I’ve written several times about the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) convened by President Obama to seriously address the critical international negotiations this year.  Most of the governments that contribute 80% of the total GHG emissions have been engaged since April in extensive discussions.  The leaders of the MEF countries will be in Italy next week and there are some hopeful expectations.  Reuters reports here that we could see a “…decisive step forward in talks for a U.N. climate change pact due to be signed in December.”  Reuters reported yesterday that Obama’s climate leadership faces test with this meeting.  “‘This is really a chance for President Obama to bring what he’s most known for here in the U.S. — hope and change — into the climate dialogue internationally,’ said Keya Chatterjee, director of international climate negotiations at environmental group WWF in Washington.”

Although China has often been characterized as one of the most recalcitrant of the developing economies on climate change, India seems to have its heels pretty well dug in at the moment.  This article, also from Reuters, quotes the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh:  “India cannot and will not take emission reduction targets because poverty eradication and social and economic development are first and over-riding priorities.”

Last week, Alistair Doyle, the environment correspondent from, you guessed it - Reuters - wrote here that there did, however, appear to be some major points of agreement.  For one thing, the MEF may seek “an aspirational global goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, with developed countries reducing emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050.”  (The Waxman-Markey bill, passed last week in the US House of Representatives, attempts to hit that mark, or pretty near.)  Doyle also says that the MEF “…will seek to double public investments in low-carbon technology by 2015 and boost funding from both public and private sources as well as from carbon markets to fight global warming.”

This meeting should be construed as a critical one.  If we come out of Italy without a major announcement or at least a very strong signal on a realistic framework for getting all the major economies into a binding framework - with teeth - then the run up to Copenhagen is going to be all that more frenzied and chaotic.  There are, as this blog has been reporting consistently, scores of important indications that we’re finally getting at the problem but, if this group doesn’t come together, it is going to make progress more-than-a-bit difficult.

Meanwhile, it is entirely worth noting in this context that British PM Gordon Brown made a landmark speech last week on his vision of a Roadmap to Copenhagen.  The BBC said here that Brown’s proposal for a £60bn annual fund to help poor countries deal with climate change mitigation and adaptation was welcomed by environment and anti-poverty campaigners.  Brown likened the course that we need to take on climate change to be as important as the Bretton Woods agreements and the Marshall Plan.  Here is a bit of what some might characterize as language that one doesn’t often hear from politicians.  It’s worth pondering.

Success will require two major shifts in how we think - as policy makers, as campaigners, as consumers, as producers, as a society. The first is to think not in political or economic cycles; not just in terms of years or even decade-long programmes and initiatives. But to think in terms of epochs and eras - and how our stewardship will be judged not by tomorrow’s newspapers but by tomorrow’s children.

And the second is to think anew about how we judge success as a society. For sixty years we have measured our progress by economic gains and social justice. Now we know that the progress and even the survival of the only world we have depends on decisive action to protect that world. In the end, without environmental stewardship, there can be no sustainable prosperity and no sustainable social justice.

I want to flag four important major reports on the impacts from climate change.  Three of these came out in June, the third a few months back.  What all four do is underscore the urgency of our situation.

As you know, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out in 2007.  The Working Group 2 report, on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” was launched in Brussels on April 6.  Many of its conclusions were startling and unequivocal.  AR4, of course, was based on hundreds of scientific studies which derived from thousands of datasets from around the world and in many different disciplines.  An international scientific congress on climate change, “Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions,” was convened this past March in Copenhagen.  I wrote then on the State of the Science and how it had come to see the AR4 as not sufficiently indicative of the problems we’re facing.

The Copenhagen Climate Congress issued a synthesis report on June 18^th.  Professor John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a key member of the team that issued the synthesis report, said “…there is evidence pointing towards the very real possibility of triggering tipping points…” These include “…the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the abrupt change to the Asian Monsoon to a substantially drier state, or the loss of water storage capacity in the Himalayan glaciers” as well as “…signs of tipping points in connection with ocean acidification.”  What does this imply?  “This may cause creation of areas in the ocean with less oxygen which could put places in danger such as the Great Barrier Reef. To recover ecosystems like that would likely take hundreds of thousands, if not many millions of years, although true recovery is impossible because extinctions are irreversible.”

Another major report on climate change impacts came out in mid-June, this one on how the US is being and will be effected.  White House Sounds Alarm On Climate Change was the headline from CBS News.  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco was quoted.  “This report provides the concrete scientific information that says unequivocally that climate change is happening now and it’s happening in our own backyards and it affects the kind of things people care about.”  The “Washington Post” said here that the report “…found that a warmer world, with average U.S. temperatures increasing four to 11 degrees, would significantly alter natural ecosystems and urban life.”  It lists some of the findings such as heavier rainfall in the Northeast, higher temperatures bringing more insect pests, and that sea level rise of as much as three feet could inundate parts of South Florida.

Global Climate Change in the United States was issued by the US Climate Change Science Program, an interagency entity.  It looks at the key areas of Society, Human Health, Energy Production and Use, Transportation, Water Resources, Agriculture and Land Resources, and Ecosystems and for nine discrete areas of the country.

At the same time as these two alarm bells were sounding, the UK was issuing its newest wake-up call on climate change:  UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09).  Prognosis?  Much hotter summers, and with less rainfall - as much as 60% less!

Finally, the National Academy of Sciences came out with its Ecological Impacts of Climate Change earlier this year.  Like the US government report, the NAS study looks at “Climate Change in Your Backyard.”  What we see are the impacts today on our forests, farms, waters, mountains and cities, and what the future holds.

These are all carefully considered studies, weighed and presented with the conservative voice of science.  If you want to look straight into the mouth of hell, go to National Geographic Magazine’s article from April, Australia’s Dry Run, and the accompanying piece by Betsy Kolbert, Changing Rains.  Australia’s seven-year drought is a heartbreaking story.

We were away for several days (see post below), otherwise I would’ve further deluged you with information on the passage of the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), aka ACES, beyond what you may already have been experiencing.  I should, of course, weigh in with my humble opinion.  My first impulse, given the complexity of the bill which merely reflects the complexity - and stupidity, in many cases - of the politics, is to say, categorically:  “What the hell do I know?”  Okay, that might not suffice.

As you know, Henry Waxman and Ed Markey’s bill passed in the House on Friday on a 219-212 vote.  People like Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Kevin Rudd, and a host of others, have come out in strong support.  Greenpeace, among others, has condemned the bill for being too weak, and the “Financial Times” calls it a Cap-and-trade mess.

Paul Krugman excoriates those who voted against it for Betraying the Planet.  I think it’s more like they’re betraying themselves and their constituents, but that’s what regressed large groups - such as the 168 Republicans and 44 Democrats who voted against the bill - do.  Does Joe Barton, for instance, whose district includes Houston, think that the hurricanes that have been blasting up from the Gulf are going to diminish in intensity as the world grows warmer?  Three of the four Mississippi members voted no, as did all seven of the Louisiana reps.  Were these folks all on vacation on another planet when Katrina decimated their states?  Mary Bono Mack and seven other Republicans voted yes, but Greg Walden whose district in Oregon has forests that are disappearing from climate-induced drought and pine beetles, voted no.  Representatives of districts in the “bread basket” whose farms are going to be crushed by warming voted no.

Now we move to the Senate where the politics are even more twisted.  I have opined on the inherently undemocratic nature of the Senate before.  Here is an analysis from Reuters on what to expect from the Senate.  Clearly, it’s going to take some incredible focus from the White House, groups like the US Climate Action Partnership with its powerful industry membership, the national environmental organizations, the grassroots and the netroots, to get this legislation through to the President’s desk.  (There’ll be more from me soon on the politics in the Senate, based on some input from a conference I attended a couple of weeks ago, and other perspectives.)

For now, I’m definitely not in the “no bill is better than a bad bill” camp.  It’s important to note that environmental laws and regulations have never followed a perfectly linear path.  It’s important to keep pressing on and get the best possible bill out of Congress - if one is even possible, given the damnable parochialism of the House of Representatives and Senate’s memberships.

The Adirondack Park “…is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States…”  It’s protected by the NY State constitution and the publicly owned lands within it are to be kept “forever wild.”  One of the many gems of the park is Lake George which Thomas Jefferson described in 1791 as “…without comparison the most beautiful water I ever saw. Its water is limpid as crystal and the mountainsides are covered with rich groves of fir, pine, aspen, and birch down to the waters edge.”  Jefferson would be proud today to see that the lake is essentially as he knew it.  There’s a tremendous amount of recreational hiking, camping, boating, and tourism, but the lake has been well protected over many generations.

I went to camp on the lake and climbed quite a bit in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks when I was young.  I attribute much of my environmental sensibility to having been exposed to these magnificent waters, forests and mountains when I was a kid.

My wife, daughter and I spent the past several days on Lake George, mixing up the recreation with a little history and local culture.  We had a boat ride from our spot on the lake out to the Narrows.  While we were touring, a Great Blue Heron flew up and landed on the shoreline.

One of our half-day trips took us up to Fort Ticonderoga, a place rich in the history of the French and Indian War as well as the American Revolution.  Another outing was devoted to the Adirondack Museum.  This is a wonderfully laid out, hugely informative tribute to the history and culture of the Adirondacks.  (On a visit a few years back, we went to the Wild Center, another fantastic destination that is the natural history museum for the Adirondacks, and which was founded by a former NYSDEC colleague of mine.)

I’m reading a book on the history of the American environmental movement, A Fierce Green Fire, for a course I’ll be teaching in the fall.  It was just perfect to be up before breakfast, gazing out at Lake George, and thinking about how committed environmentalists have worked so hard for over a hundred years to preserve the earth, air, and water.

I’ve written admiringly of Bill McKibben, one of our leading environmental philosophers and journalists.  He reviewed Lord Stern’s The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity in a recent issue of the “NY Review of Books.”  The review covered a lot of good ground but it strayed in some instances from what readers needed to know.  (The review is not available for free online.  Try your friendly neighborhood library, on-line through library services, or buy the piece for $3.)   In any event, here are my thoughts on the review, as I submitted them to the editors.

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Bill McKibben is an astute climate warrior and has been for a fair number of years.  I am, for that reason, all the more perplexed then by a few observations he has made in his recent review of Lord Stern’s The Global Deal.  The conservative movement in America has certainly not “…been able to block every proposal to do anything serious about global warming.”  The 2007 federal Energy Independence and Security Act, passed by the then-new Democratic Congress - and signed grudgingly into law by President Bush - was a signal achievement for energy efficiency and renewable energy.  President Obama’s economic stimulus package devotes scores of billions of dollars for clean tech.  The President’s recent initiative to further boost the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards is another important step.  The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast US and Western Climate Initiative, greenhouse gas-limiting compacts between a number of states and Canadian provinces, are well underway.  29 states have renewable energy standards requiring a certain percentage of renewable power from utilities and the US Environmental Protection Agency has issued an “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act that well may lead, in the not-so-distant future, to mandated reductions of greenhouse gases.

Certainly, we could have much greater buy-in on averting a climate catastrophe - much worse than the one we’re already experiencing - by our Republican brethren in Congress, among others, but the political situation is not as dire as McKibben indicates.

And yes, the politics, science, and economics of climate change, energy and sustainability are “eye-glazing” in their complexity, but that doesn’t justify oversimplifying some important aspects of the problem.  McKibben maintains we need only really concern ourselves with carbon dioxide and that Lord Stern’s use of the term “CO₂ equivalent” is an unnecessary complication.  This is pretty far off the mark.  Greenhouse gases regulated under the Kyoto Protocol also include methane, nitrous oxide and the class of “F-gases.”  There’s a reason for that.  Measured by CO_2eq, a greenhouse gas’s global warming potential, methane accounted for 14.3% of global emissions in 2004, nitrous oxide 7.9% and the F-gases 1.1%.  These are not inconsiderable amounts.  Black carbon, not regulated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has been directly linked by a number of scientists, including those led by James Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the rapidly increasing melting of Arctic ice and the Himalayan glaciers that supply water for at least three quarters of a billion Asians.  McKibben makes a further curious statement regarding these other GHGs:  “…other gases offset their effect…”  I am at a loss to understand this assertion.

I wholly agree with Mr. McKibben that we are in a serious situation and that prolonged, focused, committed global attention needs to be paid to restoring earth’s climate and other natural systems.  He has been in the vanguard in the effort to create that focus.  It needs to be wholly understood, however, that although there is much yet that needs to be done, we have made massive strides and that cutting corners on difficult issues will not get us where we need to be any faster.

House Floor Vote - The word from Capitol Hill is that the crucial vote on the Waxman-Markey package of energy and climate change titles is going to happen this week.  The timing as Steny Hoyer indicated previously was to be sometime on either side of the July 4^th recess.  The word yesterday was that it wasn’t going to happy but “The Hill” reports here that “In a surprising development, House Democrats have reached an agreement to bring a sweeping climate change bill to the floor by the end of the week…”

“The Hill” - an indispensable news source - also reported here last week on Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to collar some Republican votes.  I lauded Mary Bono Mack for being a lonely voice in her caucus.  Let’s hope she can help lasso some votes.

UPDATE:  Deal sends global warming bill to House floor from the AP.  “The breakthrough came hours after President Barack Obama at a news conference called on the House to pass the legislation, and a new EPA analysis showed that it would raise household energy costs on average only an extra $80 to $111 a year.”  See also this from “The Guardian.”

Economic Analyses - Here is some input on the dollar figures for the Waxman-Markey bill - and the politics of the numbers - from The Center for American Progress.  (I’ve stipulated here before that the CAP is distinctly partisan, but that I think their analyses are usually pretty much on the money.)  To quote on their view of the debate on whether or not W-M is going to break the bank or be a positive economic influence:  “The latest CBO analysis should end this once and for all.  Indeed, the CBO found that, for ‘households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020.’”

The CAP article also cites Paul Krugman from yesterday:  “The point is that we need to be clear about who are the realists and who are the fantasists here,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote. ‘The realists are actually the climate activists, who understand that if you give people in a market economy the right incentives they will make big changes in their energy use and environmental impact. The fantasists are the burn-baby-burn crowd who hate the idea of using government for good, and therefore insist that doing the right thing is economically impossible.’”  (I wish Krugman would just say what he means.)

Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate - I’ve been placing a lot of hope on these series of meetings of the world’s 19 largest emitting nations plus the EU.  Meeting in Mexico this week, President Felipe Calderon warned that the stakes were too high to let climate change negotiations fail and said that the global recession was no excuse to reduce focus on solving the crisis.  This article from Reuters reports “Calderon said failure to reach an agreement would be more costly than going ahead with spending on climate goals.  ‘Climate change will cost Mexico more than 6 percent of our gross domestic product, which is many times more than we are investing in the fight against climate change,’ he said.”  Don’t expect any breakthroughs from the meeting this week, but do look for some significant news when the leaders meet in Italy in July.

Betsy Kolbert on Jim Hansen - There’s a must-read profile in the “New Yorker” this week of America’s leading climate scientist by America’s leading climate journalist.  (Registration is required, but try the newsstand or your local library if you’re not a subscriber.)  Hansen’s recent modeling at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies indicate that the situation is even worse than he feared.  The article looks at, among other things, Hansen’s activism.

Demonstrations and Debate in West Virginia - The “breaking news” on Hansen is that he’s accepted a challenge from the chief of Massey Coal to debate.  According to the “Charleston Gazette” here, it’s going to happen tomorrow.  This coincides with demonstrations today at a highly visible and controversial Massey facility in West Virginia.  For more on coal and its impact on local communities, see some of my posts on mountaintop removal mining, and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

This cartoon, from Alex Gregory at “The New Yorker” (May 11, 2009), is a pause for fresh air.

I wrote here recently about some developments in concentrated solar power (CSP). The “NY Times” had a really interesting read the other day on the confluence of American labor - in the shape of California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE) - and the exploding solar power industry. The article wraps up with, to my mind, a particularly compelling quote from Carl Zichella, the Sierra Club’s director of western renewable programs. Zichella, in referring to CURE’s focus on getting the union label on CSP projects and improving the environmental profile of these projects, noted: “”It’s not a warm fuzzy thing they are doing; it’s a very self-interested thing they’re doing. But it has a large ancillary public benefit.”

I went to GreenBuildingsNY 2009 the other day and had a fine time. The show had everything from windows and doors, to toilets and garbage disposals, to solar PV and green roofs - and beyond. Knowledgeable vendors, great stuff. Green building, for my money, has nothing but upside. As I wrote in my article for the FPA on the international green building movement, the building and construction trade has “…111 million people directly employed with 75% employed in developing countries with the industry accounting for 10 percent of global GDP.” There is a growing emphasis on green building from groups like the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the World Green Building Council, UNEP’s Sustainable Buildings and Construction Initiative, the Union Internationale des Architectes and the American Institute of Architects, among thousands of other local, regional, national and international NGOs and firms.

GreenBuildingsNY 2009 was largely put together by the very good writers and editors at GreenerBuildings.com. Some of the interesting folks I spoke with at the expo included Helios Energy Systems who install solar modules, and Long Island Compost who had a hand in the exciting new High Line Park and who also work on green roof projects.

There were, to me, a surprising number of green roof specialists, including Roofscapes, Green City and GreenGrid. That this area of green building is burgeoning so is a wonderful sign. What’s in it for us? Radically reducing heating and cooling costs - and energy use, diminishing the urban heat island effect, dramatically lowering the impact of stormwater runoff in the urban environment, and, surprise, surprise, creating a whole new felicitous architectural aesthetic. Just look at the pictures at the websites of these two companies, or at this recent NGM article. Fun fact: There are over 100 million square feet of planted roofs in Europe today.

Energy companies were there, including the folks from the energy efficiency programs at National Grid and Con Edison. GDF Suez was also at the expo with some interesting takes on energy efficiency and renewables. New York State’s energy agencies were there as well. The NYS Public Service Commission has several relevant programs, including on Green Power and energy efficiency and conservation. The NYS Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) also has key programs including those on saving energy and renewables.

Energy efficiency is a recurring theme at the blog. It’s also one of the most prevalent targets for all the green stimulus packages that have been rolling out around the world. The folks at US Energy Group are focused on maximizing building energy efficiency, as are also the professionals at Sustainability Partners. There is so much bang for the buck in this - something now wholly recognized by everyone from energy policy wonks to contractors.

What other options are there for maximizing the sustainability of your new and old buildings? Lots. Paint, for instance. See this from the folks at Pittsburgh Paints. What about your cleaning products and systems? Those can have a big impact. One local vendor, Edmar, has a range of green cleaning products. Toilets and other fixtures? You bet. Moen and Kohler were there.

Green Seal, not incidentally, certifies a lot of these sorts of products and services throughout the country.

I had a nice chat with one of the folks from InSinkErator. Environmental benefits in garbage disposals? How about reducing the burden of wastes to landfills, for a starter, and then, because the organic waste is going to wastewater treatment plants, enhancing the flow of biosolids that can be put to beneficial use as fertilizer at the end of the process.

Renewable energy is never too far from my mind. Pfister Energy has a diverse portfolio of options, including architectural wind and daylighting. Wesco had a display that combines an Easco boiler with a Capstone microturbine giving 85-95% total system efficiency. You can’t beat that!

So, to make a long story short, while sustainability writers like me, and policy wonks and policymakers, and activists are all out here trying to save the planet, many of the very good folks who were at the green building expo are doing it, day by day, with increasingly greater effectiveness. Good on ya!

Deutsche Bank yesterday unveiled an enormous display outside New York’s Madison Square Garden/Penn Station complex.  What’s it show?  “The current quantity of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as shown by the Carbon Counter is 3.64 trillion metric tons, increasing by approximately 2 billion metric tons per month,” according to DB’s release.  “‘The Carbon Counter is a bold new experiment in communicating climate science to the public,’ said Ronald Prinn, Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT.”

“BNET Energy” further reports that DB has an interest, as do growing legions of investors, entrepreneurs, and bankers, in using the instruments available to us now to get emissions down.  “The company, as of March 2009, has about $4 billion under management involving climate change. Its assets include renewable energy projects in Europe and as well as a climate change fund that invests in companies involved in clean technology, energy efficiency and environmental management.  Deutsche Bank’s portfolio is merely a snapshot of the emerging climate change industry.  The carbon trading market - for example - has grown from $727 million in 2004 to $118 billion in 2008, according to a report released last month by SBI. Global carbon markets will grow 68 percent a year to $669 billion in 2013, the market research company forecasted.”

Deutsche Bank has, as noted, a series of sustainable enterprises.  Read more about them at their website, Banking on Green.  For access to the Carbon Counter on a continual basis, click here.

Photo by Brandon Barrett, courtesy of Deutsche Bank.