Down to Earth

So I must sadly inform all of you dear readers that today will be my last day posting here at Down To Earth. I may still be writing about climate change and other environmental topics for MSN occasionally, so I won't say farewell forever. In the meantime, be sure to check out my daily blogging over on Tapped, and my regular articles on The American Prospect online. I will also be writing for WireTap when I can, blogging at Grist occasionally, and I'll probably turn up a few other places as well. Who knows?

And just so you're not without daily green news, be sure to check out these sites:

Grist, and its blog, Gristmill, give you environmental news with a sense of humor.
Treehugger gives you green lifestyle, tech, and news coverage.
Ecorazzi lets you in on the green news among celebs.
RealClimate is a blog about climate change run by real climate scientists.
The Intersection pools some of the best science writers from the Seed crowd together in one blog.
DeSmogBlog gives you some tools for interpreting what's going on and what to do about it.
ClimateProgress is a thorough climate change blog run by Joe Romm, who is one smart guy.
WorldChanging envisions a better, more sustainable future.
The Daily Score gives you enviro news from the Northwest, as well as other places.
Green Car Congress is about, well, cars.
The Daily Green is a new lifestyle online mag with lots of tips and how-tos.
Lime is focused on healthy living.
Ideal Bite sends you tips by email every day.
The Oil Drum is about oil and the future of energy.
Groovy Green brings you news to help green your life.

Over the course of the next year, I guarantee you will hear more about climate change than you ever thought possible, and that by the time 2009 rolls around, this will be a different country and a different world. And by different, I mean better.

Earlier this week, I mentioned some of the cool work going on at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative meeting in New York, like Brad Pitt giving away a huge chunk of change to rebuild New Orleans greenly. The summit has made a lot of other environmental strides this week as well.

It has brought together 1,200+ people from 72 countries, 52 current and former heads of state, and of course famous people and people who work for aid and charity organizations. And via Reuters, some other stats:

• People who do not make good on their commitments are not invited back. This year five people who had paid the membership fee to attend were asked not to come and had their money returned for not fulfilling their pledges, down from 17 people last year.
• During the past two years the initiative has avoided or reduced 20,070,524 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
• The initiative has helped 3,234,800 people gain access to clean energy services in the developing world.
• By the end of this year the initiative will have treated 34 million people for neglected tropical diseases.

And from the Los Angeles Times today, we learn that eight U.S. utility companies pledged to invest $3 billion over three years toward reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 5 million tons each a year. They reckon that's about like taking a million cars off the road.

Other pledged to invest in building schools, ending poverty, fighting disease, and conquering all manner of problems that continue to plague mankind. Thank goodness for rich, famous, do-gooder types.

I've got two new stories up this week that I've been meaning to point out to everyone. On Tuesday, my piece about different green legislation in the works in the U.S. went up on the main page of this site. It talks about what's going on with the energy bill, which passed in both the House and Senate last summer, but their versions differed somewhat, and now they're in negotiations about what a compromise will look like. It also looks at some of the climate change legislation that our senators and representatives are hard at work on, and the prospects of getting a good one passed this session.

And though I only mention it briefly in that article, the other agenda item at the top of the list for addressing climate change is international legislation. The UN hosted a summit on it earlier this week, and for the past two days, Bush has been leading meetings in DC with the leaders of other major-emitting nations. I weighed in on the relevance of those two summits over at The American Prospect yesterday:

Monday's events at the United Nations -- the climate-related ones, not the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spectacle -- were downplayed in most of the major media coverage as having little significance. Time called it "hot air," and the Guardian UK bemoaned the events as simply more talk as the world stumbles ever-closer toward a climate disaster. But the summit, which kicked off a week of climate-change talks here in the United States, was a notable landmark on what has been, and will continue to be, a long road to a comprehensive and binding international treaty on climate change.

The summit came just before the official start of the 62nd U.N. General Assembly, and was intended to create a common language among nations on climate change as they prepare to dispatch negotiators to Bali, Indonesia, in December, where they will begin hashing out a post-Kyoto plan. The Kyoto Protocol will run its course by 2012, and it's likely that a new deal will take two years to formulate and two more to ratify. This week's discussion aimed to up the political ante in the hopes that the Bali meeting will produce a successor to Kyoto rather than more talk.

You should check out the rest of the piece, but mostly it just goes on to say that Bush's alternative meetings are pretty much just more sandbagging while he waits for a new president to clean up this mess. That won't stop the rest of the world though, who are already surging ahead with emissions cuts, clean energy, and other positive green advances. By the time we get there, though, we're likely to be playing catch up.

I'm writing live from the GOP debates at Morgan State University in Baltimore tonight, waiting for them to begin. Only four of the candidates are slated to appear – less than half of them, which is pretty depressing. I'm not sure if they'll address climate change. Updates later if they do.

While we're on the topic of the GOP, since I blogged about the Dems last night, I figure I should touch about their climate change policies and stances while I'm at it. So, a run down:

Sam Brownback thinks ethanol is cool, but he doesn't want cap on carbon because he still thinks it will hurt the economy. Too bad there won't be an economy if we don't get our stuff together. Anyway, he also thinks we should solve our energy woes by drilling for oil at home.

Duncan Hunter doesn't really talk about climate or energy, but doesn't have a good record on it, either.

Mike Huckabee thinks we should be energy independent and wants to do it by his second term, saying it will be a top priority if he's president.

Rudy Giuliani admits that global warming is real, but still likes dirty energy. He's OK with nukes and coal and oil, too.

John McCain has the best climate and energy record, and he was one of the guys behind the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, 2005, and 2007. Actually, his is the only one among the GOP candidates that I would call "good." That bill calls for capping emissions and lowering them 65 percent by 2050, and would set up a carbon trading scheme.

Ron Paul is crazy. That's all I have to say on that one.

Mitt Romney won't say whether or not he thinks global warming is real, but as governor of Massachusetts he sacked a plan to join the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Tom Tancredo ... says An Inconvenient Truth is his favorite work of fiction. I'll leave it at that.

I know I like to complain about climate change, but these guys really have something to complain about: tiny islands in the middle of the ever-rising seas. From Planet Ark:

Small islands, home to 5 percent of the world's population, could disappear under rising oceans as the Earth warms, delegates from 37 small island states warned on Monday.

"As the proverbial canary in the coal mine, small island states have repeatedly raised the alarm bells of global warming over the last 15 years," Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Patteson Oti told a news conference.

The Solomon Islands have teamed up with the other 36 islands to form the Alliance of Small Island States. These guys will have to deal with more frequent and more severe storms, dying fish, ruined coral reefs, and possibly the elimination of their entire nation. Think of places like Tuvalu, the Polynesian Island that might be gone within our lifetime. Pretty soon the concept of a small, desert island might be a thing of the past.

Which brings us today, where the "Major Economies" summit is going down over at the State Department. In his address this morning, James L. Connaughton, who chairs the Council on Environmental Quality, told the gathered leaders that they'll be "talking about each of us developing national commitments beyond 2012." And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed what the administration has been pushing since they finally came around to admitting climate change is real and caused by humans:

First, we should agree upon a long-term goal for greenhouse gas reduction. Climate change is a generational challenge, and it requires a serious long-term commitment to reverse the growth in global emissions to the point where we can stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. We should do this, as we agreed in the UN Framework Convention, in a timeframe that allows the environment to adapt and in a way that ensures continued global economic development.

And what they're pushing is this: lofty, far-off goals that sound good on paper but don't get anything done, voluntary cuts decided upon by each country separately, and prioritizing economic growth at any cost. While they're encouraging country-by-country goals, they're threatening to veto the landmark energy bill being negotiated in the House and Senate, the Water Resources Development Act recently passed, and any climate bill that makes it through this Congress. The Bush administration is still not taking the threat of global warming seriously -- nor are they intending to do much about it while in office.

My buddy Schags over at Gristmill points out that while "carbon neutral" was the word of the year last year according to the New Oxford American Dictionary (though I would argue that it's, uh, two words, there are some other green-related words that are just getting their chance to shine – "green audit," "carbon footprint," and "carbon trading" just made it into the shorter version of the Oxford American Dictionary. Nice.

Speaking of words, I'm watching the Democratic debate that's going down in New Hampshire tonight as I write, where they're exchanging words on all the pertinent subjects. So far they've talked about Iraq of course, Social Security, whether or not to raise the drinking age, health care ... it has covered a lot. But nothing on global warming. Global warming! It's climate change week, people! Oh, wait, now they're on to climate stuff, but this is in the "lightning round," where each candidate gets just 30 seconds to talk. Kucinich decried nukes, and so did Gravel. Edwards says we need to stop investing in nuclear, and Obama said we shouldn't write it off. Clinton ... waffled and said no nuclear investment till we figure out what to do with the waste. Gravel also said we should have a tax on carbon. Someone else said something about weening America off Middle Eastern oil. Screw that – it's gotta be off oil, period, and off coal, too. We need clean energy as well as energy independence – kill two birds with one stone, folks. Ah, crap. They're done talking about the environment already.

It's a shame – Tim Russert has been doing such a good job moderating. But what's with almost totally ignoring the looming existential crisis, people?

An interesting aside: Russert noted that if Clinton wins the nomination, it will be 28 years – 1980 to 2008 – that there has been a Clinton or a Bush on the ballot. That's longer than I've been alive.. Every election I've been alive for will have featured someone from those two dynasties. And if she wins the presidency, it will be Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton, 41, 42, 43, and 44. How scary. Nothing against ... uh, half of them. But really, I don't like to think of America as the kind of place where that happens.

I'll be heading up to Baltimore for the GOP debates tomorrow, so expect some blogging on that.

Bill Clinton is hosting the third annual Clinton Global Initiative up in New York this week, which brings together lots of rich people and lots of smart people for some do-gooderism. There are some famous do-gooders too, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (or Brangelina, if you prefer), and they're putting their money and idealism behind some cool projects, too. Today Brad announced that he's partnering with Steve Bing, the super-rich guy who show up in the news pretty regularly, to help rebuild New Orleans sustainably. They'll be investing $5 million each in a new community of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, the part of New Orleans hit hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina, and they're asking other rich folks to help by investing in the project. They're building 150 houses, and it's part of his new "Make it Right" project.

According to the press release from Pitt's people, the project be green, affordable, and sustainable, and serve as a model for other development projects there. It will be created by green architect William McDonough and a team of local, national, and international green architects. And the houses will be provided to residents who lost there homes at a rate that they can afford, and will use cheap, renewable energy, which will also help families save money.

Way to go, Brad and Steve, and to all the do-gooders meeting up in New York this week. Climate change is a major part of the agenda, and we'll surely see more good news coming out of the meeting.

I totally forgot to mention this, but the pay walls have fallen at the New York Times, and they may be falling at the Wall Street Journal. Hurray for free content! Now I (and everyone else) can get the commentary from the Times that they've been missing. Today's column from Tom Friedman is a good place to start.

China today is entering a really delicate phase on the climate-energy issue -- the phase I like to call “The Wal-Mart environmental moment.” I wish the same could be said of America and President Bush.

The "Wal-Mart environmental moment" starts with the C.E.O. adopting a green branding strategy as a purely defensive, public relations, marketing move. Then an accident happens — someone in the shipping department takes it seriously and comes up with a new way to package the latest product and saves $100,000. This gets the attention of the C.E.O., who turns to his P.R. adviser and says, "Well, isn’t that interesting? Get me a sustainability expert. Let’s do this some more."

Friedman outlines how greening works in the business world. After trying it out, business leaders realize that it's not only a good environmental move, but a smart business plan, and then they run with it. That's what Wal-Mart has done, and now it's bringing China with it through the Carbon Disclosure Project, which measures the amount of energy it takes to create their products, most of which come from China. Friedman asks why the United States as a whole can't do the same – take environmental steps, bring the rest of the world along with us, and make sure everyone profits in the process – as we head up climate talks this week. He concludes:

Leadership is about “follow me” not “after you.” Getting our national climate regulations in order is necessary, but it will not be sufficient to move China. We have to show them what Wal-Mart is showing its competitors -- that green is not just right for the world, it is better, more profitable, more healthy, more innovative, more efficient, more successful. If Wal-Mart can lead, and California can lead, why can’t America?

That said, it should also be noted that President Bush will be conducting his own talks here in DC later this week with the leaders of the world's 16 largest emitters. While Bush says the "Major Economies" summit is meant to supplement the UN conversations, many believe he is trying to subvert the UN process. Most of the representatives at yesterday's summit called for binding targets, a price on carbon, increased emphasis on adaptation strategies and financing plans, and a plan that takes into account the needs of the developing nations. While some called for exemption for developing nations, more emphasis was placed on the need for a sliding-scale system that doesn't hold everyone to the same goals, at least not immediately, but at the same time, doesn't let less-developed nations off the hook for cuts. Bush, however, has set only aspirational goals been to resistant to setting binding targets, creating enforcement mechanisms, or establishing penalties for non-compliance. He has instead called for voluntary programs for emissions reductions, and wants to allow each nation to determine its own goals, and he is expected to maintain that line of negotiating this week as he meets with representatives from the G8 as well as Indonesia, Brazil, China, and India.

Scientists say we need 80 percent cuts by 2050 if we're going to avert real problems. Less than that will mean we're still pretty screwed. An official I talked to after yesterday's meeting equated "voluntary" targets to making voluntary speed limits, and I think that's about right. Voluntary isn't enough, and let's hope that's what the other leaders drive home to Bush in their special secret sessions later this week.

Reflecting back on yesterday's meeting at the U.N., I have to say, it was quite fascinating to see how it all goes down when you get the world's leaders together to work out common problems and create common goals. Here were the people I've read about and watched on television for years, gathered in one place, and at once united by a common issue: climate change. We hear so often about the differences between world leaders, and about bickering and disagreements. But yesterday, for the most part, there wasn't fighting about the technicalities of what a post-Kyoto plan should look like. Instead, leaders presented a united front against the common problem of climate change, and a unanimous agreement about the threat is large, but solutions are possible.

I think climate change could really be a huge uniter for the nations of the world. For once we aren't really fighting each other, even if we might disagree about the path we need to take to solve this problem. It could also religitimize the United Nations as a place for problem-solving and action. Too many write off the UN as toothless or inefficient. But this sort of problem is the reason the UN exists, and the reason yesterday's summit and the upcoming negotiations in Bali should be taken seriously.

On another note from yesterday's climate meeting at the UN, I spent several hours yesterday listening to leaders make passionate speeches about the need to mitigate our effects on the planet, leaders that included Federal Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and Bolivian President Evo Morales. Each leader gets five minutes to stand before the others assembled in their plenary session, and they've all discussed what you'd expect – targets, the need for sustainable development, and just how grave a concern climate change has become in the years since Kyoto. But that's it – they talk, others listen, others talk. So I could share the frustration of president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, who led off his speech by saying he hoped this whole thing would be a more interactive session. I think he wanted fiery debates on mitigation strategies, which would have been a whole lot more exciting – and probably more productive.

On a similar note, there were separate sessions for each general area of climate change – mitigation, adaptation, financing, technology. But I doubt any of the delegates have an interest in just one of those subject areas. Wouldn't it make more sense to have one general assembly with everyone involved, and have representatives with compelling stories address the entire body? And perhaps have some conversation rather than endless speechification? If I were a head of state -- don't I wish? -- I would want to hear about all these topics, to get a more accurate image of the threat we face, how others are dealing with it, and what our priorities should be going into Bali. And I'd want to be able to ask questions and have a conversation. I'm just saying. That's what I'd want.

I missed Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech this morning while I was darting off to learn about mitigation strategies. Upon examining the transcript, it seems like it was by and large a justifiably self-congratulatory speech about what they have been able to achieve in California and now in the Western states, and in the economic gains that the state has earned as an early adopter in the technology sector. A chunk of his speech also gets to what needs to happen to get an international climate pact to the next level:

I believe California will do great things, amazing things. But we need the world to do great things too. The time has come to stop looking back at the Kyoto protocol. It is time to stop looking back in blame or suspicion. The consequences of global climate change are so pressing, it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past. What matters is who is answerable to the future. And that means all of us. The rich nations and the poor nations have different responsibilities, but one responsibility we all have is action.

I've got mixed thoughts on Schwarzenegger's "put up or shut up" posturing. On the one hand, it seems to fall into the same rhetorical pattern that guided our Kyoto policy: it's not us, it's them, and we're not in until they're in. But at the same time, thinking about Bali not as the Next Kyoto or as the U.S., et al, trying to make good on a past screw up, but as its own new, innovative, opportunity-rich pact offers a more positive spin on today's events and December's meeting.

Some of my colleagues (Matt, Ezra, and Brian Beutler) have expressed some cynicism about today's events, and I can't say I blame them. Last night the assorted bloggers gathered to take in the spectacle today met with some important folks-who-know-and-do-stuff at various divisions of the UN, and all of us were clearly bringing with us a certain degree of pessimism about the ability of what happens today to translate to the level of commitment that we need to see down the line in Bali.

While I'm certain that there's a lot of good conversation to be had here today, it's true, I do have to look at it from the U.S. politics side of the game. And on that side I expect to see big aspirational promises from Bush and co., but no agreement to mandatory cuts and targets. I fully expect the administration to punt on climate change, and to do their best to undermine the U.N. while waiting for the clock to run out on their term. But that said, the U.N. can't wait for the clock to run out to get started on this. Kyoto expires in 2012, and it's probably going to take two years to come up with a new pact and two years to get it ratified; there isn't a whole lot of time to waste waiting for the administration to change.

So watching what's going on here today, one really has to keep in mind that what everyone else will do is the most important factor here – whether they'll pool their efforts to put pressure on the U.S., whether they'll move forward with binding targets without U.S. consent, and whether they'll create a plan that efficiently addresses mitigation, adaptation, financing, and technological needs. Climate change could be an issue that reinvigorates the U.N. and reaffirms that they can play an important role in international politics. They could craft a binding treaty that the next administration would be compelled to sign onto. Or the rest of the world could just figure that they're off the hook on this one, at least until a new administration is in power in the U.S., or worse yet, cave to crafting something weak. So while it's true that we can't expect anything big today outside of conversations on the subject, those conversations alone are big.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon started off Monday's summit on climate change -- the first of its kind for the UN -- by attempting to reaffirm the importance of the UN in crafting a post-Kyoto plan. In his opening remarks, he made not-so-subtle jabs at the Bush administration's attempts to undermine today's meeting with talks later in the week between the heads of state from only the world's biggest economies.

"The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," said Ban, who called today's meeting in hopes that it would push the nations toward targets and deadlines for December's meeting in Bali.

Bush, who has long-opposed any forced compliance on emissions targets, is not in attendance for today's meetings, but he will be at a dinner meeting tonight that Ban called with roughly 20 world leaders. The Bush administration has resisted any discussion of targets and mandatory cuts, which they maintain would be damaging to the U.S. economy, proposing instead that we rely on voluntary cuts and increased investment in technological innovations. He is expected to push this at his meetings later in the week, while most of the delegates speaking in the mitigation plenary session today will be calling for concrete, mandatory cuts, carbon trading schemes, and system that both affords flexibility to distinguish between developed and developing countries and locks major emitters into a series of cuts.

Ban argued that inaction will prove far more dangerous to both the U.S. and the world's economy than cutting emissions now. ''Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term,'' he said.