L’AQUILA (Italy): Attempts to forge a global consensus to battle climate change suffered a serious setback as developed countries tried to wriggle out of any short-term commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and instead, demanded that developing economies such as India and China accept emission reducing targets.

At a meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in Rome on Tuesday evening, the developed countries tried to renege on their commitment to use 1990 as the base year for reducing emissions. Nor would they spell out what quantum of commitments they would accept in the run-up to 2020.

The developed nations insisted that India, China and other emerging economies such as Brazil and South Africa agree to a long-range target for reduction of GHGs with the burden-sharing formula remaining quite ambiguous.

The 17 members of MEF who will discuss the issue here on Thursday account for 75% of global emissions, and an agreement among them could have fastpaced the global response to a deepening crisis resulting from changes in the climate.

Sources termed the deliberations at the Rome meeting as “tense” with India and China having to join hands to counter pressure from the developed world led by the US. The India-China partnership had staved off a similar challenge at the Bonn climate change talks where discussions failed to make any headway.

Indian sources called the development a step backwards. It was only last month that US and Mexico at the MEF meeting in Mexico had sponsored a draft that recommended an “aspirational” goal of halving emission levels by 2050.

An aspirational long-term goal for all without a roadmap of how the emission reduction burden would be shared was even then strongly opposed by India and China.

India is not keen to let the negotiations progress only on the long-term goals which would bind them without the industrialized nations putting on the table numbers for the commitments they would take in the second phase of Kyoto Protocol as the first phase expires in 2012.

However, the intransigence of developed countries reduced the draft to a bland statement of the professed intensions of the global community to take on the threat of climate change, without any mention of either timeframe or targets.

The decision to come out with the draft at all, after the clash between the developed and developing countries, was taken after the US representatives at the Rome meeting cajoled participants into agreeing to put one out.

The US insistence was because of the anxiety to organize a face-saver for President Barak Obama who in his capacity as chairman of the MEF is to release the draft on Thursday to coincide with the ongoing G-8 summit.

The MEF meeting, US had hoped, would become an important prelude to the UN Climate Conference in Copehenhagen in December.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, 36 industrialized countries known as Annexe 1 countries are obliged to reduce their emissions by a fixed percentage below 1990 levels between 2008-2012. However, barring UK, Germany and a couple of others, they have failed to meet the commitment.

Instead, they are seeking to shift the goalpost. Japan has already argued that 2005 be used as the base year in place of 1990 under the Kyoto Protocol.

The global downturn has come in handy for the defaulters who have also been insistent that developing countries accept emission reduction targets lower than “business-than-usual” levels, in what marks a major shift away from the principle of “historical responsibility” that enjoined the developed countries to agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Though China and India came together in Rome and are expected to stick together as the standoff with the developed world deepens, the two neighbours are hugely different in terms of their contribution to global pollution levels. China accounts for 16% of the total global emissions annually and 3 tonnes per capita. US is comparable with China on an absolute level but its per capita emissions are 20 tonnes. As against this, India’s contribution stands at a mere 1.1 tonne per capita and a meagre 4% in absolute terms on an annual basis.

Copyright 2009, TOI

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Mikhail Klimentyev

L’AQUILA, July 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia refuses to back a target of an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 proposed by other Group of Eight countries, a Kremlin aide said on Wednesday after the first day of the G8 summit in Italy.

At a news conference earlier in the day, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the world’s richest nations should cut their emissions by 80% by the middle of the century.

Arkady Dvorkovich, who is accompanying President Dmitry Medvedev at the summit in the central Italian mountain town of L’Aquila, told reporters: “We will not sacrifice our economic growth to meet emissions cuts. Economic growth must be effective. Everyone spoke about this.”

He called the 80% target “unacceptable, and probably unattainable.”

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, earlier said the G8 had agreed to set targets that would limit the likely rise in global temperatures due to man-made emissions to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. He also said 1990 should be set as the base year for measuring emission reductions.

Copyright 2009, RIA Novosti

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By Anna Smolchenko - 2 hours ago

L’AQUILA, Italy (AFP) - G8 plans for deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions began unravelling on Wednesday shortly after leaders signed on to the deal as Russia rejected a key plank as “unacceptable”.

G8 leaders agreed to bear the brunt of steep global cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, calling on a broader bloc of developed countries to reduce pollution by 80 percent by 2050.

The aim, agreed at a G8 summit in the central Italian town of L’Aquila, is to cut overall world emissions by 50 percent in order to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius, a declaration said.

“Because this global challenge can only be met by a global response, we reiterate our willingness to share with all countries the goal of achieving at least a 50 percent reduction of global emission by 2050,” the G8 leaders said.

“As part of this, we also support a goal of developed countries reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80 percent or more by 2050, compared to 1990 or more recent years,” they added.

But the ink was barely dry on the agreement when it ran into Russian opposition.

“For us the 80 percent figure is unacceptable and likely unattainable,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aide.

“We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction,” he told reporters.

The head of campaign group WWF’s global climate initiative, Kim Cartensen, said that Russia’s objection to the target was “probably a sign of internal disagreement inside the Russian delegation.”

“They should have, but they don’t have anything in their policy to reach the target,” she said.

The objective to cut global emissions overall by 50 percent also came under fire with a broader group of major polluters, including many developing countries such as China and India, dropping a pledge earlier to halve their pollution by 2050.

Summit host and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that developed countries needed to be united in the fight against climate change to convince poorer countries to sign on to the emission cuts.

“It’s important to show unity before India and China because reductions in Europe and the US but not in those countries would not be productive,” he told reporters.

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The most contentious part of the report is the discussion of the legality of so-called ‘Border measures’ (aka carbon tariffs) which can is covered on pages p. 98-110

2. Border Measures

In the absence of an internationally agreed price on carbon and since emission reduction policies, such as taxes and/or trading schemes, are not applied universally, the implementation of emission reduction policies has
given rise to concerns about competitiveness as well as about environmental efficiency, i.e. “carbon leakage”.

Concerns about competitiveness and carbon leakage, particularly in relation to energy-intensive industries, have recently come to the forefront of climate change discussions, triggered by the consideration and implementation of emission trading schemes in several developed countries.

To reduce the cost of compliance for potentially affected industries, mechanisms such as free allowances or exemptions are used.149 Another mechanism is to use trade measures at the border to impose a similar cost on importers. This type of trade policy is also argued to be an incentive for other countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, so that the environmental objectives of domestic legislation are achieved and at the same time the global nature of climate change is taken into account.

The following sections first clarify the concepts of “competitiveness” and “carbon leakage”, and then present the various types of border mechanisms that are being suggested to remedy them: border tax adjustments to carbon or energy taxes; border measures in relation to an emission trading scheme; and some other types of border measures.

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More open trade could lead to growing greenhouse gas emissions if nothing is done to shift “business as usual” trade practices and encourage the exchange of new low-carbon technologies, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a joint report.

The global trade organisation and the UN body for environmental awareness launched a joint report on Friday (26 June) exploring for the first time the connections between trade and climate change.

WTO and UNEP argue that international trade expansion will most likely be accompanied by higher CO2 emissions as more economic activity requires greater energy use, as well as increased transportation of goods. But the net impact of free trade on emissions is difficult to determine, as open trade will also have positive mitigation effects, they argue.

Opening markets will help developing countries tap into climate change technologies developed in industrialised countries, the report states.

Trade can also help level out differences in demand and supply, as countries hardest hit by climate change can import goods and services that they can no longer produce themselves, it adds.

The report concludes that the hardest blow will be dealt on the developing countries’ competitive advantage, as they often depend on agriculture, forestry and fisheries, sectors that will be worst affected by climate change, alongside tourism.

Although the ongoing Doha Round of trade negotiations aims to reduce tariffs and other trade-distorting measures on climate-friendly goods and services, policies targeted at cutting CO2 emissions could be exceptionally accepted under international free trade legislation, the paper underlines.

Border measures such as import taxes on products from a country that does not impose a price on carbon could fall under such exceptions, WTO says. Such measures are devised to discourage domestic industries from relocating to cheaper production areas and escape strict environmental laws.

“The general approach under WTO rules has been to acknowledge that some degree of trade restriction may be necessary to achieve certain policy objectives, as long as a number of carefully crafted conditions are respected. WTO case law has confirmed that WTO rules do not trump environmental requirements,” the trade organisation states.

It adds, however, that such measures should not constitute “arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination” nor a “disguised restriction on international trade”, warning off efforts to use climate policy as a guise for protectionist measures.

Considering the significant interconnections between climate change and trade, WTO and UNEP therefore call for a fair climate deal in Copenhagen in December to protect the most vulnerable countries, as well as a conclusion of the Doha trade round, opening trade in environmental goods and services to complement emissions reductions.

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China said Thursday it was “firmly” opposed to provisions in a new US clean energy bill that will make it easier to impose trade penalties on nations that reject limits to globe-warming pollution.

“China is firmly opposed to such measures,” vice foreign minister He Yafei told reporters in Beijing.

“We are firmly against such attempts to advance trade protectionism under the pretext of climate change. It is not conducive to world economic recovery. It serves nobody’s interests.”

On Friday, the US House of Representatives narrowly passed legislation to limit pollution blamed for global warming, handing President Barack Obama a hard-fought major victory.

Lawmakers voted for the first time in US history to limit heat-trapping carbon emissions and shift the US economy to cleaner energy.

However, after the House of Representatives passed the legislation, Obama said he did not want the bill to be used to impose trade penalties on countries in the interest of curbing global warming, The New York Times reported.

The newspaper said Obama had told reporters at the White House that at a time when the global economy is still deep in recession, he thought “we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.”

The US Senate has still to vote on the energy bill.

China has shown increasing concern in recent years about the consequences of global warming.

But as part of ongoing global negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, China has said the bulk of the responsibility for emissions cuts lies with developed nations.

Copyright 2009, AFP

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Peter Schwerdtfeger

ALTHOUGH there are many doubters of man-made climate change, I am not yet one of them. But I remain unconvinced that carbon dioxide is the sole bete noire. Two decades ago, I pored over the spectral properties of the infra-red radiation of this gas, which is essential to plant life, and found that it was almost completely overshadowed by the radiative properties of water vapour, which is vital to all forms of life on earth.

Repeatedly in science we are reminded that happenings in nature can rarely be ascribed to a single phenomenon. For example, sea levels on our coasts are dependent on winds and astronomical forces as well as atmospheric pressure and, on a different time scale, the temperature profile of the ocean. Now, with complete abandon, a vociferous body of claimants is insisting that CO2 alone is the root of climatic evil.

I fear that many supporters of this view have become carried away by the euphoria of mass or dominant group psyche. Scientists are no more immune from being swayed by the pressure of collective enthusiasm than any other member of the human race. I do not believe for one moment that undisciplined burning of fossil fuels is harmless, but the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection ofminute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies led by internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall.

Rosenfeld’s research group has shown that humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2. Rather, pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

Rosenfeld is no snake-oil salesman. As an American Meteorological Society medallist, he has an internationally endorsed research record in cloud physics that no living Australian can claim to emulate. It is more than 20 years since Australia was a knowledgeable force in cloud physics and cloud seeding. CSIRO’s relevant division has long been disbanded and its cloud-seeding techniques based on the use of expensive silver iodide have been superseded by the Israelis using an inexpensive and far more natural product: sea salt.

Chinese and Israeli researchers have shown that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi’an in central China has decreased by 20per cent amid increasing levels of man-made air pollution during the past 50 years. The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

Some of the most chilling evidence was presented by Rosenfeld’s Australian-based research associate Aron Gingis in a 2002 submission to the House of Representatives standing committee on agriculture, fisheries and forestry concerning future water supplies for Australia’s rural industries and communities.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellite map of southeast Australia, enhanced by Rosenfeld, shows the frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas, including the all-important Snowy Mountains catchments. It may well be concluded that the increasing emissions from the phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations at Hazelwood and other locations in Gippsland, Victoria, have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld’s scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld’s conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

Yet his work so far has been ignored in Australia because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions.

Scientists, like all other people, need to remain open to competing views and avoid the danger of being locked into tunnel vision through group obsession, which is what global warming seems to have become.

Peter Schwerdtfeger is emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide.

Copyright 2009, The Australian

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BOSTON–Hopes are dimming for a climate change deal between the United States and China following a key U.N. meeting in Germany, experts say.

The two-week conference in Bonn that ended June 12 was called to craft an agreement that would follow the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. But despite a 200-page draft pact that will be subject to major revisions, the talks “produced little of substance,” the Washington Post said.

The meeting was one of the last chances to strike a worldwide accord on curbing emissions before a December conference in Copenhagen, where 192 countries will consider targets to replace Kyoto commitments that expire in 2012.

Environmental groups are concerned that the lack of progress at Bonn means there may be no agreement at Copenhagen, or one that fails to slow climate change.

“I think it is a very tough question to figure out what kind of agreement there’s going to be,” said Damon Moglen, director of Greenpeace USA’s global warming campaign, in a Radio Free Asia interview. “Key players are for the moment making gestures rather than having real negotiating positions.”

Despite some hopeful signs earlier this year, the United States and China have yet to break through the impasse of how much each should contribute to controlling greenhouse gases. Without big steps by the world’s two largest sources of emissions, other nations are unlikely to make major efforts.

Different standards

But the Bonn meeting saw little change in negotiating stands, although U.S. officials have accepted that China will not adopt caps on carbon dioxide emissions. As a developing country, China insists it will only pursue goals for energy efficiency while it argues that U.S. emissions cuts do not go far enough.

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By Shaun Tandon

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Access to green technology is becoming a growing stumbling block in global efforts to fight climate change, with US lawmakers bristling at what they see as China’s attempt to “steal” US know-how.

China and India have led calls for developed nations to share technology to help them battle global warming as the clock ticks to a December meeting in Copenhagen meant to seal a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The US House of Representatives this month unanimously voted to make it US policy to prevent the Copenhagen treaty from “weakening” US intellectual property rights on a wind, solar and other eco-friendly technologies.

Congressman Rick Larsen, a member of President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party who authored the measure, said the United States was caught between concern both over the climate and its soaring trade deficit with China.

“The US can be part of China’s solution for the problems that they admittedly have with energy efficiency and emissions. And I think legitimately we want to be part of that solution — we’re the two largest emitters of C02 in the world,” Larsen said.

“But we need to couple being part of that solution with making it part of the solution on the trade deficit as well,” he said ahead of the measure’s approval.

Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican who joined Larsen on a recent trip to China, said that climate change was the most contentious issue during talks with Chinese leaders.

Kirk said the Chinese essentially were seeking “the stealing of all intellectual property” related to energy efficiency and climate change.

Kirk warned that China’s position could change the political dynamics in Washington, where promoters of a bill to force emission cuts say the United States stands to create millions of jobs in a new green economy.

“Right now a number of green industries like the climate change bill coming out. But if an international treaty sanctions the theft of their intellectual property, then there will be hardly any green jobs built in the United States,” Kirk said.

The United States is the only major industrialized nation to reject the Kyoto Protocol, with former president George W. Bush saying it was unfair by making no demands of fast-growing developing nations such as China and India.

Despite a recession, President Barack Obama has vowed to work to halt the planet’s warming, which UN scientists warn will threaten severe weather and the extinction of plant and animal species later this century if unchecked.

More than 180 countries promised at a December 2007 meeting in Bali, Indonesia to take part in the next global treaty with a “common but differentiated responsibility” for developed and developing economies.

But 12 days of talks this month in Bonn came up with no visible progress, with top Chinese negotiator Li Gao accusing rich nations of reneging on sharing technology and watering down commitments to cut emissions.

“There is an attempt to obliterate the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ and to split up the developing countries,” Li told China’s state Xinhua news agency.

Shyam Saran, India’s envoy on climate change, also criticized rich nations, which he said bore the historic responsibility for climate change. India has proposed setting up global “innovation centers” to work on green technology.

A report last month by experts for the UN climate body called for a “balanced” approach, stressing the importance of intellectual property rights but saying all nations needed to accept the terms.

Technology transfer “is certainly a big and important question that might be a roadblock” in global negotiations, said Daniel Kessler of Greenpeace.

The environmental group has called for public and private funds on climate change to be pooled into an independent global body, funded to the tune of at least 140 billion dollars a year.

But such funding may prove hard to come by. The European Union, champion of the Kyoto Protocol, has come under fire from environmentalists for declining to put a figure on climate aid, saying it is waiting to see other nations’ proposals.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

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By Jim Tankersley

Reporting from Washington — Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, but President Obama’s plan to fight climate change would result in the nation burning more coal a decade from now than it does today.

The administration’s plan, the centerpiece of a 700-page legislative package, proposes strict limits on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.

But to attract vital support from congressional Democrats representing heavily coal-dependent areas, authors of the legislation, including Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), have made a series of concessions that substantially soften its effect on coal — at least over the next decade or so.

As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency projects that even if the emissions limits go into effect, the U.S. would use more carbon-dioxide-heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.

That’s because the bill gives utilities a financial incentive to keep burning coal by joining the cap-and-trade system — a kind of marketplace where polluters could reduce their emissions on paper by buying pollution reductions created by others. These so-called offsets, for example, could be created and sold by farmers who planted trees, which filter carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Environmental groups also say the bill could set off a boom in the construction of new coal plants because of provisions that would restrict legal efforts to block such projects.

Leading Democrats — and some major conservation groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council — say the moves have helped attract coal-district Democrats to support the bill without undermining the plan’s environmental goals.

“We’ve ensured a role for coal” in the nation’s energy future, said Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), one of the leading coal champions in the House.

But some environmentalists remain skeptical that offsets can reduce greenhouse gases to avoid catastrophic warming of the atmosphere.

“This is greens making a deal with the devil,” said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmentalist think tank that recently completed a detailed critique of the bill’s coal provisions.

Obama and House leaders “gave the coal guys everything they wanted,” said Michael Shellenberger, the institute’s president. “The result is legislation that, when all is said and done, will increase coal generation and make it harder to move away from it.”
The EPA projects Obama’s plan would slow the growth in coal over what would have occurred in the absence of emission limits. Emissions from coal would grow at roughly the same rate as overall coal use, until “clean coal” technology becomes commercially viable.

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Christian Kerr

ANTARCTIC ice shelves are showing no sign of climate change, six years of unique research have shown.

Scientists from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology are using acoustic sensors developed to support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to listen for the sound of icebergs breaking away from the giant ice sheets of the south pole.

“More than six years of observation has not revealed any significant climatic trends,” CUT associate professor Alexander Gavrilov said yesterday.

Professor Gavrilov and PhD student Binghui Li are investigating whether it is possible to detect and monitor significant changes in the disintegration rate of the Antarctic ice shelf by monitoring the noise of ice breaking.

The pair are using two acoustic stations, one 150km off Cape Leeuwin, the southwest tip of WA, and another off the gigantic US military base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.

“They are part of a network of underwater acoustic receivers, or hydrophones,” Dr Gavrilov told The Australian yesterday.

The stations have been used to locate nuclear explosions detonated by India.

More than 100 signals from Antarctica are detected weekly by the Cape Leeuwin station. They are then transmitted to Geoscience Australia in Canberra.

“Six years of results is not long in the scheme of things, so we will keep watching,” Dr Gavrilov said.

The pair will present their research at a conference in Europe later this month.

Copyright 2009, TA

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