Tag Archives: greenhouse gas

How Negotiators at Durban Can Agree Emissions Targets

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The parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are meeting once again in Durban, South Africa, from November 28 to December 9.  The period covered by the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and the clock is running out on negotiations for a successor agreement.  Progress at Copenhagen two years ago and Cancun one year ago was slow.   Negotiations have been blocked by a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. The United States is at loggerheads with the developing world, especially China–now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG)–and India.   read more

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Progress on Global Warming Is Not Yet in Evidence in Copenhagen

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I am writing from Copenhagen, the site of the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.     If one were to judge by outward appearances, the prospects look dim for a meaningful global agreement by the end of the week.   

First, most conference participants have been put through an experience that seems designed to convince them that global warming may not be such a bad idea after all:  a registration system that requires waiting in long lines in freezing temperatures.  (Wait times commonly reported this week vary from one hour for China’s negotiator to 8 hours for other participants, such as prominent NGO leaders.  Even 9 or 10 hours.)    
 
Second, there has been little convergence of positions.  The views expressed here cover the same fantastically and unbridgeably wide range as they did at the time of the Kyoto meeting 12 years ago.   At one end of the spectrum, developing countries are still asking for reparations – African delegations boycotted Monday’s meetings;  and demonstrators are still very confused about who they should be trying to persuade and how.   At the other end of the spectrum, the climate change deniers are also represented here.  Recent opinion polls show that the percentage of skeptics among the fickle American public has risen very recently, even though the scientific evidence for anthropogenic warming continues to mount.   (For some reason, many find it easier to deny science than to make any of the less indefensible arguments available to critics: that global warming wouldn’t be all bad, or that cutting emissions enough to prevent it would be too expensive, or that the U.N. is not a competent instrument, or that geo-engineering would be a cheaper approach.)     read more

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Down in the Recession. So, Then, Is “Green GDP” Up?

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Alan Krueger, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Affairs, suggested in a recent speech a useful metaphor to distinguish different kinds of economic indicators. Some indicators are like the gauges on the dashboard of the car — industrial production, unemployment, inflation and so on.  They give the latest bits of information on the business cycle outlook, for businesspeople, government policy-makers, economic forecasters, and anyone else who wishes to follow such developments at high frequency. Many of these numbers are collected on a monthly basis. Other statistics are like the results of 10,000 mile checkups – the poverty rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, carbon emissions, natural resource depletion, the crime rate, traffic congestion, leisure time, and other measures of inequality, health, the environment and the quality of life.  They supplement market-measured activity and are needed in order to get a comprehensive feel for welfare and the longer term sustainability of the economy. This second category of statistics is more often collected on an annual basis. read more

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