Climate Change

The Summit started in earnest yesterday.  Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, and Chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, had some opening remarks, including these which are very direct indeed.  (The C40 is in partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative.  I’ll have more to say about President Clinton and the CCI in a later post.)

In a separate panel later in the day, Livingstone gave considerable heart to NYC Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters of congestion pricing.  (I wrote about congestion pricing and New York’s big plans last month in Mike Bloomberg’s Earth Day.)  Livingstone cited the considerable success of the program in London and the acceptance by the public. 

It should be noted that in one year, the congestion charge has brought about a 38% drop in private cars entering London—twice the anticipated figure. There has also been a more than 80% increase in cyclists and a rise in bus passengers from four million to six million. This modal shift has been accompanied by substantial emissions reductions, including a 20% reduction in carbon emissions.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” reported on the state of the science and the good news and the bad news:  we are in very rough waters already with climate change and it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but we have the tools at hand to deal with the threat, if we apply the will and the energy.  I said it was up to political leadership and the publics they represent to address the problem.  He quoted Montaigne:  “Politics is the art of making possible what is necessary.”

George David, the CEO of United Technologies, had some fascinating things to say about using energy and the potential for radically reducing the amount of power that New York City consumes.  One chord that he struck that I heard later in the day is that the overall efficiency of power generation is 30% for central power stations and 70% for distributed generation.  You simply get much more energy output per Btu input when you locate the consumer close to the source of the power.  On the same panel, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley noted they have three million square feet of green roofs and they have a “green technology permit system” to help expedite new and retrofitted smart green buildings.  (See my last post and the discussion of green building.)  Both Daley and Toronto Mayor David Miller emphasized the message that there is economic opportunity – I do love that word –  in green tech, and also that there are tremendous savings to be made by government, commercial interests and consumers in all of this. George David again came back to the idea of opening up power generation to small suppliers and suggesting that the federal government needs to promote net metering.

So, in the panel discussion I attended later on decentralized energy, there were some interesting tidbits.  Nicky Gavron, a deputy mayor of London, led the panel. Rotterdam and Copenhagen’s mayors talked about their district heating systems that are hugely efficient and comprehensive.  New York’s electric utility, Consolidated Edison, was represented by its CEO, and he talked about the highly efficient steam heating system we have.  Not incidentally, steam systems can also be engineered to provide cooling and are used this way.  The CEO of Britain’s largest electric utility, EDF Energy, also spoke.  They’ve got a considerable investment in renewables and are working with London to promote distributed generation through its new Climate Change Agency (LCCA). There were several folks in the audience who also spoke at Gavron’s urging, one of whom, Allan Jones, is with the LCCA, which is developing a number of important pathways for low-carbon energy.  Jones pioneered Woking’s innovative energy project where they’ve had nothing but success in saving money and cutting carbon use.  Tom Casten, head of Primary Energy, spoke rather passionately and well about local generation of power.  George David of UTC had earlier cited a number of 70% efficiency for local power.  Casten said 80%.  Here’s a convincing slide show from Casten that backs up his assertions.  See also this from the BBC on microgrids.  Finally, a consultant to Mayor Bloomberg on energy, Doug Foy, said that the City could be doing much more on locally generated power, as much as 2,000 mw or more.  Foy has had a distinguished career with 25 years as the president of the Conservation Law Foundation, and then he brought a new level of environmental thinking to Massachusetts, but resigned last year.

Thinking outside the box - or outside the grid - is what’s going to get us to healthy, low-carbon economies. 

The C40 Large Cities Climate Summit kicked off on a gorgeous spring day today in the Big Apple.  Thirty-two mayors are here with their delegations.  There are 46 cities represented, from six continents. There’s been considerable press on this, a couple of hundred by Google’s count, including this from Reuters “London mayor says cities lead on climate change” and this from one of our local radio stations, WINS “Clinton, Bloomy to Host International Climate Summit.”

JPMorgan Chase is the lead sponsor for this event and they made some news of their own with the announcement that they would make their climate change research publicly available.  Check out their climate change investment page.  This is good, solid, serious research that they’re putting out. 

I enjoyed going out today on the Swiss catamaran “Sun21” which just made the first transAtlantic voyage of a solar-powered vessel.  For a land-locked country, these Swiss are pretty good sailors!  You can go to the sponsoring organization’s website to see, among other things, a great little video.

But wait, there’s more:  The same folks, Transatlantic21, have created the “World Clean Energy Awards.” The jury for these awards, to be given in seven categories with the winners to be announced at the tenth annual Sun21 Energy Forum in Basel on June 15, included such luminaries as Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Nicky Gavron, a deputy mayor of London and one of the organizers for the C40 group.  London, as you know, has been going full-tilt boogie to avert a climate change crisis, along with the U.K. government, and the rest of Europe for that matter.  (See my post from March 14.)  For a further look at what the Swiss have been doing, see information at SwissEnergy, such as this on renewables, and, from a consortium of companies, Solar Impulse, an attempt to go around the world in a solar airplane!

On the boat ride, I had the distinct pleasure of talking with Kevin Hydes, the current chairman of the board of the World Green Building Council. Their mission, among others, is to help foster the creation of national councils all over the world.  Kevin is the past chair of the USGBC.  They are the parent of the LEED Green Building Rating System which is the national benchmark for high performance green buildings.  LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” and has become a critically important tool in the green building movement.  The American Institute of Architects also has a Committee on the Environment (COTE) that has done, and is doing, pathfinding work.  I mentioned Randy Croxton (who I interviewed many years ago about the NRDC building in New York) and Kevin talked about Bob Berkebile, founding chairman of the AIA Committee on the Environment and a driving force.

Here’s Kevin in front of the Solaire which bills itself as America’s first environmentally advanced residential tower.  Kevin, when he was president of the USGBC, presented the LEED plaque that adorns the entrance.     

We were taken on a tour of the building, including seeing the photovoltaic arrays, the water reuse system, the apartments with all Energy Star high-efficiency appliances and low-emissivity windows, and the green roof where water is captured and filtered and which also diminishes the ambient heat.

All in all, I had a hugely informative and enjoyable afternoon.  More to come tomorrow on the C40 Summit.

Since billions of people live in cities, with more coming every day, the infrastructure needed to support them needs building, rebuilding and rehabilitation, expansion and enhancement. There’s power generation and transmission, the delivery of drinking water and the treatment of waste water, housing and parks, schools and hospitals, transportation, and commercial and industrial development. All this activity requires energy and energy, as we know, is primarily carbon-based throughout the world. As I pointed out in my post, “Mike Bloomberg’s Earth Day,” the Big Apple’s carbon dioxide output is on a par with that of Switzerland, Norway and Ireland. New York City has 8.2 million folks with probably 800,000 more on the way in the next several years. The OECD reports that “60-80% of worldwide energy consumption occurs in urban areas.”

The fascinating event I attended yesterday, the Regional Plan Association’s annual assembly, focused on the problem of global climate change and how to address it. Robert D. Yaro, RPA’s president, said that climate change will influence planning for the foreseeable future. Former New Jersey Governor Jim Florio spoke about the imperatives of minimizing our carbon footprint and said that economic advancement and environmental sensitivity were not incompatible. The present N.J. Governor, Jon Corzine, was to have given the morning’s keynote address but, because of a recent terrible car accident in which he was involved, was replaced by Gary D. Rose, the Chief of N.J.’s Office of Economic Development. Corzine has an ambitious energy master plan that’s being developed now that will require a 20% increase in energy efficiency and 20% of electricity from renewables. This echoes the plan proposed by N.Y. Governor Eliot Spitzer recently. Rose, like Florio, emphasized the opportunity in developing a “clean and green tech economy” and that this sort of activity could “support the next great wave of economic growth.”  (See my last post - opportunity is what I’m seeing, and I’m sure glad that I’m in the company of folks who know their way around high finance, venture capital, and economic development. See also my post from March 9 on “The Business of Green,” and the mention of venture capitalists and their enthusiasm for renewables.)

The Assembly Chairman, Theodore Roosevelt IV, is an investment banker and certainly knows his way around these matters. He’s also the Chairman of the Lehman Brothers’ Council on Climate Change. John Llewellyn, a Kiwi with an impressive track record as an economist at the OECD, and now the Senior Economic Policy Advisor to Lehman Brothers, gave a stunning presentation on the realities of climate change and their implications for corporations. Llewellyn tells CEOs that the science is sound, the climatology is too, that the economic analysis shows that no matter how bravely and well we address global warming, we are going to have impacts:  2 to 3% of global GDP is going to be destroyed by the impacts of climate change annually. (See the Stern Review from the U.K. and its analysis of economic consequences as referenced in my post from March 30.) You can find much of Dr. Llewellyn’s compelling presentation on The Business Of Climate Change - Challenges and Opportunities here. (There’s that word “opportunity” again.)

There were six breakout sessions:  on carbon markets, protecting water resources under the pressures of climate change, transportation options, siting, green building, and the one I attended, “Tilting at Windmills? Opportunities for Green Power Generation.” One of the panelists was Jim Gordon, President of the Cape Wind project. He reported that NRDC has characterized Cape Wind as the largest single GHG reduction project in the U.S. He also reported that in the six years that the project has been going through the regulatory process, 20 offshore projects have been built in Europe and 25 more have been approved. He gave us a heads up too to a book that’s coming out next week:  Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound.

Another panelist was Dr. Stephen Hammer from Columbia University’s Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy. He’s been running the Urban Energy Project there and they’ve been looking at the renewable energy potential for New York City and have found four main sources:  landfill gas, tidal, wind, and solar photovoltaic. I asked him after the session about whether or not they’d been looking at distributed generation, fuel cells, microturbines and the like, and he said they were working on this now. He further mentioned “microgrids” – “Small networks of power generators in ‘microgrids’ could transform the electricity network in the way that the net changed distributed communication.” See this from the BBC. Finally, I asked him if they were looking at geothermal and he said no. I mentioned this new report on geothermal from M.I.T. and the fact of a landmark geothermal project in downtown Manhattan. Maybe I’ve put a bee in his bonnet.

Mike Bloomberg was the luncheon keynote speaker, promoting PLANYC, and he promised that New York City was going to become the first truly sustainable American city in the new century. He said the stars were aligned and that it was time for action. As I said once before here, quoting Winston Churchill:  “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

Cities for Climate Change is doing a lot of important work. I think this is a compelling thought from the mayor of Charlotte, N.C.:  “We are the ones building roads, designing mass transit, buying the police cars and dump trucks and earth-movers. We’re the ones lighting up the earth when you look at those maps from space. Together we have huge purchasing power and if we invest wisely, that can have huge implications for the environment.”

I’m going to another exciting event in ten days:  the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit. Much more soon on how cities are approaching the climate change crisis.      

Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire (see Forbes) and the mayor of the biggest city in the United States. He’s in his second term of office – NYC has a term limit of two for municipal office – and he’s come out with a very bold, far-reaching plan, PLANYC, for “A Greener, Greater New York.” He unveiled the plan on Earth Day at the American Museum of Natural History. “With historically low unemployment, a low crime rate and better schools, New York is thriving – it’s a place that people want to be. The time to build on our success is now, and I will not spend my last 984 days in office ignoring the problems that this City will face in the future,” said Hizzoner. (You can watch a video by going here.) 

Bloomberg’s plan is ambitious and, from my perspective, absolutely fabulous. It’s also unprecedented in my experience to have a New York City mayor really embrace so many of the ideas that urban environmentalists have been championing for years:  street trees, expanded open space, an emphasis on renewable fuels, energy efficiency and green buildings, distributed generation, mass transportation, brownfield remediation, protecting ambient water and expanding recreational opportunities. So many of New York City’s environmental mandates are dictated by federal and state law. Mayors haven’t been able to skirt these. But they’ve often stinted of their concern. Giuliani wanted to liquidate most of the community gardens and had nothing but contempt for recycling. I was at an American Planning Association convention one year listening to someone from Chicago talk about Richard Daley’s commitment to street trees and urban parks and I just was squirming thinking of my own city. I also remember being in a meeting in 1986 with one of Ed Koch’s deputy mayors. A group of us were discussing a state bond proposal to increase spending for open space acquisition. “We don’t want new parkland, even if the bond act will pay for it,” the deputy mayor told us. “We’d have to spend money on upkeep if we did.”  I wrote a magazine article for the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990 which, in essay form, was later published by the American Planning Association. “The City Is Built To Music” is a sort of urban environmental utopia. I always thought that the Big Apple’s politicians could never really think this way. Mike’s making a monkey out of me, and I love it.

Here’s one big-ticket item:  plant a million trees!  Sweet. “Beyond aesthetics and emotional well-being, trees perform important functions that protect and enhance city dwellers’ health and property. Trees literally clean the air by absorbing air pollutants and releasing oxygen. They reduce stormwater runoff and erosion; they temper climate; they can save energy; they create wildlife habitat; they can improve health, serve as screens, and strengthen community. They can even help contribute to a community’s economy and way of life.”  The USDA has a wealth of information on the benefits of the urban forest.

Another initiative in the plan is congestion pricing. I mentioned this in my post immediately below, under the heading How Green is Your City?  The pushback is already coming on strong. See this from “Crain’s NY Business.”  But you’ve got to see the congestion pricing also in the context of the overall transportation plan. We are supposed to get better mass transit at the same time.  Not incidentally, the NY metropolitan area already has, by far, the most extensive and widely used mass transit system in the country. See this from the US DOT. Anyway, London’s congestion pricing system works!  It can and should in the Big Apple. (For critics of congestion pricing as an “elitist” measure, consider London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s politics. They don’t call him Red Ken for nothing.)

So here’s the part that’s most germane for this little sector of the blogosphere:  the plan has a significant component on climate change. Fun fact:  The sheer scale of our city means that New York emits nearly 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, slightly more than Switzerland and Norway and slightly less than Ireland. We’re looking now for a 30% reduction from the 2005 baseline by 2030. The idea is to get reductions of 33.6 million tons - 10.8 million tons coming from “clean power,” 16.7 million from “efficient buildings,” 6.1 from “sustainable transportation,” plus an additional 15.6 million avoided by accommodating 900,000 people in New York City or “avoided sprawl” as the Plan terms it. Plus, the City will devise a comprehensive plan for dealing with weather impacts that are likely to come no matter how negatively or positively global warming trends. This is all heady stuff.  

Bloomberg and New York City are hosting the “C40 Large Cities Climate Summit” next month. “Cities are responsible for three-quarters of the world’s energy consumption, and as such, the world’s largest cities have a critical role to play in the reduction of carbon emissions and the reversal of dangerous climate change,” says their website.

I’ll let the Mayor get the last word in here. He’s earned it, for my money, with this plan. “Climate change is a national challenge, and meeting it requires strong and united national leadership. The fact is, the emerging consensus among scientists is that, to avoid serious harm, we must reduce our emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050.”

There were a number of developments this past week worth noting. Here’s a rundown:

U.N. Security Council - On Tuesday, Britain, holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council, brought the issue of climate change forward. (See this from “The International Herald Tribune” and this from the BBC.) The U.K.’s Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, for five years her country’s lead climate change negotiator, said: “There are few greater potential threats to our economies, too, but also to peace and security itself.” (See the Stern Report for further background on her reference to the world’s economies.) Beckett gave a speech the night before to the Foreign Policy Association and its partners titled “Climate Change - The Gathering Storm.” She concluded by saying: “Now it is time for us to rise to our newest and biggest challenge: to fight the first great war of interdependence, the struggle for climate security.”

At the Security Council on Tuesday, there was a considerable push back by developing nations. China’s delegate didn’t quite see it the way that Beckett did. Ambassador Liu Zhenmin asserted, “Developing countries believe that neither has the Security Council the professional competence, nor is it the right decision making place for extensive participation leading up to widely acceptable proposals.” The “Times of India” reported:  “Indian ambassador to the UN Nirupam Sen rubbished the idea that climate change presented any kind of imminent security issue that the Security Council should deal with.” Ouch.

UNSG Ban Ki-Moon playing conciliator, as is appropriate, had this to say:  “We must focus more clearly on the benefits of early action. The resources of civil society and the private sector must be brought in. And this Council has a role to play in working with other competent intergovernmental bodies to address the possible root causes of conflict discussed today.”

For some more perspectives from journalists from China, Brazil, India, Indonesia and elsewhere, go to PostGlobal.

U.S. Security Concerns – Last Monday, the non-profit CNA Corporation, issued a report called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.” The report was prepared by some serious former American military top brass. The website says:  “Global climate change presents a serious national security threat which could impact Americans at home, impact United States military operations and heighten global tensions …” That’s unequivocal. General Gordon Sullivan, Chairman of CNAC’s Military Advisory Board, followed up with a release applauding the Security Council’s activity on the subject (see item above) and then testified before the “Select Committee On Energy Independence And Global Warming” in the House Of Representatives. (Their website is pending.) He testified:  “After listening to leaders of the scientific, business, and governmental communities both I and my colleagues came to agree that Global Climate Change is and will be a significant threat to our National Security and in a larger sense to life on earth as we know it to be.” One more radical leftist tree hugger on record. (See my post “If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then …)  A “NY Times” editorial from yesterday included this zinger:  “In an alliance of denial, China and the United States are using each other’s inaction as an excuse to do nothing.” 

IPCC – On North American Climate – As a follow-up to the IPCC report from April 6 – see my post “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” – regional briefings have been given all over the world. The one for North America was given in Washington on Monday. See this coverage from “ABC News” for example – “Global Warming May Put U.S. in Hot Water.” Another news organization, McClatchy Newspapers, reported here:  “More droughts, floods, heat waves, infectious diseases and extinctions are possible for two of the most prosperous countries on the planet …” One of the lead authors, Michael Oppenheimer, put it this way:  “Water at large is the central (global warming) problem for the U.S.” (The North American section of the report has not yet been posted at the IPCC website but should appear here when it does, soon one presumes.)  Another of the lead authors, Cynthia Rosenzweig, talked to WNYC radio last week:  “Ground Water: Climate Change Could Flood Subways.” This sort of flooding, not incidentally, was the theme of the event I attended last Saturday, the Sea of People – part of the national Step It Up campaign. (See my post on it below.)

How Green is Your City? – This is a new book from SustainLane, “the first internet and media company dedicated to empowering consumers, businesses and government to go green.” Their 2006 US City Sustainability rankings are contained in a new book. You can find a great teaser for the book here. #1 sustainable city?  Portland, Oregon. No surprise there.

How’d my home town, New York City perform? #6 on the list! Mayor Bloomberg is going to have a big speech for tomorrow, Earth Day, on how we are going forward in all this. One of the newsiest components for his speech is on his embrace of congestion pricing. London’s certainly had great success. You go, Mike!  (I’ve been saying this for years and years, before the term congestion pricing was even coined.)

The new Governor of New York State, Eliot Spitzer, put out his comprehensive plan for energy and the environment, on April 19. The reviews from environmentalists were enthusiastic. NRDC energy expert Ashok Gupta said: “Governor Spitzer’s commitment to energy efficiency will make New York the benchmark against which all other states will be measured.” 

Media Notes

• “The Nation” devotes much of its issue of May 7 to “Surviving the Climate Crisis – What Must Be Done.”
• “Newsweek” and “MSNBC.com” have devoted a huge amount of coverage recently to climate change. See their website “Learning to Live with Global Warming” which has a great body of useful material.
• “NY Times” foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, made a big splash this week with a cover story in their magazine:  “The Power of Green.” There’s more:  a Discovery Channel series on energy with Friedman starting tonight:  “Green: The New, Red, White and Blue.” Here’s some commentary on Friedman’s magazine article from Harvey Wasserman at the Huff Po.
• Finally, “The Weather Channel Unveils Number One Weather Moment: Global Warming.” See the video. 

Not Incidentally, Comments -  Dear Reader, you are cordially invited to make comment at this website on this or any of the posts. One of the principal reasons the Foreign Policy Association has created this blog and its seven sister blogs is to provide not only some ongoing information on the subject at hand but also to engage you in a dialogue. We really do want to hear what you have to say. Feel free.

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* “That Was The Week That Was” or TW3 as it was more affectionately known, was a British television satire from the early 1960’s, with an American spin-off a little later.