Twice in the last two weeks, FirstEnergy has announced it will shut down old coal-fired power plants – then tried to blame those business decisions on the clean air rules that protect us all from toxic pollution.

First, at the end of January, First Energy announced it would retire six coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The company blamed those closures on new EPA regulations that will protect us from mercury, acid gases and other toxic air pollution – but FirstEnergy is going to retire the plants by September 1 of this year.

The compliance deadline for the new EPA rules isn’t for at least three years (2015 – with possible extensions to 2017). 

What’s more, FirstEnergy announced a decision to switch some of those six units from full-time to seasonal operation, and to temporarily mothball others, more than 16 months ago — before EPA even issued its proposal for the new rule.

Clearly, there’s more to the story than just EPA regulations.

Then, this week, First Energy announced it will close three more old coal plants in West Virginia. The company once again tried to pin the blame on EPA.

But the three plants in question were built between 1943 and 1960. They were built while Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower were in office. The oldest was built while we were still fighting World War II.

The plants are not closing just because of clean air regulations. They’re closing because they’re aging and inefficient, and because they are facing competition from natural gas.

Many factors contribute to the new utility investment cycle. They include:

• Age – 59% of America’s coal fired power plants are over 40 years old, with many over 60 years old.

According to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell:

In 1970, the [Clean Air Act] required that new sources meet tight emissions standards. At that time, it was assumed that electrical utility units had an average lifetime of 30 years.

• Competition from Natural Gas – with increasing natural gas supplies and lower prices, the market is shifting to more efficient combined cycle natural gas generators over old, inefficient coal plants.

One industry analyst told the Wall Street Journal:

Inexpensive natural gas is the biggest threat to coal. Nothing else even comes close.

• Low utilization –the older units are often small, inefficient, and operated only part-time. From a business perspective, it is not cost effective to keep paying the fixed costs needed to maintain them for limited operation. Energy efficiency and demand response programs are far more efficient ways of meeting these energy needs.

In its press release announcing the closings of the three West Virginia plants, First Energy itself points out:

[T]hese plants served mostly as peaking facilities, generating, on average, less than 1 percent of the electricity produced by FirstEnergy over the past three years.

• Health and the Environment – it is not surprising that these old, inefficient power plants are also disproportionately higher emitters of pollutants, and often have not had modern pollution control equipment installed.

We have information and graphics to illustrate this issue on our new fact sheet.

Business decisions in the utility sector are complex. Don’t let plant owners use our health protections as a scapegoat for their choice to retire old coal-fired power plants.

This is a joint post by Gus Silva-Chávez, EDF's Climate & Forests specialist and REDD+ project manager, and Chris Meyer, who coordinates EDF’s REDD+ activities with Indigenous Peoples.

The most recent UN climate negotiations wrapped up in December with a better-than-anticipated outcome, but the preparations for the next set — this year in Qatar — are already underway.

Policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and to protect the rights of indigenous peoples who live in the forests made important progress in the recent UN climate negotiations in Durban.

We've spent some time reflecting on the outcome of the 2011 talks in Durban, South Africa, especially on progress on policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, known in the UN world as REDD+. REDD+ was a huge winner in the 2010 negotiations, when the UN put its seal of approval on the policy, and this year made some additional progress, most importantly in finance and in ensuring rights for indigenous peoples.

We were recently invited to write about the REDD+ negotiations in Durban for the Governor’s Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), a coalition of -collaboration of 14 states and provinces in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Nigeria that was formed in 2008 at the first Governor’s Global Climate Summit.

Below is our analysis of where REDD+ negotiations ended in Durban, and what we're likely to see as countries gear up for the Qatar negotiations. You can find additional analysis of Durban negotiations by EDF's International Climate Program Director Jennifer Haverkamp in her blog post In Durban, world's major economies show will to address climate change.

The Durban REDD+ Outcome

Cross-posted from the Governor’s Climate and Forests Task Force Newsletter (January 2012)

In an annual ritual, government negotiators, NGOs and journalists attended the December 2011 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Durban, South Africa. Negotiators in Durban approved technical guidelines for ensuring that reference levels — benchmarks for measuring progress in reducing emissions from deforestation — have environmental integrity. EDF had been eagerly anticipating this technical decision going into Durban, these new guidelines will provide a framework and necessary guidelines on how to establish reference levels that are based on science and that can serve as a measuring stick for environmental performance and financial compensation.

REDD+ policies got a major boost in Durban when countries agreed that all sources of funding, including carbon markets, are eligible to pay for REDD+ activities. After years of exploring how to pay for all three stages of REDD+ (capacity building, early implementation and national-level pay-for-performance), the UN has put its seal of approval on the use of markets. Estimates indicate that while public financing is needed, especially for the capacity building stage, only large-scale, sustainable funding from carbon markets will generate sufficient funding. EDF applauds this decision.

The decision on REDD+ finance, in the “Long-term Cooperative Action” (LCA) negotiations, included a clear endorsement of all sources of finance, a call for a REDD+ finance workshop and a technical paper in 2012.

Looking forward to next year’s climate negotiations in Qatar, countries will start deciding on the details of reference levels, and some will begin to calculate their reference levels using the guidance decided in Durban. As more specific REDD+ financing methods are developed, countries will hold a REDD+ finance workshop and produce a technical paper that will attempt to answer some of the questions around financing REDD+.

Indigenous peoples & REDD+

Negotiators in Durban approved critical provisions for ensuring the rights of Indigenous Peoples are respected and will be safeguarded in the implementation of REDD+ programs. Parties also outlined the protections for Indigenous Peoples prominently in the LCA’s financing sections. Still, negotiators only developed a framework for systems of reporting on the implementation of REDD+ safeguards and decided to continue working on the content of these REDD+ systems next year.

Durban resulted in a positive step forward in providing preliminary guidance for the reporting on the implementation of safeguards as countries launch REDD readiness initiatives already being financed through the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, UN-REDD program, and other bilateral initiatives. More importantly, we’re seeing indigenous peoples in many countries developing their own consultation and information gathering processes that will feed information into these systems.

The Durban conference as a whole produced surprisingly good results, given our modest expectations. However, it is important to note that there are a lot of concrete actions taking place outside of the UNFCCC forum, including efforts to open a path for REDD+ credits from Brazil, Mexico and beyond to flow into California’s emerging carbon market. Top-down efforts at the international level can only succeed if bottom-up actions like these are being successfully implemented.

For additional information on EDF’s international work, please visit edf.org/international.

Whether Brazil continues to reduce its deforestation could depend on the outcome of a vote on its forest protection law in Brazil's lower house in March and sign-off from the president. Above: the home of Brazil's Congress, Congresso Nacional do Brasil (Photo credit and thanks to Flickr user JorgeBRAZIL)

Brazil has made great strides in reducing Amazon deforestation in recent years, bringing rates down about 80% over the last six years. But President Dilma Rousseff is already showing signs of backsliding on her environmental commitments in just her first year in office.

It’s a trend environmental groups have been following since Rousseff was sworn in last January, and one New York Times reporter Alexei Barrionuevo captures well in his recent story, "In Brazil, Fears of a Slide Back for Amazon Protection."

With global emissions from deforestation contributing about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions – as much as all the world’s cars, trucks, ships and airplanes combined – a lot is at stake in next month’s vote on a forest protection law in Brazil’s House of Representatives.

Whether Brazil, home to about 40% of the world’s remaining tropical forests, continues to reduce deforestation or not could depend on the outcome of the vote, and President Rousseff’s sign-off.

Forest Code enforcement and new protected areas slashed deforestation in 2000s under Marina Silva

Brazil’s law regulating deforestation on private land, the Forest Code, has been around since 1965; until relatively recently, it was hardly enforced and rarely obeyed.

That changed under former Environment Minister Silva. In 2003 she launched a national Plan for the Prevention and Control of Amazon Deforestation that ramped up law enforcement and established 600,000 square kilometers – an area the size of France – of new protected areas. These indigenous lands, parks, and forest-land reserves were located in the areas most affected by the expansion of agriculture.

Coupled with a temporary decline in agriculture commodity prices, the Plan brought deforestation way down, and persuaded policy makers that Brazil could commit not only to a national deforestation target, but to an overall national emissions reduction target as well.

Brazil made just such a commitment at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, pledging to reduce its emissions 36–39% below business-as-usual emissions by 2020 — the first emissions reductions target taken by any major developing country.  And Brazil is ahead of schedule to meet this 2020 target, having already reduced about 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide below its 1996–2005 baseline – on the order of what the EU has pledged to do by 2020.

However, while the deforestation plan was supposed to have a carrot (positive incentives for conservation) in addition to the stick (cracking down on illegal deforestation), so far it’s pretty much been all stick and no carrot: lots of law enforcement, but no incentives to keep the forests standing.

Farmers lash back

Many large-scale farmers in Brazil historically had railed against the Forest Code as being too restrictive, but were too busy cutting down trees to plant cattle pasture and soybeans to do much about it. Since the Code was rarely enforced, they didn’t much care.

An aerial view of Mato Grosso shows the stark distinctions between protected forests and land that has been cleared for cattle pasture or agriculture.

But they started to take notice when government, under Minister Marina Silva, began enforcing the Code and fining them for violations.

They also noticed when the environmental group Greenpeace mobilized big European soy importers to declare a moratorium on soy imports from land deforested after 2006, and when national supermarket chains, prodded by Brazil’s Attorney General, called for deforestation-free beef in 2009. Most people in urban Brazil agree that Amazon deforestation should stop, and support such measures.

For many of the large-scale farmers in Brazil and their powerful block of congressional representatives – the “ruralistas” – the solution to their not being in compliance with the law when government started enforcing it was to weaken the law.

So for the past two years, the ruralistas have been making a concerted push to radically weaken the Forest Code.

Last June, the ruralistas pushed a revised Forest Code through the lower house of Congress that amounted to a license to deforest. The bill, sponsored by a ruralista-friendly member of the Communist party, would fix the ruralistas’ problem by giving an amnesty for past illegal deforestation, and could open up new land for clearance.

Environmentalists and the Brazilian scientific community strongly contested the House bill. President Rousseff had promised during the presidential campaign to veto a new Forest Code that would increase deforestation or amnesty past illegal deforestation, but her administration was a belated and ineffective participant in the House debate.

In December, the Senate passed somewhat improved amendments to the Code, which, however, still includes an amnesty for some past illegal deforestation.

This bill now returns to the House for a final vote in March.

The amnesty for deforestation that has plagued these bills is unfair to the few farmers who made the effort to comply with the law, and could give all farmers the bad idea that if one new law granting amnesty for illegal deforestation is good, two – or more – are better. If farmers think that an amnesty now means that future illegal deforestation will eventually be amnestied too, they will take the new Code as a license to deforest. Penalties for scofflaws, and a clear pathway to legality with positive incentives, especially for small famers, would be much better.

Environmentalists are calling on Dilma to keep her campaign promise and veto the amnesty.

Deforestation: the price of progress? Not really.

For years, the ruralistas have insisted with increasing vehemence that the current Forest Code is an enormous, unfair obstacle to the growth of Brazilian agriculture. (They also often claim that environmentalists who support the Forest Code are no more than a front for foreign agriculture interests trying to protect themselves against Brazilian competition).

But there is solid evidence that while deforestation rates were falling to the lowest levels on record, Brazil and Amazon states were getting richer and agriculture production was growing to record levels.

A vivid example is Brazil’s biggest agricultural state, Mato Grosso.

Deforestation (red line in Fig. 1 above) in Brazil's state of Mato Grosso plummeted as production of soybeans (green) and cattle (blue) increased substantially from 2001-2010. (PNAS)

The state had the highest deforestation rate in the Amazon from 2000–2005, but over the next five years (2006-2010) saw deforestation fall more than 70% below historic levels. At the same time, agriculture production reached an all-time high, according to a recent article in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In “Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s,” Marcia Macedo, Ruth DeFries and others also show in great detail that in recent years, while soy prices and production picked up substantially, deforestation kept going down.

Ruralista rhetoric to the contrary, Brazil and Amazon states have shown decisively that, so far, they have the wherewithal to reduce deforestation substantially while they grow their economies and their agriculture sectors.

Brazil should encourage – not undercut – global action against climate change

However, as the Times story correctly notes, Forest Code amendments threaten to usher in open season on forests. The government has watered down environmental licensing for big infrastructure projects like dams and roads and has rolled back protected areas in the Amazon by a form of executive fiat. Brazil’s Congress is also considering a bill that would give it a veto over recognizing new indigenous lands.

Brazil is home to about 40% of the world's tropical forests and a pioneer in policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), which could provide the positive economic incentives needed to maintain Brazil's progress in continuing to curb deforestation.

Perhaps most critically, there has been little progress on providing the carrot – positive economic incentives to keep deforestation going down and to restore degraded forests – that Brazil needs in order to sustain the progress it made during the last decade into the future.

One candidate for the carrot is Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)  – the concept that reducing deforestation is good for the atmosphere and needs international compensation. Brazil was one of the pioneers of this idea in the international climate talks, and consequently created the Amazon Fund, to which Norway has committed $1 billion if the country continues to meet its 2020 target.

Brazil’s National Climate Change Policy also calls for the creation of a Brazilian emissions reductions market. But the federal government has made little headway on creating its own carbon market and has been reluctant to look at linking up with international carbon markets to pay for reducing deforestation. Both could go a long way to creating the incentives needed to grow the economy and sustainably expand agriculture and forestry, while stopping deforestation and restoring degraded forests.

What all of this means is that Brazil still leads the world in reducing carbon emissions because of its success in reducing Amazon deforestation – but risks reversing the trend if it approves a general amnesty for illegal deforestation. President Rousseff should listen carefully to Brazil’s world-class scientific community on how to balance environmental protection and development priorities, in the Forest Code and more broadly.

As Brazil prepares to host the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, it will find no lack of major developed countries to criticize for foot-dragging, omission, or outright obstruction on global environmental issues.  Ambitious new commitments on environment and development are unlikely under the specter of economic crisis in the EU and anemic growth in the U.S. Blaming richer countries for tepid results is one possible outcome.

But if President Rousseff  musters the political will to kill the deforestation amnesty and save the Forest Code, Brazil could do much better in Rio+ 20. It might find ways to use its world-leading achievement in reducing emissions from deforestation to chart the way to both more ambitious commitments and effective actions from other major economies going forward, and for funding for a sustainable low-carbon development strategy.

Those of us following the debate over clean air regulations are used to hearing frequent comments from key players – power plant executives, politicians, environmentalists, doctors.

But every once in a while, we get a truly original point of view. 

Like today – in this animated video from actress Julianne Moore.

Moore taped the video for Moms Clean Air Force (MCAF), a nonpartisan group of moms (and dads, and grandparents, and others) who want cleaner and healthier air for their kids.  

Moore is a well-known actress, children’s book author, and activist for a variety of children’s causes. She narrates the new video with the help of the cartoon-character stars of her Freckleface Strawberry books.

In a blog post on the MCAF website, Moore writes:

Sometimes being a good mom means being an active citizen. That’s why I joined Moms Clean Air Force. Moms are banding together. We are making our voices stronger. We are fighting for our children. Together, we are telling politicians to protect our right to clean air.

Moms Clean Air Force was launched last summer and now has almost 50,000 members. (EDF has worked with them from the beginning).

Since the launch, MCAF has gotten other celebrities – including Blythe Danner, Laila Ali, and Jessica Capshaw – to join. Danner and actresses Maya Rudolph and Christina Applegate have also taped video for the group.

Two days ago, I wrote about a flawed global warming analysis in the Wall Street Journal.

The paper published an opinion piece, No Need to Panic About Global Warming, written by a small group of scientists and engineers who are global warming skeptics.

Today, the other side was heard from.

The Wall Street Journal published a sharp rebuttal from 38 experts – all of them respected climatologists — who call the authors of the first piece:

[T]he climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology.

Today's piece points out that most of the authors of the first analysis have no expertise in climate science, although they are accomplished in their own respective fields.

But, as the large group of climate scientists writes today:                   

The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues), as well as major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research have stated that the science is clear: The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible … Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.

I couldn’t agree more.

Climate change is likely to be high on the agenda of Mexico’s Congress when it returns to session today, and the world will be watching as the 15th largest emitter of global greenhouse gas emissions considers what would be the country’s first comprehensive law to curb climate change.

Mexico's lower house of Congress, which returns to session today, is anticipated to consider a sweeping climate change bill this spring. (Photo credit and thanks to Flickr user SCA)

The “General Law on Climate Change” has already made successful inroads in Congress, having passed Mexico’s Senate with an overwhelming majority in early December. This spring, the Senate-approved version of the bill is anticipated to be considered in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

The bill’s language states its intention is to:

favor the transition towards a competitive, sustainable economy with low carbon emissions, consequently generating environmental, social, and economic benefits.

The bill is still subject to change in the Chamber of Deputies from the language approved in the Senate. However, the current version provides some ambitious, albeit not obligatory, goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, as well as promising paths to achieve these goals through promoting renewable energy, ratcheting down of fossil fuel subsidies, and reducing emissions from land-use change.

The key features of the Senate-passed legislation include:

• The permanent establishment of a new high-level Inter-secretarial Commission on Climate Change.
• Creation of a climate fund to collect and channel resources for climate change activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) and adapt to the changing climate (adaptation).
• Authority to establish an emissions market that can include international transactions between Mexico and any countries with which it makes emissions trading agreements.
• Requirements for mandatory emissions reporting and the creation of a public emissions registry that will cover emissions sources from power generation and use, transport, agriculture, stockbreeding, forestry and other land uses, solid waste, and industrial processes.
• Goals for states to reverse the trend of deforestation, increase electricity generation from clean sources to 35% by 2024, and reduce fossil fuel subsidies.

While the Chamber of Deputies is able to make modifications to the bill, the threat of triggering delays for additional voting – especially now, as this Congressional session, scheduled to end this August, winds down – often incentivizes keeping the bill in its current form.

Broad support, efforts in Mexico to address climate change

Global attention on Mexico’s climate policy has faded from its 2010 peak when the country hosted the UN climate negotiations, but Mexico’s motivation to address climate change has not.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderón, who has made climate change a top priority in his administration, signed an agreement with the United States in January to "advance towards a green economy." (Photo credit and thanks to the Mexico's Presidency of the Republic)

Particularly over the last several years, the country has shown political willingness to address climate change, with a pledge to halve its emissions by 2050 from 2000 levels, and a number of sweeping climate change bills brought up in the Senate. Though the other climate bills never became law, the current bill’s overwhelming approval in the Senate by a broad coalition of sponsors (76-2 with 5 abstentions) shows a stronger momentum than we’ve seen.

While the political composition of Mexico’s lower chamber may mean the bill will not have as broad support in the Chamber of Deputies as it had in the Senate, it may benefit from that momentum.

Meanwhile, President Felipe Calderón has made clear climate change is a top priority in his administration, and in mid-January signed a formal agreement with the U.S. to “advance towards a green economy.”

Mexico’s passing this bill to enshrine domestic action on climate change into law guarantees the country’s efforts to curbing climate change can extend far beyond the current president.

And, as the world’s 15th largest global emitter of greenhouse gases, Mexico’s domestic environmental leadership will also be particularly important as the world increasingly acknowledges that action from developed and developing countries alike will be necessary if we are to avoid the disastrous effects of global warming.

*Clarification (Feb. 3): The third bullet point above has been revised to reflect a more accurate translation of the relevant provision.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by a few scientists and engineers who believe man-made climate change will have less impact on the environment than the vast majority of the scientific community has concluded it will.

Debate is normal and necessary in science — it occurred even on such questions as whether smoking causes lung cancer — so this disagreement is part of the process. However, people considering this issue should not lose sight of the fact that thousands of scientists studying decades of data have established an extremely strong link between carbon dioxide emissions and rising global temperatures. The underlying physics is well understood. 

Further, hundreds, if not thousands, of peer-reviewed studies indicate that the impact on Earth’s climate will be substantial and dangerous. That is why so many scientific organizations and national academies have concluded climate change is a serious danger.

Many of the specific claims in the Journal piece also have already been definitively laid to rest. As the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out:

the authors claim there has been a "lack of warming" for 10 years…. [yet] 2011 was the 35^th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record. 

Moreover, every decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the last.

The authors recycle an out-of-context quotation from Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, to imply that he harbors doubts about warming. As Trenberth has said publicly:

I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.

The authors misuse his words in service of what they call an “inconvenient fact” that is no fact at all. They ignore the multiple streams of scholarship that rebut their claims and point to rising global temperatures caused in large part by anthropogenic emissions.

In truth, climate skeptics may be finding it harder to cling to their doubts. Last year, for example, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley – in a study partially funded by climate skeptics – found that technical issues that skeptics claim skew global warming figures had no meaningful effect on them.

As the Guardian reported:

The Berkeley Earth project compiled more than a billion temperature records dating back to the 1800s from 15 sources around the world and found that the average global land temperature has risen by around 1C since the mid-1950s.

This figure agrees with the estimate arrived at by major groups that maintain official records on the world's climate, including Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the Met Office's Hadley Centre, with the University of East Anglia, in the UK.

“My hope is that this will win over those people who are properly skeptical,” Richard Muller, a physicist and head of the project, said.

President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address last night, and energy issues played a starring role in the speech.

 Here are some of the comments that caught my attention:

 The President drew some firm lines in the sand.

The address was a strong defense of the importance of clean energy to America’s long-term economic prosperity. The President said:

 “I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy."

In the speech, the President called for Congress to pass a clean energy standard and extend clean energy tax credits, while ending a century of tax subsidies for oil companies. 

The President again rejected the false choice between a clean environment and jobs.

He said:

“We don't have to choose between the environment and our economy."

His description of the remarkable comeback of American vehicle manufacturers, which are rapidly innovating to meet aggressive fuel economy standards, proved his point.

A mixed bag on natural gas.

On natural gas, the President committed to full disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing on federal lands.

 But — he missed an opportunity to lay out the bargain that must be struck.

We can help revolutionize America’s energy picture with our newly abundant supplies of gas, but to do so responsibly, we must get the environmental rules right to protect our air, land and water wherever "fracking" wells are drilled. 

Getting the environmental rules right means disclosure of the chemicals used in drilling. It also means reasonable standards to ensure high-integrity well design, safe water and chemical management, and methane gas containment to prevent additional harm to our climate.

With those kinds of safeguards in place, gas can reduce our environmental problems instead of increasing them.

The blueprint for action already exists in the recommendations of the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board. They must be swiftly implemented.

Standing by new mercury standards

The President ended 2011 with historic action to reduce mercury in our air, water, and food. 

As you probably remember, EDF was a strong advocate for those groundbreaking new standards.

Last night, the President stood by his action, declaring:

"I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning, or making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean."

Last night’s speech wasn’t the only time President Obama has talked about a clean energy future recently.

Earlier this month, he spoke to EPA staff and told them:

"We don't have to choose between dirty air and dirty water or a growing economy. We can make sure that we are doing right by our environment, and, in fact, putting people back to work all across America.

He's right about that, but make no mistake – in the weeks and months ahead, there will still be efforts in Washington to block efforts to change the environmentally-destructive and irresponsible course on which the nation, and the world, are bound.  

We at EDF will continue working to remind our lawmakers, and all Americans, that the science of climate change is clear and so are the economics. 

The fact is that we can build a more sustainable future using market-based approaches that preserve public health and the environment while creating new businesses and new jobs for American workers.

Indonesia’s tropical forests are the world's third-largest, covering more than half of the country and possessing some of the richest and most unique biodiversity on earth. But Indonesia has lost more than 20% of its forest since 1990.

Indonesia's forests offer a huge opportunity to cut carbon emissions that cause global warming -- and earn significant income for national and state governments. (Photo credit and thanks to CIFOR)

The carbon released through deforestation and related changes in land use has made Indonesia the third-largest national contributor of greenhouse gas emissions (behind China and the U.S.) – and also one of the most promising areas in the world to put into action effective policies to reduce deforestation and combat climate change.

In a study developed in collaboration with Indonesian government and non-governmental partners and published in one of the world’s leading scientific publications, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my colleagues and I have found that the ways countries could choose to set up a framework of economic incentives for reducing deforestation really matter.

While most economic analyses of the potential for reducing deforestation emissions have been at a high theoretical level, our study takes the analysis closer to the level of policy implementation.

We found that, with an international carbon price of $10 per ton of carbon dioxide, which is relatively modest compared to existing and projected greenhouse gas compliance markets, and strong and specific economic incentives for local decision-makers, Indonesia could:

• achieve major reductions in national greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation — up to a 26% reduction in national greenhouse gas emissions
• earn significant new income for national and regional governments – as much as $1 billion of net national revenue per year over and above payments to local governments

Worldwide, emissions from deforestation contribute about 15% of global greenhouse emissions; the Indonesian government estimates 85% of its country’s emissions come from agriculture, forests and land-use change.

Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) aim to provide incentives for forest conservation by giving living forests an economic value, and have the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions substantially right away while protecting ecosystems and generating economic and social benefits for indigenous and local communities.

Important economic analysis of REDD+

Our analysis, “Structuring economic incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation within Indonesia” by Jonah Busch of Conservation International, myself, and others, is an important advance because it:

1) Analyzes specific policy choices for designing a national framework to reward REDD+ activities at the local level

Our results show that Indonesia can maximize its emissions reductions while staying within its budget through a comprehensive national policy framework that both encourages broad participation and includes rewards for reductions measured across larger geographic scales, such as the political units of districts or provinces.   This system would be superior to more traditional approaches based on payments only on a site-by-site basis, which run the risk of overpaying certain sites while providing insufficient incentives to others, and thus have an increased risk of emissions shifting to these locations (“leakage”).

In particular, we found that either of two REDD+ policy scenarios would lead to strong outcomes for both the climate and Indonesia’s economic interest:

Graph showing deforestation in Indonesia from 2000–2005. (a) observed deforestation; (b) modeled expected deforestation without REDD+; (c) expected deforestation with “improved voluntary incentive structure” for REDD+ at a carbon price of $10 per ton.

1. A cap-and-trade or tax-and-subsidy REDD+ program with international carbon payments at $10/ton showed the highest potential benefits for Indonesia during the 2000-2005 study period. Such a program could: reduce national emissions from deforestation 20-31% over five years; avoid 163-247 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from deforestation emissions every year; and inject into Indonesia’s national REDD+ program a net budget surplus of $1 billion per year.
2. A well-structured voluntary incentive structure could be a more politically attractive option, compared to a mandatory system. To be effective environmentally but not exceed the program budget, a voluntary REDD+ system must balance robust and widespread local incentives with maintenance of revenue, through policies that, for example, combine shared revenues and responsibilities for the program between national and subnational governments, and that make payments for emissions reductions to districts or provinces rather than individual site. Operating at these larger scales helps target resources and account for possible emission shifts (“leakage”) as well as less predictable emissions at more local levels. Structured this way, Indonesia’s REDD+ program could: reduce national emissions from deforestation 17-26% over five years; avoid 136-207 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from deforestation emissions each year; and, with international carbon payments at $10/ton, yield a net budget surplus of $331 million per year for Indonesia.

Either system would be more than twice as effective at reducing emissions as a “basic voluntary structure," where payments would be made for voluntary reductions in emissions at the level of individual sites on a solely project or landowner basis.

These results show the way REDD+ policies are designed can have important implications for national and local budgets and make a huge difference in achieving large-scale, cost-effective emissions reductions.

2) Relies on actual historical data

This is the first time potential emissions reductions from deforestation in Indonesia have been estimated using actual historical data on how deforestation varies with economic factors. This provides a stronger basis for informing REDD+ policies than prior analyses that rely on various assumptions for how readily deforestation can be reduced.

3) Develops “OSIRIS” model to help inform policy decisions

To conduct our analysis, we used a model called OSIRIS (the Open Source Impacts of REDD+ Incentives Spreadsheet), a set of free, transparent, open-source, spreadsheet-based decision support tools.

The model estimates and maps the climate, forest and revenue benefits of alternative policy decisions for REDD+.  EDF and Conservation International developed a version of OSIRIS for Indonesian policy makers in collaboration with its National Council on Climate Change, and with co-authorship from Padjadjaran University and World Resources Institute. We have versions of the model for other countries and are working to enhance the analysis and extend the model to additional countries.

Analysis timely as Indonesia develops its REDD+ strategy

Our analysis, published in this week's Proceedings of National Science, offers valuable information for Indonesia's REDD+ strategy.

Indonesia’s President Susilo Yudhoyono committed in 2009 to reducing his country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 26-41% below its “business as usual” levels (the amount of emissions Indonesia expects to hit if no efforts are made to curb emissions) by 2020.  These goals could translate to substantial reductions below current levels, based on the best current projections.

In May 2011, Indonesia and Norway signed a $1 billion agreement to cooperate on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Currently the Indonesian government is developing its National REDD+ Strategy, and our analysis offers some valuable information as the country decides how to implement REDD+. We’ve already received positive feedback from our analysis – in fact, the National Council on Climate Change in Indonesia published our findings in a joint policy memo and chapter in a book about REDD+.

We look forward to Indonesia’s policy-makers’ using the best knowledge and technology to structure a REDD+ framework that will provide the economic incentives to achieve the country’s enormous potential to fight climate change and protect biodiversity.

You can read more in our full PNAS article,  “Structuring economic incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation within Indonesia,” our joint press release with Conservation International and at the ORISIS webpage.

I’m very excited about a brand new website that will let me – and all Americans – learn about sources of climate pollution in my community and across America.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the website today. The consumer-friendly web platform has new greenhouse gas emissions data that will help Americans work together to develop innovative ways to reduce climate pollution.

The public availability of this data means that Americans now, for the first time, have access to accurate information about the heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by large industrial sources in their communities.

For a decade and a half now, since 1995, fossil-fuel fired power plants over 25 megawatts have reported their carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. Those reports have created a rigorous database of emissions data for the nation's single largest source sector.

Under the FY 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December of 2007 (H.R. 2764; Public Law 110–161), other large emitters of carbon pollution started reporting their emissions too.

Now, that long-awaited data is finally available. The new EPA’s website has climate pollution data for about 6,700 industrial facilities, based on 2010 annual pollution discharges.

The facilities include:

• Power Plants
• Cement Plants
• Iron and Steel Producers
• Landfills
• Metals Manufacturing
• Mineral Production
• Petroleum Refineries
• Pulp and Paper Manufacturing
• Chemicals Manufacturing
• Government and Commercial Facilities
• And Other Industrial Facilities

These are sources that emit 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or more per year. Those levels are comparable to the emissions from 131 rail cars of coal consumed, or 58,000 barrels of oil consumed. Collectively, they’re responsible for billions of tons of climate-disrupting pollution.

Churches, cattle, and other small sources of emissions do not have to report their emissions.

The website includes data on emissions of the following climate-disrupting pollutants:

• carbon dioxide
• methane
• nitrous oxide
• hydrofluorocarbons
• perfluorocarbons
• sulfur hexafluoride
• other fluorinated gasess

The website lets you search for, and sort, emissions information by geographic area and industry sector. You can compare emissions among facilities. You can also share information using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Americans have a right to know about the pollution in their air. All this information will help us make historic progress towards that goal.

The new data promotes transparency and provides a strong foundation for Americans to work together in deploying smart climate. It also will strengthen corporate governance and sustainability by providing rigorous, facility-based pollution data that tracks pollution levels for comparison with other facilities. And, it will provide investors with transparent information, helping to drive investment decisions informed by the companies and facilities that are leading the way in reducing climate pollution and those that are lagging behind.

EPA also released the data as a factsheet. And of course, there’s lots more information on the main EPA website.

But all of us at EDF are especially happy to have the new interactive website – it’s a great tool for fighting climate change.

The first week of 2012 was a busy one for developments in the European Union's law requiring airlines to cut their global warming pollution.

On Jan. 1, Europe’s “Aviation Directive” took effect.  The law holds all flights using EU airports accountable for their pollution and requires the airlines to make modest cuts in their carbon emissions. (Remember that last month, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood sent a letter to the European Commission saying the U.S. might retaliate against the law, the EU's highest court upheld the law against a challenge by United-Continental and American Airlines and their trade association.)

Obama administration weighs its options

Last week some officials from the Obama administration alluded to retaliatory measures but declined to give specifics on what the U.S. will do next. These unnamed U.S. officials told Reuters, in a Jan. 6 story:

We are contemplating a wide range of possible steps that we could take … we haven’t decided how to move forward on any specific one.

Maybe these officials’ vagueness is because the administration is currently gathering data from U.S. and European airlines to determine whether EU law discriminates against US airlines. But maybe they are starting to realize that the legal case for retaliation is thinner than the snow that didn't blanket most of the US at Christmas.

Despite what Chinese airlines say, the EU law is an emissions cap, not a “tax”

Across the world, Chinese airlines announced on Jan. 4 they wouldn’t comply with the EU law, and promptly watched their stocks slide.

Airlines, as of Jan. 1, are now accountable for their pollution from flights to and from Europe. (Thanks and photo credit to Flickr user chanelcoco872.)

Too bad the Chinese airlines' trade association doesn’t understand the EU law, inaccurately referring to it in a Reuters interview as a “tax,” and missing – to the detriment of its members' shareholders and customers – what the law really is: an opportunity to fly more efficiently and make money.

I want to make this point perfectly clear: the EU law is a cap on emissions, not a tax.

With a typical carbon tax, the more companies pollute, the more they pay. But under a cap-and-trade system like the EU’s that puts limits on pollution, airlines that cut emissions can comply without paying a nickel. In fact, companies that come up with better, deeper, faster ways of cutting pollution can actually make money. The EU’s top court recognizes that airlines participating in the EU law could “even make a profit” by cutting pollution and selling their surplus emissions allowances.  (See paragraphs 136-145, especially 142, of the Court’s decision.)

China's foreign ministry was reportedly more nuanced in its comments about the EU law than the airline trade association.  It didn't threaten non-compliance and it didn't threaten retaliation.  Instead a foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters:

We hope the EU can take careful precautions with a cautious and practical attitude, and regarding those aspects involving China, appropriately discuss and handle this matter.

Airlines are participating in EU law

Despite the discord, airlines have actually been preparing to comply with the EU law for months; they’ve all filed emissions data and applied for the law’s generous free allowances.

And with the start of 2012, the world’s smartest airlines are quietly lining up to participate, not litigate:

• Singapore Airlines, the world's second-most valuable airline, has said it will offset the impact of the EU system by improving fuel efficiency and reducing its carbon emissions, according to Reuters.
• Among US airlines, Delta, the No. 2 U.S. carrier, led the pack with a first-week-in-January fare increase of $3 per flight to Europe – one-twentieth the cost to customers of taking a second bag on their trip, BBC's Richard Black pointed out. United-Continental, U.S. Airways and American Airlines have since reportedly followed suit, matching the $3 increase.
• Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget airline, is introducing a charge of 25 euro cents – about  $0.32 – per seat starting next week, Reuters reported.

While German-based Lufthansa – the world’s second largest long-haul carrier, according to Reuters – has announced it will address the EU law by passing on the costs to its customers, it hasn’t clarified how much or what the money would be used for. Green groups and consumer groups will be watching to see whether and how much they and others like Emirates and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific raise fares.

With his new focus on holding airlines to be more transparent about the fees and charges they add to fares, Secretary LaHood might want to make sure airlines tell customers how they use environmental surcharges – with airlines ideally limiting the fare increase to the modest true cost of complying with the EU law.  That would be a win for the flying public and the environment.

The CEOs of nine major environmental groups came out in force this week responding to a letter sent by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to ministers in the European Union in which the Secretaries voiced objection to Europe’s pioneering law to reduce global warming pollution from airplanes.

The CEOs expressed their extreme disappointment with the U.S. objections to the EU law. They noted that “Asking America's allies to back down on strongly supported domestic legislation to reduce global warming pollution from aviation is simply not consistent with the historical U.S. leadership role on either the environment or the rule of law. If ever there was a time for U.S. leadership in both areas, it is here and now.”

International aviation represents a significant and fast-growing source of emissions. And, given nearly fifteen years of inaction by the International Civil Aviation Organization (the United Nations agency for aviation affairs), the EU has enacted a reasonable and effective law to address a portion of the sector’s emissions. The U.S. should be applauding such efforts, not thwarting them.

Earlier this week, Europe’s highest court ruled that the EU aviation directive is fully consistent with international law and relevant bilateral agreements. The high-profile case pit the U.S. airline industry against the EU and leading U.S. environmental groups, who joined European groups in supporting the EU law.

Given the imperative to reduce emissions as quickly, effectively, and efficiently as possible, and in light of the Court’s ruling this week, what we need from the U.S. government is political will, creativity, and a keen eye to the future. Instead, we’re confronted with myopic objections to a reasonable and effective law to reduce emissions. What’s more, we see little indication that the U.S. government is ready to take action either domestically or internationally to reduce emission from aviation.

As the letter to Secretaries Clinton and LaHood states, EDF and other groups are “eager to work with [the U.S. government] on creative approaches that overcome the logjams in ICAO and that capitalize on the innovative power of America’s aviation industry.”

Early this morning, the highest court in Europe read out a decision in Luxembourg that evoked cheers across the environmental community: the Court of Justice of the European Union had decided the world’s first program to reduce global warming pollution from aviation, the EU Aviation Directive, is fully compliant with international law.

The decision was a strong finish at the EU court, where United/Continental and American Airlines — and their trade association, known at the time as Air Transport Association of America (now called Airlines for America) — had challenged the legality of the Aviation Directive, and EDF, in partnership with five other U.S. and European environmental organizations, intervened in support of the EU law.

EDF, with our other European and American co-intervenors, applauded today’s decision, saying in a joint statement:

Today’s decision makes clear Europe's innovative law to reduce emissions from international flights is fully consistent with international law, does not infringe on the sovereignty of other nations, and is distinct from the charges and taxes subject to treaty limitations.

Today's outcome was generally anticipated, as an Advocate General – a senior legal advisor appointed by the Court of Justice of the European Union – issued a formal recommendation to the Court supporting the legality of the EU law in October.  That opinion called the airlines’ challenges “unconvincing”, “untenable”, “erroneous” and based on a “highly superficial reading” of the Aviation Directive.

Aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, rising 3 to 4% per year.  Though airlines often say they agree with environmental groups that these growing emissions need to be addressed, until now, the sector has escaped regulations that would require emissions reductions.  But the EU Aviation Directive, the very law airlines were suing to get out of complying with, will cut 183 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually by 2020, the equivalent of taking 30 million cars off the road every year.

While the airlines were suing in the EU, however, at home they were lauding their environmental performance in advertising and media campaigns.

Annie Petsonk, EDF’s International Counsel, referenced these claims in her statement after the decision was announced:

It is high time airlines actually live up to their green claims, and comply with the EU law, which will cut pollution and spark low-carbon innovation.  Americans invented the airplane, now it’s time for us to create climate-friendly skies. The EU’s leadership challenges U.S. airlines to take charge and deliver to the flying public clean and green air travel.

This decision on the case now returns to the UK High Court, where airlines had originally brought the suit challenging UK regulations implementing the law, and which will implement the recommendations of today’s ruling.

And in the meantime, the Aviation Directive begins January 1 – now with legal affirmation – to hold all airlines accountable for their emissions from flights using European airports.  We hope the airlines use the new year as a fresh start to reduce their emissions, fly cleaner, and embrace the opportunity provided by the Aviation Directive to move to a lower-carbon aviation sector.

This is one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time.

Right on the heels of today’s landmark court decision upholding European laws to reduce airplane pollution, we got another historic moment for the environment and public health.

Today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson unveiled the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will place our country’s first-ever national limits on mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

Every decade or so, the United States takes a giant step forward on the road to cleaner, healthier air. Getting the lead out of gasoline was one. Reducing acid rain was another.

Today’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, 21 years in the making, are a new giant step forward.

Power plants are responsible for half of all manmade mercury emissions, as well as 75 percent of acid gases, and 60 percent of arsenic.

Mercury exposure can cause brain damage in infants, and can affect children’s ability to walk, talk, read and learn. Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of babies are born each year with potentially unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.

Many of the other toxic pollutants also controlled by the new rules — such as chromium, arsenic, dioxin and acid gases — are known or probable carcinogens and can attack the brain, lungs, liver, and kidneys.

Cost-effective and tested technology solutions are available to reduce mercury pollution and other toxic air contaminants from power plants by more than 90 percent. Many states have already led the way in adopting policies to control mercury emissions, helping to drive investment in technology solutions, but this is the first time we’ll have a national standard.

According to EPA, the new rules will:

• Prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths each year
• Prevent up to 4,700 heart attacks each year
• Prevent up to 130,000 asthma attacks each year
• Prevent up to 5,700 hospital and emergency room visits each year
• Prevent up to 540,000 missed work or school days each year

The rules will also provide employment for thousands. The updating of older power plants with modern air pollution control technology will support:

• 46,000 new short-term construction jobs
• 8,000 long-term utility jobs

The value of the air quality improvements for human health alone will be as much as $90 billion each year.

I can’t overstate the importance of these new standards. We should all thank President Obama, Administrator Jackson, and everyone at EPA for protecting our air – and our health.

This is the perfect holiday gift for America.

Tomorrow morning the highest court in the European Union will issue a landmark ruling in a legal challenge originally filed by three US airlines and their trade association. In the lawsuit, the airlines challenged the legality of Europe’s pioneering program to reduce emissions from flights to, from, and within the EU.

The Court of Justice of the European Union announced some weeks ago that it would release its opinion in the case on December 21. So, on the eve of the announcement of the decision of the European Union’s highest court, what did the US government do? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood sent a letter to the leadership of the European Union objecting to the EU’s law to limit global warming pollution from aviation. Further, they threatened to “take appropriate action” should the EU implement its law.

While the positions outlined in the letter are not new—they simply restate what others in the Administration have been saying for the past few months—it is greatly disappointing that that Obama Administration, instead of waiting a few more days for the ruling of Europe’s highest court, would choose this moment to elevate its objections to cabinet level, especially when the US has never clearly stated the basis for the “legal concerns” it has often mentioned.

The US should be playing a constructive role in the global effort to reduce emissions and avoid dangerous climate change. And, just as companies operating within US borders have to comply with US laws, we would hope that the US would respect the rule of law and direct its companies to comply with the duly enacted laws of countries in which they operate.

Stay tuned for our full reaction to the ECJ ruling tomorrow.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce its long-awaited Mercury and Air Toxics Standards any day now.

The new standards would place the first-ever national limits on mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants, and the issue is already being examined from every possible angle – politics, economics, business, health, you name it.

Now a new group is weighing in.

Just yesterday, 23 of the country’s leading scientific experts on mercury wrote a letter to the White House about the proposed new standard and its importance to the health and safety of all Americans.  And I had the honor of joining them!

Together, our group of scientists represents at least a million hours of study on mercury and its effects. But this is the first time we’ve publicly weighed in, as a group, to support this vitally important standard.

We felt compelled to write to President because, during recent Congressional hearings – despite voluminous scientific literature to the contrary – a few people actually claimed that there is no science to back up the health benefits of decreasing pollution from power plants.

Our letter is our answer to that ridiculous claim:

As mercury scientists and physicians, we strongly refute such statements

And we:

… affirm our belief that the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) will protect the health of thousands of Americans each year.

Some of us have studied how mercury travels in our air, soils or waters — and how it ends up in our bodies. Some of us specialize in how various forms of mercury affect everything from our individual enzymes and cells all the way to our ecosystems. We have, collectively, traced mercury all the way from smokestacks to the cells in our bodies. We also represent physicians who actually treat patients, including children, who have chronic pulmonary, cardiovascular, and neurological diseases caused by air pollution.

And we all came to the same conclusion, which we put into our letter:

… minimizing all mercury exposure is essential to improving human, wildlife and ecosystem health because exposure to mercury in any form places a heavy burden on the biochemical machinery within cells of all living organisms.

Our letter both affirms our support for the scientific findings of EPA’s Science Advisory Board on the health impacts of methylmercury, and goes a step further – to highlight the toxicity of all forms of mercury.

Here are our key points:

• The neurological development, particularly brain maturation, of fetus and young children are severely affected by methylmercury, the form of mercury that collects and concentrates in aquatic food chains.
• While the neurotoxicity of methylmercury to the young has been widely acknowledged, the effects on children and adults through exposure to all other forms of mercury have not been effectively publicized. No form is mercury is safe.
• Mercury has no biologically beneficial function; indeed, each atom that ends up in the body can be toxic to all types of cells.
• Mercury is such a potent toxin because it bonds very strongly to functionally important sites of proteins including enzymes, antibodies and nerve growth-cones that keep cells alive, “intelligent” and safe.

One of my personal heroes is the late Dr. Kathryn R. Mahaffey, who conducted careful studies for over a decade to test the mercury levels in the blood of women of child bearing age in the U.S. Her research is the reason we know that about 10 percent of babies born in America each year have mercury levels sufficient to cause adverse neurological and developmental health effects. Along with her collaborators, she also carefully compiled information on the effects of all forms of mercury on our endocrine system, including hormones that control functioning of our reproductive system.

The pioneering research tools and methodologies developed by several of the mercury research giants who have signed on to this letter helped Dr. Mahaffey reach her conclusions. Some of the signatories are now building on Dr. Mahaffey’s work in insightful ways. For example, Dr. Chad Hammerschmidt from Wright State University has written that unless we decouple mercury emission from power production, we could have as many as 30 percent of children born in the U.S with too much mercury in their blood. Along with their collaborators, Drs. David Evers, Charlie Driscoll and Thomas Holsen identified that local mercury emissions are linked to such high mercury concentrations in multiple biological species that these areas of high mercury emissions were referred to as biological mercury hotspots.

I would love to write more about the fundamental ways in which the signatories of this letter have added to the understanding of the transport, transformations and toxicity of mercury, and I encourage you read the entire letter to see who they are, and to learn more about the work they do.

We fully understand the remaining uncertainties in our understanding of the global mercury cycle. Yet we believe there is irrefutable proof for:

• The local and regional deposition of mercury from coal-fired power plants within the U.S.
• The toxicity of each and every atom of mercury in any form, and
• Rapid reductions in mercury levels in many biological species upon reductions in mercury emissions from local sources

Thus, we attest to the wisdom of stringent national-level mercury regulation. Now we need our policy makers to act. We need them to create and support a strong Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.

Sunday morning around 5 am, almost 36 hours after the UN climate negotiations were slated to conclude, the chair finally banged her gavel and declared the 17th annual UN climate ministers meeting at an end. Exhausted delegates and ministers — those that hadn't already melted away to the airport hours before — emerged from an already partially dismantled venue into the bright clear sunshine and fresh promise of a new day. And just maybe, that's a metaphor for the UN climate talks as well.

Durban was quite the cliffhanger, swinging back from the brink of collapse to produce surprisingly good results compared to the low incoming expectations. Instead of being the meeting that let the Kyoto Protocol "die on African soil", as many had feared, Durban will be known for launching negotiations of a new agreement that encompasses all the major emitters, and thereby beginning finally to erode the rigid old walls between developed and developing countries. The negotiations are to conclude by 2015, and come into effect by 2020, which is far slower than the enormity of the problem requires, but a fair reflection of what the political freight in 2011 can bear. As part of the deal, the EU has agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol to at least 2017, and Kyoto parties are to finalize their next round of commitments by December 2013. These next couple of years will test whether the parties can now coax into flame the spark of hope struck here, or whether they go back into their respective corners of stalling and delay.

Lack of certainty over whether the global community will move beyond the vague action plans and pledges that were the outcome of previous meetings has hampered the development of robust climate policy in many nations, and threatened to undermine the important national commitments that have already been made in jurisdictions from Australia to California, and Europe to New Zealand. The agreement reached in Durban is an opportunity to improve upon that situation: its goal is an outcome, that is, in the words of the Durban conclusions, "a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force under the UNFCCC", applicable to all Parties. Stronger than the "agreed outcome" language of the Bali Action Plan, the Durban meeting therefore cracks open the door on negotiations which could lead to the kind of comprehensive, legally binding treaty that can serve as a powerful driver of domestic action. But the lack of specificity in this negotiating mandate also means that the Parties could use it to continue to posture, delay, and reargue old fights.

In a top priority for developing countries, the gathered nations also took a critical step toward making the much-anticipated Green Climate Fund a reality, by agreeing on structural details for setting up the fund, which aims to finance efforts of developing countries to adapt to the impact climate change and curb their greenhouse gas emissions. And even though the new fund is not quite yet a functional bank, Germany, Denmark, and South Korea have made the first pledges for contributions in 2013.

In other key developments, there was solid progress on developing standards for anti-deforestation work in developing countries (known as REDD+, for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), as well as recognition that carbon markets could be used to finance forest protection. Unfortunately, though, standards were adopted for developed-country forest and land use accounting that create big loopholes in meeting their emission reduction commitments.

The global carbon market dodged a major bullet in Durban. Collapsed talks could have been disastrous. Instead, a positive signal came through clearly: the Kyoto Protocol will be extended; the Ministers endorsed market-based financing for REDD+; they have agreed to define a new market mechanism (in addition to the existing clean development mechanism (CDM) and joint implementation projects); and the EU is already talking about tightening its emissions reduction target, which will increase demand for international credits. And overall, Durban's signal that the world's major economies are serious about addressing climate change over the long term will boost countries' bottom up efforts to institute emissions trading schemes, as in Australia, Korea, Brazil, and China.

Nations that have implemented Kyoto through domestically binding targets, in particular the EU, have learned how powerfully these targets can drive national action, and how domestic carbon markets can drive innovation and the search for better, cheaper faster ways of cutting global warming pollution. It is vital that the next round of negotiations continue this drive.

Breaking the record for the longest UN climate negotiations ever, the two-week-long international climate talks in Durban, South Africa wrapped up early yesterday morning with the world taking a small, but essential, step toward a global agreement to curb climate change.

The UN climate conference went into a second day past its scheduled end at the Durban International Conference Center, but its resulting Durban Platform has produced a good first step toward a global climate agreement.

It had been a long night leading up to the conclusion: enthusiastic soccer fans had taken a break from the dragging negotiations late Saturday night at the conference center's cafe and bar, seemingly the home to the only television not tuned to the center's closed-circuit channels, to drink local Castle beer and watch Barcelona's 3-1 victory over Real Madrid; and by the end of the negotiations at dawn on Sunday morning, most attendees — including a number of the negotiators and ministers covering critical issues at the talks — had already left, a significant number of them to catch their flights home.

But applause rang loudly from the remaining countries and non-governmental organizations in the large Baobob plenary room when the president of the conference, South African Minister of International Relations Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, wrapped up the UN climate negotiations' 17th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-17) at 5 a.m. Sunday.  Having run into a second day — 35 hours after its supposed 6 p.m. Friday deadline — Durban's conference now holds the record for the UN's longest climate negotiations.

The Durban Platform

The "Durban Platform" reached by countries at COP-17 reflects the "first small but essential steps toward creating a new global agreement to curb climate change," Jennifer Haverkamp, director of EDF's international climate program, said in a statement.

For the first time all major emitting nations, including China and India, have agreed on the need to move forward – and to do so together.

The challenge is that we begin the talks from the lowest common denominator of every party’s aspirations. For this effort to be successful, countries need to be ambitious in their commitments and to refuse to use these negotiations as just another stalling tool.

The president of COP-17, Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, speaking at the closing session of the UN climate conference early Sunday morning.

The conference also saw two big wins on individual policy issues:

1. Finance: Accomplishing one of the highest priorities for this conference, countries agreed to start building infrastructure for the "Green Climate Fund,"  which is dedicated to helping developing countries address and adapt to climate change.  Now that the Fund has been launched, one of the highest priorities for countries is to find the public and private money to finance it.
2. Avoiding deforestation: Countries included carbon markets as a possible funding source to pay for policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).  This represents a major achievement for countries, as markets are important in achieving the large-scale, sustainable funding needed to keep carbon-rich tropical forests alive.

An unfortunate development in the Durban talks was the finalization of rules for measuring emissions from forests in developed countries that may allow countries to increase their forest emissions without penalty by almost half a billion tons of emissions a year.

Some countries will be rewarded even if they increase emissions from forests, while others will receive massive windfalls for doing nothing.

A new report by some the world’s top researchers confirms that climate change will make the extreme weather we’ve seen recently even worse in the future.

The report was released today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It synthesizes two years work from 100 experts who analyze data from all over the world.

Their conclusion: climate change is bringing us more extreme weather, and it’s likely to get worse and have greater negative impacts over the next century.

Here’s what EDF’s Chief Scientist, Steve Hamburg, had to say today:

We've all been experiencing these dangerous storms and heat waves, and this report provides strong evidence of the links between impacts of dangerous weather and climate change. Now we need to start using this data to find ways to protect ourselves and our communities.

Here are some of the highlights of the report – or lowlights as the case may be:

Here in the United States, we’re likely to see

• Higher temperatures and more hot days through the next century (Record-breaking heat that would have been a once-in-20-year high are likely to become a one-in-two-year event)
• More frequent and heavier rains, especially in winter
• Stronger hurricanes that will do more damage
• Increased droughts, especially in the center of the country
• Higher sea levels, which means more coastal erosion and other damage
• All these changes will affect our agriculture, water supplies, health – even tourism. And all that, in turn, will affect our economy.

That's more bad news on top of an extremely unpleasant year of bad weather. America suffered through a number of extreme weather events, including these compiled by Climate Central:

• The Groundhog Day Blizzard blanketed 22 states and crippled travel. The deadly blizzard was one of Chicago’s top five snowstorms on record.

• Some of the worst flooding in history hit us in the spring, from the Upper Midwest all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. More than three times the normal spring rainfall caused the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers to overflow. Flooding in Minot, North Dakota damaged 4,000 homes and forced 11,000 to evacuate. More than a million acres of farmland flooded in Missouri and Arkansas.

• Hurricane Irene became the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in 100 years, and inundated people from Virginia all the way north to Vermont. Tropical Storm Lee following right behind Irene. Their combined rainfalls led to damaging floods in the East.

• Record-setting rainfalls were recorded across the country. August 2011 was the all-time rainiest month in New York City, Newark and Philadelphia; 2011 will be the rainiest year ever in Cleveland, Scranton, Binghamton and Harrisburg. 14 places in Wyoming and Montana set precipitation records in May, and seven places set new all-time records for the single rainiest day ever.

• Deadly tornado outbreaks caused damage across the Southeast. 748 twisters touched down across the South in April, the most ever recorded in a single month. The EF-5 tornado that destroyed Joplin, Mississippi was America’s deadliest single tornado since modern record-keeping started in 1950.

• Extreme heat across the region had people sweltering. Texas had the hottest summer for any state in U.S. history, going back to when modern records were first kept in 1895. New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado had their hottest summers on record — as did Tallahassee, Florida and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Wichita Falls, Texas had 100 days when the temperature was more than 100 degrees; Austin had 67 days over 100 degrees. Washington D.C. hit an all-time record high of 105 degrees on July 22.

• Severe droughts caused massive damage in the Southwest. Texas had the worst one-year drought on record.

• Wildfires — which are linked to droughts –burned across the West. 3.5 million acres burned in Texas — the state’s worst wildfire season ever. 156,000 acres burned in New Mexico and 538,000 in Arizona.

The Clean Air Act was originally designed to save lives, protect public health and safeguard the environment – and it has been a clear success story on those fronts.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) own analyses show that Clean Air Act rules yield hundreds of billions of dollars in economic benefits. These include the value of avoided premature mortality, negative health impacts, lost worker productivity due to illness, and environmental improvements such as increased visibility and agricultural productivity.

Now EDF and Trust for America's Health (TFAH) have released a new report that takes a closer look at one segment of those benefits.

Our new analysis [PDF] finds that four major rules of the Clean Air Act will yield more than $82 billion in Medicare, Medicaid and other health care savings for America through 2021.

The report is called Saving Lives and Reducing Health Care Costs: How Clean Air Rules Benefit the Nation [PDF].

It looks at four new rules recently proposed or finalized by EPA:

• The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule
• The Utility Mercury and Air Toxics Rule
• The Industrial Boiler Rule
• The Cement Kiln Rule

Those four rules are expected to lower emissions rates of a number of air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, dioxins, acid gases, smog, and soot.

Reducing levels of those dangerous substances will, in turn, reduce rates of premature mortality, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, respiratory hospital admissions, and emergency room visits related to asthma.

That, in turn, will result in health care savings of $82 billion, including;

• $44.6 billion in Medicare and federal-level health care savings
• $2.8 billion in state-level Medicaid and other state and local savings
• $8.3 billion in out-of-pocket individual savings
• $24.7 billion in private insurance savings

Our report is one more piece of evidence that clean air rules are a good investment for America. We can save lives, protect public health, and save billions of taxpayer dollars that are currently being spent by programs like Medicare to treat pollution-related illnesses.

Our report also shows that the polluter-led attempts to roll back clean air rules would not reduce costs, but rather shift costs from polluters onto the American people.

Our new report also includes a second analysis of health care savings expected from the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which finds implementation of these programs could yield over $612 billion between 2000 and 2020 in reduced Medicare, Medicaid, out-of-pocket and private insurance spending.

You can read the full report here [PDF].