Climate Change: Evidence Is Overwhelming.

Perhaps now the deniers will cease their attacks on the science of climate change, and the American public will, at last, fully accept that global warming is a danger now and an even graver threat to future generations.

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that since 1990 has been issuing increasingly grim warnings about the consequences of a warming planet, released its most powerful and sobering assessment so far. Even now, it said, ice caps are melting, droughts and floods are getting worse, coral reefs are dying. And without swift and decisive action to limit greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and other sources, the world will almost surely face centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas, species loss and dwindling agricultural yields. The damage will be particularly acute in coastal communities and in low-lying poor countries — like Bangladesh — that are least able to protect themselves.

The report’s conclusions mirrored those of a much shorter but no less disturbing report issued two weeks ago by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest scientific society. Like the panel, the association declared that the world is already feeling the effects of global warming, that the ultimate consequences could be catastrophic, and that the window for effective action is swiftly closing.

The intergovernmental panel’s report (a companion report later this month will discuss what governments should do) could carry considerable weight with delegates to next year’s climate change summit meeting in Paris, at which the members of the United Nations will again try, after years of futility, to fashion a new global climate treaty. And together, the two reports could build public support for President Obama’s efforts to use his executive authority to limit greenhouse gases, most recently with a plan issued on Friday to reduce methane emissions from landfills, agricultural operations and oil and gas production and distribution.

The methane strategy is one of several weapons in Mr. Obama’s broader Climate Action Plan, announced last year, that seeks to reduce emissions by circumventing an obstructionist Congress by aggressively using his executive authority under the Clean Air Act and other statutes. The most important of these are two rules from the Environmental Protection Agency — one already proposed, another in the works — that would regulate emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants, the largest source of industrial carbon pollution. He has also promised to increase energy efficiency in appliances and buildings, and double renewable energy capacity on public lands by 2020.

The methane abatement plan is a welcome addition to that arsenal. Methane, a product of animal wastes and of decomposing material in landfills, and the main component in natural gas, contributes only about 9 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. And natural gas, as a fuel, is much cleaner than coal.

But methane is a powerful atmospheric pollutant, 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and thus a major driver of global warming.

The burden for fulfilling the president’s promise will fall on the E.P.A., which is charged with developing regulations to plug methane leaks in pipelines and in oil and gas production systems. Given everything we now know, public and congressional acceptance of these initiatives should be close to automatic. But, of course, it is not. Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate Republicans, seeks to block the coal regulations. Industry groups are complaining in advance about methane regulations.

Some of this may be attributable to public misunderstanding. A poll last year found that one-third of Americans believed that scientists disagreed on whether global warming was happening. These studies suggest virtually no disagreement. The hope among advocates is that the latest show of scientific solidarity will clear up any confusion about the causes and consequences of climate change and the need for action.
(NYT Editorial March 31, 2014)

Is the EU plan to cut Carbon Emissions by 40% Ambitious Enough?

Europe's new targets of a 40% carbon emissions cut by 2030 and a boost to renewable energy have been greeted with both acclaim and derision for their ambition, or lack of it. Both views are justifiable: it's a classic example of a glass being simultaneously half full and empty.

For those focusing on climate change – the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide – the European commission's plan is clearly inadequate to meet the EU's own target of limiting global warming to 2C. For those focusing on the economy of the bloc today – EU citizen's pocket are half empty after a crushing recession – the deal was the most ambitious possible.

Initially, EC president José Manuel Barroso spoke optimistically, talking of a "marriage" between climate action and economic competitiveness: a demonstration that environmental action does not have to cost the Earth. But he soon became exasperated at the criticism: "Let's have some realism, no member state, even the ambitious ones, wanted more than a 40% cut."

Commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, bristled too: "My message to the NGOs is be honest: 40% cut is a not a small thing, it is a big thing." The commisioners pointed out that the EU still remains well ahead of other major economies in its ambition to tackle global warming.

Both the green campaigners and the industrial vested interests were left equally unhappy. Such a fudge might be seen as a successful compromise in other circumstances, but here the stakes are just too high.
Climate change is, as Barroso put it, "the defining challenge of our time", while struggling economies are the defining challenge of today. This tension means the promise of the fast-growing green economy, in which Europe leads, looks to many more like a road to ruin than the path to prosperity it actually is.
The question, then, is how is Europe to move towards the clean, sustainable future that is essential to long-term wellbeing of us all and leave the dirty industries of the past behind? The commission made some progress: the target of at least 27% renewable energy by 2030 is an important political signal (and a defeat for the UK, which lobbied hard against it). The commission also pointed out that the biggest challenges for EU competitiveness is not in fact the cost of climate action.

But the commission also procrastinated on two of best ways to tackle the dual climate-economy problem: energy efficiency and the EU's trading scheme for carbon pollution permits. Furthermore, despite energy commissioner Günther Oettinger, more hawk than dove on climate, stating what every rational person knows - "shale gas not going to have same significance in the EU as in the US – the commission still failed to deliver binding safety regulation on fracking (as I reported, a victory for UK lobbying).

Two things need to happen next. First, the EU's member states, which now examine the commission's plan, must put in ways of ratcheting up the ambition in future to levels that match the seriousness of the climate change threat. Real world achievements are actually running ahead of the existing targets: the EU is already within 2% of its 2020 target of a 20% carbon cut.

Second, member states must get serious about tackling the foot-dragging of heavy industry, by easing the transition from the coal-black past to the bright future. Support, not hand outs, for business boosting energy efficiency will be important, for example, as will far more serious efforts to deliver carbon capture and storage.

Germany, with all its manufacturing might, may have opted for a fully renewable future, but Poland, 90% reliant on coal, will not. The UK, stupidly given its super-smart science base, is veering more to the Polish path than the German one.

Overall, the EC's plan is a long way short of delivering the sustainable climate and economy need for our future prosperity, but it is also a significant step towards it: the glass is both half full and half empty.