Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
28 March 2012
20 July 2009
Trade and Climate
Editorial | The New York Times | July 18, 2009
When leaders of the world’s richest nations and the big developing countries agreed at the Group of 8 summit this month to restart global trade negotiations, they sent a powerful signal about the need for concerted action to deal with the world’s economic emergency.
It was disturbing, however, that they could not agree on a common strategy for reducing the greenhouse emissions causing global warming. Trade and climate policy have become increasingly entangled. A failure to agree on how to address global warming could undermine half a century of opening world trade.
The House of Representatives proved the point last month when it passed a climate bill that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on carbon emissions. Last year, the European Commission approved the idea of an “equalization” levy on imports from countries that have not agreed to cut emissions.
President Obama rightly opposed the penalties in the House bill. Unilateral sanctions are unlikely to work and more than likely to provoke a dangerous protectionist tit-for-tat trade war. Yet if the world’s biggest emitters of CO2 — including the United States, China and India — fail to reach an agreement at a meeting in Copenhagen in December, the temptation for countries that accept limits on emissions to impose unilateral sanctions on countries that do not could well become irresistible.
The main reason trade and climate change are linked is that the damage inflicted by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not mainly local or regional. If big emitters do not cut back, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise dangerously no matter what the rest of the world does.
Moreover, without a worldwide agreement on emissions, strict limits in signatory countries would very likely lead to a fall in energy prices in countries that did not agree to cuts — encouraging even more energy consumption in those places and undermining the goal of stopping climate change.
Congress is concerned that domestic limits on carbon emissions would put American companies at a competitive disadvantage with rivals in countries with no such caps. But that is not the only problem. In the absence of a system of import duties related to carbon, industries with high emissions might relocate to nonsignatory countries to save money. Or they might fail, unable to compete with dirtier and cheaper foreign rivals.
There are precedents for using trade measures for environmental goals. The Montreal Agreement to curb the use of ozone-depleting gases included trade controls on such substances. And the World Trade Organization has suggested that levying taxes at the border on the carbon content of imports would be acceptable if they are devised properly — in the same sort of way as some consumption taxes are levied on imports, ensuring equal treatment with domestic products.
Such tariffs must be part of an international agreement on climate change. Unilateral penalties against fast-growing polluters like China and India would be seen as illegitimate and could easily backfire, scuttling chances of an agreement on climate issues. Congress must refrain from putting sanctions in its climate bill.
An international accord that includes trade-related enforcement measures must also include commitments on emission reductions all around, as well as financial aid for poorer countries, like India and China, to meet the caps without sacrificing economic growth.
Further, any deal must set clear guidelines on how to identify and quantify transgressions and establish appropriate countermeasures. It also must not open a backdoor for protectionism. Without such a deal, trade is going to have problems. Failing to conclude the current negotiations will be the least of them.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Read more... Sphere: Related Content31 May 2009
Positive Feedback Hint Between Tropical Cyclones And Global Warming
ScienceDaily, May 29, 2009
Tropical cyclones could be a significant source of the deep convection that carries moist air upward to the stratosphere, where it can influence climate, according to Harvard University researchers David M. Romps and Zhiming Kuang.
Using 23 years of infrared satellite imagery, global tropical cyclone best-track data, and reanalysis of tropopause temperature, the authors found that tropical cyclones contribute a disproportionate amount of the tropical deep convection that overshoots the troposphere and reaches the stratosphere.
Their findings appear in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
Tropical cyclones account for only 7 percent of the deep convection in the tropics, but 15 percent of the convection that reaches the stratosphere, the researchers found. They conclude that tropical cyclones could play a key role in adding water vapor to the stratosphere, which has been shown to increase surface temperatures.
Because global warming is expected to lead to changes in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones, the authors believe their results suggest the possibility of a feedback mechanism between tropical cyclones and global climate.
Journal reference:
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David M. Romps and Zhiming Kuang. Overshooting convection in tropical cyclones. Geophysical Research Letters, 2009; 36 (9): L09804 DOI: 10.1029/2009GL037396
Adapted from materials provided by American Geophysical Union, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Copyright © 1995-2009 ScienceDaily LLC — All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content22 May 2009
Climate-Forests Agreement Reached
Coalition of Corporate and Conservation Leaders Creates Breakthrough Consensus on Tropical Forests in Climate Legislation
PRNewswire-USNewswire, May 20
WASHINGTON -- Several of the nation's top environmental groups, conservation organizations, and corporate leaders today released details of an agreement on policies aimed at protecting the world's tropical forests. Ongoing burning and destruction of these forests is responsible for approximately one-fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions -- more than all the world's cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined.
The coalition includes: American Electric Power, Conservation International, Duke Energy, Environmental Defense Fund, El Paso Corporation, National Wildlife Federation, Marriott International, Mercy Corps, Natural Resources Defense Council, PG&E Corporation, Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, Union of Concerned Scientists, The Walt Disney Company, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Woods Hole Research Center.
In the policies outlined by the agreement, companies would be eligible to receive credit for reducing climate pollution by financing conservation of tropical forests. In addition, five percent of the value of new greenhouse gas emission permits would be dedicated to tropical forest conservation. The full agreement is available on Avoided Deforestation Partners' website at http://www.adpartners.org.
"Chairman Waxman, Congressman Markey, and the entire committee deserve real credit for including these powerful tropical forest conservation measures in their legislation," said Jeff Horowitz, founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners. "When environmentalists and major corporate leaders can agree, real change has come."
Coalition members praised the agreement.
"These tropical forest protections will help make tackling climate change both more affordable and comprehensive," said Michael G. Morris, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer. "Climate legislation that appropriately values preservation of our world's largest and most vulnerable forest regions is good for the planet, but also is good for the U.S. economy and electricity customers."
"Fighting global warming and moving to a clean energy economy will require the world come together and protect the world's tropical forests," said Frances Beinecke, president of NRDC. "The United States needs to lead the way in protecting these forests by including the right incentives in the comprehensive climate change legislation moving through Congress."
The agreement discusses the importance of protecting tropical forests for alleviating poverty, promoting peace and security, and protecting endangered wildlife. The agreement also includes specific protections for biodiversity, indigenous and forest-dependent communities, and the rural poor.
The signers of the agreement called for the United States to lead the effort towards international solutions to end global deforestation and solve the climate crisis.
Copyright © 1996-2009 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related Content11 March 2009
South-East Asian climate map reveals disaster hotspots
By Imelda V. Abano, SciDev.Net, March 9, 2009
An attempt to map the potential effects of climate change across South-East Asia has found Cambodia to be unexpectedly vulnerable to disasters.
The map, which considers the region's risk of exposure to climate hazards as well as its ability to adapt to such threats, found that Cambodia's poor ability to deal with disasters dwarfs its relatively low exposure to the risks.
The project, 'Climate Change Vulnerability Mapping for Southeast Asia', was carried out by the International Development Research Centre's Economy and Environment Program for South-East Asia (EEPSEA) as part of a larger-scale study.
The researchers combined historical datasets (from 1980--2005) with climate hazard maps for five climate-related risks. They compared these findings with the vulnerability assessment framework of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- based on exposure to multiple hazard risks, human and biological sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climate change.
The study found that some of the most vulnerable areas in South-East Asia were the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and Bangkok, because of their exposure to sea level. The northern part of the Philippines was also particularly vulnerable, being at high risk from tropical cyclones.
But the most vulnerable areas of all, occupying four of the top ten hotspots out of a total of 530, were in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Not only does the city lie at the intersection of all but one of five climate-related hazards -- drought, floods, landslides and sea level rise -- it is also densely populated. These risks outweigh its high adaptive capacity.
"This is the first comprehensive [climatic] picture of what the region looks like," says Herminia Francisco, director of EEPSEA. "The map illustrates the extent of climate change in the region and that most of the countries are vulnerable to the worst manifestations of climate change. To avert disasters, governments should take urgent and ambitious actions."
Richard Fuchs, IDRC regional director for South-East and East Asia, says: "The challenge for us is to put more pressure on the policymakers to better manage adaptation options in reducing vulnerability in the region."
Philippines senator Loren Legarda, who attended the Manila launch of the map last week (6 March), said that policymakers should now devise ways to prepare vulnerable people for the impact of climate change.
Copyright 2009, SciDev.Net
Read more... Sphere: Related Content05 January 2009
Q. What's an 'environmental externality'?
Who do we repay for the pollution from which we have benefitted?
By Peter B. Meyer (Guest Contributor), Grist Magazine, 03 Jan 2009
If I buy bread from you, when you want to sell it to me, and we agree on a price, that's a deal between the two of us. Now imagine that you getting up early to bake bread wakes two people who would rather sleep in. They are not a factor in our deal -- they are "external" to our market exchange and any effect on them is an "externality" we have ignored in agreeing on our price. The same logic holds for the greenhouse gases your ovens generated when you baked the bread. That contribution to climate change is an "environmental externality."
How many of those did you create today?
Well, you created a whopper of an environmental externality if you were in any way tied to the electricity grid that includes a certain TVA plant in Tennessee -- the Kingston Fossil Plant that produced the fly-ash slurry spill in Harriman, Tenn. Given interlocking power grids, odds are if you lived in the U.S. you helped create that mess when you turned on the computer.
Unless your electricity bills include a charge on the risk that such an accident could occur, they failed to internalize that externality.
Your utility bill also likely fails to internalize the greenhouse gas emissions associated with generating and delivering your power.
But the slurry spill and the massive damage to water and soils it has produced also helps us remember that we miss externalities even when we are looking for them and might be willing to pay for them. It should remind us how much we have benefited from ignoring externalities in the past. Yes, benefited.
Harriman, Tenn. now has a new contaminated site. Pity. But there are, by most estimates, well over 500,000 "brownfields" -- sites that are abandoned or underutilized due to real or perceived contamination -- across the U.S. So why all the noise about one more contaminated site?
It's because we can no longer ignore the externality -- the spill risk posed by all the coal-fired power plants storing fly-ash slurry on-site (see "Who will be the next victims?"). We have to admit that coal is not clean and that the price we pay for power does not cover all the costs generated by the power generating process. (We still do not have enough publicity for a real national debate over the social, economic, and environmental external costs of coal, but that is another story.)
But what if we had known all those costs when we built the first coal-fired power plants? Would we have built them? Would we have charged far more for the power? What would our society and economy be like now if we had charged more for power?
Extend those questions to those 500,000 brownfields. They include old power plants, coal gasification plants, steel mills, factories making any of the thousands of products that drove American technological progress in the 19th and 20th century, and all those machine shops, appliance and sewing machine repair shops, dry cleaners, paint stores and others that polluted the soil and water in the course of doing business, mostly out of ignorance. Would we be better off today had they never existed?
Would we be better off if the externalities had been recognized at the time and the products far more expensive, with fewer made?
Would our current incomes be higher or lower? Would our ability to pay more for cleaner power to avoid further greenhouse gas emissions or to invest in energy efficiency be higher or lower?
Are we sure that we would not have done as much damage either way?
There's no hard evidence. There's a lot of argument and speculation grounded in assumptions. You can't have hard evidence on the "might have beens," as there is no source.
Except perhaps for automobiles. There are other high-income industrialized countries that rely far less on cars and trucks than the United States. Western Europe offers empirical evidence for the "might have been" if the U.S. had internalized auto externalities -- vehicles would have been more expensive and bought in fewer numbers, and mass transportation systems would be stronger.
If that evidence seems weak, think how much less there is for arguments about incorporating externalities into the prices for other products and services developed in the 20th century. Speculate on the full cost of a computer today, including all externalities -- even those associated with the computers of the mid-20th century, which helped make those of today possible. Would I be blogging? Would you be reading this?
We probably have to admit to ourselves that we are, on balance, benefiting today from past pollution without putting price tags on it or paying for it.
We owe a debt. But to whom, or what? And how do we discharge it?
©2008. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved
Read more... Sphere: Related ContentA New List of Climate Quibblers: Paid Deniers, Dead Guys and Ill-informed Fellow Travellers
By Richard Littlemore, Desmoblog.Com, 2 January 09
The latest list of "650 International Scientists (who) Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming" seems to be more of the same: dead guys (Fred Seitz, Marcel Leroux, Reid Bryson ...), paid deniers (Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Sallie Baliunas ...), and a much larger group of weather forecasters and "experts" from unrelated fields, many of whom (eg., Edward Wegman) don't even disagree with the scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change.
The apparent author of this list, Swiftboater Marc Morano, even included the names of Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, an historian and an anthropologist who have made themselves famous by advocating for renewed and more vigorous policy action against the threat of climate change.
It's possible that some of the people included in this list sincerely doubt that human activity is promoting potentially catastrophic climate change. For example, the 79-year-old Nobel laureate (Physics, 1973) Ivar Giaever may, legitimately, have fallen behind in his reading. For that matter, it's possible, perhaps evening likely, that Giaever has never taken any direct interest in atmospheric science.
Still, Morano deserves some credit for guile in the way he presented this list: The short sheet he passed out at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland last month didn't include a single name that was recognizable as being among the "usual suspects" - the deniers for hire with whom Morano and his ex-boss, the RepublicanSenator for Oil and Gas James Inhofe, generally spend their time.
But if you look past the first dozen or so anonymous quibblers, you soon get to experts like James Peden, a web designer who still advertises himself as an "atmospheric physicist" regardless that he has long since abandoned the field. Peden can no more call himself a scientist than I can claim to be a big city newspaper reporter (last newspaper reporting job, 1980) or, for that matter, an expert practitioner of high-pressure water blasting (Algoma Steel, 1975).
The question we keep asking is this: if Morano and company truly believe that they have science on their side, why continue to consort with people like Fred Singer, who has taken money in his colorful career to deny everything from the health effects of smoking (Philip Morris) to the truth of global warming (Exxon Mobil)?
One answer is that Fred Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project is listed as principal sponsor of this most recent disinformation flyer.
There is an old adage that if you tell a lie often enough, people will start to regard it as the truth. But an old lie is still a lie. And people who are careless (or crafty) enough to hang around with old liars deserve to have their own credibility judged accordingly.
Read more... Sphere: Related Content
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