Currently viewing the tag: "Climate Change"
by Agence France-Presse. SAN FRANCISCO — California has approved the most sweeping U.S. plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, acting on its own against climate change as proposed nationwide plans flounder in Washington. The largest U.S. state, which would be the world’s eighth largest economy if it were a country, will from 2012 start a cap-and-trade system under which industry will be required to cut emissions but can trade credits on a new market. Outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who has differed sharply with much of his Republican Party on the environment, saw the decision by a state panel late Thursday as part of his legacy
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California approves first broad U.S. climate plan
When the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference ( COP15 ) ended in Copenhagen on December 18 of last year, the general feeling was that the proverbial glass was “half empty”; that is, nations had failed to reach a climate change agreement that would limit warming to the 2 degrees (Celsius) beyond which scientists see the potential for extreme environmental degradation.
Global Warming Deal Decades Away as ‘Dysfunctional’ U.S. Delays Commitment Bloomberg wins the prize for the worst Cancun headline. There is no doubt that the dysfunctional U.S. deserves criticism and that our inaction is a substantial reason why talks couldn’t progress anywhere near as far as they need to.
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The worst Cancun headline plus Stavins explains why the climate talks produced a “successful outcome”
That bold statement may seem like hyperbole, but there is now a very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the earth is warming, that warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes in climate, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are very possible . This pattern emerges not, as is so often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well. The great cryo-scientist Lonnie Thompson has a must-read paper, “ Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options .” Thompson has been the Paul Revere of glacier melt.
The UN Climate Summit in Cancun ends with a bang big enough to advance a progressive global climate agenda another year and possibly a bit longer. Andrew Light , CAP’s Coordinator of International Climate Policy , offers his take. The consensus reached at 3:00am this morning to forge the “Cancun Agreements” is a critical step forward in forging an effective global compact to fight global warming. These agreements will certainly not solve the problem, and some of the hardest issues in forging a climate treaty are still waiting to be addressed. But in a relatively short time, especially for this process, the parties came together on a balanced package of decisions on adaptation, forestry, technology transfer, the structure of climate finance and other issues which will be the basis for progress moving forward. Achieving these agreements vindicates for now the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, which had been on life support for a number of years for failing to negotiate through its own consensus process to move an agreement out of the body. Last year, even though over a hundred world leaders gathered together in Denmark to forge the Copenhagen Accord – the first significant step forward on a climate agreement since the Kyoto Protocol – the UNFCCC could not seal the deal with five countries exercising their effective veto to block the accord as an official decision of the UNFCCC. This left the agreement in limbo throughout the year. This year, with the exception of a lone holdout who was overruled by the Mexican chair of the meeting at the last minute, all 194 parties agreed to turn the core elements of the Copenhagen Accord, expressed in a scant six page outline last year, to 33 pages of densely packed text which the negotiators will now be bound to use in working for a final agreement. It will also set substantive global goals and requirements on adaptation and mitigation for the present. This outcome gets us halfway between the original idea of the Copenhagen Accord as originally articulated by the Danes: A two step process starting with a political agreement in 2009 to be followed by a legal agreement based on the same principles at a later date. While the Cancun Agreements are not the full second step they are a solid half step forward, a kind of Copenhagen 1.5. Two weeks of tension Coming into these meetings two weeks ago there were a number of issues in play, any of which could have derailed the process and resulted in no agreements whatsoever. Everyone agreed though that a fully fleshed out climate treaty was not going to emerge this year but were hopeful that issues would be resolved sufficiently to get a “balanced package” of agreements, first on improvements to the Kyoto Protocol, and second on core issues like forestry, finance, and technology from the companion negotiating track on Long-Term Cooperative Action (LCA)
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The Cancun Compromise