TEL ABYAD, Syria — I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up.
Thomas L. Friedman by Josh Haner/The New York Times
As we were driving back to the Turkish border, I noticed a school and asked the driver to turn around so I could explore it. It was empty — of students. But war refugees had occupied the classrooms and little kids’ shirts and pants were drying on a line strung across the playground. The basketball backboard was rusted, and a local parent volunteered to give me a tour of the bathrooms, which he described as disgusting. Classes had not been held in two years. And that is what terrified me. Men with guns I’m used to. But kids without books, teachers or classes for a long time — that’s trouble. Big trouble.
They grow up to be teenagers with too many guns and too much free time, and I saw a lot of them in Tel Abyad. They are the law of the land here now, but no two of them wear the same uniform, and many are just in jeans. These boys bravely joined the adults of their town to liberate it from the murderous tyranny of Bashar al-Assad, but now the war has ground to a stalemate, so here, as in so many towns across Syria, life is frozen in a no-man’s land between order and chaos. There is just enough patched-up order for people to live — some families have even rigged up bootleg stills that refine crude oil into gasoline to keep cars running — but not enough order to really rebuild, to send kids to school or to start businesses.
So Syria as a whole is slowly bleeding to death of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. You can’t help but ask whether it will ever be a unified country again and what kind of human disaster will play out here if a whole generation grows up without school.
“Syria is becoming Somalia,” said Zakaria Zakaria, a 28-year-old Syrian who graduated from college with a major in English and who acted as our guide. “Students have now lost two years of school, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and if this goes on for two more years it will be like Somalia, a failed country. But Somalia is off somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Syria is the heart of the Middle East. I don’t want this to happen to my country. But the more it goes on, the worse it will be.”
This is the agony of Syria today. You can’t imagine the war here continuing for another year, let alone five. But when you feel the depth of the rage against the Assad government and contemplate the sporadic but barbaric sect-on-sect violence, you can’t imagine any peace deal happening or holding — not without international peacekeepers on the ground to enforce it. Eventually, we will all have to have that conversation, because this is no ordinary war.
THIS Syrian disaster is like a superstorm. It’s what happens when an extreme weather event, the worst drought in Syria’s modern history, combines with a fast-growing population and a repressive and corrupt regime and unleashes extreme sectarian and religious passions, fueled by money from rival outside powers — Iran and Hezbollah on one side, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar on the other, each of which have an extreme interest in its Syrian allies’ defeating the other’s allies — all at a time when America, in its post-Iraq/Afghanistan phase, is extremely wary of getting involved.
I came here to write my column and work on a film for the Showtime series, “Years of Living Dangerously,” about the “Jafaf,” or drought, one of the key drivers of the Syrian war. In an age of climate change, we’re likely to see many more such conflicts.
“The drought did not cause Syria’s civil war,” said the Syrian economist Samir Aita, but, he added, the failure of the government to respond to the drought played a huge role in fueling the uprising. What happened, Aita explained, was that after Assad took over in 2000 he opened up the regulated agricultural sector in Syria for big farmers, many of them government cronies, to buy up land and drill as much water as they wanted, eventually severely diminishing the water table. This began driving small farmers off the land into towns, where they had to scrounge for work.
Because of the population explosion that started here in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to better health care, those leaving the countryside came with huge families and settled in towns around cities like Aleppo. Some of those small towns swelled from 2,000 people to 400,000 in a decade or so. The government failed to provide proper schools, jobs or services for this youth bulge, which hit its teens and 20s right when the revolution erupted.
Rebels in Tel Abyad, in northeast Syria, in 2012. Life in the town has ground to a halt, with children not in school, and no solution in sight.
Then, between 2006 and 2011, some 60 percent of Syria’s land mass was ravaged by the drought and, with the water table already too low and river irrigation shrunken, it wiped out the livelihoods of 800,000 Syrian farmers and herders, the United Nations reported. “Half the population in Syria between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers left the land” for urban areas during the last decade, said Aita. And with Assad doing nothing to help the drought refugees, a lot of very simple farmers and their kids got politicized. “State and government was invented in this part of the world, in ancient Mesopotamia, precisely to manage irrigation and crop growing,” said Aita, “and Assad failed in that basic task.”
Young people and farmers starved for jobs — and land starved for water — were a prescription for revolution. Just ask those who were here, starting with Faten, whom I met in her simple flat in Sanliurfa, a Turkish city near the Syrian border. Faten, 38, a Sunni, fled there with her son Mohammed, 19, a member of the Free Syrian Army, who was badly wounded in a firefight a few months ago. Raised in the northeastern Syrian farming village of Mohasen, Faten, who asked me not to use her last name, told me her story.
She and her husband “used to own farmland,” said Faten. “We tended annual crops. We had wheat, barley and everyday food — vegetables, cucumbers, anything we could plant instead of buying in the market. Thank God there were rains, and the harvests were very good before. And then suddenly, the drought happened.”
What did it look like? “To see the land made us very sad,” she said. “The land became like a desert, like salt.” Everything turned yellow.
Did Assad’s government help? “They didn’t do anything,” she said. “We asked for help, but they didn’t care. They didn’t care about this subject. Never, never. We had to solve our problems ourselves.”
So what did you do? “When the drought happened, we could handle it for two years, and then we said, ‘It’s enough.’ So we decided to move to the city. I got a government job as a nurse, and my husband opened a shop. It was hard. The majority of people left the village and went to the city to find jobs, anything to make a living to eat.” The drought was particularly hard on young men who wanted to study or marry but could no longer afford either, she added. Families married off daughters at earlier ages because they couldn’t support them.
Faten, her head conservatively covered in a black scarf, said the drought and the government’s total lack of response radicalized her. So when the first spark of revolutionary protest was ignited in the small southern Syrian town of Dara’a, in March 2011, Faten and other drought refugees couldn’t wait to sign on. “Since the first cry of ‘Allahu akbar,’ we all joined the revolution. Right away.” Was this about the drought? “Of course,” she said, “the drought and unemployment were important in pushing people toward revolution.”
ZAKARIA ZAKARIA was a teenager in nearby Hasakah Province when the drought hit and he recalled the way it turned proud farmers, masters of their own little plots of land, into humiliated day laborers, working for meager wages in the towns “just to get some money to eat.” What was most galling to many, said Zakaria, was that if you wanted a steady government job you had to bribe a bureaucrat or know someone in the state intelligence agency.
The best jobs in Hasakah Province, Syria’s oil-producing region, were with the oil companies. But drought refugees, virtually all of whom were Sunni Muslims, could only dream of getting hired there. “Most of those jobs went to Alawites from Tartous and Latakia,” said Zakaria, referring to the minority sect to which President Assad belongs and which is concentrated in these coastal cities. “It made people even more angry. The best jobs on our lands in our province were not for us, but for people who come from outside.”
Only in the spring of 2011, after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, did the Assad government start to worry about the drought refugees, said Zakaria, because on March 11 — a few days before the Syrian uprising would start in Dara’a — Assad visited Hasakah, a very rare event. “So I posted on my Facebook page, ‘Let him see how people are living,’ ” recalled Zakaria. “My friends said I should delete it right away, because it was dangerous. I wouldn’t. They didn’t care how people lived.”
Abu Khalil, 48, is one of those who didn’t just protest. A former cotton farmer who had to become a smuggler to make ends meet for his 16 children after the drought wiped out their farm, he is now the Free Syrian Army commander in the Tel Abyad area. We met at a crushed Syrian Army checkpoint. After being introduced by our Syrian go-between, Abu Khalil, who was built like a tough little boxer, introduced me to his fighting unit. He did not introduce them by rank but by blood, pointing to each of the armed men around him and saying: “My nephew, my cousin, my brother, my cousin, my nephew, my son, my cousin …”
Free Syrian Army units are often family affairs. In a country where the government for decades wanted no one to trust anyone else, it’s no surprise.
“We could accept the drought because it was from Allah,” said Abu Khalil, “but we could not accept that the government would do nothing.”
Before we parted, he pulled me aside to say that all that his men needed were anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons and they could finish Assad off. “Couldn’t Obama just let the Mafia send them to us?” he asked. “Don’t worry, we won’t use them against Israel.”
As part of our film we’ve been following a Syrian woman who is a political activist, Farah Nasif, a 27-year-old Damascus University graduate from Deir-az-Zour, whose family’s farm was also wiped out in the drought.
Nasif typifies the secular, connected, newly urbanized young people who spearheaded the democracy uprisings here and in Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia. They all have two things in common: they no longer fear their governments or their parents, and they want to live like citizens, with equal rights — not as sects with equal fears.
If this new generation had a motto, noted Aita, the Syrian economist, it would actually be the same one Syrians used in their 1925 war of independence from France: “Religion is for God, and the country is for everyone.”
But Nasif is torn right now. She wants Assad gone and all political prisoners released, but she knows that more war “will only destroy the rest of the country.” And her gut tells her that even once Assad is gone, there is no agreement on who or what should come next. So every option worries her — more war, a cease-fire, the present and the future. This is the agony of Syria today — and why the closer you get to it, the less certain you are how to fix it.
Really – You can’t hit 400 ppm CO2 and still think “all of the above” is a rationale for energy strategy.
A lot has happened in the last week. The Earth hit the 400 parts per million CO2 threshold for the first time in human history. Scientists tell us this is bad news if we want to prevent runaway climate change. “If we continue to burn fossil fuels at accelerating rates, if we continue with business as usual, we will cross the 450 parts per million limit in a matter of maybe a couple decades,” scientist Michael Mann told Democracy Now! “We believe that with that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we commit to what can truly be described as dangerous and irreversible changes in our climate.”
May 17, 2013 | from Tara Lohan on AlterNet
If you didn’t know this already, we should be listening to Mann and to other scientists. I thought this was settled a long time ago, but someone keeps giving print space to climate deniers, so a new survey of 12,000 peer-reviewed studies on the climate was just completed and the not-so-shocking conclusion was this, as Mother Nature Network reports:
Published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the analysis shows an overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that humans are a key contributor to climate change, while a “vanishingly small proportion” defy this consensus. Most of the climate papers didn’t specifically address humanity’s involvement — likely because it’s considered a given in scientific circles, the survey’s authors point out — but of the 4,014 that did, 3,896 shared the mainstream outlook that people are largely to blame.
In light of this news, it makes it even more infuriating to see that the Obama administration has spent the week prostrating to the fossil fuel lobby. Here are four disturbing things the administration’s been up to.
1. Moniz Hearts Fracking
Obama tapped nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to head the Energy Department and the Senate gave a big thumbs-up to Moniz on Thursday. Many environmental groups had concerns that Moniz was too pro-fracking, and those concerns are clearly warranted. Moniz’s first order of business Friday was to clear the way for 20 years of liquified natural gas exports via Freeport LNG Terminal on Quintana Island, Texas.
Of course, we’ve already been sold the story that we’re suposed to frack the crap out of the country in the name of energy security, but we knew all along it was for industry profit, right? Brad Jacobson recently detailed for AlterNet about how Congress members are clamoring for export plans to be fast-tracked — although what Americans will get out of the deal
will be higher gas prices and less energy security.
2. Thanks for Nothing, Sally
While the nomination of Moniz disappointed many environmentalists, some were cheered by REI exec Sally Jewell taking over the Interior Department. Those same folks might not be cheering after Jewell announced the Bureau of Land Management’s newest regulations (or lack thereof) for fracking on our public lands.
As Sierra Club’s Michael Brune reported Friday:
The new rules are disappointing for many reasons: Drillers won’t be required to disclose what chemicals they’re using, there is no requirement for baseline water testing, and there are no setback requirements to govern how close to homes and schools drilling can happen. Once again, though, the policy documents an even bigger failure to grasp a fundamental principle: If we’re serious about the climate crisis, then the last thing we should be doing is opening up still more federal land to drilling and fracking for fossil fuels.
3. No Time for Farmers
The group Bold Nebraska reported this week that Obama turned down an invitation to hear from Nebraska farmers and ranchers about their concerns that the Keystone XL pipeline could destroy their livelihoods. Of course, the President is a busy guy, right? And besides, the White House said he was not “taking any meetings on the pipeline.”
Or is he? The group writes:
Bold Nebraska was therefore surprised the President is meeting with staff at Ellicott Dredges, a company that just testified in Congress in support of Keystone XL and makes equipment that creates the tailing ponds, which are massive bodies of polluted water and a byproduct of the tar sands mining process.
“I simply do not understand why President Obama can find the time to visit a company that helps hold 12 million liters of toxic tar sands water but cannot find the time to visit ranchers who put over $12 billion of Nebraska-grown food on Americans’ dinner tables every year,” said Meghan Hammond, a young farmer whose family land is at risk with the current route in Nebraska.
4. Who Needs the Arctic? (Hint: We Do)
Subhankar Banerjee, a photographer and longtime Arctic activist, was recently appalled by a new report from the Obama administration on the future of the Arctic. And the rest of us should be, too. Banerjee writes about the report:
“Our pioneering spirit is naturally drawn to this region, for the economic opportunities it presents…” President Obama hides his excitement for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean by carefully choosing the euphemism—“economic opportunities.”
In page 7 the true intent of the report is finally revealed: “The region holds sizable proved and potential oil and natural gas resources that will likely continue to provide valuable supplies to meet U.S. energy needs.”
Of course the report mentions protecting the environment, but gives no specific details.
We know that Obama talks a good talk about climate protection, but his second term has proven thus far that he’s completely out of touch with reality. You can’t hit 400 ppm CO2 and still think “all of the above” is a rationale energy strategy.
Statement of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Today the U.N. Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda concluded its three day meeting at the United Nations in New York.
The Panel’s discussions were frank, productive and characterized by a strong unity of purpose. The meeting reiterated the imperative need for a renewed Global Partnership that enables a transformative, people-centered and planet-sensitive development agenda, realized through the equal partnership of all stakeholders. The Panel reaffirmed its vision to end extreme poverty in all its forms in the context of sustainable development and to have in place the building blocks of sustained prosperity for all.
The Secretary-General visited the Panel during its discussions. He expressed his full respect and confidence in the ongoing work of the independent Panel and its three co-Chairs. He also commended the Panel for the inclusive and transparent approach adopted in its work and encouraged Panel members to maintain the already high level of ambition right through to the finish.
The Panel made good progress in considering its report. The Panel looks forward to its final meeting when it will deliver the report to the United Nations Secretary-General on the 30th of May as requested.
Observed concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have exceeded the symbolic 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold at several stations of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch network. This is a wakeup call about the constantly rising levels of this greenhouse gas, which is released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities and is the main driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years, trapping heat and causing our planet to warm further, impacting on all aspects of life on earth.
On May 9, 2013, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, recorded a reading of 400.03 ppm, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mauna Loa is the oldest continuous atmospheric measurement station in the world and so is widely regarded as a benchmark site in the Global Atmosphere Watch.
Several other Global Atmosphere Watch stations have also reported CO2 concentrations exceeding the 400 ppm threshold during the seasonal maximum. This occurs early in the northern hemisphere spring before vegetation growth absorbs CO 2.
The threshold was first crossed at stations in the Arctic. A monthly average value exceeding 400 ppm was registered at Barrow, Alaska, USA (71.3N) for the first time in April 2012, as well as at Alert, in Canada (82.5N). From the beginning of 2013, measured CO 2. values at another GAW Global station, in Ny-Ålesund, Norway, (at 78.9N) also exceeded 400 ppm. This threshold has now also been crossed at stations closer to the Equator. Izaña, (Canary Islands, Spain), reported daily mean values exceeding 400 ppm at the end of April 2013. This was followed by Mauna Loa, which has been carrying out measurements since 1958.
The Global Atmosphere Watch coordinates observations of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases like methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to ensure that measurements around the world are standardized and can be compared to each other. The network spans more than 50 countries including stations high in the Alps, Andes and Himalayas, as well as in the Arctic, Antarctic and in the far South Pacific.
Carbon dioxide is the single most important greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. It is responsible for 85% of the increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – over the past decade. Between 1990 and 2011 there was a 30% increase in radiative forcing because of greenhouse gases. Radiative forcing is calculated relative to the pre-industrial level of key greenhouse gases.
According to WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 390.9 parts per million in 2011, or 140% of the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million. The pre-industrial era level represented a balance of CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased on average by 2 parts per million per year for the past 10 years.
At the current rate of increase, the global annual average CO2 concentration is set to cross the 400 ppm threshold in 2015 or 2016. www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html.-
Full WMO news release, including charts and links, is available at www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/news/documents/400ppm.final.pdf
A parched Syria turned to war, scholar says, and Egypt may be next.
Prof. Arnon Sofer sets out the link between drought, Assad’s civil war, and the wider strains in the Middle East; Jordan and Gaza are also in deep trouble, he warns.
Some look at the upheaval in Syria through a religious lens. The Sunni and Shia factions, battling for supremacy in the Middle East, have locked horns in the heart of the Levant, where the Shia-affiliated Alawite sect has ruled a majority Sunni nation for decades.
Some see it through a social prism. As they did in Tunis with Muhammad Bouazizi — an honest man who couldn’t make an honest living in this corruption-ridden part of the world — the social protests that sparked the war in Syria started in the poor and disenfranchised parts of the country.
Others look at the eroding boundaries of state in Syria and other parts of the Middle East as a direct result of the sins of Western hubris and Colonialism.
Professor Arnon Sofer has no qualms with any of these claims and interpretations. But the upheaval in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, he says, cannot be fully understood without also taking two environmental truths into account: soaring birthrates and dwindling water supply.
Over the past 60 years, the population in the Middle East has twice doubled itself, said Sofer, the head of the Chaikin geo-strategy group and a longtime lecturer at the IDF’s top defense college, where today he heads the National Defense College Research Center. “There is no example of this anywhere else on earth,” he said of the population increase. Couple that with Syria’s water scarcity, he said, “and as a geographer it was clear to me that a conflict would erupt.”
The Pentagon cautiously agrees with this thesis. In February the Department of Defense released a “climate-change adaptation roadmap.” While the effects of climate change alone do not cause conflict, the report states, “they may act as accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world.” Predominantly the paper is concerned with the effects of rising seas and melting arctic permafrost on US military installations. The Middle East is not mentioned by name.
But Sofer and Anton Berkovsky, who together compiled the research work of students at the National Defense College and released a geo-strategic paper on Syria earlier in the year, believe that water scarcity played a significant role in the onset of the Syrian civil war and the Arab Spring, and that it may help re-shape the strategic bonds and interests of the region as regimes teeter and borders blur. Sofer also believes that a “Pax Climactica” is within reach if regional leaders would only, for a short while, forsake their natural inclinations to wake up in the morning and seek to do harm.
Syria is 85 percent desert or semi-arid country. But it has several significant waterways. The Euphrates runs in a south-easterly direction through the center of the country to Iraq. The Tigris runs southeast, tracing a short part along Syria’s border with Turkey before flowing into Iraq. And, aside from several lesser rivers that flow southwest through Lebanon to the Mediterranean, Syria has an estimated four to five billion cubic meters of water in its underground aquifers.
From 2007-2008, over 160 villages in Syria were abandoned and some 250,000 farmers relocated to Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. The capital, like many of its peer cities in the Middle East, was unable to handle that influx of people. Residents dug 25,000 illegal wells in and around Damascus, pushing the water table ever lower and the salinity of the water ever higher.
For these reasons the heart of the country was once an oasis. For 5,000 years, Damascus was famous for its agriculture and its dried fruit. Since 1950, however, the population has increased sevenfold in Syria, to 22 million, and Turkey, in an age of scarcity, has seized much of the water that once flowed south into Syria.
“They’ve been choking them,” Sofer said, noting that Turkey annually takes half of the available 30 billion cubic meters of water in the Euphrates. This limits Syria’s water supply and hinders its ability to generate hydroelectricity.
In 2007, after years of population growth and institutional economic stagnation, several dry years descended on Syria. Farmers began to leave their villages and head toward the capital. From 2007-2008, Sofer said, over 160 villages in Syria were abandoned and some 250,000 farmers – Sofer calls them “climate refugees” – relocated to Damascus, Aleppo and other cities.
The capital, like many of its peer cities in the Middle East, was unable to handle that influx of people. Residents dug 25,000 illegal wells in and around Damascus, pushing the water table ever lower and the salinity of the water ever higher.
This, along with over one million refugees from the Iraq war and, among other challenges, borders that contain a dizzying array of religions and ethnicities, set the stage for the civil war.
Tellingly, it broke out in the regions most parched — “in Daraa [in the south] and in Kamishli in the northeast,” Sofer said. “Those are two of the driest places in the country.”
Professor Eyal Zisser, one of Israel’s top scholars of Syria, agreed that the drought played a significant role in the onset of the war. “Without doubt it is part of the issue,” he said. Zisser did not believe that water was the central issue that inflamed Syria but rather “the match that set the field of thorns on fire.”
Rebel troops transporting two women to safety along the Orontes River, which has shrunk in recent years and grown increasingly saline (Photo credit: CC BY FreedomHouse)
Since that fire began to rage in March 2011, the course of the battles has been partially dictated by a different sort of logic, not environmental in nature. “Assad is butchering his way west,” Sofer said. He believes the president will eventually have to retreat from the capital and therefore has focused his efforts on Homs and other cities and towns that lie between Damascus and the Alawite regions near the coast, cutting himself an escape route.
Sofer and Berkovsky envision several scenarios for Syria. Among them: Assad puts down the rebellion and remains in power; Assad abdicates and a Sunni majority seizes control; Assad abdicates and no central power is able to assert control. The most likely scenario, Sofer said, was that the Syrian dictator would eventually flee to Tehran. But he preferred to avoid that sort of micro-conjecture and to focus on the regional effects of population growth and water scarcity and the manner in which that ominous mix might shape the future of the region.
Writing in the New York Times from Yemen on Thursday, Thomas Friedman embraced a similar thesis, noting that the heart of the al-Qaeda activity in the region corresponded with the areas most stricken by drought. Sofer published a paper in July where he laid out the grim environmental reality of the region and argued that, as in Syria, the conflicts bedeviling the region were not about climate issues but were deeply influenced by them.
Egypt, Sofer wrote, faces severe repercussions from climate change. Even a slight rise in the level of the sea – just half a meter – would salinize the Nile Delta aquifers and force three million people out of the city of Alexandria. In the more distant future, as the North Sea melts, the Suez Canal could decline in importance. More immediately, and of greater significance to Israel, he wrote that Egypt, faced with a water shortage, would likely grow more militant over the coming years. But he felt the militancy would be directed south, toward South Sudan and Ethiopia and other nations competing for the waters of the Nile, and not north toward the Levant.
The Nile River, the lifeblood of Egypt’s 82 million people (Photo credit: CC BY Simona Scolari, Flickr)
As proof that this pivot has already begun, Sofer pointed to Abu-Simbel, near the border with Sudan. There the state has converted a civilian airport into a military one. “The conclusion to be drawn from this is simple and unequivocal,” he wrote. “Egypt today represents a military threat to the southern nations of the Nile and not the Zionist state to the east.”
The Sinai Peninsula, already quite lawless, will only get worse, perhaps to the point of secession, he and Berkovsky wrote. Local Bedouin will have difficulty raising animals in the region and will turn, to an even greater degree, to smuggling material and people along a route established in the Bronze Age, through Sinai to Asia and Europe.
Syria, even if the war were swiftly resolved, is “on the cusp of catastrophe.” Jordan, too, is in dire need of water. And Gaza, like Syria, has been battered by unchecked drilling. The day after Israel left under the Oslo Accords, he said, the Palestinian Authority and other actors began digging 500 wells along the coastal aquifer even though Israel had warned them of the dangers. “Today there are around 4,000 of them and no more ground water. It’s over. There’s no fooling around with this stuff,” he said.
Only the two most stable states in the region – Israel and Turkey – have ample water.
Turkey is the sole Middle Eastern nation blessed with plentiful water sources. Ankara’s control of the Tigris and the Euphrates, among other rivers, means that Iraq and Syria, both downriver, are to a large extent dependent on Turkey for food, water and electricity. That strategic advantage, along with Turkey’s position as the bridge between the Middle East and Europe, “further serves its neo-Ottoman agenda,” Sofer said.
He envisioned an increased role for Turkey both in the Levant and, eventually, in central Asia and along the oil crossroads of the Persian Gulf, pitting it against Iran. Climate change, he conceded, has only a minor role in that future struggle for power but it is “an accelerant.”
Israel no longer suffers from drought. Desalination, conservation and sewage treatment have alleviated much of the natural scarcity. In February, the head of the Israel Water Authority, Alexander Kushnir, told the Times of Israel that the country’s water crisis has come to an end. Half of Israel’s two billion cubic meters of annual water use is generated artificially, he said, through desalination and sewage purification.
For Sofer, this self-sufficiency is an immense regional advantage. Israel could pump water east to Jenin in the West Bank and farther along to Jordan and north to Syria. International organizations could follow Israel’s example and fund regional desalination plants, which, he noted, cost less than a single day of modern full-scale war.
Instead, rather than an increase in cooperation, he feared, the region would likely witness ever more desperate competition. Sofer said his friends see him as a sort of Jeremiah. But the Middle East, he cautioned, is a region where “leaders wake up every morning and ask what can I do today to make matters worse.”
Arnon Sofer, a longtime professor at the IDF’s National Defense College, sees a link between the war in Syria and the water shortages there (Photo credit: Moshe Shai/ Flash 90)
Day 4 of the climate talks in Bonn, Germany. Photo credit: adopt a negotiator, Flickr
A slight breath of fresh air entered the UNFCCC climate negotiations this week in Bonn, Germany. Held in the old German parliament—which was designed to demonstrate transparency and light—the meeting took on a more open feel than the past several COPs and intersessionals.
Instead of arguing over the agenda, negotiators got down to work, discussing ways to ramp up countries’ emissions-reduction commitments now and move toward a 2015 international climate action agreement.
Reaching these two goals is imperative. It was encouraging to hear delegates make progress across three key issues involved in achieving them:
1) “Spectrum of Commitments”
This idea—put forward by the United States—is that every country should determine its own national “contribution” to curbing global climate change and present it to the international community. A “spectrum” of various commitments would thus emerge, which could be included in some sort of formal agreement.
The idea opened up a much-needed conversation about the concept itself and how it would work in practice. Beyond the issues of ambition and equity noted below, the first question was whether there would be any guidance or templates for how countries put forward such commitments, or would it be a more “wild west” atmosphere. The second question was if and how the contributions would be reviewed, if at all.
The United States proposed a review up-front, but did not state whether that review would result in any change in the initial offer. Other questions included what kind of mechanism could be used to ratchet up ambition, and how developing countries could put forward contributions without knowing what kind of financial support might be provided. Clearly one key question is how to ensure that nationally offered commitments add up to a level of action that keeps global average temperature increase below 2 degrees C.
While the talks yielded more questions than answers, discussing new ideas like the spectrum of commitments represented good progress in the negotiating process.
Delegates struggled to think through ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent climate change’s worst impacts. They heard from cities, farmers, and business people about what they’re currently doing to shift to a low-carbon economy. But how does that all add up? And how does one create the benefits for countries to go faster and deeper in reducing emissions?
In the context of a spectrum of commitments, the key question asked was how to ensure that collective actions would get the world anywhere close to staying below 2 degrees C of temperature rise. Many noted that the current ambition gap exists because of the bottom-up pledge and a failed review system. Why would this situation be any different if we pursue a spectrum approach? The word “ratchet mechanism” was often heard, with delegates searching for new ideas and incentives to catalyze more action. This “ratchet up” process, which enables countries to increase their emissions-reduction pledges over time, may be combined with a periodic review and a robust set of accounting, measurement, reporting, and verification rules.
3) Equity
The issues of equity and climate justice blew through many of the sessions and dominated informal dinner table debates. Although the “e” word is not mentioned specifically in the Durban Platform, it is now abundantly clear that figuring out how to make the 2015 international climate agreement equitable is going to be one of the keys to its formation.Some asked whether an “equity reference framework” approach could work. A number of experts have been analyzing the different indicators that could help assess whether a national climate action plan is equitable. While negotiating this set of indicators within the UNFCCC process would likely prolong the negotiations, delegates acknowledged that there is value in finding evidence-based, pragmatic ways to integrate equity into the decision-making process.
It was an encouraging debate: After this intersessional, all subsequent UNFCCC discussions of equity will inevitably be taken more seriously.
These stories and the open feeling of the meeting were clearly needed to inspire delegates to roll up their sleeves and think hard about how to address ambition, equity, and other issues.
Negotiators made some progress and started asking the right questions. Now it’s time to start answering these questions to ensure that the 2015 agreement not only provides transparency, but drives a game change in the level of climate action that the world has seen to date.
A dry check dam near Magadi, Kenya.?Photo:?Panos/Dieter Telemans
A UN climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, concluded in December 2012 with a new agreement called the “Doha Climate Gateway.” Its major achievements included the extension until 2020 of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a work plan for negotiating a new global climate pact by 2015, to be implemented starting in 2020.
Despite these commitments, the Doha conference made only limited progress in advancing international talks on climate change, and failed to set more ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
That failure increases the risk of a rise in average global temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. The Emissions Gap Report 2012 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) stresses that if the world does not accelerate action on climate change, total yearly greenhouse gas emissions could rise to 58 gigatonnes by 2020 (compared to 40 gigatonnes in 2000), far above the level scientists say would likely keep temperature increases below 2°C.
Studies by the World Bank indicate that even with the current commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly a 20% likelihood that temperature increases will top 4°C by the end of this century, triggering a cascade of cataclysmic changes, including extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks and a rising sea level, that will affect hundreds of millions of people.
All regions of the world will suffer if this happens, but the poor will suffer the most, and sustainable development in Africa will be set back considerably. Severe droughts in the Horn of Africa in 2011 and in the Sahel region in 2012 alarmingly highlighted Africa’s vulnerability.
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Not-so-fast finance
African countries are among those least likely to have the resources to withstand the adverse impacts of climate change. At the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, developed countries committed to pay $100 billion per year by 2020 into the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries implement adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change. They also pledged to deliver $30 billion as “fast start finance” by 2012.
Disappointingly, a report by the African Climate Policy Centre of the UN Economic Commission for Africa shows that of the $30 billion promised in 2009, only 45% has been “committed,” 33% “allocated” and about 7% actually “disbursed.”
At the Doha conference, Germany, the UK, France, Denmark, Sweden and the EU Commission announced financial pledges totalling approximately $6 billion for the period up to 2015. Most developed countries did not make pledges. African countries thus left Doha with little more than they already had.
Bottom-up approach
Cost-effective measures need to be taken without delay to mitigate the effects of climate change in Africa. Fortunately, there are already many examples in Africa of bottom-up approaches that directly address national needs.
{MIND YOU – PROGRESS IS ATTAINED OUTSIDE THE UNFCCC COP SYSTEM – LET”S FACE IT – THE UN MADE NOISE BUT DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE PROMISED RESULTS. WHY? THIS IS SIMPLE TO ANSWER – IT GOT STUCK ON KYOTO -
A STALE-BIRTH FROM START. WHENEVER KYOTO IS MENTIONED - YOU CAN BET ON WASTED TIME – AGAIN, AGAIN, and AGAIN.This is a SustanabiliTank.info comment – further please note that this website has stopped numbering the meetings at Copenhagen – COP 15 of 2009 – and keeps noting those since then as – 15+1, 15+2, 15+3, and next one, this year, will just be 15+4}
The present article notes:
In Togo, for example, a water reservoir project provided accurate data for rehabilitating water dams. This data and expertise gained during the rehabilitation helped the government develop a proposal for rehabilitating all other water reservoirs in Togo. As a result, access to water has improved for most local communities, with rainwater harvested from rehabilitated. This because the last meeting that had some meaning was the one when President Obama went to China and convinced the Chinese to join the party.ted dams available for domestic and agro-pastoral consumption.
In Seychelles, a rainwater harvesting project in schools gave students a practical demonstration of adaptation to climate change, with harvested water used for school gardens, cleaning and flushing toilets. It also enabled the schools to save up to $250 per month on water bills, money that could be invested in other areas such as teaching and learning resources. Legislation is now under consideration to include rainwater harvesting systems in building codes.
However successful such initiatives may be, their scale is limited. Sizable increases in capital are needed to expand the reach of such adaptation projects. Yet it is unclear whether Africa will ever have sufficient funds to enable the most vulnerable people to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change.
Before the Doha conference, developing countries elaborated a common position that included the desire for a new climate treaty, financing and new technologies to help them make the transition to cleaner, “green” economic practices. “We all have a responsibility in some way to address climate change in order to achieve sustainable development,” said Ali Mohammed, Kenya’s permanent secretary in the ministry of environment and mineral resources. “Africa, small island developing states and least developed countries continue to suffer most from the effects of climate change.”
Priority for adaptation
Greater adaptation efforts in Africa are essential, and they should be supported financially and politically by many different stakeholders in Africa and around the globe. Not only should the process of long-term climate financing from developed countries be accountable and transparent, but it should also be directed first and foremost to the most vulnerable developing countries.
There also needs to be a better balance. Currently, “fast start” finance, however slow in arriving, is largely directed toward “mitigation” projects, which tackle the causes of climate change, such as by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Against the 62% allocated for mitigation projects, only 25% is destined to finance “adaptation” actions, which are intended to minimize the consequences of actual and expected changes in the climate. The remaining 13% goes to countering deforestation, which can also be counted as mitigation, since forests help absorb greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Seyni Nafo, the spokesperson of the African Group at the Doha talks, insisted, “In Africa, we need to know how much is new, where it is coming from, and whether it will be directed to the adaptation projects that are desperately necessary.”
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Positive steps
Despite the limited advances on financing, African countries gained five positive developments from the Doha conference:
The formal extension of the Kyoto Protocol, with continued access to carbon-trading market mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism.
Financing for the formulation and implementation of national adaptation plans for all particularly vulnerable countries, not just the small island developing states and least developed countries, as previously.
The agreement to develop an international mechanism to address loss and damage, which would support countries affected by slow-onset events such as droughts, glacial melting and rising sea levels.
A programme for climate change education and training and for the creation of public awareness to enable the public to participate better in climate change decision-making.
The agreement to assess developing countries’ needs for green technology, as well as a pledge that no unilateral action will be taken on the development and transfer of technologies.
Effectively meeting the challenges of climate change will require a compromise of monumental proportions by all
countries. But climate change will not wait for the adoption of binding international climate change agreements. Nor should individual governments, businesses and others hesitate to take bottom-up action and support local grassroots initiatives.?
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Richard Munang is a policy and programme coordinator for the Africa Climate Change Adaptation Programme of the UN Environment Programme, and Zhen Han is an environmental policy graduate fellow of the Council of World Women Leaders at Cornell University in the US.
Vienna has had now five months of winter and there is no end in sight. Today, April 1st, was Easter Monday – a full Holy Day in Austria – everything is closed – though Catholic Austria does very little for Good Friday – a day like any other. Tomorrow is also last day of the Jewish Passover – also usually a festival of spring renewal in the Northern hemisphere – but nature seems to take her time this year.
Saturday and Sunday I stayed home – it was snowing until Sunday mid-morning, and the streets were wet. But Monday the sky cleared and the street was dry – though the zero Celsius temperature continued. People try to explain that this was a sign of global Warming as well.
The weekend papers (there are no papers on Easter Monday) were talking about several places that had Easter Markets. I decided to go not to one of the two places in center-city, but picked the Calvary-Mountain Street in the outer lying 17th District – Harnals. Named so because there is a Calvary Church on that Street. I took The Underground (U-Bahn) #6 to Alser Strasse and continued on foot. That part of town was rebuilt in large part in the 40s – 50s years as it was bombed during the war – quite a few Nazi institutions were there. Today those rather cheaply built early redone houses are home to a largely Turkish immigrant community – with many other sources of newer arrivals as well. I asked a young Mid-Easterner where was the Easter Market and happily he pointed up-hill and said they might be closed today – then rethought and added – actually today they should be open.
It was 3 pm and my paper said it should be going on till 6 pm. When I got there, the booths were lined up on both sides of the street, but only three of them were open – one for food and the other two for trinkets that children love. Hardly any people on the street – no takers for this cold weather. One of the three sales people, I think he was a Turk, tried to convince me to buy at least sun-glasses.
Then my eyes caught a regular store window on the side of the street, at Kalvarienberggasse 24, not far from where the Church was. It looked like an art gallery and had empty shells in the window – garden-snails and different water-molluscs. Schein-Kunst it said, and the author was Brigitte Gauss.
It had a poem written directly on the window-pane. It said:
Erst wenn der letzte Baun gerodet,der letzte Fluss vergiftet, der letzte Fish gefangen, werdet Ihr feststellen, dass man Geld nicht essen kann!
signed Weissagung der CRE
That means:
Only when the last tree was felled, the last river poisoned, the last fish caught, you will understand then that one cannot eat money.
Signed - wise-saying of the CRE.
I do not know what the CRE means but googling for it I concluded it must be an acronym meaning Bible-Store. It could stand for International Christian Resources Exhibition headquartered in the UK - ” title=”http://www.creonline.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>Exodus 13:17–15:26 and Numbers 28:19–25.
Haftorah: II Samuel 22:1–51.
The priests bless the congregation with the priestly blessing during the Musaf prayer.
Festive lunch meal.
Evening prayers. After the Amidah, count the 7th day of the Omer.
Light candles after dark for the 8th day of Passover before sunset, using an existing flame, and recite blessing 2. Click here for the blessing, and here for local candle-lighting times.
Festive holiday meal, complete with the holiday kiddush.
Tuesday
April 2—22 Nissan
Final Day of Passover—Acharon Shel PesachMorning service. Half-Hallel is recited. Two Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark.
Torah reading: Deuteronomy 14:22–16:17 and Numbers 28:19–25.
Haftorah: Isaiah 10:32–12:6.
The Yizkor memorial service is recited following the Torah reading.
The priests bless the congregation with the priestly blessing during the Musaf prayer.
Festive lunch meal.
On this final day of Passover we strive for the highest level of freedom, and focus on the final redemption. Following the Baal Shem Tov’s custom, we end Passover with “Moshiach’s Feast”—a festive meal complete with matzah and four cups of wine, during which we celebrate the imminent arrival of the Messiah. The feast begins before sunset and continues until after nightfall.
Evening prayers. After the Amidah, count the 8th day of the Omer.
After nightfall, perform the havdalah ceremony, omitting the blessings on the spices and the candle.
Nightfall is the official end of Passover (for the exact time, click here). Wait an hour to give the rabbi enough time to buy back your chametz before eating it.
Wednesday
April 3—23 NissanThe day following the holiday is known as Isru Chag. It is forbidden to fast on this day.
IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he’ll do Canada a favor.
Canada’s tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy — a mixture of sand, clay and a viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments, are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines.
Canadians don’t universally support construction of the pipeline. A poll by Nanos Research in February 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of billions of dollars annually into our economy.
The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles.
Also, bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.
There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state.
Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat and happy, at least when resource prices are high.
Canada is true to type. When demand for tar sands energy was strong in recent years, investment in Alberta surged. But that demand also lifted the Canadian dollar, which hurt export-oriented manufacturing in Ontario, Canada’s industrial heartland. Then, as the export price of Canadian heavy crude softened in late 2012 and early 2013, the country’s economy stalled.
Canada’s record on technical innovation, except in resource extraction, is notoriously poor. Capital and talent flow to the tar sands, while investments in manufacturing productivity and high technology elsewhere languish.
But more alarming is the way the tar sands industry is undermining Canadian democracy. By suggesting that anyone who questions the industry is unpatriotic, tar sands interest groups have made the industry the third rail of Canadian politics.
The current Conservative government holds a large majority of seats in Parliament but was elected in 2011 with only 40 percent of the vote, because three other parties split the center and left vote. The Conservative base is Alberta, the province from which Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many of his allies hail. As a result, Alberta has extraordinary clout in federal politics, and tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal cabinet.
Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.
The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked “environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada, implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main target.
This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.
President Obama rejected the pipeline last year but now must decide whether to approve a new proposal from TransCanada, the pipeline company. Saying no won’t stop tar sands development by itself, because producers are busy looking for other export routes — west across the Rockies to the Pacific Coast, east to Quebec, or south by rail to the United States. Each alternative faces political, technical or economic challenges as opponents fight to make the industry unviable.
Mr. Obama must do what’s best for America. But stopping Keystone XL would be a major step toward stopping large-scale environmental destruction, the distortion of Canada’s economy and the erosion of its democracy.
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Thomas Homer-Dixon, who teaches global governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, is the author of “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”
The Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) is a centre for advanced research and teaching on global governance and international public policy, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is an independent, non-partisan think tank on international governance, founded in 2005 as a not-for-profit institution on July 30, 2001. The organization was created through a $30-million endowment, including $20 million from Jim Balsillie and $10 million from Mike Lazaridis, co-CEOs of Waterloo-based telecommunications firm Research In Motion (BlackBerry).
The founding followed an early-2001 retreat, convened by Balsillie, that brought together experts, academics and other thought leaders to determine how Canada could increase its capacity to contribute to effective multilateral global governance.
CIGI – Originally named the New Economy Institute, the resulting think tank was renamed The Centre for International Governance Innovation in 2002 to clarify its focus and mission. In 2003, CIGI obtained a matching $30-million donation in federal funding, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
In 2009, CIGI announced plans for the new CIGI Campus in Waterloo. The campus houses CIGI and the BSIA. In time, the campus may also be home to other academic and research institutions, including a proposed CIGI program of research and studies in international law. The $69-million CIGI Campus received federal and provincial funding totalling $50 million through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program and Ontario’s 2009 budget. The City of Waterloo donated the land for the campus through a 99-year lease.
Above tells us that the main goal of this institution is to do Canada good and to place Canada in a leadership position internationally.
By 2010, CIGI was producing over 100 publications annually and employing more than 30 global governance experts across its research programs. Some projects had considerable impact — most notably, CIGI’s proposals for innovation in the G8 system helped lead to the creation of the G20 leaders group.
===========
Abbreviation
BSIA
Formation
2007
Type
Centre for advanced research and teaching on global governance and international public policy
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Is it Easter or Christmas? Many Europeans would be forgiven for being confused by winter’s icy grip on lands that should be thawing in springtime temperatures by now.
Britain is on track for the coldest March since 1962, according to national weather service the Met Office, which also says daily low temperatures in London are going to remain below freezing through the Easter holiday. The mean temperature in Britain from March 1-26 was 2.5 C (36.5 F) — three degrees below the long-term average.
In Berlin, Good Friday saw a new round of snowfall and temperatures just above freezing. The city’s popular lakeside beach opened for the season as planned, though it wasn’t exactly beach weather. Some visitors built a snowman and few ventured into the freezing water.
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What’s going on?
As always when you talk about weather, natural variability is a big factor. But an increasing body of research suggests that cold spells like the one that has lingered in northern and central Europe for much of March could become more common as a result of global warming melting the Arctic ice cap.
Q: Why is it so cold in much of Europe right now?
A: Normally, European winters are kept relatively mild by wet, westerly winds from the Atlantic. But in March, the wind has been blowing mostly from the northeast, bringing freezing Arctic air down over much of Europe.
Q: So why are the winds coming from the northeast?
A: The winds are driven by atmospheric circulation patterns which in turn are affected by differences in air pressure between northern and southern latitudes. For much of March this circulation has been in a negative state, meaning the pressure difference is small. That weakens the westerly Atlantic winds and paves the way for cold air to sweep down over Europe from the Arctic and Siberia.
Q: What does that have to do with Arctic sea ice?
A: Global warming is melting the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean. Last September, it reached its lowest extent on record. Climate models show that the loss of sea ice — which acts as a lid on the ocean, preventing it from giving off heat — triggers feedback mechanisms that shake up the climate system further. A series of studies in recent years have shown that one such effect could be changes in atmospheric circulation, resulting in more frequent cold snaps in Europe.
Q: How would melting Arctic ice lead to cold snaps?
A: The theory is the loss of sea ice means more heat is released from the open ocean, warming the layer of polar air over the water. That reduces the temperature and air pressure differentials with more southern latitudes, increasing the likelihood of a negative state in the atmospheric circulation. Experts stress that winter weather is affected by many other factors, but several studies have shown the Arctic melt loads the dice in favor of colder and snowier winters in Europe. One study by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany showed European cold snaps could become three times more likely because of shrinking sea ice.
Q: What’s the impact on the jet stream?
A: Some studies suggest that the shrinking sea ice also shifts the polar jet stream, a high-altitude air current that flows from west to east. Bigger waves in the meandering jet stream allow frigid air to spill southward from the Arctic, they say. Other climate experts are uncertain about this effect, saying more research is needed. {This effect is important for US climate conditions – lower temperatures and storms. our addition}
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Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this story.
To be sure, regulations have contributed to the process; tighter fuel economy standards are expected to lead automakers to double the fuel efficiency of new cars and light trucks by 2025. Tax breaks are encouraging companies to invest in renewable energy sources and retrofit buildings to increase energy efficiency.
But the main reasons are economic. The great recession and the world’s sluggish recovery have depressed energy use. As in the 1970s, high oil prices have encouraged drivers to drive less, and switch to cars and trucks with better fuel economy.
There is a new force as well: high prices underpinned the widely trumpeted investment in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of shale rock rich in oil and natural gas, which pushed the price of gas to some $2 per thousand cubic feet last April, down from $9 four years ago. Cheap gas, in turn, has encouraged power companies to switch to the cleaner fuel, replacing the most heavily polluting source of energy that we know, coal.
Since 2007 the share of the nation’s electricity produced by gas-powered generators has jumped to 30 percent from 21 percent; CO2 emissions from electricity generation have tumbled more than 15 percent. This new fuel brings potential problems of its own. Environmental groups have sounded the alarm about chemicals and methane leaking from wells, potentially contaminating local water supplies and releasing additional carbon into the air.
But fracking also appears, against all odds, to have brought Mr. Obama’s early, hopeful promise to cut CO2 emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020 within reach.
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The above analysis is saved nevertheless in the last two paragraphs of the article:
“In all my experience as an oil company manager, not a single oil company took into the picture the problem of CO2,” said Leonardo Maugeri, an energy expert at Harvard who until 2010 was head of strategy and development for Italy’s state-owned oil company, Eni. “They are all totally devoted to replacing the reserves they consume every year.”
Perhaps the most important lesson from the American natural gas boom is how prices drive both demand and supply. Putting a price on emissions of CO2 that reflects the burden they impose on the environment and the threat excessive amounts pose to future generations would almost certainly be the most effective strategy to persuade energy companies, power generators — and you and me — to spew less of it.
Published by New York Times on-line: March 16, 2013
Oliver Munday
This Painted Graph catches our attention but we wonder what it means – given content, potentially some new shape, and potentially new colors, it could be the publicity weapon for new campaigns. A majority of Americans, we are sure, by now understand that the good life in the future will be a life based on sustainability, and will be paid for by the citizenry as a whole.
ONE of my favorite quotes, writes Thomas Friedman, about the state of U.S. politics was offered a couple years ago by Gerald Seib, a Wall Street Journal columnist, when he observed that “America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so. A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.” That’s us today — our entire political system is guilty of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” for ourselves.
I raise this now because it strikes me as crazy that one of the obvious solutions to our budget, energy and environmental problems — the one that would be the least painful and have the best long-term impact (a carbon tax) — is off the table. Meanwhile, the solution that is as dumb as the day is long — a budget sequester that slashes spending indiscriminately — is on the table.
Shrinking the tax deduction for charity is on the table. Shrinking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for the poor are on the table. But a carbon tax that could close the deficit and clean the air, weaken petro-dictators, strengthen the dollar, drive clean-tech innovation and still leave some money to lower corporate and income taxes is off the table. So the solutions that are lose-lose and divisive are on the table, while the solution that is win-win-win-win-win — and has both liberal and conservative supporters — is off the table.
Writing in this newspaper in support of a carbon tax back in 2007, N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist, who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush and to Mitt Romney, argued that “the idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise government revenue, has a long history.
The British economist Arthur Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them ‘Pigovian taxes.’ Using a Pigovian tax to address global warming is also an old idea.
It was proposed as far back as 1992 by Martin S. Feldstein on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
… Those vying for elected office, however, are reluctant to sign on to this agenda. Their political consultants are no fans of taxes, Pigovian or otherwise.
Republican consultants advise using the word ‘tax’ only if followed immediately by the word ‘cut.’
Democratic consultants recommend the word ‘tax’ be followed by ‘on the rich.’ ”
Yes, to win passage of any carbon tax, Republicans would insist that it be revenue neutral — to be offset entirely by cuts in corporate taxes and taxes on personal income. But maybe they could be persuaded otherwise.
In an ideal world, you would have 45 percent go to pay down the deficit so that we don’t have to cut entitlements as much — appealing to liberals and greens — and have 45 percent go to reducing corporate and income taxes — to encourage work and investment and appeal to conservatives. The remaining 10 percent could be rebated to low-income households for whom such a tax would be a burden.
According to the Center for Climate and Electricity Policy at the nonpartisan Resources for the Future, a tax of $25 per ton of carbon-dioxide emitted — through the combustion of fossil fuels used in electricity production, commercial and residential heating and transportation — “would raise approximately $125 billion annually.” This $125 billion “could allow federal personal income tax reductions of about 15 percent or corporate income tax reductions of about 70 percent, if all carbon tax revenues were used to replace current tax revenues. Alternatively, the federal deficit could be reduced by approximately $1.25 trillion over 10 years” — roughly what we are trying to do through the foolish sequester. Such a tax would add about 21 cents per gallon of gasoline and about 1.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity. It could be phased in gradually as the economy improves.
Experts believe that the mere signal of a carbon tax would get companies to become more energy efficient. And that’s the point. As part of any grand bargain — which will have to include spending cuts and tax increases — introducing a carbon tax into the mix makes all kinds of options easier and smarter.
Alas, right now both sides are trying to inflict maximum pain on the other, rather than framing the debate as: “Here’s the world we’re living in; here’s what we need to thrive; and, if we cut and tax here, we can invest in these 21st-century growth engines over here.” Our goal is not to balance the budget. It’s to make America great.
SO how come the best ideas are off the table? (Blessedly, Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat of California, is now working to get some kind of carbon tax on the table.) Several reasons, argues Adam Garfinkle, editor of The American Interest and author of a smart new e-book, “Broken: American Political Dysfunction and What to Do About It.”
First, because our democracy today is perverted more than ever by deep-pocketed lobbies and oligopolies. So, “in order to get and stay elected today, you have to raise huge sums of money from corporations, wealthy individuals and dues-laden unions,” Garfinkle notes, and all that money leads to “twisted decision-making at the high-politics level” and “regulatory capture” at the bureaucratic-administrative level.
The fossil fuel, auto and power companies have bought a lot of politicians to block a carbon tax.
The only way around them, argues Garfinkle, would be for leaders to galvanize the public, but that requires building “governing coalitions” in the center rather than “political coalitions” that can get you elected but little else after that. Obama is belatedly trying to do that; the Republican Party hasn’t even tried. “This is what real leaders do,” said Garfinkle. “They change the conversation.” They don’t just read the polls; they shape the polls.
But we can’t put this all on lobbyists. It’s also our generation. “We’re the most self-indulgent generation in American history,” argues Garfinkle, always demanding more services than we’re ready to pay for. “Too many of us want to be unbound by broader social obligations, but the network of those obligations creates the moral ballast that makes good governance possible.”
As Nathan Gardels and Nicolas Berggruen note in their insightful book, “Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East,” we prefer a “Diet Coke culture — sweetness without calories, consumption without savings and safety nets without taxes.” No wonder anything hard or smart is off the table. We pushed it there.
Press Conference held inside the UN with access to the room available only to those the UN calls PRESS, and allows in by means of a stranglehold on the process of Media Accreditation. As such, the many websites belonging to environmental media are not part of this process.No wonder that the outside world is hardly provided information on subjects like this one. Non Member-State government-backed media does not stand a chance under such scrutiny.
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Press Conference on Impact of Climate Change on Marshall Islands.
The Security Council should consider climate change as a threat to international peace and security, particularly for such low-lying nations as the Marshall Islands whose “very existence” was at risk, a Government minister from that country said at a Headquarters press conference today.
“This organization [the Council] that we put faith in to provide the security of our country is saying that that is not a security matter,” said Tony deBrum, Minister in Assistance to the President of the Marshall Islands, as he briefed journalists on today’s so-called “Arria Formula” meeting on security implications of climate change.
Initiated in 1992 by Ambassador Diego Arria, the representative of Venezuela on the Security Council, such informal gatherings do not constitute an activity of the Council and are convened at the initiative of a member or members of the Council.
Mr. deBrum said he had participated as a panelist and reminded the Council that 35 years ago, he had come to the United Nations to petition for the independence of the Marshall Islands. Between 1976 and 1986, his delegation had annually visited the United Nations. In 1986, the Security Council finally approved the termination of the trusteeship and the establishment of an independent Government for the Marshall Islands, he added.
“We are very grateful for that, but it is hard to be excited about the independent Government seeking prosperity, progress and good life for its people to be faced with the situation where its very existence is threatened through climate change,” he said.
“It seems ironic that the very same agency whose approval was needed for my country to become a country again would consider my coming back to ask for help […] is not relevant to their work,” he said. There was no outcome document or a running record from that meeting, but he expected that his appeal had convinced some or more of the participants that climate change “is in fact a security issue, not just an economic/social/political issue”.
When asked which countries opposed treating climate change as the Council’s prerogative, he said China, Russian Federation and Guatemala were among them. “Surprisingly”, the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, of which the Marshall Islands was a member, had taken a position that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was the appropriate venue for deliberations on that issue. That revealed that “many of our own friends throughout the world do not realize the urgency of the problem,” he said.
Describing the situation, he said rising tides had started severely impacting the islands, with roads inundated every 14 days in keeping with the moon cycle. In southern parts of the nation, where there used to be a military base in the Second World War, ordnances were being exposed by the tides, presenting a clear danger to the life and welfare of people there. Even the nation’s capital was required to ration water. In the northern part, emergency kits for making drinking water were being distributed as well water was inundated with salt.
“It became unsuitable for human consumption, and dangerous even to our staple food and citrus,” he said. He said he was not predicting a looming crisis — it was already happening, affecting not just his own country but also Kiribati, Tuvalu and some of the other low-lying islands of the Pacific.
He hoped that “logic will prevail and people see it as a just cause”.
In September, there will be a Pacific Islands Forum meeting to be held in his country, he said. He wished to invite the most significant players in the politics of climate change to visit the Marshall Islands to see the situation first hand. “We are not just sitting under coconut trees and waiting for coconuts to fall,” he said, stressing the need for proactive measures.
To an inquiry about Palau’s bid to bring the climate change issue before the International Court of Justice as a security and human rights violation, he said it was an interesting effort, but was not moving anywhere.
Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Senator Bob Carr, spoke from the Island Republic of Kiribati, the Bikenikora Village, where he went to visit with President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati. and prepared there a tape to be used for the Arria formula non-meeting at the UN Security Council, February 15, 2013. We made some excerpts because it presents interesting angles of what sea-rise could mean to an Island State. This is a potential clear wipe-out. A UN Member State might simply be discontinued because we emit greenhouse gasses.Just think of it.
What happens with the water area where there used to be an inhabited land? Who takes over the non-existent sunken State? What happens to the mineral and oil rights at the bottom of the former territorial waters?
How do you organize the migration of the inhabitants to another country? Do you establish training centers in the country of origin so that the incoming folks fit better into the adopting society? This is what Australia and New Zealand have to consider in their relations to Kiribati.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Bob Carr has recorded a video message that he says is intended as a call to action at the United Nations. He says that climate change is now a matter of security.
The Foreign Minister says his video message is about approaching the problem of getting world consensus on climate change from a slightly different tack.
Senator Carr recorded his message in the low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati, and warned that rising sea levels will make the place uninhabitable within 10 to 20 years and force the mass migration of its population.
Bob Carr’s recorded message will be a contribution to a climate debate in the United Nations early next month. He says Kiribati is in the frontline of climate change and president Tong is keen for the world to understand his country’s special message.
The message is to be played at next month’s UN Security Council debate on climate change, as Alexandra Kirk reported for ABC News.
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BOB CARR: My name’s Bob Carr, I’m the Foreign Minister of Australia. I’m here in Kiribati with the president of this small, island country, president Tong. And what I’m looking at here is the living reality of climate change. This is a village; the tide rises and floods it. This did not happen in the past, and it sends a message of what might happen to this nation of 100,000 people over six islands should the temperature continue to warm and the sea levels continue to rise.
Australia’s working with Kiribati on mitigation measures, like planting mangroves to hold back the tides – even so, Kiribati still faces a future determined by climate change.
Well the president spoke about two decades being all they’ve got left if ocean levels continue to rise. We’re sending to the UN Security Council this key notion that climate change is a security issue.
You take Kiribati as an early warning sign. If they have to evacuate because rising levels of salt water have inundated their fresh water and there’s no drinking water on the islands, then they will be an example of environmental migration. They would be environmental refugees.
The UN is concerned with problems of peace and security. That defines its charter, especially that of the Security Council. We’re saying that if, for example, a population is driven from its traditional home by rising sea level, then this creates a problem of peace and security.
And if it can happen with Kiribati, it can happen with other vulnerable low-lying areas in poor developing countries.
If Kiribati ends up being a victim of climate change, presumably the burden will fall on Australia and possibly New Zealand. Is that correct?
I think we have to accept that as a given, hence our very big commitment to English language and technical education.
I was at a training college in Kiribati and I saw Australian teachers provided by AusAid, some of them volunteers, working hard to lift English education and provide training in carpentry and motor mechanics so that if it does arise that the population has to be relocated, they can enter the workforce of countries like New Zealand and Australia, with Australian qualifications.
That’s the key, they’re being educated to Australian qualifications, they’re winning Australian trade certificates.
That means, that presents, not as desperate environmental refugees, but as proud skilled migrants, and that’s a serious strategic commitment on our part.
At the outset, I would like to thank Pakistan and the United Kingdom for initiating this debate. 18 months ago, in July 2011, the Security Council discussed the security implications of climate change in a formal meeting at the initiative of Germany. This resulted in a presidential statement expressing the Council’s concern about the possible adverse effects of climate change on international peace and security. We are happy to see the Council again taking up this important issue in today´s informal meeting.
Let me join previous speakers in thanking the keynote speakers for their valuable thoughts and the Secretary-General for his presence in this debate.
Germany aligns itself with the statement made by the European Union.
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Prof. Schellnhuber eloquently presented the alarming findings of recent climate research: It is not just facts, it is threats – be it to food and water security in Pakistan, to social stability in the Sahel, to the inhabitants and infrastructure of coastal cities or to the very existence of some small island states.
With the current trends of CO2 emissions, climate change will continue and lead us into a 4 degrees scenario with devastating consequences – with a high risk to economic growth and a grave threat to peace and security.
Therefore, each UN member state should take responsibility for climate and human security and become engaged at national and international level.
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to emphasize 3 points:
1. Avoiding dangerous global warming by taking action to curb emissions is the best way to address the obvious security implications of climate change. The international community has committed itself to adopting a climate protection protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome by 2015 with legal force for Parties. Let me stress: We must take action today to avoid the worst effects of climate change happening to our children and grandchildren – but also in our lifetime. More than ever, climate diplomacy is one of the key challenges for foreign policy in the 21st century. It should be a priority for all UN member states.
2. The UN has a pivotal role to play. The UNFCCC remains the key forum for addressing climate change. However, in accordance with UNGA resolution 63/281, all relevant UN organs, including the Security Council, need to intensify their efforts to combat climate change, including its possible security implications. In this context, the request to the SG to ensure that his reports to the Security Council contain contextual information on the possible security implications of climate change remains important.
We should also consider whether a UN Special Envoy on Climate and Security could help us to tackle the foreign and security policy implications of climate change.
3. In Rio, our Heads of State and Government agreed on a vision for the future we want. In New York, we are now embarking on a number of processes in which we will work out the details. Let us not forget: Climate change and its security implications will shape tomorrow’s world in a way that is almost impossible to overestimate. This is why the transformation of our economies into low-carbon economies is so important. This is why we cannot and must not continue to fuel our economies with fossil resources. This is why it is time now to move towards a green economy and truly sustainable development, in order to create the future we want – and to avoid a future we should all fear.
After almost four decades under US administration as the easternmost part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Marshall Islands attained independence in 1986 under a Compact of Free Association. Compensation claims continue as a result of US nuclear testing on some of the atolls between 1947 and 1962. The Marshall Islands hosts the US Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA)
Reagan Missile Test Site, a key installation in the US missile defense network.
constitutional government in free association with the US; the Compact of Free Association entered into force on 21 October 1986 and the Amended Compact entered into force in May 2004
blue with two stripes radiating from the lower hoist-side corner – orange (top) and white; a white star with four large rays and 20 small rays appears on the hoist side above the two stripes; blue represents the Pacific Ocean, the orange stripe signifies the Ralik Chain or sunset and courage, while the white stripe signifies the Ratak Chain or sunrise and peace; the star symbolizes the cross of Christianity, each of the 24 rays designates one of the electoral districts in the country and the four larger rays highlight the principal cultural centers of Majuro, Jaluit, Wotje, and Ebeye; the rising diagonal band can also be interpreted as representing the equator, with the star showing the archipelago’s position just to the north
Columbia Law School Climate Law Blog has posted a new item,’Upcoming Event -
The United Nations Climate Negotiations: Perspectives From a Small Island
Nation’ – our update is after the event and before moving the outcome to the UN Security Council – Friday February 15, 2013.
On Wednesday, February 13, 2013, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, the Center for Climate
Change Law will host a discussion with Tony deBrum, Minister in Assistance to
the President of the Marshall Islands and former Foreign Minister, and Dr.
Radley Horton, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, focused
on the UN Climate Negotiations from [...]
Info: The United Nations Climate Negotiations: Perspectives From a Small Island Nation
Date/Time: February 13, 2013 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm EST
Location: Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall room 101, 435 West 116th Street (at Amsterdam Avenue)
The February 13, 2013 event at the Columbia University School of Law – was in effect a dry-run of what will be presented to the UN Security Council on Friday Februaruy 15, 2013 in an Arias format meeting – that is in an information gathering session – a closed meeting of the UNSC that will dash out the issue of climate change endangering the security of the people of the Marshall Islands in particular and of all small island States of the Pacific. Further the problem of climate change caused flooding of coastal areas, tsunamis, and the probable wiping out of whole populations will be on the UN table.
An Araias is not a negotiation that expects an outcome – it is plain information gathering that can later lead to discussions that come before attempts at decision making.
The Ambassador Representing the Republic of the Marshall Islands at the United Nations, H.E. Ms. Amatlain Elizabeth Kabua, was present at the Columbia University’s Center for Climate Change Law event.
Professor Michael B. Gerrard, head of the Center, has already produced several volumes of study of the problems posed by a budding Climate Change impacts legal system dealing with “Threatened Island Nations” and “The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change – US and International Aspects” – both being titles of appropriate volumes.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Prof. Gerrard introduced the general problem of Climate Change, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, US District Court, Eastern District of New York, introduced legal aspects, Professor Radley Horton of the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University, spoke of the scientific aspects, with Tony deBrum of the Marshall Islands President’s office and former Foreign Minister describing the legal situation aspects of the Marshall islands and the impact the US had on those islands, and students and others fielding many questions.
Professor Horton showed a graph of sea level rise 1870-2006 by Church & White from UNEP (2006), and material from the US National Climate Assessment (2013) dealing with “Hawaii and Affiliated Lands.”
My eye caught here indication about VERTICAL LAND MOTIONS which a couple of years ago we attributed to the melting of the ice-cover of Antarctica and a release of pressure on the Antarctic plate that reaches to the “Ring of Fire” of volcanoes and earth-quakes on its border with other tectonic plates. We suggested the movement causes earth-quakes that cause the tsunamis that flood coastlines and islands – thus this whole set of events being Climate Change related. The issue explains thus enhanced flooding that impacts countries like Bangladesh. At the end of the meeting I had a chance to talk about this with Mr. deBrum of the Marshall Islands who will be the main presenter at the Arias meeting at the UN Security Council. We will revisit this later.
The case of the Marshall Islands is particularly bad and the responsibility of the United States is particularly great – this going back to the many nuclear experiments that for a couple of years were detonating powerful bombs in the Bikini and other island locations. The destruction of those islands started already at that time – now it is continued with the attacks of climate change greenhouse gas emissions.
As the Marshall Islands is a State with few inhabitants, the answer to move them somewhere else is not acceptable to the islanders. They prefer compensation and the condtruction of physical barriers. They also have suggestions for Renewable energy production using commercial OTEC technology (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion). The first 20 MW floating OTEC electric generation plant will be completed by 2017.
In my discussion with Mr. deBrum I suggested getting States like Bangladesh and other States of large population involved, as the Security Council has to hear about large number of people being affected in order to move them to action – and the mentioned Tsunami-effect ought to be pushed forward. I mentioned to him the Washington military-people event when a Brigadier-General from Bangladesh asked – “when 10 million people moving to higher ground because of the floods, get to the Indian border, which way am I supposed to shoot,” that was a moment of truth that an Arias meeting at the UNSC can start worrying about.
We just received from UN Foundation the full transcript of the UNSG presentation and the follow up discussion – the subject of our original posting of February 11, 2013.
The event was on the record but I was surprised at the language of warnings by the transcriber claiming the copyright for reproducing what was announced as a clear event in the public domain. As such we post only the link to the Council on Foreign Relations posting so our readers could in effect read the full wording, as we considered the event important because of it timing ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union, and the expected follow up by Mr. Ban going to Washington immediately after the President’s speech and our expectation that finally there could be a cooperation on climate Change between the US and the UN, provided Mr. Ban plays his cards right, asks only for technical cooperation and not for grandiose multilateral programs that the US is still very far from being ready to join.
and let me note again, as I wrote in the original posting, that though questions from the floor were allowed only for CFR members, I had the opportunity afterward to bring up my concerns in a direct conversation with the Secretary-General and my hope that he succeeds in his mission to Washington Tuesday and Thursday. I also reported the following day on the President’s speech in this vain. We await now for news when the UNSG returns to New York.
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Renewables could soon supply 80% of world’s energy, Ban says.
Politicians are lagging behind scientists and military leaders in sounding the alarm over climate change, and the consequences could be catastrophic, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week. “It’s time to move beyond spending enormous sums addressing the damage and to make investments that will repay themselves many times over,” Ban said. “With the right enabling public policies, close to 80% of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century. This is not utopian or science fiction. It is current fact,” he added.
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THE ORIGINAL POSTING OF FEBRUARY 11, 2013:
On the eve of the US President presenting the State of the Union, the Secretary-General of the UN came tonight to the Council on Foreign Relations for a statement of his own, a podium conversation with CNN Chief Correspondent and Anchor – Christiane Amanpour, and to answer questions of CFR members.
The event was billed as a Sorensen Distinguished Lecture on the United Nations with Ms. Gillian Sorensen present. Mr. Richard N. Haass, President of CFR presented the introductory remarks.
I was saying to myself, following the event we had at the Korea Society two weeks ago, that the Secretary-General is catching the bull by the horns by having an unusual opportunity to say in effect what the President will be saying – but ahead of him. Would it not be nice?
Because it is generally accepted that President Obama’s main topic tomorrow will be the economy, and the fact that by tackling Climate Change he can right the economy – Climate Change – spurred by the latest Catastrophic Disasters – is going to be the driver in the US economy in the coming four years.
I thought that if the UNSG links his previously stated interest in Sustainable Development and Climate Change with the President’s interest in the US economy, and the Global economy, and in order to get in lock-step and finally move the issues forward at the UN, the UNSG will line up his language in such a way that the subject becomes a joint goal.
But neigh – it somewhat got lost.
Indeed the UNSG did say that he is limiting his topics to just two – and he picked Syria and Climate Change as those two, and in that order. Only later he enlarged by saying that he just has another two that cannot be left out – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation on the Korea Peninsula.
We feel he lost his chance because he felt obliged to start with Syria. Had he said – look – our main problem is Climate Change which though man-made is inflicting now everywhere as if it were a natural disaster – which it is not – because it is not naturally produced. That is why it is my worry number one!
That could have made his day!
Instead what happened was that all questions that befell him were on Syria. He did not want to acknowledge a need for military intervention, had to recognize that sovereignty means Mr. Assad will have to initiate moves, accept that Responsibility to Protect was never applied in Syria, and that he even does not have someone in charge of that great achievement of his predecessor – the R2P that should be applied against any tin-pan dictator that comes to the General Assembly Hall.
Syria is a UN disaster – two years of war, 60.000 dead, 400,000 uprooted, refugee camps all over and neighboring States being destabilized.
Not having good answers on Syria, not because of his own fault, why giving in to those at the UN who do not want to act and let him on it on his own?
Here he had a chance to talk about something that might become his legacy – some sort of cooperation with the American President who is now ready to work on decreasing the effects of Climate Change – something that the UNSG wants as well.
I had my hand up and wanted to ask a question – it would have been the only question of the evening on Climate Change – but Ms. Amanpour did not call upon me – she just called CFR members, sitting in special rows, whose interest was rather in the conventional mind-set – even at times quite critical of the UN – but I wonder if those that asked about Syria ever thought that you could really switch an economy away from oil?
At the end I had my chance to speak with Mr. Ban Ki-moon directly, and though understandably he was not ready to enter speculations what Mr. Obama might say tomorrow, nevertheless said he hoped the American would join international Climate agreements and I understood that in his trip to Washington, Mr. Ban this Wednesday and Thursday, he might pick up these topics directly in Washington, and I assume he meant with the Administration.
But here I have a serious problem. I do not imagine that the US will in any way contemplate joining anything like the Kyoto Protocol or large multilateral agreements. On the other hand – technical joint work on issues like Sustainable Energy for All and the Green Economy are very much in the cards. To succeed it is needed to start talking in practical terms, and to move away from those that have bombastic ideas that even a favorable President, working with the means of Executive Orders, will not be able to parade before an antagonistic Congress. It will be the day of the visionary economists that Mr. Ban Ki-moon ought to consult, rather then the internationalists that need an OK from 193 capitals. Climate – ought not be Syria.
MOST books about the environment take the West as their starting point. This is understandable. For decades America was the world’s biggest polluter, contributing more to the problem than any other country, whereas Europe—at least in its politicians’ minds—has model environmental laws and holds plenty of righteous talks to negotiate new solutions.
But Europe and America are becoming supporting actors in the world’s climate-change drama. The lead players are China and India. China is the world’s largest emitter, contributing nearly a quarter of current global emissions. With India it accounted for 83% of the worldwide increase in carbon emissions in 2000-11. Though global warming began with industrialised countries it must end—if it is to end—through actions in developing ones. All the more reason to welcome “Greenprint”, the first book on climate change to concentrate on this growing part of the problem. Written by Aaditya Mattoo, an economist at the World Bank, and Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development, the book offers an unflinching look at what one might realistically expect emerging markets to do.
From an environmentalist’s point of view, India and China elicit despair. They are obsessed with growth. To fuel it, they are building ever more coal-fired power stations, a filthy form of energy. Their cities fume. Their rivers catch fire. There is not much anyone can do about it.
But an attractive quality of this book is that it goes beyond such fatalism. The West, the authors argue, has failed to mitigate global warming, so developing countries will have to take over. This is necessary, they say, because global warming will affect developing countries more than rich ones, partly because tropical and subtropical lands are more sensitive to warming than cold or temperate ones, and partly because rich people can afford better flood controls and drought-resistant seeds than poor ones.
One estimate by William Cline, an economist, found that a rise of 2.5% in global temperatures would cut agricultural productivity by 6% in America but by 38% in India. In light of their disproportionate vulnerability, emerging giants will have to push rich countries to make more environmental compromises. To make these demands credible, they themselves will have to make some changes too.
The trouble, as the authors admit, is that emissions cuts will also be costly for China and India. Messrs Mattoo and Subramanian estimate that if the two countries were to reduce emissions by 30% by 2020 (compared with doing nothing), their manufacturing output would fall by 6-7% and their manufactured exports by more than that. As still relatively poor countries, they are less able to bear the pain.
These challenges help to explain why it is so difficult for India and China to take the lead on climate change. After considering different ways to allocate emissions cuts among nations, the authors concede that the fairest approach would be to allow developing countries to consume as much energy as rich ones did during their own industrial revolutions. But if the aim is to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degrees, which most scientists think necessary, this would allow developing-country emissions to rise by 200% whereas rich-country emissions would have to fall by an amount that is politically inconceivable.
The authors supply more reasonable solutions. They reckon that China and others could and should invest more in new technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, in order to boost improvements in clean energy. They also provide a detailed and convincing case for rich countries to put a price on carbon by introducing a modest border tax on imports from developing countries.
The book does not quite provide the promised “greenprint” for developing countries to reduce emissions. But that would be a tall order. As a first stab at analysing one of the world’s most intractable problems, it provides a wealth of analysis and fuel for thought.
Japan & EU Move to Cut Rio+20, US “Divides on Scales,” of R2P & Ban’s Car.
By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, December 21 — Alongside the approach of the US fiscal cliff in Washington, at the UN in New York the annual budget fight is entering the end-game. Thursday the gloves came off, tellingly about a $8.7 million budget proposal to “implement Rio+20″ on sustainable development.
The UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions ACABQ supported the budget item. But on Thursday the European Union and Japan proposed to cut that budget to zero. This gave rise to howls among the Group of 77 and China, and accusations that the EU and Japan are hypocrites on sustainable development and the environment.
There are other fights, on a proposed salary freeze in the UN Common System and the deferred issue of re-costing of the budget. The funding and mandate of the Responsibility to Protect office is being questioned, while other “Special Political Missions” are almost agreed.
Seemingly less contentious than in other years has been the scales of assessment. But, a good Fifth (Budget) Committee sources exclusively tells Inner City Press that “some attempts by the United States to split the Group of 77 irritated the Group and made progress stop.”
The US Mission’s budget and reform ambassador Joe Torsella was at Morocco’s End of Security Council Presidency reception in the UN Tent Thursday night, just behind the North Lawn building where the talks are talking place.
What about reform issues like Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this week accepting as a gift from South Korea an armor plated Hyundai? What safeguards are in place? Watch this site.
Footnote: the UN provided Inner City Press with this answer to a related, previously asked question about the Capital Master Plan:
Subject: Answer to your question
From: UN Spokesperson – Do Not Reply [at] un.org
Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 10:12 AM
To: Matthew Russell Lee [at] innercitypress.com
Please find our answer to the question your asked yesterday at the Noon briefing:
“The CMP is contributing to a report the Chef de Cabinet is preparing on what lessons the Secretariat (not just the CMP) can learn from Hurricane Sandy.”
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Some tricky turns up ahead