The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a disturbing research report on increases in methane leakage in the Arctic. Methane leakage is most immediate climate change feedback loop threat we face - increased leakage means we have less time to shift to a zero-carbon world than previously thought.
NSF issues world a wake-up call: "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming."
The research was undertaken jointly by scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Alaska.
The Climate Progress blog coverage of the report is the best thing to read. Check out the well-informed blog comments as well.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Did Lincoln just print money to fund the American Civil War/ If he did, shouldn't we just do that to fund climate change mitigation?
On one of the lists I'm on there's been a bit of excitement about an article published by Californian Ms Ellen Brown on Civil War monetary policy. The argument argues that Lincoln simply printed money to get around the usurious banks of the time and fund the vast expense of the Civil War - and we should do that now to fund climate change mitigation. A lot of people welcomed the article, which I found worrying, because simply printing money without backing is a highly risky and doubtful policy idea.
I'm not an expert on the impact of monetary supply or on leveraging deposits (which is the essence of the argument Ms Brown is making), and I appreciate that there are some potentially interesting arguments in this area, but I do know that Ellen's description of how Lincoln printed money to finance the Civil War is not correct.
Yes, there was an increase in monetary supply in the North, but the big distinction between the North and the Confederacy was that the latter ended up having to rely largely on printing money - contributing to to 9,000% p.a. inflation (vs 80% inflation in the North), a collapse in resources for their armies and, arguably, the loss of the war despite initial successes.
The North relied much more on increases in income and customs taxation (laying the foundation for tax-funded federal government services). One of the curiosities of wartime taxation policy was that it was the Republicans who first introduced progressive income taxes, based on "ability to pay", to the US, to ameliorate the impact of the large number of regressive tariffs and sales taxes they introduced. New taxes were an important revenue source.
But by far the biggest source of Northern war financing - 65% - was from the issuing of bonds. Yep, bonds. I.e. they actually got the money in before they spent it.
This is a precedent for the effort to address climate change - long-term climate bonds are the best financing vehicle for the transformation we need to bring about.
It's interesting to also note that the US marketed war bonds widely - some 25% of the population owned them by the war's end - but most of the money was actually raised from the richest 10%. Wide marketing served to get more of the population behind the war (having a stake in the outcome) as well as serving as a general propaganda vehicle. In the Climate Bonds Initiative we are proposing a similar mix of retail bonds to give as many people as possible a chance to participate in and thus support the transformation of energy supply, while actually relying on institutional investors to stump up the bulk of the money.
The Civil War government's takeover of monetary supply and re-introduction of government-issued paper money was more to provide currency liquidity within the economy - paper money had been tied to specific banks and was not necessarily interchangeable. This was the equivalent of radios being sold that only worked on one station (which was the case in the 1920s!). The government legislated to ensure that money could be used everywhere, much to the annoyance of the banks who quite liked having proprietal bank notes. This is what is meant by "the government printing paper money".
Monetary supply did increase, and so did inflation (to a problematic 80%), but nothing compared to the South's crippling reliance on it.
Monetary-policy-induced inflation is essentially a kind of wealth tax, using inflation to redistribute wealth from private savings to the government. In an emergency situation this is not necessarily a bad thing, except that in our financially porous world richer people have all sorts of opportunities to shift money to inflation-resistant vehicles, including taking it offshore; the people that tend to get hit by inflation now are welfare beneficiaries continually waiting for the urgently needed inflation-responsive increase in benefits, or pensioners living off savings. High inflation has become a regressive form of taxation.
Monetary supply was also increased by Britain and the US in WW1 and WW2, and quickly led to significant levels of inflation with all sorts of consequent problems. Governments then relied more on war bonds instead, which helped stabilise their economies.
Ellen Brown's article conflates many developments and ascribes them, willy-nilly, to one policy action. It's especially misleading to suggest that the US economic boom was as a result of printing money. While monetary liquidity was important to a unified economy, even that was less important than:
- disease (plus a few genocidal massacres, especially after the Civil War) that depopulated (by 95%) local Indian populations and allowed rapid and massive land grabs that sucked in millions of European immigrants between 1830 and 1900. The rapid application of large-scale human resources to this vast and fertile (seized) resource allowed the US to make all sorts of mistakes and still thrive economically. It's worth noting that part of the dispute between the North and South was about differing conceptions of human resources management - the North thrived economically on free settler immigration (on depopulated Indian land) while the South was built on old-fashioned slavery.
- the importation from the UK and Europe, and the refinement and cost reduction (thanks to volume deployment!) of a wide range of industrial technologies, and subsequent labour productivity improvements. (This same phenomena was mirrored in the Asian Tigers in 1960-1990, as Paul Krugman has eloquently shown). With the benefit of late-mover advantage (a bit like China today), by the 1900s this had become by far the most important factor in economic growth.
- Declining energy costs as a result of the exploitation of coal and then oil.
It is true that Lincoln used monetary policy to subdue the usurious banks in the middle of the war, effectively establishing a dominance of State over finance and introducing a unifying and more liquid national currency. But monetary policy was a minor gambit in financing the war, and one that was demonstrably disastrous when applied in much larger proportion in their opposing entity, the Confederacy.
Some commentators on recent US monetary policy, like Chris Martinson, continue to make the same sorts of errors in their analysis. Martinson for example equates deficits in the last 10 years to printing money without backing (e.g. of gold). But actually the US borrowed the money first from the Chinese, who effectively funded both Bush's war effort and his tax cuts for the super-wealthy (one of the stupidest tax policies in modern history).
I'm worried that talk of simply printing money is a potentially dangerous distraction, when, as in wars, we have the straightforward means to finance mitigation with good, old-fashioned, long-term debt. Climate Bonds.
Yes, there was an increase in monetary supply in the North, but the big distinction between the North and the Confederacy was that the latter ended up having to rely largely on printing money - contributing to to 9,000% p.a. inflation (vs 80% inflation in the North), a collapse in resources for their armies and, arguably, the loss of the war despite initial successes.
The North relied much more on increases in income and customs taxation (laying the foundation for tax-funded federal government services). One of the curiosities of wartime taxation policy was that it was the Republicans who first introduced progressive income taxes, based on "ability to pay", to the US, to ameliorate the impact of the large number of regressive tariffs and sales taxes they introduced. New taxes were an important revenue source.
But by far the biggest source of Northern war financing - 65% - was from the issuing of bonds. Yep, bonds. I.e. they actually got the money in before they spent it.
This is a precedent for the effort to address climate change - long-term climate bonds are the best financing vehicle for the transformation we need to bring about.
It's interesting to also note that the US marketed war bonds widely - some 25% of the population owned them by the war's end - but most of the money was actually raised from the richest 10%. Wide marketing served to get more of the population behind the war (having a stake in the outcome) as well as serving as a general propaganda vehicle. In the Climate Bonds Initiative we are proposing a similar mix of retail bonds to give as many people as possible a chance to participate in and thus support the transformation of energy supply, while actually relying on institutional investors to stump up the bulk of the money.
The Civil War government's takeover of monetary supply and re-introduction of government-issued paper money was more to provide currency liquidity within the economy - paper money had been tied to specific banks and was not necessarily interchangeable. This was the equivalent of radios being sold that only worked on one station (which was the case in the 1920s!). The government legislated to ensure that money could be used everywhere, much to the annoyance of the banks who quite liked having proprietal bank notes. This is what is meant by "the government printing paper money".
Monetary supply did increase, and so did inflation (to a problematic 80%), but nothing compared to the South's crippling reliance on it.
Monetary-policy-induced inflation is essentially a kind of wealth tax, using inflation to redistribute wealth from private savings to the government. In an emergency situation this is not necessarily a bad thing, except that in our financially porous world richer people have all sorts of opportunities to shift money to inflation-resistant vehicles, including taking it offshore; the people that tend to get hit by inflation now are welfare beneficiaries continually waiting for the urgently needed inflation-responsive increase in benefits, or pensioners living off savings. High inflation has become a regressive form of taxation.
Monetary supply was also increased by Britain and the US in WW1 and WW2, and quickly led to significant levels of inflation with all sorts of consequent problems. Governments then relied more on war bonds instead, which helped stabilise their economies.
Ellen Brown's article conflates many developments and ascribes them, willy-nilly, to one policy action. It's especially misleading to suggest that the US economic boom was as a result of printing money. While monetary liquidity was important to a unified economy, even that was less important than:
- disease (plus a few genocidal massacres, especially after the Civil War) that depopulated (by 95%) local Indian populations and allowed rapid and massive land grabs that sucked in millions of European immigrants between 1830 and 1900. The rapid application of large-scale human resources to this vast and fertile (seized) resource allowed the US to make all sorts of mistakes and still thrive economically. It's worth noting that part of the dispute between the North and South was about differing conceptions of human resources management - the North thrived economically on free settler immigration (on depopulated Indian land) while the South was built on old-fashioned slavery.
- the importation from the UK and Europe, and the refinement and cost reduction (thanks to volume deployment!) of a wide range of industrial technologies, and subsequent labour productivity improvements. (This same phenomena was mirrored in the Asian Tigers in 1960-1990, as Paul Krugman has eloquently shown). With the benefit of late-mover advantage (a bit like China today), by the 1900s this had become by far the most important factor in economic growth.
- Declining energy costs as a result of the exploitation of coal and then oil.
It is true that Lincoln used monetary policy to subdue the usurious banks in the middle of the war, effectively establishing a dominance of State over finance and introducing a unifying and more liquid national currency. But monetary policy was a minor gambit in financing the war, and one that was demonstrably disastrous when applied in much larger proportion in their opposing entity, the Confederacy.
Some commentators on recent US monetary policy, like Chris Martinson, continue to make the same sorts of errors in their analysis. Martinson for example equates deficits in the last 10 years to printing money without backing (e.g. of gold). But actually the US borrowed the money first from the Chinese, who effectively funded both Bush's war effort and his tax cuts for the super-wealthy (one of the stupidest tax policies in modern history).
I'm worried that talk of simply printing money is a potentially dangerous distraction, when, as in wars, we have the straightforward means to finance mitigation with good, old-fashioned, long-term debt. Climate Bonds.
Are carbon taxes fairer than using bonds for climate change mitigation costs?
A friend of mine asked:
"Aren't taxes fairer because bonds reward those who have spare cash they don't need much right now?"
In fact this isn't the case - taxes are not fairer because they ask current taxpayers to pay for developments that will deliver much cheaper energy costs to future consumers.
"Aren't taxes fairer because bonds reward those who have spare cash they don't need much right now?"
In fact this isn't the case - taxes are not fairer because they ask current taxpayers to pay for developments that will deliver much cheaper energy costs to future consumers.
Bonds are a mechanism for averaging out over time the charges to pay for stuff that requires mostly up front cost and has minimal operating costs. Like most renewable energy.
Bonds will largely NOT be bought by mums and dads with savings (well, maybe some will), they'll mainly be bought by pension, insurance and sovereign wealth funds who have the money now but are spending it on carbon-era projects. It's about switching capital, not asking for more. The idea is to squeeze the carbon-era projects of all their capital by giving investors good reasons to switch it all over to low-carbon investments.
Long-term investors like pension funds actually need more long-term debt to ensure they'll be able to pay out pensions when required. In the US many pension funds are moving their portfolios from about 20% bonds to 80%+ bonds, because the crash has shown that equities are just too volatile when you have to ensure payouts. That's why the Greek Government's EUR10 billion bond this week sold out despite jitters about the government's finance. There is a very big demand for bonds that will go on for some years.
Bonds will largely NOT be bought by mums and dads with savings (well, maybe some will), they'll mainly be bought by pension, insurance and sovereign wealth funds who have the money now but are spending it on carbon-era projects. It's about switching capital, not asking for more. The idea is to squeeze the carbon-era projects of all their capital by giving investors good reasons to switch it all over to low-carbon investments.
Long-term investors like pension funds actually need more long-term debt to ensure they'll be able to pay out pensions when required. In the US many pension funds are moving their portfolios from about 20% bonds to 80%+ bonds, because the crash has shown that equities are just too volatile when you have to ensure payouts. That's why the Greek Government's EUR10 billion bond this week sold out despite jitters about the government's finance. There is a very big demand for bonds that will go on for some years.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Friday, 15 January 2010
The next breakthrough: efficiently sucking CO2 out of the air
Understanding where to go post-Copenhagen: four reflections
Reflections towards a better strategy in the future:
1. Developing nations came to the Copenhagen Conference with a very firm position, that Kyoto had to be extended, which meant tougher commitments and cuts by developed nations but no cuts required of developing nations, reflecting the view that the richer nations caused the problem and had to do most to fix it (fair point). Developed nations came to the table insisting that, as 90% of all future
emissions would be coming from developing nations, they had to accept cuts as well, especially the now more developed ones like China, Korea and, of course, Saudi Arabia (fair point also). They also, as Aubrey Meyer at the Global Commons Institute has pointed out, had a de facto Contraction and Convergence position, which is a significant advance. Copenhagen turned into the big collision between these positions; no surprise that a binding agreement wasn't possible. The hope is that polarised positions will now have to be abandoned, at least by the majors.
2. Some recent reports suggest China came to Copenhagen with more to give than they ended up giving, but were put off by the US having nothing extra to offer. The total lack of progress during the last week of the negotiations seems to have been because China then decidednot to budge. Some people that were in the talks have privately reported that they think the Chinese team had very tight negotiating limits, and were not able to respond effectively to the fast-pacednegotiation the Americans tried to introduce in the last couple of days. That's positive news, because it means there really is room to keep working on the process.
3. The outcome reminds us that the world is not run by the United Nations. Expecting a consensus result from the flawed governance model it represents was really a dream. The fact is that we now have a multi-polar world - a number of large economies or economic blocks have to be able to agree for anything global to happen. Whatever we might wish for, the UN negotiations are a venue for big country discussions, not a decision-making forum. The good news about this is that it IS a multi-polar world - the Copenhagen Accord is the first major international agreement of modern times that recognises Brazil, South Africa and India, as well as China, as critical components of the world order. This probably wouldn't have happened before the financial crisis when the dollar was still the primary world currency.
4. Civil society was impressively organised at Copenhagen. A number of agencies had great looking campaigns and put a huge amount of money and effort into them. Could they have been better coordinated? Yes, room to improve, but the major civil society organisations are not that far apart as it is. The rethinking to be had is with strategy - the"ask" made of rich countries were not able to be met, even when they were largely onside, as the EU was. Civil society organisations are going to have to do the politician's work for them - analyse the various global blocks to change, whether in developed or developing countries, and run more acutely targeted campaigns, presenting progressive politicians with a politically easy path to make what we all know are the right decisions. A small example in the US of how campaigns could be better targeted to make it easier for politicians: have a look at a story just published in the Columbia Journalism Review on the extraordinarily powerful impact on US public opinion of pseudo-scientist TV weather reporters.
I first became aware of the assertive ignorance of some weather reporters when my news monitoring kept turning up denialist stories on the Weather Channel website, and I dived in to try and correct some of them. The Columbia Journalism Review story explains just how widespread the problem is and, at the same time, just how central weather reporter views are to the understanding of climate change by the US public. When asked in a national survey who they trusted for information about global warming, 66 percent of respondents named television weather reporters! .... unfortunately, most weather reporters don't 'believe' in climate change. The underlying story is how the 'sceptic' Heartland Institute targeted weather reporters some years back, giving them free tickets to sceptic's conferences and the like. That would have to be one of the more successful targeted campaigns in history, helping block policy progress for years; it needs to be reversed.
We've run out of time to rely on convincing governments to do what's required; we now need cleverer targeting of pivotal groups in society, from weather reporters to the investors who really decide whether coal-fired power plants will be built or not.
What do you think?
1. Developing nations came to the Copenhagen Conference with a very firm position, that Kyoto had to be extended, which meant tougher commitments and cuts by developed nations but no cuts required of developing nations, reflecting the view that the richer nations caused the problem and had to do most to fix it (fair point). Developed nations came to the table insisting that, as 90% of all future
emissions would be coming from developing nations, they had to accept cuts as well, especially the now more developed ones like China, Korea and, of course, Saudi Arabia (fair point also). They also, as Aubrey Meyer at the Global Commons Institute has pointed out, had a de facto Contraction and Convergence position, which is a significant advance. Copenhagen turned into the big collision between these positions; no surprise that a binding agreement wasn't possible. The hope is that polarised positions will now have to be abandoned, at least by the majors.
2. Some recent reports suggest China came to Copenhagen with more to give than they ended up giving, but were put off by the US having nothing extra to offer. The total lack of progress during the last week of the negotiations seems to have been because China then decidednot to budge. Some people that were in the talks have privately reported that they think the Chinese team had very tight negotiating limits, and were not able to respond effectively to the fast-pacednegotiation the Americans tried to introduce in the last couple of days. That's positive news, because it means there really is room to keep working on the process.
3. The outcome reminds us that the world is not run by the United Nations. Expecting a consensus result from the flawed governance model it represents was really a dream. The fact is that we now have a multi-polar world - a number of large economies or economic blocks have to be able to agree for anything global to happen. Whatever we might wish for, the UN negotiations are a venue for big country discussions, not a decision-making forum. The good news about this is that it IS a multi-polar world - the Copenhagen Accord is the first major international agreement of modern times that recognises Brazil, South Africa and India, as well as China, as critical components of the world order. This probably wouldn't have happened before the financial crisis when the dollar was still the primary world currency.
4. Civil society was impressively organised at Copenhagen. A number of agencies had great looking campaigns and put a huge amount of money and effort into them. Could they have been better coordinated? Yes, room to improve, but the major civil society organisations are not that far apart as it is. The rethinking to be had is with strategy - the"ask" made of rich countries were not able to be met, even when they were largely onside, as the EU was. Civil society organisations are going to have to do the politician's work for them - analyse the various global blocks to change, whether in developed or developing countries, and run more acutely targeted campaigns, presenting progressive politicians with a politically easy path to make what we all know are the right decisions. A small example in the US of how campaigns could be better targeted to make it easier for politicians: have a look at a story just published in the Columbia Journalism Review on the extraordinarily powerful impact on US public opinion of pseudo-scientist TV weather reporters.
I first became aware of the assertive ignorance of some weather reporters when my news monitoring kept turning up denialist stories on the Weather Channel website, and I dived in to try and correct some of them. The Columbia Journalism Review story explains just how widespread the problem is and, at the same time, just how central weather reporter views are to the understanding of climate change by the US public. When asked in a national survey who they trusted for information about global warming, 66 percent of respondents named television weather reporters! .... unfortunately, most weather reporters don't 'believe' in climate change. The underlying story is how the 'sceptic' Heartland Institute targeted weather reporters some years back, giving them free tickets to sceptic's conferences and the like. That would have to be one of the more successful targeted campaigns in history, helping block policy progress for years; it needs to be reversed.
We've run out of time to rely on convincing governments to do what's required; we now need cleverer targeting of pivotal groups in society, from weather reporters to the investors who really decide whether coal-fired power plants will be built or not.
What do you think?
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
US Weather reporters may be the pivotal target group to ensure Congressional support for strong climate action
Columbia Journalism Review has just published a fascinating story of the extraordinarily powerful impact on US public opinion of pseudo-scientist weather reporters in the US.
I first became aware of the assertive ignorance of some weather reporters when I picked up denialist stories being regularly published on the Weather Channel website.
The Columbia Journalism Story explains just how widespread the problem is and, at the same time, just how central weather reporter views are to the understanding of climate change by the US public. When asked in a national survey who they trusted for information about global warming, 66 percent of the respondents named television weather reporters!
No wonder Congress holds back efforts to do something serious about climate change, including helping to ensure the US's deal-neutering position at the Copenhagen Conference - with consequences for us all.
In terms of the marketing of climate solutions, this is a classic case of unearthing a pivotal influencer target group.
I first became aware of the assertive ignorance of some weather reporters when I picked up denialist stories being regularly published on the Weather Channel website.
The Columbia Journalism Story explains just how widespread the problem is and, at the same time, just how central weather reporter views are to the understanding of climate change by the US public. When asked in a national survey who they trusted for information about global warming, 66 percent of the respondents named television weather reporters!
No wonder Congress holds back efforts to do something serious about climate change, including helping to ensure the US's deal-neutering position at the Copenhagen Conference - with consequences for us all.
In terms of the marketing of climate solutions, this is a classic case of unearthing a pivotal influencer target group.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
"How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room", by Mark Lynas
Worth a read to understand the role of China in the failure of Copenhagen. Certainly puts Lula, Obama, Merkel, Brown and Rudd in a better light compared to the chinese delegation. Mark Lynas is the author of the impressive book "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet".
Saturday, 19 December 2009
COP15: Copenhagen Accord now released
> Would you like to see a genuine artifact of the COP negotiations? Have a peak at this scanned version of the final text of the Copenhagen Accord. On the same page you can see a copy of the draft text from Friday 5am, as apparently discussed by heads of state on Friday morning. A treat for the history buffs among you.
> One item that stood out: the final text mentions a $100 billion per annum fund by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries; more than expected. It says that the funding will "come from a variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance." Sounds a lot like "we'll find the money somehow, by golly".
> On Friday morning the COP15 business delegations issued a strong statement asking for a global agreement. They ended up with "Business, governments and society are intricately linked – climate change solutions will need all three to work together." Absolutely right.
> A window into negotiating tactics: in the early hours of the morning US negotiators inserted brackets at numerous places in the negotiating text for the main strand of the negotiations that includes all countries - the long term action plan. This effectively blocked discussions on this negotiating track. Some observers believe the US wanted to counter moves by developing countries to add their concerns to the text, effectively ensuring that discussions would have to be continued next year.
> COMMENT: Despite some good detail, the Copenhagen Accord is not a great agreement - nowhere near enough. Even US negotiators have admitted that the Accord won't hold global temperature rises to 2°C; http://climateinteractive.org/ has already projected the deal will, despite the assertions of the deal makers, lead to temp rises of 3.9°C. Last week the Stockholm Environment Institute was telling us that 1.5° and 350ppm are the maximum we can afford. (At least Tuvalu got this on the media agenda.)
But the Accord was never going to be enough; even if we had got a serious deal, the time lag for impacts to be felt would mean we'd miss our short window to get emissions down. Our best short-term hope is to turn mitigation into a profitable activity and hope we can raise enough private debt because of the money to be made over the long term, with a carbon price a nice bonus if and when it happens.
Whatever the Agreement, the conference marks the beginning of a new global discourse of cooperation. The extent to which nations (numbers of Heads of State) are coming together to discuss something hard and real in the full glare of galvanising global civil society activism starts us on a road. COPs will begin to be the new global forum of import, eclipsing the WTO and the G20 (which will now be seen merely as the big nations caucusing ahead of COPs). COP15 may not give us an Agreement that matters that much, but I do think it will provide the mechanism for us to work through the ghastly challenges we're going to face with environmental crisis, migration of peoples, and probably wars.
If we can construct mitigation as a profitable activity (and I believe we can) the Clean Energy race will become the next industrial boom - for those countries choosing to participate (and pity those that don't). It will, eventually, see energy prices drop substantially from where they are now, kicking off further booms. If we can use it to also push through a new generation of energy related productivity improvements, then it will prove a lasting step-up in world economic wealth (technology productivity gains being the primary driver, after cheap energy, of wealth). As long as that wealth can be enjoyed in ways that don't involve cannibalising resources and dirtying our nest, I reckon we have a good chance.
> Back to finance - I've had two exchanges this week with people setting up green fixed-interest investment funds, and two groups planning to issue green or climate bonds. Does two-by-two mean the dance is hotting up?
> One item that stood out: the final text mentions a $100 billion per annum fund by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries; more than expected. It says that the funding will "come from a variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance." Sounds a lot like "we'll find the money somehow, by golly".
> On Friday morning the COP15 business delegations issued a strong statement asking for a global agreement. They ended up with "Business, governments and society are intricately linked – climate change solutions will need all three to work together." Absolutely right.
> A window into negotiating tactics: in the early hours of the morning US negotiators inserted brackets at numerous places in the negotiating text for the main strand of the negotiations that includes all countries - the long term action plan. This effectively blocked discussions on this negotiating track. Some observers believe the US wanted to counter moves by developing countries to add their concerns to the text, effectively ensuring that discussions would have to be continued next year.
> COMMENT: Despite some good detail, the Copenhagen Accord is not a great agreement - nowhere near enough. Even US negotiators have admitted that the Accord won't hold global temperature rises to 2°C; http://climateinteractive.org/ has already projected the deal will, despite the assertions of the deal makers, lead to temp rises of 3.9°C. Last week the Stockholm Environment Institute was telling us that 1.5° and 350ppm are the maximum we can afford. (At least Tuvalu got this on the media agenda.)
But the Accord was never going to be enough; even if we had got a serious deal, the time lag for impacts to be felt would mean we'd miss our short window to get emissions down. Our best short-term hope is to turn mitigation into a profitable activity and hope we can raise enough private debt because of the money to be made over the long term, with a carbon price a nice bonus if and when it happens.
Whatever the Agreement, the conference marks the beginning of a new global discourse of cooperation. The extent to which nations (numbers of Heads of State) are coming together to discuss something hard and real in the full glare of galvanising global civil society activism starts us on a road. COPs will begin to be the new global forum of import, eclipsing the WTO and the G20 (which will now be seen merely as the big nations caucusing ahead of COPs). COP15 may not give us an Agreement that matters that much, but I do think it will provide the mechanism for us to work through the ghastly challenges we're going to face with environmental crisis, migration of peoples, and probably wars.
If we can construct mitigation as a profitable activity (and I believe we can) the Clean Energy race will become the next industrial boom - for those countries choosing to participate (and pity those that don't). It will, eventually, see energy prices drop substantially from where they are now, kicking off further booms. If we can use it to also push through a new generation of energy related productivity improvements, then it will prove a lasting step-up in world economic wealth (technology productivity gains being the primary driver, after cheap energy, of wealth). As long as that wealth can be enjoyed in ways that don't involve cannibalising resources and dirtying our nest, I reckon we have a good chance.
> Back to finance - I've had two exchanges this week with people setting up green fixed-interest investment funds, and two groups planning to issue green or climate bonds. Does two-by-two mean the dance is hotting up?
Thursday, 17 December 2009
COP15: 16 Dec snippets #5
> Gossip: the World Bank has just increased the recent green bonds issue by $50 million, because the Dec 4 release sold so quickly.
> Very strong statement put out this week in Copenhagen by "Action by Business on Climate", coalition of WWF, Cambridge Leaders Group, CERES, Climate Group etc, representing 1,000 big businesses. The statement denies that big business would prefer caution and the status quo - and instead advocating a strong Copenhagen deal; and asking if businesses can do it, then why can't world leaders? They want a legally binding deal that reduces carbon pollution and accelerates clean energy innovation. They want a clear signal that allows businesses to make long term investment decisions in low carbon technologies; Provides incentives to invest heavily in low carbon R&D, and; Protects economies from dramatic impacts of climate change.
Timely contribution. Tell your friends!
> Coral prediction by Stockholm Environment Institute: they're Ok at present, with a 1°C temp rise. At 2° seaweed dominates corals (no good for snorkelling any more, apart from all the ecosystem problems). At 3° temp increases corals die.
> COP15 Trivia (thanks to RePower America)
- Countries represented: 192
- Heads of state that have announced they will attend next week: 110
- Accredited attendees: 23,000 before they stopped accepting people
- Size of Brazilian Govt delegation: 600 (what are they all doing?)
- Fraction of food served at COP15 that is organic: 66%
> "If we don't deal with climate change decisively, "what we're talking about then is extended world war." – Sir Nicholas Stern.
> The UK defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute recently reported that climate change threatens to spark conflicts of a similar magnitude of both World Wars – only this time they will be waged for centuries.
> 36% of people in CPH commute to work on a bicycle - in all weathers. And we're talking about some cold weather. A friend reminiscences about when Shanghai was bike-filled. Maybe when they become as rich as the Danish are they'll get back to bicycling?
Thanks for reading. Access to the conference has now been cut; I'm outta here, back to London!
Sean
-----------------
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Sean Kidney
www.climatebonds.net
www.sustainablefinancialmarkets.net
www.climaterisk.net
> Very strong statement put out this week in Copenhagen by "Action by Business on Climate", coalition of WWF, Cambridge Leaders Group, CERES, Climate Group etc, representing 1,000 big businesses. The statement denies that big business would prefer caution and the status quo - and instead advocating a strong Copenhagen deal; and asking if businesses can do it, then why can't world leaders? They want a legally binding deal that reduces carbon pollution and accelerates clean energy innovation. They want a clear signal that allows businesses to make long term investment decisions in low carbon technologies; Provides incentives to invest heavily in low carbon R&D, and; Protects economies from dramatic impacts of climate change.
Timely contribution. Tell your friends!
> Coral prediction by Stockholm Environment Institute: they're Ok at present, with a 1°C temp rise. At 2° seaweed dominates corals (no good for snorkelling any more, apart from all the ecosystem problems). At 3° temp increases corals die.
> COP15 Trivia (thanks to RePower America)
- Countries represented: 192
- Heads of state that have announced they will attend next week: 110
- Accredited attendees: 23,000 before they stopped accepting people
- Size of Brazilian Govt delegation: 600 (what are they all doing?)
- Fraction of food served at COP15 that is organic: 66%
> "If we don't deal with climate change decisively, "what we're talking about then is extended world war." – Sir Nicholas Stern.
> The UK defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute recently reported that climate change threatens to spark conflicts of a similar magnitude of both World Wars – only this time they will be waged for centuries.
> 36% of people in CPH commute to work on a bicycle - in all weathers. And we're talking about some cold weather. A friend reminiscences about when Shanghai was bike-filled. Maybe when they become as rich as the Danish are they'll get back to bicycling?
Thanks for reading. Access to the conference has now been cut; I'm outta here, back to London!
Sean
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Sean Kidney
www.climatebonds.net
www.sustainablefinancialmarkets.net
www.climaterisk.net
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