Climate politics – Page 187

Geoengineering on the table

John Holdren, recently confirmed as President Obama’s science adviser, has said in an interview that discussions at the White House include looking at geoengineering options to reduce the effects of global warming. He stressed that it would be a last resort, but can’t be ruled out of discussion if the failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions continues. He is concerned that several tipping points could be fast approaching, with chances of “really intolerable consequences”, instancing the possible loss of Arctic summer sea ice within six years, the release of frozen methane from thawing permafrost in Siberia, and more and bigger wildfires worldwide. He would much prefer to see the problem solved by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, but global warming is happening so fast that geoengineering has to be looked at. “We don’t have the luxury … of ruling any approach off the table.”

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Do you remember the first time?

There’s a first time for everything, and today it was making an oral submission to a parliamentary committee — the ETS Review committee. I made my written submission public a while ago, so I won’t repeat that here, but in my 15 minute slot (5 mins for initial presentation, 10 mins for questions), I chose to emphasise four key points:

That the effects of climate change are being observed now, ahead of expectations. I quoted from the recent Copenhagen conference closing statement in support: For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.
That the emissions reductions New Zealand will have to make are likely to be much steeper than currently envisaged, because the science is beginning to suggest we need to move beyond stabilisation of GHG levels into active sequestration (I mentioned Hansen and 350 ppm), and because simple equity demands that the developed world adopts a “cap and converge” approach to emissions in order to engage China and India.
That the climate commitment — the fact that we have 20 to 30 years of warming in the pipeline whatever we do means that New Zealand has place considerable emphasis on adaptation. We need to build resilience to the direct impacts of climate change here (which with luck won’t be too bad), and to the actions that other countries take to address change (counter food miles arguments and so on).
Finally, that early action on reducing emissions would be significantly less costly than making drastic forced changes later.

I closed by reiterating my first recommendation: that the government should seek to build a consensus of business and consumer interests on both the need for action, and the direction to be followed.

The questions were interesting. Charles Chauvel, Labour’s climate spokesman, asked me to elaborate on the matter of targets. John Boscawen (ACT) commented that my evidence flatly contradicted the previous submitter, Dr Bruce McCabe (which appears to have been along the lines of “cooling since…”), and asked if I would examine that evidence and explain to him why it was wrong. Peter Dunne asked me to do that on behalf of the whole committee, and I happily agreed. Should be an interesting exercise… 😉 Jeanette Fitzsimons (Green) then asked me to explain the significance (if any) of 8 year trends in climate data — obviously making a point to Boscawen. Finally, Nicky Wagner (National) asked me to elaborate a little on why regulatory action was required to complement the emissions trading scheme: I mentioned efficiency measures.

Looking at the full list of submitters the committee is hearing (available at Carbon News), it’s clear that more than a few of the usual crank suspects have got through: Bryan Leyland’s there, as is Vincent Gray and the NZ CSC. Plenty of debunking to come, as their submissions are made public… 😉

[Pulp]

The other side of the world

Imagine this: the country’s leading business organisation — noted for its robust espousal of free markets and business freedom — takes the government to task for not doing enough, fast enough to get emissions on a downward path. So it releases four roadmaps, for the power, industrial, energy and transport sectors designed to deliver emissions reductions of 30% by 2020 (overview here). Fantastic, eh? Sadly, it’s not happening here. The organisation in question is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI told Business Green:

“Achieving all of this in the ambitious timeframe that has been set will require massive investment of private capital, much of it from abroad,” he said. “But this will only be forthcoming if there is certainty about the direction of government policy, a robust price for carbon, a clear planning and regulatory structure, the right regime for tax and intellectual property, and the skills that will be needed to bring all this new kit to market.”

The contrast with the situation in Godzone could not be more stark. A couple of months ago, Carbon News reported on a draft of Business NZ‘s submission to the ETS Review committee:

New Zealand needs to stop ETS implementation until the rest of the world decides what it is doing, avoiding imposing an emission prices ahead of the rest of the world

We have the most â€œpunitiveâ€ ETS in the world (all sectors and all-gases)

The Government will raise more revenue than needed to meet the actual cost of paying for any excess emissions commitment under Kyoto

The ETS is â€œrushedâ€ (even though it has now been nearly 15 years since the Kyoto commitment was made and nothing major, except the ETS, has been done in response)

Agriculture will suffer if the ETS covers that sectorâ€™s gases before others in the world do so.

Couple that with the nonsense contained in the Business Roundtable’s ETS Review submission, and a clear picture emerges. The core of the New Zealand business world just doesn’t understand the climate problem — or have any real ideas for dealing with it. There are good guys in the business world — most notably the Business Council for Sustainable Development — but they struggle to be heard amongst the cacophony from the big emitters and their representatives.

Time for our business leaders to start living in the real world, not in some fantasy where their actions have no consequences, climate change is someone else’s problem, and taxpayers pay all their bills. But I’m not holding my breath.

[KT Tunstall]

Getting windy in Waikato

Windturbine This column was published in the Waikato Times on 31 March. Windfarms in the Waikato. Thereâ€™s a nice alliterative balance to the words, as well as the promise of economic and employment benefits. But donâ€™t count on them yet. Not only does a project have to undergo a long consent process and survive any apppeal, but once that hurdle has been surmounted the current economic factors obtaining have to be weighed and timing carefully considered. We inch towards the final commitment.

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Contention city

One of Hot Topic’s regular readers, the estimable Cindy Baxter, is in the Greenpeace team in Bonn keeping a weather eye on the latest round of negotiations to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Here’s her first guest blog: an insider’s view of events so far.

Bryan’s quoted Stern’s speech at length — I won’t bang on about it, but it’s still worth a mention. Stern’s not known for his charisma — the rumours going round here are that Obama’s speechwriter may have been involved. It was certainly in that league. Pressed all the right buttons.

After so many years of witnessing the Bush delegation’s wrecking ball, it was quite a moment to hear the US say: “You will not hear anyone on my team cast doubt upon or downplay the threat of global climate change. The science is clear, and the threat is real. The facts on the ground are outstripping the worst case scenarios. The costs of inactionâ€”or inadequate actionsâ€”are unacceptable.”

It brought extended applause from the whole room; an audible sigh of relief. Some were in tears.

We Kiwis noted with glee the reference to anyone planning a high carbon economy being “losers” — wondering what Mr Brownlee thinks about that.

Yet on a more sober note, Waxman’s bill in Congress, released today, is a mixed bag. Sure, 7-8% by 2020 (at 1990 levels) is better than Obama’s 0% – but certainly nowhere near what we need from the US. The offsetting provisions (2bn US tons) would mean the fossil fuel industry could continue to pump out C02 for the next 20 years. But it’s early days and there may be another, better bill tabled before long.

Meanwhile back in Bonn, as Stern wowed his new fans, Bush’s former climate delegation leader Harlan Watson (originally recommended by ExxonMobil to work with the Bushies on climate) sat on the balcony of the plenary, headphones on, pretending he was typing. He’s here with a US congressional delegation, working for Republican sceptic Sensenbrenner. Why don’t I find that surprising?

He may have been coaching the OPECs. My top quote of the week so far was from Kuwait: “Let’s get real. We all need C02”.

Meanwhile the whole negotiations go along at a snail-like pace. Have they made progress? Not yet. Are they likely to? Debatable. The developed world’s focus seems to be on process – anything that means they can avoid the hard discussion on narrowing down the Chair’s proposal to resemble anything like the negotiating text that needs to be legally tabled by 17 June if we want to get a deal in Copenhagen.

The developing world is, meanwhile, still waiting for the action they were promised in – erm – 1992…

[Calexico]