Germany plans 80% cut in GHG emissions by 2050

Angela Merkel's cabinet approved a plan to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent between now and 2050. They will use renewable energy and energy efficiency. It bolsters Germany’s pace-setting role in addressing climate change. The catch is that nuclear fission (free of carbon emissions) is included as a "bridge."

Greenpeace and others mobilized 100,000 in the street to protest the nuclear component.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0928/Why-many-environmentalists-will-fight-Germany-s-green-energy-plan

Courtesy of the Daily Climate: http://www.dailyclimate.org/

Climate panel must adapt to survive, says Nature editorial

The UN climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) needs to reorganize and adopt to modern communications techniques if it is to survive. So says an editorial in the UK journal Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100831/full/467014a.html

The scientific findings have been solid (except for a obviously wild prediction that Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 2035, which needed to be withdrawn). But the longstanding Chairman (Rajendra Pachauri), defensiveness (he was installed in 1988) and the IPCC's inability to use modern scientific communication and review procedures have been embarrassing.

Movie Review: Wall Street--Money Never Sleeps

It's a complete bomb. Wooden acting, a confusing story (something about how laser fusion will save the world if we just invest $100 million, after billions have been spent already).

California Beer and Beverage Distributors association is opposing ballot initiative to legalize pot

The Volokh Conspiracy blog, always alert to the latest on the War on Drugs, reports:

The California Beer and Beverage Distributors is opposing a California ballot proposition that would legalize marijuana within the state. No surprise there. Some of the CBBD’s members may fear legal marijuana would compete with beer. Interestingly, the CBBD claims it is not opposed to legalization in principle, just the poor wording of this specific proposal. Josh Wright doesn’t buy it. Neither should you.

http://volokh.com/2010/09/26/this-buds-not-for-you/

Nutrient Trading is in the new Chesapeake Bay Program

Sen Benjamin Cardin (D, Md.) of the Sen. Environment and Public Works Committee introduced a bill to establish nutrient trading a system (S. 1816, “To amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to improve and reauthorize the Chesapeake Bay Program).”

It will establish a private market (modeled on the sulfur credits that are used to control acid rain) and will allow private contracts between say farmers, factories, municipalities, and others to take low cost conservation measures. A municipal wastewater system or factory could simply pay a farmer to make the desired reduction in nutrients if it finds that doing so is cheaper.

The amendment says:

"Facilitation of trading.--In order to attract

market participants and facilitate the cost-effective 

                achievement of water-quality goals, the Administrator 

                shall ensure that the trading program established under 

                this paragraph--

                            ``(i) includes measures to mitigate credit 

                        buyer risk;

                            ``(ii) makes use of the best available 

                        science in order to minimize uncertainty and 

                        related transaction costs to traders, including 

                        the Administrator, in consultation with the 

                        Secretary of Agriculture, supporting research 

                        and other activities that increase the 

                        scientific understanding of nonpoint nutrient 

                        pollutant loading and the ability of various 

                        structural and nonstructural alternatives to 

                        reduce the loads;

                            ``(iii) eliminates unnecessary or 

                        duplicative administrative processes; and

                            ``(iv) incorporates a permitting approach 

                        under the national pollutant discharge 

                        elimination system established under section 

                        402 that allows trading to occur without 

                        requiring the reopening or reissuance of 

                        permits to incorporate individual trades.

‘‘(vii) ensure that private contracts

between credit buyers and credit sellers

contain adequate provisions to ensure en-

forceability under applicable law;"

Ace

UN Climate Change Negotiations Set for Cancun

Following the Embarrassing Failure to reach a binding agreement in Copenhagen [see "what happened to the UN Framework Convention], The UN Climate Change conference in Bonn has scheduled two more rounds of climate talks, leading up to a "summit" starting November 29 in Cancun.

Excerpts from the April 21 release:

Participants at the United Nations climate change talks in Bonn have agreed to intensify their negotiating schedule in hopes of reaching a strong outcome in Mexico later this year after world leaders were unable to agree on a binding treaty in Copenhagen last December.

“At this meeting in Bonn, I have generally seen a strong desire to make progress,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), following the talks over the weekend in Germany.

He cautioned, however, that while additional “meeting time is important, it is itself not a recipe for success.”

In addition to the negotiating sessions already scheduled for 2010, governments of the 175 countries that participated decided to hold two additional sessions of at least one week each to intensify the search for ways to limit carbon emissions and provide assistance for developing countries.

Dates have not yet been set, but the additional meetings will take place between 11 June, when the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies wrap up their session, and 29 November when the UN Climate Change Conference will begin in Cancun, Mexico.

“The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun must do what Copenhagen did not achieve: It must finalize a functioning architecture for implementation that launches global climate action, across the board, especially in developing nations,” said Mr. de Boer.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34339

Ace

Nutrient Trading Could Help Save the Bay, says the World Resources Institute

As we know, the Chesapeake Bay watershed is in big trouble; so much so that Pres. Obama has proposed to federalize the Bay's recovery under the EPA (the “Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009”).

The World Resources Institute in Washington says nutrient trading (a cap and trade system for excess nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients in the water) would offer regulators an economical solution.

It makes sense to me. Here's how it would work. the state EPAs in DC, NY, PA, MD, VA, and WVA would set limits on the nutrients they would allow for farms, factories, and municipal water treatment plants, pavements, and other sources in their areas. They would make the permits tradeable, and encourage owners to buy and sell permits to meet their needs.

A factory owner, for example, who wanted to expand production and emit more nutrients could either install the necessary treatment equipment or buy the corresponding permits from another participant in the market if buying the permits was cheaper.

Such a cap and trade system has worked for decades in controlling sulfur emissions to air. It is also part of the Waxman-Markey legislation passed by the House, to control greenhouse gases. The goal is to minimize costs.

Here's the summary:

Summary

The largest estuary in the United States, the Chesapeake Bay is a vital economic, cultural, and ecological resource for the region and the nation. Excess runoff and discharges of nutrients—particularly nitrogen and phosphorus—from farms, pavement, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), and other sources have placed the bay on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) List of Impaired Waters. This nutrient pollution is responsible for creating large algal blooms that lead to “dead zones” in the bay. Despite decades of restoration efforts, progress has been slow, and the rivers and streams that drain into the Bay remain polluted.

The proposed “Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009” (H.R. 3852/S. 1816) would provide significant new resources and new approaches to help restore the bay. Nutrient trading is one such approach. In a nutrient trading market, sources that reduce their nutrient runoff or discharges below target levels can sell their surplus reductions or “credits” to other sources. This approach allows those that can reduce nutrients at low cost to sell credits to those facing higher-cost nutrient reduction options. Nutrient trading, therefore, could allow sources of pollution such as WWTPs and municipal stormwater programs to meet their pollution targets in a cost-effective manner and could create new revenue opportunities for farmers, entrepreneurs, and others who implement low-cost pollution reduction practices.

The bill would establish a baywide nutrient trading market for the Chesapeake Bay watershed, allowing credits to be exchanged across state lines and among the watershed’s nine major river basins. A baywide nutrient trading market would build on the existing and pending state-level nutrient trading programs in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. A baywide nutrient trading market could help states and sectors more cost-effectively achieve courtordered nutrient pollution limits called Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) that are being developed by the EPA. These TMDLs will set limits on nutrient loads to the bay and its tributaries for the agricultural, wastewater, municipal stormwater, and other sectors.

Preliminary analyses indicate that the economic benefits of a baywide nutrient trading market for nitrogen could be signifi cant for the agricultural, wastewater, and municipal stormwater sectors in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Depending on credit prices, trading potentially could:

• Generate new revenue for the agricultural sector and other credit generators at an amount comparable to current levels of annual public funding for agriculture conservation cost-share programs for the bay;

• Reduce nitrogen removal costs for some in the wastewater sector by as much as 60 percent; and

• Save the municipal stormwater sector hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Unemployment Trumps Environmental Concern

Economists Matthew E. Kahn, Matthew J. Kotchen, Environmental Concern and the Business Cycle: The Chilling Effect of Recession, studied compared with frequency of google searches for "global warmining with increases in the searches for "unemployment" in Italy and California. The former goes down when the latter rises. He opines that people have a "finite pool of worry." Here's the abstract:

This paper uses three different sources of data to investigate the association between the business cycle—measured with unemployment rates—and environmental concern. Building on recent research that finds internet search terms to be useful predictors of health epidemics and economic activity, we find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate decreases Google searches for “global warming” and increases searches for “unemployment,” and that the effect differs according to a state’s political ideology. From national surveys, we find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in the probability that residents think global warming is happening and reduced support for the U.S to target policies intended to mitigate global warming. Finally, in California, we find that an increase in a county’s unemployment rate is associated with a significant decrease in county residents choosing the environment as the most important policy issue. Beyond providing the first empirical estimates of macroeconomic effects on environmental concern, we discuss the results in terms of the potential impact on environmental policy and understanding the full cost of recessions.

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16241

What Happened to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

United States ratification of the 1992 UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was accompanied by the expectation that all developed countries would sign onto the co-caled Kyoto Protocol--an international agreement linked to the UNFCCC that sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.

But in 2001 the George W. Bush Administration’s decided to abandon the Kyoto Protocol process. This left some committees in both houses of Congress (Sens. McCain, Kerrey, and Kennedy, Lieberman and Rep. Waxman and Markey) on their own to promote legislation. .

As candidates, then Sens. Obama and Biden outlined several climate change initiatives in a “New Energy for America” plan, highlighted by a pledge to “implement an economy-wide cap and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.” They also promised to “re-engage” the UNFCCC (with a Conference of Parties to meet in Copenhagen in December 2009 to negotiate a post-Kyoto program),

By the 2009 negotiations at Copenhagen, showed that China and India were in the driver seat, because the USA has squandered its influence by falling deeply in debt and over-committed overseas. The US emissions reduction target for 2020, from a baseline of 2005, is about 17%, in conformity with anticipated U.S. energy and climate legislation, recognizing that the final target will be reported to the Secretariat in light of enacted legislation. [Note: The pathway set forth in pending legislation would entail a 30% reduction in 2025 and a 42% reduction in 2030, in line with the goal to reduce emissions 83% by 2050.]31

For a developing country like China, the goal is to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45% by 2020 compared to the 2005 level, increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15% by 2020 and increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from the 2005 levels. [China’s submission adds:]

Meanwhile widespread Congressional opposition arose over the cost of the cap-and trade program, among other things. They have prevented meaningful action.

But global warming is an increasingly obvious fact to the rest of us.

Ace

Climate Change Roundup

Here's some background on next week's big climate pow-wow in New York City, in which representatives of the world's major economies will spend two days talking about the implications for their national security. The 17 members of the forum include Australia, Brazil,Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia,Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United States, and the EU.

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1419151



Climate changes are continuing in frightening ways. The European cuckoo is being thrown off in timing its egg laying:

http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/09/15/cuckoos-thrown-off-by-climate-change.html


So are the efforts to deny and defeat remedies, by the US energy industries, according to the Miami Herald.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/15/1825587/oil-industry-group-blasts-schwarzenegger.html

But the world's biggest mining company says it's time to act:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/move-on-climate-bhp-billiton-urges-20100915-15cn4.html

Meanwhile Deutsche Bank puts $5 billion where its mouth is.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS177841910920100915