Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis
We all know, at this point -- by which I mean that we should all know -- that climate change is going to set off a vast new wave of migration.  Development groups are even debating, grimly and quietly, how to think about a future in which their job includes evacuating people people, lots of people, from lands that can no longer support them.  And it's not just climate.  Many of today's forced immigrants are the victims of "develpopment" itself.   Not up to speed on the issue?  Start here.

The Growth Rate of CO₂ Emissions has Tripled 
Just in case you were starting to relax (or sink back exhausted into your chair) here's a little wake up call, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US).  Seems that  the recent rate of increase of CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes has been accelerating -- their global growth rate recently increasing from 1.1 to 3.0 percent a year.  Why?  Because some the world's poor (think China) are getting richer, but that we haven't managed to break the link between economic growth and emissions. As the PNAS editors say, "the results have implications for global equity."

This is an open-access article, so you can actually read it.  And you should.  See also Joe Romm's commentary here.

Stop Climate Chaos Manifesto

We've got a lot going on here in the US, but somehow we don't quite have anything like the Stop Climate Chaos coalition. If you don't believe it, take a look at the SCC policy platform, which you can find here.  Not only has this huge coalition -- which includes development and ecumenical groups as well as self-identified greens -- committed itself to fighting to keep total warming below the 2ºC line (total surface warming, since pre-industrial times), it also draws conclusions.  Like that, for example, if we're to hold the 2ºC line, global emissions must peak within 10 years. And that 

The result, as all climate newhounds know, is a glut of allocations (hot air) and a drop in the price of carbon in Europe from the already low level of 30 Euros a ton to even lower, deep discount, bad-joke levels. Which you can read about in this admirably brief and direct report from a think tank called Open Europe.

None of this would be so bad if it was just a sign of birthing pains. But rumors indicate that the EU is not rising to the occasion, and that the next round of allocations won't be much smaller. Cross your fingers, and hope that "European Leadership" has a bit of wind left in its sails.

China and "Our Oil"
Have you noticed the new fashion for China Bashing? If you haven't, be assured that the drums are beating. The underlying story here is, as always, complex, though it sure seems to have a lot of do with US dreams of a new cold war, and even of Containing China. Or, if you indulge in the coarser varieties of business journalism, it's the story of China (and India) taking "our oil."

In this context, check out the Energy Information Administration's reference projections for future oil consumption. Click here for the PDF or, if you have Excel installed, here. The numbers are pretty amusing. For one thing they show total global oil consumption rising from 78.2 million barrels a day in 2002 to 119.2 million barrels a day in 2025, which, by the way, is not going to happen. But they also show that increased US consumption in that brief period will be 7.6 million barrels a day, while China's will be 9.

Think about that in per-capita terms and you'll get the joke.

Justice and Honesty in New Orleans
New Orleans still has more to teach us, and this little piece by Melissa Harris Lacewell, author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought is a good place to look for another lesson. Faced with a haphazard (if not willfully incompetent) reconstruction that's leaving the city's poor black community in even more precarious straits than it suffered before the storm, Lacewell calls for a "restoration" that really is designed to make the victims whole.

There will be more hurricanes, more relocations, more -- let's face it -- climate refugees. It's time, as the "adaptation" debate heats up, to think more viscerally. And a bit of effort spent mining these same veins is just what's needed.

On the Commons
The Tomales Bay Institute, organized a few years ago to promote and reinvigorate the theory and culture of the commons, seems like it's picking up some traction. There's a lot of activity on the site, and we can recommend two postings in particular as starting points:

* In Whose Atmosphere Is It?, Peter Barnes (father of the Sky Trust) argues that the authors of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in which seven northeastern states have banded together to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, are making a key strategic error -- "a huge giveaway of a common asset, the atmosphere, to a few private companies." "It's the equivalent of giving the airways away for free, or selling timber from National Forests at below-market prices." Good realists would no doubt argue that the "grandafthering" of 75 percent of the emission permits created by the RGGI to existing polluters is a political necessity, but Barnes claims (and we tend to agree) that "it will set a dangerous precedent for other regional plans, as well as for the nationwide plan we must eventually adopt." This is a crucial debate, and its outcome will have consequences, as Vermont has realized. A state committee recently voted to recommend that 100 percent of the revenue from state RGGI carbon permits be reserved for consumers. For more from Barnes, see his blog here.

* In Slavery and the Takings Clause, Jonathan Rowe (Exec Director of the Tomales Bay Institute) draws our attention to an irony of history that few of us ever knew, one that involves the "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This, of course, is a clause that many US enviros have encountered under less than favorable circumstances, for it is beloved by property-rights fundamentalists (who "contend that this clause applies not just to actual takings -- by eminent domain for example -- but to regulation of any kind that inconveniences and owner financially"). The twist is, as Rowe learns this from Cassandra Pybus's Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty, is that it originated, in no small part, in the outrage of American colonial slaveholders "over the way that the British, during the Revolution, provided sanctuary for escaped slaves, and then paid no compensation afterwards."

Makes you think!

Landmark Study from Old Europe!
The German Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU) has just released Climate Protection Strategies for the 21st Century: Kyoto and Beyond, and it's a milestone. For one thing, it calls for a 2ºC "guardrail" to prevent dangerous climate change. For another, it promotes an idea which has long and unjustly been marginalized by calling for "Contraction and Convergence" to be the basis of the post-Kyoto regime.

This is a big step forward for a major quasi-governmental think tank, even a European one, but it remains to be seen how much traction these ideas will win. Even if the E.U. were to adopt the WBGU's proposal for convergence to equal per capita rights in 2050, the South's response would remain uncertain.

Will Contraction and Convergence stand up to close scrutiny? Would developing countries think it fair, and even start discussing quantified emissions limits? What about historical responsibility?

There are lots of questions. The plot, in any case, has just thickened! (November 2003)

Am I Meaningfully Participating Yet?
The Chinese government is preparing to impose minimum fuel economy standards on their burgeoning auto fleet, standards far more stringent than those in the US. To be clear, the new standards aren't intended to address China's rapidly rising carbon emissions, but rather to force foreign automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology into China, fast, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports. Which, actually, makes excellent sense. And the situation is not without its humorous sidelights. Here's one: the New York Times article, China Set to Act on Fuel Economy; Tougher Standards Than in US, reports that "two executives at Volkswagen, the largest foreign automaker in China" .. told the Times that "They had no choice but to agree." (November 18, 2003)

Those damn Market-Leninists!

The Perfect Firestorm
Mike Davis isn't the only writer to say "global warming" while commenting on the California fires, but his Perfect Firestorm is probably the only essay to link the outsized economic damages to "stupid development," or to note that "Republicans tend to disproportionately concentrate themselves in the wrong altitudes and ecologies." Read this one; it's short and anything but sweet. (October, 2003)

Argentina and Chile Endorse Per Capita
In the small but significant step department, the Presidents of Argentina and Chile have come out for a per capita climate accord. It's not China, but it's welcome news in any case!

Think of it: only 30 years from Pinochet to Per capita! (August 2003)

Can we defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?
In this fascinating, accessible presentation, James Hansen, one of our most respected climate scientists, argues that we're much closer to "dangerous anthropogenic interference" than the IPCC's work would suggest: "The dominant issue in global warming, in my opinion, is sea level change and the question of how fast ice sheets can disintegrate. A large portion of the world's people live within a few meters of sea level, with trillions of dollars of infrastructure. The need to preserve global coast lines, I suggest, sets a low ceiling on the level of global warming that would constitute DAI." The funny thing is the Hansen is still an optimist. Or, rather, he thinks we still have time. Just. This one is a must read. (June 2003)

The New Apollo Project
There've been lots of efforts to form a "blue green" labor-environment coalition in the US, but none ever looked as promising as The Apollo Alliance, which just might have legs. Apollo's focus is on creating jobs and energy independence, two goals that would benefit tremendously from an effective drive for renewables. And Apollo's time, clearly, is right.

To be sure, there's almost no attention given, in the Apollo frame, to either global warming or international justice, but that's because Apollo is shooting for the moon, not the stars. And hey, it's a first step. For more info, check out Apollo's media center. Amanda Griscom's Declaration of Energy Independence, originally from Grist Magazine, is a nice place to start.

After Cancun
You know that the international trade talks are in trouble. What you may not know is that Cancun saw the emergence of a newly coherent Southern negotiating bloc - the "Group of 21" - and that it may (cross your fingers) portend good news spreading even as far as the climate talks. Ok, maybe that's a stretch, but here's an interesting analysis by Focus on the Global South's Walden Bello, who by the way just won the Right Livelihood Award. In it, Bello discusses "the possibility that the Group of 21 can serve as the engine of South-South cooperation that goes beyond trade to coordination of policies on investment, capital flows, industrial policy, social policy, environmental policy." (October 2003)

Speaking of Trade War
In this report, a few of our German friends come right out and think the unthinkable. Indeed, in Implementing the Kyoto Protocol Without the United States: The Strategic Role of Energy Tax Adjustments at the Border, Frank Biermann and Rainer Brohm of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research go so far as to argue that, if the U.S. remains indefinitely outside a future greenhouse regime (assuming we ever get one) even existing world trade law would permit the European Union to enact "well designed" and "comprehensive" border adjustments against its exports.

Want some freedom fries with that? (January, 2003)

Emissions Inequality Rising
Only fifteen percent of the population lives in the high-income countries, but they use 50 percent of the world's energy and emit 50 percent of its anthropogenic CO2. These grim figures are not unfamiliar, but they are now corroborated by a UNFCCC analysis based on the increasingly sophisticated "national communications" required by the climate treaty. (June 2003)

The UNFCCC analysis, Rich countries see higher greenhouse gas emissions, lays out the news pretty clearly: the rich world, which stabilized its greenhouse gas emissions during the 1990s, will likely see these emissions rise again by the end of the current decade. Indeed, the combined emissions of Europe, Japan, the US and other highly industrialized countries could grow by 17% between 2000 to 2010, despite domestic measures currently in place to limit them.

World Meteorological Organization Warning
In the midst of the summer heat wave, the UN World Meteorological Organization issued an unusual press release that clearly ascribed recent extreme weather events to climate change. WMO cited record temperatures of over 40 degrees C in the South of France, a record number of tornadoes in the US, and pre-monsoon heat waves in India that were up to five degrees higher than average. (June 2003)

The London Guardian Draws Conclusions
If the WMO press release is too understated for your taste, try the articles that George Monbiot and John Vidal have been publishing in the Guardian recently. Particularly notable are:
* Monbiot's Shadow of Extinction which presents evidence that the great Permian extinction may have been caused by a mere 6C degrees of climate change. (July 1st)
* Vidal's Global Warming may be Speeding Up, which evocatively argues that this summer's global drought/heatwave could indicate that the warming has already begun to accelerate. (Aug 6th)
* Monbiot's With Eyes Wide Shut, which reviews some of the more terrifying of the recent science, and suggests that we are, perhaps, living in a dream. (Aug 12th) All three of these articles cite a recent workshop where top atmospheric scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Bert Bolin, former chairman of the IPCC, concluded that the masking effect that aerosols are having on the warming could be far greater than previously thought, and that, therefore, the IPCC's estimate of the "high end" danger could turn out to be far too low. For more on this, see First, the Bad News in the current issue of Climate Equity Observer.

The Truth about McCain Lieberman
The Myth, of course, is that any serious effort to control emissions is bound to bankrupt us. The reality, as shown, once again, by two authoritative studies of the McCain Lieberman proposal, is far different.

The better known of the two is the Emissions Trading to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States: The McCain-Lieberman Proposal, better known as "The MIT study, which showed that the per-household "welfare loss" would typically be a mere $50 to $175 in 2010, rising to about $100 to $350 per household in 2020. And this, please note, was the original McCain Lieberman proposal, before it was watered down to win more vote.

Still, that would be enough to hurt the poor, so we felt better when the Tellus Institute released its Analysis of the Climate Stewardship Act. Tellus' analysis, while entirely consistent with the MIT study, also assumed targeted policies designed to promote efficiency and renewables, and concluded that, in fact, net savings to consumers accrue from 2013, and would reach $48 billion annually in 2020. (July 2003)

Keep these studies in mind the next time you hear some blowhard from the Competitive Enterprise Institute sound off about the so-called economic realities.

The Big Wrap Up
This Strategic Assessment of the Kyoto-Marrakech System was jointly prepared by an impressive list of European climate policy researchers, gathered together under the "Climate Strategies" umbrella. You'll definitely want to start with the (mercifully short) synthesis report and then, to drill deeper, download the underlying "modules" (why not just call them papers?) from the British Centre for Energy Policy and Technology. All, curiously, except Benito Muller's "Module 4" on Framing Future Commitments, which isn't downloadable. Instead you get it (a free PDF) by emailing www.oxfordenergy.org (at information@oxfordenergy.org), and we, actually, recommend that you do. Take a special look at page 68, where Benito lays down his notion of the "twin taboos" (one Northern; one Southern) that underlie the current impasse, and at the appended comments (starting on page 123) by Anju Sharma of India's Centre for Science and the Environment. (July 2003)

Strange Augusts Yet to Come
Perhaps you've read Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts. More likely you've looked at the cover photos, grimaced, and turned away. But do take a look at Our Summer Vacation: 20,000 dead wherein Davis ties this past August's wave of European heat death to the more routine suffering of the poor and the forgotten, and then shares his personal greenhouse nightmare: a positive feedback caused by the now almost inevitable melting of the Arctic ice cap.

Speaking of August, 2003's was the Northern hemisphere hottest on record, and according to the Earth Policy Institute's Janet Larson, whose detailed numbers nice supplement Davis's, it actually accounted for 35,000 deaths. (September, 2003)

More Death and Suffering: This Just In!
Speaking of greenhouse body counts, the estimate of 160,000 deaths a year has been in the news lately, thanks to a new report from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The majority of these deaths occur in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, where people are more vulnerable to malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea as hotter temperatures settle in and floods and droughts become more common.

This figure demands to be put in perspective. Here's one place to start: the World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution causes 1.6 million deaths per year. That's an even power of ten greater than the greenhouse body count, and this time the situation is crystal clear: the killer here is poverty, pure and simple. (September, 2003)

Climate System (and Scientific View of the Climate System) Shifts Rapidly
Physics Today has just run an unusually salient history of science article, The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change, which among much else focuses on how rapidly the research community's perception of the risks of rapid climate change is changing. Got that? And note that a longer article, focusing on rapid one-way climate shifts, is available at www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm. (August 2003)

Global Warming Endangers Development
It's been said before, and with more brio (see, for example, The End of Development? Global warming, disasters and the Great Reversal of Human Progress) but it's still true: global warming actually threatens "development" itself, and not in a positive way. This time the warming comes from a study commissioned by ten major international agencies, including the UN Environment Program, UN Development Program, Global Environment Facility and World Bank, and it's notable for two reasons.

First, Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation argues that global warming threatens to have serious adverse impacts on the livelihoods of poor people in developing countries, and thus to undermine the "Millennium Development Goal" of reducing poverty by 50 percent by 2015. Second, the study's sponsoring institutions claim to plan to reorient their own development assistance through the integration of climate concerns into the design of their own water, forestry, agriculture and infrastructure projects.

We'll see how it goes. But don't hold your breath, particularly as the World Bank remains one of the planet's principle funders of carbon-based energy development. For a recent analysis of the situation, see The World Bank And Fossil Fuels: At The Crossroads, a recent brief by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (September 2003).

From Skeptics to Denialists
Skepticism, in case you've forgotten, came into its own during the age of enlightenment, as scientific reasoning rose to challenge the faith-based orthodoxy of the time. This is not a tradition to which Bush administration properly belong, so let's give their approach another, more accurate name. Something like denialism.

While we're on the subject, check out Politics & Science, a lovely website commissioned by Henry A. Waxman, democratic Member of the US House of Representatives. It's really quite a remarkable document, for it details how the Bush people have manipulated, distorted, or interfered with science on health, environmental, and other issues - global warming not the least among them.

And look at Luntz Speak, where you'll learn to why the denialists are calling it "climate change" rather than "global warming."

And while we're on the subject, how about this button (just produced by the US wing of the Climate Action Network):

"Fresh Air" - Evaluating Climate Policy Options
This report is over a year old, but it's looking like a keeper. Written by Alex Evans of Britain's Institute for Public Policy Research, and edited by Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, Fresh Air may well be the most satisfying single call for classical Contraction and Convergence ever written. We don't quite love it, but that's a long story. The point here is that it really is very good. (March 2002)

Great Climate Graphics
No equity stuff, of course - what does equity have to do with global warming? - but Vital Climate Graphics is still a nice authoritative collection. There are three sections: an intro, observed trends, and potential impacts. Someday there will be a forth. Educators, in particular, should check this out.

"Thank God for the Death of the UN"
Richard Perle, a very senior advisor to Bush, made it all quite clear. Writing in the London Guardian he put it thus: "Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The 'good works' part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions." (March 21, 2003)

The NGOs Draw the Line
The mood at 2002 8th Conference of Parties in New Delhi was grim, but at least the Climate Action Network took a stand. If our goal is Preventing Dangerous Climate Change, we're going to have to stop the warming before it reaches 2 degrees C. It's still possible, but it isn't going to be easy. (Nov, 2002)

Hans Blix's Greatest Fear
Just before the bombing started, Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, told MTV News that "I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict." Seems a reasonable choice; after all, with global warming you'll get the major military conflict anyway...

The Other Tony Blair
Just before the Iraqi war, Tony Blair committed the UK to cutting C02 emissions by 60% by 2050. This goal was not accompanied by any plan capable of realizing it, but it's still worth remembering. We'll do so by way of this letter, written to Blair just before his big speech, in which Sir John Houghton (former IPCC Working Group 1 Chair), Professor Sir Tom Blundell (Chair of the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution) and Alex Evans of the British Institute for Public Policy Research called upon him to go all the way.

This means, in case, your wondering, that "a formal atmospheric concentration target is essential" if we're to avoid an unacceptable level of warming, and that "Securing developing country participation in any such global framework ... will require the adoption of the principle of convergence to equal per capita entitlements by an agreed date, since developing countries will not accept a system that presumes to continue current inequalities in emissions levels." (Feb 2002)

Speaking of Old Europe
The German Advisory Council on Global Change has also weighed in with a perspective inconceivable within America's current regime. Here, the need for a rapid global renewables transition (to stabilize the climate) and the imperative of poverty alleviation (to liberate the 2.4 billion people living in "energy poverty") are actually given equal weight! The full report isn't in English yet, but you can download the summary at World in Transition: Towards Sustainable Energy Systems . By the way, our German friends argue that we still have time to hold the warming to acceptable limits. (April 2003)

The Big (Policy) Picture
Want to read a single policy paper? Try Sustainable Development South and North: Climate Change Policy Coherence in Global Trade and Financial Flows, by Daphne Wysham and a second author who wishes to remain anonymous. (Don't ask.) These few pages not only offer a quick tour of how the International Financial Institutions (The World Bank and all its cousins) promote "dirty development" and prevent energy leapfrogging, they also sketch out a few of the big themes that we need to keep in mind in deciding what do to do about it. Want to read about border tax adjustments, or a "dirty development mechanism," or, finally, a global carbon accounting system designed to prevent free riders like the U.S. from exploiting a non-global carbon treaty? This is a fine place to start.

Freak Weather
Want the details? See this site from the Center for International Disaster Information for a comprehensive disaster listing, or British Rising Tide for a focused review of 2002's freak weather. And it was freak weather indeed.

The End of Development
Our failure to successfully address climate change actually threatens to reverse the course of human development. Thus argues a report by London's New Economics Foundation and the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. Judge for yourself at The End of Development? Global warming, disasters and the Great Reversal of Human Progress. (Nov, 2002)

Even if the Climate Sensitivity is Low...
And, now, Climate Sensitivity Uncertainty and the Need for Energy Without CO2 Emission, published in the March 28 issue of Science. In it, Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Atul Jain, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University, demonstrate that even if climate sensitivity is in the low end of the accepted range, climate stabilization will require a massive transition to carbon-emission-free energy technologies during this century. In fact, "huge reductions in fossil-fuel carbon emissions will be required by the middle of this century," if we're going to make it to one of the a stabiliation pathways that lead to a 2 degree warming (the CAN target, just above) in 2150.

2002 International Energy Outlook
In case you were wondering, 2002's International Energy Outlook projects "that world energy demand will grow by two-thirds in the next 30 years;" while "fossil fuels will continue to dominate the energy mix" and that, ergo, "Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide will grow slightly more quickly than primary energy demand." Of course this is an old business as usual projection, from way back in September of 2002, and we all know that since then things have really turned around.

Who Dies, and Why?
Eric Klinenberg, Professor of Sociology at New York University, is the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, a fine book about the 1995 hot spell in Chicago that killed 700 people. If you find time to read Heat Wave, it will give you a new appreciation of the word "vulnerability," and some eye-opening insights on just who dies, and why. (Hint, they're generally old, and home alone.) Or listen to NPR's interview with Klinenberg.

Interactive Map: Early Warning Signs
This interactive global warming map, a cooperative effort by a number of the big U.S. environmental groups, is really pretty nice. It includes both "fingerprints" (direct manifestations of a widespread and long-term trend toward warmer global temperatures, as already documented and projected to continue by models of a changing climate) and "harbingers" (events that foreshadow the types of impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming). (Originally 1999, but revised and re-released in Jan of 2003.)

"The World's Most Controversial Philosopher"
Peter Singer endorses the notion of a per-capita climate accord in One World: The Ethics of Globalization, his new book. It contains a chapter called "One Atmosphere" which, it turns out, is a finely wrought argument for a per-capita climate deal -- as the way forward after the Kyoto Protocol, rather than an alternative to it. Some highlights:

* Singer reviews the ethical case for per-capita inequality, as it's been made by John Locke and Adam Smith, and even by John Rawls (who just died, by the way), and finds it wanting.

* He shows that per-capita allocations would be easier on the rich than historical allocations (like those likely to be implied by the Brazilian Proposal). That, in other words, they would be a significant compromise on the part of the South.

* He reviews the problem of differential national circumstances (e.g., hot and cold climates), and how these would bear on the matter of equal entitlements.

* He makes a nice case for simplicity, per se, as it bears on the problem of political compromise -- simplicity as in "one person, one share" or "one person, one vote."

* He deals with the problem of dictatorships and corruption, and how these could lead to the odious appropriation of trading revenues associated with per capita allocations.

If you're interested in the politics of global climate justice, you have to read this one.

Updated Ecological Footprint Calculations
If you think "ecological footprints" are just a vague greenie metaphor, check out Redefining Progress's recent recalculations of the footprints of 146 Nations. It's a fine piece of work, and here's Mathis Wackernagel, the report's principal author, with the bottom line: "Humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeds the Earth's biological capacity by 20 percent. Many nations, including the United States, are running even larger ecological deficits. As a consequence of this overuse, the human economy is liquidating the Earth's natural capital." (Nov 2002)

Options for Protecting the Climate
This is a more technical book, of the kind that will be familiar to attendees of the climate talks. But Options is more than a cut above the usual fare. In it, Kevin Baumert and a cabal of co-authors take a focused, well-considered look at most of the current ideas for the post-Kyoto period, from absolute caps for developing countries to a per-capita climate accord. The per-capita chapter is a bit behind the times (it doesn't include a good discussion of national circumstances), but still, it's quite fair. Put this one on your short list.

American Heat: Ethical Problems With The United States' Responses to Global Warming
A vast literature on global warming has emerged in the last two decades, but most all of it has been scientific or economic in nature. There's been little written on the ethics of climate change, or, indeed, on the role of "fairness" in the fight to stabilize the climate. You might, at this moment, reply that this is as it should be, that "ethics" is not a particularly significant part of the recent American policy. But this, we must hope, will soon change. For as Donald Brown argues in American Heat ethics, and justice in general, may well be the keys to the future.

Oiling the Wheels of War
Not to be reductionist or anything, and Michael Klare certainly isn't, but did you know that "only one country has the capacity to substantially increase oil production in the event of a Saudi collapse: Iraq. With proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of oil (compared with 49 billion for Russia and 15 billion for the Caspian states), Iraq alone can serve as a backup for Saudi Arabia." (Oct, 2002)

UN Blocks Future Earth Summits
No way we're not going to try to sum up the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. But if this short news report turns out to be right, history will do it for us: "No more summits are planned by the UN on environment and development until governments put into practice what they have decided to do. Instead... the UN will set up an unprecedented operation to report on how governments are performing... The move follows the disappointing Earth Summit in Johannesburg last week, which produced few new decisions." (September 2002)

The Politics of Empty Words
The climate negotiations went off to India, and the talk became about "adaptation." Sunita Narain of New Delhi's Center for Science and the Environment, a veteran observer of diplomatic duplicity, calls upon the Indian government, with little hope, "to situate the debate of vulnerability in the context of the urgent need for reducing emissions of the rich," and to "set up a political context to "adaptation" by discussing a framework of entitlements. Without this framework of rights, adaptation is something like the feel good factor of food aid, without the legally guaranteed right to food." (August 2002)

An SOS from the South
Eduardo Galeano is a Uruguayan environmentalist, historian and one of South America's leading social philosophers. So he can get away with telling it straight: "Beauty is beautiful if it can be sold and justice is just if it can be bought..." You might also take a look at his latest book, "Upside Down."

This Doesn't Look too Good ...
Speaking of economic decline, the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report tells us that future generations can expect to see a severe fall in living standards as humanity begins to pay for its huge environmental "overdraft" with planet Earth. Unless governments take urgent action to encourage a more sustainable way of life, human welfare will go into drastic decline by 2030 with falls in average life expectancies, lower educational levels and a shrinking economy. Cheers. (August 2002)

Bali Principles of Climate Justice
The Bali Principles define climate change from a human rights and environmental justice perspective. The principles were developed by an international coalition (including CorpWatch, the Third World Network, Oil Watch, and the Indigenous Environmental Network) at the final preparatory negotiations for the Earth Summit in Bali in June 2002.

10 Principles for Just Climate Change Policies in the U.S.
These 10 Principles reflect the perspective of the 28 U.S. based environmental justice, climate justice, religious and policy groups gathered together in the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative to call for action on climate change from the United States government. (August 2002)

Justice and Realism: an Interview with Benito Muller
In this wide-ranging interview, philosopher and mathematician Müller gives his views of "fairness" (and perceived unfairness) as political forces that no realist can afford to overlook. And he calls for COP8 to produce a New Delhi Mandatethat will commit us to focus on the impacts of climate change, impacts that, of course, will fall most heavily upon the innocent.

Note that Müller takes this opportunity to defend his "global compromise" approach as superior to classical Contraction and Convergence, which "deprives them of their legitimate surplus permits at the time when they need these most in their quest to reach a path of sustainable development - namely now." Click here for a reply by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. (August 2002)

Grandfathering is WAY More Expensive!
In case you were wondering, this report from Resources for the Future shows that auctions - in which corporations would have to pay for carbon emission allowances - would to be a lot less expensive to "consumers" and "society" than grandfathering, though (surprise) "producers" tend to prefer grandfathering. And the really nice thing about auctions is that they could provide cash for "other efficiency and distributional goals." Like, say, just transition programs. (August 2001)

Friends of the Earth Statement on Ecological Debt
Admit it. Every time you find yourself at a party and everyone around you is talking about ecological debt, you just nod and pretend you know what they're all talking about. Well stop pretending and join the in crowd! Just read this little intro and you'll be able to say "historical responsibility" without breaking a sweat.

The Human Genome as a Commons
It's not just the climate that's at stake. Nor even, solely, the air, the water, and the land. This essay, published in Worldwatch Magazine by EcoEquity's Tom Athanasiou and Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, considers the human genome itself as a commons, one on the cusp of privatization as humans themselves become objects of genetic "enhancement." (July 2002)

Why Early Action Matters
As the impacts of global warming becomes clear, it’s becoming obvious that we have to make it to the “soft landing corridor,” by whatever means necessary. As the science becomes clear, it’s becoming just as obvious that it won’t be easy. This recent piece by Brian O’Neill and Michael Oppenheimer, published in Science earlier this year, helps. The point is the graphs, which show that another few decades of business as usual is going to make it far harder to hold the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide down to any even plausibly “safe” level. (June 2002)

Good Vs. Evil: Thoughts of an AOSIS Ambassador
Antigua and Barbuda is a small island state whose existence is threatened by rising waters. Its US ambassador, Lionel Hurst, gave this speech on 28 June 2002 at the International Red Cross Conference on Climate Change and Natural Disasters in The Hague. You're busy but you should read it anyways, especially if you haven't spent enough time thinking about the parallels between global warming and human slavery. (July 2002)

A Better World Is Possible
Rumor is that the International Forum on Globalization's book on "Alternatives to Economic Globalization" is finally available. What we know for sure is that you can download the 20 page abstract, and that this nest of mad radicals have penned some nicely measured prose: E.g., "There is an appropriate place for private ownership and markets to play in the management, allocation, and delivery of certain common heritage resources, as for example land, within a framework of effective democratically accountable public regulation that guarantees fair pricing, equitable access, quality, and public stewardship." (Spring 2002)

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth
Finally, a book that doesn't just focus on the atmospheric commons (like our own Dead Heat), but, rather, casts the wider net: "public lands, the broadcast airwaves, the Internet, the public domain of knowledge and creativity, publicly funded medicines, and even our genes." Could have been more about the atmosphere, come to think of it... And if you want to learn more about the politics of the commons, author David Bollier has also put together this great list of resources.

An Assessment of Vulnerability
Here's an oldie but goodie: a two year old IPCC special report on The Regional Impacts of Climate Change. If you're looking for the grim facts, all in one place and with the imprimatur of formal scientific knowledge, you can't do much better than this.

Clean Energy and Jobs: A Comprehensive Approach to Climate and Energy Policy
Clean Energy and Jobs has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. It outlines a detailed plan that would cut US carbon emissions in half over a mere 20 years, and radically reduce US reliance on foreign oil in the bargain, while at the same creating 1.4 million jobs. It's been endorsed by the Service Employees International Union, America's largest and fastest-growing union, by the Steelworkers, representing energy-intensive industries and also some coal miners, and by UNITE, as well as by the presidents of the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. (March 2002)

For statements by unions and environmentalists endorsing Clean Energy and Jobs, see the new website of the Blue Green Alliance.

Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Views from the South
Lots of fine stuff is being written about climate equity, but this piece stands out. Written by a trio of southern policy activists -- Youba Sokona of Senegal, Adil Najam of Pakistan, and Saleemul Huq of Bangladesh -- this brief essay offers an excellent glimpse into the future of the climate policy debate. It's critical of Kyoto, but in the right way, for it grants Kyoto's necessity, and sees the opportunity Kyoto's ratification would open. And while it sharply critiques Kyoto trading regime, it advocates "contraction and convergence," which would require trading to work. And it does all this with the concerns of the poorest and most vulnerable in mind. (Feb 2002)

Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative
The EJCC is designed to bring US Environmental Justice groups together to engage the political challenge of climate change. Check out the site, and you'll see that the match makes excellent sense. Good places to start reading are the Climate Change And Environmental Justice Fact Sheet and the Statement Of Solidarity. EcoEquity, by the way, is a proud member of the EJCCI. (Feb 2002)

Beyond Kyoto Lite
Ross Gelbspan, the passionate and independently minded author of The Heat is On, here argues that the Bush administration's absence from the climate talks could actually lead other nations to pursue a bolder approach. He also sketches out just what he has in mind. (Feb 2002)

Options for Differentiation of Future Commitments in Climate Policy
The language here is that of mainstream Climate Policy, but you don't have to read between the lines to get the point. If we want to stay below the EU target of a maximum global temperature increase of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, there are basically two options: (1) the gradual evolution of the Kyoto framework and (2) "contraction and convergence, with universal participation and a convergence of per capita emission permits." Marcel M. Berk and Michel G.J. den Elzen of Netherlands' RIVM conclude that, "in the case of stringent climate targets, a convergence regime seems to provide more incentives for a timely participation of developing countries, and opportunities for an effective and efficient regime for controlling global emissions than increasing participation." (Sept 2001)

Projected Impacts of Climate Change of US Native Communities
If you're interested in seeing the U.S. National Assessment Overview of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Native America, this is the place to go. If your interested in seeing the assessment for your particular bit of the US of A, check out the National Assessment proper. (2001)

On Strategies for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
This one was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and its lead author is Bert Bolin, chairman emeritus of the IPCC. These are points worth mentioning because the focus of this piece is future emissions equity between countries, and, all things considered, it constitutes a nice step forward, towards a more careful analysis of contraction and convergence than we're used to seeing. (2001)

Anil Agarwal (1947-2002) Anil Agarwal just died. He'll be remembered, and missed, and not only in India, where he was the founder and leader of the Centre for Science and Environment. He'll be remembered as well by the friends of environmental justice, and of climate justice in particular. Anil, with Sunita Narian, was the co-author of Global Warming in an Unequal World, which is in many ways the foundational text of the climate equity movement. We interviewed Anil soon after The Hague; the interview is worth a look, and not just for historical reasons. Anil, you see, was that rarest of animals… an honest man.

Who's Responsible for Climate Change? This really shouldn't be missed. WRI collected the data, hired the cartographers, and then put together this lovely "Contributions to global warming" map. Each region's area is drawn in proportion to its historical fossil fuel emissions (1990 to 1999), and the result is pretty hard to misunderstand. Forget the gargantuan US; even Japan is bigger than Africa! The map is easy to download, print, email, or tattoo onto your chest. (December 2001)

Surprise! Climate Change will Widen the Gulf between Rich and Poor A recent report by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis indicates that global agricultural productivity will rise with the temperature for the next 70 years. It might not — lots of crop ecologists are skeptical — but even if it does, the poor will still suffer. According to the IIAPA study, two billion people around the world, particularly in India and Africa, will face large declines in the yields of key food crops.

See also Billions Across The Tropics Face Hunger And Starvation As Big Drop In Crop Yields Forecast, wherein the UNEP adds that the harvests of some of the world's most important food crops could fall by as much as a third in the tropical parts of the planet. (November 2001)

100 Nobel Laureates: Security Demands Environmental and Social Reform This particular Laureates statement didn't get much coverage, but you can't beat it for pithy realism. It begins: "The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate and manifestly unjust. It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich..." And do note, if you will, how few economists number among the signers. (December 2001)

Global Warming and Ecological Debt Do the rich countries owe a massive "ecological debt" to the poor? Do Third World debt and global warming lead to the same fateful dilemmas? Will "the equal distribution of property rights in the air above our heads" mean "the biggest economic and geo-political realignment of recent history." Is equity the key to realism? Andrew Simms, a veteran of the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign who's now with Britain's New Economics Foundation, thinks so, and he makes a pretty good case! And he argues that an "environmental war economy," in which we all pull together to face the common threat, would actually be more fun than shopping.

The ideas here, by the way, are actively in play. See for example, Globalization, Ecological debt, Climate change and Sustainability, a description of a conference that you've already missed. (Winter 2001)

Are you Scared Yet? The National Academy report you've been waiting for, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises explains that while "most climate-change research has focused on gradual changes… new evidence shows that periods of gradual change in Earth's past were punctuated by episodes of abrupt change, including temperature changes of about 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit, in only a decade in some places." There were, of course, "severe floods and droughts."

If you want more (sorry, this one isn't online) go out of your way to read Elizabeth Kolbert's Ice Memory in the January 7th issue of the New Yorker. Did you know, for example, that, in the (likely) event of an atmospheric carbon doubling, the Arctic ice could be gone by 2050? And don't miss the last page! (Winter 2001)

The Bonn Declaration of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities The Bonn Declaration of the Third International Forum of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on Climate Change builds on previous statements. It's probably the best place to start, if you want to know the indigenous view of the UNFCCC and Kyoto processes, as they have been and as they will be. And you should. (July, 2001)

The Inequality Divide: Some New Numbers Next time a "friend" starts talking about "the population problem," point them to these recent stats on rich world vs. poor world consumption. The bottom line: there may be a lot more of "them" down in the South, but our footprint is far, far larger. Remember this: "A child born today in an industrialized country will add more to consumption and pollution over his or her lifetime than 30-50 children born in developing nation." (December 2001).

The Third Assessment Report is now Online The entire text of the TAR is now online, in HTML, and it's searchable. Take a special look at chapter one of the Mitigation report for a sense of the showdown that occurred between the US and the neoclassical economists on one side, and "the equity people" on the other. (For an intro of the issues here, see our interview with Wolfgang Sachs).

The Real Marrakech Declaration As COP7 stumbled towards its success, the editors of the Climate Action Network's ECO newsletter turned from the minutia of a deal they could no longer influence and faced the future. The road from Rio had ended in Marrakech with a ratifiable version of a phase1 climate treaty. And meanwhile, the bright delusions of the 1990s had crashed into dust.

Barring (another) unforeseen catastrophe, 2002 will see the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It will also see the tenth anniversary of the Earth Summit, and with it reams of grim reflections on how little has been accomplished. And, the way things are going, it will see the international climate movement lift its head and look forward to the only phase2 deal that can possibly stick -- one that is both global and just.

Here then is the climate (justice) agenda, as seen from CAN's last late night COP7 office. If ever something deserved a close reading, this is it.

Tuvaluans Begin to Evacuate their Islands The people of Tuvalu, a Pacific nation of nine islands, plan to start leaving in 2002. They say the sea levels, already too high, are destroying their islands, and they blame climate change. The first group to leave, from a total population of around 10,000, will resettle in New Zealand, which has agreed to accept an annual quota of Tuvaluans.

Clean Energy Blueprint In the wake of September 11th's rather grim lesson in geopolitics, over a hundred US environmental organizations are urging an alternative energy strategy that aims to reduce dependence on imported oil through investments in renewable energy sources such as wind, biomass, and solar power. The Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Energy Blueprint already has the support of Senator James Jeffords, who chairs the environment committee. (October 2001)

Halfway to the Future The Tellus Institute has released a fine, accessible summary of the global predicament. And after September 11th, its "three possible futures" conclusion can only be read as a warning: Conventional Worlds is a scenario governed by today's dominant values and trends. Fortress Worlds depicts a future in which crisis, conflict and environmental degradation lead to a degeneration of civilization. Finally, Great Transitions is a future that results from responses to the sustainability challenge based on new values and humanistic forms of social and economical organization. We'll take door number three. (September 2001)

A New Agenda to Counter Terrorism "The challenge is to construct a counter-terrorism policy that demonstrates America's new commitment to protecting Americans and U.S. national security, while at the same time asserting our new commitment to constructing an international framework of peace, justice, and security that keeps terrorists out in the cold--with no home, no supporters, no money, and no rallying cry." (October 2001)

Solidarity Statement on Environmental Justice and Climate Change When the US delegation walked out of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban South Africa, a group of American environmental justice activists was among the outraged onlookers. Their statement is notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the strong link it draws between environmental justice and climate change. The issue here is Just Transitions, and you'll be hearing a lot more about it in the years to come. (September 2001).

Democracy or Carbocracy? England's Corner House is an "NGO which aims to support the growth of a democratic, equitable, and non-discriminatory civil society in which communities have control over the resources and decisions that affect their lives and means of livelihood." It's deeply respected among grassroots greens around the world, and for good reason. Here, the crew takes its scalpels to the problem of carbon markets and democracy. You may disagree, but you should know the argument. (October 2001)

De-Carbonize the World Bank! The international campaign to force the World Bank and other International Financial Institutions to stop funding fossil-fuel development is picking up steam. As concerns about climate escalate, and as the negative impacts of extractive industries become well known, people around the world are asking why publicly financed institutions are pushing extraction economies and fossil fuel dependence rather than clean energy. The Oilwatchnetwork has similarly called for a moratorium on investments in these sectors.

Red Cross/Crescent World Disasters Report 2001 "In many cases, nature's contribution to "natural" disasters is simply to expose the effects of deeper, structural causes - from global warming and unplanned urbanization to trade liberalization and political marginalization. The effects of man's action are often evident - many natural catastrophes are un/natural in their origins." (Summer, 2001)

Java Climate Model A fantastic site. Ben Matthews, the man behind the Java code, has done a lovely job of making contraction and convergence accessible to anyone with a web browser and an attention span. Ben's model is getting very sophisticated, and allows you to interactively compare your favorite mitigation scenarios against the IPCC's own SRES baselines. Truly, truly, cool.

The IPCC SRES Scenarios The IPCC's recent work includes a major advance in the scenarios department, one that most people haven't really appreciated yet. The details are all here, but what it comes down to is that climate futurism is now organized into "storylines" defined by 1) Globalization or Regionalization on one axis and 2) "Emphasis on Material Wealth" or "Emphasis on sustainability and equity" on the other. Note that the world we want is the "B1 World," where Globalization meets "sustainability and equity."

IPCC Third Assessment Report on Mitigation Equity was a big issue in the TAR's mitigation working group (Working Group 3). This link takes you to both the Summary for Policy Makers and the Technical Summary, which is all we can find on the web. Unfortunately, you really have to be able to read between the lines to guess, from these summaries, what actually went on in WG3. Look at chapter one of the report itself, available from Cambridge University Press, and you'll get a better sense of the showdown that occurred between the US and the neoclassical economists on one side, and the "equity people on the other." And, for a discreet intro, see our interview with Wolfgang Sachs (Spring, 2001)

Greenpeace Analysis of Pronk's Compromise It's technical, and it's grim. E.g.: "It would be ironic in the extreme if the rules adopted for the Protocol at COPbis were to permit virtually business as usual emissions from Annex B Parties by adopting rules which the USA had long fought for." Click to Climate, then Documents, then Reports. (June 2001)

"Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism"
Who Owns the Sky tries to make a realistic proposal for a fair way of managing the US's transition away from carbon-based fuels, and, in many ways, it actually succeeds. Note, in particular, that the Sky Trust would support a U.S. transition fund to the tune of perhaps $25 billion a year. SeeCapitalism 2.0? for our review. (July 2001)

Nice "Plan B" Article from the London Guardian
The Global Commons Institute has raised some NGO eyebrows over the years by promoting Contraction and Convergence as a "Plan B" that could be brought to bear after a Kyoto-process collapse. Here John Vidal, the Guardian's environment editor, takes his own shot at those same eyebrows. (June 2001)

WRI report on the US and Developing Countries
We won't pretend we agree with WRI about everything, but this one isn't bad. E.g.: "Such criteria as historical emissions, income, emissions per capita, and vulnerability, among others, should be used to help determine the conditions under which countries should be expected to make formal commitments to reduce emissions or carbon intensity." (June 2001)

Catholic Bishops' Statement on Climate Change
Some of us atheists would be a lot happier if our fellows took ethics as seriously as do the Catholic bishops. In this long-awaited statement, they're particularly concerned about the harm global warming will do to the world's poor, they assert that poor nations have a "right to economic development," and they call upon the rich world to help the poor develop clean energy technologies. (June 2001)