Obama reaches new low on #climatechange spinelessness

Chinese Premier Li Kequiang laughs at
'naming and shaming' threats
from President Barak Obama.
Wikipedia photo

Yes, the authoritarian leadership in China is really going to stop burning coal because Barack Neoliberal Obama (born not in Kenya, but a business law program's pocket) thinks that "naming and shaming" countries contributing to global warming will make them stop it:

The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
 In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
 To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions.

What B.O. is committing too, actually, is simply updating what happened at the 2009 Copenhagen round of climate talks:

American negotiators are instead homing in on a hybrid agreement — a proposal to blend legally binding conditions from an existing 1992 treaty with new voluntary pledges. The mix would create a deal that would update the treaty, and thus, negotiators say, not require a new vote of ratification.

Yeah, right. That’s technically true, but it’s meaningless, and anybody with a brain knows that.

As far as it doing anything? I’m sure that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is quaking in his fake Italian shoes at being “named and shamed.”

But, hey, it’s working already. At least one Gang Green environmental group seems to be giving it the thumbs up.

“There’s some legal and political magic to this,” said Jake Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “They’re trying to move this as far as possible without having to reach the 67-vote threshold” in the Senate.

Yeah, yeah.

Carbon tax domestically, plus carbon import tariff for the other countries. Forces us all on the same playing field, protects “cleaner” American business and thus gets the support of CEOs whose middle names aren’t, all of them, “Outsource,” and gives us fixed, written-in-stone targets.

That said, the NY Times doesn’t quite read the GOP right:

The Obama administration’s international climate strategy is likely to infuriate Republican lawmakers who already say the president is abusing his executive authority by pushing through major policies without congressional approval.

Actually, it’s likely to make them laugh hysterically more than be infuriated, for the reasons I’ve just mentioned.

Beyond that, Obama KNOWS this.

Also laughing at Obama's threats?
PM Tony Abbott of Australia, top
coal exporter to China.
Wikipedia photo

And, he knows it won't do a think to stop actual climate change problems, which the U.N. Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change has just detailed in its newest report.

That would be things like grain harvests already declining, the possibility that we've already cooked in the destruction of the Greenland ice sheet and more.

Meanwhile, the IPCC also notes that, "name and shame" aside, this:

From 1970 to 2000, global emissions of greenhouse gases grew at 1.3 percent a year. But from 2000 to 2010, that rate jumped to 2.2 percent a year, the report found, and the pace seems to be accelerating further in this decade.

Yep, Li Keqiang is laughing all the way to the ribbon cutting for the next Chinese coal-fired power plant. And, the new Liberal government in Australia 

Do we have hope?

The new report found that it was still technically possible to limit global warming to an internationally agreed upper bound of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level. But continued political delays for another decade or two will make that unachievable without severe economic disruption, the report said.

"There never was much hope, Planet Earth."

We're really headed to about 9 degrees F, or 4 C, by the end of the century. And, we haven't even talked about what will happen if and when India starts industrializing at an even more rapid rate. Or if Brazil wants to become an industrial country. Or, if we find even more undersea methane hydrates starting to bubble.

Meanwhile, for American wingnuts who want to say "so what," er, more ozone in U.S. cities is part of the so what. And, unlike international non-binding "naming and shaming," the Clean Air Act requires that that be fixed, especially in hot red-state cities like Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, etc.

And, want to be really alarmist?

Per a long new piece by Charles Mann, all of this is likely going to spur the "salvific technologism" fake solution of geoengineering.

A single country could geo-engineer the whole planet by itself. Or one country’s geo-engineering could set off conflicts with another country—a Chinese program to increase its monsoon might reduce India’s monsoon. “Both are nuclear weapons states,” (David) Keith reminds us.

Let's hope it doesn't get that bad. 

Of course China loves Copenhagen

This AP story is a no-brainer. Beijing got the majority of the world to give it a PR whitewash, got both rich and poor nations to ignore the idea of a three-track approach to emissions control, which I have blogged about before, got truly poorer nations to believe it was one of them, and made nary a binding commitment.

And, even that is a farce. The non-binding deal never got formally approved by the full rota of nations at Copenhagen, anyway.

China still rejects climate commitments

China is still apparently resisting making any concrete commitments at Copenhagen, even to the point of giving U.S. President Barack Obama the cold shoulder.

So, my idea of something like a three-track plan for climate change control is getting hard-core Chinese opposition.

Last nail for Copenhagen round?

China is refusing to accept international monitoring of any carbon dioxide emissions reduction it does undertake. We all know how well internal monitoring worked on stuff like melamine.

Meanwhile, even if every country at Copenhagen does what it has pledged to do, the same story reveals global temperatures will still jump by 3C, not 2C.

Copenhagen headed down in flames

It looks like the "swing point" for the Copenhagen climate control round is what to do with the Kyoto treaty - junk it or build on it. That, in turn, is a metaphor for larger decisions, and the philosophy behind them.

Unfortunately, nobody in Denmark is discussing my "three track" idea: Developed nations, developing nations in the true sense, and folks like the BRIC countries on a middle track, with binding targets, but on a slower timetable.

Meanwhile, both in Denmark and at home, while trying to straddle some things, Obama needs to do more.

Can't trust China and India on climate change

The so-called "Danish draft" of a new climate agreement that would push less developed countries to do more on greenhouse gas control?

Turns out India and China had a hand in drafting it. The story doesn't say if the two nations were acting as agents provacateur or what, but that would be my first guess, or at least a partial guess, not just that it was an attempt to put legs onto some sort of agreement.

That said, we need a a three-track, not two-track, agreement. China, India and other BRIC-type nations need to be on a "middle" track, one that has binding, if not immediate, targets. China is NOT Mozambique.

Hansen vs. Krugman battle on carbon cap-and-trade

Paul Krugman says
he may be naive on the success possibilities of carbon dioxide cap-and-trade deals coming out of the Copenhagen climate summit or elsewhere. I’d agree.

So does James Hansen

NASA planetary and climate scientist has a headline of “Cap and Fade” on his column. He didn’t write the column himself, but it sums it up well.

Unlike cap-and-trade boosters, and even some opponents, he rejects the analogy of its predecessor, pollution trading permits. He claims they haven’t worked as well as claimed, either.

Cap and trade also did little to improve public health. Coal emissions are still significant contributing factors in four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States — and mercury, arsenic and various coal pollutants also cause birth defects, asthma and other ailments.

That puts it pretty basically.

Hansen strongly favors a carbon tax instead. So does Joe Stiglitz, who arguably trumps even Krugman in economic insight.

Krugman now responds that Hansen doesn't understand the economics of cap-and-trade.

True as that may be, it only makes clear that Krugman doesn't fully grasp the science involved. Nor, on the economics side, does he apparently get, as some of his commenters DO get, that cap-and-trade is easily gamed.

Too bad Hansen can't blog back at Krugman at the NYT site.

Hansen: Junk Copenhagen

NASA’s former top climate scientist says anything likely to come out of the Copenhagen climate summit
could be worse rather than better than where we’re at now.

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means."

He goes on to criticize Barack Obama and even Al Gore.

Oh, Canada, Copenhagen’s eyes are on thee…

Because, even more than the U.S. or China,
you are a climate treaty wrecker.

China promises 45 percent CO2 cuts - but, nothing new

Well, this all sounds great.

BUT, if it really is true, Beijing, then why won't you commit to even nominal mandatory cuts for the Copenhagen round?

This is why. China is not promising anything that won't happen already, anyway:

Michael Levi, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the announcement "disappointing," because the Energy Information Administration estimates that existing Chinese policies will already cut the nation's carbon intensity by 45 to 46 percent.

So, we'll see. Color me a bit skeptical.

Of course, isn't Obama's latest proposal pretty much in the same territory, being at least partially based on changes that will happen naturally, anyway?

U.S. to offer target numbers for Copenhagen

But, this bit of good news has two big caveats.

First, climate negotiator Todd Stern notes it’s conditioned on the U.S. legislative process. So, if the Senate doesn’t pass Waxman-Markey in three weeks, does that mean no numbers?

Second, Obama’s attendance is still up in the air — and some Europeans are getting a bit frustrated.

Spiegel reams Obama on climate change

The popular German magazine says U.S. President Barack Obama lied in Berlin a year ago, has sold out to the lobbyists he said he would fight, and has forfeited his claim to be a world citizen.

The magazine then faults average Americans’ notable insularity:

For most Americans, the world beyond the US's borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance.

That’s part of also deploring Obama’s likely no-show in Copenhagen next month.

As a parting shot, Speigel goes quasi-apocalyptic:

But if the worst-case scenario becomes reality at Copenhagen and at the follow-up conferences -- if, in other words, world leaders ignore the findings of the global scientific community -- then the US will find itself in a very uncomfortable position. America will be seen as the primary culprit of global warming -- and this after the US, with its rampant real estate speculation, has given us a global economic crisis that has not only destroyed assets, but pushed 100 million people worldwide into hunger. With that kind of track record, the US hardly has a claim any more to the leadership of the Western world — let alone a Nobel Peace Prize for its leader.

Wow.

Copenhagen climate round gutted

In one sense, this decision is political realism, both here in the US and internationally.

On the domestic side, I hope that President Obama and Congress use the breathing space to get serious about a jobs bill. Out of both political need and political smarts.

Could US-China talks spur climate agreement?

Oh, the idea sounds optimistic on paper, or in the paper, but, color me somewhat skeptical. That said, Copenhagen climate summit expectations are now so low, any achievement at all next week between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao would get trumpeted.

No Copenhagen climate treaty this year?

British Climate Secretary Ed Miliband says expect only a political deal, not an actual treaty.

No real surprise there. And, contra warnings from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern that only a "politically binding" agreement can now be achieved, I wouldn't even hold my breath on that, especially given that Mr. Stern's boss is unlikely to see, or motivate, the Senate passing a climate-control bill.

Some EU delegates blame legal complexities, but at least one developing-nation representative rejects that. Says South Africa's Alf Wills, who co-ordinates the G77/China bloc of developing countries on extending the Kyoto Protocol,:

"China has published a five-year plan, India has published proposals, as has Brazil - and a few weeks ago Indonesia said it would cut the rate of growth of emissions by 40%, doing 26% of that by itself (without outside aid)."

Read the full story for more analysis.

EU hopes to break climate talks deadlock

Good luck with these hopes, especially given splits between richer and poorer EU members on helping other countries. Realistically, Slovakia or Bulgaria paying to help nations not necessarily that much poorer than them to control CO2?

I say that, given the current state of things, and the EU being in the lead on carbon-emissions reduction, we’re better off with the EU setting carbon tariffs against both China and the US.

Obama ditching Copenhagen climate summit

The excuse for him chickening out on discussing climate change, and the lack of U.S. action, in person?

The Nobel Prizes ceremony is on the second day of Copenhagen.

Puhleeze. He just doesn't want to get bashed for lack of U.S. effort, including his own.

And, given that a couple of Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded in the past for environmental issues, the irony climbs higher.

Also, in light of recent polling showing more Americans doubting the reality of global warming, and, within that, doubting its anthropogenic cause, it gives denialists more incentive and boldness to continue their pushback.

Speaking of that, since NASA says 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year on record, let's push back against denialist pushback that claims the climate hasn't warmed in more than a decade.

Hopes for Copenhagen climate deal fade

All that’s likely to happen this December? A political declaration.

The Obama Administration is already saying it won’t get out in front of Congress on this issue, which means any deal with China will be tissue paper or bupkis.

The EU may well push to do more, if it thinks it can make carbon tariffs stick. That’s the one hopeful point.

Because, as the story points out, not much is likely to happen next year either.

No climate deal in Copenhagen this year

Denmark’s climate minister says there won’t be a deal without more U.S. action, and we know how likely that is.

So, why don’t we save the carbon emissions, cancel now, let the EU create carbon tariffs, get more opprobrium dumped on the U.S., and go from there?

Carbon tariffs imposed from abroad is the ONLY thing that will prod the United States at this point, anyway.

That said, Connie Hedegaard said China and India need to step up to the plate, too.

EU smartly hedges climate control bets

The European Union has drawn up a list of industrial sectors to offer state support in case a world-wide climate deal doesn’t get done at Copenhagen in December.

Given that the toothless, Kyoto-cheating Waxman-Markey bill is unlikely to pass the U.S. Senate in even emasculated form, that China is likely to foot-drag on committing to even long-term goals, and more, it’s a smart idea, economically, while staying committed to climate control principals.