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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)

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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.

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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.

BBC coverage
Environment issues on The World

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:

Other weblinks:

“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)

All of our coverage of Copenhagen 2009
Environment stories on The World
Offical Copenhagen webcast
BBC photos from Copenhagen

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.

Assessing India’s green energy promises

The World — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:38:16 +0000

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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. (AP Photo: Rafiq Maqbool)

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston. As climate negotiators meet in Copenhagen, polls suggest that the US is one of the few countries where concern about climate change is falling. Today, we learned of a possible reason. Temperatures in North America have actually been on the cool side in recent years. The UN’s weather agency presented that finding today at the international summit on climate change. The bigger picture is more sobering, though. The figures show that globally, the current decade has been the warmest since records began 160 years ago. India has been especially vulnerable to global warming. That fact is leading the Indian government to soften its position on greenhouse gas emissions. Yesterday, we reported on India’s internal debate on climate policy. Today, in her second report from New Delhi, Miranda Kennedy tells us about India’s promises on green energy.

REPORTER: Well our top focus this evening remains the crisis that has been caused by incessant rains across southern India, across Kanatica–

MIRANDA KENNEDY: Earlier this fall, when there was unprecedented flooding in southern India, environmentalists took to the TV talk shows to try to stir people up about climate change.

BITTU SAHGAL: With climate change, our food security is at risk, our health security is at risk, our water security is at risk.

KENNEDY: Bittu Sahgal, the editor of the magazine Sanctuary Asia, says India’s long coastline and proximity to the Himalayan Mountains make the country especially vulnerable to the impacts of rising sea levels and melting glaciers. But he worries that few Indians understand the seriousness of the problem, and that the government hasn’t done enough to raise the alarm.

SAHGAL: The prime minister should get on the air, and he should talk to farmers, he should talk to the urban and rural poor and he should tell them what climate change is. If there was an external threat from another country that’s what he would do.

KENNEDY: Government officials, though, say such criticism is unfair.

MONTEK SINGH AHULWAHLIA: The idea that India’s not willing to do anything is just completely wrong. Because in our own national action plan for climate change, we’ve said we must do something.

KENNEDY: That’s Montek Singh Ahulwahlia, the prime minister’s chief economic policy maker. He’s referring to new legislation that would dramatically limit the growth of India’s carbon emissions.

AHULWAHLIA: Starting with a statutory requirement that you’ve got to purchase X percent of your electricity from clean sources. We have decided to launch a program for development of solar thermal electricity, which is actually more expensive than coal, but the idea is the government will subsidize the difference.

KENNEDY: The legislation would ensure that India get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources with ten years. It would also set the country’s first mandatory energy efficiency standards for vehicles, appliances and buildings. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh says efforts like these show that India is doing its part on climate change.

JAIRAM RAMESH: We aren’t part of the problem but India wants to be part of the solution.

KENNEDY: Since announcing the new energy policies, Ramesh has become a target of criticism at home, with many legislators accusing him of selling India out to the West. But the promises actually come with a big caveat. India wants developed countries to help fund the transition to a lower-carbon economy. And that could be a big sticking point, especially since India continues to refuse the binding emissions caps that some in the West are demanding. But without such aid, India’s homegrown green energy industry may continue to spin its wheels. Government scientists have been researching clean technologies here in this sprawling solar development facility outside Delhi for more than 30 years. India created a ministry devoted to renewable energy back in the 1970s. But in all that time, researchers haven’t made any major breakthroughs. When I came by for a scheduled tour mid-morning on a weekday, there didn’t seem to be much urgency to the solar mission here. I was told that only five full-time scientists work here, and they were all out of the office. A couple of researchers sheepishly offered me a soda and led me around. One of them, Nikhil Girka, started up what he calls a sun simulator machine, which tests the ideal conditions for solar thermal panels.

NIKHIL GIRKA: We calculate what is the VOC, what is the fail factor, what is the short circuit current–

KENNEDY: Indian researchers have helped improve solar heaters and lanterns for use in rural areas. Wind power is also taking root in some parts of the country. But while other countries, from Germany to Japan, have made big strides in clean energy, India has little to show for its efforts. And it still depends on highly-polluting coal for more than half of its electricity. Still, many here believe that India is already on a less polluting path than industrial nations took, including Chandra Bhushan, a climate researcher with the Center for Science and the Environment in Delhi.

CHANDRA BHUSHAN: Our energy consumption is increasing at a much lower rate than our growth which is a very good sign.

KENNEDY: For that, Bhushan partly credits the Indian government, which charges industry some of the highest energy rates in the world, in an effort to conserve resources. He says Indian companies must also report their energy use.

BHUSHAN: India was probably the first country in the world to demand energy data disclosure in the financial reports. Every company in this country has to say what they’ve done for conservation of energy.

KENNEDY: Bhushan agrees that there’s plenty of room for improvement, though. Roughly a third of India’s electricity is lost to theft and leakage. And while India’s per capita carbon emissions are among the lowest of the major world economies, that’s because more than half the population has no access to electricity at all. It’s inevitable that will change. India is now promising that many of those hundreds of millions will get their power from renewable sources. Much of the rest of the world is hoping the country makes good on that promise. For The World, this is Miranda Kennedy, New Delhi.

WERMAN: Miranda Kennedy’s reports from India were produced with the assistance of the International Reporting Project.

Pride vs practicality in India’s climate stance

The World — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:56:07 +0000

As negotiators gather for global climate talks in Denmark this week, India is resisting steep binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Reporter Miranda Kennedy tells us why. (Photo of Kolkata factory: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images)

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH/Boston.

FEMALE VOICE: Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, a warm welcome to Copenhagen and to the opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009.

WERMAN: It’s official. The International Climate Conference opened today in Denmark. After months of growing anticipation, delegates from almost 192 countries were told that the Summit will write history. But the U.N. Climate Chief Yvo de Boer warned that it needs to be the right sort of history. De Boer said the negotiators must set ambitious goals to tackle global warming. Delegates will be trying to strike a new deal on climate change during the next two weeks. The Senior U.S. Delegate at the Conference, Jonathan Pershing, outlined what the Obama Administration is doing to help reach a deal.

JONATHAN PERSHING: At the center of these efforts, the Administration is working with Congress to pass domestic clean energy and climate legislation as quickly as possible. That’s what we’re bringing to the table, an unprecedented level of effort, a commitment to act domestically and internationally.

WERMAN: Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Administration upped the ante on that domestic commitment today. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will use its power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and power plants. CO2 is the main human contributor to global warming, and the move was a big symbolic gesture to the world. It was also a warning to Congress that the Administration will act on greenhouse emissions with or without Congressional support. President Obama himself will attend the final day of the Climate Conference next week. India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will also head to Copenhagen next week. India’s position could influence the outcome of the talks and the future of the global climate. The country’s booming economy could soon produce a huge spike in climate pollution. India has pledged to voluntarily reduce some of that growth and emissions, but as Miranda Kennedy reports, the country is resisting calls for mandatory cuts.

MIRANDA KENNEDY: Indian diplomats have arrived in Copenhagen expressing hope for reaching agreement with the West on a global climate accord. But back in New Delhi, not many people are being diplomatic about climate change diplomacy.

LEENA SRIVASTAVA: I don’t think that the western countries actually have a right to point towards China or India.

KENNEDY: Leena Srivastava runs the Energy and Resources Institute. She says that the West sees only part of the truth about India. They see a rising economic giant, soon to be the world’s biggest country, and already the fourth largest emitter of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. But what she sees is an India that still has one of the lowest per capita emissions rates on the planet.

SRIVASTATVA: The basic problem is our perspectives don’t match.

KENNEDY: You could say the dispute boils down to a disagreement over which is more important the past or the future. Most future pollution is expected to come from India and the rest of the developing world. That’s why some in the West say these countries must agree to reduce their emissions. But industrialized nations are responsible for 80% of past carbon emissions, and Srivastava speaks as one with official India when she says it is unfair to ask India to curtail its growth to deal with a problem it did not cause.

CHANDRA BUSHAN: You’re essentially saying no more electricity to your house, close your factories, and go back to the fields. I don’t think that’s a position which any country will accept.

KENNEDY: Chandra Bushan is a Climate Researcher with the Center for Science and the Environment. He’s passionate when he says that a cut in emissions would mean a cut in economic growth, so passionate that sweat broke out on his forehead, even under the fan in his Delhi office. The Indian government has refused to accept any internationally binding emissions caps, and Bushan makes it clear that this is a matter of national pride and sovereignty.

BUSHAN: Our emissions will increase. That’s why the developed countries’ emissions must come down. If the world is not worried about a moral position, then India will have to harden its position.

KENNEDY: India believes this position protects the interests of all developing countries. That’s why emissions targets should be based not on hard dates but on developmental levels, according to Sunjoy Joshi, a Policy Analyst in Delhi.

SUNJOY JOSHI: The principle of negotiations has to be raised and one has to accept the basic fact that today it is India, tomorrow it is going to be Africa, and a whole host of other nations waiting. All lifestyles have to converge, and then there should be binding targets for everyone, once lifestyles converge.

KENNEDY: Joshi doesn’t expect developing countries to catch up with the rest of the world for another 40 years. Meanwhile, he says, the U.S. should cut its own so-called luxury emissions from things like SUV’s and central air conditioning systems. But there are voices in India who consider this high-minded moralism and finger pointing dangerous.

BITTU SAHGAL: In terms of India’s own self interest, the position that you’ve polluted so therefore we should pollute is the equivalent of suicide.

KENNEDY: Bittu Sahgal is editor of the environmental magazine Sanctuary Asia.

SAHGAL: The ethics of India’s position might be justifiable, but the science is completely wrong because India may not have caused the climate problem, but India will be the first and worst victim of climate change in the world.

KENNEDY: Whether India will be the first or worst victim is debatable, but there’s no doubt it’s already suffering consequences like devastating floods, rising sea levels and a shrinking Himalayan snowpack, which feeds the country’s major rivers. And those realities have prompted something of a turnaround on India’s official hardline negotiating position. This fall, India proposed sweeping new legislation that would set internal targets for renewable energy use, and prescribe efficiency standards for vehicles and buildings. And on the eve of the Copenhagen meeting it announced that it would cut emissions growth by at least 20 percent over the next ten years. But not everyone is satisfied.

VINUTA GOPAL: If we could put international negotiations aside, and if India just took stock for its own self, I think that India would react actually probably differently. It is with the pressure of international negotiations that India is posturing.

KENNEDY: That’s Vinuta Gopal of Greenpeace India. Gopal thinks the government should move more aggressively to cut emissions and worry less about its negotiating position at Copenhagen. But India is holding fast to its position of no binding emissions caps. Economic policymaker Montek Singh Ahluwalia says what matters most to him is a simple principle, emissions equity.

MONTEK SINGH AHLUWALIA: We are willing to guarantee that our per capita emissions will never exceed of those of the industrialized countries. If as a result of technology and self-denial and whatever determination, they were to cut their emissions 50%, we are in effect willing to let you set the cap. The moment you achieve it yourself, we will accept that cap.

KENNEDY: Of course, India knows just how unlikely it is that the U.S. will cut its emissions that much anytime soon. Right now, the average American is responsible for nearly 20 times the emissions of the average Indian. But pledging emissions equality is good for India. It allows it to retain its moral authority even while appearing to be a deal maker. For the World, this is Miranda Kennedy, New Delhi.

WERMAN: That report was produced with the assistance of the International Reporting Project. Tomorrow, Miranda Kennedy reports on India’s promises and record on renewable energy.

Climate science fracas

The World — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:12:05 +0000

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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.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. A controversy has erupted just days before the Copenhagen climate summit gets underway. It involves allegations that some scientists in Britain and elsewhere may have tried to manipulate climate research. Climate skeptics say the incident challenges the scientific consensus on global warming. Others say it’s all about sowing unfounded doubt about humans’ responsibility for climate change. The World’s Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH: The controversy started two weeks ago. That’s when hundreds of emails were stolen from the Climactic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia and then posted online. The writers of the hacked emails say their comments were taken out of context. But this week, the head of the climate unit stepped down while the university conducts an investigation. And today, the head of the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, jumped into the middle of the dispute, vowing to uncover the truth.

RAJENDRA PACHAURI: We certainly will go into the whole lot and then we’ll take a position on it. So we certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. We don’t want to sweep it under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we certainly will look into it in detail.

LYNCH: Meanwhile, climate change skeptics have been quick to argue that the emails show that scientists are hiding evidence. The university is looking into those claims, but the vice chancellor Edward Acton is defending the institute’s work.

EDWARD ACTON: My central focus is on the questions which concern the practice of scientists at my university. On the wider question, I think the fact that 95 percent of the data that the center uses is, and has long been, available from other websites and subject to scientific analysis by different methods and different teams of scientists, makes the sort of stakes for the inquiry in terms of what humanity thinks about climate change much lower than you suggest.

LYNCH: The stakes are high. With just days to go before the start of negotiations at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Britain’s climate change minister, Ed Miliband has leapt into the debate.

ED MILIBAND: One string of emails does not undermine the global science on climate change. And there will be people who want to use this to say somehow it casts doubt on Copenhagen or on the scientific evidence and I think frankly that is nonsense. And we must resist those siren voices.

LYNCH: One of those voices appears to be coming from Saudi Arabia’s chief climate negotiator.

Mohammad al-Sabban said the emails prove there was “no relationship whatsoever between human activity and climate change.” Miliband says he’s never heard the Saudis take that position.

MILIBAND: I’ve obviously met him in the past and indeed the minister that he works for. They have never said to me that Saudi Arabia’s position is that climate change is not man-made or is not happening. My sense is that the vast majority of countries at the talks will not be swayed by one chain of emails.

LYNCH: But veteran environmental journalist Bud Ward, who edits the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, thinks the emails have the potential to affect the Copenhagen talks.

BUD WARD: It’s an early Christmas gift for those skeptics or contrarians who want to use it for political purposes.

LYNCH: That includes skeptics in the US Congress. Ward says while the emails themselves do raise some serious questions about the science at the university, that doesn’t really matter to those who want to challenge claims that global warming is man-made.

WARD: I think it also shifts the field of play from the science field, from the science arena to the political arena, and that is home court advantage for the skeptics and contrarians because they have benefitted most when they have been able to get this issue and deal with this as a political issue.

LYNCH: Jonathan Porritt admits that is his biggest concern. He’s founder of the Forum for the Future and a former environmental adviser to the British government.

JONATHAN PORRITT: You can see why lots of people might jump on this in order to strengthen the case that they’ve already made, that they don’t want to go along with a new legally-binding treaty, they don’t want deep cuts, they don’t want to find a different way of creating wealth in a very low carbon world. So the implications of this are huge.

LYNCH: The vast majority of climate scientists say the evidence is overwhelming, that the earth’s climate is changing and that humans are largely responsible. But the emails, and the questions they raise, are succeeding in taking the focus off the drive to find agreement in Copenhagen. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

China and US jockey on climate

The World — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:10:57 +0000

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China is going above and beyond in preparation for next week’s climage change summit in Copenhagen. Officials have come up with a plan for reducing greenhouse gases. But they’re also outlining ways to clean up its air, land, water, and in the process, its image. Anchor Marco Werman finds out more from Orville Schell of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

MARCO WERMAN: When the Copenhagen climate talks finally get underway next week, China will likely play a big role. China is now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It’s also emerging as a leader in climate and energy policy. Like the US, China has unveiled a plan, ahead of next week’s talks, for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. But China is doing much more than that, according to Orville Schell. He directs the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, and was recently in China.

ORVILLE SCHELL: They are doing a tremendous amount. A lot of effort in renewable energy, in wind and solar, tremendously aggressive program in energy efficiency, which what is proverbially called the low-hanging fruit, because if you can reduce the amount of energy it takes to produce let’s say a golf club or a toaster or something, you actually are able to pocket money. So the Chinese are very interested in that, because they can make money by becoming more efficient.

WERMAN: Is the Chinese government setting up solar and wind farms and did you see any of them?

SCHELL: Yes. They’re doing it very aggressively and they’re number two in terms of wind generation in the world. Their solar industries, which are not being marketed so much in China, but very aggressively abroad, are extremely well evolved and growing every larger. So they are making enormous steps in the fields of green technology and renewable energy technology. And I think in the last year or so, they have come to recognize that the economic future of their country will lie in this next great revolution. The post information technology revolution is I think undeniably going to be a green tech revolution.

WERMAN: Well the science is increasingly clear, climate change is happening and it will have significant, and in some cases, dire consequences: seal level rise, drought, flood, extreme weather. Is it fair to say that China has allowed the science to guide its policy making to a larger degree than the United States?

SCHELL: You know, curiously, the leadership in the central government is quite well apprised. Before President Bush left office, you had a real discontinuity, I think, in terms of the awareness that the Chinese leaders had of this issue, recently arrived at to be sure, and that of our present government. Now we have a kind of a curious switch where our presidential administration is very up to speed and aware of the science behind it, and in a certain sense is right at the same level as the Chinese central government leadership. But the problem is the US Congress. And in a certain sense, that’s not just Obama’s problem. It’s now the problem of the Chinese leadership too, because if the Congress doesn’t act, China’s not going to act.

WERMAN: With the Chinese waiting on the US and the US waiting on the Chinese, can either afford to wait out for one or the other to kind of give in on this?

SCHELL: Well that’s what we’ve been doing for the past ten years, and this is now the crux of the negotiation: who’s going to give what? So Obama is sort of trapped by Congress. He has a bill that’s passed the house. It’s committed to 17 percent cuts which is under 4 percent of the cuts that the Europeans have committed to, and the Chinese have also now committed themselves to a 40 percent cut by 2020 in what it costs to produce something in terms of energy. So how do you compare these things? That’s the problem we’re now at. Nobody quite knows how to get the apples to look like oranges and to be able to say, “Well, that effort is worth this much. Our effort is worth that much and it is comparable.”

WERMAN: With China’s growing political and economic leadership on climate and energy, I’m wondering if you can envision a scenario where they actually make the US in the future look to them as a leader on this?

SCHELL: Well, I do worry. One of the senses I had being in China with the whole Obama trip was that you really saw in the starkest way how the playing field has leveled. And Obama really arrived in China with no cards to play. He had no money. He couldn’t, on the climate question especially, really articulate what our position was, because Congress hasn’t passed a bill and he felt it would be counterproductive to do so. He finally did commit himself to a number, the number of the House bill, but that doesn’t really commit the US, so China’s still waiting. So that makes it very difficult for the US and China to actually come to an agreement in Copenhagen. I think they’ll try, but it will be a sort of an aspirational one on the US side, because Congress could blow it up in a heartbeat if they chose to.

WERMAN: Orville Schell is Arthur Ross director for the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations. Very good to speak with you. Thanks a lot.

SCHELL: Pleasure.

Ontario’s green energy plan

The World — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:43:53 +0000

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Ontario’s new green energy plan is the most ambitious in North America. It would phase out coal-fired power plants within five years and agressively push renewables and conservation. Opponents say it will push up energy costs and harm business and consumers. Anita Elash has the story from Toronto.

Environment coverage on The World
Copenhagen summit 2009

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Negotiators are heading to Copenhagen for next week’s climate talks armed with all sorts of pledges to cut their countries’ carbon dioxide emissions. Here in North America, though, the switch to cleaner energy has been slow to take hold. The U.S. and Canada remain the highest per capita CO2 emitters among major economies. But the Province of Ontario, Canada’s largest is hoping to chart its own course on energy. It recently adopted what supporters call the most ambitious climate change policy on the continent. Anita Elash has the story.

IJAZ RAUF: We’re walking towards the first system that was installed at the mosque property. It’s 530 watt.

ANITA ELASH: At the Bethel Islam Mosque just north of Toronto, Ijaz Rauf shows off an array of solar panels. Rauf is an environmentalist by nature and the Mosque’s Educational Director by profession. Three years ago he installed this small photovoltaic system to help power the community’s exhibition center. Now, he’s got much bigger plans for solar energy.

RAUF: We are planning to put up a project with 200 solar homes, and tie it to the grid to sell the electricity to the government.

ELASH: Rauf’s project would cost each homeowner about $25,000. It’s a big upfront investment, but it suddenly makes long-term sense. That’s because the local utility company will now pay the homeowners eighty cents for each kilowatt hour of electricity they produce for the next twenty years.

RAUF: If we can arrange financing then it we’re a no-brainer.

ELASH: Rauf and his neighbors are hoping to benefit from Ontario’s ambitious new clean energy law. The Province plans to shut down all of its carbon-intensive coal-fired power plants within just five years, and replace them with a wide array of carbon-free renewable energy sources.

SMITHERMAN: Mr. Chair, the Green Energy Act would, if passed, truly make this Province North America’s green energy leader.

ELASH: That’s Ontario’s Energy Minister George Smitherman announcing the plan in the Provincial Parliament last spring.

SMITHERMAN: The Act has two equally important thrusts. It would make it easier to bring new renewable energy projects to life. And it would help us to create a culture of conservation to encourage all Ontarians to use less electricity.

ELASH: The idea is to spur investment in everything from small home solar arrays to bio-gas plants to large offshore wind farms. Ontario hasn’t set specific targets for electricity from such new renewable sources. Energy Minister Smitherman says he’ll take as much as people want to build. But observers say the amount could reach 10 to 15 percent of Ontario’s electricity supply within just five years. Warren Mabee is an Energy Policy Analyst at Queen’s University.

WARREN MABEE: The scale of some of these projects is quite large. So you could get wind farms that are producing power for a million plus homes. You could get bio-energy plants that are producing hundreds of megawatts. And I think that with rooftop solar, we could see a lot of homeowners taking their homes essentially off the grid.

ELASH: If Mabee is right, only the European Union would generate more. If the expectations are high, Mabee says Ontario begins with some significant advantages. Among other things, the Province is huge, sparsely populated, and blessed with a lot of renewable energy resources.

MABEE: We have a lot of biomass, we have lots of rivers, and we have some of the greatest wind potentials in the world. We also have some great solar potential.

ELASH: Then there’s the fact that Ontario already doesn’t rely much on coal. It gets only eighteen percent of its electricity from coal compared to roughly fifty percent in the U.S. But the new Green Energy Plan won’t come cheap, and critics say that could be its downfall. That humming sound is juice flowing through part of Ontario’s aging grid. It was built to carry electricity from huge central power stations, whose output can be regulated as needed. Now, the grid has to be refurbished to bring in power from many more sources, large and small, and often intermittent. That’s going to cost billions. John Yakabuski is the energy critic for the Opposition Conservative Party.

JOHN YAKABUSKI: My concern is that we’re going to be building an energy system that from a cost point of view might be one that shocks Ontarians.

ELASH: A study commissioned for Yakabuski’s party found that residential electricity bills could eventually double. He says that’s a lot to pay for a plan that would reduce Ontario’s carbon emissions by just fourteen per cent.

YAKABUSKI: If other jurisdictions do not opt for the same kind of choices, which lead to the same kind of prices, we could find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage.

ELASH: The Liberal government responds that growing international pressure to cut carbon emissions will push up electricity costs everywhere. So, Ontario is just getting ahead of the game. And the Green Energy Plan also includes conservation measures designed to cut electricity use by twenty per cent. So as the cost of electricity rises, the hope is that consumers will be using a lot less of it. For his part, Ijaz Rauf at the Mosque near Toronto says he’s convinced his solar project is worth pursuing.

RAUF: If you look at these houses they’re wide roof area facing south, making it ideal for solar PV technology. And there are rows and rows of houses like that.

ELASH: And Rauf expects that the new law will spur many more across Ontario to follow suit. For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.