Weathering Climate Change

Thank you Jennifer, I'm delighted to be online with you and everyone else.

This century we need to prevent the release of potentially 3 trillion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It is critical to start now, not procrastinate, since the planet is already committed to a degree of warming from past emissions.

There are myriad ways to prevent, reduce, and offset our footprints, many already highly cost-effective, and most resulting in substantial ancillary benefits. Some are far more time-sensitive than others if we are to avoid immense lost opportunities. Vigorous and rigorous efficiency gains in the way humans derive their energy, water, and resource services, for example, are imperative for permanently shrinking footprints, while also accruing vast monetary savings.

This is absolutely essential given that an estimated half or more of total global “delivered” energy and water services this century could be satisfied at lower cost and risk than any other option through available high efficiency design and technology opportunities.

By far the most critical and immediate imperative is to offset humanity’s footprint impacts by taking actions that simultaneously conserve threatened biodiversity, further the sustainable livelihoods of impoverished communities, and protect against the threat of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch/), this single action effort could achieve three or more positive outcomes:

1) generating tens of billions of dollars of “carbon offset” revenues for impoverished developing country communities;
2) as a result of not burning down rainforests and, instead, selling the reduced emissions in the global carbon trading market, amounting to upwards of 100 billion tons of CO2 emissions, most of it between now and the next decade; and
3) resulting in the protection of millions of hectares of threatened biodiversity rich habitat and preventing the irreversible extinction of millions of species populations.

These actions can be promoted not only by an environmental studies student, but every single individual as an engaged citizen at home, work, and supporting change in government policies.

Both high altitude montane rainforests as well as high latitude forests, like boreal forests in northern canada, alaska, and russia, are especially impacted. There is considerable scientific concern that the world's montane rainforests will disappear, while the boreal forests are already exhibiting unusually high frequencies and severities of drought, wildfires, and pest attacks.

While we are committed to some warming from past emissions, it is totally within our hands to minimize future damage by taking climate mitigation actions more rapidly and thoroughlly.

The climate science indicates the warming sea surface will shift the frequency of hurricanes from Categories 1s and 2s to categories 4 and 5. A steady future of such disasters is a key reason why society should be accelerating its efforts to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases as rapidly as possible. In the meantime, we should be protecting the world's remaining mangroves and wetlands, which serve as natural seawalls angainst typhoons and hurricanes. For example, 3500 square miles of mangroves and swamp forests were cleared in Louisiana over the past half century, which could have greatly softened the impact of that hurricane if they were still intact.

One-third of the world's mangroves have been removed, and another one-third is projected to be lost in the coming decades. Protecting, as well as restoring these intact coastal ecosystems not only are great protection against storm disasters, but absorb and store considerable carbon from the atmosphere. In addition, mangroves and estuaries are areas for a large fracction of the oceans aquatic species for breeding, nursing and feeding.

Yes, some 14 million hectares per year of tropical forests are burned down, representing some 20% of total global emissions. And scientists estimate 16 million species populations are lost in the wake of this destruction. Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz calls one of the most egregious errors of the Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change the failure to include reducing emissions released from burning down tropical forests in developing countries. Inclusion, he emphasizes, offers one of the most immediate and economically attractive ways of not only reducng carbon emissions but providing revenues for eliminating poverty, illness, contaminated water, and spurring sustainable livelihoods in developing countries. Another serious shortcoming of the international treaty is that the target reductions by 2012 only amount to one percent of the reductions needed this century. Even worse, if current rainforest destruction levels occurring just in Brazil and Indonesia continue unabated, these emissions will undermine 80% of the Kyoto Treaty’s 2012 reductions!

Businesses, cities, churches, schools, families and individuals can commit to offsetting most or all of their emissions by donating to projects focused on preventing deforestation (as well as devegetation of natural grasslands, peatlands, wetlands and mangroves). The best projects are designed to achieve multiple benefits.

For example, Pearl Jam offsets the emissions from their World Tours (including all the buses, trucks, plane travel, hotel rooms, arenas, and the 1 million fans driving to and from concerts) by protecting threatened biodiversity habitat. The first one was done in Madagascar, in the Makira Reserve, through collaborative project of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, and the government of Madagascar.

The project follows the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards (www.climate-standards.org/) which require real benefits for carbon mitigation, real biodiversity protection, and benefits for local communities.

Businesses and citizens should also push for a change in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (www.unfccc.int) that was proposed by Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and a coalition of rainforest nations. They call for including reduction of emissions from rainforest loss as a creditable and tradable carbon mitigation action, proposed this past December at the Climate Convention of Parties (COP11) in Montreal. The proposal is currently under review and a decision will be made in the next 18 months.

The most powerful advocates for the inclusion of multiple-benefit forestry projects in international climate policy frameworks are the less developed countries, where most of these projects will be located. Many of the poorest developing countries, lacking the infrastructure to host renewable energy or energy efficiency projects, will be unwittingly excluded from access to the funds from the GHG mitigation market. On the other hand, these same cash-strapped, low-income countries are carbon-rich with threatened forests and biodiversity habitat, offering significant opportunities for sharing in carbon market revenue streams if rules allow the development of carbon forestry projects.

Developing country stakeholders, who view exclusionary policies as harmful trade barriers, are increasingly voicing their frustration with being shut out of the carbon market, and policymakers from the industrialized world are beginning to take notice, especially since carbon finance is seen as an invaluable means for helping eradicate poverty in the tropics and realizing the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (www.undp.org/mdg/), which were agreed to by the world’s developed countries several years ago.

Until such time government negotiators supersede the artificial constraints imposed on climate change actions, it is incumbent upon citizens to lead the way through their own voluntary efforts to capture a greater good through multiple-benefit actions.

CI is in the process of setting up just such an option on our web site. It hopefully will be operating within the coming month.

I haven't seen the film, although I've seen Al give his climate talks since 1989. His facts are compelling, and are all derived from input from a range of world respected scientists.

You're probably right that some people who dislike Al will not watch the film. At the same time, the emergence of the Evangelical churches calling for action on climate change, as well as the signatures by 220 mayors to meet or beat kyoto targets, is likely to create a greater audience for the film.

I highly recommend the web site Real Climate (www.realclimate.org) which was set up and is operated by highly respected climate scientists. They were frustrated at the routintely inaccurate media reporting on climate change issues, and this sight provides clarity and accuracy on all the issues raised by climate skeptics. The web has an email newsletter you can sign up for. It's a terrific repository to find answers for any particular issue.

Details can be found in the reports issued every five years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch/), and the fourth assessment report will be issued at the end of this year.

Scientists expect to see more frequent and severe droughts, wildfires, floods, pests and diseases spreading more broadly and affecting crops, animals, forests and humans. The corals already are dieing off and this is expected to accelerate with the acidification of the oceans to a level not experienced in 800,000 years.

There will also be more smog episodes, which are triggered as temperatures increase. Extinction of species is also anticipated because plants and animals will be unable to migrate latitudinally or altitudinally rapidly enough as the temperature changes adversely impact their habitat.

Certainly the most vocal advocates for rapid action on stabilizing atmospheric emissions are the small island nations. I'm not sure which islands are so low in elevation that the committed warming to date make irreversibly doomed to submergence, but it certainly is not the case that many have to be engulfed IF society moves more rapidly in the transition to stabilization.

Yes, it's kind of the soft way of engaging people to do something. But given the magnitude of changes necessary for achieving stabilization people will have to confront consumption levels far more dramatically. One group tackling this difficult issue is the Center for a New American Dream (www.newdream.org), attempting to decouple well-being from the drive to consume evermore.

Obviously all steps are valuable -- consuming less, more smartly, as well as leaving a legacy of offsetting one's consumption "footprint" by protecting threatened biodiversity habitat.

This is one of the million dollar questions of our time. I have an article coming out this summer along with my colleague Dr. Lu Zhi, a preeminent Panda expert, professor at Beijing University, and Director of CI China Country program, on China's situation -- "Harmonious Energy and water opportunities for advancing security and prosperity in China."

Recent pronouncements by President Hu and Premier Wen on the importance of China building a great “resource-conserving and innovating society,” combined with unprecedented recent laws giving highest priority to pursuing the “4E’s” – efficiency of energy, water, resources and land use – appears to be steering the country in the direction for seizing this historic prospect.

The looming question is whether this new spirit for pursuing harmonious prosperity and security opportunities will be embraced by the entrenched bureaucracies, traditional resource-inefficient industries, and favored interests, or derailed by their lack of transparency, corrupt practices, misallocation of investment capital, and stonewalling of public participation, as well as inadequate incentives for the 4E’s, irrational resource pricing, and inadequate environmental law enforcement.

Only time will tell, and our article takes the perspective that China’s emerging resource-conserving society can prevail, given the financially competitive pool of harmonious 4E goods and services that continues expanding. Tapping this deep resource pool offers China the most enduring path to prosperity and security. If successfully pursued, the world will witness a strong version of the Porter Hypothesis: a country with forward-leaning environmental policies and programs actually enhancing their competitiveness.

We will be posting the article on the CI web site for those who are interested in reading it.

In the end, setting a regulatory cap on emissions is fundamental, and it needs to set the long-term goal of stabilization so all of society and business knows the path we will be purusing.

on informed consumers check out www.newdream.org which has considerable information for families and organizations.

Thank you Jennifer and everyone who participated. I'm happy to provide anyone with additional details or articles if they drop me an email at mtotten@conservation.org