Vice President Al Gore, Nobel Peace Laureate, venture capitalist, author, lecturer, Academy Award winner, activist, the man Denialists love to hate, and the man some others canonize as the path-breaking visionary on the threat of global climate change, has a new book out:  Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.  It has a series of solutions and it’s a call to action for people all over the world.  Gore is making the rounds to both promote the book and to talk about the looming crossroads at Copenhagen.

The preeminent journalistic voice on climate change, Betsy Kolbert, interviewed Gore at her blog for “The New Yorker.”  It’s a wide-ranging conversation and Gore’s optimistic about prospects, both for Copenhagen and beyond.  I had one cavil which I expressed in a comment there:  “I’m somewhat at a loss, though, in reading this conversation, to note the absence of reference to greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide. As we all know, methane, nitrous oxide, the F-gases, ozone and black carbon are all pernicious actors in warming and need to be addressed.”  I think they both know this perfectly well, but there seems to be a sense that the issue has to be dumbed down for the general public, a perception that I challenged when Bill McKibben did it last summer in a book review.  In any event, Kolbert, McKibben, and Gore are three of the greatest rainbow warriors of our age and should be regarded as such.

Gore was at the American Museum of Natural History earlier this week and “Scientific American” covered the event.  Gore talked about population, a too-neglected part of the equation in the climate change calculus, and he talked about gender equality.  “Near-zero growth, however, could be attained with four basic societal achievements, he said. The goals include: the education of girls, the empowerment of women, the spread of fertility management and a higher child survival rate. Regardless of climate change, he noted, these aims are ‘all things we should be doing for good and beneficial reasons otherwise.’”

The good folks at Salon.com did an interview with him too.  Asked his expectations for Copenhagen, he said:  “I think it is realistic to expect a treaty. It will not be as strong as I would like it to be. But it will put a price on carbon and change the forward planning of businesses and cities and states, provinces and nations.”  Putting a price on carbon is one of the cornerstones of climate policy that the IPCC, the Stern Review, the EU, and most economists in the world concerned about the issue have all trumpeted.

Perhaps some of the most visible and controversial commentary he had this past week happened in an ABC interview.  He said that people should eat less meat, agreeing with Lord Stern’s recent pronouncement.  (See the two posts immediately below for more on this approach.)

Gore is going to Copenhagen as a sort of Ambassador Plenipotentiary for the planet.  He’s well suited to the role.

I wrote a thumbnail sketch the other day of where we are in the US on domestic climate change and energy legislation.  Let’s now take a quick look at how things are shaping up only 37 days before Copenhagen.

As you know, the world has been building toward the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for several years.  COP 13, in Bali two years ago, created the “roadmap” for further talks under the UN’s aegis.  In Bali, for one thing, avoiding deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) was embraced as a necessary mechanism for an international agreement after the Kyoto Protocols expire in 2012.  For another thing, the idea that adaptation, with an adaptation funding mechanism, needed to be a key building block in “a strengthened future response to climate change” was established.

Copenhagen is where the international community is going to create the framework for how we proceed.  We will have a more vigorous regime than Kyoto provided.  The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, it should be recognized, was never meant to be the alpha and omega for addressing the climate crisis.  It should be celebrated, nevertheless, for the mechanisms that it established.

What we will have after Copenhagen is somewhat well defined in some areas, and as-yet unclear in others.  The big bones of contention remain to what extent the developing nations will adhere to a quantifiable program of greenhouse gas reductions, how much and in what way the developed countries will pay for mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world, and the new and improved mechanisms for achieving the climate-cooling ends nations agree are necessary.

What’s been going on as part of the preparations for COP 15?  The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), for one thing, has been having a series of meetings all year.  The MEF nations’ leaders met in Italy in July and made several declarations, among them that “Developing countries among us will promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the mid-term …”  (My emphases.)  Developing nations represent a large burden of the GHG emissions now and there is plenty more ahead before any “meaningful deviations” start to kick in.  (China, Indonesia and Brazil are 1, 3 and 4 when you count Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry [LULUCF].)  These major developing economies, and others such as India, South Africa, and Mexico, all have a critical voice and a critical role to play in effecting a good agreement in Copenhagen.

Meeting just before the MEF, the G-8 called for a 50% reduction overall in greenhouse gases by 2050, the most advanced economies reducing by 80%.  In mid-September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon organized the Summit on Climate Change.  A number of world leaders further delineated their intention to address climate change, in Copenhagen and beyond.  The G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh later that week produced a declaration of intent to end fossil-fuel subsidies worldwide, a not-inconsiderable outcome.

Many world leaders, environment and finance ministries, key NGOs, and business leaders have been meeting, talking, negotiating, and building to the critical COP 15 in December.  The President of COP 15, Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedgard, has been working hard and long, saying that failure is not an option.  Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has been engaging some key leaders for extra service in helping to make a deal happen.   Meanwhile, various working groups of the UNFCCC have been plowing ahead, helping to create optimal conditions for the meetings.  The final preparatory meeting before Copenhagen takes place next week in Barcelona.

Just today, after a key EU Summit concluded, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission announced:  “We have a clear, ambitious, and unified EU message on climate finance.  We can take this message to Washington, New Delhi, Beijing and elsewhere.  Next Tuesday, Prime Minister Reinfeldt and myself are meeting the President of the United States and we will say ‘we are ready to engage, let’s make Copenhagen a success.’”  John Fredrik Reinfeldt is the Prime Minister of Sweden.  (See also this video from Reuters on the EU agreement.)

The SG had an op-ed this past week in the “NY Times” in which he says that a good deal can come out of Copenhagen.  He’s certainly been working hard to effect precisely that outcome.

Another of the central players in all of this is Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC.  In the latest monthly newsletter from them, he delivers an urgent, but I think positive message.  He talks about the successes in the Bangkok talks earlier this month.  He mentions the thousands of NGOs and faith groups that are working toward achieving success on climate and sustainability.  He calls on world leaders to follow through on the commitments they’ve been making to finalize a strong, smart and thorough agreement in Copenhagen.

There are a series of UNFCCC meetings this year leading up to the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties - the 15^th COP.  As you know, Copenhagen is where the post-Kyoto agreement is going to be finalized.  The first of the five planned negotiating sessions leading up to the COP wrapped up in Bonn last week.  (There is also the “Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate” that President Obama is convening in Washington at the end of April.)

The UNFCCC reported that “Progress was made on technology transfer, and agreement reached on the need to boost funding for adaptation. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said “…more clarity was still needed on industrialized country commitments to produce the scale of finance required for both mitigation and adaptation. He added that real negotiations based on negotiating texts would take place at the next meeting in June.”

Here is a succinct version of de Boer’s press statement.

I don’t know much about President Obama’s game, but I’m guessing, based on his aggressive moves on climate change and energy since just about the moment he took office, that he’s not shy about driving hard to the inside to make points.  I’ve been writing here since November about his appointments and initiatives and I’ve rarely been unimpressed.  (See Obama Administration.)

Maybe it’s the incredible contrast.  I love what Brian Urquhart, the extraordinary writer and witness to history said recently at the “NY Review of Books” in a characteristically fascinating article:  “A fog of know-nothing ideology, anti-intellectualism, cronyism, incompetence, and cynicism has, for eight years, enveloped the executive branch of the United States government. America’s role in the world and the policies that should shape and maintain it have been distorted by misguided decisions and by willful misinterpretations both of history and of current events. That fog is now being dispersed, and the vast intellectual and managerial resources of the United States are once again being mobilized.”

This applies,  positively, to climate change policy.  The President, as you know, is going to London next week to attend the G20 summit.  On the agenda are sustainable growth and economic stimulus, green and otherwise.  Obama and Co. have been in the forefront, in my opinion, on the greening of economic development.

Now the President has called for a “Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate” to take place in Washington at the end of April and culminating in Italy in July.  See this from the BBC and this from the “Washington Post.”  The Post notes that White House believes “…the talks could help forge a basis for a broader U.N. climate agreement in December…”  President Bush tried this approach last year and curried further disfavor with the international community for his insincerity on addressing climate change.  See Plus ça change, … for commentary from April.

The feeling now is that President Obama is most definitely focused and wants these meetings to catalyze the conditions for a strong agreement in Copenhagen.  Not incidentally, the US will be a much stronger presence than it has been for years, starting today at the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn.  Et voila:  That’s precisely the message from America’s top climate diplomat, Todd Stern.  “Yes, the US will be powerfully and fervently engaged in this process,” is how he’s quoted in this from AFP.

Meanwhile, as another indication of how hard driving the administration is, here’s a key personnel move that says a lot:  Cathy Zoi is going to be the new director of DOE’s critical Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).  Zoi’s not only an old government hand, having taken a leading role in creating the hugely successful Energy Star program at EPA and serving in the Clinton White House, but she’s been in the private sector, most notably helping to build the smart grid operations at Landis + Gyr.  She’s another powerful, positive, progressive force who’s going to be pushing the envelope at DOE at precisely the time when the money and the focus are going to be on renewables and efficiency.