Climate - Feb 25

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Brother, can you spare a carbon credit?
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Boston Globe
Thinkers weigh a radical new way to reduce greenhouse gas: Give everyone an individual carbon allowance, and let the dealing begin.
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GLOBAL WARMING IS a planet-sized problem, so policy solutions tend to aim for the grandest possible scale. The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions at a national level, while laws in various countries and states seek to reform entire industries.
(Fabio Cardosa/Corbis;Globe Staff Illustration)
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For individuals, the picture is very different. Environmentalism often boils down to small lifestyle choices, like turning down the thermostat and screwing in the squiggly light bulbs - gestures that can feel virtuous but futile. Some environmentalists even consider them counterproductive if they substitute for activism.

But a new wave of thinking suggests it may be better in the long run to address this global problem in a way that directly involves individuals. Several proposals generating buzz chiefly in the United Kingdom and Ireland operate on the notion that every individual has an equal stake in the atmosphere. The most provocative idea, personal carbon trading, would grant all residents a "carbon allowance," setting a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from their households and transportation. In the model of the industrial "cap and trade" system, guzzlers who exceeded their allowance would need to buy extra shares. People who conserved energy, meanwhile, could sell their leftover shares and ride their bikes all the way to the bank.

This is not just a fantasy floating around in the greenest reaches of the blogosphere.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is an associate editor at Boston Review Books.
(24 February 2008)
Contributor Shaun Chamberlin writes:
David Fleming highlights that only his TEQs scheme is designed to address peak oil as well as climate change.

Britain's year zero: UK to leap from 'laggard to leader' on carbon dioxide emissions
Geoffrey Lean, Independent
Every new building put up in Britain will have to be zero carbon, emitting none of the pollution that is the main cause of global warming, the Government will announce this week.

Caroline Flint, the new housing minister, will commit herself on Wednesday to setting an "ambitious target" for eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from "non-domestic" buildings, ranging from schools to supermarkets, health centres to hotels, and from libraries to light manufacturing industry.

Taken with a year-old government commitment to make all new housing zero carbon by 2016 - the most exacting target anywhere in the world - the move will set Britain on the road to a new energy age, with conservation measures and renewable sources replacing the wasteful burning of fossil fuels.
(24 February 2008)

How Beijing set off a Premier's smoke alarm
Justine Hunter, Globe and Mail
As B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell toured Beijing's Olympic stadium in November of 2006, a thick haze of pollution left his eyes stinging and his throat raw.

It proved to be a moment that helped shape the carbon tax that his government imposed on Tuesday - Mr. Campbell's personal tipping point on the environment.

“You saw the impact of millions of individual actions on the environment around you,” Mr. Campbell recalled in an interview this week.

“I don't know if you have ever been in the middle of a hazardous air day, it is visible manifestation of man's impact on the environment around him.”

This week his government became the first in North America to put a price on greenhouse-gas emissions, taking a political gamble that B.C. voters are ready to embrace an experimental new tax in a bid to battle global warming.

But will any other jurisdiction follow his example?
(23 February 2008)
Contributor CP writes:
The carbon tax is announced on page 9797 of Hansard in the 2008 budget at www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/38th4th/H80219p.htm

Contraction & Convergence in Garnaut Climate Review (Australia) - PDF
Professor Ross Garnaut via Global Commons Institute

Garnaut Climate Change Review Interim Report - February 2008

Contraction and Convergence [section begins on page 30]

It is clear already that per capita allocation will have to play a strong role in principles for national budgets. Indeed, it appears inevitable that if global per capita emissions fall to the level required by stabilization scenarios, then the current stark divergences in national per capita emissions rights will inevitably diminish- though variation in national emissions levels will be possible through the trading of emissions rights.

Some argue that a population-based allocation encourages environmentally damaging global population growth. This is unlikely, as population growth is decided by far more fundamental economic and social determinants. This argument is not at all relevant to countries - mostly developed countries and first of all Australia and Canada - where population is growing through immigration. As discussed later, a focus on per capita allocations is essential for equitable treatment across developed countries with and without high levels of immigration.

The more important point is that any allocative formula that does not emphasize population over current or past emissions levels as the basis for long-term emissions rights has no chance at all of being accepted by most developing countries.

One approach worth considering, consistent with giving weight to population and with the need to allow time for adjustment, would be the “contraction and convergence” approach that was developed by the Global Commons Institute in the early 1990s, and has been discussed favourably in Germany and the United Kingdom in recent times.
(Ref.: WGBU, 2003; RCEP, 2000).
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Full text at: www.gci.org.uk/briefings/Interim_Report_Feb_2008.pdf

(February 2008)
Related: Garnaut inquiry into climate change a step forward

So just why is the nation most proud of its free speech too frightened to use that freedom?

Garnaut inquiry into climate change a step forward
Kenneth Davidson, The Age
THE interim report on climate change by Professor Ross Garnaut is excellent . Garnaut argues convincingly that Australia has more to lose from global warming than other developed countries, is well placed to profit from effective global mitigation policies and therefore concludes it is in Australia's interests to seek international agreement based on the most feasible global mitigation target.

Garnaut's preferred option of limiting carbon dioxide emissions to 450 parts per million (ppm), which will require a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by mid century, is based on European Union targets designed to limit the global mean temperature increase to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

But Garnaut also quotes scientific authorities, which suggest that even if this target is reached, there is still a 50% chance temperatures will go beyond two degrees, leading to catastrophic and irreversible global warming.

This level of risk is unacceptable. Nobody would fly in an plane or cross the street if there was a 50/50 chance of being killed.

Garnaut notes submissions to his inquiry by green groups asking that the review focus on a 400ppm objective. Significantly, they are not dismissed out of hand.
(25 February 2008)

Water, water ... nowhere
Science says we are turning the West into a desert
Joseph Romm, Gristmill
A major new study in Science by a dozen water experts, concluded humans are the primary cause of changes in Western river flow, winter air temperature and snow pack in the past 50 years -- and things will only get worse if we don't act soon. The abstract of the study, "Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States" (subs. req'd), led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, states:

Observations have shown that the hydrological cycle of the western United States changed significantly over the last half of the 20th century. We present a regional, multivariable climate change detection and attribution study, using a high-resolution hydrologic model forced by global climate models, focusing on the changes that have already affected this primarily arid region with a large and growing population. The results show that up to 60% of the climate-related trends of river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack between 1950 and 1999 are human-induced. These results are robust to perturbation of study variates and methods. They portend, in conjunction with previous work, a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States.

The study's conclusion is stark:

Our results are not good news for those living in the western United States. The scenario for how western hydrology will continue to change has already been published using one of the models used here [PCM (2)] as well as in other recent studies of western U.S. hydrology. It foretells water shortages, lack of storage capability to meet seasonally changing river flow, transfers of water from agriculture to urban uses, and other critical impacts. Because PCM performs so well in replicating the complex signals of the last half of the 20th century, we have every reason to believe its projections and to act on them in the immediate future.

The time to act is now!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
(24 February 2008)