All industries across the world face the same regulatory maze and misdirection. In some cases it has led to industry leaving and going to China where laws are more permissive, That is not an option for the aviation industry which flies everywhere. All aviation stakeholders, including manufacturers, airlines, airports and navigation service providers, have issued a
Fifty-five major industrial powers that produce nearly 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have submitted voluntary CO2 reduction targets, but a top UN climate official says they still fall short of what’s needed to limit future temperature increases to 2 C (3.6 F).
Meeting a Jan. 31 deadline established at the December climate summit in Copenhagen, the European Union set a goal of reducing emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; Japan pledged to slash CO2 emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the U.S. set a more modest target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020; and China vowed to cut the so-called “carbon intensity” of its economy — the amount of CO2 produced per unit of gross domestic product — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020.
The bitter battle over health care legislation, fears that global warming legislation could harm the weak U.S. economy, and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit to set binding CO2 emissions reductions targets will make U.S. Senate passage of a carbon cap-and-trade bill difficult in 2010, according to senators from both parties.
Politico reports that the partisan struggle over health care reform — in which 60 Democratic senators are poised to pass a bill with no Republican support — has alienated moderate Republicans whose votes are crucial to passage of climate legislation.
Reverberations from the disappointing Copenhagen climate summit continued to be felt worldwide, with political leaders blaming each other for the meeting’s outcome, U.S. senators saying that the lack of progress will make it harder for Congress to pass a climate bill, European Union carbon prices falling, and some businesses lamenting the continuing lack of uncertainty about future CO2 cuts and carbon prices.
Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown told an environmental meeting on Monday that a handful of countries blocked a legally binding deal on climate change, adding,
“We will not allow a few countries to hold us back. What happened at Copenhagen was a flawed decision-making process. We’ve just got to find a way of moving this process forward.”
Although Brown did not mention any countries by name, Ed Miliband, Climate Change and Energy Secretary, specifically mentioned China, noting that it had vetoed proposals calling for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and an 80 percent cut in emissions by developed nations by mid-century. Miliband said China exercised its veto despite support for the proposal by a broad coalition of industrialized nations and the vast majority of developing nations.
The UN Climate Change Conference opened in Copenhagen this morning, with conference President Connie Hedegaard of Denmark telling delegates from 192 nations that they must take action now or risk putting off for years a crucial agreement to curb global greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is our chance,” said Hedegaard, Denmark’s former minister for climate end energy. “If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one — if we ever do.” After weeks of pessimistic forecasts about what the 12-day conference might accomplish, the mood among participants was more upbeat following news that U.S. President Obama will appear at the end of the conference and that China would agree to reduce by nearly half the so-called carbon intensity of its economy — the amount of energy used per unit of gross domestic product. Today’s opening session featured video clips from children around the world urging delegates to act to stave off catastrophic global warming. A 24-year-old from Fiji wept as she presented a petition from 10 million people asking the conference to forge a deal to save low-lying islands like hers from rising sea levels.
Denmark, host of the upcoming climate summit, is proposing that global greenhouse gas emissions be cut by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, with emissions peaking by 2020, according to Reuters.
A draft of the Danish proposal, now being circulated, said that to meet the 2050 target industrialized nations will have to slash emissions by 80 percent in the next 40 years.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he hopes that the 192 nations at the climate summit will approve a five- to eight-page “politically binding” agreement that spells out emissions reduction commitments for each nation.
A couple of years after former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach founded ActNow, a sustainable business consultancy, he signed up Walmart as a client. This brought Werbach considerable notoriety in eco-activist circles. Walmart’s record of environmental responsibility had previously been spotty, to put it mildly. Werbach retorted to his critics that Walmart, with almost two million employees and 127 million customer visits per week, had the potential to do far more to save the world than the Sierra Club ever had.
I had the opportunity to visit Werbach’s company (now named Saatchi S) in San Francisco and attend a staff meeting. The participants sat on the floor and passed around a plate of organic banana bread. Yet despite the trappings of informality, the conversation had a focus, drive and ingenuity about it that I had rarely experienced in the non-profit world. The Saatchi staff certainly looked like the young, idealistic types whom I knew from environmental NGOs. But dropping a profit incentive into the motivational mix seemed to release a different level of creative zing.
Author and scholar Michael Levi says in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that the odds of signing a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December are extremely small and argues that policymakers and environmental advocates should rethink their expectations for the summit.
Levi, a senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, contends that the conventional treaty model – which focuses on high-level agreements on emissions caps and carbon trading schemes – is fundamentally flawed because emissions caps are largely unverifiable and unenforceable. Short of bullying with punitive sanctions, nothing can be done if caps are exceeded.