The bad news is that the climate/energy push just crashed and burned in the Senate.  The good news is that, in the wake of that crash,  the US climate community is having a robust Big Think.  The last time we had such an exchange was back after what, for lack of a better term, I will call the Great Copenhagen Disappointment.  Which raises an interesting question – do we only debate, openly and seriously, after we lose?

If so, and judging by the situation in Bonn, where an inconclusive post-Copenhagen “intersessional” just shambled a bit closer to December’s rematch in Cancun, we’re up for another round of disputation soon.  Not, of course, that disappointment in Cancun is certain.  It’s still possible that the wealthy countries are going to actually come up with the “fast start finance” that they promised back in Copenhagen.  Maybe they’ll even go beyond fast-start finance, and actually start acting like they want to make a meaningful international deal.  Because, frankly, it’s their move.

But while we’re waiting, it’s best to admit that the level of despair is high and rising. In America, matters could still get worse.  And as for the international negotiations, well let’s just say that a certain pall has descended.  The US has been accused of being bloody minded, and not without cause.   Everywhere, expectations are being lowered.  Consider the Copenhagen Accord.  After Denmark, it was widely – and justly – disparaged.  But now, with the negotiations fraying, who can but notice that, by moving the world’s nations to commit pledges to paper, it at least allows us to see – with distressing clarity – just exactly where we are.

The bottom line: the Copenhagen Accord sets up a “transparent” situation in which research teams around the world can sum and evaluate both the total size of the global emissions reduction pledge, and the total size of the Annex 1 (rich world) pledge.  Alas, both are terribly low.  They are low with respect to the demands of the 1.5C and 2C temperature targets that, between them, define the emergency mobilization pathways that are our best hope.  And they are even low with respect to the problematic, though oft-supported (even, it is said, by the IPCC) claim that, to hold the 2C line, the Annex 1 countries must reduce emissions, by 2020, by at least 25%, and preferably 40%, below their 1990 levels.

The problem is that (excluding the US) Annex 1’s “aggregate pledges” add up to cuts of only 17-25% below 1990 levels by 2020.  And when you factor the US’s pledge (which is still on the table) to reduce emissions by 17% below the 2005 level by 2020 — a pledge that is almost as paltry as it is unacceptable to the American right — you dilute the total rich-world 2020 pledge down to 12-18% below 1990.

This is not a serious target, and it directly implies a global regime of extremely inadequate ambition.  But what if we, as they say, get realistic  What if we take account of the timidity of an Administration that, after all, faces an explicitly nihilistic Republican opposition  Wouldn’t it at least be a break with the past, and maybe, just maybe, enough to get the ball rolling

The problem is that the ball only rolls if the pledges perform as advertised. And this, as it turns out, is not the plan.  Because the Annex 1 Copenhagen pledges, though widely trumpeted by governments around the world, are rife with extremely significant loopholes.

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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…)

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 2C, 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…)

EcoEquity is a small, activist think tank that has had an outsized impact on the international climate justice debate.  It has done this primarily, but not exclusively, by way of the Greenhouse Development Rights project, which has its own website here.

More generally, EcoEquity is focused on developing and promoting climate solutions that are just enough to actually work.  Through our participation in both domestic and international networks of both activists and scholars, we argue for emergency climate strategies that protect the poor, and more generally protect the rights of all people to dignified levels of just and sustainable development.  In other words, we focus on the development and promotion of new approaches in which the politics of economic justice (global as well as domestic) and the politics of emergency climate mobilization are one and the same.

EcoEquity works by emphasizing the importance of equity principles in all aspects of the policy response, by producing political and economic analyses that highlight equity issues, and by developing practical proposals for equitable climate policies. Our focus has been on the international negotiations but we also work to develop domestic approaches to climate justice that explicitly and organically expand into the project of a just global transition. We believe that, particularly given the failure of 2010′s push for US climate legislation — and the major rethink that it has catalyzed — it is critical to stress the US’s role in the international deadlock, and its responsibility to help break it.  This is of course true for both realist and moral reasons.

Greenhouse Development Rights

EcoEquity has done a great deal, but our greatest accomplishment has clearly been the development, along with the Stockholm Environment Institute, of the Greenhouse Development Rights framework. You can find much more information about the GDRs project, and about the many networks and accomplishments that are associated with it, at its website and its Wikipedia page, but, briefly, GDRs is a principle-based burden sharing framework designed to support an emergency climate mobilization while, at the same time, preserving the economic rights of all people.  We believe that, without the latter stipulation, failure in ensured.

After Copenhagen, such an approach is more important than ever.  This is particularly true if the “pledge and review” approach that was moved forward in Copenhagen holds — and to some extent this hold is inevitable.  In this context, it’s essential that the climate movement move towards a far more coherent, and shared, understanding of how various national efforts can be most fairly compared to each other.  Remember, the climate crisis is a class commons problem, and as we all know, countries are naturally unwilling to stop exploiting the commons, because doing so just doesn’t pay.  Even if a country entirely halted its emissions, the benefit (which it would share with all other countries) would be only a minimal reduction in climate damages.  Which is to say that taking action is only worthwhile to a country if, and to the extent that it can, induce other countries to similarly take action.  And, for that reciprocal action to occur, a country’s efforts must be (and must be seen to be) proportional, which is to say, fair.  After all, nobody wants to reward a free-rider.  Or to be taken for a sucker.  And, as we’ve seen, things only get worse when countries are worried (often excessively) about trade competitiveness and carbon leakage.  Which is why, given the turn towards pledge and review, a broad understanding and appreciation of fair-shares burden sharing is more important than ever.

Here, to give you a sense of what is at stake, is nod to EcoEquity’s GDRs work from Oxfam’s excellent Hang Together or Separately report:

EcoEquity has developed a responsibility and capability index (RCI) as part of its Greenhouse Development Rights framework (see P. Baer, T. Athanasiou, S. Kartha, and E. Kemp-Benedict, The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework), which has been influential in the thinking in this report. Within the UN climate negotiations, South Africa and the Philippines have put forward separate proposals for Annex 1 country targets based explicitly on responsibility and capability measures, and whilst the proposed reductions in their submissions are not identical to those used in this report, the methodology used in all cases follows the RCI developed by EcoEquity and resulting emissions-reduction targets are similar in scale.

More specifically, the Greenhouse Development Rights framework quantifies the official principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which call for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. It does so with the goal of providing a coherent, principle-based way to calculate and compare national obligations to pay for both mitigation and adaptation.

See here for a list accomplishments that are related directly to GDRs.  Or see this list of GDRs-related publications and, even more tellingly, this list of significant notices, by others, of GDRs and its role.

Other accomplishments

EcoEquity was organized in 2000, but only funded at a significant level in 2007. Nevertheless, we’ve accomplished a great deal. Here is a selection of some of our non-GDRs accomplishments:

Established ourselves as a trusted, expert presence in a number of key climate networks, including (domestically) the U.S. Environmental Justice movement, where we have, for example, long been members of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative and (internationally) the Climate Action Network

Written and published a large number of noted essays and commentaries. These have focused on the politics and philosophy of equity in the climate debate, but have also sought to summarize the science in a clear and straight-forward manner.   Our first big hit was Honesty About Dangerous Climate Change, which we first published in September of 2004.

Worked hard to develop the (classic, instantaneous rather than cumulative) per-capita emissions rights approach to global burden sharing into a more robust system capable of accounting for both per-capita emissions rights and varying national circumstances, which we dubbed “Per Capita Plus.”  (This effort failed; it was by abandoning it that Greenhouse Development Rights was developed).

Published Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press, 2002). The book was well received, has been widely quoted, and is used in academic courses at Princeton and the University of Washington, among others. Were planning, by the way, to republish (an extensively reworked version) of Dead Heat.

Served as core organizers of the Climate Action Network’s 2002 “Equity Summit” in Bali, a key climate movement strategy retreat in which the demands of equity were closely examined and widely debated.

Via consulting contract for the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research, influenced the International Climate Change Taskforce to endorse a long-term stabilization target of 400 ppm CO2-equivalent.  This (2006) was the first time this honest but demanding target was publicly tied to the 2C threshold.

Emerged as consultants (to the Heinrich Boll Foundation) with A Brief, Adequacy and Equity-Based Evaluation of Some Prominent Climate Policy Frameworks and Proposals, an incisive and reasonably comprehensive overview and critique of “principle based” approaches to differentiation.

Managed, finally, in a blog published during 2005′s Montreal climate conference, to finally engage the anti-emission-trading movement in a debate about international financial mechanisms.

In 2007, we were tasked with doing an independent strategic analysis of Friends of the Earth International climate campaign.  This was a major analysis, though it remains private.

In 2008, in preparation for the impending march down the road to Copenhagen, the Climate Action Network decided to have a second Equity Summit. EcoEquity was one of the key instigators, agenda setters, and organizers of this summit, which has some very significant (and off the record) results.

In 2009, the Copenhagen year, the international climate negotiations came to even further dominate our work. We accomplished a great deal on this front, but rather than document it here, we refer you to the various sections of the Greenhouse Development Rights website.

After Copenhagen, our immediate focus was strategic reflection.  We organized a major report-back in the Bay Area in Jan of 2010, at which EcoEquity’s Tom Athanasiou was joined by speakers from 350.org, the Rainforest Action Network, and International Rivers.  We attended a large number of movement debates and seminars.  And we published a fair number of reflections and analyses.   In this regard, see in particular After Copenhagen: On being sadder but wiser, China, and justice as the way forward, which was widely reprinted.  We also conducted a major strategic review of our accomplishments and plans.

We currently have a number of specific projects in process, including domestic projects designed to expand US climate justice politics more explicitly into the project of a just global transition.

Primary staff

Advisory board

Azibuike Akaba, Environmental Justice Specialist, California EPA

Eugene Coyle, PhD, Ecological Economics, “public servant”

John Gershman, Associate Professor, Wagner School of Public Policy, New York University

Barbara Haya, PhD Candidate, Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley

Glenn Fieldman, Associate Professor, San Francisco State University

Dan Kammen, Professor, Energy and Resources Group, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley

Juliette Majot, Consultant specializing in Non-profit Organizations

Richard Norgaard, Professor, Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley

Ian McGregor, Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney

Patrick McCully, Executive Director, International Rivers

Timmons Roberts, Director, Center for Environmental Studies, Professor of Sociology, Brown University

Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist, Stockholm Environment Institute.  IPCC Lead Author (WGIII, Chapter 4, Sustainable Development and Equity).

Jim Williams, Energy consultant, Associate Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Contact information

EcoEquity
1-510-859-4864
www.ecoequity.org

c/o Earth Island Institute
2150 Allston Way, Suite 460
Berkeley, CA 94704-1302 USA

There is change coming to Washington. The question is if it will bechange enough, and when it will arrive. And right now, well let’s just say that reasonable men and women can differ about the demands of climate realism, and its relationship to the logic of Beltway politics. As opposed to, say, the science. Or the demands of justice.

Which is why we wrote [this brief essay]. (more…)

This is interesting, and not just because it cites our work. The Climate Equity Project, a reality based supporter of the cap and share approach, did this survey of recent science, new data, and emissions scenarios designed to avoid catastrophic climate change for Friends of the Earth Australia in late 2006, and it’s still very much worth reading. Think of it as a sort of Reader’s Digest to the bad news. After all, who’s got the time to keep up

Late breaking news: Jim Hansen’s team has a relevant new report that could well have gone into Avoiding Catastrophe. It sports the snappy title of Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study, and it argues (surprise!) that the ticking of the clock is getting pretty loud. Particularly interesting on positive feedbacks.

Hansen hasn’t given up yet, but he gets blunter every year. So should we.

Just in case you’re in a good mood, we offer you this exploration of a most difficult subject — What is the science actually telling us, and how should we pass it on It doesn’t directly address “the equity issue,” but it helps, we think, to lay the foundation upon which real climate equity will have to be built… (more…)

(For a much longer version of this analysis, and all the accompanying political and strategic discussion, see our recent book, Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming. See Dead Heat post, or browse to the Seven Stories Press Dead Heat page, where you can actually buy a copy.)

Our goal here is hardly comprehensive. We suffer no illusion that we can summarize climate science as a whole. But we do think that can distill out the part of the science that bears most immediately on the core problem of drawing the line.

Should the climate negotiations try to cap CO2 pollution in the atmosphere at 550 parts per million (ppm), 450 ppm, or some other (hopefully lower) figure Or should we take an entirely different approach and try to cap temperature change itself, rather than CO2 pollution And what must we know about the kinds of impacts and instabilities that can be expected at any given level (more…)

Capitalism 2.0

Who Owns the Sky: Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism, by Peter Barnes (Washington: Island Press, 2001).

Who Owns the Sky is an important book at a bitter moment. Its important because it tries to make a realistic proposal for a fair way of managing the USs transition away from carbon-based fuels, and because, in many ways, it seems to actually succeed. It certainly highlights some of the crucial questions, and it just may do a whole lot more. In normal times, it might automatically command a bit of attention (more…)

The climate showdown, as everyone knows, is coming soon. The Europeans are doing their best to ratify Kyoto, but the Japanese-essential to any ratification coalition that lacks the US-are waffling, and the US (contrary to the promises it made last month in Sweden) is maneuvering to get its way. If it does, the setback will be strategically serious and politically demoralizing, so much so that few climate activists, today, are willing to even admit the possibility of failure. Doing so, after all, could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At some point, however, we have to take stock. That point would have come after last November’s COP6 in The Hague, but then COP6 deadlocked, and we learned that it would be continued in Bonn this summer. The Supreme Court soon thereafter appointed G.W. Bush as the US president, and ever since then the ball has been relentlessly in play. Now, of course, all eyes are turning to Bonn, where the second shoe is about to drop, and already the futurists among us are looking forward to COP7 in Morocco, and to Rio+10 in Johannesburg. After all, the great thing about the Kyoto Protocol, like the UNFCCC before it, is that it’s a moving target. If we lose the next round, there’ll be another, and another. Failure, as they say, is not an option. (more…)

This is the first issue of Climate Equity Observer.

Its purpose, since you asked, is to put a single idea onto the agenda. To wit: if we hope to make a soft landing in a tolerable future climate, we’re going to have to shift from the initial Kyoto framework to a new “equity framework” based on equal per capita rights to the atmosphere. This idea is already on the table in most of the rest of the world. We want to put it on the agenda in the United States. (more…)