(Revised, Feb 19, 2010)

(For a snappier version of this analysis — without the charts! — see  the Earth Island Journal)

First up, this is not another enumeration of confident judgments.  I do not presume that Copenhagen was an unmitigated failure, or that this failure was Obama’s fault, or, as is the fashion, that China was the ugliest of them all. Nor do I suggest that the South’s negotiators made impossible demands.  Or argue, with disingenuous resignation, that the UN process is obsolete.   Or believe that, finally, only a US breakthrough really matters.

To be sure, Copenhagen was absolutely a failure, in the precise sense that it failed to catapult us into the fair and ambitious global mobilization that’s needed to prevent climate catastrophe.  But this was never going to happen.  What did happen, as the veteran Bangladeshi policy activist Saleem Huq put it, was “a shaking of the traditional pieces of the global geo-political puzzle and their landing in a new and unfamiliar configuration.”  In this sense, the question of success and failure is moot.  The real question is whether this new configuration offers us new ways forward, and if any of them lead beyond the “North / South impasse” (a misleading formulation that implies an equal division of blame) to enable a meaningful global mobilization.

This question cannot be answered by the hard, uncompromising pragmatics of campaign logic.  This is a time for reflection, not for pushing forward, one more meeting, one more demo, one more demand at a time.  This time we need strategy as well as tactics, and we need it fast.  2010, which will culminate with another showdown in December in Mexico, is going to be another big year.  As, for that matter, will 2011, and 2012, and all the other years in the brief period just ahead, the post-Copenhagen period in which we must, finally, begin to move.

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It’s been a long time since Copenhagen.

A few weeks after it ended, chatting to a friend about some stupid comments I’d overhead during that long last night, he said that “everyone gets a pass for anything they said during the first week.”  The first week after Copenhagen is what he meant — a time of exhaustion and near despair in international climate circles.

I bring this up because some of the stupid things that were said during that first week are still with us. There were plenty of them, of course, but this post doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive. It’s just about China.

Copenhagen, of course, was not a success. But it did change the game, in particular by establishing a framework in which both northern and southern countries can step forward to “pledge” to mitigation actions of various kinds. As they do, scientists and institutes around the world are tabulating the pledges, normalizing them, calculating their implied aggregate impact on global temperature, and — inevitably — drawing conclusions about which countries are doing their “fair share” and which are free riding on the efforts of others. (more…)

The Greenhouse Development Rights project, of which we are core members, has just released a brief report (only 12 pages) entitled A 350 ppm Emergency Pathway.   In it, for the first time, a very precise and up-to-date representative 350 ppm pathway is developed.  Like so:

The first phase of the 350 campaign has been a wild success. “350″ is now an international symbol of emergency climate stabilization. More importantly, the 350 target reflects a scientifically-grounded assessment of what global climate protection really means. But what would it actually take to bring the atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO₂) concentration back to 350 parts per million? This memo provides a quick, up-to-date overview of the issues here, which are significant to any plausible emergency emissions-reduction effort. It focuses on the extremely limited size of the global CO₂ budget that would remain to us in a 350 ppm future, and on the shape of the emissions pathway that’s needed if we’re to keep within that budget. In particular, it specifies a representative emissions pathway consistent with a 350 ppm concentration target. By way of context, it then compares this 350 pathway to an emission pathway consistent with a 2°C temperature target, and to other, supposedly 2°C-compliant pathways that have significantly lower odds of actually satisfying their target. Finally, it offers a brief glimpse of the challenges that all true emergency climate-reduction targets raise in this North / South divided world.

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A major new report, just released today by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Friends of the Earth Europe, shows that — despite an increasingly widespread sense that climate catastrophe can no longer be averted — radical action, on the necessary scale, is still a very real possibility.

The report — Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge: Domestic Actions and International Obligations to Protect the Planet – takes a close look at Europe, showing exactly how it can show leadership in keeping global climate change within the necessary planetary limits.  The analysis is in terms of Europe’s”two fold obligation,” and shows how it can act, on the one hand, by undertaking domestic actions to rapidly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and, on the other, by fulfilling its international obligations to help other countries address the twin crises of climate change and development. (more…)

A lot of dreck comes across my desktop. I’m even on a list called “ennui mail,” and some of it is utterly irredeemable. But still I took notice when Chuck Norris: Copenhagen Talks To Forge “One World Order” blew in.

I especially like this bit:

In this conference, they’re going to try to take our money and send it to third-world countries because of, since we spend so much oil and these other countries have suffered, then we’re going to give our money to these third-world countries.

But then there’s this:

“Neil, we have people here starving in our own country,” Norris said. “You know, my foundation, I have families, who are making $9,000 a year—the kids I’m teaching. Why aren’t we trying to help the poverty in our own country?”

… which demands to be taken a bit more seriously.   (more…)

An important scientific paper (by Chakravarty et al.), called Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters was just published in the Proceedings of the [US] National Academy of Sciences.  And because, as Greenwire notes, it “loosely builds on the idea of ‘greenhouse development rights,’” we’ve decided to write, and prominently feature, this a friendly rejoinder to it. (more…)

First up, the climate talks are not going very well. After a rousing start in Rio in 1992, from which we returned with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiations have been anything but inspiring. 1997’s Kyoto Protocol defined the rich-world actions – the first steps – that would put meat on the Convention’s bones, but the details were not ideal, and as the years passed, well, let’s just say that things didn’t quite work out as hoped. And now, twelve years on, Copenhagen is rising on the horizon. (more…)

A few days ago, I got mail from a colleague at Climate Action Network International, a communications guy, asking for a comment on the US National Academy of Science’s recent climate reports, or rather on the US emissions budget that is recommended / affirmed in these reports.   It turned out to be quite an interesting request.

First up, though, these reports only strengthen the scientific case.  For example, the  IPCC’s 2007 Forth Assessment Report says that sea levels could rise by between 0.6 and 1.9 feet by 2100, but recent studies have suggested that this is far too optimistic.  The NAS reports incorporate this newer research and concludes that sea levels could rise by as much as 6.5 feet in during this century.

Second – and this is the point – I was a bit surprised by the way the NAS approached the problem of calculating the US emissions budget.  The standard methodology in the climate world is to estimate a remaining global budget (which is hard) and then to work out the “share” of this budget that properly belongs to each country (which is harder).  And you have to admit this approach makes sense; after all, when the US – or any country – “takes” a budget, less is left for everyone else; which is why climate, fundamentally, is a sharing problem.  Anyway, I expected to find some version of this approach in the NAS reports.  How else could they calculate a recommended US budget?

The NAS authors, however, manage to calculate a US budget without spelling out the global budgets that they are leveraging, or saying anything about how these should be shared.  Rather, they approach the problem in a “bottom up” way, by way of a recent study by the highly-respected Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, that at the end of the day simply aggregates estimates of what the US and other countries can reasonably (i.e. cost effectively) be expected to do. (more…)

If you’ve been following the international climate-equity debate, you probably already know that Martin Khor, former director of the Third World Network and now head of the South Centre, has been one of the driving figures, and you will probably be familiar with his views.  But  concision is its own reward, and the new issue of the South Centre bulletin contains a short piece in which Khor lays out his position in a very clear, and useful, manner.

The piece, Climate Deal Needs Equity In Carbon Space, is framed as a comment on a recent conference, organized by the Tata Institute for Social Sciences and held in late June in Mumbai India.  This conference, which was focused on exploring the the “carbon budgeting” approach to global burden sharing was interesting indeed — see the brief comment here.   But Martin’s comments are of broader interest.  Note, in particular, that he reports that [Indian Environment Minister Jairam] “Ramesh indicated that India will take the lead in the UN climate negotiations in using the carbon budget to develop the paradigm of equitable access to atmospheric space and how this is to be put into operation.”

All this may seem pretty abstract to those in, say, the US, where the Administration’s attempt to pass climate legislation has failed, and rather pathetically, but it is not.  This will be a long game, and if we’re going to win it, we have to bring climate change down from the sky and reveal its implications, in people’s daily lives. This, like it or not, will take you to the land of the “equity debate.”

If you take a look at Global Carbon Budgets and Equity in Climate Change, an extremely interesting and forthright set of papers and reflections compiled by India’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences, you’ll see that the “equity debate” is alive and well, at least in the developing world.

Equity, Energy Access, and Global Carbon Space, the paper by Surya Sethi, is particularly interesting.  Sethi was for many years a member of India’s climate negotiating team, and while this is no long the case, his views still carry real weight.  And what views they are!  The fundamental questions of climate justice are neatly listed here.  The injustice that would follow from any accord that allows the wealthy to continue to “occupy” more than their fair share of the atmospheric space is quickly explained.  A tidy case is made for a regime of dual obligations, one in which the long-time over-polluters of the North are assigned “negative entitlements” that can only be discharged with “significant actions within their borders and action beyond their borders, with finance and technology.”  And, critically, a bit of bile is reserved to excoriate the reality of intra-national injustices within the South, injustices that allow southern elites to “hide behind their poor.” (more…)

In this fine, wide-ranging speech, delivered Feb 25 under the auspices of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Naomi Klein did an excellent job of introducing “the carbon debt approach,” as it has come to be known.

I won’t attempt to summarize her presentation, or to enumerate its many virtues, but I will say that Klein’s approach to the problem of rich-world climate obligation is not without its problems.  Note, for example, that her discussion is framed entirely in North / South terms, and that it focuses more or less exclusively on the “responsibility” of the North to the South.  There’s not a word here about the rich / poor divide, or about the southern elites, or about class, or about the problem of “capacity,” which this site of course believes to be the second half (the first, of course, is responsibility) of the “Who Pays?” equation.

To say this is to broach a key set of political and strategic questions.  Add them to the list that Klein lays out here and you’ll have a good bit of the international obligations debate laid out before you.   Not all of it, to be sure – but given that she goes so far as to broach the criticism that she’s received for using the language of “reparations,” it’s a pretty good start.

By the way, Klein ends her talk with an interesting claim, one very relevant to the Who Pays debate, one that quite adroitly flips the terms of reference here in a manner that just might be very helpful indeed:

“When we talk about climate reparation, we talk about those scary numbers like $600 billion, what gets people’s back up is the idea that this money is going to come out of their pockets, but why should that be?   Why should it come from regular taxpayers?  With the right kind of taxes and penalties, the oil and gas sector, big coal, agribusiness, and the banks that finance them, the players that actually are responsible for both climate change and underwriting the climate-change denial movement, can be made to foot this bill.  The polluter should pay. “

There’s lots to be said about Copenhagen. One of the key points, however, is too seldom made — the fogs have gotten thinner. In particular, it is now obvious, at least to those who care to know: unless “we” come up with a fair and reliable source for the hundreds of billions of dollars a year that is going to be needed, not only for the climate transition, but also to invest in a lives and dignity of the poor, around the world, then we’re toast.

Fortunately, there are lots and lots of ways to source such funding, and one of the most straightforward, as this little film explains, is the tax formerly known as the “financial transactions” or “Tobin” tax.

But no more…

There are many within the climate movement who, if truth be told, would prefer it if the left’s now deeply serious, and increasingly sophisticated, engagement with the climate challenge were to be, well, soft-pedaled.  The left, after all, is still dangerous place to be, particularly in the US.

We do not rank ourselves within this tendency.  For one thing, we do not believe that the climate crisis can be managed without real (if not absolute)  economic justice, and this alone puts us on the left.  For another, the question that most concerns us is global emergency mobilization, and at this point we’re not at all sure that the existing “social formation” (to quote Immanuel Wallenstein) is up to the job.

In this context, The 350 ppm Carbon Dioxide Challenge and How to Achieve it, a little essay by one Renfrey Clarke, can only be praised.  It contains a few nuances that we could quibble with, but the overall framing of Clarke’s argument, and his angry tone, are entirely justifiable.  And, frankly, he is a reasonable man:

“To argue that the capitalist system cannot afford to deal with climate change is thus at least technically wrong. The system has paid a similar – or much greater – cost in order to meet previous challenges. The central reason why the nettle of climate change is not being grasped is that private capital is exactly that – private, required to produce profit for specific people and corporations. Combating climate change means profits foregone, in the case of oil left in the ground and stranded assets, in the case of coal export facilities made idle. Both the oil and the coal trains are owned by particular corporations, able to lobby politicians, influence media outlets and fund political parties and candidates.”

There is nothing here to disagree with.

This scoreboard isn’t perfect. For one thing, it doesn’t really show national proposals – a term that implies that countries are suggesting levels of effort for others as well as for themselves. These are actually pledges, not proposals.  And for another thing, national pledges are in no way compared to national fair shares — what countries should be doing. But leave aside these two little “details,” and this isn’t a bad scoreboard.

If you’ve been hearing that the science has gotten worse since the IPCC’s last assessment report, but lacked for a single report that pulled the details together, you’re in luck. The Copenhagen diagnosis, subtitled “Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science” is written by an all-star team of top researchers, and it’s just what the doctor ordered.

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This recent report, from an esteemed German research shop with the acronym WBGU, is, despite its dry title, an important milestone on our collective path to the Big Climate Reckoning.  Though you should be warned that Mark Hertsgaard, in Grist, reviewed it under the title A scary new climate study will have you saying ‘Oh, shit!’

Rather than rehashing Hertzgaard’s nice introduction to this report and its principle author, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, let me simply add that, in essence, Solving the climate dilemma puts forward a version of the “carbon budget” analysis explored in another important paper, Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2°C, published in April in Nature by Malte Meinshausen and friends.  See our discussion of that paper here.

What’s important in this new study is that, in it, an influential group of top-tier scientists sets out to draw explicit political conclusions — about the shape of the necessary global climate accord — that are consistent with the implications of the budget approach, as they see them.  More particularly, they set out to advocate a budget-sharing system that, they believe, is fair enough to serve as the basis of a global emergency mobilization.  (more…)

This blog post is called Maurice Strong, Agenda 21 and more from Lord Moncton.  It’s on a site called Soldier of Liberty and it pretty much speaks for itself.

How long does it take for this sort of thing to get really boring?