The Australian delegation to climate change talks in Bangkok has turned the clock back to the Howard era by failing to back binding greenhouse targets, environment group Greenpeace says.
The European Union's greenhouse-gas emissions from key industries rose 1.1% last year, despite its antipollution policies, demonstrating the difficulty in meeting international commitments to fight climate change.
The US Congress will not ratify any global climate change agreement if India is not a party to it.
Painstakingly tough negotiations on how to fight climate change are getting even harder as concerns mount that the global economy is heading into recession.
Even when the economic outlook looked brighter, the United States led criticism that the existing Kyoto Protocol's requirements on cutting greenhouse gases would prove too costly for rich countries.
Gregory Benford thinks Al Gore's a good guy and all, but he also thinks the star of "An Inconvenient Truth" is a little delusional. Driving a hybrid car, switching your bulbs to compact fluorescents and springing for recycled paper products are all well-meaning strategies in the fight against global warming. But as UC-Irvine physicist Benford sees it, there's a catch. Those do-gooder actions are not going to be effective enough to turn the temperature tide, and even incremental political changes like reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mining alternative fuel sources are not forward-thinking enough. "I never believed we were going to be able to thwart global warming through carbon restriction," Benford says. "Carbon restriction requires nations to subvert short- and midterm goals for a long-term goal they've read about online, and that's just not going to work."
The leader of the G-77 in the Bangkok talks has stinked up the place by insisting that the parties that undertook solemn commitments in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their emissions should actually be required to meet their solemn commitments as a condition of further negotiations.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A recent opportunity in Minnesota, almost entirely ignored, demonstrates how little the members of these state climate commissions care about costs of their proposals they produce. According to one Burnsville businessman, who served on the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group, his colleagues were given the chance to meet with Dr. Margo Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation for dinner, when she was in the Twin Cities recently. I'll let Jim Marchessault, owner of Business Card Services, tell the rest of the story:
Allow me to introduce myself. I, Jim Marchessault, own a printing company in Burnsville that employs about 140 people. We are a large consumer of electricity and we are always looking for ways to save money. We do this so we can remain competitive in the market place. We were even featured on WCCO's Project Energy. (see link below)
http://wcco.com/seenon/project.energy.renewable.2.372463.htmlI also happen to be one of the few consumers on the 55 member Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) that met over the last 9 months. Many times, I and others expressed concern about the possible cost impact of the many suggestions that the group came up with.
David Thornton, one of the MCCAG leaders, extended a dinner invitation to meet with Dr. Margo Thorning to the entire 55 member group. She was giving a talk on "Reducing Green House Emissions: What are the Real Economic Costs" on March 6th. Imagine my surprise when I was the only member to show up! This reinforces my feeling that cost to the consumer was not their concern.
This weekend Dr. Thorning wrote an article that appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. I have attached a PDF of it. I hope you will read it before implementing any of the MCCAG's recommendations.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Marchessault said he sent this message to all of Minnesota's state legislators. Perhaps some of them will at least give a bit of attention to the economics of greenhouse gas emissions policy.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
The Capital Research Center has just published its latest Organization Trends report, which focuses on the Center for Climate Strategies. Reviewers like me say it is "must reading," "compelling," and that they "couldn't put it down." Of course, I've had an intense interest in this group for at least a year, and it helps that our friend Chris Horner put the piece together. As CRC summarizes:
To use nightmare scenarios to forge national policies the activists have decided to circumvent the outgoing Bush administration – and more to the point, Congress – and get state governors to follow their advice. That’s where the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) comes in. CCS persuades governors to appoint “study commissions” on global warming, then steers the policy process, rigging commission proceedings to produce a predetermined result: higher energy costs, diminished property and other individual rights, and more Big Government. These undemocratic maneuvers do an end-run around state legislators and should trouble advocates of open government.
Chris does a great job explaining comprehensively how CCS works, how they are funded, and what are the fruits of their efforts. Read it.
Carter is not a man who gets easily spooked–he led a reconnaissance unit in Desert Storm, and I watched him grab a small anaconda with his bare hands in Brazil–but he can sound downright panicky about the future of the forest. "You can't protect it. There's too much money to be made tearing it down," he says. "Out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work."
This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.
Nigeria will lose all of its remaining forests in the next 12 years if the rate of deforestation remains unchecked, an environmental expert warned Thursday.
Nigeria has the seventh-largest gas reserves in the world but has so far failed to harness them to produce affordable cooking gas, meaning the bulk of the population still relies on wood or charcoal for cooking.
"Now that the forests in the north are gone, attention has shifted to … southern Nigeria where trees are burnt for charcoal. This is more destructive than tree chopping because it is more rapid and kills all the flora and wildlife," Yammama further warned.
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