“Full-body scanners on display at Reagan National Airport: Many experts say the full-body scanners would have detected the explosives carried aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but the
machines have also raised privacy concerns over the detailed body image that is displayed as part of the screening.”

TSA – Transportation and Security Administration – tries to assuage privacy concerns about full-body scans.

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 4, 2010
It has come to this.

Already shoeless, beltless and waterless, more beleaguered air passengers will be holding their legs apart, raising their arms and effectively baring it all as they pass through U.S. airport security
checkpoints.

Add the “full-body scan” to the list of indignities that some travelers are confronting in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era of vigilance.

Federal authorities, working to close security gaps exposed by the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, are multiplying the number of imaging machines at the nation’s biggest
airports. The devices scan passengers’ bodies and produce X-ray-like images that can reveal objects concealed beneath clothes…….

- – - – - -

now add the “me-au” from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, ADC Legal Director   nshora at adc.org

Washington, D.C. | January 5, 2010 | www.adc.org |

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply concerned by the new Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) directives, which went into effect on January 4th at midnight.  According to news sources, these directives will require citizens from 14 countries, all Arab or Muslim countries, with the exception of Cuba, to go through enhanced security screening. Such screening can include full pat-downs, scans, delays, and anything associated with secondary screening – an extra search of the passenger’s carry-on luggage may also be required.  News sources also stated that the directives are applicable to any travelers, including US CITIZENS, who have passed through one of these 14 countries, or who have taken flights that have originated from these 14 countries.

ADC is very troubled as such directives will have negative ramifications on Arab-Americans, citizens of the 14 countries, and all Americans who visit these countries. A disparate segment of the Arab-American community will be scrutinized because of these new guidelines. The blanket labeling of hundreds of millions of civilians based solely on their country of citizenship or travel is not only unfairly discriminatory based on national origin, but also improperly labels millions of innocent people as somehow suspect or possible terrorists.

The new directives came following the Christmas Day attempted airline attack that threatened our national security, and which ADC has strongly condemned. Implementing an effective and productive counterterrorism tool is paramount. However, casting a wide net against individuals based on their country of origin, race or religion is not an effective counterterrorism tool. During the past decade, similar racial, ethnic and religious profiling tactics and practices have time and again misdirected precious counterterrorism resources, damaged foreign relations with key allies, fueled the fires of extremists by giving them an excuse, stigmatized communities, and most importantly did not have any discernible impact on security. Based on precedent, these new directives will be no different than these past practices and their adverse consequences; and while such directives may appear to make us feel safer, the reality is that they discriminate against innocent persons and divert attention from real threats.

Resources must instead be focused on high-risk individuals based on proper intelligence, better coordination and communication between different governmental agencies. In addition, continued engagement with the Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community groups must be strengthened, and must not be discouraged by ethnic profiling tactics.

ADC has been in contact with TSA and the Department Homeland Security (DHS) and is planning to file a complaint and request for additional information with the Department.  ADC urges all travelers affected by these new guidelines to always comply with the Transportation Security Officer’s (TSO’s) request.  In the event of any abuse or misuse of authority, please request the TSO’s name and badge number, and file a complaint with ADC’s Legal Department at  legal at adc.org.

==============

Honestly, I feel the pain of decent members of the ADC, but am appalled at the chutzpah to announce the complaints of that organization without a single word attached saying that as loyal citizens to this country they are ready to organize themselves in units of informers when it comes to transgressions by people from their country of birth, that are endangering the security of the country that gave to the ADC members the privilege of life under a secular democracy.

Yes, I know that the ADC has members that are Muslim, Christian or atheists. I know they have no Jews in ADC, but that is not the issue. The Arab countries, other Asian countries, and the African Arabized countries, on the list of 13, are all Islamic countries – in all of them Christians and Jews face very serious difficulties. Further, I know of good Muslims in the US and overseas, that participate with enlightened Jews in order to build bridges between communities. in Copenhagen I actually participated during the Climate conference at a pilgrimage that took us to places of worship that were Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim (that last meeting was held in the rooms of a Danish humanist society) – in this time sequence. Yes – good relationships are possible, but that will happen only when, and if, there is a clear understanding, and voiced recognition, that Islamic terrorism originates with Muslim individuals, and that in order to safeguard ourselves, profiling in search of instruments of terror is not a dirty word, but a means of self defense.

Also, in order to avoid needless friction, I suggest that the ADC moves front and center in the global effort to disengage from the addiction to oil.

And one more item – this website does speak up for Cuba as they surely are not part of the group of countries responsible for Islamicists performing acts of terror. So, they do not belong on that list of 14.

THE DEATH OF THEOCRACY – TEHRAN’S THUGS CANNOT LAST
3 January 2010
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Newsweek

The term “theocracy” trips readily enough off the tongue and is an accurate description of a system where mortals claim the right to dominate other mortals in the name of God. But it is also a word that has uncomfortable implications for those who hope to stay out of the “internal affairs” of other societies. The Iranian theocracy, and the crisis of its regime, is a near-perfect illustration of this dilemma.

By the rule laid down by the mullahs, the Iranian people are not even allowed to meddle in their own internal affairs. They are counted as wards of the state, as children in the care of a paternal priesthood. (It’s for this reason that the humiliation of dictatorship is felt with especial and stinging keenness by the rising generation of young Iranian adults.) The immediate result of theocratic policy when measured by the standard of repression is pretty clear and getting ever clearer: any government that imagines it has a divine warrant will perforce deal with its critics as if they were profane and thus illegitimate by definition.

But now see how this plays out in the ordinary human world, and watch what happens to a state or society that forbids itself the secular catharsis of self-criticism. In 1988 a certain Mr. Rafsanjani paid an urgent call on a certain Mr. Khomeini in order to tell him that Iran had no serious choice but to sign a U.N.-sponsored peace deal with Saddam Hussein. Not even the consecrated martyrs of the Revolutionary Guards could go on taking the catastrophic casualties of the war. Khomeini had resisted Rafsanjani’s “realism” for a long time, claiming that God was on the side of Iran and that his will would therefore prevail. But he was obliged to sign.

Then, desperate to recover religious credibility and honor, and noticing that there were angry protests against an Indian-born novelist living in England, Khomeini doubled and quadrupled the cultural stakes and pronounced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Thus the West came to hear and understand the words ÒfatwaÓ and “jihad,” as exported to non-Muslim societies by bribery and force. To this day—as evidenced by the Danish cartoon controversy and other crises—there is a palpable fear of printing or broadcasting anything that may offend Islamic extremist “sensibilities.”

My colleague and friend Fareed Zakaria wrote not long ago in these pages that there was a significant difference between, say, the Taliban takeover of the Swat Valley and the launching of suicide attacks on the non-Muslim world. I said to him then and I say once more that in the long run this is a distinction without very much difference. A country that attempts to govern itself from a holy book will immediately find itself in decline: the talents of its females repressed and squandered, its children stultified by rote learning in madrassas, and its qualified and educated people in exile or in prison. There are no exceptions to this rule: Afghanistan under the Taliban was the worst single example of beggary-cum-terrorism, and even the Iranians were forced to denounce it—because of its massacre of the Shia—without seeing the irony.

But when the crops fail and the cities rot and the children’s teeth decay and nothing works except the ever-enthusiastic and illiterate young lads of the morality police, who will the clerics blame? They are not allowed to blame themselves, except for being insufficiently zealous. Obviously it must be because the Jews, the Crusaders, the Freemasons have been at their customary insidious work. Thus, holy war must be waged on happier and more prosperous lands.

If you think I exaggerate even slightly, consult the Web sites of the Iranian theocracy and of its Hamas and Hizbullah surrogates and proxies.

These exhorting leaders are not content to inflict their doctrines only on their “own” people. A failed state that cannot allow any grown-up internal debate, or any appeal against the divine edict, will swiftly become an even more failed state and then a rogue one because its limitless paranoia and self-pity must be projected outward. Thus we have a very direct interest in having the Iranian people permitted to interfere in their own internal affairs, and a very immediate reason to insist that the regime’s thugs not make their next appearance on the historical stage with nuclear weapons with which to undergird their claim of unfailing righteousness and conviction that they alone know what it is to be a victim.

We find the following a good summary of movements by people and of the description of the locale which we did not get to see ourselves from the inside, but which we know well from gleaning information from were we could. But having said that, we must add immediately that we have strong disagreements with the assumption that the UN was, and is, the right place to deal with a problem that needs an immediate solution. If one is ready to remove his blinders when analyzing the UN as a problem solver, rather then the nest of intrigue it really is, then one could also figure out when and how to use the UN’s services. One could also be free to initiate the needed process to change this institution from the club of victors of WWII into a potential super-government structure as needed in a world that has become so inter-dependent – that whatever afflicts a remote corner of the world becomes very soon a menace to everyone were we live right here.

Ban Ki-moon and Yvo de Boer are civil servants within the UN system, they are no gods, and now we can say also, they proved that they are no leaders. Flying around the world declaiming with a smiling face SEAL THE DEAL did not create a deal that one can seal.
Yvo de Boer got of the mantra in October, but Ban Ki-moon just declared today at the UN that he sealed a deal in Copenhagen. Does this negate in any way the lamentations we hear from our friend Bates, or it simply turns the UNSG into plain laughing stock?

When it became quite clear that going to Poznan in December 2008, without active US participation, and thus no way to have also China, India, Brazil etc. at the table was counterproductive. Why the Europeans did not speak up is beyond me – and I can say at least that I personally raised that question with Denmark Prime Minister Rasmussen in September 2008, and can say that I did not walk away with the feeling that success was the goal of organizers of the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting.

The bottom lines of these comments are that the fact that we would have wanted to see a much better outcome does not give us the right to blame President Obama for the lack of agreement to what was nothing more then a bundle of wishes.

Whatever the critics may think, Obama took a dead issue with lots of quasi-leaders running around and spreading accusations, but not ready to negotiate a deal, and for the first time managed to move the issue quite a few squares ahead. Yes – he did get China, India and South Africa to say for the first time ever that they also have responsibility to think of limits to the human mischief committed against the planetary environment. This is clearly not something they will easily wiggle away from.

Further, the Europeans are already starting to review their own positions and look for internal change having found out that the world of the 21st century may look very different with China, India and Brazil commanding much more power then any one European State if not aggregated in a real EU. Having three out of five seats at the UN Security Council in 2010 means absolutely nothing while the new comers are not part of the game.

Now about Mexico City, please remember that there is on the way another stop in Bonn, and there is not even a Conference Building ready for a May 2010 meeting in Bonn. I would suggest that NGOs and the Press get used to the idea that the difficulties in Copenhagen will turn out nothing to what expects them in Bonn.

But again, this is not yet our evaluation of the Copenhagen meeting – this posting is intended only as a further elaboration to the fact that we think Obama achieved much more then could have been expected from him. His further moves will involve cooperation with those countries that in his mind count indeed when it comes to make efforts to curb the GHG effects.

Also, I believe in the people – and Copenhagen was a clear success story when one realizes that it publicized the issues. The people will take on the ball that is thrown at them by the Islamists and combine in their thoughts their needs with what they heard about Copenhagen. I assume for instance that the people will create the demand for rails in order to avoid flying short distances. With the Unions coming on board it might even allow for some new tax on fuels – this will be perhaps have also social aspects and a reaction against oil imports. Could there be a positive change in US attitude towards Latin America? After all not everyone is a friend of the US, but some relationships can be improved easier then others.

The outcomes from Copenhagen are varied and complicated – the only thing that is sure is that tomorrow is different from yesterday.

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 http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.p…

30 December 2009

Copenhagen’s Fateful Friday and Obama’s Real Role.

by Albert Bates
27 December 2009, published December 30, 2009.
“Cokenhagen” blog’s last day
Leaving Copenhagen before sunrise, we passed into the airport terminal revolving doors, each panel emblazoned with the “Hopenhagen” logo, but beneath it was revealed Hopenhagen’s corporate sponsor, Coca Cola, taking credit for the advertising campaign. Hope has died but Coke survived.

Upstairs from the revolving doors was a TckTckTck/Greenpeace billboard with Nicolas Sakozy, Premier of France, reading, “I’m Sorry. We could have stopped catastrophic climate change… We didn’t.”

We are still mulling the meaning of humanity’s giant step away from survival. No targets, no timetables, no firm commitments, a crash of the carbon market, massive disinvestment in renewables and a switch back to coal and gas – all of these are the “Copenhagen Outcome.”

Perhaps the strangest and most serious outcome was the damage wrought to the UN negotiation process itself. One needs to go back and re-read the 1972 Stockholm principles, the document that emerged from the 21st plenary session of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. From the preamble, authored by Maurice Strong:

“Man is both creature and moulder of his environment, which gives him physical sustenance and affords him the opportunity for intellectual, moral, social and spiritual growth. In the long and tortuous evolution of the human race on this planet a stage has been reached when, through the rapid acceleration of science and technology, man has acquired the power to transform his environment in countless ways and on an unprecedented scale.
“The natural growth of population continuously presents problems for the preservation of the environment, and adequate policies and measures should be adopted, as appropriate, to face these problems.

“A point has been reached in history when we must shape our actions throughout the world with a more prudent care for their environmental consequences. Through ignorance or indifference we can do massive and irreversible harm to the earthly environment on which our life and well being depend. Conversely, through fuller knowledge and wiser action, we can achieve for ourselves and our posterity a better life in an environment more in keeping with human needs and hopes. There are broad vistas for the enhancement of environmental quality and the creation of a good life. What is needed is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind and intense but orderly work.”

With our laptop and a wall socket at JFK, we were able to watch Rachel Maddow’s interview with Andrea Mitchell and learn how freakish and noir the COP-15 talks really were. Looking for Premier Wen Jiabao of China, President Obama followed a lead to a back room at the Bella Center, his press pool in tow.

Before the COP, the United States and China had been sniping at each other over demands that Beijing agree to international monitoring, ostensibly to verify its pledge to reduce by 40% the carbon intensity of its economy (the rate of emissions per unit of economic activity, something that is easy to do if you are growing your GDP by 10% annually).

After the President and Hillary Clinton made some snarky remarks about China’s transparency, Premier Wen used diplomatic finesse to express his official displeasure. Twice on Friday, Mr. Wen sent an underling to represent him at meetings with Mr. Obama. Each time it was a lower-level official.

The White House made a point of noting the snub in a statement to reporters. According to an aide who passed it to the New York Times, Mr. Obama confided to his staff: “I don’t want to mess around with this anymore. I want to talk to Wen.” The story the Times then began spinning has formed the official frame of the talks — China was the bad actor, the US President stood tall and went dragon hunting, he slew the beast in its lair, and emerged with a new Accord, which was not the best, but the best that could be salvaged. “This progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough,” he said. “We’ve come a long way, but we have much further to go.” The carpenters then moved in to break the site down and make way for a trade show of home furnishings.

What actually appears to have happened is that the US came into the UN meeting with all the style and substance of John Bolton, Dubya’s UN ambassador. Arriving on the final day with a lame, lowball proposal, Obama tried to ram a strictly voluntary, symbolic pledge system down the throats of the delegates, who despite the media clouding, were actually close to several important agreements.

China backed Africa. Africa did not want voluntary, symbolic pledges. So the White House tried to set up a third meeting between Obama and Wen. It also set up a separate meeting with Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Manmohan Singh of India. China apparently got wind of this sequence of meetings and called those players together on its own, before the Obama meeting.

When Denis McDonough, the national security council chief of staff, and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, learned of the Chinese pre-meeting, they passed the word to the President and he rushed to China’s room.

It bears mentioning here that the Bella Center has a very curious layout, thanks to the Danish hosts. All of the national delegations were assigned a Bella Center office and display space for administration, conferencing and receptions, which was typically a plastic-walled Star Wars battlecruiser cubicle between 24 and 48 square meters in size. There were no distinctions based on population size, GDP, or emissions, but there were some differences in both placement (near or far) and size between G-77 (130 poor countries, green in the image), G-30 (the industrial economies headed by Merrill Lynch’s William McDonough, no relation), and a few VIP countries who rated special treatment.

China, with a quarter of the world population and emitting 20% of GHG emissions, was given a 2-room box in the back row of offices. The US, with 5% of the population and also about 20% of the emissions, got a glass skybox suite with conference rooms, communications center and a mini-Oval Office. This was the safe home for climate deniers James (Torture-9) Inhofe and Marsha (No Czars, No Death Panels, Demand Obama’s Birth Certificate) Blackburn, as well as the travel office for high-level junketeers Nancy Pelosi, Bart Gordon, Henry Waxman, John Kerry, Ed Markey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Doyle and many, many other USAnians needing photo ops in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Locating China’s tiny room at the downstairs back, just behind the boiler room, under the steam vents, where the greenish neon lights flash intermittently through a high window and there is a faint odor of solvents, Mr. Obama called from the doorway. “Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?” From inside a room that was already stuffed with Presidents Zuma, Lula, Singh and their top aides and translators, Wen, surprised, beckoned Obama to enter.

The Chinese, who had to send their people out to make room for Obama and his aides, balked at admitting the White House press pool to the fluorescent-lit craps game. Gibbs pressed forward with the pool’s photographer. “My guys get in or we’re leaving the meeting.” They squeezed Gibbs in, which yielded this (hands over head) photo from Doug Mills at the NY Times:

Despite whatever had been discussed by Zuma, Lula, Singh and Wen before Obama arrived, the US got its wish for a barebones “accord.” Danish hosts Rassmussen and Hedegaard, and UN leaders Ban Ki Moon and Yvo de Boer, none of whom had slept more than 2 hours in the previous 48 trying to broker a highest denominator deal, were not invited.

Obama, seated, started by asking what they could agree on. That settled a number of issues, including changing the wording on monitoring and verification to satisfy Mr. Wen. The other 188 countries were not asked for an opinion, although Mr. Obama then shopped his “Copenhagen Accord” around to a few European leaders, who each declined to join such an outrageous outlaw process. Ban Ki Moon and Yvo de Boer tried to put a nice face on it, but had to be steaming inside. They said the next COP in Mexico would resume the process, but as George Monbiot opined, Mexico is where negotiations go to die.

Having destroyed the whole notion of consensus negotiations carefully crafted over the 37 years since Stockholm, Mr. Obama joined his waiting motorcade and exited. In 8 hours, he had done more to destroy the fabric of the United Nations than his predecessor had accomplished in 8 years.

As for the $10 billion dollar per year pledge Hillary Clinton offered to support clean green economies in the 2/3 world, beginning in 2012, the US knows it will simply borrow that money from China and the loan will vanish in the slippage of the dollar against the huan.

Hugo Chavez told Amy Goodman, “We have to transition ourselves to a post-petroleum era, and that is what we must discuss.”

Goodman asked him about reducing Venezuela’s emissions. Chavez replied, “We must reduce emissions 100 percent… We are in agreement — we must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet. However that requires a change in lifestyle, a change in the economic model. We must go from capitalism to socialism, that’s the real solution.”

“How do you throw away capitalism?” Goodman asked. Chavez replied, “They way they did it in Cuba. The way we are doing it in Venezuela. Give the power to the people and take it away from the elites. You can only do that through revolution.”

Being more evolutionary than revolutionary, we are still betting on the dolphins. They can survive even without T-mobile and a laptop.

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Read all about Albert’s observations and adventures in Copenhagen and Hopenhagen on his blog. For more on his peak oil work, see the Culture Change article Albert Bates, guide for our post-petroleum, globally warmed future. For more articles on or by Albert on this website, visit this listing

Cokenhagen propaganda

His latest book is The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, published in 2006.^[2] In it Bates examines the transition from a society based on abundant cheap petroleum to one of “compelled conservation.” The book looks at the ways of preparing for this transition. He regards the coming change as an opportunity to “redeem our essential interconnectedness with nature and with each other.”

In his introduction, Bates outlines the realities of declining fossil energy and global climate change. He puts forward a “twelve step petrochemical recovery program,” from post-growth economics through methods to conserve fresh water, manage wastes, generate energy, produce and store food, and travel without the aid of fossil fuels. As a review by Ryan McGreal states: “The central message in this book is sustainability and permaculture. A recurring theme is that every waste product is something else’s food, and that the most sustainable arrangement works with the prevailing conditions, not against them.”^[3] McGreal summarizes Bates’ proposals for human adaptation as follows:

“Instead of wasting energy trying to fight nature, it makes more sense to understand nature and use it to your mutual benefit. This, of course, means the end of one-size-fits-all industrial solutions and a return to decentralized, idiosyncratic plans based on local conditions.”^[3]

1. ^ Ecovillage Training Center. The Farm, Summertown, TN. Retrieved on 20067-06-22.
2. ^ .The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times (2006). New Society Publishers.
3. ^ ^{a b} McGreal, Ryan (January 10, 2007) “Reviews.” Raise the Hammer, Hamilton, Ontario. Retrieved on: February 25, 2007.

Bates went to Copenhagen and posted a list of 16 daily reports on his blog as posted on Jan Lundberg’s www.CultureChange.org

We will re-post here two of that series of 16 articles – the last one #16, and the the #13 article of his series, the one about Christiania, which is a part of Copenhagen that started going green before this was even made fashionable through Agenda 21 – at the UN conference on the Environment and Development of the Rio 1992 fame. In effect it was Christiania that became an example for Agenda 21.

by Albert Bates

22 December 2009

My COP15 Journal: Day Sixteen, Dec. 19

“Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest; it was nice knowing you, not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.” — George Monbiot, The Guardian, Dec. 18, 2009

Last Day: When we arrived in Copenhagen 16 days ago, we were met by Ross and Hildur Jackson, our hosts at a farm near Birkerød, just outside the city. Hildur had been organizing the Windows of Hope meeting at Christiania and Ross had been drafting white papers and talking points for the Global Ecovillage Network to share with delegates during the negotiations. Ross intends to expand his central position paper, The Breakaway Strategy, into a book soon, and the core of that document turned out to be remarkably prescient as to the outcome of COP-15.

In The Breakaway Strategy, Ross prescribed the ideal components of a fair and binding climate treaty:

1. It should guarantee that the adopted CO2 emissions target will be met with 100% certainty. We will not have two chances to avoid runaway warming. We must get it right the first time;
2. It should be effective and cost-efficient;
3. It should be equitable in order to get the backing of all 7 billion world citizens who are the ultimate owners of the biosphere; and
4. It should be simple and transparent.

The “Kyoto approach” of negotiating CO2 reduction targets, credit bargaining, technology transfer and who pays what to whom — fails all four criteria. If there was any doubt, we need only revisit these past two weeks.

Ironically — and the irony was heightened by the decision of the Danish government 4 days ago to exclude the non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) from the Bella Center — at least three proposals had been put forward by the NGO community over the last two years that fulfill all four criteria. They are:

1. The Earth Atmospheric Trust: earthinc.org
2. Kyoto2: kyoto2.org
3. The Carbon Board*

To Ross’s three we would add two Irish NGO proposals, Cap and Share and the Carbon Maintenance Fee, based on New Zealand’s prototype Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS) to provide a robust and comprehensive carbon reporting and accounting system. Admittedly both of these additions involve more government involvement (and potential for corruption) than the simpler Carbon Board solution cited in The Breakaway Strategy.

The strategy has two components, a top-down political initiative, and a bottom-up civil society initiative. Recognizing that the major powers are locked into a national interest battle and unable to act in the global interest, the strategy turns to some of the smaller nations, such as Maldives and Tuvalu, that are freer and more committed to take on leadership. The Carbon Board, which allocates pollution on a per capita rationing system, is just one example of how such a partnership can function in practice. It administers a reward and punishment system for policing the atmosphere, but could as easily be applied to rationing everything humans are ruining or depleting to extinction — fisheries, food, water, or phosphorus, for instance.

The first step would be for the organizers to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO), hence the name breakaway. The WTO is a major part of the problem because it prevents individual nations from introducing environmentally friendly production methods and subsidizing industries that go green.

From the start of the COP-15 meetings it became evident that a very different agenda was being worked than the Kyoto, multilateral, inclusive, transparent, “shared but differentiated” commitment process that had evolved since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972.

Within hours of the opening, the buzz in the halls was all about the secret text that Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen had been circulating to just the G8 parties. Inexplicably, the UN had begun to function like the WTO. Some called it an “Am-Bush.” Others called it “Kyotic.”

Rasmussen, as head of Venstre, the right wing party, and a coalition including the rabid anti-immigrant party in Denmark, had become the official host of the meeting. Until midway through the second week of the COP, that role had fallen on the more capable shoulders of Denmark’s former environmental minister, Connie Hedegaard. With years of experience at the UN, and in the Kyoto process particularly, Hedegaard knew the players, the positions, and was respected as fair and impartial.

Rasmussen would, in contrast, become known for high-handed demands, back-room wheeling and dealing, mass arrest and detention of protestors on suspicion of future traffic obstruction, demoting Hedegaard on the eve of the final high-level talks, and then abruptly bringing her back in to try to salvage a deal, barring the civil sector IGOs and NGOs from the meeting midway through the second week, after putting them through torturous and repeated dawn-till-dark outdoor linestandings in freezing cold and blowing snow, and then breaking with the EU and G-77 to back the USA’s “coalition of the willing” approach.

Leaving the NGOs out in the cold — literally — meant that none of civil society’s detailed ideas could rise to the surface when they were most needed to break out of government sector’s impasse. Instead, the US came in and tried to bully China, and China, in a geopolitical-orbit-shifting rebuke, stood firm and did not blink. The US limped home with a spin-doctored document, while China was revealed as the emerging world power to be reckoned with. Some of that had to do with China’s massive investments in Africa and the two-thirds world over the past decade, which had built it a large store of political capital. Unfortunately, it spent a big hunk of that when it sold out Africa to the 5-party outcome.

Naomi Klein said, “Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3–3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, ‘an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger,’ and ‘water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people.’”

Rasmussen and the G8 powers led by the Obama delegation, made their case for colonialism. What was being colonized and divided between occupying powers was not the G77, but the sky. For a mere ten billion dollars per year, G8 shareholders were sold a carbon market worth $1.2 trillion per year. Matthew Stilwell of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development said that rich countries were allowed to exchange “beads and blankets for Manhattan,” adding, “[They]‘ve carved up the last remaining unowned resource and allocated it to the wealthy.”

With a $100 billion/year buy-out (first payment — 2020, a US election year) — or one army-year in Kabul, shared out between 193 countries, citizens from the Maldives will be offered hotel rooms in Houston the way New Orleans hurricane refugees were.

Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said, “In a cruel irony I have just learned that the three Greenpeace activists who, posing as world leaders, entered the Danish Palace for the State Dinner on Thursday night to unfurl a banner calling for a real climate deal are to spend the next three weeks in jail. They will be away from their families over Christmas and the New Year. The real leaders, who attempted to get real action are now in jail, while the alleged ‘leaders’ got clean away, and are fleeing the Copenhagen climate crime scene in private jets and 747s.”

In the end, just five countries signed the “Copenhagen Outcome,” a mushy mishmash of voluntary pledges. They left some serious heavy lifting for November 2010, when COP-16 convenes in Mexico. There the chair will be Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa, a man to whom Lars Lokke Rasmussen must surely have looked to as a role model to guide him on steering a fractious political process to the safe harbor of crystal chandeliers, overstuffed chairs before the fire, a snifter of Cognac, and a good cigar — perhaps Cuban.

If anyone can keep those solution-oriented NGO ideas out of the process at COP-16, it will be Felipe Calderón.

* Ross Jackson, “An Ideal Climate Agreement?” (Permaculture Magazine, UK, no.58 Winter 2008). See www.ross-jackson.com (Articles, English), “Climate Solutions: Part I, Comparisons” and “Climate Solutions: Part 2, The Carbon Board.

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Follow Albert’s adventures in Copenhagen and Hopenhagen on his blog. For more on his peak oil work, see the Culture Change article Albert Bates, guide for our post-petroleum, globally warmed future. For more articles on or by Albert on this website, visit this listing

* * * * *

Christiania: Copenhagen’s Funky Jewel of Sustainability - by Albert Bates

UN Stumbles by Degrees in Nopenhagen, Stealing the Deal?

By Matthew Russell Lee of the Inner City Press.

UNITED NATIONS, December 17 — In the months leading to the Copenhagen climate talks, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon veered back and forth between reading out specific statements on how the deal should be sealed and saying it is up to member states, the UN is just the venue.

Then he and his advisors including Janos Pasztor and top humanitarian John Holmes announced that $10 billion for adaptation — or reparations — to developing countries would be enough, or “a good start.”

Inner City Press asked each of these three about the African Union’s much higher figure and threat to walk out. Each was to varying degrees dismissive.

Now with the Danish police pepper spraying demonstrators in the street, along with a crowd of UN accredited but excluded reporters, representatives of non governmental organizations and even some UN personnel, the mainstream media coverage turns negative and Ban urges poor countries to stop pointing fingers.

He also, at least according to them, has inappropriately accepted not only the developed countries’ $10 billion figure, but now their two degree Celsius temperature rise cap, versus the 1.5 degree figure.

UN’s Ban at Bella Center, excluded and pepper spray and 0.5 degrees not shown

In New York, Inner City Press has asked Ban’s spokesman about each of these. On December 15, Inner City Press asked

Inner City Press: I just want to follow up on Copenhagen. Do you have any, a large number of us have received the complaints of people who were there, who went yesterday and were unable, both journalists and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and even some UN staff, were unable to get into the building. And they seemed to say that the UN accredited 45,000 people, even though only 15,000 could fit in the building. If that’s true, why would the UN have done that?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Two things, the figure I’ve heard is not 45,000 but 34,000. That’s still a lot of people, absolutely.

Inner City Press: The same question.

Spokesperson: Yes, the same question. As I understand it, and as we’ve heard from Copenhagen, they have a system to try to rotate the number of people going into the building, because, obviously, they’re over capacity. Part of it is also, it’s not just NGOs, it’s journalists as well. There are large numbers. And as I’ve said here before, it clearly demonstrates the considerable interest there is in this event and in having access to this event. As for why there was an over-accreditation, I would refer you to the organizers, actually the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change], who are actually on the ground organizing this, and they have a media team there who I’m sure could help you with that.

On December 16, Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky answered

I was asked yesterday about the delays in accessing the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, that’s obviously where the UN Conference on Climate Change is taking place. The United Nations regrets the long delays today for people wishing to gain access or pick up accreditation, and is doing all it can to alleviate further delays.

And more than 45,000 people did indeed apply to attend the Conference. And an overwhelming number of those who applied actually arrived on Monday. This is what caused the congestion in the area outside the UN venue, which is under the control of the Danish police, and also long delays at the UN accreditation counters.

The access to the venue for NGOs will continue to be controlled by the quota system that I mentioned to allow balanced access by various NGO groups. And the NGO representatives are given over half of the capacity of the Bella Centre, and that’s more than ever for a climate change conference. As of tomorrow, only NGO organizations that have the secondary badges will be able to enter the Bella Centre. And the Danish Government and the Danish NGO Network are organizing an alternative venue for NGOs who can’t get into the Bella Centre over the next two days.

Inner City Press asked two more questions:

Inner City Press: I want to ask you about two things that the Secretary-General said in Copenhagen; maybe you can clarify them. One was, he said that the goal is to cap temperature rise at 2° C, and small island States and other participants, Member States of the United Nations, had set their goal at 1.5° C. So, I guess they’re wondering where he came up with the 2° C number. Maybe you can clarify if that really is what he thinks should happen? And also he was quoted as saying that Kenya should lobby to make UNEP [the United Nations Environment Programme] in Nairobi the global environmental agency. You, know, France has a separate proposal that created a new agency. I’m wondering, does that indicate that he doesn’t support France’s proposal or what does it indicate?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Okay, on the first one, on the temperature rise, he’s made public comments on this, which we distributed this morning. The bottom line is that he has said if it’s possible to get to 1.5° C, that’s great. But if it’s not, then it’s important to have a deal that everybody can sign up to. That’s what he’s said. But I would refer you to his remarks so that you could read them in detail. On the UNEP idea, I will need to follow up on that.

Inner City Press: Just one follow-up on that, because in his press conference before he went on the trip, I think he was asked, somebody said, “What ideas are you taking to Copenhagen?” And he said that’s not his role. It’s up to the Member States to negotiate. So, I’m just wondering, I think that’s why people have this question about coming out with a 2° C number. It seems like more than leaving it up to Member States. Do you see what I’m saying? That seems to be inconsistent with what he said before he left.

Spokesperson: I don’t see any inconsistency there. He’s been consistent in saying that, yes, he has an honest broker role, but he also has firm convictions, strong convictions, about what is happening with climate change and his role in ensuring that everybody can come to the table and sign a deal. I would refer you to the remarks he made this morning, which are fairly explicit about the numbers.

And and Ban’s number is now two degrees Celsius, a figure never agreed to by developing countries. They think the UN is or is supposed to be their venue. But not anymore, it seems.

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As UN Flies 700 Staff to Copenhagen, Coup Leader Set to Speak, Major Emitter Excluded.

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 10 — In the run up to the Copenhagen climate change conference, Inner City Press on December 4 asked UN climateer Janos Pasztor how many UN system staff, officials and consultants would be traveling to Denmark, with what carbon footprint. Pasztor said it wouldn’t be known until the conference began.

On December 10, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky finally answered the question, or part of it. He said that the Copenhagen conference has among its participants 477 people from the UN Secretariat and 309 from 19 specialized agencies and related organizations. That is, 786 people from the UN. But does this include consultants? And what is the carbon footprint and will it be offset?

Nesirky did however answer two questions Inner City Press asked on December 10, after an ill attended noon briefing held at the same time as a media stakeout by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. Inner City Press asked if Ban Ki-moon is aware of the request that the coup leader of Madagascar not be allowed to participate in the Copenhagen conference, just as he was barred from speaking before the General Assembly in September.

Nesirky answered, “As for Madagascar, it is scheduled to speak on next Wednesday 16 December, sometime after 6 p.m., so they seem to have been invited.” But what about the request that, as at the UN General Debate in September, they be disinvited?

On December 8, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon

Inner City Press: Has Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has he indicated to you – we’ve heard that you’ve spoken to him weekly by videoconference – he represents the African Union. Is the $10 billion enough? They threatened to walk out if not sufficient funds were committed. What’s you stance on how that issue’s going to play out?

SG: As you know I, together with Prime Minister [Lars Løkke] Rasmussen [of Denmark], have been engaging in weekly videoconferences with major stakeholders on climate change – particularly the representatives of the most vulnerable countries, including the African Union and small island developing countries. We are going to continue to do that, as we did in Trinidad and Tobago. Now the idea of short-term fast-track financial support is supported by developing countries. We had a very in-depth discussion on this issue during our Commonwealth summit meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. As you know the 53-Member State Commonwealth adopted a consensus declaration where this financial support – fast-track support – was agreed by all the Member States, including a provision that 10% of this $10 billion will be provided to small island developing countries.

So the Commonweath agreed — but has the African Union? Inner City Press asked Ban’s top humanitarian John Holmes on December 10, but he said he hadn’t been involved in setting the $10 billion figure. So who was?

UN’s Ban pre-signs Deal, coup leader coming, major emitter not shown

Inner City Press also asking about the block on participation by Taiwan, which is a major industrial emitter. Nesirky answered only that “Taiwan is not a party to the UNFCCC.” But why not? Would the UN want a major source of emission like Taiwan to participate?

The answer, of course, in China, a senior diplomat of which told Inner City Press a good joke on Thursday. He noted that U.S.’ Susan Rice had been harsh against Iran in that morning’s Council meeting. She has to play to the electorate, he said, just as Iran’s teetered regime tries to strengthen its power by being ever more hard-line. The Chinese diplomat said, “This is the problem with democracy.” And then he laughed.

ON THIS DAY – On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people; now, 21 years later, remembering what addiction to oil can do to us, the New York Times starts to discern a path to a better future for the planet.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL OF December 21, 2009
Copenhagen, and Beyond.

The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It produced instead a softer interim accord that, at least in principle, would curb greenhouses gases, provide ways to verify countries’ emissions, save rain forests, shield vulnerable nations from the impacts of climate change, and share the costs.

The hard work has only begun, in Washington and elsewhere. But Copenhagen’s achievements are not trivial, given the complexity of the issue and the differences among rich and poor countries. President Obama deserves much of the credit. He arrived as the talks were collapsing, spent 13 hours in nonstop negotiations and played hardball with the Chinese. With time running out — and with the help of China, India, Brazil and South Africa — he forged an agreement that all but a handful of the 193 nations on hand accepted.

Mr. Obama aside, there were two keys to the deal. One was a dramatic offer of $100 billion in aid from the industrialized nations to poorer countries to help them move to less-polluting sources of energy and to deal with drought and other consequences of warming. The offer had an instant soothing effect on many poorer nations that had been threatening to walk out all week.

The other was China’s willingness to submit to a verification system under which all countries would agree to report on their actions and — assuming details could be worked out — open their books to inspection. Transparency is a huge issue in Congress, and Mr. Obama made clear in his opening remarks on Friday that he would not agree to a deal unless China gave ground.

An enormous amount of work lies ahead, both for the president and for the other signatories to what is now being called the Copenhagen Accord. In order to deliver on his promises to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and provide a chunk of that $100 billion in aid, Mr. Obama must persuade the Senate to approve a cap-and-trade bill — a huge task.

Meanwhile, there can be no letup by the rest of the world’s negotiators, no matter how tired and beat up they may be. These talks have been so chaotic and contentious that some people believe the United Nations machinery has outlived its usefulness, and real progress will henceforth be made in smaller gatherings of the big players.

There may be some truth to this, but at the moment it is hard to see how many of the arrangements agreed to in principle at Copenhagen — the verification system, for instance — can be made to work without detailed agreements. There must also be some mechanism that holds all countries responsible for doing everything they can to tackle climate change. As it is, the pledges now on the table, from both rich and poor countries, are nowhere near enough to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from rising above dangerous levels.

But for the moment it is worth savoring the steps forward. China is now a player in the effort to combat climate change in a way it has never been, putting measurable emissions reductions targets on the table and accepting verification. And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role.

NEW YORK TIMES RECENT FURTHER ARTICLES ABOUT THE UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Mixed Bag for Obama on Climate Change Deal Amid the Recession

By JOHN HARWOOD

A victory for President Obama in Copenhagen will not necessarily help his popularity at home.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: FOREIGN AID, GLOBAL WARMING, UNITED STATES ECONOMY, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, PELOSI, NANCY, OBAMA, BARACK, KERRY, JOHN

An Air of Frustration for Europe at Climate Talks

By JAMES KANTER

Caught off guard by the Copenhagen accord, European leaders felt pressure to back it even though they thought it did not go far enough and had a process in which they had little influence.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, COPENHAGEN (DENMARK),EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Copenhagen’s One Real Accomplishment: Getting Some Money Flowing

By JAMES KANTER

The accord in Copenhagen was “a big step forward” after previous talks offered no financial support mechanisms, Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary general, said.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, ENERGY AND POWER,COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

Compromising on 2 Issues, Obama Gets Partial Wins

By PETER BAKER

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, for now.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, HEALTH INSURANCE AND MANAGED CARE, REFORM AND REORGANIZATION, OBAMA, BARACK

A Grudging Accord in Climate Talks

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

After delays, theatrics and deal-making, climate talks ended with an agreement to “take note” of a pact shaped by five nations.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, TREATIES

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

The agreement left open the question of whether the accord would gain the full support of the countries involved in the talks on limiting the risks of climate change.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

———————————————————————————————————-

Off to the Races

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

A competitive Earth Race led by America can be a more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, UNITED STATES, UNITED NATIONS

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Updated Dec. 18, 2009

Representatives of 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen to seek a consensus on an international strategy for fighting global warming, in a series of meetings between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, 2009.

Leaders concluded a climate change deal the Obama administration called “meaningful” but which fell short of even the modest expectations for the summit. The maneuvering that characterized the final week of the talks was a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a significant agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.

President Obama injected himself into a multilayered negotiation that was far more chaotic and contentious than anticipated – frozen by longstanding divisions between rich and poor nations and a legacy of mistrust of the United States, which has long refused to accept any binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions.

The accord drops what had been the expected goal of concluding a binding international treaty by the end of 2010, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiation before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

Read More…

We found today that the Mayor of Hopenhagen – Her Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerrgaard, City of Copenhagen, who coined before the start of the Copenhagen COP15 of the UNFCCC, the dictum “I am A Citizen of Hopenhagen, is seemingly the only believer in “Seal The Deal” at Copenhagen, the sunny front-piece of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

At the Conference of US Mayors Reception  and  dinner honoring Lord Mayor Bjerregaard I had the chance to ask her excellency the Lord Mayor what she thinks about the probable outcome of a compilation of individual countries’ promises and she answered that the week is not over yet and she still hopes for the original Seal The Deal approach.

When I asked earlier in the day the same question from former Irish Prime Minister Marry Robinson said that she does not like the outcome because the real question is who will monitor the compliance, and I suggested that it will have to be done by the governments themselves, she said that ‘and who believes governments.” She is a great Lady indeed.

Now, getting to my room and my computer, I found that actually Tony Blair is already on top of the issue. He sees correctly the outcome as “DOING THE DEAL” – so, as there is nothing to seal except a compilation of individual promises, the best we can hope for is the concept of the people of each country monitoring their governments’ compliance. Now, can we trust the people?

All right, if one watches not the Bella Center procedures as such, where the governments speak – but rather the Klima Forum 09 that saw tonight Bill McKibben invite President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives,and the over 1,000 people in the audience kept sounding their agreement to an orderly transition to an eventual return to 350 ppm of CO2, one could see that the call to action, and the understanding of the art of the possible in order to achieve the desirable – is well alive among the people.

Anyway – this posting is about the new term as coined by Tony Blair.

Tony Blair launches report “Doing the Deal” with The Climate Group.
From Lena Ruthner:

The Office of Tony Blair and The Climate Group today launch “Doing the Deal: Key Elements for a Copenhagen Climate Agreement”, the latest report from their joint Breaking The Climate Deadlock initiative.

The report, aimed at heads of government and ministers as they arrive in Copenhagen to seal a new climate agreement, outlines three elements that will need to be at heart of the accord – emissions reduction targets, finance and the basic architecture. It argues that countries should lock in the most ambitious pledges they have made already and then use the time between now and signing a formal treaty to ratchet up commitments.

In particular, countries should agree to:

- a review mechanism that allows automatic scaling up of ambition by 2015
- commit now to deeper cuts beyond 2020
- prepare low carbon growth plans that will identify new abatement opportunities
- put money down for a fast start mechanism that starts cutting emissions immediately

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “What countries have pledged already is a major step in the right direction. We need to bind these pledges together and get on with implementation. I’m convinced that once we get going and unleash the creativity of business, we’ll quickly find that it’s easier than people thought and be able to scale up our ambition. “

The Climate Group’s CEO Steve Howard agreed: “The businesses we work with need a long-term signal from Copenhagen. With the deal we outline we will see an unparalleled wave of investment and innovation: a clean energy and technology revolution. It is right for the planet and the right for the economy – we just need our leaders to seal the deal.”

Best wishes,

Lena Ruthner
Manager – International Policy Programme
THE?CLIMATE GROUP

Direct: +44 (0)20 7960 2977 | Mobile: +44 (0)7970 399 773| Fax: +44 (0)20 7960 2971
 lruthner at theclimategroup.org
 View Download

———————————
AND FROM THE UN PROPER:

UN DAILY NEWS from the

UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE

14 December, 2009 =========================================================================

IT’S NOW OR NEVER IN BID TO CURB CLIMATE CHANGE, BAN WARNS

At the start of the most critical week in global efforts to forge a new deal to curb climate change Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today that the world stood at the crossroads between a sustainable future and a path to catastrophe.

“Now is the moment to act,” he told a news conference at United Nations Headquarters in New York ahead of the culmination later this week of the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, where some 115 heads of State and government, including the leaders of the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, will gather to hopefully seal the deal on an agreement.

“Seldom in history has a choice been so clear. We can move toward a future of sustainable green growth, or we can continue down the road to ruin. We can act on climate change now, or we can leave it to our children and grandchildren – a debt that can never be paid, that threatens our planet and its people,” he added.

“I call on the world’s leaders to lead. Time is running out. There is no time left for posturing or blaming. Every country must do its part to seal a deal in Copenhagen.”

Mr. Ban appealed to negotiators to redouble their efforts, find room for compromise and make a final push. “If everything is left to leaders to resolve at the last minute, we risk having a weak deal – or no deal at all. And this would be a failure of potentially catastrophic consequence,” he said.

UN officials have said there are three key layers of action that governments must agree to in the course of the Copenhagen summit: fast and effective implementation of immediate action on climate change; ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, including start-up funding and a long-term funding commitment; and a long-term shared vision on a low-emissions future for all.

Mr. Ban voiced confidence in a successful outcome as he himself prepares to leave to join the summit, citing new commitments from industrialized countries, emerging economies and developing nations, and deploring recent efforts to derail progress by those who try to claim that the science about climate change is unconfirmed.

“They are wrong. The science is clear and settled. Climate change is real, we are the primary cause, and it is up to us – here and now – to deal with it,” he said. “Greenhouse gases continue to rise. Climate impacts are escalating. Nature does not negotiate. In Copenhagen, we must summon the moral and political will to act in a spirit of compromise and common sense.”

He acknowledged that the negotiations are difficult and complex – “among the most ambitious ever to be undertaken by the world community” – and noted the strong passions and hard bargaining under way.

“But we also see tangible progress on core issues of technology cooperation and financing. We have reached substantial agreement on ‘fast track’ funding for mitigation and adaptation,” he said, adding that governments are moving toward the common goal of laying a foundation in Copenhagen for a robust, fair and comprehensive agreement that can be turned into a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010.

“Looking ahead, we need greater clarity on a robust finance package for the middle and longer-term. It is essential that we leave Copenhagen with a clear understanding of how we will meet the financing challenge through 2020.”

Mr. Ban also announced that he would appoint Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai as a Messenger for Peace on climate change, calling her “an excellent choice” in light of her long record of achievement in environmental conservation and sustainable development.

* * *

UN CLIMATE TALKS BACK ON TRACK AFTER BRIEF SUSPENSION

Talks resumed at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, today after African nations briefly suspended negotiations over the future of the Kyoto Protocol, currently the only legally binding pact on climate change.

While many industrialized countries are hoping to merge the Protocol and the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting, which entered its second and final week today, into a single agreement.

However, their developing counterparts, among the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, want to extend the Protocol past 2012, when its first commitment period ends, and hammer out a separate agreement this week in Copenhagen.

“I think this is not just an African concern,” Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters today. “I think that the vast majority of the countries here want to see a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol.”

To this end, informal consultations kicked off in Copenhagen today, he said, with the Kyoto Protocol topping the list of discussion topics.

Mr. de Boer said that talks are halfway up the hill whose summit is an agreement reached by world leaders at the end of the two-week Copenhagen meeting.

“I think we’re queuing up for the cable car, but the rest of ride is going to be fast, smooth and relaxing,” he noted.

One of the remaining challenges, the official pointed out, is “how to capture countries’ commitment, countries’ willingness to act in a final agreement at the end of this week.”

The ministerial portion of the conference, to be attended by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, will kick off tomorrow, while the high-level segment – which will see the participation of 115 heads of State – will begin later this week.

Mr. Ban, who departs for Copenhagen today, emphasized at his end-of-year press conference in New York today that “decades of effort will come down to this one critical week” in the Danish capital.

“Seldom in history has a choice been so clear,” he said, exhorting negotiators to redouble their efforts and make the final push towards a new agreement.

“If everything is left to leaders to resolve at the last minute, we risk having a weak deal – or no deal at all,” the Secretary-General said. “And this would be a failure of potentially catastrophic consequence…

“As we depart for Copenhagen, I am confident that a fair deal is within our reach – a deal that can be embraced by all nations, large and small, rich and poor.”

Events tomorrow – Sunday, December 13:

Hopenhagen Live event: COUNTDOWN TO CO2PENHAGEN:

Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu, will hand over 300,000 signatures from the global campaign ‘Countdown to Co2penhagen’ to the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer. The hand-over is followed by a concert with the internationally renowned Danish band Outlandish.

WHEN: December 13, 11:30am

WHERE: Hopenhagen Live, Spillestedet no. 21, City Hall Square

Press event: 

CLIMATE FRIENDLY MOTOR PARADE.

There will be plenty of speed, varnish and power when 95 climate-friendly vehicles ranging from flashy Italian scooters to Danish sports cars drive across the Copenhagen City Hall Square as part of the world’s largest gasoline-free vehicles parade.

 The vehicles will be lined up at the City Hall Square and presented on:

2:30 pm, Sunday December 13, 2009,

WHERE: Departure from Hopenhagen Live, no. 20, City Hall Square.

We are inviting visitors to take a closer look at the flashy cars, scooters and motorcycles.

The vehicles are then sent out into the streets of Copenhagen. Among the vehicles participating in the parade are the Danish sports car “LYNX GT Extreme”, the world’s fastest electric car Tesla Roadster, the Scandinavian “Mini Hummer”, and an open off-roader.

The parade takes the vehicles to Forum, where, for a short while, they will form an integrated part of the art piece “CO2 E-Race” created by Danish artist Mr. Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen. The parade ends at H.C. Andersens Boulevard by the City Hall Square.

  ————————–

VISIT THE FIRST PUBLIC CARBON NEUTRAL BUILDING IN DEMNARK:  

Visit Green Lighthouse and hear how the architecture and design of the building has eliminated CO2. Green Lighthouse is part of the University of Copenhagen and is the first public carbon neutral building in Denmark.  Read more about the house.!

WHEN: December 13, 1-4 pm.

WHERE: Green Lighthouse, Tagensvej 16, 2200 Copenhagen N

Please contact the press team for facts about Copenhagen’s climate initiatives, statistics, analyses or inspiration in connection with your press work before or during the Climate Change Conference or the Mayors’ Summit.  

 THE PRESS CENTRE OF COPENHAGEN (ON THE CITY HALL SQUARE, THE BLACK GLASS BUILDING OPPOSITE THE CITY HALL). 
————————-
The Press Team of the City of Copenhagen 
www.kk.dk/english
+45 3082 8337/2711 6896
cphclimate@kk.dk

Side event at COP15, 16 Dec 3pm Copenhagen Business School  

Details at http://mayflybooks.org/?p=345

“Why Carbon Offsetting Will Not Save The Planet”
Talk by Dr Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi, of Essex Business School, UK, to launch their new book Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets
http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=194

The talk will be introduced by Ida Auken, Member of the Danish Parliament
This is a free talk that is open to all.
Free copies of the book will be available at the event.

Venue:
Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3
Frederiksberg/Copenhagen
Auditorium SP s05 KPMG
(take the Metro from ‘Nørreport’ to ‘Frederiksberg’; 10 min)
Maps and details at http://mayflybooks.org/?p=345

Description:
Copenhagen Business School would like to invite you to a talk which challenges some of the so-called ‘green’ initiatives which businesses, NGOs and governments are signing up to.
Far from carbon offsetting schemes helping to combat global warming, Dr Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi will argue that in many cases they have actually made matters worse.
The talk, followed by a Question and Answer session, will be of interest to any business, policy maker, academic or student interested in climate change issues.
The talk is being held in conjunction with the launch of their new book – Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets – at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen (COP15). The book – which collates contributions from more than 30 leading experts – can be downloaded for free at http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=194

If you have any enquiries about this event, please contact Bent M. Sørensen (bem.lpf[at]cbs.dk), Associate Professor, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy.

____________________________________________

Dr Steffen Boehm
Reader in Management
Essex Business School
University of Essex
Colchester CO4 3SQ UK
Rm 5NW.4.4
Tel. +44(0)1206 87 3843
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/ngoclinic/
http://mayflybooks.org/
 

 

From:

December 11, 2009 | News covering the UN and the world.

Group claims evidence of systematic Zimbabwe election rapes

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his party are guilty of a systematic campaign of politically motivated rape against opposition supporters during last year’s election season and should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, says a report from advocacy group AIDS-Free World. Zimbabwean authorities repeatedly have refused to investigate rape charges. The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (12/10) , AllAfrica Global Media/Inter Press Service (12/10)

WE AT WWW.SUSTAINABILITANK.INFO SUGGEST THAT SUCH A GOVERNMENT’S PRESIDENT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED PARTICIPATION AT NEXT WEEK’S HEADS OF STATE MEETING IN COPENHAGEN. HE IS NOT THE ONLY ONE – THERE ARE OTHERS – BUT A LINE MUST BE DRAWN IF ANYONE IS TO TAKE SERIOUS THE CONCEPT OF HIGH LEVEL MEETING AT THIS SORT OF CONFERENCE. WE BELIEVE THAT THE EU SHOULD EMPOWER DENMARK TO REFUSE VISA TO ROBERT MUGABE. ALSO, LET US REMIND OUR READERS HERE THAT AFRICA’S PUSH TO HAVE ZIMBABWE CHAIR THE UN COMMISSION OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT WAS A MAIN REASON FOR HAVING REDUCED THAT UN BODY TO STATUS OF PLAIN JOKE.

YES, AFRICA SEEMINGLY INSISTS ON INFURIATING THE CIVILIZED WORLD BY MAKING SUCH APPOINTMENTS TO ITS OWN PERIL – THIS BECAUSE IT PLAINLY CAUSES DIFFICULTIES WITH GETTING NATIONAL AGREEMENTS TO FUNDING GOOD CAUSES – THE KIND OF CAUSES THAT ARE CRYSTALLIZING NOW IN COPENHAGEN AND THAT WILL BE FURTHERED ONLY IF NEW FUNDS ARE CREATED TO HELP AFRICA WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL AGREEMENTS – OR CAREFULLY REVIEWED BILATERAL AGREEMENTS.

The following is just in time – please see what President Obama just said in Oslo after receiving the Nobel Prize:

Speaking as U.N.-sponsored climate talks continued in Copenhagen, Obama linked global warming to international security, telling his audience that “the world must come together to confront climate change.”

He said: “There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades.”

Now at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change will be heard something that the leadership of the UN managed to hide for many years – this until the taboo was broken by the UK at the time they chaired the UN Security Council three years ago. They declared, as part of their prerogative for naming a topic of their choosing, with full voice, that climate change is a security issue. We know what we say because our web was a victim of a UN that by policy of some individuals made the clear decision not to allow the UN DPI to see in its rooms the truth come out via the UN accredited press.

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On December 9, 2009 I tried to go on the tracks of what President Obama’s drop-in to Copenhagen to see what it would have meant had he kept that date.

What made me decide to write this posting was an invitation from the City of Copenhagen to a briefing about the Copenhagen Climate Plan by Project Leader Drejer Nielsen who offered a choice of several tours after that presentation – and the first among  of those tours was called: “CLIMATE STREET IS WAITING FOR OBAMA.”

Now, one might say the timing of December 9th was a coincidence, but I thought otherwise – actually I would want to believe that I might be able to see here what Obama has missed by not coming to  the Copenhagen climate meet on his solo flight on his way to receive the Peace Prize in Oslo, and by having switched to be just one of the odd 120 “Heads of State or Heads of Government” that will hit Copenhagen for the December 18th finale and class photo.

The city of Copenhagen has reduced during the 1990-2005 time period its CO2 emissions by 23% – that is real reduction and not some sort of “intensity reduction.” For the 2005-2015 time period, Mayor Ms. Ritt Bjerrgaard has promised another 20% reduction based on the 2005 emissions. According to plans – the city of Copenhagen intends to be the first major city to be CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2025.

The Copenhagen engineers figured out ways how to build the world’s largest district heating system with 98% of the houses part of the system. They constantly work on improving this network, in making hot water transmission more efficient, in improving energy saving in housing, in switching part of electricity supply to wind power and geothermal energy. All of the above is going on while the city claims that the equivalent of GNP – calculated for the city alone – has increased by 66%. They also found that with success the popularity of the programs increases also – and here the funny example is that one and lonely windmill that was put up close to the Bella Center where the UN conference resides now. Obviously, someone thought this was a mill for show. There were those that objected the same way as a US famous Senator objected having windmills next off Nantucket Island sound. But nay, now the residents want that wind mill they found even aesthetic values in that mill.

Why is the Obama name part of the story?

Simply, he is adored here in Copenhagen as it was shown when he came for that misguided Chicago lobbying effort. Anyway, one of the Copenhagen Mayor’s climate adviser’s office is a project of encouraging shopkeepers to become effective climate action performers. The idea is to educate people so they take initiatives they propose and implement them. That particular Climate Street is Jembane Alle in the District of Vanlose. With 36,000 inhabitants that is Copenhagen’s smallest district. But with about 100 stores on that street, 70 of them joined the project, and additional 13 stores from neighboring streets. The project is run out of a store-front right on that street by Jette Ebbekaer Thomsen who discusses with store owners how they can reduce their CO2 foot-print. She has Obama’s picture in the window and big letters CLIMATE STREET – YES WE CAN!

This is an Agenda 21 Center – do you still remember that term coined in the Maurice Strong preparations for the Rio Conference of 1992. And you know something further? Canadian-American Maurice’s wife, Hanne Strong, is Danish.  What the project does is to put before people ideas that they eventually make their own and come to ask for further information on how to go about decreasing their carbon foot-print. First these new members of the program are just interested people but they graduate to front-runners when they start implementing some of these ideas – i.e. by switching electric bulbs and eventionally buying LED bulbs.
The Mayor’s office just tries to transform the interest people have into immediate action. There are no laws and there is no push from above – it is only an assisted real home grown program. These are the budding green businesse of the city of Copenhagen that will make it possible to attain the cO2 goals of the city management because of the participatory involvement of citizens.

But above was not all I started with when laying out ideas for the draft of this posting.

I also had before me an e-mail from home that told me about the special programs on CNN and PBS that I like to watch every weekend – and here a second Obama mention in relation to Copenhagen.

As we have written earlier, on Friday he EPA announced that CO2 is dangerous to our health opening the door to control the CO2 emissions by Administrative regulation

“CNN is the only network even mentioning Copenhagen and Campbell Brown brings it daily.

Monday night  I watched the News on Channel 13 with Gwen Iffel. She interviewed Lisa Jackson from the EPA who was on her way to Copenhagen.  Her subject at the Conference will be ‘Taking Action at Home.’ Among other things she promised that the EPA is taking steps towards improvement especially for cleaner automobiles, and information will be sent out in January 2010.”

OK, what above says is that the US President will not present a base for a multilateral agreement as dreamed up by many people of good intentions, but simply had all the intent to go on December 9th to Copenhagen and say exactly that what Ms. Lisa Jackson is saying – we will regulate CO2 for ourselves and do whatever it takes to reduce CO2 emissions.

Had Mr. Obama said this in Copenhagen at the start of the conference on a December 9th speech – “WE WILL BE TAKING ACTIONS AT HOME” – he would have set the tone for the Conference – something like we are doing it – will you do it also?

I believe that China and India Heads of State knew of that strategy and answered in unison – we also! So with this under his belt, Mr. Obama decided to line up his trip with the rest of the crowd, so the end result is clear – and by DEcember 18th there will be a compilation of all these “I Owe You” notes that in their summation will constitute the document on which the future negotiations will be based.

This is now the COPENHAGEN PLAN “A” and the base for the POLITICAL DECLARATION that will be hailed as the new platform for a Framework that will see growth from the meager list of the Kyoto Protocol Annex to a list of as many countries as there will be ready to make statements. With all largest emitters already on board, we believe that most other countries will come up with their own contributions to a country by country policy to be fit into this new global puzzle. Two weeks from now we will be able to start figuring out what the totality of these promises adds up in terms of atmospheric parts per million and the predictable global average temperature increase.

One way or another – President Obama does indeed set the tone for the Copenhagen Conference on December 9, 2009. He seems to achieve the goal of returning the US to its leadership position – only that this time it will be more appropriate to the fact that there is a bunch of newly developing states that are very promising front runners in this context.

Latest News from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School
December 7, 2009

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BREAKING THE CLIMATE IMPASSE WITH CHINA: A GLOBAL SOLUTION

By Kelly Sims Gallagher

The paper is aimed at finding a partial solution that would be likely to bring both the United States and China into an international climate change mitigation regime. It proposes a “deal,” whereby all major-emitting countries, including the United States and China, agree to reduce emissions through implementation of significant, mutually agreeable, domestic emission-reduction policies. To resolve competitiveness and equity concerns, a proposed Carbon Mitigation Fund would be created.

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19698

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CREATING A CLIMATE POLICY REVIEW MECHANISM

By Michael A. Levi

International climate negotiations are becoming increasingly focused on suites of emissions-cutting policies and measures, rather than solely on traditional targets and timetables, particularly for developing countries. This approach raises at least two important challenges. First, how can negotiators judge whether states’ proposed policies and measures are commensurate with ambitious global goals for controlling emissions? Second, how can policymakers evaluate whether climate policies and measures (in both developed and developing countries) are succeeding?

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19738
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CLIMATE FINANCE: KEY CONCEPTS AND WAYS FORWARD

By Richard B. Stewart, Benedict Kingsbury, Bryce Rudyk

The Copenhagen process must, at a minimum, reach agreement on a comprehensive framework and set of principles for both public and private climate finance, as well as an agenda for future elaboration and implementation. Such agreement (which should include credible arrangements for significant adaptation as well as mitigation funding) is essential to winning developing country trust and engagement and providing resources sufficient to curb, and adapt to, anthropogenic climate change. This Viewpoint examines some of the key issues facing negotiators.

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19772

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ROBERT STAVINS TO BLOG FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES FROM COPENHAGEN

Professor Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, will be blogging periodically from Copenhagen for the Financial Times. Prof. Stavins will offer his analysis of the key issues before the climate negotiators in response to questions from the Financial Times’ editors and reporters. Prof. Stavins’ posts can be viewed at the Financial Times – http://blogs.ft.com/energysource –
or at his own blog, An Economic View of the Environment – http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/

[Comment] EU-US energy council should act as model for others

by RICHARD MORNINGSTAR AND JULIA NESHEIWAT, the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy,  and the Senior Advisor on Policy at the US Department of State

posted on  EUObserver as a comment (opinion piece) on 07.12.2009

President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen on 9 December to support the United Nations climate change conference, where he is eager to work with the international community to lay the foundation for a new, sustainable and prosperous clean energy future.

{obviously, that date was changed now to December 18, 2009 and accordingly the presentation the US President will be making in Copenhagen will be very different from what he would have said on December 9th. As such, we wonder what the purpose of this posting was when intended to be viewed close to that date, and how things might change after the December 18th date in case Copenhagen will have laid out the foundation for a larger scope climate, and thus energy, global horizon. (the SustainabiliTank editor)}

Copenhagen presents a critical opportunity to take decisive and immediate global action, to build the institutions that we will need to combat climate change and to speed the transition to a low-carbon global economy. Agreement on – and implementation of – a climate deal at Copenhagen is critical, but will be weakened without effective corresponding energy policies.

The right kinds of energy and their distribution across the globe will determine whether the international economy can maintain production levels while meeting the climate change goals set out in Copenhagen.

Energy is the prime nutrient that powers the global economy. It is the common thread that connects many of today’s global challenges, from rebuilding the global economy and combating climate change to forging new partnerships around the world. To ultimately be successful in combating climate change, we need a plan for clean, secure, and abundant energy not only for us for but for our friends around the world.

For these reasons, last month, President Obama, Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt, and President Barroso of the European Commission announced a new partnership that will help the United States and the European Union work together to meet our energy-related challenges: the US-EU Energy Council.

The Council will help drive diversification of energy sources, such as increased use of liquefied natural gas, solar and wind power and biofuels. It will facilitate cooperation in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And it will help us coordinate our approaches with other energy producers and consumers to increase sources of supply, diversify routes, strengthen energy markets in today’s financial crisis and increase transparency.

The new Council will help us address four major trends that will likely shape energy policy in the coming years: rising energy demand, increasingly interdependent markets, a growing imperative for global co-operation to reorient away from fossil fuels, and a clearer understanding that energy and climate change policy are inseparable.

First, despite the current decrease in global energy demand, increased demand over the medium term will likely result in increased reliance on fossil energy resources, with its accompanying environmental challenges. Unless we act now with fortified partnerships, these challenges will move ahead with increased demand for fossil fuels.

Second, global energy markets are interdependent. Disruptions in one market can have adverse impacts in distant places. In this global economy, countries and companies must realize that we can no longer afford “zero-sum games.” Clean energy and environmentally sustainable production are critical – as is maintaining global supply. A disruption of gas to Europe – apart from potentially severe humanitarian consequences – will have a direct effect on the supply and price of liquefied natural gas on a global basis. Instability of countries affected by climate change or by political volatility can also have dramatic effects.

Third, to ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels countries must work together to promote the development and commercialisation of alternative technologies and renewable energy, as well as improve energy efficiency and conservation. The brightest and most creative thinkers should be directed at this vital challenge.

The time is now to work with the European Union and other global partners and take authentic, concrete and quantifiable actions to exchange commercial ideas and address energy security challenges. Our partnerships must be standard bearers bringing about global co-operation and ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We must be leaders in promoting efficiency and developing alternative energy technologies. Together, we must pursue hydrogen and solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal energy.

One of the principal sources of alternative energy is via improved energy efficiency. Given that the largest sources of C02 are in the exceedingly inefficient thermal electricity and transportation sectors, there is a great deal of room for joint, international victories with the EU and Asia.

We are already engaging with other major energy players, such as Russia through the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Energy Working Group. We will work together in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And we will discuss new investment opportunities in both countries, while at the same time encouraging diversified supply routes. By deepening the US-Russia dialogue on energy, we will increase transparency and promote stability and predictability in our relationship. While we may not agree on every issue, we can work together to foster an open dialogue that builds trust.

Fourth, our understanding of energy challenges must include environmentally suitable sources of supply that are compatible with

climate change objectives that will be outlined in Copenhagen. Addressing energy security and meeting the climate change challenge are inextricably linked. Since President Obama took office, the United States has demonstrated its renewed commitment to combating climate change both by supporting domestic policies that advance clean energy, climate security, and economic recovery; and by vigorously re-engaging in international climate negotiations.

Domestically, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included over $80 billion for clean energy investment. President Obama set a new policy to increase fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks. And the administration supports mandatory emissions reduction targets. On the international front, the United States is working with its partners around the world to forge a strong international agreement through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating process.

Global issues need global solutions and we can not go at this alone. A secure energy future is fostered by building relations internationally through many cross-cutting issues that will determine peace, prosperity and quality of life, not only for Americans, but for the world.

Richard Morningstar is the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy. Julia Nesheiwat is a Senior Advisor at the US Department of State

News Releases from EPA Headquarters, Washington DC.

EPA: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Public Health and the Environment / Science overwhelmingly shows greenhouse gas concentrations at unprecedented levels due to human activity

Release date: 12/07/2009

Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn,  Milbourn.cathy at epa.gov, 202-564-7849, 202-564-4355; En español: Lina Younes,  younes.lina at epa.gov, 202-564-9924, 202-564-4355
EPA: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Public Health and the Environment

Science overwhelmingly shows greenhouse gas concentrations at unprecedented levels due to human activity

WASHINGTON – After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.

GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.

“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”

EPA’s final findings respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that GHGs fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. The findings do not in and of themselves impose any emission reduction requirements but rather allow EPA to finalize the GHG standards proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles as part of the joint rulemaking with the Department of Transportation.

On-road vehicles contribute more than 23 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions. EPA’s proposed GHG standards for light-duty vehicles, a subset of on-road vehicles, would reduce GHG emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.

EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world.

Scientific consensus shows that as a result of human activities, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, with the steepest increase in warming in recent decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change goes beyond observed increases in average surface temperatures; it includes melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide, changing precipitation patterns, and changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife.

President Obama and Administrator Jackson have publicly stated that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation. However, climate change is threatening public health and welfare, and it is critical that EPA fulfill its obligation to respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

EPA issued the proposed findings in April 2009 and held a 60-day public comment period. The agency received more than 380,000 comments, which were carefully reviewed and considered during the development of the final findings.

Information on EPA’s findings: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endange…

December 07, 2009
Climate auguries turn promising in Copenhagen
by Jeffrey Laurenti,  http://takingnote.tcf.org/

The Romans would read the entrails of sacrificed animals for encouragement about the prospects for success of an intended initiative.  Diplomats in our more rationalist age predict results based on delphic hints from government leaders and on subtle softenings of once adamantly held positions.  The omens for the global climate conference that opened in Copenhagen Monday have suddenly turned auspicious.

Over the past two weeks the major hold-outs from the first round of greenhouse gas reductions promised at Kyoto a dozen years ago have belatedly put cards on the table.  By apparent pre-arrangement, the United States went first, with President Obama committing to a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions from 2005 levels (a feeble four percent reduction from the 1990 baseline).  China quickly followed with a promise to reduce  the carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross national product from 2005 levels by some 40 percent over the next ten years — a sleight of statistical hand that translates into halving the increase in China’s emissions over the coming decade.

China’s opening bid was “a wake-up call” for New Delhi, India’s environment minister acknowledged, and prime minister Manmohan Singh promptly stepped forward to pledge comparable cuts in India’s carbon emissions at the meeting of Commonwealth heads of government at the end of November.

The big breakthrough, say the augurs in the office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, came late last week, when the Obama administration endorsed a call for immediate creation of a $10-billion international fund to support developing countries’ responses to climate change.  As proposed at the Commonwealth summit by British prime minister Gordon Brown, the fund would next year begin pumping funds into poorer countries’ acquisition of new, cleaner energy technology, their fight against deforestation, and their efforts to mitigate effects of the warming already underway.

Washington has promised it will pay its “fair share” of the fund, and Britain has already pledged $1.31 billion (thirteen percent) of the initial launch fund for 2010 through 2012.  Financing through the fund would then swiftly rise, to a cumulative $150 billion by 2020.

A virtuous circle seems to be developing, lifting even the most cynical diplomats’ expectations for a tangible result from Copenhagen over the next two weeks.  President Obama’s decision not to treat the conference as just a check-that-box stopover en route to collecting his Nobel prize this week is a further augury of likely success.  Instead, he will make a separate trip to ensure that a hard-negotiated outcome emerges from a summit of world leaders as the conference concludes on December 18.

If Copenhagen does indeed approve the political framework of a “grand bargain” to combat climate threats — built around emissions cuts from the big energy burning countries plus technology and mitigation financing for developing countries — Obama will have ended his first year in the White House with a major game-changing victory.   A global pact on climate protection, to be hammered into legally binding treaty terms next year, will rebut conservative critics’ charge that Obama’s embrace of diplomacy and the United Nations produces nothing but impotent talk.

Climate change has been a huge fault line in American politics for over a decade, with climate-holocaust deniers having seized control of the formerly ruling party.  Vice President Cheney famously derided calls for energy conservation as merely “a sign of personal virtue,” and Obama’s opponents in the 2008 election loudly vowed to “drill, baby, drill.”  There would most assuredly have been no prospect for global agreement on climate action had Obama not come to power in Washington.

But Obama will have to deliver on his Copenhagen commitments in the Congress — in an election year about which his party is increasingly nervous.  Achieving agreement with the Chinese and Indians may prove easy by comparison.  Our filibuster-disabled Senate in Washington may well prove more impervious to climate rationalism than the superstitious senate of ancient Rome.

Posted by Jeffrey Laurenti on December 7, 2009

Climate Change and International Security
15th December 1.30-3pm at DR-Byen’s Concert House, Studie 2
Open to the general public

The Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs Per Stig Møller has invited a panel of world leaders for a debate on the impact of climate change on international security. The panel will include:

·        African Union Commission Chairperson Dr. Jean Ping
·        EU Presidency, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt
·        NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen

The moderator will be Steffen Kretz, Senior International Editor and anchor with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR).

You are invited to take part. Participation is free of charge. Seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis due to the limited number of seats. A binding registration is therefore necessary. Deadline is the 10th of December 2009. Register by sending your name and contact details to  MEK at UM.DK. You will receive a personal confirmation of registration, which you must bring with you in order to access the event.

Venue: DR-Byen’s Concert House, Studie 2, Emil Holms Kanal 20, 0999 Copenhagen C.
Nearest metro: DR-Byen (two stops from the Bella Center).
Doors open at 12.30 and close at 1.15pm, to ensure a prompt start to the debate.

For further information contact Catherine Lorenzen:  catlor at um.dk / +45 3392 1855

UNCTAD Publishes Analysis of Alternative Biofuels Policy Options

7 December 2009: The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has released a report titled “The Biofuels Market: Current Situation and Alternative Scenarios,” which assesses six different biofuels policy scenarios, along with their possible global impacts.

The report is based on a scenario-building exercise that explicitly recognizes the contingency and volatility of biofuels viability, and frames its analyses accordingly. The report examines: the role and implications of biofuels blending targets; the establishment of a carbon dioxide price as incentive for the development of a global biofuels market; the commercial viability of second generation biofuel technology; trade opportunities for developing countries; and trade implications, including a discussion of intellectual property rights. The report also contains a chapter dedicated to biodiesel and the potential role of jatropha. [UNCTAD Press Release][The Report]

First President Obama went to Copenhagen on behalf of the city of Chicago and his host was Prime Minister Lars  Lokke Rasmussen. The man did not help him and the President came back empty handed. But now, in Copenhagen, quite a few people told me that Obama’s visit has completely overshadowed the election of the site for the Olympics. In effect the visit became an Obama festivity.