Climate Change

I want to send you to my colleague Bonnie Boyd’s terrific article on climate change in Central Asia. Bonnie is the FPA’s blogger on Central Asia and has got some really interesting posts going up. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its second report of the year yesterday in Brussels. (I referenced this in “Headlines” below on April 3.) The IPCC Report is titled “Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” – that’s a mouthful. Go to the IPCC website for all the material relevant to this including the “Summary for Policymakers” and a video of the press conference. There will be 16 regional press briefings around the world in the next couple of weeks, including one in Washington on April 16. There are over a thousand news articles about this listed by Google. I won’t get into the specifics too much here. Suffice it to say that the headlines read like this one from Reuters:  “U.N. panel issues stark climate change warning.” The BBC has this informative interactive map by region and by area of concern to describe what’s being reported. (I touched on some of the impacts that are being found in “Bits and Bobs” from March 30 below.)

One serious bone of contention between some of the 2,500 scientists who’ve been involved in this year’s series of IPCC updates and some of the government representatives who represent political interests is how much damage global warming has already been responsible for causing. (This particular 1,572-page report was prepared by more than 200 scientists, and a 21-page summary was endorsed by officials from more than 120 countries.) But, the conclusion, after all the jockeying, is that human activity causing global warming “… over the last three decades has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems.” One of the co-chairs of the report team said:  “We’re no longer arm-waving with models. This is empirical information on the ground.”

It’s clear, for instance, that carbon dioxide has been making the world’s oceans more acidic. Harvey Marchant, lead author on polar regions for the report, said: “Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere continue to rise, putting a greater strain on the world’s oceans which are being forced to absorb more of these emissions than ever before and with potentially catastrophic effects.” Elizabeth Kolbert, the brilliant and passionate journalist and author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, had a stunning article on this in “The New Yorker” on November 20 last year:  “The Darkening Sea – What carbon emissions are doing to the ocean.”Another immediate concern is the vulnerability of certain populations, many of which live in coastal regions. I referenced the 634 million people who live in vulnerable shore areas under Global Ecology in “Bits and Bobs” below, and a report on the dangers from storms and rising seas. See also this terrific slide show from Andrew Revkin and the “NY Times.” Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, said:  “It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit.” In a report timed to coincide with the IPCC schedule, “Save the Children” claimed “Children’s future in jeopardy as climate change set to create up to 175m young disaster victims every year.”

So, we’re hearing again that it’s past time to act. Ed Markey, Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in the U.S. House of Representatives, said:  “This Congress must rise to the challenge of transitioning from energy sources that threaten the planet and preparing for the damage we can no longer avoid.” (See more from Markey.) Hans Verolme of WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) said: “The urgency of this report…should be matched with an equally urgent response by governments.” Michael Oppenheimer, a world leader in public interest science for many years and an author of the report, said: “The actual outcome in terms of damages and ruined lives and costs depends heavily on the response — the response of individuals to deal with the changes and governments to organize and anticipate and deal with this in advance.”

Winston Churchill said:  “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

I’ve been looking at renewable energy – we used to call it alternative energy – for a long time. When I went, as a high schooler, to the first Earth Day in 1970, I said, “Yeah, great. This is the future.” When I read Barry Commoner’s The Politics of Energy, published in 1979, I said “Of course, why not?” to the thesis that the federal government should be invested in making the transition to a non-carbon economy. When ten leading environmental groups came out with An Environmental Agenda for the Future in 1985, I said “Okay, now we’re really getting into gear.” When Al Gore became Vice President in 1992, I thought this was an important development. Unfortunately, as I’ve learned, things move slowly. When industrial economies have been burning coal, oil and natural gas for 150 years, you don’t jump right into the energy future. But so slowly? 

Maybe we’re making up for a lot of lost time now. Now we appear to really be on the cusp of a new way of doing business. As noted in my post below on “The Business of Green”, venture capitalists are jumping in with both feet. Wind power and solar power are becoming very big business.

Energy efficiency and green building are both integrally connected to the burgeoning new energy economy, and I will have a good bit to say about these as we go on through the year, but I want to just highlight renewables for the moment. Biofuels and nuclear seem to me to be in a different category too from pure renewable energy. Wind, solar, geothermal, fuel cells, hydro, and even ocean and tidal power. These are the technologies that have fascinated me since the first Earth Day. I think the genie is finally out of the bottle. It’s not a little exciting for me to see all this incredible activity. It should also be exciting for anyone who’s concerned about climate change.

So here are some interesting morsels. “Abu Dhabi eyes renewable energy future” from the FT. The Masdar Initiative aims to “… manage the implementation of a significant renewable and alternative energy initiative in Abu Dhabi.” Similarly, in Singapore, the launch of a new solar and fuel cell initiative was recently announced. See this from Reuters. According to the Singapore Economic Development Board:  “The Singapore government aims to develop Singapore as a global Clean Energy hub which will generate S$1.7 billion of value-added and 7,000 jobs by 2015.” In Portugal, they just opened the world’s largest solar power plant – 11 MW. See this story, and this for the bigger picture:  Portugal plans investments of €8.1 billion (US$10.8 billion) in renewable energy projects over the next five years.

This is a great overview of the state of the solar energy business from “The Economist” – “Bright prospects” from March 10. Here’s some refreshing news about wave power from Environment & Energy Publishing:  “The New Wave – Grid Power from the Sea.” There are some wonderful video and other links in this special report. However, there’s always some fly in the ointment or other. In the case of one ambitious project in Cornwall, it appears that “Surfers Make Waves in British Battle of the Breaks.” On geothermal, in January a major new report found enormous “… potential for geothermal energy within the United States” and “… that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth’s hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.” See this from the M.I.T. news service and the report itself. (Big file – 14.5 mb!)  That’s the good news. The bad news is “White House seeks to cut geothermal research funds.” Natch. On wind power, on one ambitious and highly promising front, there’s the Cape Wind project which promises that “Average expected production will be 170 megawatts which is almost 75% of the 230 megawatt average electricity demand for Cape Cod and the Islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.” Now don’t let anybody tell you that I think Republicans are the ones who always spoil the party. See this for instance:  “Ted out to blow down windmills.” To be fair, let Sen. Kennedy give you his perspective.

Well anyway, I must say I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle sometimes. There’s just such an enormous amount of forward movement on renewable energy these days. We’re jumping from quanta to quanta. (Forgive me physicists among you for the no-doubt hugely liberal use of the term.)  I was beginning to think I’d never wake up to the sound of renewable energy bursting into the world’s consciousness and becoming an accepted, even preferred source of power. Much more to come. Stay tuned. 

Supreme Court - As of noon Eastern time today, Google listed 1,127 news articles reporting on yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, 5-4, in favor of the plaintiffs in probably the most important climate change case to be adjudicated anywhere in the world.  Here’s the story from “The Guardian” and from “The Online NewsHour.”   See this excellent analysis from Felicity Barringer at the “NY Times” and the “backstory” on podcast with her.  Reaction was generally muted from the EPA and the Bush Administration – see yesterday’s press briefing from the White House.  The reaction from some of the interested parties was, however, predictably jubilant.  “Fantastic news” was what the environmental secretary for Massachusetts deemed it.  Massachusetts was the lead plaintiff.  Senator Barbara Boxer, a sponsor of the strongest of the global-warming proposals so far put before Congress, said: “This decision puts the wind at our back.”  A really critical player in Congress in all of this, John Dingell, had this to say:  “Today’s ruling provides another compelling reason why Congress must enact, and the president must sign, comprehensive climate change legislation.” (I mentioned Dingell’s history, importance and role in last week’s post, “Bits and Bobs” below.)

The ruling also gives ammunition to California in fighting the legal challenge to its initiative on automotive emissions for which they need a waiver from the EPA. The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said about yesterday’s ruling:  “We expect the U.S. E.P.A. to move quickly now in granting our request for a waiver.”

Here’s the caveat in all this, though:  The EPA will not break any speed records in racing to control carbon dioxide from automotive emissions nor any other source.  The EPA is a creature of the presidential administration and this President has said it’s not on. 

What is happening, though, is that momentum is building.  Congress will likely pass legislation this summer to increase energy efficiency and to boost renewable energy.  In the autumn, they may well get to passing something substantive on controlling carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  The pressure is definitely on the White House, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision and any number of other factors, including the pressure that will brought to bear on the U.S. at the G-8 summit in Germany in June. 

IPCC Report – “Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” is due out on Friday from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Advanced coverage of the report emphasizes the disparity in how various populations of the world are able to deal with climate change.  A piece in the “NY Times” Science section today highlights the problems.  There are a number of good resources there, including a reader forum in which you can take part.  That there is uneven development in the world is not, I’m afraid, news.  What is news is that people are raising the question of global warming’s impact on the situation now and how it may exacerbate conditions in many impoverished places in the future.  The Kyoto Protocols have an important feature:  the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).  The idea is to have richer nations help poorer nations by developing CDMs to boost sustainability. The UN administers the program and you can go to this interactive map to find projects throughout the world.