Compelling late night/early morning reading – 12/16/09

Technically, since I published it here first, this didn’t originally appear on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog, but it’s over there too.

Yesterday (Wed. the 16th) was the last day for on-the spot reporting at the Bella Center. NGO access has been severely restricted due to security concerns from potential invading protestors and the critical mass of heads of states with their extensive entourages. According to the UN Secretariat, 7000 delegates from NGOs were supposed to be allowed to enter the Bella Center yesterday. Much less than that actually got in because security cut off access to the NGOs about mid-morning, even if they had the proper documentation to get in. Today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday), only 300 NGO delegates are allowed in. According to UN officials at a briefing this blogger attended last night, Yvo de Boer argued vigorously with Denmark security officials for more access for civil society, but ended up with only 300. Needless to say, in my humble opinion, civil society has got the shaft over the pat few days. Security concerns typically trump everything (and rightfully so), but the NGOs are a major part of these proceedings and have every right to be consistently engaged in the discussions at the COP. It’s hard to be part of the discussion, however, when you’re locked outside. On with the show…

Messy (I) -  Last night, talks hit another major snag, or as UN climate guru Yvo de Boer called it, “an unexpected stop.” Delegates apparently needed more time to discuss the basis of further talks, which is in theory what they have been doing the past two weeks. de Boer remained optimistic, but underlined that the next 24 hours are absolutely critical.

Messy (II) – Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s Environmental Minister, resigned as president of the Conference yesterday morning, handing the keys to Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen. There are two ways to look at this development. One is Hedegaard was simply following protocol, which says that when heads of state arrive at the conference, it should be led by a head of state. The second is that Hedegaard’s resignation signals how much trouble the COP is in, especially with rumors about her unhappiness with the negotiating language Denmark is developing. Hedegaard remains in the thick of talks and will be there until the end.

Messy (III) – If you think the negotiators are happy, you should see some of the other folks around here. More protestors were arrested as they tried to storm the Bella Center, resulting in violent clashes with police. Inside the Center, indigenous peoples demanded more rights and larger voices with a march through the halls. Some demonstrators were removed. On top of all that, 60 members of NGOs held a sit-in at the entrance gates to protest their exclusion from the proceedings. There are not a lot of happy people in Copenhagen right now.

One bright spot – If you’re looking for some good news, or you like forests, you’re in luck. Some major developed countries, including the US, pledged serious money to help protect international forests from deforestation. US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack pledged $1 billion in support over the next three years. Combined with commitments from Japan, France, Norway, Australia and Britain, $3.5 billion will go into rainforest preservation over the next three years. Once again, forests are the thing on which people can agree.

REDD Dawn

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — If there is one topic at the COP that gets people excited, it is the issue of international forests. Many people I’ve talked to, from delegate members of developing countries to negotiators for major corporations, see a lot of potential for REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) to have a major impact on the negotiations. For those not in the know, REDD programs basically would pay people to keep the carbon currently locked up in the trees and soil of forests.  Truth be told, if had I to make everyone at this event decide on something slightly more scandalous than the statement “chocolate is tasty,” it would be “REDD is a vital part of any climate agreement.”

With that in mind, the RFF team has been scouring many of the REDD-related meetings over the past couple days. Though the side events and presentations have been varied, a couple of consistent themes have cropped up:

• Stakeholders – working with people who are on the ground, especially indigenous groups who can benefit from REDD schemes (paying people to protect their forested land), is a critical component of a successful project. The indigenous people here at the COP are very skeptical about the ability of REDD to improve their lives or protect their lands. This was especially evident in one side event that focused on the social and environmental standards necessary for REDD projects hosted by Nepal. After a series of presentations about how best to involve people living in forests and the importance of their rights, a number of indigenous representative stood up and lamented how no one appreciates their rights and they are not being involved. Ensuring indigenous rights (and convincing them they are a part of the process) will be key for any tropical forest carbon program.
• Equity – similar to the stakeholder issues, equity among all involved parties in REDD programs is something people here are hammering home. People receiving payments need to be treated fairly for them to maintain standing forests.
• National strategies – Coordinated national strategies are important, but no one knows quite how to do them yet. The solution, reiterated in multiple events, is to take lessons learned from small-scale projects and eventually upgrade them to the national scale. While it’s not a perfect strategy, options are currently limited.
• Upfront investment – REDD is not a slow-boil proposition, something you can just sit back and let develop slowly. Without robust investment in critical components (capacity building, monitoring, etc) from the beginning, REDD programs will likely fail. National governments are the only entities with the resources to fully deploy everything necessary to make REDD succeed.

Forestry issues are one of the least contentious issues being negotiated here, but there are still a lot of important considerations and problems to be solved. Don’t count on them being solved in the next ten days.

Compelling late night reading – Dec. 15

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — Things started to heat up both inside and outside the Bella Center yesterday as negotiators prepared for the arrival of environmental ministers.

Interior protests – The African countries were true to their word yesterday when they led a boycott of the negotiations and were supposed by all 135 developing countries, including China and India. Their major concern was that the industrialized countries were conspiring to kill the Kyoto Protocol, which the developing countries value due to its many beneficial programs, such as the Clean Development Mechanism. By the end of the end, however, negotiations were back on as the developing countries receive enough assurances that Kyoto would be killed to come back to the table.

Get it together – There were multiple calls for negotiators to get their work done ahead of the arrival of senior government officials and heads of state. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked nations to stop blaming each other and get something done before various heads of state reach the conference. India was more specific, saying that ministers and heads of state can’t negotiate, so something has to be done by Tuesday night. The clock is ticking.

Exterior protests – Protestors continue to swarm Copenhagen, and last night they confronted police with molotov cocktails in the Freetown Christiania area, just north of the COP meeting in the Bella Center. After street barricades were lit on fire and tear gas was used to disperse crowds, nearly 200 protestors were arrested, though most were released by early this morning.

SUPER SPECIAL MID-DAY 12/15 UPDATE: You knew it would come to this – The Chinese are accusing the developed world, namely the United States, of not taking responsibility for historical emissions and stalling on a climate deal. The U.S. and China are at loggerheads about an agreement for monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reduction, something the U.S. views as critical. With time growing shorter, it remains to be seen what a potential deal will look like …

Forests and Climate? Just Google It

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — Yesterday at the COP, Google was in the air (if you’re wondering, Google in the air smells faintly like mint). First, Copenhagen managed to conquer the most frequently search term list. Tiger Woods is no longer no.1, on the Internet or in our hearts. Second, Google threw delightful side events where they unveiled a new tool that could be a game changer for monitoring the world’s forests and could put Google on the map in the climate change philanthropy world.

Since its inception in 2004, Google.org has been using 1 percent of Google’s total revenues to address issues like global health, but it has concentrated mainly on investing in products to reduce energy usage and commercialize electric vehicles, all the while challenging the world to create renewable energy that costs less than coal.

These seeds have yet to blossom, because as powerful as Google is, its engineers haven’t yet figured out how to completely redesign the world’s energy systems. Google is not an energy company, it is an information company. If they are incredibly innovative in the information business, it stands to reason they might have a better chance of being innovative in information philanthropy than in other things.

But yesterday Google finally accepted what we knew all along: that they’re not an engineering firm, an automaker, a public health center, or a policymaker. They’re facilitators. The business model for the profitable arm of Google is based on a superior ability to facilitate the transfer of information. They’re finally applying this skill set to climate change in the form of a new forest monitoring tool. Utilizing the amazing capability of the “Google cloud,” scientists can use an online platform to take satellite imagery data compiled over time and use it to track changes in forests. This tool is a major step forward in identifying areas of deforestation and reforestation, and may help solve some of the current problems with forest monitoring and measurement. A full rundown of the tool is here. See what happens when Google tries to do something it’s good at?

Thanks to Virginia Kromm for her insights into the inner workings of Google.

You Can Say That Again: Climategate Edition

Despite what you may think if you read only this blog, there’s stuff going on in the US this week too. Apparently, Sarah Palin wrote something. It wasn’t in Danish, so I couldn’t understand. Luckily, Tiff Clements, the talented and industrious editor of Weathervane, is on the case and published the following editorial gem. As of this moment, she is an official contributor to CT:

Sometime between eating my last piece of pumpkin pie and snapping out of my tryptophan coma this story turned into a full-blown “gate”. And just when I thought it couldn’t seem any more like the premise of the next Jack Ryan movie, Sarah Palin jumped into the fray.

With the CT All Stars off on an exotic solstice cruise around the 50th parallel I decided I should take it upon myself—captain of the blogging b squad—to suit up, flex my Alaskology skills and step in on this. But then I got distracted last night baking sugar cookies and yelling at my television, hoping to convince Hannity’s Great American Panel that I was right and it was wrong. The combination of icing and ire really tired me out.

So when, shortly after coming to at my keyboard this morning, I came across this rebuttal to the former governor’s  piece from the publisher of the journal Science, I figured it was probably a good opportunity to avoid an inefficient duplication of work.

Alan Leshner takes issue with Palin’s assertion that a handful of internal emails, shared between colleagues can undermine the entire foundation of the science used by the United Nations to plan its policy response, writing:

The public and policymakers should not be confused by a few private e-mails that are being selectively publicized and, in any case, remain irrelevant to the broad body of diverse evidence on climate change. Selected language in the messages has been interpreted by some to suggest unethical actions such as data manipulation or suppression … it is wrong to suggest that apparently stolen emails, deployed on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit, somehow refute a century of evidence based on thousands of studies.

Palin chooses to paint, in one broad stroke, centuries of study and research as tainted by 160 MB of emails and data. Her quixotic characterization of the messages and their implications moves quickly from demonstrating a lack of consensus to “strong doubt” to “fraudulent scientific practices” to a justification for President Obama to take his negotiating ball and go home.  She distorts out-of-context collegial discussion and debate into grounds for inaction.

But Leshner point out there is hardly justification:

Doubters try to leverage any remaining points of scientific uncertainty about the details of warming trends to cast doubt on the overall conclusions shared by traditionally cautious, decidedly non-radical science organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which represents an estimated 10 million individual scientists through 262 affiliated societies. Doubters also make selective use of the evidence, noting that the warming of the late 1990s did not persist from 2001 to 2008, while ignoring the fact that the first decade of the 21st century looks like it will be the warmest decade on record.

Doubters, deniers and skeptics build their arguments on a selective acceptance of facts sprinkled with alterations of half-truths. Inaction on the premise of doubt has been U.S. climate policy for the last decade. It hasn’t worked out that well, keeping our economy on a dead-end path and severely tarnishing our reputation abroad. Plus, doesn’t keeping that up mean we’re going with the flow? I could have sworn only dead fish go with the flow.

If strategic positioning for the Kamchatka Defense is foreign policy experience, then living in Anchorage for a year makes me an Alaska expert. With those credentials in hand I beg the question of a woman with America’s best interests at heart and  who stepped down from her leadership role to “do what’s best for Alaskans”:  As their villages and livelihoods disappear into the seas, do the Alaskans you care about really have the time for you, and the world, to delay?

Compelling late night reading – 12/09/09

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — A late batch of links is better than none at all. Here is a collection of some of the compelling stories from Dec. 09 in Copenhagen.

Tuvalu takes a stand – The developing countries are starting to squabble among themselves and their row helped bring negotiations to halt yesterday. Tuvalu, a small island nation in the Pacific, called for a new legally-binding protocol to complement an amended version of the Kyoto Protocol. The Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) and other developing nations supported the plan, but some major developing nations, including China and India balked at the idea. After some contentious back and forth, Tuvalu asked for the negotiations to be suspended until a solution could be reached. It got what it wanted, setting up another tense day of work to follow.

Paying for forests can pay dividends – A new report released by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) sees forests a winning issue for the Copenhagen negotiations. Implementing financial schemes to pay countries for reducing their emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Harnessing benefits from REDD will require in-country reforms, including governance, land use tenure, and monitoring. While many project have not succeeded in the past, the report says financial backing for REDD could provide the political will to implement it.

The big kids are getting feisty – Head U.S. Negotiator Todd Stern said he doesn’t think China needs help cutting its emissions, and it certainly doesn’t need U.S. taxpayer money. As soon as he arrived in Copenhagen yesterday, he called for China to increase its emissions reductions. Funny thing that, because China said the same thing earlier in the week. The world’s two biggest emitters will continue to trade blows as the negotiations progress.

Endangerment is my middle name

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — If the old adage I just made up, “A party without someone from the Environmental Protection Agency is not a party,” is true, then Copenhagen officially became a party today. The cavalcade of Obama administration officials kicked off today when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson delivered a ‘this is where we stand’ speech in the U.S. Center at the COP meeting. Jackson summarized many of the important actions the administration has taken since the beginning of 2009, highlighting:

• $80 billion from the stimulus package spent on renewable energy and smart grid projects
• EPA’s Energy Star program for household appliances
• CAFE standards of 35.5 mpg starting in 2016
• A new national greenhouse gas registry for large emitters, covering 85 percent of U.S. emissions
• An executive order from the president requiring all government agencies to adopt emissions reduction standards by 2020, improve their energy efficiency, and reduce fuel use.

Now, that’s all well and good, but there was another issue in which people were keenly interested. That would be the announcement Monday that the EPA finds greenhouse gases are a threat to the public health and can be regulated by the Clean Air Act. Jackson said the announcement was the latest in a chain of events set of by the Supreme Court ruling on Massachusetts vs. EPA, which gave the agency the authority to regulate CO2 and other GHGs as pollutants. By finalizing the ‘endangerment’ finding, she asserted that Clean Air Act allows EPA to take reasonable and common sense steps to reduce pollutants (emphasis hers).

All in all, not much ground-breaking news in this speech, which is essentially what one would expect from someone trying not to rock the boat before the boss shows up. She avoided speaking about the negotiations whenever possible, and repeated that actions under the CAA will be reasonable and common sense.

One interesting, slightly off-script response occurred when she was asked about Exxon’s criticisms of CAA regulation. Jackson said that you can’t call the CAA not transparent and that it can provide the clear signal businesses are hoping legislation will give in the form of a price on CO2. One could call her comment not transparent, as it was unclear whether she meant the CAA sends businesses a clear signal with a price signal or it just sends a clear signal to businesses that they will be regulated. But, as Jackson mentioned in a later question, the EPA tends to think in terms of who is going to sue them and why, so the answers will come regardless eventually.

Risky Business

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

If you’re looking for an industry that is on the cutting edge of assessing the effects of climate change and forming appropriate responses, look no further than the insurance industry. At a small side event sponsored by Climate Consortium Denmark, experts from major European insurance companies came together to call for a larger role for governments in the industry through public-private partnerships. The insurance industry has been dealing with nasty weather as long as it has been around, but the steroid injection of climate change into weather systems creates a whole new ballgame.

With those future risks in mind, Richard Ward, CEO of Lloyd’s, asked policymakers here at Copenhagen to help level the playing field amongst companies by strongly regulating the entire industry. While it’s not often you hear the CEO of a major corporation asking for stout government regulation, Ward emphasized the need for more clarity for future planning and investment. He also called for the formation of national adaptation plans, especially in developing countries, to provide the industry insights that can help move capital into new or burgeoning markets.

His calls were echoed by Patrick Liedtke of the Geneva Association, an international industry think tank, who said that the industry wants stronger partnerships with governments. He pointed to the Kyoto Statement, in which 56 insurance companies state their great concern about extreme climate change, as an example of the commitment of the industry to addressing climate change.

Two major issues popped up throughout the presentations that highlight the unique tension the industry faces. First was the role of insurance in the developing world. Insurance companies can encourage both mitigation and adaptation through investments in renewable and sustainable technologies and offering products that encourage adaptive measures and better building codes. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for companies to establish themselves in developing countries. Insurance is a luxury good, and poor farmers are more likely to spend money on extra livestock or seeds than on floor insurance. Consumers need much more education before they will try to access insurance markets. Moreover, many of these markets are still primitive and require government action to get firmly established. And while insurance companies can manage risk, they can’t reduce it alone, further showing the need for private-public partnerships.

Second is the issue of data. Both Ward and Liedtke emphasized the importance of robust data and the need for more data collection and data sharing from national governments. Better information will inform the risk assessments that are critical to the insurance industry and this need for better data has driven the industry to be on the forefront of climate assessments for years. “Good risk management needs good risk data,” according to Ward and he made a strong plea for governments to make more data freely and publicly available.

Data sharing is a two-way street however, and one (like me) could argue that the insurance industry needs to be more transparent with its risk assessments and make its data more accessible to the public. Prices that reflect true risks are the best way to make them clear to consumers, but there are other means to achieving clarity as well, including data and information sharing.

At the end of the day, it’s still the price tag that drives behavior, especially in insurance markets. Profit drivers are still an essential part of the system, so there is a limit to how much coverage can exist, especially in areas highly exposure to climate change risks. As national governments continue to devise ways to grapple with the effects of climate change, they may need to provide the insurance industry with a little more assurance that they won’t leave it over-exposed.

Compelling late night reading – 12.08.09

Here’s a collection of stories that have bubbled up during Day 2 of the COP in Copenhagen that you really want to read if only you can find the time…

Danes crashing their own party? – Draft compromise text developed by Danish negotiators was leaked to news outlets today and has angered many developing nations. Among their complaints: the secrecy under which the text was generated, a new definition of ‘least developed countries,’ and a transfer of authority away from the UN to the World Bank – something the developing nations see as an indirect transfer of power to the industrialized world. Despite it being December, things are heating up in Copenhagen.

Great minds think alike? – Despite the well advertised differences amongst various nations, at least one survey finds that negotiators are not all that different in their thinking. In a new working paper from the Center for Global Development, authors Nancy Birdsall and Jan von der Goltz share their results from a survey of 500 international development professionals in 88 countries. According to the authors, most respondents see eye to eye on the differentiated responsibilities of developed and developing countries, support strict monitoring, and want to limit the use of trade measures for enforcement. It seems, though, the devil is in the details…

Shoot for the Ki-Moon, land in the stars – Optimism is not a scarce resource here at the beginning of the COP. Everybody seems to have a little bit, and if you’re missing some, UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon has some extra. Speaking to reporters today, Ban cheered what he called ‘unprecedented momentum for a deal,’ and predicted an eventual agreement to go into effect immediately.

Apparently, e-mails can’t change physical reality

This post originally appeared on Weathervane, RFF’s climate policy blog.

COPENHAGEN — While Climategate has been taking some of the wind out of the already luffing sails of the build up to Copenhagen (at least in the U.S. and Britain), scientists at the conference claim the science remains airtight. In a side event meant to highlight the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the only thing that deserves serious attention in relation to this issue is finding who is responsible for the hacking of files from the University of East Anglia. He also reinforced the robustness of IPCC standards and procedures, mentioning that the IPCC will conduct reviews to ensure this remains the case in light of the controversy.

In response to questions from the press, Pachauri emphasized there is no question about the science in the AR4, noting that governments must sign off on the findings of the IPCC before they are released. As much as members of the American and British press continue to harp on the scandal, Pachauri continues to stand by the work of the IPCC. The issue is certainly an attention-getter, as the room is overflowing with observers. Whether Pachauri’s confidence will do anything to quell the naysayers, my guess would be probably not.

COPping a feel

Sometimes, even suckers get lucky. As a result, I’m currently stationed in Copenhagen for the next two weeks. I will be regularly blogging events as they transpire for RFF’s climate blog Weathervane, which I will also post here. In addition, I will take full advantage of the lack of stylistic restrictions Common Tragedies provides to give some insight into some of the less professional aspect of international climate meetings. As you can tell by the title, I’m already expanding my horizons (as they relate to obvious and puerile humor). Stay tuned for more throughout the week.

COPENHAGEN — The first few days of the negotiations here in Copenhagen probably will not result in any big statements or major developments. It’s mostly a time for countries to remind everyone where they stand and try to see who may be willing to give a little bit. As you might have guessed, things stared off with countries saying exactly what you would expect them to. The Least Developed Countries stressed the need for financing mechanisms for mitigation and adaptation efforts, capacity building for those efforts, and immediate financing for current impacts. The African countries made similar statements, reminding the world that it is experiencing climate change impacts already and does not have the capacity to respond effectively. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) advocated strong action now (like right now), because it quite obviously has the most to lose from inaction. The Umbrella Group, which included the United States, Australia, Japan, and other major developed economies hinted that monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) is going to be a important issue for moving forward.

There have been some interesting developments in the past 24 hours. Saudi Arabia, which feels that its economy will suffer major losses due to climate change, proposed an independent, international investigation into “Climategate.” When asked about the investigation proposal, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachuari said (with just a hint of cheekiness), “I would be worried if they didn’t ask for an investigation,” later adding “Oil and politics mix very well, I’m not sure that politics and science mix so well.”

In another development that could have broader implications for the next two weeks, Bangladesh has asked for 15 percent of any agreed-to climate fund. Bangladesh is one of the most obvious poster children to the nasty effects of climate change, and feels like it deserves justice in the form of major international funding. It’s unclear how this pronouncement will affect the dynamics among developing countries, but it will no doubt play a prominent role in the financing discussions moving forward.