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Iceberg breaks off in Greenland

The World — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:20:37 +0000

Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland (left image July 28; right image August 5)

A massive iceberg broke off Greenland this week. It’s the largest break in Greenland in 50 years, setting off alarm bells among climate watchers. Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Dr. Robert Bindschadler, one of NASA’s leading climate scientists, about the break.
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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: The death toll has topped 1,100 today from flooding and landslides in China. The grim milestone comes amid reports of continuing floods in Pakistan, and an unrelenting heat wave in Russia. Scientists say none of this extreme weather can be directly linked to global warming. But they say it all does fit into the models of what a warmer future might look like. Meanwhile there’s another bit of news raising climate-related alarms. The break-off this week of a massive iceberg from Greenland. Robert Bindschadler is a glaciologist with NASA. He says the location of the ice collapse makes it especially troubling.

ROBERT BINDSCHADLER: This is happening right at the northern tip of Greenland, so what it tells us is that these dramatic events have extended from the southern part of Greenland where we’ve seen them before all the way to the northern limits. So all of the Greenland ice sheet is now involved in this dynamic.

SHARP: One of the concerns often about these kinds of events is rising sea levels. Is there any reason to think this one iceberg could contribute significantly to rising sea levels?

BINDSCHADLER: It likely will in a fairly small way and the way it will is that before it calved it was part of an ice shelf. A floating ice tongue connected to the ice sheet and because it’s been removed, there’s less resistance to the flow of the ice sheet into the ocean, so as a glaciologist I would expect the glacier to speed up a little bit and that will contribute a modest increase to sea level rise.

SHARP: And in terms of other impacts I think one of the things that really scares people is the idea that this huge chunk of ice could hit ships or oil rigs.

BINDSCHADLER: It doesn’t move too fast, but you don’t want to get in its way. It’s likely to get caught up in the circulation in the Arctic Ocean and move around for many years.

SHARP: How do you think of the future of the arctic when you think about it? If there’s more ice melts and that means more human activity up there in terms of exploration, numbers of boats. Do you have a kind of nightmarish picture of too much stuff all going different directions and one bumping into the next?

BINDSCHADLER: Yes, I would say it’s disturbing to think about what the near-term future is of the arctic because it’s really chaotic up there. So everybody in the world should kind of keep an eye out on how disruptive climate change is to the northern societies because that’s a harbinger of things to come for everybody on the planet.

SHARP: Dr. Robert Bindschadler is a senior fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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Many Muscovites are getting out of town

The World — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:25:22 +0000

Global climate change is partly to blame for the abnormally hot and dry weather in Moscow, cloaked in a haze of smoke from wildfires, say researchers. The fires continue to burn in central and western Russia and the smoke and pollution has become unbearable for many in Moscow, and as Jessica Golloher reports, many are gettin’ out of town. (Flickr image: RiMarkin) Download MP3

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. Wildfires continue to burn in central and western Russia. Economists suggest that the fires could reduce the country’s national output by up to 1%. The smoke and pollution has become unbearable for many in the capital, Moscow. And so, as Jessica Golloher reports, many are getting out of town.

JESSICA GOLLOHER: Patience is wearing thin as everyone from babyshkas to kids cram onto an already packed express train. Destination, Domodedova Airport. Many of the passengers say they’re headed out of the pea soup like acrid smoke of Moscow for better, cleaner and more breathable air. American Charlotte Turner is one of them. She says she’s ecstatic to be finally headed home to Boston after spending time in what she describes as Smogeddon.

CHARLOTTE TURNER: It’s like walking through a campfire. Everywhere is just smoky. You can’t see. Before I left, it wasn’t as bad. I came back last night and it’s been just hard to breathe and really terrible. Can’t even see 100 yards. It’s like smoking a pack of cigarettes on the street for four hours.

GOLLOHER: Standing outside the United check-in at Domodedova Airport in a Northwestern Law t-shirt, Derek Linkous looked relieved to be going back to Chicago. He says the Moscow smog ruined his vacation. He even tried to go home early, but everything was booked.

DEREK LINKOUS: There was just nothing to do in Moscow cause you would just – there’s nothing to do. You just sort of sit in your hotel room, maybe run out to the cafe and hope the cafe isn’t too smoggy. But I mean if you’re just going to sit in a hotel room you may as well just go home.

GOLLOHER: Muscovites commonly flee the city during the summer months. They take vacations just like everyone else. But aviation officials say people this season were desperate to leave. More than 100,000 people flew out of Moscow on Sunday. The highest volume so far this year. Travel agents reported package tours to destinations popular with Russians such as Egypt and Turkey were completely sold out. And an online check found that nearly 95% of trains from Moscow to St. Petersburg were completely sold out over the weekend. Lena Ivanova lives in the Moscow region. She says she’d love to get on a plane or take a vacation to get away from the toxic chemicals, but she can’t afford it. So she and her husband have packed up the car instead.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

GOLLOHER: She says it’s dangerous here. It’s like we’re at war. She says we can’t breathe, we’re really frightened and we’re going to get out of here. Despite Ivanova’s readiness to flee the smoke and toxic fumes, her neighbor Vasiliey Ivanovich says he’s not budging.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

GOLLOHER: He says it’s my home. I’m not going anywhere. Where would I go? I’m not scared of anything. I know these firefighters are working around the clock to get these fires under control. I know the fires will stop soon. And with that, Ivanovich turned on his heels and walked into his house, disappearing through a cloud of thick smoke. The government may need more than Ivanovich’s positive approach. Officials have recently acknowledged that they can’t get the blazes under control and President Dmitry Medvedev has accepted aid such as planes and troops from several other countries. Some forecasters predict that the giant cloud of smoke covering the Moscow region won’t abate for at least several days. Making matters worse, temperatures are expected to remain near 100 degrees for at least a week with no rain in sight. For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher in Moscow.

Lizard extinction and oil in the deep ocean

The World — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:37:53 +0000

In the science podcast we’re looking at a new study suggesting the world’s lizards are increasingly threatened by climate change. And a scientist on board a research vessel tells us what he’s seeing around the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Lizards in peril

The World — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:29:06 +0000

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In recent decades, scientists have documented serious threats to frog species across the globe. Frogs and other amphibians have vanished from many areas. The exact cause is in question. It might be an infectious disease, or pollution, or habitat destruction. A study published by the journal Science suggests the world’s lizards are also in peril. And what’s threatening lizards is climate change. The World’s science correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee has the story.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Scientists know of serious threats to frog species across the globe. They’re vanishing from many areas, though the exact cause is in question. It could be disease or habitat destruction. Now a study published by the Journal of Science suggests the world’s lizards are in peril because of climate change. The World’s Science Correspondent, Rhitu Chatterjee has the story.

RHITU CHATTERJEE: The European common lizard is a slender creature with a brown back and brightly colored belly. And as its name implies, it’s found across Europe. In the 1980′s scientists had documented the lizards in many parts of the Pyrenees mountain range in France. But when ecologist Barry Sinervo of UC Santa Cruz went back to those locations in the 1990′s, he was surprised by what he found.

BARRY SINERVO: I was in fact shocked. They were extinct at many locations.

CHATTERJEE: Sinervo couldn’t find an obvious reason why the lizards had vanished from these areas. The lizards do still live in some parts of the Pyrenees and the sites where they went extinct were pristine; undisturbed by development. But there was something different about the areas that had lost their lizards.

SINERVO: They were all concentrated in the southern part of the range and at low elevation.

CHATTERJEE: In other words, these were relatively warm areas at the edge of the species range. Maybe these areas were getting too warm. Sinervo wondered if these lizards were dying off due to global warming.

SINERVO: So I thought well that’s interesting but it’s not like a global pattern.

CHATTERJEE: Then in 2006 Sinervo went to Mexico. And he found the same pattern of local extinctions. Mountain dwelling lizards were disappearing from the warmer edges of their ranges. But was it really the heat that was killing them off? Biologist Donald Miles of Ohio University examined that question. He measured the air temperature of the sites where the lizards had vanished. And indeed, for part of the year, these places were too hot for the lizards to survive.

DONALD MILES: The extinct sites were thermally inhospitable so we got the smoking gun.

CHATTERJEE: Miles, Sinervo and their team wondered what these findings meant for lizards worldwide. They scoured the literature for data on other lizards. They applied what they had learned in Mexico and combined it with projections of future temperature increases. And from that they made some predictions. If nothing is done to curb global warming, nearly a fifth of all lizard species may go extinct by 2080. Raymond Huey is a herpetologist at the University of Washington. He calls the new study solid and important.

RAYMOND HUEY: This is the first major paper to show that extinctions of lizards are not just for the future, but they’re here now. I don’t think anyone had an appreciation of that on a global scale.

CHATTERJEE: And scientists say that it’s not just the lizards that are in trouble. The problem is many species live in mountain ranges. And as the temperature warms, these animals will have to move higher and higher up the mountains to find a more comfortable climate. And soon, they could be left with nowhere else to go. Stuart Pimm is a conservation biologist at Duke University. He says the planet could warm by two degrees Celsius or more in the coming decades and that could cause large scale extinctions.

STUART PIMM: The very substantial fraction of species around the world, maybe 25%, live within two degrees of their nearest mountain top, and that means those species are going to be in very serious trouble and it’s a very significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity.

CHATTERJEE: For now, these are only projections. The big unknown is what the world will do to control the emissions that scientists say are already threatening species and entire ecosystems. For The World, I’m Rhitu Chatterjee.

Uncertain impact for BC’s carbon tax

The World — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:30:52 +0000

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In an effort to help cut greenhouse gas pollution, Britsh Columbia has adopted North America’s largest carbon tax. But as the World’s Jason Margolis reports, the tax may still be too small to be making a difference. (flickr photo: courtesy of wburris)

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Fossil fuels, like oil and coal, are the biggest sources of global warming pollution. But governments around the world are having a hard time finding ways to wean their economies off the stuff. Here in the U.S., Congress has been unable to agree on a new energy strategy, so states have been left to chart their own course. It’s the same in Canada where provinces are experimenting with various approaches to the problem. A year and a half ago British Columbia adopted North America’s largest carbon tax. The World’s Jason Margolis has this report on how it’s working.

JASON MARGOLIS: Jennifer Davies advertises her Hair Garden Salon in Victoria B.C. as an eco-friendly salon. I was curious what that meant so I booked an appointment. So the eco-friendly part of this haircut is coming? Thus far it’s pretty standard. I haven’t minimized my carbon footprint yet. The eco-friendly part came when she washed my hair with organic shampoo.

JENNIFER DAVIES: So as you can tell it’s not sudsing up because when you don’t have sulfate, you don’t get a sudsing effect.

MARGOLIS: Davies has other green tricks up her sleeve. But truth be told I came to her shop to get more than a guilt-free haircut. I wanted to hear how B.C.’s new carbon tax has impact her business. When I asked her about it, the talkative stylist suddenly tensed up.

DAVIES: I find that, what am I trying to say, I’m focusing on your hair right now.

MARGOLIS: Davies seemed embarrassed that a green business person like herself just didn’t know much about the carbon tax. But she’s not alone. Most ordinary people I met in British Columbia didn’t know much about it either, which was surprising since during the last election here the carbon tax was the issue. Even in Canada there’s no dirtier word than tax.

ALISON SHAW: People were irate. People were making their election choices based on whether they were in support of the carbon tax or not.

MARGOLIS: That’s Alison Shaw of the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. This being the northwest, we met at a Vancouver coffee shop to talk about her research on the effectiveness of British Columbia’s carbon tax. Shaw says she likes this approach to cutting carbon pollution because it’s easy to implement and it’s transparent.

SHAW: The carbon tax does a really good job at sending predictable price signals to business.

MARGOLIS: That price signal in B.C. is 3.6 cents on a liter of gas for now. Or about 14 cents a gallon. Straightforward. Simple. And palatable to many voters because the tax is revenue neutral.

SHAW: Which means that they are paying more at the pumps as consumers, but actually that revenue that is generated is coming back in tax breaks and tax incentives.

MARGOLIS: With one the government taketh, with the other it giveth right back. That’s because the idea of the carbon tax wasn’t to raise revenue, but to change consumer and business behavior. But for a tax like that to work, it has to pack some punch. For example, tax British Columbia’s tobacco tax. Every pack of cigarettes carries a tax of nearly $4.00. That’ll curb your habit pretty quickly. The carbon tax, on the other hand, adds only a small percentage bump the cost of polluting fuels like gasoline, natural gas and coal.

LISA DUNN: It really doesn’t have a ripple on what we do. It doesn’t create any kind of disincentive or incentive.

MARGOLIS: Lisa Dunn is with The Islands Trust, a local government that encompasses 450 island and 25,000 people off the coast of Vancouver. The island have a very green ethic and Dunn supports the carbon tax. In fact, she supports a higher tax. She says when the carbon tax took effect in 2008 nobody much notice.

DUNN: Unfortunately, I guess the prices of fuel were skyrocketing at the time anyway, so it got basically buried in what was already being a 20% or so increase in fuel at the tank. So it really wasn’t that visible.

MARGOLIS: Put another way, the carbon tax isn’t costing people enough to make them change their behavior. So it may not be having its desired impact.

JOSEPH PALLANT: I think as a good hip hop artist would say, cash rules everything around me.

MARGOLIS: That’s Joseph Pallant, he runs a small company called Carbon Project Solutions. We also met in a coffee shop. He favors a different approach to cutting carbon, the so-called cap and trade system that Europe adopted a few years ago. It’s more complicated than a carbon tax, but Pallant likes it because it sets a clear emissions limit for large polluters.

PALLANT: I think that you need to push the cap and trade first for the large carbon emitters and then you put a carbon tax to sort of sweep up other elements of the economy that aren’t getting caught by that.

MARGOLIS: And before long, British Columbia will have both. The province has joined a regional cap and trade market of 11 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. It begins in two years. At that point, B.C. will become a laboratory to see whether a carbon tax or a cap and trade system is better at limiting greenhouse gases. Or, as some argue, perhaps they’ll learn that they need both. For The World, I’m Jason Margolis, Vancouver, British Columbia.

UN chief establishes climate panel review

The World — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:42:12 +0000

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed an independent panel to review the operations of the IPCC, the UN’s climate science panel. The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work, but critics have identified a number of small errors in its reports. The World’s Katy Clark reports.

DAVID BARON: I’m David Baron, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. The secretary general of the United Nations has begun a review of the way the UN’s climate science panel works. The inter-governmental panel on climate, or IPCC is a collaboration of thousands of scientists from around the globe. It won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its work. But recently some people have been questioning its credibility. The World’s Katy Clark has more.

KATY CLARK: The IPCC’s massive 2007 report has been hammered by critics in recent months. They’ve seized on a number of small errors to challenge the credibility of the entire agency. In announcing the review yesterday, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon made it clear he believes that the science behind climate change remains solid.

BAN KI-MOON: The threat posed by climate change is real. Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change. Nor does it diminish the unique importance of the IPCC work.

KATY CLARK: But the secretary general acknowledged a few errors that had undermined public confidence in the IPCC. For instance, the agency failed to pick up a mistake in its estimate of how quickly the Himalayan glaciers are melting. So Ban Ki-Moon is turning to an independent panel to evaluate the IPCCS’s operations in hopes of avoiding such mistakes in the future. IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri says he welcomes the review.

R.K. PACHAURI: In recent months, we have seen some criticism. We are receptive and sensitive to that, and we are doing something about it.

KATY CLARK: The review will be led by the head of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Robbert Dijkgraaf.

ROBBER DIJKGRAAF: What we have been asked to look at is the general way in which the IPCC works. So it’s processes and procedures, and management structure, the way it deals with peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed literature. How it communicates. So, it’s actually a very broad task. And we also have been asked to see how the approaches towards errors, how they can be avoided. All in all it will be future looking review.

KATY CLARK: That all sounds good to Roger Pielke Junior.

ROGER PIELKE JUNIOR: I guess I’m in the unique position of being one of researchers who publishes in the peer-reviewed literature who has seen his work misrepresented by the IPCC.

KATY CLARK: Pielke is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He says the IPCC’s last report came to erroneous conclusions on the links between rising temperatures and the costs of natural disasters. Pielke doesn’t want to speculate why the IPCC didn’t correct its mistake.

ROGER PIELKE JUNIOR: The reasons for the breakdowns in process don’t matter so much as that they’re recognized and changes are made to the policies and procedures of the institution, so they don’t happen again. It’s inevitable that there will be mistakes in a report as massive and as ambitious as the IPCC, but if the institution’s incapable of responding in an effective manner, then institution has some credibility problems.

KATY CLARK: Pielke says he’s cautiously optimistic that the review will address those problems. Oceanographer Katherine Richardson is a climate advisor to the Danish government. She’s also happy that a third party will be reviewing the IPCC’s work. But she harbors no illusions that the review will satisfy people who believe climate change isn’t real.

KATHERINE RICHARDSON: There’s still people saying same thing about evolution. So it would be naïve to believe that this discussion is going to go away simply because we do look at the way IPCC works.

KATY CLARK: The review panel will try to finish its work by August. That would give the IPCC time to implement any recommendations before it begins work on its next report. For The World, this is Katy Clark.

Scott Brown and climate change

The World — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:37:42 +0000

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The election of an anti-cap & trade Republican to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy is further clouding prospects for a climate bill in the Senate. And that in turn makes prospects for strong global action on climate change even murkier. Peter Thomson reports.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. The White House said today that President Obama is willing to work with Republicans on his legislative priorities including climate change. But yesterday’s election of a Republican to fill the senate seat held by the late Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy may put climate legislation further out of reach. Senator-elect Scott Brown campaigned against a comprehensive climate bill now working its way through Congress. And his victory could also dim prospects for international cooperation on greenhouse gas pollution. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson has more.

PETER THOMSON: The chances of getting a comprehensive climate bill through the Senate this year were never good. With yesterday’s Senate election in Massachusetts, its chances may have fallen toward zero.

FRANK MAISANO: I think it really punctures that balloon that we were going to have a climate bill this year that democratic leaders were still holding out for.

THOMSON: That’s Frank Maisano, an Energy Specialist at the firm of Bracewell and Guiliani. He represents energy companies and other big greenhouse gas emitters. Maisano says it’s not just that the Senate may have lost a sure vote in favor of the pending climate bill. It’s also that yesterday’s results showed that even voters in solidly democratic states are worried about the costs of climate legislation. The Senate bill, sponsored by Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, would institute a cap and trade system for climate pollution. That system would raise the cost of fossil fuels and, the argument goes, nudge industry toward cleaner energy. Senator-elect Scott Brown campaigned against the bill, saying it would hit already reeling consumers in their pocketbooks. And Frank Maisano says Brown’s victory likely will lead wavering senators in other key states to reject the bill as well.

MAISANO: It just won’t give folks who have to go back to those states in the Midwest and the Southeast and the mountain states, and it won’t give them any interest in supporting something that’s going to increase those costs to their constituents.

THOMSON: Supporters of the cap and trade bill say it includes mechanisms to reduce the economic impact on consumers. But the bill is complicated, and those mechanisms would be indirect at best. And yesterday’s election suggests that voters don’t seem to be in much of a mood to trust such promises. And that’s left even some supporters of strong action on greenhouse gas emissions saying its time to step back and simplify.

EILEEN CLAUSSEN: We need to do something that is simple and understandable and doesn’t include a lot of side deals. And we could never pass a 2,000-page bill.

THOMSON: Eileen Claussen is the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. She agrees that the sweeping Boxer-Kerry bill is dead. But she says it may still be possible to do something less sweeping but still important. Claussen says there may well be sufficient support for an energy bill that’s more narrowly focused on how electricity is produced.

CLAUSSEN: Either a limit on utility emissions or some kind of a clean energy performance standard that requires us to be producing carbon-free electricity.

THOMSON: But if cap and trade really is off the table, at least for now, that could further cloud negotiations with other countries on an international deal to reduce greenhouse pollution. The U.S. has already come under fire for proposing fairly modest emissions cuts at the recent Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. But even those targets were tied to the cap and trade bill. And without a firm commitment from the U.S., other countries may waiver on their own promised emissions cuts. For the World, I’m Peter Thomson.

Copenhagen aftermath

The World — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:04:56 +0000

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The outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit has disappointed many and now the blame game is in full swing. Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, says the summit was held to ransom by a small number of countries. One of his ministers has accused China of blocking major agreements at Copenhagen. China insists it was already doing a lot to deal with global warming. Marco Werman talks with The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. The reviews are in and most give thumbs down on the Copenhagen climate summit. The critics include Britain’s Prime Minister. Gordon Brown called the non-binding agreement at best flawed, at worst chaotic. His government accused China of blocking major agreements. China responded that it’s already doing a lot to deal with global warming. One of the more positive assessments of the summit came from its Danish hosts; they called it better than nothing. The World’s Environment Editor Peter Thomson is back from Copenhagen. Better than nothing Peter? Is that the best that can be said?

PETER THOMSON: Well even President Obama who was the catalyst in brokering this agreement said that it was insufficient, far insufficient to meet the task and really just a first step. So there really is a sense even from those who made the final agreement happen that it’s far less than we need, far less than they hoped for.

MARCO: Now you mentioned the one thing that was actually put back in, into the final draft of the agreement that you had not heard until actually today, right?

PETER: Yeah. Well I mean this document has been in play since well into the last week and even over the weekend I was looking at what I thought was the final version of it and then this morning I come in and I look at the UNFCCC’s, the UN’s official final version and it’s got an interesting number back in there that had not been in there over the weekend.

MARCO: What is that?

PETER: That is one point five degrees Celsius. It says at the top of this document that we recognize that the science says that we should try and keep global temperatures under a rise of two degrees Celsius as the threshold for dangerous climate change. At the end of the document, previous versions had said we should reassess that in a bit and maybe think about one point five. That was out of what I thought was the final version. Now it’s back in and the final version says that we should look in the future to come back and look at this temperature threshold of a one point five degree rise and that’s really crucial because a lot of the least developed countries, the countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, are saying we have to hold global temperatures to one point five degree rise. And they were some of the ones who were the most critical of this accord. So that’s back in and that’s interesting.

MARCO: That half a degree Celsius would make a huge difference for countries that are low lying like Vanuatu and Tuvalu who are facing sea rises.

PETER: Sure. Nobody knows exactly what it’s going to mean but certainly I mean, even that what sounds like a small difference, half a degree Celsius could be life and death.

MARCO: Now top British officials used words like chaotic and farcical even to describe the talks in Copenhagen. How did it feel for you on the conference floor?

PETER: Well sure as has heck chaotic. I mean all weeklong I arrived on Monday and from the get go when it took me six hours just to get into the building and I was lucky. There were colleagues of mine, journalists accredited who didn’t, who sat in line for ten hours outdoors and did not get in; to Friday when talks seemed on the verge of collapse we had all this back and forth between Obama and Premier Wen of China. Nobody knew what was going to come out of it and then finally about 9:00 in the evening after the official program was supposed to have finished by noon, we have word that Obama has brokered this deal and we hear about how it happened. We hear that maybe he burst into this meeting of China and Brazil and India, or maybe he was invited, nobody really knows. And all of that is sort of off the official program. The official program is supposed to be 192 countries negotiating stuff together, and what we have actually is like the world’s biggest players going off into a back room someplace and hammering something out, and ultimately getting this agreement between the two biggest players which are the US and China which had seemed totally out of reach just hours before.

MARCO: It does seem kind of crazy there on the floor. One thing that you know we might have forgotten in all of the discussion of the treaty and agreements, is that there is kind of a trade show quality to this with a lot of green activists and people selling stuff on the sides and countries having their booths in a convention center.

PETER: Yeah I mean nobody was actually selling stuff per se but there was a whole section that was devoted to NGOs and business and countries to sort of promote their position and their technology. It was, it really did have a trade show feel to it. And then of course there were the country delegation offices, which were off in another whole other side of the building. And an interesting thing is that every country had one office for their delegation, except for the United States, which had two. And this really came back to the crux of the problem to a large degree, was the split between our administration and our congress. The administration has certain goals, congress has been reluctant to go along with them.

MARCO: And you really mean that Congress had a booth and the White House had a booth.

PETER: Yeah. They weren’t booths they were offices.

MARCO: I see, okay.

PETER: They were delegation offices. And that was something that a lot of people remarked on, yeah.

MARCO: So the key question is what happens next, Peter. There are talks slated for Bonn in Germany next summer then again in Mexico City a year from now. What are the goals?

PETER: Well I mean there’s a lot going on here and the talks in Bonn and Mexico City are part of this official Kyoto UN framework convention on climate change process that continues even though this document did not actually have sort of the force of their stamp of approval coming out of that. They will attempt, you know to continue the dialogue, move things forward. But there are important things that are going to happen before then. One is that this document, the Copenhagen Accord has this annex that countries have to submit their national plans for emissions reductions by January 31^st of 2010, just a month, a little more than a month from now, and that’s a key thing that the US got these countries to agree to, China and India in particular was to put on paper for the rest of the world to see these are the things to which we are committing. That has to be done by January 31^st. That’s very important. It’s important in part because it’s going to pressure the Senate and part of, a lot of what was going on here was an effort to essentially assuage the concerns of the Senate that China and India were not going to commit to real reductions in their emissions and to oversight. There’s also a provision in here for oversight of those developing countries, those large developing countries’ economies. And that is also starting to be in progress. So this is in some ways all aimed at the Senate in Washington. And John Kerry has promised coming out of this meeting that he will push through a bill in Washington to commit the US to hard targets for carbon reduction. So we have the official Copenhagen UN process, we have the US process in Washington, those are on different tracks but they have to converge. And that’s kind of what people are hoping will come out of this is that Obama has somehow managed to put it on a track for those two to converge and only then do we really get progress.

MARCO: We’ll see where these two tracks end up. The World’s Environment Editor Peter Thomson just back from Copenhagen thanks a lot.

PETER: Thanks Marco.

Copenhagen climate conference

The World — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:00:38 +0000

China and Indonesia have hailed the Copenhagen UN climate summit outcome, despite its cool reception from aid agencies and campaigners. Beijing’s foreign minister said it was a new beginning, and Indonesia’s leader said he was pleased with the result. The Chairman of Friends of the Earth International, Nnimmo Bassey, called the summit “an abject failure. By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates.”

Copenhagen deal reaction in quotes

President Barack Obama defended the accord he helped broker with China and other main powers. The non-binding pact, called the Copenhagen Accord, was not adopted by consensus at the summit in Denmark. Instead, after two weeks of frantic negotiations, the 193-nation conference ended on Dec 19th with delegates merely taking note of the deal. At the end of the conference President Obama described the accord as a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty.

Key points of Copenhagen Accord

Dec 21: Summit aftermath
Marco Werman discusses with our environment editor Peter Thomson where global efforts to combat climate change stand after the Copenhagen summit.
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Evolution of the accord: some of the Copenhagen drafts (pdf):

Draft 1
Draft 2
Draft 3
Draft 4
Draft 5
Near final draft

UN’s Copenhagen Climate Summit homepage with final version of the “Copenhagen Accord”

In his address to the conference, the President had called on world leaders to come together to strike a deal on the final day of the two-week UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Video of President Obama’s full address to the climate conference

Coverage on The World:

Dec 18: “meaningful agreement”
Marco Werman talks with The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson about the deal reached in Copenhagen.
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Dec 17: deadlock continues
World leaders remain deadlocked on a host of issues just a day before the Copenhagen climate summit is scheduled to end. Anchor Marco Werman gets an update from The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson, who is in Copenhagen.
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Peter Thomson’s photos from the Copenhagen summit

Dec 17: China in Copenhagen
China has resisted calls for it to agree to binding verifiable targets for reducing emissions. But people in China say their government should be willing to make a commitment in Copenhagen. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing.
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Dec 16: Time running out
Chances are growing slim that world representatives meeting in Copenhagen will come up with a deal on climate change. The World’s Peter Thomson reports on chaos at the conference.
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Demonstrators march toward the Bella Center where the UN climate summit is taking place (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Dec 16: climate deal still possible?
Anchor Marco Werman speaks with former US climate negotiator Kathleen McGinty. She was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Kyoto climate summit back in 1997. She says a climate agreement is still possible in Copenhagen.
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Dec 16: Climate change in Peru
Climate change is having an effect on agriculture in Peru. Farmers in the Peruvian mountains are adapting to rising temperatures by planting at higher and higher elevations. Jon Beaupre reports.
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Illustrated transcript of this story

Dec 16: Parsing global climate change polls
Have you ever wondered why two polls on climate change, both done by credible organizations and both asking not dissimilar questions, can come up with strikingly different results? Science journalist Dan Grossman tried to find out from political scientist Richard Worthington.

Read Dan’s blog from Copenhagen

Dec 15: Climate change and the oceans
During the conference, Peter Thomson had the chance to talk with Margaret Caldwell, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program at Stanford University, about the impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions on the oceans. Despite being a major part of the climate system, oceans are not on the agenda at the conference.
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Dec 14: Crunch time in Copenhagen
There’s little time left for climate negotiators at the conference in Copenhagen. The summit has less than a week to go. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson, who is in the Danish capital to cover the summit.
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Dec 14: Climate migrants in Bangladesh
Scientists say droughts, floods and rising seas could drive millions of so-called climate migrants from their homes by later this century.
Floods have already been a very real problem in low-lying Bangladesh. Joanna Kakissis reports from southwestern Bangladesh.
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Dan Grossman’s Copenhagen blog
Science reporter Daniel Grossman is in Copenhagen to cover the climate summit. He is also blogging for The World: in his first entry, Daniel describes a visit to an unassuming, but very eco-friendly dwelling just outside the Danish capital.
Daniel Grossman’s Copenhagen blog

Impact of climate change
As world leaders gather in Copenhagen for the Climate Change Summit 2009, BBC reporters have traveled the globe to see the impact of the issue on people and the places they live in:
View the interactive map with BBC video reports

Dec 11: EU pledge to climate fund
The European Union has pledged $ 10.5 billion over three years to help developed nations deal with climate change. Now it’s looking to other big polluters, like the US and China, to make a contribution. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.
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Dec 11: Canada’s rush toward energy reform
The Canadian province of Ontario has embraced renewable energy. But the province’s headlong rush into solar, geothermal and wind power has angered some residents. Anita Elash reports.
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Dec 10: Underground energy concerns
To produce cleaner energy, companies and governments are looking underground. That’s got project neighbors worried. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Landau, Germany.
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Chief Engineer Joerg Baumgaertner and Geox CEO Branka Rogulic at their geothermal power station. This plant provides enough power for about 6,000 homes. (Photo: Gerry Hadden)

More pictures for this story

Dec 9: Conflict in Copenhagen
There has been tension at the Copenhagen climate summit – but it wasn’t a dispute between industrialized countries and developing nations. Developing nations started arguing among themselves. Anchor Marco Werman talks the BBC’s environmental correspondent, Richard Black.
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Richard Black’s ‘Earth Watch’ blog

Dec 9: Campaigning for Kiribati
Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Alex Randall, a volunteer with the group UN-fair-Play. He’s in Copenhagen to help small countries with environmental concerns get heard at the summit.
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Dec 9: Paris heat wave offers lessons on climate change
In 2003, Europe was hit by a major heat wave. It caused the death of about 1,200 people in Paris. Now the city is trying to learn from that tragedy, as it plans for the kind of extreme temperatures climate change could bring. Reporter Daniel Grossman has the story.
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Daniel Grossman’s Copenhagen blog

Dec 8: Assessing India’s green energy promises
As climate negotiators huddle in Copenhagen, India is promising to reduce its greenhouse emissions with a big boost in green energy. But as Miranda Kennedy reports, there are big question marks as to whether India can deliver.
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Dec 8: Climate activists get creative
Activists are staging creative demonstrations at the climate change summit in Copenhagen. The World’s Marina Giovannelli looks at how different protest groups are vying for a spot on the international stage, and whether or not their efforts will sway the outcome of the negotiations.
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Dec 7: Pride v practicality in India’s climate stance
India is resisting steep binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Reporter Miranda Kennedy tells us why.
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Dec 4: Climate science fracas
The United Nations is conducting an investigation into claims that British scientists manipulated data on global warming to support their argument that it’s man made. The World’s Laura Lynch has the story.
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Dec 4: China and US jockey on climate
China is set to play a big role at next week’s climate talks in Copenhagen. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Orville Schell of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, about the steps China is taking to clean up the environment, and its image.
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From the BBC:

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“Meaningful agreement” in Copenhagen

The World — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:40:43 +0000

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President Barack Obama said on Friday that a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been reached among the US, China, and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty. The President had earlier called on world leaders to come together to strike a deal on the final day of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson is in Copenhagen.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. It’s been a hectic day at the Copenhagen climate summit for President Obama. Early on the president urged delegates to reach an agreement on how to combat climate change even, he said, if it’s an imperfect agreement. Mr. Obama may have gotten his wish. Just as the climate summit was about to close a US official told reporters that President Obama has reached a meaningful agreement with other world leaders and that official said the agreement is not sufficient to fight climate change but is an important first step. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson is there at the summit in Copenhagen. Peter what are you hearing about this agreement? What makes it meaningful?

PETER THOMSON: Well we just don’t know. And in fact I’m not sure that anybody who was in the room with the president when he announced that knows. My understanding is it was just a small pool of White House reporters with the president and I’m not sure that any details were given to them and those details that they got are sort of only slowly washing across the conference center here in Copenhagen.

WERMAN: And any sense about how it’s going to kind of jive with the two degree Celsius level that everybody’s looking at?

THOMSON: Well I’ll tell you if the deal they’re talking about now reflects at all the latest draft of the accord that I’ve seen not very well. The previous drafts were pretty weak. This is even weaker. And again this was the latest draft that I saw and it could be out the window by now. But it even … . It mentioned two degrees as the target not to exceed that in terms of total warming over an undetermined amount of time. But it didn’t give a timeline for that. And it didn’t give any particular targets for how to achieve that. So they’re saying meaningful. What we’re seeing here is a little less meaningful.

WERMAN: What else happened today in Copenhagen Peter that led up to this kind of unofficial announcement of a meaningful agreement? There was a lot of stuff happening behind closed doors.

THOMSON: Oh there sure was. And I mean you said a minute ago that this agreement came just as the meeting was about to close. The meeting was actually supposed to close many hours ago. They were supposed to wrap things up this morning Copenhagen time and have this sort of big handshake and picture taking session and signing ceremony and everything this afternoon. That’s long gone. All that’s been canceled. People have been running around. Meetings have been being held behind closed doors. Other things have been cancelled. Just a moment ago as I was waiting to come on here I heard that the EU was holding a press conference. It’s the first press conference that we’ve actually heard announced today that’s going to be held as scheduled. And the EU obviously is a very significant player here so stuff is popping right now. And we are well past the deadline. The big issues are verification. The US is determined to get China and other developing countries to provide verification for the emissions cuts that they say they are going to make and to make sure that the international community can count on those being made. It’s the old Ronald Reagan term trust but verify. The administration is dead set on that and the Chinese are dead set against it. They say that’s a violation of their sovereignty. But they are making small moves in terms of talking about increased transparency and better means of communication and the like.

WERMAN: And Peter apparently Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premiere, met twice today. Do have any sense of what was going on in those meetings?

THOMSON: Well nobody really knows for sure but apparently Wen Jiabao was fairly upset by some of the language that President Obama used in his speech to the assembly today on that question of verification and took some offense at it. And it seems that it took two meetings to work out that diplomatic snafu. Exactly where they came out of it we don’t know but we are hearing that China is party to this new agreement that also involves Brazil and South Africa and the US. Now obviously those are only four players. Three of them are quite big players. But it doesn’t involve everybody yet.

WERMAN: Peter with just a few seconds to go, give us the mood right now as delegates in Copenhagen wait for some announcement.

THOMSON: Well I think there’s a sense of the sort of increase chaos. It’s been chaotic all week but things are suddenly just picking up and nobody knows what’s going on but everybody knows something is going on. There’s this incredible anticipation but I think there’s also an expectation that what ever does happen it’s still going to be a very, very weak document coming out of here.

WERMAN: The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson at the summit in Copenhagen. We’ll stay in touch. Thanks a lot Peter.

THOMSON: Thank you Marco.

Climate deal might have to wait

The World — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:38:53 +0000

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen that the US was prepared to work toward mobilizing $100 billion a year for developing countries to help them deal with climate change. The announcement comes as doubts grow over whether the summit will achieve its declared goals of agreeing cuts in emissions, and deciding on how much rich countries should pay to assist developing countries. The summit has entered its final two days and there are still major differences of opinion. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson is in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen police battle climate talks protesters

The World — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:36:57 +0000

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Police have forced back hundreds of protesters who tried to break through a perimeter fence at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Activists have been angered by lack of progress on a new climate deal and also by restrictions on access to the talks. Inside the conference, Wednesday’s “high-level” session was delayed when several developing countries protested about procedural issues. The World’s environment editor Peter Thomson reports from the Copenhagen summit. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is the World. It was a raucous day at the global climate summit in Copenhagen. Danish police fired pepper spray at protesters outside the conference venue. Meanwhile disputes inside left major issues unresolved. The president of the European Commission said he was disappointed with the lack of progress toward a climate treaty and time is running out. The meeting ends in two days. The World’s Peter Thomson is at the conference and has this report.

PETER THOMSON: The climate of the climate talks here in Copenhagen has been growing more acrimonious. Delegates of poor nations staged a sort of work stoppage earlier in the week. Rifts have been deepening between key players, including the US and China. Meetings and events are being cancelled without explanation. And then there are the protesters. Many of them have been squeezed out of the meeting site as the UN tightens security with the arrival of scores of government ministers and heads of state. In the snow outside the conference center this morning, a small group of observer delegates who say they’ve been barred from the conference site burned their credentials in protest. Seno Tsuhah was among them. She came here to represent thousands of farmers in India.

SENO TSUHAH: We are burning our badges because we are angry, to show our anger, that we want to tell the world that there should be no legitimacy without communities’ voices.

THOMSON: The mood was no less angry inside. Just beyond the first security gates, delegates from Friends of the Earth International sat on the floor, saying they’d been denied access to the meeting hall itself. Nnimmo Bassey, who came here from Nigeria, is Friends of the Earth’s chair.

NNIMMO BASSEY: We all have badges, we have secondary badges and were are all expecting to go in and we’ve been stopped.

THOMSON: Have they given you a reason?

BASSEY: The reason is security, and I don’t know what that means. We believe it’s not just, it’s not right and it should not be tolerated.

THOMSON: Some of the demonstrations and sloganeering had a sort of pro-forma, pre-packaged feel to them and it’s possible that a good number of such supposedly spontaneous outbursts were planned long ago. But the concern that this meeting could lead to no agreement, or to an agreement that falls far short of what’s needed, isn’t limited to protesters. Many delegates, scientists, and long-time observers of the treaty process fear the summit could end up being a failure. Now, with two days left, many who’ve been most deeply involved in pushing for dramatic action are dramatically scaling back their expectations, and talking about it as just another meeting. Elliot Diringer is with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

ELLIOT DIRINGER: I think that an outcome here is very likely to be disappointing in some respects to everyone who feels the need to move forward urgently. But it’s the process we have. We have to look to it to deliver as much as possible.

THOMSON: It’s possible that with President Obama and more than 100 other world leaders arriving in the next 24 hours, things could quickly change. But Diringer and others say that even if Copenhagen doesn’t produce an agreement on climate change, they hope it moves the world a little further in that direction. For The World, I’m Peter Thomson, in Copenhagen

Climate change in Peru

The World — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:35:42 +0000

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World leaders have begun to arrive at the climate summit in Copenhagen. But deep divisions between rich and poor nations continue to threaten to derail the negotiations. The US says it doesn’t expect to offer any further cuts in its carbon emissions. And developing countries accuse industrialized nations of going back on their commitment to fight climate change. The consequences of failure would have a global impact, from the world’s mountains to its jungles. Peru is a country that has both. John Beaupre tells us that the South American nation is feeling the effects of climate change from top to bottom. Claes Andreaason contributed to this report. <

Marcelino Cruz

Reporter: 10,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes, the gray skies over Copa Grande are suddenly lit by magnificent lightning, followed by a deep rumble. And a light rain. It’s the beginning of the rainy season, and the village’s five hundred residents are happy to see it. The rain is essential for their crops of potatoes, wheat, corn and beans. But people here say it doesn’t rain as much as it used to. Marcelino Cruz takes a break from turning the soil in one of his corn fields.

Cruz: “There used to be more rain in the past. These days, it seems as if it’s escaping.”

Reporter: It’s not much better during the dry season. Between the months of May and September, Cruz and his neighbors get their water from the nearby Copa Glacier. But temperatures here have been rising, and the glacier is rapidly diminishing. Over his 34 years, Cruz says the glacier has retreated about a mile and a quarter. The lack of water has affected production, Cruz says. Yields from his farm have decreased by forty percent in the last decade.

Cruz:“And it’s not just the water. We also have new pests. And frost – something we never used to have.”

Copa Glacier (photo: Kate Dunbar)

Reporter: Cruz is seeing the effects of what researchers have confirmed–that his small part of the world is experiencing a significant shift in its climate. The effects of climate change are also being felt a day’s journey away, at the edge of the Amazon jungle. That’s where a long and slim balsa takes us across the Marañon River to Yamayaka – to meet with Simon Wipe Bejus, a leader of the Awajun. It’s a steamy, 100 degrees or so here. Bejus is dressed in a headband of beans and feathers, with wide belts of red, white and black beans crossing his chest .

Bejus: “The climate is changing, The rain is scarce and the sun feels like three times what it used to be. The mountains are getting drier. And the River is much smaller. It really worries us here in the Amazon.”

Reporter: The Awajun grow plantains, yucca, maize and rice. But as in Copa up in the mountains, Bejus says their traditional lifestyle here is threatened.

Bejus:“The jungle is our market. Nature is our pharmacy. But with climate change, mining, oil exploration and illegal deforestation, the Amazon is getting polluted.”

Huancayo potato market

Maria Scurrah: This is another one, Paseña from Huancavelica. Loved in the market for its purple color…

Reporter: 400 miles away in Huancayo, plant breeder and pathologist Maria Scurrah guides me through the potato market. Peru is the birthplace of the potato, and the plentitude at the market is just a fraction of the thousands of varieties of potatoes grown here.

Scurrah: You can see that they native varieties are easy to tell because, you can see that plant breeders go for big, round, no eyes. Whereas the ancient varieties are the opposite; small, shriveled and deep eyes.

Reporter: Scurrah says that lately, Peru’s potato farmers have had to adjust to their changing climate :

Scurrah: “Well, one of the key adaptations that the farmers in the Andes are doing is really climbing up with their crops – only ten years ago you wouldn’t have seen a crop above 4,000 (meters) and those are all the bitter potatoes that are frost tolerant. And the top potatoes would have been at 3,900 (meters) – and now it’s very common to find crops at 4,200 (meters).”

Reporter: Growing potatoes at above 13,000 feet used to be unheard of. But Scurrah says there is a limit.

Scurrah: “As the globe heats up, people move up with their crops until the edge of what used to be highland pastures, not agriculture, And they will have nowhere to go after reaching that top line.”

Reporter: Peru itself is responsible for only about half a percent of all greenhouse gas pollution. But as climate change begins to affect life all over the country, the Peruvian government has adopted an ambitious plan to fight it. The goal is to decrease the country’s emissions by 47 percent by 2020. And to stop net deforestation in the Amazon entirely in just ten years as well. Eduardo Durand runs the government’s special agency for climate change.

Durand: “The reduction has to be very aggressive and very important in the first twenty years.”

Reporter: Durand believes Peru’s goals… and those of much of the rest of the world… can – and must be met:

Durand: “Otherwise we will have a very serious situation, and a very high cost of adaptation in the long term. So it’s better for everybody – developed and developing countries – to have a very bold and ambitious goal of reduction in the next step up until 2020.”

Reporter: Back up in Copa Grande, Marcelino Cruz is getting ready for the night shift as a guard at a rose plantation . Like many other farmers here, Cruz needs the extra income to support his family. Moving his farm somewhere else is not an alternative, he says. They probably don’t have enough water either. But as the climate continues to change, here. Cruz says he doubts own children will be able to stay in Copa Grande:

Cruz: “I hope my children will get a good education and get a job somewhere else. These fields will not be able to support them.”

Underground energy concerns

The World — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:32:13 +0000

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To produce cleaner energy, companies and governments are looking underground. That’s got project neighbors worried. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Germany. (Photo of German carbon capture facility: Gerry Hadden)

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Climate negotiators hunkered-down today for the fourth day of their two week summit Copenhagen. They’re trying to find the right mix of financial incentives, political commitments, and investments in new technologies to patch-together a new global treaty to fight global warning. For many governments and energy companies, some of the most promising new technologies are those used underground. One technology taps geothermal heat for electricity; another is used to capture greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and store that pollution underground. Both concepts face significant hurdles, including a public that’s sometimes wary of what’s going on “beneath its feet.” The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Landau in der Pfalz, Germany.

GERRY HADDEN: At the bakery in downtown Landau, Frau Schumacher is not used to watching her chocolate covered pastries suddenly tremble and flop to the floor. So when that happened one morning last August, she thought the world was ending. (Audio clip of Frau Schumacher, speaking in German.) She says, “I didn’t know what was happening. I live upstairs on the third floor, and I thought the building was going to come down.” What happened was an earthquake. It was minor. It had jolted sleepy little Landau for a couple of seconds, and it got residents like Schumacher pointing fingers at a nearby geothermal electricity plant. Engineers there have been drilling deep holes into the earth to tap super-hot water for energy. (Audio clip of Audio Clip of Schumacher speaking in German.) “We see the plant as negative,” Schumacher says. “We are afraid that it will cause our houses to fall down.” Investigators still aren’t sure whether the Landau facility’s deep drill holes provoked the quake. On a tour of the plant, engineer Jerg Baumgaertner concedes they might have. Other geothermal plants have triggered similar events, but Baumbaertner says people shouldn’t be alarmed by what he calls minor seismic movement.

JERG BAUMGAERTNER: If we call every noise from the underground an earthquake, then I think we have a real communication problem, because it’s not what it is. This is known since 200 years, that the rock reacts to the volume which is extracted from the underground. The same is true for oil the gas; but nevertheless, there are towns on top and cities on top, and they all still alive.

HADDEN: Since the quake, Landau’s plant has been running without incident or protest, and it does provide a public benefit—clean energy for the equivalent of 6000 homes—but the public scare was part of a trend that’s been dubbed “numbyism,” or “Not Under My Back Yard”—that is, growing resistance to new energy technologies meant to operate “under our feet.” Just ask VatenFall, the Swedish energy giant. Their experimental coal-fired power plant here in Spremsberg, on the other side of Germany, is designed to catch 90 percent of its CO₂ emissions, and pipe the gas more than a mile underground; where backers say, it will remain trapped forever. The process is called Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS, and much of the world is pinning its climate hopes on the technology. VatenFall’s plant is one of its first proving grounds. It was supposed to open a year ago, but local resistance has so far kept it closed. As in Landau, people here are afraid of its possible impacts, including earthquakes, or even escaping CO₂. Jeff Chapman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, an industry group based in London, says he’s not surprised at the delay.

JEFF CHAPMAN: I think it’s quite understandable that local people will be concerned to understand if there is any risk associated with CO₂.storage.

HADDEN: Chapman says CCS is safe, even though it’s still largely untested. But more important, he says, it’s indispensible.

CHAPMAN: Unless we adopt Carbon Capture and Storage technology, there is absolutely no way whatsoever that we will be able to address climate change. And that’s the conclusion of the International Energy Agency, for example. It’s the conclusion of the European Commission. And most people who know about this situation will realize that inevitably we are locked-in to burning fossil fuels …

HADDEN: But environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth, are backing nervous neighbors. Tina Loeffelsint, of the German chapter, calls CCS “one giant question mark.” She says nobody is really sure how long the CO₂.will stay underground or how it might react with rocks and minerals over time. The unknowns, she says, make it too risky.

TINA LOEFFELSINT: We have better and cheaper and reliable technologies at hand today, like renewable energies, efficiency technologies, with which Germany could easily reach its climate targets. CCS, at this point in time, looks like a solution just for energy industry—for them to not change their mix of energy.

HADDEN: Scientists working on CCS insist the technology isn’t just “smoke and mirrors.” This is another test site, in [PH] Catseen, outside of Berlin. Lead scientist, Hilke Wuerdeman says the goal is to develop better systems to monitor and control the gas once it’s underground. CO₂.is a voracious solvent and can leach toxic minerals from the deep rocks into underground reservoirs of salt water. Wuerdeman wants to make sure that mixture never reaches fresh water sources.

HILKE WUERDEMAN: Of course, it’s all the part of the research to enhance the pressure only to an amount where fluids will not leave the reservoir. So if the fluids may leave the reservoir, then it is possible that they reach a new reservoir. But the main idea is to limit the pressure increase, so that you have no movement.

HADDEN: Wuerdeman insists that Carbon Storage will bring minimal risks, and even less with constant monitoring. But that begs the question of who should be responsible for such oversight. Again, Tina Loeffelsint, from Friends of the Earth.

LOEFFELSINT: If you assume that our government says the CO₂ would have to be stored safely and endlessly; and they mean like for 10,000 years or more; like the time span is just far too long.

HADDEN: The uncertainty on this question has some investors hesitating, along with potential neighbors of CCS projects, and that raises still more questions about its potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions soon. As it is, one Harvard study says the technology won’t be commercially viable for at least 20 years. For The World, I’m Jerry Hadden, Ketzin Germany.

Campaigning for Kiribati on climate

The World — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:38:17 +0000

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A major split between developing countries emerged on the third morning of UN climate talks here. Small island states and poor African nations vulnerable to climate impacts laid out demands for a legally-binding deal tougher than the Kyoto Protocol. This was opposed by richer developing states such as China, which fear tougher action would curb their growth. One of the concerned island nations is Kiribati. Its Copenhagen delegation is getting some help from British environmental campaigner Alex Randall, who offered his services to poor nations most affected by climate change. Marco Werman talks with Randall. (AP Photo: Katsumi Kasahara)

MARCO WERMAN: Alex Randall is in Copenhagen to help small developing countries get heard. Randall is a volunteer with a group called, Unfair Play. His organization examines data and climate maps produced by the UN’s inter-governmental panel on climate change.

ALEX RANDALL: We looked at the countries which were most vulnerable to effects of climate change and also looked at the countries which weren’t sending many negotiators to the Copenhagen conference. And what we found that some of the really, really vulnerable countries were actually almost unable to represent themselves at the negotiations simply because they couldn’t send enough people to Copenhagen to go to all the meetings to read the documents to be everywhere they needed to be.

WERMAN: And so you basically offered two countries your services. Who are you helping?

RANDALL: Caribous and Nauru both of which are island states in the Pacific.

WERMAN: Right, how would Caribous be adversely effected by climate change?

RANDALL: There are multiple problems that they would have if global temperatures rise. The first one is essentially from rising sea levels. A lot of the Island of Caribous is only two meters above sea level so it doesn’t really have to rise very much before they have serious problems. The second problem they face is as the sea levels do begin to rise salt water begins to get into their drinking water supply and that obviously causes enormous problems. The problem they have at the negotiations is that I can briefly describe what it’s like here. There are probably 12 or 15 streams of negotiations going on all at once and they need to be in all those talks in order to

get the climate deal that’s going to protect their people but with such a small delegation it’s very hard for them to cover all those meetings and to represent themselves adequately. There are also hundreds of hundreds of documents that they need to read in order to prepare to go into the negotiations. So we take some of the strain off them by going to some of the sessions and taking notes so we can update them later, or sometimes just trawling through the thousands of pages of documentation that they need to understand before going into the talks.

WERMAN: We just heard the dividing lines between developing countries like Caribous but also Tuvalu and Sierra Leone, and other developing countries like India and China. I mean Caribous is a country with about 100,000. Their main exports are coconut and fish. I’m just wondering, do you think they’re going to be some countries that end up by being like sacrificial lambs in order for other developing countries to emerge unscathed?

RANDALL: Well, let’s hope not because I think what we really need at the end of Copenhagen is a deal that protects all nations however vulnerable or small they are. So for a country like Caribous, they really are on the front line of the front line. It’s not just that they’ll be adversely affected. It’s they’ll be one of the first countries to feel the effects. So I don’t think that it’s a really a viable position to say that we’re going to sacrifice some nations in order to wake the world up to what’s going on here.

WERMAN: Alex Randall in Copenhagen. Very good to speak with you. Thanks a lot.

RANDALL: Alright, thank you.