This site is being designed to be the source of ideas, articles, and other materials that will be shared by the Sustainable Business faculty at City University of Seattle. This is where we will post information about the university’s sustainable business programs as well as research and articles that are relevant to topics related to sustainability.

In short, this is a collective blog, managed by those City University of Seattle faculty that are teaching in the areas of environmental responsibility, social justice, sustainable business, global citizenship, and responsible management. Each entry, posted by a City U faculty member, will be made available to the City U community. Each entry will allow comments on the materials that have been posted.

Since this blog is in support of our academic programs, an effort will be made to limit the content of this page to articles and materials that are academic in nature.  We will ask faculty to submit articles and use this page as a collection point for this work.  Ideally, this blog will be a first step to establishing an online journal of ideas related to sustainbility for the City University of Seattle community.

As we move forward together to explore what sustainable business education will be through City University of Seattle, we invite you, the members of the City University community and the community at large, to join us and participate in this forum and exchange of ideas.

What the G8 and the Major Economies Forum Agreed to Last Week

And What it Could Mean

Kurt Kirstein

So, many of us heard the news last week.  The G8 took up climate change as a primary issue during its annual meeting.   So, what did they accomplish?

In truth, there were two important groups that met last week in L’Aqulia, Italy, the G8 met on Wednesday and the Major Economies Forum or MEF met on Thursday.  A summary of their agreements follows:

G8 Points

• Support for an overall reduction in the amount of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2050.
• A target, for developed countries, to reduce their GHG emissions by 80% by 2050.
• An agreement that the average global temperature should not be allowed to increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial average temperatures.

MEF Points

• Global average temperature increases should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius.
• All nations should make a commitment to low carbon growth plans.
• There needs to be a commitment from developed countries to aid developing countries in their adoption of newer, greener technologies in order to avoid development through strictly carbon based energy sources.
• There was significant progress on plans for developed countries to provide financial support to developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Is this enough to solve the problem of climate change?  Not according to the experts, most of whom believe that we need to reduce global GHG emissions far more and far sooner than the G8 agreed to.  Most believe that global GHG emissions need to be reduced by 80%, in the next two decades, to avoid a chain reaction of sorts that could likely lead to a global catastrophe.

In his book, Six Degrees, Mark Lynas summarizes a host of studies that predict what will happened to various regions of the planet at each degree of increase in average global temperature.  The news at two degrees, which is what the G8 and the MEF both endorsed, is not good.  Despite the fact that two degrees does not sound like much, it is enough to impact the acidity of the oceans, the summertime temperatures in Europe, droughts in the American Southwest, the coral reefs, and the polar ice caps.  Also, it could spell disaster for polar bears and other species who depend on the fragile climate balance of the Arctic regions.

What’s more concerning is that two degrees is two degrees closer to the tipping point.  This is the point where the planet takes over.  It is the point where we have warmed things up enough to melt the permafrost in Siberia and devastate the rain forest of the Amazon basin – both of which would release vast amounts of carbon dioxide from natural occurrences that, today, are not happening because our planet’s fragile climate still maintains the conditions that prevent them.  Additionally, the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia could also release vast amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere greatly accelerating global warming as methane, as a greenhouse gas, is 21 times more effective than carbon dioxide.

But the work of the G8 and the MEF is progress.  As we move closer to the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December of this year, serious diplomatic impediments are being worked out.  Agreements are being reached and global cooperation on this issue is starting to come about.  Without some of the agreements worked out by the MEF, any significant progress that might be expected to come out of Copenhagen would be harder to achieve.

There is another thing that would really help.  If the US Senate passed the Clean Energy Bill that was recently passed by the House, the United States would be sending a message to the world that it is serious about climate change.  Despite the fact that the House bill is weaker than the items agreed upon by the G8 and the MEF, it is still a significant step, especially given the history of the US on climate change over the past decade.  For the first time, the world’s biggest polluter, and the developed nation that has probably been the least active in addressing its own problem, is taking steps to control its GHG emissions.  The US is joining the global effort in dealing with this problem. 

It will be interesting to see what happens, but the two things to watch this coming fall are the passage (or not) by the US Senate of the Clean Energy bill and the results of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.  One is likely to impact the other and both could be turning points in the world’s approach to what may turn out to be the biggest challenge we have ever faced.

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