Tag Archives: Kyoto protocol

Climate Change, Economic, Global warming, Government, Politics, Science, Society, United Nations, United States

US National Climate Assessment…

(From the archives) Originally posted on January 13, 2013 by markdowe

CLIMATE ASSESSMENT

Now no one can deny that the world is getting warmer. Last week’s report by America’s National Climate Assessment reveals the full horror of what’s happening to our planet

The draft version of the US National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, makes remarkable reading – not just for Americans but for all humanity. Put together by a special panel of more than 240 scientists, the federally commissioned report reveals that the US is already reeling under the impact of global warming. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, intense downpours, rising sea levels and melting glaciers are now causing widespread havoc and are having an impact on a wide range of fronts including health services, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture, transport and flood defences.

Nor is there any doubt about the cause of these rising temperatures. “It is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel,” the report states. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere soar, temperatures rise and chaos ensues. Air pollution intensifies, wildfires increase, insect-borne diseases spread, confrontations over water rights become more violent and storm surges rise. This is the near future for America and for the rest of the world. Earth is set to become a hotter, drier, unhealthier, more uncomfortable, dangerous and more disaster-prone place in coming years.

The language used in this exhaustive, carefully researched investigation is also worthy of comment. It includes the word “threat” or variations 198 times and versions of the word “disrupt” another 120 times. After poring over the 1,146 pages of the assessment, readers will be under no illusions about what is happening to our planet. The robustness of its rhetoric is especially striking because it contrasts so noticeably with the debate – or to be precise, lack of debate – on climate change that occurred during last year’s presidential campaigning.

Neither President Obama nor his opponent, Mitt Romney, made more than a cursory mention of the issue, despite the fact that it now affects just about every aspect of existence on our planet today. As the assessment makes clear, global warming is not just about polar bears. It is about the lives of people today and about those of future generations.

A three-month period for public comment will now follow last week’s publication of the draft assessment. The US National Academy of Sciences will also review the document before a final version is published later this year. The ensuing debate promises to be an intriguing and important one. The US is the world’s greatest economy and a massive emitter of greenhouse gases. Until its political masters act, the planet has no chance of halting global warming or curtailing rising sea levels or dealing with the increasing acidification of our oceans or coping with the melting of Earth’s icecaps.

Given the vehemence of opposition in the US to the suggestion that climate change is manmade, we should not be too hopeful of immediate action. Most of the Republican Party believes the concept is a liberal hoax – along with an array of rich and powerful industrial foundations and corporations. A bitter struggle lies ahead.

From this perspective, it might be tempting to sneer at the US over its response to the challenge of climate change. Britain has little to be smug about, however, a point that was demonstrated last week by media coverage of the Met Office’s updated forecast of likely global warming over the next five years. In revising downwards, albeit slightly, its previous expectation for temperature rises from now until 2017, the Met Office found itself at the midst of a PR shambles. In their dozens, climate change sceptics charged forwards to claim this data showed that global warming has stopped, a completely misleading suggestion that was not properly challenged by journalists.

In fact, the Met Office’s figures indicate that most of the years between 2013 and 2017 will be hotter than those of the hottest year on record. More to the point, British forecasters still stand by their longer-term projections that anticipate there will be significant warming over the course of the century.

The fact that this message was lost on the public suggests climate change denial is becoming entrenched in the UK, or that our media have become complacent about the issue, or both. Whatever the answer, there is little cause for cheer. Both sides of the Atlantic are dithering over global warming. Yet the issue is real, as the US climate assessment emphasises. In making that clear, the report should be welcomed.

The unaffordable cost of climate change delay…

If there was ever a case of fiddling while Rome burns, then the sadly dilatory global response to the threat from climate change is surely it. Even as weather patterns become measurably more extreme the world over; even as the polar ice caps melt back ever further each summer, opening up newly navigable shipping lanes; even as average global temperatures continue their inexorable rise; still, attempts to forge an international consensus make only glacially slow progress. Yet, the longer we take to act, the more unaffordable remedial action becomes.

The most recent foot-dragging was at the UN talks in Doha, which concluded last month. The hope was that the 18th conference on the Convention on Climate Change, attended by nearly 200 countries, would agree rules for an updated treaty – to be signed by 2015 and come into force in 2020 – to impose legally-binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on all countries of the world for the first time. But for all the blustering commendations from politicians accompanying the 11th-hour “Doha Climate Gateway”, the outcome was disappointing.

In fairness, there was some progress. The existing Kyoto protocol was extended and discussions about the technicalities of the future treaty’s negotiating procedure were determined. But the thorniest issues – how, for example, to share the cost of mitigating climate change between developed and developing countries – are no nearer to resolution.

If there were any remaining doubts as to the need for concerted and swift action, however, the latest draft US National Climate Assessment, published on Friday, puts paid to them. The Washington-commissioned analysis makes clear that America is already feeling the impact of global warming; infrastructure, water supplies, crops and coastal geographies are being noticeably affected, it says, while heatwaves, downpours, floods and droughts are all both more common and more extreme. The 240-strong panel of experts also explicitly state, contrary to Republican lore, that rising temperatures are “due primarily to human activities”.

It can only be hoped that the findings will galvanise the world’s second-largest carbon emitter into action at last. But although President Obama has brought in a smattering of regulations on greenhouse gases, and his energy strategy ultimately aims to wean the US off foreign oil, explicit references to climate change are still few and far between in Washington, and most Republicans refuse to acknowledge any link between human activity and a changing climate. With America central to any meaningful follow-up UN treaty, the tone of the three-month consultation on the Climate Assessment has far-reaching implications.

Evidence is growing, however, that the UN timetable is insufficiently ambitious. Waiting until 2020 rather than pressing ahead now will add £3 trillion to the price tag for corrective measures such as renewable power sources, according to leading climate scientist Dr Keywan Riahi. Seven more years of delay also steadily erodes the probability that the rise in global temperature can be kept below the 2C level at which the consequences become devastatingly destabilising.

As economic malaise leaves the case for environmental policies harder to make, and international efforts lose their gloss, climate change is slipping off the agenda. We cannot afford for it to do so. As the US report says: “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.” There is, then, no more time to waste.

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Business, Climate Change, Environment, Global warming, Government, Legal, Politics, Science, Society

Clime, crime and punishment …

(From the archives) Originally posted on August 25, 2008 by markdowe

1.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND REMEDY

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL, a climate change treaty that spanned over a decade in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is perceived by some climate scientists as an ineffective waste of time and energy. The biggest polluters on the earth, the United States and China, both failed in ratifying Kyoto which, had they done so, would have seen a vast improvement in how global warming could have been tackled and managed.

The only effective way in dealing with the threats and risks posed by climate change is through legal enforcement and wider use of the courts. Science appears more than capable in linking climate change as a probable cause of deadly weather events which the world has experienced in recent years – such as the heat-wave that hit Europe during the summer of 2003. If this is the case then global warming becomes a matter for product liability law.

The threat of judicial arguments in an attempt to resolve the scourge of climate change should, if nothing else, force many companies to radically change their behaviour than any government policy ever could.

Pinning individual weather events on climate change

Scientists usually purport that we can’t attribute individual weather events to climate change. But, the example quoted of the 2003 European heat-wave, should have been the first weather event where that link could have been made. That event, particularly within European latitudes, was probably a one-in-a-thousand year event. The immediate effect was a series of anticyclones over Europe. We can’t say those were made more likely by climate change but, what we can say, is that climate change made the background temperatures within which those anticyclones operated that much higher. This, surely, goes central to what the problem is.

Small changes in averages make extreme events much more likely. The 2003 heat-wave was far outside the range of normal climate uncertainty. Scientists and environmentalists say that there is 90% certainty that the risk of such a heat-wave in Europe has at least doubled as a result of climate change. More recent estimates (Myles Allen, University of Oxford) suggest that is probably a four to six-fold increase. The finding of a “doubled risk” is significant because established legal precedent holds that this is the threshold on which civil liability sets in. The argument remains, therefore, that lawyers must have a case against those people and companies who caused and exasperated global warming. In 2003, the heat-wave claimed the lives of 30,000 people. Whilst most who died were older people, fewer than a quarter would have died in the following year. If such a scale of deaths had been due to the toxic effects of a drug or chemical spill, lawyers and the courts would have been swiftly involved. Suing the big oil companies, for the environmental damage and degradation they have caused, seems, now, only a matter of time before such organisations are subpoenaed. Legal redress seems the only rational way forward.

At the time of the European catastrophe, many people blamed the healthcare services for not being prepared. That, too, seems a bit irrational because how many sectors in society can cope with a once-in-a-thousand year event? The real culprits are the 20 or so coal and oil companies that we know have been responsible for 80% of carbon dioxide emissions.

Statute

If the lawyers attempt to go for product liability, then everyone down the supply chain would be liable: the company that sold you the petrol, the oil company that pumped it out of the ground, and the showroom that sold you the car that burnt the fuel. But, if it is said to be an industrial waste issue, then the polluter pays. That might be the car driver.

Previously, actions have already been taken against greenhouse gas polluters under public nuisance and human rights legislation. But, none as yet, has alleged actual harm. That could become a critical moment if proven and, yet, could be over something quite trivial, like someone in Alaska suing an oil company because their conservatory subsided as the permafrost melted. Legal precedent could have huge implications if harm was ever proved but an effective way to tackle and deal with climate change.

Knowing the harm

In order to successfully sue an organisation, you have to show that they knew the ‘harm’ in what they were doing, and went ahead with it anyway. But, the question underpinning causation is, at what point in history did the impacts of climate change become foreseeable? Should it, for instance, be 1896, when Svante Arrhenius first calculated the greenhouse effect? Or, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first reported it in 1990? Of course, up until the recent signing of the Climate Change Bill by President Bush, the United States has never accepted climate change as being foreseeable at all. If 1990 is accepted as the start date for ‘foreseeability’, then companies can get away with some of their past emissions. By 2030, more than half of the excess greenhouse gases in the air would have been emitted since 1990. The concept of foreseeability will, therefore, rapidly diminish.

Whilst this approach is very different to that of Kyoto and of national emission targets, the legal route would have much more impact on the use of fossil fuels than any conceivable formula devised by government.

Ironically, though, when government’s started to make attempts in regulating carbon dioxide emissions – as the British Government has done for some time – then the companies producing them are given a defence: that their government had acted, so they didn’t have too. Such an argument, largely, mitigates responsibility.

Pursuing the legal option

Kyoto’s decade-long negotiations over a 2% reduction in emissions by industrialised nations, was hardly an initiative that got very far. The legal option remains a credible and viable alternative particularly as the science can now predict and forecast with some certainty what must be done to prevent further environmental degradation.

Most climate scientists do not like the liability idea. They believe that action on climate change should be a managed and sequential process. It’s certainly true, though, that the law can be unfair and arbitrary in its effects and application. Rich people might get settlements, whilst the poor would not. But, the conventional approach introduces, inherently, its own injustices. Besides, the ultimate goal is, primarily, to cut carbon emissions, not to win compensation or financial recompense.

Just the possibility of legal action would have a big effect. Climate change, if it hasn’t already, would become an even bigger issue at boardroom level. Look, for example, at the impact on share prices when a threat exists of legal action against food companies over obesity. 12-years of climate negotiations have not had the (same) effect as it should have had. The threat of being pursued with legal action and/or enforcement remains the only effective way to enforce company compliance if nations are ever to sustainably reduce carbon emissions. The introduction of an international court, too, seems logical.

Science

We still need to work much harder by showing how greenhouse gases are altering our world. Although climate scientists should be commended for spending large chunks of time and using vast resources in predicting what might happen in a hundred years time, we should also be focussing on helping today’s victims.

Interestingly, a research group headed by Myles Allen (Oxford University), previously, compiled reports of how the weather today would have looked without climate change. The modellers described it as it was, and as it might have been. The American legal community was interested in this research because, in 2000 – the year the reports were compiled – the weather was very dry. Reservoirs emptied and there were ‘brown-outs’: electricity in short supply from hydro sources. Allen’s research models could, yet, become the basis for legal action.

International Court for the Environment…

(From the archives) Originally posted on December 6, 2008 by markdowe

2.

REGULATION & ENFORCEMENT

STEPHEN HOCKMAN, QC, a former chairman of the Bar Council, has called for the establishment of an international court for the environment to punish states that fail to take adequate measures in protecting wildlife and in preventing climate change. Mr. Hockman proposes a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

Underpinning the role of such a body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions to be set and agreed upon next year. The court would fine national governments or individual companies who fail to take adequate measures in protecting endangered species or through wanton neglect and degradation of the natural environment. Enforcing the “right to a healthy environment” seems the next logical step given the seriousness associated with the long-terms effects of climate change.

The pioneering idea has been presented to an audience of scientists, politicians and public figures at a symposium held at the British library.

Mr. Hockman, a deputy High Court judge, believes that it is imperative now given the threat of climate change for the law to protect the environment.

 

A UN Climate Change Conference recently held in Poznan, Poland, began negotiations that is hoped will lead to a new agreement in replacing the Kyoto protocol in Copenhagen, next year. Developed countries are expected to commit cutting emissions quite drastically, while developing countries will be urged in halting deforestation.

The British Government has agreed in-principle that the concept of an international court will be taken into account when consideration is being made on how to make international agreements on climate change binding.

Mr. Hockman said an international court would be needed to enforce and regulate any agreement, saying: ‘Its remit will be overall climate change and the need for better regulation of carbon emissions but at the same time the implementation and enforcement of international environmental agreements and instruments.’

Whilst the creation of the court would provide an arena and setting in resolving disputes and in providing resolutions between states, the court would also likely be useful for multinational firms by ensuring environmental laws are kept to in every country.

It is believed that the court would uphold a convention on the right to a healthy environment; and by making provision for a higher body within itself, so as individuals or non-governmental organisations could appeal or protest against any environmental injustices.

The primary role of such a court would be in making “declaratory rulings” that, essentially, would be made to influence and embarrass countries into upholding the law. The court would also likely be equipped with powers in fining companies and individual states where breaches of the law are made.

Mr. Hockman added: ‘Of course regulations and sanctions alone cannot deliver a global solution to problems of climate change, but without such components the incentive for individual countries to address those problems – and to achieve solutions that are politically acceptable within their own jurisdictions – will be much reduced.’

It is envisaged that the court would be led by retired judges, climate change experts and other public figures. It would also include, as a central part of its function, a scientific body in considering evidence and by making available any data on the environment.

The creation of an international court on the environment would invariably influence public opinion that in turn would force Governments to take issues associated with the environment seriously. If there are established bodies that can give definitive legal rulings that are accepted as ‘fair and reasonable’ that would likely have its own impact on public opinion.

Environmental campaign groups such as Friends of the Earth have welcomed the idea as it helps and promotes the rights of people to live in a clean and healthy environment.

See also:

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Britain, Climate Change, Environment, Global warming, Government, Medical, Politics, Science, Society

BMJ says global warming should be declared a public health emergency…

GLOBAL WARMING

Intro: The BMJ, a top medical journal, has been accused by critics of being ‘alarmist’ as it joins the green agenda…

A leading medical journal has warned that global warming is a ‘public health emergency’ that will cause thousands of deaths worldwide.

The BMJ claims that the ‘mayhem’ it will inflict on future generations will make deaths from the ebola outbreak ‘pale into insignificance’.

In an unusual move, the journal has set aside 11 pages of this week’s issue to warn doctors of the dire consequences of global warming – without any obvious relevance to medicine.

Critics described the article as ‘alarmist’ and ‘desperate’.

But in a separate commentary, the BMJ’s editor Dr Fiona Godlee defends the piece by saying doctors must understand the problem if they are to help tackle it. It is not the first time the publication – formerly known as the British Medical Journal – and its editor have spoken out on such a highly charged issue.

In July, it carried a piece calling for doctors to be allowed to help the terminally ill to die – prompting concern among medics.

In her most recent comments, Dr Godlee warns that seven million people die worldwide every year due to pollution and this will only increase if greenhouse gas emissions – which cause global warming – rise further. She points out that reducing these emissions by walking rather than using the car will have added benefits of reducing obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

And she calls on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare the issue a public health emergency – putting it on a par with the current ebola outbreak in West Africa which has claimed 3,000 lives since February.

‘Deaths from ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to check its carbon emissions.

‘And action is needed now,’ the article concludes.

Last year, experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the average global temperature had risen by 0.5C in 50 years. They predicted that over the next century temperatures will increase by 3C causing a rise in sea levels, flooding, disease outbreaks and, as a result, mass migration of refugees. Politicians are striving to reach an international agreement by December next year on legally-binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would aim to limit global warming to just 2C, and will replace the Kyoto Protocol which came into effect in 2005.

However the last attempt at a deal, at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, ended in disaster, and many politicians are worried about a similar result this time.

Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Forum, a think-tank founded by the climate-change denier and former Chancellor Lord Lawson, accused the BMJ report of being needlessly alarmist.

He said: ‘The World Health Organisation would become a global laughing stock if they were to follow the ridiculously over-the-top demands of a green alarmist editor. There is a real disconnect between what they are saying and the reality.’

He added that the article was ‘just desperate’, saying: ‘The smaller the chance of an international agreement, the more desperate they get.’

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