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.

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.

We’ve been seeing a lot of activity in the past few months in the House of Representatives on climate and energy - see a number of blog items here on the Waxman-Markey bill.  The Senate hasn’t been idle, certainly, but they’ve been flying a bit below the radar.  Senator Boxer, chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee, is waiting for the House to finish its work before she formally takes up climate change in committee.  However, Senator Bingaman, chair of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, has been getting at the energy end of things.  The committee yesterday voted 15-8 to approve a broad package that includes a renewable portfolio standard (aka renewable electricity standard) of 15%.  “This bill will help shift our country to cleaner sources of energy, and more secure sources as well,” Bingaman said.  The bill also opens up hitherto-banned areas offshore for oil and gas drilling, and also gives the federal government ultimate authority in determining questions of transmission line routing.  Reuters reports here that “It is unclear when the full chamber will consider the energy package. Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped to combine the energy measures with climate legislation.”  As I’ve noted, Sen. Boxer is expected to get cap-and-trade legislation up to speed after the House completes its work.

Meanwhile, all the signals from the House are that a floor vote will happen as soon as next week.  Steny Hoyer, the Majority Leader in the House, said this is moving forward.  See House may vote on climate change bill next week, also from Reuters, in which Hoyer says they’ll wrap things up before the July 4^th recess, or just after.  As I noted in an earlier post, Nancy Pelosi has said she wants the legislation passed - or else.  (HT to “The Hill.”)

Henry Waxman, the commanding general in the House in this Homeric struggle to effect a new path for energy and the climate, has been working night and day (really since his accession to the chairmanship last November) to effect all the changes - yes, and compromises - necessary to make the legislation viable.  I heard any number of speakers at the conference I attended last week laud Waxman for his leadership.  I’ve been a huge fan since the 1980’s when he was chairman of the Health and Environment Subcommittee.

Here is a ClimateWire story, via the “NY Times,” that discusses Waxman’s talks with the Agriculture Committee heavyweights, led by Collin Peterson, the chair.  The story reports that “…farm state lawmakers have not been shy in stating their problems with provisions in the bill that give U.S. EPA the principal oversight role for the carbon offset market. Peterson also is against a draft EPA regulation that would hold the ethanol industry accountable for ‘indirect land use,’ such as crop conversion in other countries.”  (The serious implications of land use changes was the subject of my post, Are Biofuels A Bummer?, from over a year ago.)

Peterson, according to this from “The Wonk Room,” is quite a piece of work.  He seems to be denying the impacts of climate change on agriculture, flying full in the face of the federal government’s critical report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, issued this week.  (Stay tuned for more on the study in a later post here.)

As you no doubt know, the latest round of UNFCCC negotiations concluded in Bonn last week.  UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer seemed generally pleased.  The representatives had, for the first time, a negotiating text with which to work.  It was delivered on schedule and that in itself was a significant achievement.  The AP reported here on the meetings and de Boer’s frame of mind, as well as the views of other key participants.

Here’s a succinct video of de Boer:

I would like to note here that only one Republican on the House Energy & Commerce Committee voted for the Waxman-Markey bill.  Mary Bono Mack from California deserves, in my opinion, a pat on the back.  Here is an article from the “Press-Enterprise” about her vote and the political pressures on her.   The article notes:  “Describing herself as a ‘progressive Republican,’ Bono Mack pointed to her past support for stricter fuel economy standards and her work on environmental issues as evidence that her independent streak isn’t a recent reaction to political trends.”

It is a little bit - okay hugely - infuriating that Republican members of the House seem to be so dug in on this issue.  I’ve heard one member of that Committee, Greg Walden, go on at some length regarding his concerns about forest debris in his district caused by the pine beetle infestation that is devastating the forests of the Northwest US and Western Canada.  Walden even offered an amendment in Waxman-Markey to help address this.  He is fully cognizant of the reason that the beetles are able to thrive so:  climate-induced changes in the forest ecosystem.  Why then won’t he vote for something that will begin to address this problem?

So Representative Mack gets my vote.  I hope there are more of her kind, as there certainly used to be in the Republican Party, at least when it came to conservation.

After China and the US, which together contribute 40% of the world’s burden of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, you come to Indonesia and Brazil.  Why?  In a word, deforestation.  Japan, because of its industrial emissions, comes in 8^th overall.  So when there’s news on the intentions of these major economies on reducing their GHG, we should listen.

We’ve heard a fair bit about how the nations of the developing world - the Non-Annex 1 countries -  are resisting any commitments to quantifiable emission reductions.  Certainly China and India have been vehement on this score.  Some, however, are moving forward with ambitious plans.  At a conference I attended this week, I heard Nathaniel Keohane, EDF’s Director of Economic Policy and Analysis, cite Mexico, South Africa and Brazil as three countries that are progressing nicely on addressing their emissions.  (More about the conference in a forthcoming post or two.)

Brazil could adopt greenhouse targets: Lula is the story from Reuters.  Brazil’s President said his country, according to the article, “…was open to adopting targets for greenhouse gas emissions…”  His condition, though, was that developed countries had to take on more responsibility.  Destruction of the Amazon rainforest, 1½ times the size of India (or eight states of Texas), lying mostly in Brazil, is the main reason, by far, that Brazil is so high on the list of contributors to climate change.  That is also the reason that REDD is going to play so critical a role in the post-Kyoto international framework.  “The Economist” looks at Brazil and the Amazon this week in both this article and this leader.  Both note the efforts that Brazil is making and the incredible difficulties involved.  Brazil (and Indonesia and other rainforest nations) are up against some powerful commercial interests.  What is forthcoming on the international scene is a system for securing rainforests by creating economic incentives for preserving them.  As “The Economist” puts it:  Lay down that axe and you will get cash.  It’s crude, but you get the point.

Meanwhile, the proposal for GHG reductions from Japan’s Prime Minister, Taro Aso, received, at best, a lukewarm reception.  Some observers were manifestly not amused.  Aso pledged to cut emissions by 15% under 2005 levels by 2020.  Yvo de Boer, the UNFCCC executive secretary, was taken aback by the perceived lack of ambition from Japan.  The AP quoted him here:  “For the first time in 2½ years in this job, I don’t know what to say.”  Ouch.

Mr. Aso, however, told the “FT” that “The target we are using is for ‘genuine clear water’ or ‘mamizu’ as we say in Japanese - truly a genuine net effect of our effort to save and conserve energy.  Unlike the European Union, we do not include [purchased] emissions trading.”  He also noted that Japan will hit a target of 20% on renewables in the short term, partially by radically stepping up solar.  See the article and this transcript of the interview.

Some analysts are noting that Japan is only low-balling their commitment.  This seems perfectly plausible.  There is likely to be a bit of posturing as we approach December and the Copenhagen conference.

If you hadn’t guessed, I love looking at the arcane world of politics inside the Beltway and elsewhere.  There’s a really readable article in this week’s “NY Times” magazine by the perspicacious Matt Bai.  It’s about the politics of health care reform but you could transpose energy and climate change into what’s being said.  There’s an awful lot of insight here in any event.  Many of the key players, for instance, are the same:  Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi in the House; Rahm Emanuel and Phil Schiliro, not to mention the President, in the White House; Harry Reid in the Senate, and the moderate Democrats in both houses of Congress.  Bai talks about Bill (and Hillary) Clinton’s failure back in the early ’90s and how the Obama folks are playing it much differently, giving the Congress full ownership of health care.  You could swap in the BTU tax and the Kyoto Protocol failures from the Clinton Administration and see how Obama and Co. are working things much differently now.

Rahm Emanuel tells part of the story.  “‘First, if you go back and study mistakes in the White House, you find they get leadership-driven and they don’t reach beyond that.’ By ‘leadership-driven,’ Emanuel meant that previous White House teams tended to focus almost entirely on the handful of leaders of each caucus rather than on building relationships with individual members. ‘I mean, if I think of one thing that we did that was a mistake under President Clinton,’ he said, ‘it was that early on it was just too driven through a couple of committee chairmen.’”  Obama and his team are clearly working the rank and file of each house, Democratic and Republican, on energy and climate change.  Although the Republicans in the House have shown little but antipathy toward the Waxman-Markey bill, Mary Bono Mack being the only Energy & Commerce Republican to vote for it, it is hoped that the legislation will do somewhat better in the Senate, at least among relatively moderate Republicans.

As with health care, the President is going to have to do some good old-fashioned politicking on the Hill and marketing to the nation on energy and climate change legislation.  See this today, also from the “NYT.”

Not incidentally, see also this from “The Hill” from last week - Speaker issues ultimatum on climate.  (I do totally adore Nancy Pelosi.)  Plus this, from “E&E,” on exactly what the critical players at Ways & Means and Agriculture are thinking.

Green Roofs - I have seen the future and it works.  (Well, in the case of the Soviet Union, it didn’t, but with green roofs, it definitely does and will.)  I’ve written before on this unbeatable approach to lowering the urban heat island effect, diminishing the troublesome problem of stormwater runoff, and providing a stunningly effective insulating layer, among other felicitous outcomes, here and, more recently, here, for instance.

The excellent “GreenerBuildings.com” has an encouraging article, Green Roofs Show Big Growth in U.S., Canada.  Some big news includes the fact that Toronto has “…adopted a mandatory green roof law yesterday, requiring 50 percent of the area of all new roofs be covered with greenery.”  See more at the article and from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.

More Inside Baseball - The “Washington Post” had this about how Barack Obama really started to zero in on energy policy and climate change last summer.  How has he framed the issues to get some positraction?  He and his team have “…made them pop by packaging them as ways to create ‘green’ jobs and reduce U.S. dependence on imports of foreign oil.”  He’s also blitzed the Congress and industry with diplomacy to marshal some of the critical political backing that’s necessary for the breakthroughs that are needed.  For instance, the article reports that “…many environmentalists and corporate executives have praised the White House for taking a pragmatic approach to negotiations over the cap-and-trade bill. Duke Energy chief executive James E. Rogers, who promoted free allowances for local electricity firms, said Obama understands the need to protect key industries, states and consumers, and he praised energy and climate czar Carol M. Browner for marshalling congressional support without dictating terms.”  (See also next item immediately below.)

I’ve written about the Obama Administration a fair number of times in the past six months, so it’s good to get a little look inside how they’ve operating and how they’ve come to their thinking.

The Wonk Zone - Here is a slightly difficult bit of political economy from Harvard’s Robert Stavins:   The Wonderful Politics of Cap-and-Trade: A Closer Look at Waxman-Markey.  As he says at the outset:  “The headline of this post is not meant to be ironic.”  Why?  Because “…the political process of states, districts, sectors, firms, and interest groups fighting for their share of the pie (free allowance allocations) serves as the mechanism whereby a political constituency in support of the system is developed, but without detrimental effects to the system’s environmental or economic performance.  That’s the good news, and it should never be forgotten.”

Professor Stavins also makes clear that the deal on allocating allowances that was struck in the Energy and Commerce Committee is certainly not the corporate free lunch that many have characterized it as being.  He says “…the totals become 79.9% for consumers and public purposes versus 20.1% for private industry, or approximately 80% versus 20% - the opposite of the ‘80% free allowance corporate give-away’ featured in many press and blogosphere accounts. Moreover, because some of the allocations to private industry are - for better or for worse - conditional on recipients undertaking specific costly investments, such as investments in carbon capture and storage, part of the 20% free allocation to private industry should not be viewed as a windfall.”

The economics are the wonky bit here, not so much the politics, but it might be worth it for you to work through the article.  As is so often the case, the comments - and the responses by Stavins - are quite informative.