nbsp;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20…

Brace for the Arctic oil rush - Thursday, March 20, 2008, By DAVID HOWELL, LONDON, For The Japan Times.

For decades the world’s major oil companies and their engineering experts have been eyeing the Arctic region and wondering how to get at the oil and gas deposits that are said to lie, in almost legendary quantities, beneath the vast expanses of ice. With the price of crude oil now well above $100, has their moment at last arrived?

Two factors suggest that this may be the case. First, as long as world oil markets were dominated by cheap Mideast oil that could be easily extracted from the open deserts, there was almost no chance of competition from other regions.

But that era that passed. No one believes that oil will ever again be the cheap and plentiful commodity it once was. Even if the largest reserves remain in the Middle East, the whole region is now a caldron of turbulence.

Ideological Islamism, combined with Israeli-Palestinian feuding, Iranian nuclear ambitions and chronic anti-Americanism throughout the area have combined to make Middle East oil not only more expensive but also increasingly unreliable.

Second, the Arctic ice cap is shrinking. Armed with new technology for extracting oil and gas deep down on the seabed, the oil powers now see opportunities opening up across the whole polar region.

All round the Arctic the “circumpolar nations” have been raising their levels of activity and staking claims to sovereign “ownership” of the Arctic space, while delegations from countries as far afield as China, India and Japan have been streaming toward the ice cap and crowding on to survey ships and exploration vessels, all anxious not to be left out of a possible new oil bonanza.

The Russians in particular have made headlines by planting their national flag, in titanium, on the seabed below the North Pole, with a Gazprom spokesman adding that the Russian energy giant expected “major new discoveries” of oil and gas reserves under the Arctic Ocean, and had large-scale prospecting plans for the region.

Meanwhile, Canada has ordered up new naval patrol vessels to “defend its sovereignty over the Arctic.” The United States, stung by Russian activity, has announced plans for two new polar ships, and the Danes have sent a mission to find out how far Greenland opens the way to claims for Arctic sovereignty.

Staying slightly on the sidelines, Norway, having been embroiled in decades of dispute with Russia over demarcation lines in the Barents Sea, has pleaded for an end to “the gold rush.”

What are all these hopeful searchers likely to find? Of course, in one sense the Norwegians, the Russians and the Americans have already arrived and started nibbling round the edges of the Arctic. The Norwegians have their giant Snohvit project and are already bringing ashore very large quantities of gas for liquefaction at the world’s most northerly LNG plant near Hammerfest.

Meanwhile, the Russians are pushing ahead with their equally large Shtokman development in the Barents Sea, with of course the American interest having long been established via the BP development of the big Prudhoe Bay field on the northern edge of Alaska.

But what lies beyond, nearer to the polar heart of the Arctic’s icy and forbidding wastes? Estimates vary wildly. The most optimistic is that no less than 25 percent of the world’s yet-to-find oil and gas reserves (400 billion barrels of oil equivalent) lie beneath the ice. But that may be too hopeful. A more modest recent estimate is about half that (around 14 percent of world yet-to-find reserves) with about two-thirds of it in gas and the other third, or less, in liquid resources.

But we are getting here into guesswork, although of an informed kind. The much more immediate question is cost. What might be the break-even price of extracting these reserves, or what is likely to be commercially feasible, whether now, with crude at $100 plus, or in the years ahead?

The answers depend both on the limits of current technology and now on global warming. If the Arctic ice cap is going to shrink fast then, whatever the other downside consequences, the accessibility of hydrocarbon reserves is made significantly easier and cheaper. If liquids can be brought out at less than $40 a barrel, that makes them not only comfortably profitable in world markets but also just about competitive against alternatives like Canadian tar sands, Venezuelan heavy oil (also $40), or some of the oil being squeezed from the dregs of older wells via “enhanced-recovery techniques,” which can cost up to $50.

In short, while past estimates may have been inflated, and while the very highest environmental standards will need to be met at every stage to safeguard Arctic wildlife, the economics are beginning to give a wavering green light.

If crude oil prices stay near the present range, if world oil thirst grows as predicted and if the Middle East gets even more dangerous and less inviting, the attraction of Arctic energy could radically alter the pattern of global energy resources and, consequently, geopolitics.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords.

Arctic warming could result in armed conflict: naval expert; Melting of passageway means countries will vie to control it, former coast guard official says.

Peter O’Neil, The Ottawa Citizen, Friday, February 29, 2008, From Paris.

The fast-warming Arctic’s vast economic potential makes it increasingly prone to smuggling, perilous polar tourism, environmental catastrophes and even armed conflict unless Canada and the U.S. lead efforts to bring order to the region, according to a new analysis.

Former U.S. Coast Guard Lt.-Cmdr. Scott Borgerson, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, argued Washington has to start with a Canada-U.S. agreement on how the Arctic should be regulated as global warming opens northern sea lanes. He also called on U.S. leaders to take seriously Canada’s sovereignty claims over the Northwest Passage, as well as consider a way to resolve competing claims involving Russia, Denmark and Norway.

“The United States should not underestimate Canadian passions on this issue,” wrote Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson, a fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations.
He cited ongoing Canadian “sabre-rattling” and noted that Canada is among several countries bulking up their military and surveillance capabilities in the North in anticipation of expanded shipping and energy exploration activity.
“There are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region,” stated the magazine’s summary of Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson’s analysis, called Arctic Meltdown: The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming.

“Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.”
Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson doesn’t specifically identify which countries would engage in battle, though he noted Russia’s increasing assertiveness in claiming sovereignty of huge swaths of the region off its coast.

Territorial disputes and the lack of regulations pose “grave dangers” that could “eventually lead to … armed brinkmanship” involving not only the countries staking claims, but also energy-hungry newcomers like China eying the North, he wrote.
The U.S. has consistently rejected Canada’s claim of right of control over the Northwest Passage. It has also refused to ratify the United Nations Law of the Sea because the Senate views the treaty as an encroachment on U.S. sovereignty.
Lt.-Cmdr. Borgerson said the U.S. government’s status outside the treaty restricts its ability to assert its own territorial claims off the Alaskan coast. He also asserted that the U.S. needs, as a first step, to strike an accord with Canada on regulating vessel and tanker traffic in the North.
Citing studies suggesting an ice-free Arctic in the summer as early as 2013, he said the U.S. should seek a broad treaty with all Arctic countries as well as a bilateral deal with Canada to manage and police shipping and Arctic activity, including tourism and environmental protection.

Among the concerns he cited:

- How to carve up the “the world’s longest uncharted and most geologically complex continental shelf among five states with competing claims.”

- How to regulate and protect a region facing an explosion of offshore oil and gas exploration and development. “Oil tankers present a particularly grave environmental threat, as illustrated by three recent oil spills in the much safer waters of the San Francisco Bay, the Black Sea, and the Yellow Sea.”

- How to clean up the hazard created by Russia’s dumping of 18 reactors, some still fully loaded with nuclear fuel, in the Arctic Ocean between 1958 and 1992.

- How to recognize the interests of one million indigenous people whose rights in areas such as the bowhead whale hunt, which could be jeopardized by an explosion of shipping activity by companies seeking to exploit far quicker sea routes than exist today from Asia to Europe through the Panama Canal.

======

Adds by Google that came along with the Ottawa Post article - Then why why should not Google also try to make money from the global misery like mostly everyone else is bound to do?:
(Yes - this is also freedom of speech and freedom of the press - the dissemination of venom that can make money for someone!)

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Visiting Antarctic, Amazon Helped Climate Case - Ban.
By REUTERS from JAKARTA: Posted On Monday December 17, 2007. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday, December 15, 2007, that visiting Antarctica and the Amazon had brought home to him personally the critical need to tackle climate change.

Nearly 200 nations meeting in Bali reached a deal to launch talks on a pact to fight global warming, but only after a reversal by the United States allowed a historic breakthrough.

The United Nations will decide in February whether to extend the mandate of its mission in the country, which became fully independent in 2002 after voting to break away from Indonesian rule in a violence-marred UN sponsored ballot in 1999.

Story by Ed Davies, Story Date: 17/12/2007

————–

At www.SustainabiliTank.info that raised questions about the UNSG trip from New York To Valencia, Spain via The Korean Scientific Station At the Antarctica, the Chilean Military Outpost in an Area Dispute By Argentina and Chile, and His Trip To the Amazonas, These Without Any Thoughts About Offsets.

Will We now Expect The UNSG To Go To Every Place Of Major Conflict In Order To See It For Himself - The Likes Of The Places Where There Are Ongoing Killings In Darfur, The Shderot Village In Israel Where There Is Quite Often Shelling From Hamas Run Gaza? Or Is The UNSG Just Going To Pick Nice Places Like The Coral Bleaching Area Of The Coast Of Australia, The Coast Of Dalmatia, Miami Beach in Florida?

Sorry, But Skepticism Is The Mark Of Good Blog Journalism - The Kind That The UN Is Very Much Short Off. 

 Despite the hoopla, the UN is not exactly the place were leadership on climate change will evolve. We saw this at the New York UN Headquarters where the UN Department of Public Information was leading away, the journalists it is supposed to inform, from any such notions as described in this article. Many journalists from large circulation papers, paid for writing just human rights, injustice to women, inflammatory articles, but without any mandate to look for reasons that contributed to the situations they describe, were part of this UN cover-up. It was all a disgrace of a true information service. The few investigative journalists that were asking the right questions were being held at a short leash with the  danger of being expelled hanging over their head. Even UNFCCC’s most important leader, Yvo de Boer, did not have the courage to speak up against this undertow at the UN. We concluded then justifiably that such a UN will not help. It is only single governments, like the UK, now under a second forthcoming leadership, perhaps now also Australia under its new leadership, that present the world with some hope. it will be only if these few fighting governments will prevail over other governments - the US, China, India … that change may be on its way.  www.SustainabiliTank.info comments)

Bali Conference: Diplomats warned that climate change is security issue, not a green dilemma.
By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor, The Independent, December 6, 2007.

Foreign policy-makers are waking up to the impact of climate change on conflict zones worldwide, and will add their voice to those calling on governments at the UN conference in Bali to act urgently.

An internal presentation to senior diplomats at the Foreign Office listed every recent, serious breakdown of civil order around the world and mapped it against those countries hardest hit by climate change. The fit was almost perfect. One of the diplomats present said there was an “audible intake of breath” from the audience when the slide was shown.

As the scientific debate has been unequivocally settled by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year, it has become increasingly apparent that its effects will have major implications for foreign policy.

“Climate change presents an enormous challenge to the international community, and unless we respond effectively we won’t be able to deal with the implications,” said John Ashton, the UK’s special representative for climate change. “We need to see how we can use the assets at our disposal to something about it.”

Those assets include the know-how to build international coalitions, and the kind of influence over governmental decision-making that environment ministers can only dream of. Analysts point out that while environment experts know how to make emissions trading work, it’s a “political fact” that you get a quicker response to a security crisis.

Delegations from some 190 countries began talks on the Indonesian island of Bali yesterday, aimed at agreeing a “road map” for a successor to the Kyoto protocol. There are concerns that, despite scientific and business consensus on the urgent need for deep cuts to carbon emissions, Bali will be simply more talks about talks.

From rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean to the increasing spread of desert in Africa’s Sahel region and water shortages in the Middle East, global warming will cause new wars across the world and is being described by diplomats as a “threat multiplier” – adding new stress to areas of traditional geopolitical instability.

Mr Ashton was brought into the Foreign Office by the former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett last year as a “climate-change ambassador” to try to instil a sense of urgency on the issue in the diplomatic service. Britain also used its presidency of the UN Security Council to lead its first debate on climate change and conflict. “What makes wars start?” asked Mrs Beckett. “Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats… to peace and security itself.”

“Societies are not prepared for the scale and the speed with which they will have to decide what they will do with people.”

How ‘climate proofing’ could prevent conflict:

Were global carbon emissions to be cut by half today, any mitigating effects on climate change would take at least two decades to appear. In the short term we are locked into global warming, so efforts to “climate proof” the nations set to be hit hardest by it is one of the biggest tasks facing the UN, and the most effective means of reducing the likelihood of climate-driven wars.

For Uruguay and Argentina, the report urged “a review of coastal and city defences, and of early-warning systems and flood-response strategies” along the river Plate. In Gambia, a projected decline in rainfall this century is likely to cut yields of millet. Cases of dengue fever in the Caribbean could triple, and better education about the risks could help. “Adaptation is not an option – it’s essential,” said Neil Leary of the International Start Secretariat in Washington, who led the studies.

Inner City Press Posted an Analysis Of The UN News Of The Secretary-General’s Trip To The ABC Countries and to Antarctica. As, according to old Heisenberg Principle, the visit by the Secretary-General has changed the situation so that what he saw is not how it was intended by him to see it, or what he would have learned by having accepted reports from many hundred scientists, so it is really the minimum to ask if he worried at least about carbon off-sets. So, we learn he might not be attuned yet to the idea that he should have done so. Ego-trip 0r eco-trip it really does not matter, and we think that his trip to war-torn Lebanon was a much better use of Secretariat time. We wait now for his statement in Valencia on matters of climate change, and his statement when back in New York on matters of Syria. (our comments)

UN’s Ban Jokes of Eco-Tour, Heads Without Carbon Off-Setting to Biofuels Debate in Brazil.

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis.

UNITED NATIONS, November 10 — Speaking in Antarctica, apparently without questions from reporters, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “This trip, you may call it an eco-trip, but I’m not here as a tourist.” Or did he? The UN’s version of the quote, emailed out to UN correspondents, is “We joke among ourselves that we are on an ‘Eco-tour,’ but I am not here as a tourist.” Emphasis added. Note, and hope, for the trajectory from defensive to collegial. During his tour of melting ice, Ban stopped at a South Korean scientific base where, the Associated Press reports, he was “greeted by a small reception and offered traditional Korean food and drink.”

The Antarctic ice sheet covers 13.6 million square kilometers, including islands and ice shelves, and has an average thickness of about 2,400 meters. The inland ice has a depth up to double that, making Antarctica easily the highest of the continents.

Beyond the melting ice, troubling is brewing around Antarctica. The UK last month said it is considering lodging territorial rights over an area of the continental shelf off Antarctica covering more than 1 million square kilometers. Argentina and Chile immediately came out with their own claims. Other countries, including Russia, France, Australia, New Zealand and Norway, have lodged earlier claims or have reserved the right to do so. China announced this week that it would build a new third research station on the White Continent and beef up its scientific presence there. Similarly about the North Pole, countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are making competing claims to adjacent sub-sea territory that is thought to contain vast reserves of oil and natural gas. The bordering states are Russia, the United States, Norway, Denmark (through Greenland) and Canada. Diplomacy, anyone?

Back in New York on November 9, Inner City Press asked Ban’s Associate Spokesman if his travel is being carbon-offset. Pursuing the same question about the climate change debate during the UN’s General Debate in September, Inner City Press was told by Ban, collegially, that it was an “unexpected question.” Is it still unexpected? From the November 9 transcript:

Inner City Press: Has any arrangement been made to try to offset the carbon emissions caused by this travel to Antarctica?

Associate Spokesperson: The issue of carbon offsetting is a complex and long-term challenge that would require creative thinking and a firm commitment to be addressed. For the Secretary-General’s part, he wants the UN to lead by example, which is why, during the last meeting of the Chief Executive’s Board, just a few weeks ago, he obtained a commitment of all the heads of agencies, programs and specialized agencies to move their own organizations forward to what we call climate neutrality in their daily operations. But as for the specific trip to Antarctica that’s taking place today, that’s being organized by the Chilean Government, so we’ll be checking with them whether any carbon offsetting arrangements have been made by them, after this.

Some question whether, if the Secretary General is to lead, simply waiting to hear is the Chilean government carbon-offset its tour of the Secretary General constitutes leadership. We’ll see.

Ban Ki-moon in Santiago, melting ice and food security not shown

Before Ban left on this trip, in his final November 6 meet-the-press at the Security Council stakeout, Inner City Press asked for his views on the balance between food production for the poor and devoting land to biofuels:

Inner City Press: You’re visiting an ethanol facility, I believe in Brazil. One of your Special Rapporteurs on food had said that this use of land for biofuel instead of for food was hurting the poor and that there should be a moratorium on it. So he encouraged us to ask you, what’s your view of the balance between food for the poor, under the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] and cleaner fuels?

Ban Ki-moon: As a means of addressing these climate change issues, having alternate resources, or renewable resources of energy, this is a very important aspect. I know that research and development has taken place in many countries, particularly Brazil has been in the lead of the group in the research and development of biofuels. In fact, the UN research report published this year underscored that biofuels [have] greater promise in addressing these global warming issues through low-carbon emissions. At the same time, as you suggested, it is true that there are some concerns expressed, by specialists or experts, on the possible impact on food security. This is also an area which needs attention. Therefore, I would encourage that both research and development and debate should be made. As Secretary-General what I would like to say is that again, the elimination of extreme poverty should be also a top priority. Therefore, how to reconcile or have some balanced development addressing these issues will be very important. I am going to discuss this matter when I visit Brazil, with Brazilian leaders, and look for myself.

A statement is to be expected.

———————–

And From Valencia, Spain - The Associated Press, November 16, 2007: “Working until dawn, negotiators on Friday concluded a policy guide for governments on global warming that declares climate change is here and is getting worse, one of its authors said. Provisional agreement on the text — which is about 20 pages and summarizes thousands of pages of data and projections — required compromises among the more than 140 delegations, but resulted in a ‘good and balanced document,’ said Bert Metz, a Dutch scientist who helped draft the report. The brief Summary for Policymakers is expected to get final approval later Friday after a longer version of about 70 pages is reviewed and adopted. It is to be released Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Until then, the text is supposed to remain confidential.”

So, The UNSG will release in Valencia the document that will be handed to him there by Dr. Pachauri, the Executive of the IPCC meeting in which diplomats from 140 UN Member States tried to find the lowest common denominator of that material that it took the scientist’s four years to assemble. The diplomats argued for five days and some NGOs were present in an effort to push upwards this lowest common denominator of the consensus.

The UN Secretary-General went on his fact-finding eco-tour in order to be able to say in Valencia about the melting ice - I was there, I saw that. But with his best intentions, arriving to Valencia in time just to release that document will be too late for him having any impact on the outcome. The only question we hear in our mind is thus - “did you do something in order to off-set the ecological foot-print of your trip?” We hope that in Valencia the UN mechanism will come up with a better answer then the Akiyo Akasaka, Ahmad Fawzi, Michelle Montas team in New York.

 http://environment.independent.co.uk/cli…

This is from The Reporter for The Independent, Gideon Long, Directly From The Chilean Military Outpost, The Eduardo Frei Base, That Is A Bone Of Contention Between 2 or 3 Sovereign UN Member States, November 12, 2007.

As Said, in Order To Get There The UN Secretary-General Will Have Traveled 12,000 miles and No Word Yet If His Trip Was Covered With Emission Off-Sets.

“UN chief visits scientists in Antarctica for global warming fact-finding tour,” writes Gideon Long, but when we were there two years ago we visited baracks of the military that were decorated inside still with Photos of General Pinochet.

When Ban Ki-moon clambered out of a Chilean Air Force transport plane and planted his boots in the snows of Antarctica, he became the first head of the United Nations ever to visit the world’s icy underbelly.

A fleeting visit, perhaps, but one which underscores how rapidly global warming is rising up the political agenda. Mr Ban was on a fact-finding mission over the weekend ahead of a major United Nations conference on climate change in Bali next month.

At the Asia Society diner we wrote about, Mr. Ban was talking about an ECO-FACT-FINDING MISSION.

There, at Bali, the international community will try to work out what steps it can take to curb greenhouse emissions. A key deadline of the much-ignored Kyoto protocol is due to expire in 2012 and so far the world has yet to decide what comes next.

On Antarctica, scientists told Mr Ban of the changes they have witnessed on the continent’s peninsula, the finger of land that reaches out from the South Pole towards the southern tip of South America. “The temperature increase here over the last 50 years has been up to 10 times the global average,” said Gino Casassa, a Chilean expert and member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

In early 2002, Larsen B, an ice shelf about 10 times the size of the Isle of Wight, peeled away from the continent and crashed into the sea. “Nobody believed that Larsen B … could collapse in a matter of weeks,” Mr Casassa said.

From the Chilean base Mr Ban hopped into a snowmobile and dropped in on his compatriots at South Korea’s King Sejong research station, where another retreating glacier is being monitored.

From Antarctica, Mr Ban flew over Grey’s Glacier in southern Chile, a wall of ice four miles wide, the façade of the which is riven with cracks that experts blame on global warming. Chile, which accounts for 0.2 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, is home to three-quarters of all the glaciers in South America. It is also home to the world’s driest desert, the Atacama, which has been encroaching southwards as rainfall diminishes.

Mr Ban flew yesterday to Brazil, where he was due to see the effects of logging and burning on the Amazon rainforest.

The secretary general and his entourage will have clocked up about 17,000 air miles by the time they get back to New York.

———-

The Reuters Reporting by Juan Jose Lagorio From Eduardo Frei Base:

U.N.’s Ban says global warming is “an emergency.”

EDUARDO FREI BASE, Antarctica, Nov 10 (Reuters) - With prehistoric Antarctic ice sheets melting beneath his feet, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for urgent political action to tackle global warming.

The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else on Earth in the last 50 years, making the continent a fitting destination for Ban, who has made climate change a priority since he took office earlier this year.

“I need a political answer. This is an emergency and for emergency situations we need emergency action,” he said during Friday’s visit to three scientific bases on the barren continent, where temperatures are their highest in about 1,800 years.

Antarctica’s ice sheets are nearly 1.5 miles (2.5 km) thick on average — five times the height of the Taipei 101 tower, the world’s tallest building. But scientists say they are already showing signs of climate change.

Satellite images show the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning and may even collapse in the future, causing sea levels to rise.

Amid occasional flurries of snow, Ban flew over melting ice fields in a light plane, where vast chunks of ice the size of six-story buildings could be seen floating off the coast after breaking away from ice shelves.

“All we’ve seen has been very impressive and beautiful, extraordinarily beautiful,” he told reporters. “But at the same time it’s disturbing. We’ve seen … the melting of glaciers.”

It was the first visit by a U.N. chief to Antarctica.

Ban is preparing for a U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December, which is expected to kick off talks on a new accord to curb carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Ban has focused strongly on the environment and held a climate change summit at the United Nations on the eve of the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

On Saturday, he is expected to continue his South American tour at Chilean national park Torres del Paine, where Andean glaciers are also being affected by global warming.

He will then visit Brazil, a leading force in developing biofuels from crops as an alternative to fossil fuels. Fears about climate change have fueled a boom in biofuels.

Despite the controversy of diverting food crops into fuel production, Ban has said alternative energy sources are vital to addressing climate change.

Antarctica — a continent with only about 80,000 temporary residents — is 25 percent bigger than Europe and its ice sheets hold some 90 percent of the fresh water on the Earth’s surface.

(( helen.popper at reuters.com; +54 911 4198 3488; Reuters Messaging: helen.popper.reuters.com@reuters.net))

Richard Heinberg’s Museletter #187: Big Melt Meets Big Empty, November 4, 2007.

Big Melt Meets Big Empty, Rethinking the Implications of Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Environmental and development NGOs are now fixated on climate change to the exclusion of nearly every other topic. Discussions in and among these organizations center on capping carbon emissions and trading emissions rights, and doing this internationally in a way that will be deemed equitable by the global South and acceptable to the industrial Northern countries.

Most of these policy organizations are seeking ways of implementing recommendations made in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which suggested that to keep the global average temperature rise to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (by consensus, the maximum increase the world’s climate system can absorb without triggering catastrophic climate change), the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere must be capped at 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalents. This will require a 60 to 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions below current levels by 2050.

In order to win any reduction agreement from less-industrialized nations, the richer, more industrialized nations will have to promise to reduce their emissions more and faster. A growing number of organizations (including the Global Commons Institute, EcoEquity, the Climate Equity Project, Feasta, Just Transition Alliance, The Sky Trust, and Third World Network) contend that the fairest solution would be to allocate annually capped emissions rights globally on an equal per-capita basis; then, if wealthy nations wished to continue using proportionally more fossil fuels, they would have to purchase emissions rights from more parsimonious consumers in poor nations. This would result over time in both a diminishing amount of total emissions (based on the declining trajectory of the annual caps) and an enormous transfer of wealth from the more-industrialized to the less-industrialized nations. Some organizations advocate immediate allotment of equal per-capita emissions rights; others envision a staged implementation of the program, that would give wealthier nations time to plan and adjust (the two most widely promoted versions of this strategy are known as “Contraction and Convergence” and “Cap and Share”).

From the perspective of less-industrialized countries, a global climate policy that does not include an equity provision is a non-starter. The existing humanly produced atmospheric carbon, which will continue driving climate change for the next 40 years or so even if all emissions are halted now, was generated overwhelmingly by rich countries in the process of getting rich. Thus it is these countries’ obligation to shoulder most of the burden of necessary cutbacks. A second equity argument has to do with expected population growth: since the population of the global South is expected to double during the next 50 years while total population in rich countries is projected to remain at current levels (the US is an exception), even if the South reduces carbon emissions at half the rate of the industrial North that will translate to an equivalent per-capita cut.

If people in the industrializing countries (particularly China and India) continue to burn more coal and drive more cars, they will metaphorically cook the planet. These nations have the highest growth rates for fossil fuel emissions, and China is set to soon become the world’s foremost carbon emitter if it has not already done so. These nations are in effect saying to North America, Europe, and Japan, “Agree to reduce your emissions faster than we do, or we won’t reduce ours at all and the entire planet will burn.”

This Grand Bargain could amount to an unprecedented shift of the world’s economic center of gravity. During decades of “development” policy and aid, the disparity between rich and poor only grew; now, however, the poor world has a weapon - even if its use implies a suicide pact.

The environment/development advocacy community is pushing its agenda with particular urgency for two reasons: first, scientific data show dramatic climate impacts already appearing that could devastate global ecosystems within decades or even years (more on that in a moment); and second, the agenda itself promises to solve at one stroke three enormous problems - the world’s unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, a pending environmental catastrophe, and the global equity dilemma.

However, the Grand Bargain is going to hit three serious snags before it can gain acceptance: politics, scarcity of fuels, and a growing perception that it is already too late to avert catastrophic climate change. These barriers may require new tactics if NGOs are to achieve their goals.

Has the Climate Revolver Already Fired?

In a paper titled “Climate Change and Trace Gases” published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society earlier this year, six of America’s leading climate scientists, led by James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that the Earth is rapidly approaching a “tipping point” beyond which climate change will become unstoppable  www.planetwork.net). The authors discussed feedback mechanisms not included in the assessments of the IPCC and argued that unless effective measures are put in place to control CO2 emissions over the next ten years, the rise in the Earth’s temperature could set loose self-reinforcing processes that would be beyond human control.

Some critics said Hansen was overstating his case. Richard Peltier, a University of Toronto physicist and the director of the Centre for Global Change Science, criticized the tone of the paper and the use of words such as “cataclysm,” saying that Hansen had moved “dangerously away from scientific discourse to advocacy”  http://postcarboncities.net/node/1018).

But this was before the summer Arctic ice melt of 2007.
This year, Arctic ice reached a minimum extent of 4.13 million square kilometers, compared to the previous record low of 5.32 million square kilometers in 2005. This represented a decline of 22 per cent in just two years; the difference amounted to an expanse of ice roughly the size of Texas and California combined. Between 1979 and 2005, the rate of Arctic ice retreat had averaged 7 percent per decade; in the two years from September 2005 to September 2007 that rate increased to more than 20 percent. Moreover, the average thickness of the ice has declined by about half since 2001. Altogether, taking into account both geographic extent and thickness, summer Arctic sea ice has lost more than 80 per cent of its volume in four decades. While sea levels will not be directly affected by the total melting of the northern icecap since it floats on and thus displaces ocean water, that event will severely destabilize Greenland’s ice pack - whose disappearance would cause sea levels to rise by several meters, inundating coastal cities home to hundreds of millions.

The organization Carbon Equity issued a report last month, “The Big Melt: Lessons from the Arctic Summer of 2007″  www.carbonequity.info), which draws conclusions from this disturbing new information:

The data surveyed suggests strongly that in many key areas the IPCC process has been so deficient as to be an unreliable and indeed a misleading basis for policy-making. . . . Take just one example: the most fundamental and widely supported tenet - that 2°C represents a reasonable maximum target if we are to avoid dangerous climate change - can no longer be defended. Today at less than a 1°C rise the Arctic sea ice is headed for very rapid disintegration, in all likelihood triggering the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet and catastrophic sea level increases. Many species are on the precipice, climatechange- induced drought or changing monsoon patterns are sweeping every continent, the carbon sinks are losing capacity and the seas are acidifying. . . . The Arctic began to lose volume at least 20 years ago when the global temperature was about 0.5°C over the pre-industrial level. So we can now see that to protect the Arctic the average global temperature rise should be under 0.5°C.
According to the report, if this suggested 0.5°C precautionary warming cap were adopted, the target for allowable concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases would have to be about 320 ppm CO2 equivalents, a level that was passed more than 50 years ago.

Another report published this month, this one in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/23/climatechange.carbonemissions), documents that carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than previously thought, and only adds weight to the Carbon Equity recommendations. While global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning rose annually by 0.7 percent in the 1990s, the new study shows they have increased by an average 2.9 percent each year since 2000.

What would targets of 0.5 degrees warming over pre-industrial levels, and 320 ppm CO2e, mean in terms of policy? While the Carbon Equity report doesn’t say so, if all nations were to bear the brunt of equal emissions cuts the latter would have to be huge - well over 90 percent in just three or four decades. But if international equity is also targeted, this means that for the wealthy nations more than 100 percent reduction would be needed. In other words, leaving aside the notion of carbon capture and storage (discussed below), not only would wealthy nations have to transform their economies to run entirely without fossil fuels (which currently supply 85 percent of world energy), but they would need to spend considerable capital on efforts to capture and sequester existing atmospheric carbon - for example, through massive reforestation projects. One has to wonder: With all the energy and investment that would be needed to de-carbonize industrial economies (by developing renewable energy sources, building public transportation infrastructure, and so on) and store carbon, what money and energy would be left to run existing economies, much less to fuel growth in goods and services to the population?
Politics: An Alternate Reality:

Climate science exists in a different world from the one peopled by politicians. Inhabitants of both worlds think of themselves as realists: while scientists study the real physical world, politicians are arbiters of what can and will get done in the real human socio-economic world.

In general, any policy that means voluntary economic contraction of any noticeable magnitude doesn’t stand much of a chance in the real world of politics. At least in the current political climate, absent a massive public education effort, voters will not support it and no politician will stake her career on it.

This in itself constitutes an enormous roadblock to the achievement even of the IPCC recommendations, much less the far more stringent targets (but more “realistic” ones in the scientific sense) that Carbon Equity is proposing. Faced with this roadblock, climate activists typically respond by minimizing the estimated cost of de-carbonizing economies, and by assuring one and all that economic growth can continue into the indefinite future while industrial nations radically reduce their consumption of the very fuels that made the industrial revolution possible. But if this sanguine, politically acceptable notion is at least arguable in the case of the IPCC reduction targets, it is hardly credible when it comes to the emissions reduction trajectory suggested by Carbon Equity.

Take the US as an atypical but essential example. One can realistically calculate a possible 50 percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption for the country through conservation (though that will be an enormous job, requiring extensive new electrified public transport infrastructure, new housing codes, subsidized energy retrofit programs, and so on). Another 25 percent of current fossil fuel consumption could be offset with renewable energy sources. All of this would take a few decades, and during that time we have to assume no population growth and no economic growth. That gets us to 75 percent reduction from current levels. Beyond that, it is difficult to see how more could be achieved - unless America continues burning fossil fuels but captures and stores the carbon. Suddenly with that possibility a relief valve is opened: coal-based electricity could flow in to fill the void.

This is why carbon capture and storage is the technical centerpiece of most politically acceptable prescriptions for climate salvation. However, technologies for carbon capture will add to the cost of energy, will reduce the amount of useful energy derivable from fossil fuels, and won’t be ready for widespread commercial application for about three decades. We do not even know if the captured carbon will stay where we put it. These are not trivial problems, and the first two will bite hard in the emerging context of scarce energy supplies and high prices (more on that below).

Still, politicians are feeling increasing pressure from constituents, NGOs, and the scientific community to agree at least to the IPCC target of 60 to 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050. The European nations have signed on to a carbon reduction scheme, as has the state of California. The method being adopted is cap and- trade - the creation of a carbon emissions rights market that, according to its critics, is actually an elaborate shell game that enables wealthy nations and energy corporations to continue burning fuels at high rates by paying others to do the hard work of figuring out how to get by on less fuel (a point hilariously illustrated on the website www.cheatneutral.com). While cap-and-trade employs many of the same basic mechanisms as the emissions rights distribution programs advocated by the environmental/equity NGOs, there are also substantial differences: governments and corporations envision high caps and free or auctioned distribution of emissions rights to industry; the NGOs advocate much lower caps and free distribution of rights to the people. Resolving these two visions of the process will be no small matter.

But let’s assume the best - that cap-and-trade will in fact move nations toward their targeted reductions; in that case, would promises continue to be met if compliance began to compromise economic growth? Significantly, California’s climate law, AB32, contains an escape clause:

In the event of extraordinary circumstances, catastrophic events, or threat of significant economic harm, the Governor may adjust the applicable deadlines for individual regulations, or for the state in the aggregate, to the ear