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A tax for our future
Tim Colebatch, The Age
A carbon levy would be more effective than an unwieldy emissions trading system.
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..First, if each country goes into these negotiations set on extracting the best deal for its interest groups, nothing will happen — except global warming. To get any deal, everyone must give up something.
Second, Prime Minister John Howard is rightly concerned to protect Australia’s interests as a coal exporter. But we must do that not by putting our foot on the brake to hold up global agreement, but by putting our foot on the accelerator to intensify research, development and use of technologies to shrink emissions from burning coal.
Third, despite the immense obstacles, any worthwhile solution will have to be global, and quick. A national scheme won’t work.
Fourth, the solution must be simple. The more complex it is, the harder to win acceptance — and the more scope for countries to carve out loopholes until we end up with an agreement that does very little. ..
But in international negotiations, a carbon tax has a big advantage that has been ignored. For an international trading scheme to work, countries with very different levels of emissions per capita must agree to finite caps. How would they be allocated? Developing countries will not accept caps based on current emission levels. The US will not accept caps based on equal per capita entitlements. ..
Tim Colebatch is economics editor.
(6 Feb 2007)
Mr Colebatch certainty on what the US might or might not accept forgets functioning international agreements that make concessions for less-industrialised countries on trade and CFC phaseout. –LJ
In wake of latest climate report, calls mount for global response
Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor
Friday’s release of a much-anticipated report on global warming from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in effect asks a profound question of humanity: What do you want your climate to look like over the next several centuries – and probably longer?
The report states in unequivocal terms that the climate is warming globally and that since the middle of the 20th century, human industrial activity – the burning of fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, land-use changes – is warming’s main driver. Since the last report in 2001, confidence in that statement has risen from “likely” (greater than a 66 percent chance) to “very likely” (greater than 90 percent).
But beyond detailing current and projected effects of warming – including sea-level rise, vanishing alpine glaciers, and increases in severe-weather events – the report hints at the need for a conscious control over the environment and a unity of purpose that humans have yet to achieve on such an enormous scale.
“When people think about climate impacts, they think about something very narrow: What icky things are going to happen where I live?” says Jerry Mahlman, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “They don’t say: What’s going to happen to the poor Bangladeshi farmers who get hit with a triple whammy” – rising sea levels, more intense tropical cyclones, and reduced supplies of fresh water. “Everyone wants to talk about their particular piece of turf. But this is a problem that is intrinsically and fundamentally global.” ..
While current legislative efforts at the state and local level represent a start, they merely “sandpaper the edge off of a catastrophe,” Dr. Mahlman says.
A crucial step forward would be to agree on a clear target for stabilizing CO2 concentrations, notes Gerald Stokes, a vice president with Battelle Memorial Laboratories and a former chief scientist for the US Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program.
Setting emissions targets isn’t enough, he says. With a firm target that means something from the atmosphere’s perspective, policymakers are in a better position to determine the technological path countries will need to follow, as well as put a firm economic value on carbon dioxide so the costs and benefits of mitigation – and of delay – can be more accurately assessed.
(5 Feb 2007)
UN chief says climate change has driven world to ‘critical stage’
AFP
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon has warned that climate change had driven the world to a “critical stage,” directly affecting human health and the environment.
“The world has reached a critical stage … despite our best intentions, the degradation of the global environment continues unabated,” Ban said in a message to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) conference in Nairobi on Monday.
Amid concerted calls for global action to stem further damage, Ban vowed to make the divisive climate issue “one of my priorities as secretary general.” ..
“We urge our friends from the developed world to join hands with us from developing countries to bridge the ever-increasing gap … to take economic development to greater heights to benefit the environment.” ..
(5 Feb 2007)
I really hope that last part was a misquote – economic development is not known for benefiting the environment. -LJ
AEI Critiques of Warming Questioned
Think Tank Defends Money Offers to Challenge Climate Report
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
A Washington-based think tank has been soliciting critiques of the just-released international assessment of the evidence on climate change, a move that prompted some academics and environmentalists to accuse the group of seeking to distort the latest evidence for global warming.
Advocacy groups such as Greenpeace and the Public Interest Research Group questioned why the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate- change policy, an overture that was first reported Friday in London’s Guardian newspaper.
…AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green — one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques — said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science. ..
At least two academics — Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor Gerald North and Texas A&M climate researcher Steven Schroeder — turned down AEI’s offer because they feared their work would be politicized.
Schroeder, who has worked with Green in the past and has questioned some aspects of traditional climate modeling, said in an interview that he did not think AEI would have skewed his results. But he added that he worried his contribution might have been published alongside “off-the-wall ideas” questioning the existence of global warming.
“We worried our work could be misused even if we produced a reasonable report,” Schroeder said. “While any human endeavor can be criticized, the IPCC system greatly exceeds the cooperation, openness and scientific rigorousness of the process applied to any other problem area that has significant effects on society.”
…AEI President Christopher DeMuth issued a letter Friday saying his group will continue to challenge orthodox thinking on climate change: “The effort to anathematize opposing views is the standard recourse of the ideologue; one of AEI’s highest purposes, here as in many other contentious areas, is to ensure that such efforts to do not succeed.”
(5 Feb 2007)
The highly ideological AEI is sounding defensive. -BA
Game over on global warming?
Alan Zarembo, LA Times
Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.
The Chinese could close all their factories.
Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern.
But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.
A landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Friday, warns that there is so much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that even if concentrations held at current levels, the effects of global warming would continue for centuries.
There is still hope. The report notes that a concerted world effort could stave off the direst consequences of global warming, such as widespread flooding, drought and extreme weather.
Ultimately eliminating the global warming threat, however, would require radical action.
To stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide – the primary contributor to global warming – CO2 emissions would have to drop 70% to 80%, said Richard Somerville, a theoretical meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
Such a reduction would bring emissions into equilibrium with the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The last time the planet was in balance was more than 150 years ago, before the widespread use of coal and steam engines.
What would it take to bring that kind of reduction?
(5 Feb 2007)
Buy that man a copy of George Monbiot’s Heat which addresses just that question. -BA
