COP15 ended today with a political agreement to cap temperature rise to 2°C, reduce GHG emissions and raise financial assistance to developing countries (to $30 billion over the next three years) to adapt and mitigate against climate change. Many stake holders were disappointed that the meeting ended without reaching a legally binding agreement to reduce GHG emissions, which was no surprise to most experts. Many criticized this agreement as low in ambitions, poor on targets and vague on money. However, it represents a small but important step to move in the right direction, where countries recognize joint and differential responsibilities tailored to their economic and geopolitical capabilities and constraints. (more…)
Archive for December, 2009
Global Warming and Global Whining
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009If you are not represented at this table, you might be part of the menu
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Copenhagen is a very exciting place right now, with many contrasts. One of the jewels of this beautiful city is Tivoli, a sort of “Disneyland in Las Vegas” with lots of bright and colorful lights. I wonder what its carbon footprint is. Probably a lot less than it appears, due to the prevalence of wind energy here. The Bella Center, the main site for COP15, is densely packed with people of unparalleled cultural and philosophical diversity and competing interests. A friend once told me that political negotiations get more vicious when the stakes are lower. Here, it is quite the opposite.
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The end of the saga, I
Monday, December 21st, 2009You know you’ve had a long day when your alarm clock rings for the second time and you can’t remember going to bed. That’s exactly the situation I found myself in last night upon arriving in Houston – my iPod making the desperate chirping noise to let me know it was officially 4 a.m. in Copenhagen. The brutal wakeup earlier that day, over 5000 miles and what seemed like worlds away, came only about five short hours after President Obama’s press broadcast, in which he repeatedly stressed the political agreement (read: hogwash) that came out of COP15. Coincidentally, by the time I woke up on that very early and cold Saturday morning in Denmark, Mr. Obama’s Air Force One jet had already re-entered American atmosphere and had probably touched down in D.C. (more…)
Nopenhagen: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Part I
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Above, America is awarded one of the shameful “Fossil of the Day” distinctions from Avaaz.org for thwarting negotiations. Note the Sen. Inhofe dollars. Witty.
Let’s start with the Bad, shall we?
Copenhagen did not end in a fair, ambitious, binding agreement, nor anything even near it. The meager three page “Copenhagen Accord” Barack Obama hashed out with leaders from China, India, Brazil and South Africa failed to meet even the most modest expectations of the conference, and stood as an almost mocking testament to those who urged the necessity of securing binding treaty by 2010. The US president calls the accord “an unprecedented breakthrough” but most believe it is laughably little too late. We came here to save the planet and instead, it seems, we saved face.
Joining the blog
Monday, December 21st, 2009Hello everyone,
Due to technical issues, I was unable to post until now, but better late than never!
Before leaving for Copenhagen, I had high hopes for the impact Copenhagen would leave on the world, and still do. Realistically, I did not think any great change would take place in a single week after years of carbon emission. However, in negotiating ways to mitigate and adapt to global warming, I could see great change in the future. (more…)
Climate Crackdowns
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Things are getting pretty weird at the Bella Center. Events are closing up and locking down. Key heads of state are arriving on their private jets. Evo Morales is still wearing really ugly sweaters? Will there ever be any progress on a binding agreement?
The lost (?) art of carbon taxation
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Given that climate change is occurring and that it results from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, international focus must now shift to finding ways to successfully mitigate the growing problem. Since the industrial revolution, the world has used roughly half of its carbon dioxide budget, which is defined as the total amount of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere such that global mean temperature rises (from pre-industrial reference) do not exceed two degrees Celsius. However, because carbon dioxide emission rates continue to grow, the timescale associated with the burning of this second half of the budget is considerably less than the one of the first half (1850-2010, or roughly 160 years). The image below presents a distortion of the world map which displays country size proportional to carbon dioxide emissions: (more…)
Caribbean Biological Corridor… more questions than answers
Thursday, December 17th, 2009I wasn’t planning to attend too many country meetings while here at Copenhagen. I feared that anything sponsored by one country in particular would be long on the bragging and short on the facts.
Despite this, yesterday I attended Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s joint presentation on the Caribbean Biological Corridor, a collaborative effort to protect the biodiversity of the Caribbean. Currently Cuba has officially protected 15% of its land, the Dominican Republic 15% and Haiti less than 2%. (1) However, it’s currently not contiguous, even internally, and nominal protection never guarantees actual protection.
While it took 20 minutes to finally begin the meeting, five minutes into the presentation it became painfully apparent that the “Caribbean Biological Corridor” was not a road to biodiversity, but some xkcd-inspired highway engineer’s nightmare. (2) (more…)