation. However, the Appalachian Voices’ Front Porch blog revealed that the “FACES” of the coal campaign were actually stock images purchased from iStockPhotos.com.

The oil industry, under the umbrella lobbying group American Petroleum Institute (API), is copying that strategy.

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By Mike Luckovich
From the Cartoonist Group.

This is a repost from Climate Science Watch.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), ranking Republican on the House global warming committee, has sent a letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for scientists whose names appear in the e-mails stolen from the U.K. Climatic Research Unit to be blacklisted from participating as contributors or reviewers of the forthcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

Sensenbrenner is engaged in an outrageous McCarthyist jihad against the climate science community, making it abundantly clear that this controversy is not really about stolen e-mails, which have been misused and misinterpreted.  Rather it is part of an aggressive campaign by the global warming denial machine to bully and intimidate the science community.  Sensenbrenner shows no real interest in meaningful dialogue, nor in an honest examination of climate science findings.  Denialists are throwing up a smokescreen of propaganda in an attempt to legitimize their refusal to come to grips with scientific evidence on global climatic disruption and its implications. This is a power play.

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The Wonk Room is reporting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published a bizarre and vile screed by editor Bret Stephens, who compared climate scientists to anti-Semites and Stalinists, furthering the descent of the Climategate swiftboating campaign into parody. The Wonk Room has the exclusive responses to the charges Stephens made from several of the thousands of scientists working to understand the dynamics of our climate system. These scientists are participating in the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Science Q&A for Copenhagen program. The Wonk Room would like to thank the scientists “” from the United States, Norway, Australia, Scotland, and Germany “” for their thoughtful replies to a pile of otherwise unredeemable twaddle.

These scientists refute the charges that they are guilty of “utopianism,” “anti-humanism,” “intolerance,” and “indifference to evidence.” Their responses may be summed up by that of David S. Stevenson, a University of Edinburgh climate scientist: “Mr. Stephens is missing something here, and it is called a scientific understanding of the climate system.”

Utopianism?

Stephens writes:

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A McClatchy-Ipsos poll from December 3-6 – taken at the height of the stolen email media feeding frenzy – found that that 70% of Americans believe that global warming is indeed a reality.

McClatchy also found that 52% of Americans polled still support passing “cap and trade” legislation in Congress.  And that’s despite relentless attacks on climate science and the solutions — with big oil and other special energy interests having spent millions of dollars spreading falsehoods about clean energy reforms and the climate bill — as well as the weakest economy in 80 years.

Even more Americans – 69% of those polled – support cap and trade legislation if it will create a significant number of American jobs, even if it will cost them $10 a month, while 60% support cap and trade at a cost of $25 a month if it creates jobs.

The good news is that essentially every major independent analysis finds the cost around $10 a month:

• EPA releases economic analysis of Kerry-B0xer bill finding cost to U.S. households of under $10 a month, bill consistent with global effort to stabilize at 2°C warming
• Despite its many flaws, EIA analysis of climate bill finds $7 a month cost to families, massive retirement of dirty coal plants and 119 GW of new renewables by 2030 “” plus a million barrels a day oil savings
• CBO stunner: Waxman-Markey cuts U.S. GHGs sharply but costs under $15 a month “” without counting the efficiency savings
• The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030

And analysis shows the the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill will create 1.7 million clean energy jobs.

Significantly, this new poll is consistent with every other recent poll:

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By Angel Hsu and Christopher Kieran, part of “Team China” tracking the Chinese delegation live from Copenhagen, re-posted from  The Green Leap Forward.

We spent much of today making sense of the reverberations emanating from Tuvalu’s controversial proposal yesterday and the subsequent stalling of the negotiations. We were able to glean some updates through the plenary sessions, press briefings, and our own interpretation of the texts in contention….  (Somehow, people have started approaching us for the latest intel on what the “Tuvalu situation” is).

We’re a bit disoriented from all the hoops we’ve had to jump through, but then again so is Su Wei (lead negotiator of the Chinese delegation), who seemed to be in a similar mood during this evening’s press briefing, where he revealed a much more jocular, tongue-in-cheek side of himself that was nowhere to be found during Tuesday’s briefing. At one point, Mr. Su mentioned that he and U.S. special envoy for climate change were friends and that he felt sorry for Stern because he had to answer to the press immediately after stepping off the plane (“Todd, 辛苦了！” in English interpreted by Angel: “Todd, how troublesome, I feel pity”).

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In a press conference yesterday, the top climate negotiator for the United States, Todd Stern, asserted that the United States does not shoulder a “climate debt” for its historical emissions of global warming, claiming the connection between carbon pollution and the greenhouse effect was unknown until recently. Although Stern said the United States does “recognize our historic role in putting the emissions in the atmosphere that are up there now,” Stern “completely” and “categorically” rejected the concept of “climate reparations,” he said, “people were blissfully ignorant” of the implications of their pollution:

Let’s just be mindful of the fact that for most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.

Watch it:

Stern is absolutely right that the idea of “reparations” should be rejected. It sets up an insidious dynamic of overlords and beggars, of guilt and reprisal. Even if such language — like charges of “climate colonialism — has some moral weight, it’s poisonous to everyone’s future. The only way a global solution will be found is through unprecedented cooperation, not through anger and guilt.

However, Stern’s explanation for his rejection of the concept doesn’t gibe with history. The greenhouse effect has been known since the 19th century, and role of burning fossil fuels in raising the world’s temperatures was first estimated at the turn of the 20th century:

1824: Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier, scientists theorized that gases in the atmosphere might somehow trap solar energy as heat.

1859: John Tyndall measured the radiative properties of the air, learning that water vapor and carbon dioxide were greenhouse gases.

1894: Arvid Högbom finds that human activities were adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere on the same scale as natural processes.

1896: Svante Arrhenius calculated that halving carbon dioxide concentrations would cause an ice age, and estimated a doubling of concentrations would raise the Earth’s temperature 5-6°C, in line with modern estimates for long-term climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2.

So “for most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution,” we’ve actually known about the possibility of man-made global warming. To be fair to Stern, it was only in the 1950s that the physics was better understood, and scientists began warning the public to be concerned about global warming pollution.

But nearly all of the world’s global warming pollution — including that from the United States — has come since 1960:

Center for American Progress Action Fund, from Energy Information Administration and Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.

Two-thirds (67%) of United States global warming pollution has come since 1960. More than a quarter of the total global warming pollution of the United States in the last 200 years has come since 1992, when the United States ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.