The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

Last night, the Netherlands became one of the first European nations to commit to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the central issue for developing nations, especially the most vulnerable to climate change. Linda Ijmker of Friends of the Earth Netherlands explains how Holland is taking the lead in an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room. Her message to the people of the United States was simple: “don’t be scared” and “step it up”:

My message to the American people is: Act now, take leadership, commit to forty percent reductions. You can achieve it. It’s good for the economy, it creates green jobs, it creates a lot of opportunity. Don’t be scared. So, step it up.

Watch it:

The Netherlands also pledged to new short-term financing for countries already hit by the impacts of climate change, “over and above” its existing commitments to official development assistance (ODA) of 0.8% of its total gross national product.

Top historical polluter United States, which has no intention of ever joining the Kyoto Protocol, has put $1.2 billion in short-term financing in its 2010 budget, but is avoiding making formal international commitments. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has called for the administration to commit to $3 billion in international climate finance in the fiscal year 2011 budget, and has released a draft bill for international climate funding.

E&E: “U.N. negotiations will help reset Senate’s clock”

President Obama and congressional leaders can expect to have a new target completion date in mid-to-late 2010 for passing a global warming and energy bill after the U.N. negotiations wrap up here at the end of the week.The 193 countries are likely to leave with an agreement to finish their work either at a June meeting or at the next annual U.N. conference slated for Nov. 8-19 in Mexico City.

Don’t call it a deadline. But whichever date they pick, it will become critical for Obama back in Washington as he will essentially be putting his credibility on the line and pledging to the world that he can return to the bargaining table with firm commitments on how to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term financing to help developing countries cope with climate change.

That E&E News (subs. req’d) analysis affirms what I said late last month after President Obama said he would attend Copenhagen, bringing “a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels in 2020″³:

Much of the status quo media remains stuck in an everything-progressives-are-doing-will-fail bandwagon, so they missed the key implications of that amazing announcement “” Obama just doubled down on a domestic climate bill.  Yes, I know, you keep reading stories about how the administration is walking away from the bipartisan climate and clean bill.

Here’s more from the E&E News story:

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Yes, Maslowski predicted just two years ago that the Arctic could be ice-free by 2013 — see graph of projected ice volume

UPDATE:  The videos of Gore’s talk at COP-15 can be found here. Here is his powerful closing (transcript below) — I have an excellent graph (large PDF) of ice volume trends from several leading scientific institutions based on Maslowski’s 2009 paper at the end:

Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013′

That’s the headline from a December 2007 BBC story on Professor Wieslaw Maslowski’s American Geophysical Union talk about “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer.”  In fact, I heard Maslowski in a May 2006 seminar predict that we could be ice-free in the Arctic by 2016 (search my book, Hell and High Water for “ice-free”).

So the flap over the former Vice President’s accurate statement of what Maslowski said is, indeed, symptomatic of an underlying medical condition — one that, I’d add, is often confused for ASS [see "Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome"]:

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“We’ve got to get beyond this point where we think that somehow being smart on energy is a job destroyer. It is a job creator.”

Below is the official transcript from President Obama’s speech on energy efficiency retrofits.

Home Depot
Alexandria, Virginia

11:09 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  Hello!  Hello!  (Applause.)  Thank you guys.  Thank you.  Everybody, please have a seat.

We’ve got a couple of special guests here today.  First of all, the outstanding senator from the great Commonwealth of Virginia, Senator Mark Warner is here.  Where’s Mark?  Right there.  (Applause.)  We’ve got a couple of champions for job creation here in Northern Virginia — Gerry Connolly and Jim Moran.  (Applause.)

Can I just ask, how come they got the Home Depot thing and you guys don’t have it?  (Laughter.)  What, the senators are too cool to put it on?  What’s going on here? (Laughter.)

Working to jump-start our retrofit efforts around the country, Senator Jeff Merkley and Congressman Peter Welch are here as well.  (Applause.)  We’ve got Alexandria Mayor William Euille.  Where’s William?  There he is.  Good to see you, Bill.  (Applause.)  And we’ve got Frank Blake and his team here at Home Depot.  Where’s Frank?  There he is.  (Applause.)

So seeing how Christmas is just around the corner, and we’re at Home Depot, I thought I might knock out some of my holiday shopping.  (Laughter.)  I figure my Energy Secretary wants a few million energy-efficient light bulbs.  (Laughter.)  My Press Secretary wants something that will prevent leaks.

AUDIENCE:  Ooooh!

THE PRESIDENT:  Come on, guys.  (Laughter.)  It took a while there for — (laughter.)  But I’ve also come here to spend some time with workers and contractors and manufacturers and small business owners who’ve been especially hard hit by our economic downturn.  A few of us just spent some time at a roundtable talking about the role they want to play in job creation and in our economic recovery, and how government can best help to give them a boost.

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The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

Al Gore: ‘Who Are We?’

In an address to the conference just before high-level talks begin in Copenhagen, former Vice President Al Gore said the outcome will answer a fundamental moral question. “Instead of forthrightly addressing a mortal threat to the future of civilization, if we allowed this to fall into paralysis,” Gore argued, “the following generations would be justified in asking us: ‘Who are you?’” However, he concluded his speech by saying he believes that those assembled can rise to this test of leadership. “We can do it, we must do it, and as I have said many times, I believe political will is a renewable resource.”

Al Gore: Transparency Unlocks Paralysis

“We need transparency on both mitigation and financing,” Gore said. He called for oversight of both developed countries’ financial commitments and also of “pledges of mitigation from the largest global warming polluters in the world.” One of the most intractable issues at Copenhagen has been China’s adamant resistance to the United States’ unyielding call for outside verification of its emissions pledges. By recognizing that the developed world merits better oversight — particularly in the world of financial regulation — Gore may have found a pathway to resolve one of the thorniest issues stalling negotiations.

South Korea, Holland Take The Lead

South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak “pledged Tuesday to play a bridging role between developed and emerging economies to help them narrow differences regarding how to cut greenhouse gases and address global warming.” Lee made the pledge during a telephone conversation with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister. South Korea has pledged “that it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by four percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels” — essentially the same commitment as the United States, even though its per-capita GDP is only 40 percent that of our first-world nation.

Last night, the Netherlands became one of the first European nations to commit to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the central issue for developing nations, especially the most vulnerable to climate change. Linda Ijmker of Friends of the Earth Netherlands explains how Holland is taking the lead in an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room.

Leadership From Cities

State and local governmental leaders have been an untold highlight of the Copenhagen conference. Today, 80 mayors “from New York, Toronto, Buenos Aires and Copenhagen” and around the world “led city leaders in signing a resolution calling for ‘an ambitious and empowering deal’ on carbon-dioxide emissions cuts.”

Poll Confirms Americans Believe Economy, Jobs Helped By Pollution Reduction

This guest post was written by Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at American Progress.

Two new polls issued today confirm that an overwhelming portion of Americans want domestic action and an international agreement to reduce global warming pollution.  More than half the respondents want to do a great deal to reduce the threat of global warming, while only one-quarter oppose action.

Associated Press/Stanford Univ. poll; conducted 11/17-29 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media; surveyed 1,005 adults; margin of error +/- 3.1% (release, 12/15).

How Much Do You Think The U.S. Should Do About Global Warming?

A great deal/quite a bit  52%

Some                              23

A little/nothing               25

The AP poll also found that by nearly 2-1, respondents felt that reducing global warming pollution would create rather than cost jobs.  A near majority felt that steps to cut global warming pollution would help the economy, while slightly more than one-quarter thought that it would hurt the economy – about the same proportion that oppose action.

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“In Japan, most persons think electricity consumption does not emit CO2″!

Another day in Copenhagen, more crammed line-waiting at Disneyland in Denmark. And that means more up-too close-and-personal interviews for CP readers courtesy of my Flip camcorder.

Here’s Ken-Ichi Shinoda, Asst. Manager, Environment Dept., Corporatre Strategy Dept., Osaka Gas Company:

Preliminary Data from CAP’s Carbon Cap Equivalent Project

Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He coordinates CAP’s international climate policy program.

Delegates in Copenhagen are struggling through the difficult start of the second week of talks, with charges and counter-charges that one party or another is not doing their part to save the planet and the future of humanity thick on the ground. This is not atypical in the history of the U.N. climate meetings, but it has never been productive.

Where some see plenty of blame to go around, CAP sees plenty of credit to go around. The current and pending policies among the world’s major carbon emitters are not yet sufficient to ensure that we will get to climate safety. Yet they are nonetheless a good start and could be built upon to achieve needed reductions to limit temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

CAP has over the past year documented the numerous policies that both developed and developing countries have been pursing to create a low-carbon future. Our core message is that Americans should recognize that China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and other major emitters in the developing world are doing much more to reduce their emissions than is commonly thought. But the same is true of the United States’ contribution to reducing emissions. Pending legislation from Congress would do much more to reduce emissions than is currently realized.

We believe that a common blindspot distorts recognition of the full reductions available from both developed and developing countries.

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Glaciers in southern China receding rapidly, scientists say

Reporting from Lijiang, China – If you want to see a glacier melt with your bare eyes, try Yulong Snow Mountain, an 18,000-foot peak in southern China’s Yunnan province.

On this early December morning, the mountain is etched against the technicolor sky in shades of gray — definitely more gray than white. Naked boulders of limestone and daubs of shrubbery protrude from the shallow snow cover.

At a scenic overlook on the way up, tourists leave their woolly hats in the tour bus when they hop out to take photographs.

Even with its bald spots, the mountain is a picture postcard. But scientists worry about the way it is changing.

“Look here,” said Du Jiankuo, a 25-year-old Chinese scientist, raising his telephoto lens to a gray patch. “You can see where we lost another big chunk of ice.”

In the study of climate change, glaciers are sometimes likened to the canaries in the coal mine, and to many observers the condition of Yulong (“Jade Dragon”) mountain is troubling.

He Yuanqing, one of China’s leading glacier experts, found that the mountain’s largest glacier, known as Baishui No. 1, has retreated about 275 yards since 1982.

“At this rate, the glacier could disappear entirely over the next few decades,” said He, who heads a team of scientists who have been studying Yulong mountain since 1999 for the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, a government-run think tank.

Most back a treaty on global warming

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The poorest suffer the most for our myopic greed

We were people pushed out of our home lands, left to eat mud, to keep our life, our culture distorted and our identity eliminated. We craved on streets and were crushed by the mighty before we had a days meal. Then came a call revebrating in our ears,

“born in unjust society we shall not die in it, until we change it.”

Along with, and together with the caller, we now strive to regain all that we lost, our homelands, our culture, our identity and thus for dignified exixtence and survival as distinct people of national polity.

No group suffers more from — but contributes less to — human-caused climate change than the indigenous people of the world.  In industrialized countries, we don’t hear enough from those voices.  I happened to be in line today next to V. S. Roy David, of CORD (Coorg Organization of Rural Development), based at “Kushalnagar of Somwarpet in Coorg District” in India’s Karnataka State about 150 miles from Bangalore, the State capital.  Here’s what he had to say after more than three decades representing indigenous people:

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Irvine school board member Mike Parham is raising the ante: He’ll see your solar carport, and raise you full solar installations on every one of his 21 schools.

The Irvine (California) Unified School District (ISUD) has partnered with SunEdison and SPG Solar to install solar energy at each of its twenty-one campuses.

Purported to be the largest solar deployment for a public school system in California, and possibly the United States, the project will reduce Irvine’s school power bill  by 20 percent – a savings of $17 million over twenty years….

An added component to this exciting venture is taking solar into the classroom. Using an internet-based monitoring system, students can track each solar site in real time while participating in lessons on how solar panels work and how weather impacts energy production. The school will also introduce a complement of courses to educate students about the use and benefits of photovoltaics.

That’s the amazing solar news story from last week.  The school system put no money down!

“SunEdison will finance, build, operate and maintain the solar power systems.”

The CEO of SPG told me, “The combination of leading solar technology and educational opportunity makes the Irvine Unified School District project unique. And for that, Board Member Mike Parham is to be congratulated.”

What follows is guest post on this remarkable deal by Shelly Yarbroug. Shelly is a member of the Val Verde School Board in Riverside California, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the California School Board Association.

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38 Reps. Urge Additional Clean Energy Jobs Investments to Speed Recovery

This guest post was written by Dan Weiss, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

[Update: This post was revised after clarification of some figures in the Biden Report.]

On December 15, 2009, Vice President Joe Biden released a “Progress Report: Transformation to a Clean Energy Economy.” It documents the advances in clean energy investments and job creation during the first year of the Obama Administration.  Biden determined that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and administrative actions are

“laying the foundation for a clean energy economy that will create a new generation of jobs, reduce dependence on oil and enhance national security.

“The Recovery Act investments of $80 billion for clean energy will produce as much as $150 billion in clean energy projects” due to leveraging private investment.

The Report estimates that just three programs with $29 billion in spending will leverage an additional $52 billion in private investments and create over 800,000 jobs.  This is would reduce the number of unemployed workers by 6 percent, and the lower the overall unemployment rate from 10 percent to 9.4 percent.

This estimate is very conservative because it does not include additional jobs from investments in advanced vehicles and batteries, energy efficiency – particularly weatherization of low income homes – and other programs.

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LA Times: The public conflicts at the UNFCCC conference are “one big optical illusion.”

As the second and final week of the the United Nations Climate Change Conference begins, the Bella Center is now thronged with members of civil society, the world press, and governmental delegations, overwhelming the 15,000-person facility. At the end of the week over 110 heads of state will arrive, meet, and speak publicly on whether they can sufficiently address this existential threat.

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This is by guest blogger Paulina Essunger, a science writer.

On December 9, John Christy (University of Alabama-Huntsville) and Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) appeared on CNN. Wolf Blitzer asked Christy if he takes money from oil companies.

Christy:

I do not take any money from oil companies, energy companies or any of those.

Let’s take as a given that Christy is not, in fact, on the payroll of Exxon-Mobil or any other energy company. That’s not the point. Since when did “not-deceiving-for-money” become the standard? “Misleading-for-free” is not the middle ground, flanked by deceiving-for-money on one side and truth on the other.

And, as shown below, Christy was definitely being misleading in the CNN interview.

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This is a repost from Think Progress.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), nicknamed “Smokey Joe” for his persistent advocacy on behalf of polluters, sat for an interview with C-Span this weekend to discuss a variety of environmental issues.

Barton expressed concern that regulation of carbon dioxide pollution would restrict his “convenient” and “modern lifestyle.” “I don’t want to go back to the 1870s where my great-grandparents lived on a dry land cotton farm in Texas with no running water and no electricity and their power source was their own muscles or animal power,” Barton feared.

He then argued that the warming of the planet is actually a “net benefit” for humans:

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By Angel Hsu and Luke Bassett, part of Yale University’s “Team China” blogging live from Copenhagen, re-posted from The Green Leap Forward.

Our fingers have finally thawed out after waiting two hours outside the Bella Center (can you spot us in the picture to the right?)- the nexus of COP activity, so that we are be able to bring you the latest updates on China in Copenhagen.  The weekend proved slow for the COP, owing much to the distraction provided by an estimated 25,000 protesters who took to the streets of Copenhagen to demand a fair and urgent climate deal. (see an excellent video and pictures at Dot Earth).

The protests didn’t prove to be too much of a distraction, however, as lead Chinese climate negotiator Su Wei said during a press briefing on Saturday (Day 6) that he wasn’t aware of them and was rather ambivalent about their role in the negotiation process.  Saying it was a “matter of opinion” as to whether such demonstrations were constructive or destructive, Mr. Su just hoped that delegates would be able to get into the venue so that they could work “25 hours a day” to guarantee an agreement by the end of this week.

Indeed, Mr. Su was correct in saying that the tens of thousands of protesters are probably the least of concerns for negotiators, as a consensus on certain key issues seems to be evasive still.  With the impending arrival of 110 heads of states to participate in the ministerial summit at the end of the week on Dec. 17-18, there are still significant issues on the table.  Two major updates we’ll touch on in this post reflect the pressure and the promise of the negotiations as the end of COP rapidly approaches:

1. African “disappointment”

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