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U.N. Signals Delay in Climate Change Treaty
Bill Curry, Globe and Mail
Divisions are breaking out among European nations over whether an international climate-change deal can still be reached in Copenhagen, with some proposing a new conference for early next year.
Until now, the European Union – which has shown the most enthusiasm toward international climate rules – has insisted any talk of a “Plan B” would destroy momentum heading into December’s United Nations meeting in Copenhagen. This year’s conference is the 15th annual gathering of its kind and has long been billed as the moment the world would sign a new global warming treaty.
Throughout the week, British officials pushed to keep expectations high, insisting there’s still time for a comprehensive deal.
But Norway’s chief negotiator, Hanne Bjurstroem, made waves Friday with a call for a special conference in early 2010 to ink a final deal, adding that her position was supported by Sweden.
“I don’t believe we will get a full, ratifiable, legally binding agreement in Copenhagen,” she said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, predicted earlier this month that talks would have to extend beyond Copenhagen, citing a lack of clear targets from China and the fact that the U.S. Senate has not yet approved U.S. emission targets…
(30 Oct 2009)
Republicans walk out of Senate hearing on climate-change bill
Alexander C. Hart, LA Times
Republicans today boycotted the start of a Senate hearing on climate-change legislation.
The Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee are demanding a full Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the climate bill.
But despite the boycott, committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) still held the meeting, arguing that the EPA’s partial analysis, based on a similar bill passed by the House of Representatives in June, was sufficient.
Making all the projections and running all the models would take the EPA about five weeks.
Because the Senate bill is largely based on the House legislation, the EPA said that full analysis “would likely show the impacts … would be similar.” So the EPA conducted a simplified analysis, drawing heavily on the study it already had made of the House bill and highlighting the parts that differed…
(3 Nov 2009)
African nations make a stand at UN climate talks
John Vidal, the Guardian
African countries have said they are prepared to provoke a major UN crisis if the US and other rich countries do not start to urgently commit themselves to deeper and faster greenhouse gas emission cuts.
In a dramatic day in Barcelona, UN officials were forced to step in after 55 African countries, in an unprecedented show of unity, called for a suspension of all further negotiations on the Kyoto protocol until substantial progress was made by rich countries on emission cuts.
Earlier, the UN chair had been forced to abandon two working groups after the Africa group refused to take part.
The African countries were supported by all other developing country blocks at the talks. In a series of statements, the G77 plus China group of 130 nations, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, as well as Bolivia and several Latin America countries, all broadly backed the African action.
The move by developing countries reflects their deep and growing frustration over the slow progress that industrialised countries are making towards agreeing cuts. With less than three days full negotiating time left between now and the opening of the final talks at Copenhagen, the split between rich and poor countries threatens to blow the talks fatally off course…
(3 Nov 2009)
Senators opposed to the Clean Energy Jobs Act are ignoring the bill’s benefits to Americans
Daniel J. Weiss, Grist
However, this overlooks the fact that CEJAPA is very similar to the House-passed global warming bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). The latter bill has received extensive evaluation and scrutiny from a number of government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Budget Office, and Energy Information Administration. On Oct. 27, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before the Senate Environment Committee that the two bills were so similar that they will likely have the same impact on costs, energy use, and other variables. She said:
Earlier this year, EPA ran the major provisions of the House clean-energy legislation through several economic computer models. When it comes to the specifications that the models can detect, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is very similar to the House legislation. Nevertheless, EPA has examined the ways in which the Senate bill is different and determined which of the conclusions reached about the House-passed bill can confidently be said to apply to the Senate bill as well.
In other words, the updated EPA analysis of the CEJAPA that is based on its assessment of the ACES provides an accurate portrait of the Senate bill’s projected impacts. The more in-depth analysis desired by the dissenters would not shed additional light on CEJAPA’s estimated impacts. Opponents of the bill are using this as an excuse to block the CEJAPA that they oppose regardless.
Their real agenda is to block action on clean-energy jobs legislation. Such efforts would please big oil companies and other special interests who are spending millions of dollars to block this bill. For instance, the New York Times reports that “the oil and gas industry in the third quarter outspent all of the other sectors lobbying on climate … Exxon Mobil Corp. led its sector with $7.2 million in lobbying work, more than the total of the entire alternative energy sector.”…
(X Sept 2009)
We only have months, not years, to save civilisation from climate change
Lester Brown, The Guardian
For those concerned about global warming, all eyes are on December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. The stakes could not be higher. Almost every new report shows that the climate is changing even faster than the most dire projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report.
Yet from my vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.
And second, since it takes years to negotiate and ratify these agreements, we may simply run out of time. This is not to say that we should not participate in the negotiations and work hard to get the best possible result. But we should not rely on these agreements to save civilisation.
Saving civilisation is going to require an enormous effort to cut carbon emissions. The good news is that we can do this with current technologies, which I detail in my book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization….
(3 Nov 2009)
