Emily Gertz at Grist writes:
G20 cans fossil-fuel subsidies, but fails to make other climate-conserving moves
On Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama formally announced that the world’s 20 major developed and developing nations had agreed to gradually eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies.
It was the only climate-specific policy directive to come out of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Pittsburgh, and it fell far short in the view of climate activists, who were hoping for a firm proposal on "climate finance"—G20 aid to poor nations for help in adapting to and mitigating climate change.
"Removing fossil-fuel subsidies could be an important step towards cutting CO2 emissions," said Oxfam climate advisor David Waskow in a statement. "But it should not be allowed to distract from the failure of rich countries to offer poor countries the help they need. Poor people should not be asked to pay the price of cutting emissions" that rich countries have created.
Greenpeace climate finance advisor Steve Herz agreed. "We think it’s an important step forward," said Herz, "but it’s no substitute for the work we expected them to be doing here, which was putting together a fair and ambitious financing package to help the world’s poorest nations." |
Worse yet, no timetable was set for the phase-out. Tallied among all the G20 countries, fossil-fuel subsidies run about $300 billion annually. The International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have estimated that dumping these subsidies by 2020 would cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 10 to 12 percent by 2050.
What did not get discussed in Pittsburgh was what financial contribution the developed nations should offer the developing world for low-carbon development and emissions reduction.
David Waskow, an advocate on climate issues with the anti-poverty group Oxfam, decried the meeting's results:
"With 72 days to Copenhagen, rich counties once again refused to put up he funds needed to deliver the deal in Copenhagen," he said in a statement. "Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies is a potentially welcome step, but it must not mean the poor paying for emissions cuts that should be the responsibility of the rich." |
As far as climate negotiations, in general, the G20 leaders agreed only keep trying to come up with a deal before 180 nations meet in Copenhagen in December to renew efforts to move off the dime on international efforts regarding climate change. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso
said in a statement at the close of Friday's session:
"We will only achieve a full and sustainable recovery if we also tackle climate change and kick-start trade. This is a test of credibility for the G-20 ... I do not hide my concern at the slow rate of progress. Negotiations cannot be an open-ended process." |
However, effectively speaking, that is how things have been since Rio in 1992.
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The rescue of Friday, Saturday and Sunday green diaries begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
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BruceMcF wrote another richly linked installment of Sunday Train, this time about Rapid Streetcars and Suburban RetrofitThe people's choice award in the Re-Burbia ‘Rethinking Suburbia’ design competition was the entry titled Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing The Urban Fabric. But I want to adapt these ideas from the repair of the urban fabric to the original creation of a healthy suburban fabric. ... After all, no matter how much one may love big cities - big cities have never been the be-all and end-all of settlement. Part of a healthy big city economy is a healthy network of relationships to a surrounding network of healthy smaller cities. And part of what makes them healthy is a healthy network of relationships to healthy small towns and villages."
Unitary Moonbat showed up with a History for Kossacks/Greenroots Special: Long-Distance Hiking Trails: "The path we'll trod leads through many of the myriad challenges faced by the modern environmental movement – infrastructure, funding, troglodyte resistance – but beyond them, at the Canadian border, or on Mount Katahdin, or amongst the spires of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, lies a goal so tantalizing that we already know what reaching it means: that the end of one journey is simply the beginning of another. ...Vermont's Long Trail is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States, following the spine of the Green Mountains for 272 miles between the borders of Massachusetts and Canada. It was first conceived by James P. Taylor (1872-1949), a school administrator, who cajoled 23 of his friends to show up at the inaugural meeting of the Green Mountain Club in March, 1910. Inspired, perhaps, by Teddy ‘the Vigorous Life’ Roosevelt, a general turn-of-the-century health craze, and the burgeoning Scouting movement, the Club had, by the end of its first decade, constructed 209 miles of trail. By the time the GMC turned 21, in 1930, it had completed border-to-border construction, and celebrated itself by lighting flares from mountaintop to mountaintop."
This diary is part of DK GreenRoots’ eco-series.
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Interceptor7 has posted the Overnight News Digest.
Haole in Hawaii posted a A Random Photo Diary of Wildlife.
UNEP: Climate worse than we thought. A lot worse was RLMiller’s cheery diary: "In 2007, the United Nations Environmental Program released the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report presenting the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence of global warming. Since then, scientific specialists have murmured about various findings being worse than predicted by the IPCC. Today, the IPCC releases a report confirming that it's worse than we thought. A lot worse."
In a second diary, RL probed REDD ACES: If a tree doesn't fall in a forest, who gets paid?: "REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, and the term is as critical to understanding ACES (American Clean Energy & Security Act, aka cap and trade legislation, aka climate change bill) as ‘public option’ is to understanding healthcare reform. Remember your fourth grade class in which you learned that human beings breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, while plants do the opposite? Remember Al Gore telling us at the end of An Inconvenient Truth to plant a tree? So what could possibly be wrong with planting a lot of trees? Short answers: internationally, enough to possibly derail last week's G20 meeting, when money is involved; and domestically, when a tree is not a tree."
alefnot explained Carbon capture and sequestration: "The idea of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as a means of reducing CO2 emissions or even drawing down ambient levels as a means of mitigating climate change has been percolating into the public awareness more and more. This is Climate Week, Copenhagen is coming up in a couple of months, so it seems like a good time to look into CCS in a little more detail. This will be an overview of the science involved and technologies required. ‘Carbon’ here of course refers to carbon dioxide, the result of burning of fossil fuels, biomass, or biofuel, such as ethanol or methane. Today CO2 comprises some 387 parts per million or 0.0387% of the atmosphere. ‘Capture’ refers to isolating CO2 from the rest of the atmosphere, and "sequestration" to sticking the captured carbon someplace not in the atmosphere."
mwmwm discovered I'm an expert -- wait, no, I'm an amateur re environmental collapse: "I read an astonishing work in Nature (one of the top four science journals on any given day), entitled A safe operating space for humanity. It's available for free (thank you, Nature!), with commentary from experts. In ‘A safe operating space,’ Johan Rockstrom and a few dozen et alia look at nine ‘interlinked planetary boundaries’ beyond which we cannot live on the earth. He does it with science, and with scientifically-informed suppositions (since we don't know, really, the tipping points). Summary: New approach proposed for defining preconditions for human development; crossing certain biophysical thresholds could have disastrous consequences for humanity; three of nine interlinked planetary boundaries have already been overstepped."
wide eyed lib took us Foraging with the Squirrels, Part I: "Saturday was a turning point. For the first time, the forest is more sun-dappled than shaded. Undergrowth is dying back, leaving bald spots beneath the trees. The willows have discarded their foliage, strewing the ground with narrow yellow castoffs. Leaves crackle underfoot and once-narrow paths widen, their edges trimmed with poison ivy's magenta display. Fall is here. The dying undergrowth has at least one benefit; nuts dropping from the trees are easier to locate. Packed with protein, fat and carbohydrates, nuts have sustained us through long, cold winters for millenia. While our survival no longer hinges on them, gathering nuts is a fun and delicious way to celebrate Fall. Why should squirrels have all the fun?"
Jill Richardson served us some Grilled Michael Pollan, Coming Right Up: "Michael Pollan visited Madison, Wisconsin this weekend. So did I. Madison is called ‘The Berkeley of the Midwest’ and they have what I think is the best farmers' market in the U.S. As you'd expect, most Madisonians absolutely loved Pollan, a Berkeley professor (as well as a bestselling author and star of the film Food, Inc). But Madison is also home to a major land grant university, UW-Madison. The school attracts ag students from all over the state. ... When the university decided to invite Pollan to speak, the conservative Big Ag types went nuts. Those who stand to lose money if sustainable ag takes over have been using farmers to make their case, using Pollan as a punching bag to rail against. They like to call him anti-farmer. Thursday, Pollan was greeted with 8000 adoring fans... and a full fledged farmer protest. The farmers showed up in matching green "In Defense of Farmers" shirts. Pollan broke the tension by saying he loved the shirts and wished he could have one. Here's what happened..."
Her second diary was Party at Monsanto, Baby!: "Why's there a party at Monsanto? Oh, because they have a LOT to celebrate. Obama just nominated their guy Roger Beachy to head the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an agency for agricultural research that was established by the 2008 farm bill. Beachy has been head of Monsanto's non-profit arm, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, for the past decade. But don't worry, there's no conflict of interest... he'll be stepping down as president at the Danforth Center and instead taking a position as vice chairman on the board of trustees. This comes right after Obama picked Islam A. Siddiqui as Chief Agriculture Negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative. Who's Islam A. Siddiqui? Why, he's a top lobbyist over at CropLife America, a pesticide/biotech industry lobby group. NICE. Glad to see America's got its priorities straight."
Patric Juillet examined "Rivers of Death" or How Water Runoffs Can Ruin Health: "A 2008 report by the United States National Research Council identified urban stormwater as a leading source of water quality problems in the U.S. Having read extensively on this lately, I would say it is a worldwide problem as "rivers of death" abound in almost every country (btw, the "rivers of death" tag comes from the BBC which does a stellar job of climate change awareness). Farm waste, the biggest polluter of American rivers, is largely unregulated by many of the laws designed to prevent pollution and protect drinking water."
This diary is part of DK GreenRoots’ eco-series.
Another look at water was taken by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse in Hannity Tries Triggering Water Wars, Obama Blamed for Water Crisis: "Last week, Sean Hannity broadcast live from San Joaquin Valley an astroturf rally designed to trigger water wars based on lies & transfer the health care memes to eco issues. The new CT is a whopper: President Obama, extremist environmentalists in his administration, and liberal radicals have planned for decades to turn California into a dust bowl so that the solar industry can use farmland, forcing us to buy our food from China! The means to implement this CT is compliance with a federal law to provide instream flows to endangered or threatened fisheries. It was this temporary reduction in water availability that was characterized as an "act of domestic terror" by one of Hannity's guests, Alan Autry (actor/former mayor): If you would have told me that that water would have stopped, I would have believed maybe al Qaeda struck, not the federal government."
newusername looked at still another angle on the subject in Water Shortage India = Violence: "Areas within India are on the brink of violence over water shortages. People elsewhere can help. ’Our wives already squabble over drinking water so when it gets to agricultural water there will be a much bigger fight,’ says one farmer, Jai Singh Sharma. His family owns 16 hectares of land in Balawas but he now plants crops on less than half a hectare because of a lack of water. ‘Our wells are no longer giving us what we need,’ he says. ‘If our water supply keeps receding at this rate we will see violence.' ... This story is an example of global realities that cannot be dealt with effectively, without a shift in human thinking."
As part of the Adopt a Senator for ACES project, RunawayRose ACES: Tom Harkin, D-IA, corn yes, drill no!: "Tom Harkin is one of the more liberal Democrats in the Senate. Up until very recently, he was in a powerful position to affect the Senate version of ACES, as chairman of the Agriculture committee, but that role is now held by Blanche Lincoln (D-Walmart). Healthcare's gain is ACES's loss. However, Harkin is still a member of the committee, and hopefully wields some influence. (See this for the chairmanship changeover.) Harkin was in a position to keep Collin Peterson's additions to the bill (remember the House Ag guy who held the bill up for more breaks for farmers?). He is a farm state Senator, supporting farm interests, including a strong emphasis on biofuels from corn and soy. However, he has a history of strongly supporting renewable energy, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the use of biochar to sequester carbon."
Big Meta was on bigjacbigjacbigjac’s mind in Establishing a Sustainable Human Civilization: "In order to establish a sustainable human civilization on planet Earth, we need to reduce the number of humans on planet Earth, and stop poisoning the air, the soil, and especially the water. ... However, we need to do a much better job with the birth rate than we are doing with pollution and greenhouse gasses. We need to be stricter, more aggressive. And with the birth rate, we are dealing with people in their most private areas of their lives, and the most private areas of their bodies. So, we need to set aside the idea of freedom when it comes to making babies, because that act of making a baby at this point in history could be the act of bringing a human into a miserable, nightmare life."
Josh Nelson targeted a stalwart denier in GOP Senator to Undermine Obama at Global Climate Talks: "Mr. Inhofe's most recent assault on the debate over domestic climate legislation was his insistence on repeating a misleading analysis of the costs of climate legislation, despite all evidence to the contrary. Incredibly, when I asked Senator Inhofe's staff to respond to the fact that his statements on climate legislation were clearly factually inaccurate, they responded with the single-most convoluted statement I've ever seen. Ian Malcomb of Jurassic Park had some choice words for this 1700+ word rant as well. This is what we're up against folks, and it is neither logical, credible nor reality-based. I would engage in a point-counterpoint back and forth with Mr. Inhofe's staff -- as I recently did with Senator Murkowski's staff on the same issue -- but it would clearly be fruitless. Rather than respond to Mr. Dempsey's largely irrelevant arguments, I'll simply refer you to this FactCheck.org refutation of the crux of his argument. Flail away, Mr. Dempsey, but reality is on our side."
climate science watch also targeted global warming unreality in Wash Post credits new climate denialist propaganda with "reviving the debate" -- Huh?: "CO2 is Green, a coal-money-funded global warming denialist media propaganda campaign with a message that almost might make you think you were reading a satire on denialism in The Onion, says that ‘plant and animal kingdoms, including humanity, [will be] harmed if atmospheric CO2 is reduced.’ This operation is running media ads in the states of certain key Senators, something perhaps worthy of noting. But how strange that the Washington Post’s 900-word article on this today is titled ‘New Groups Revive the Debate Over Causes of Climate Change.’ The Post thinks this has the status of a debate? Steven Mufson, your article is OK, but who wrote this dopey, misleading, and really irresponsible title? Shame on the Post for this."
In the Weekly Mulch, The Media Consortium reported that Climate Week Got a Lukewarm Response: "Since U.S. commitment is considered key to success in Copenhagen, many are concerned how climate change negotiations will proceed. The ‘first steps’ that Obama outlined will not suffice, and the leading emitters must be accountable for their emissions. Climate change has already begun to rear its ugly head. Dangerously high sea levels are threatening Pacific Island nations. Activists from all over the world participated in Climate Week through demonstrations, rallies and flash mobs. Yes! Magazine features a photo essay illustrating over 2,600 demonstrations in 134 countries that "urge their politicians to ‘wake up’ to the threat of climate change and to create a fair, aggressive, and binding treaty during the final set of international negotiations in Copenhagen this December."
SusanCStrong linked two crucial matters in Smart Healthcare Includes Preventive Earthcare: "Lately we've been hearing a lot about the need for preventive health care, and rightly so. Private insurance companies have been unwilling to pay for it (what were they thinking?), and the uninsured can't afford it. We taxpayers end up covering the high cost of the emergency room result. However, the price of ignoring preventive healthcare will soon be dwarfed by the costs of avoiding preventive earthcare. Climate change-linked damage of all kinds is heading right for us, like a rogue iceberg. And our Congress still hasn’t got the right idea about preventive earthcare. We need a much harder grass roots push. And we'd better "speak American" about it. For starters, preventive earthcare is healthcare for people too. Think of the cost of treating climate change-related health problems-- new tropical diseases invading areas where people have no resistance, new levels of respiratory illness, new heat stroke-related health disasters."
B Amer evaluated a claim by The New York Times columnistPaul Krugman, Who Says, "It's Easy Being Green": "Krugman brings down the hammer on the folks like our old pal globtrotting Sarah Palin (although he doesn't mention her specifically), in his column today. The main point of the piece is: It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either."
Bruce Nilles discussed the continuing saga of Coal’s Ash is On the Line: "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has started inspecting hazardous coal ash impoundments around the U.S., rating them based on how likely are they to fail and cause massive disasters like the spill at TVA’s Kingston, TN, plant last December. In keeping with President Obama’s goal of promoting transparency, EPA has also begun posting their findings online – more than 43 inspections at 22 facilities have already been posted. And how many of those 43 impoundments ranked ‘satisfactory’? Just over half of them – the rest were rated ‘fair’ or ‘poor,’ which means they have some work to do. This is scary news, considering that these dams are holding back billions of gallons of toxic waste left over from burning coal to generate electricity."
A Siegel had some fun in his diary Racing for the Sun: Solar Decathlon in DC: "Being an EcoGeek is becoming ever more fashionable. And, increasingly, there are events where EcoGeeks can gather in style. Every two years, for two weeks, a village appears on the National Mall providing a window on possibilities for a sustainable future powered by the sun. The Solar Decathlon is a biennial, ever-cool event, pitting colleges and universities across the nation in ten contests that ‘center on the ways we use energy in our daily lives.’ The Solar Decathlon is a competition in which teams of college and university students compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar powered house."
In his second diary, Green Buildings Generate Green, he wrote: "A new study, Green Building and Productivity (pdf), from researchers at the University of San Diego's business school institute on real estate focuses directly on this issue. The core question could be phrased as follows: Are workers in ‘green’ buildings more or less productive than those in traditional structures? The study examines a wide-range of issues related to the difficulties of measuring office productivity, various (potential) impacts on productivity, and studies related to these issues. For this effort, they use sick days and a ‘self-reported productivity percentage change after moving into a new building’ as their metrics. With this in mind, the research team surveyed 154 buildings with some 2000 tenants."
Frankenoid wrote Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 5.32: "It did not snow in Denver. It snowed somewhere to the east, west and south — at least, flakes fell from the sky and some of it stuck to the ground temporarily. Yes, it's been cool, cloudy and rainy all week. Yes, we've had rain every day since last Sunday (really strange for September). Yes, lows dipped down into the upper 30s — in anticipation I hauled all my tropical plants in for the cold season (and the brugmansia is very unhappy about it). But that's a far cry from the Denver snowstorm showing on the national news: the pictures were from the foothills, 20 miles west and 1,000 feet higher than Denver. Hereabouts, when it comes to weather, three things matter: altitude, altitude and altitude."
welsberr’s wife recently had a reptilian encounter, as he explained in A Gator Attack Way Too Close to Home: "The gator didn't connect with anything on his first lunge, but he grabbed Diane's left calf with his second lunge. Diane turned and grabbed the gator's jaw to discourage it from ripping her calf muscle. The gator then released her calf, but when it snapped its jaws shut the second time, Diane's left thumb was caught there by a tooth. She says that she didn't care to play tug with a gator, not with just her thumb as the part in the middle. She reached over with her right hand and grabbed the gator's eye ridge. Diane says that after maybe 30 seconds to a minute of this standoff, the gator opened his jaws, releasing Diane's thumb. Diane released the gator's eye ridge. She says that she briefly had considered trying to hold the gator's jaws closed and using Ritka's leash to tie it up, but that she didn't think that she was up to any more tussling with the gator. So the gator headed back to the water and Diane on up the bank and away."
tgypsy went out early for the Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Mono Lake - an environmental success story: "Mono Lake is a critical stop for Wilson's Phalaropes on their fall journey to South America – 80,000-125,000 of these lovely little birds spend several weeks in July and August at Mono Lake fattening up for their upcoming non-stop journey to Ecuador. Pretty damn cool I’d say. And to think that we almost lost it all..."
Birdpond pondered ostrich-like behavior in Fossil fuels are running out anyway; so why fight about climate change?: "I was amazed by the vehement defense made by some people for blowing up the Appalachians when I posted my recent article on Mountain-top removal coal mining. The only possible reason I can come up with to make otherwise rational and intelligent people bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge that we need to re-think our way of life, is fear; fear of change; fear of inconvenience; fear of having to take responsibility; fear of having less money. Mostly, though, fear of facing the truth. Whether or not you believe that climate change is happening or that it is caused by man (and our use of fossil fuels) the undeniable truth is that fossil fuels are running out. Period."