Sometimes the most important news is what is not happening.

This summer has given us one such example: the climate change bill, for which the US President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate because it stands no chance of passage.

This means the US is about to repeat its “Kyoto experience”. Twenty years ago, the US participated (at least initially) in the first talks aimed at achieving a global accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

At the time, the EU and the US were by far the greatest emitters so it seemed appropriate to exempt the world’s emerging economies from any commitment.

Over time, it became apparent that the US would not live up to its commitment owing, as now, to opposition in the Senate. The EU then went ahead on its own, introducing its path-breaking EU Emission Trading System in the hope that Europe could lead by example.

Without the American climate change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters – and not only on the transatlantic front.

China’s commitment to increase the carbon dioxide efficiency of its economy by about 3 per cent a year is of no help because annual GDP growth rates of close to 10 per cent mean the country’s emissions will soar this decade.

By 2020, Chinese emissions could be more than triple those of Europe and even surpass those of the US and Europe combined. Exempting emerging markets from any commitments, as the Kyoto Protocol sought to do, no longer makes sense.

Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer is cheap and abundant coal.

Burning hydrocarbons (natural gas and petrol) yields water and carbon dioxide. By contrast, burning coal yields only carbon dioxide. Moreover, compared with natural gas and crude oil, coal is much cheaper for each tonne of carbon dioxide released.

This implies that any tax on carbon has a much higher impact on coal than on crude oil (or gas). Owners of coal mines and their clients are thus strongly opposed to any tax on carbon.

They constitute a small but well organised group that wields immense lobbying power to block efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions by putting a price on them, as the planned US cap-and-trade system would have done.

In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. Therefore, it is not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry.

The tax seems to fall mostly on foreign suppliers of coal and to a lesser extend on foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons in the Middle East and Russia.

By contrast, opposition by US states with economies that rely significantly on coal production proved decisive for the fate of Mr Obama’s climate change bill.

The US experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain no commitment will be coming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the US. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.

Without any significant commitment from the US, the Copenhagen Accord, so laboriously achieved last year, has become meaningless.

Business will now continue as usual in terms of climate change diplomacy, with its wandering circus of big international meetings, and of rapidly increasing emissions.

The meetings are aimed at creating the impression that the world’s leaders are still working on a solution to the problem. But rising carbon dioxide emissions constitute what is really happening on the ground: a rapidly growing industrial base in emerging markets is being hard-wired to intensive use of coal. This will make it exceedingly difficult to reverse the trend in the future.

A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem.

Unfortunately, there is enough cheap coal around to power ever-higher emissions for at least another century. So the world will become warmer. The only uncertainty is how much warmer.

Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction but a reality that people feel.

But at that point, it will be too late to reverse the impact of decades of excessive emissions. A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.

* Project Syndicate

Daniel Gros is the director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.

At the Kenai Fjords National Park south of Anchorage, managers have learned to follow the Exit and other glaciers, moving signs and paths to accommodate the ephemeral rivers of blue and white ice as they retreat up deeply carved valleys.

“Some of the stuff is changing fast enough that we now have signs on moving pedestals,” said Fritz Klasner, natural resource specialist at Kenai Fjords.

The vast amounts of water stored in glaciers play crucial roles in river flows, hydropower generation and agricultural production, contributing to steady run-off for Ganges, Yangtze, Mekong and Indus rivers in Asia and elsewhere.

But many are melting rapidly, with the pace picking up over the past decade, giving glaciers a central role in the debate over causes and impacts of climate change.

That role has come even more sharply into focus after recent attacks on the U.N.’s climate panel, which included a wrong estimate for the pace of melting for Himalayan glaciers in a major 2007 report.

The report said Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035, an apparent typographical error that stemmed from using literature not published in a scientific journal. Climate skeptics seized on the error and used it to question the panel’s findings on climate change.

The evidence for rapid glacial melting, though, is overwhelming.

The problem is no one knows exactly what’s occurring in the more remote Himalayas and parts of the Andes. Far better measurements are crucial to really understand the threat to millions of people downstream.

“There is no serious information on the state of the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayan-Tibetan complex,” Kurt Lambeck, President of the Australian Academy of Science, told a climate science media briefing in late February.

The high altitude and remoteness of many glaciers in the Himalayas and Andes is the main reason.

DATA IN A DEEP FREEZE

To try to fill the gap, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said last month the government would establish a National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology in Dehra Dun in the north.

In Europe and North America, glaciers are generally more accessible and there are more trained people to study them.

Switzerland’s Aletsch glacier, the largest in the Alps, has been retreating for about 150 years.

But the glacier, which feeds the River Rhone, still stores an estimated 27 billion tonnes of ice, according to www.swissinfo.ch. That’s about 12 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

In 2008, a total of 79 Swiss glaciers were in retreat, while 5 were advancing, the Swiss Glacier Monitoring network says.

“There are a very small number of glaciers that are monitored,” said veteran glaciologist Ian Allison, pointing to less than 100 globally for which there are regular “mass-balance” measurements that reflect how much a glacier grows or shrinks from one year to the next.

Such measurements are the benchmark and several decades of data is regarded as the best way to build up an accurate picture of what’s happening to a glacier.

Glaciers originate on land and represent a sizeable accumulation of snow and ice over the years. They tend to carve their way through valleys as more and more ice accumulates until the point where more is lost through melting than is gained.

THAT SHRINKING FEELING

“We probably know less about the total volume of glaciers than we do about how much ice there is in the big ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctic because a lot of it is in small mass areas and a lot of it is inaccessible,” said Allison, leader of the Australian Antarctic Division’s ice, ocean, atmosphere and climate program.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland analyses mass balance data for just over 90 glaciers and says their average mass balance continues to decrease.

Since 1980, cumulative thickness loss of the reference glacier group is about 12 meters of water equivalent, it says in its latest 2007/08 report.

Estimates vary but glaciers and mountain caps could contribute about 70 cm (2.3 feet) to global sea levels, a 2009 report authored by Allison and other leading scientists says.

The “Copenhagen Diagnosis” report from the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales says there is widespread evidence of more rapid melting of glaciers and ice-caps since the mid-1990s.

That means run-off from melting glaciers and ice-caps is raising sea levels by 1.2 millimeters a year, translating to up to 55 cm (1.8 feet) by 2100 if global warming accelerates.

In Nepal, the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development says “mass-balance” measurements would provide direct and immediate evidence of glacier volume increase or decrease.

“But there are still no systematic measurements of glacial mass balance in the region although there are promising signs that this is changing,” the center said in a recent notice.

It said that based on studies, the majority of glaciers in the region are in a general condition of retreat.

“Small glaciers below 5,000 meters (16,500 feet) above sea level will probably disappear by the end of the century, whereas larger glaciers well above this level will still exist but be smaller,” it said.

Glaciers have almost vanished from New Guinea island and in Africa and many on Greenland, the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica are also melting quickly, dumping large amounts of ice into the sea.

BAMBOO STICKS

Part of the problem is that glaciers are fickle things to measure, said Allison, and requires legwork and lots of bamboo stakes. These are placed in holes top to bottom, a potentially dangerous job, although satellites and lasers fitted to aircraft are changing this.

After a year or so, stakes placed up high will have had snow build up on them, so you can estimate how much snow fell there.

Those down low will have lost mass due to melt and evaporation, so there would be more of the canes sticking out.

“So you can measure how much height is lowered down below, how much it’s gained up top. You’ll need to know the density of the snow and ice as well,” Allison said.

But he said glaciers in one region can all apparently behave differently in response to the same climate signal. “Because the fluctuations that occur in the front depend on how long it takes to transfer the mass from the top of the glacier to the bottom.”

“You might have an area where all the small glaciers are all rapidly retreating but big glaciers still coming forward because they are still integrating changes that happened maybe 50 years ago,” he added.

For the millions that live downstream, it is the impacts that are of most concern and among them is the threat of sudden bursting of lakes created as glaciers retreat.

About 14 of the estimated 3,200 glaciers in Nepal are at risk of bursting their dams.

Ang Tshering Sherpa, from Khumjung village in the shadows of Mount Everest, said the Imja glacial lake could burst its dam anytime and wash away villages.

“When I was a child I used to take our yaks and mountain goats for grazing on grassy flat land overlooking Everest,” Sherpa said.

“What was a grazing ground for yaks in 1960 has now turned into the Imja due to melting of snow,” Sherpa, now a trekking and climbing entrepreneur, said in Kathmandu.

A glacial lake broke its dam 25 years ago destroying trekking trails, bridges and a hydroelectric plant in the region. Neighbouring Bhutan also faces the threat of bursting dams.

Just how much water melting glaciers contribute to major rivers such as the Ganges and Brahmaputra, though, remains unknown.

Richard Armstrong, a senior scientist of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said it was nonsense to think that if glaciers melted there would be no water in the Ganges, a lifeline for millions in northern India.

“Even if the glaciers disappeared tomorrow it wouldn’t have a huge impact on the water supply. The rest of the river flow comes from rain and melting seasonal snow.”

He said the center has put in a proposal to NASA to use satellite data to build a better picture of the area and altitude of glaciers in the Himalayas.

“What we want to look at is what’s the contribution of melting glacier ice to the downstream hydrology,” Armstrong said. “It’s really what’s of primary importance to the socio-economic impacts of retreating glaciers.”

Allison and Armstrong and many other scientists have dismissed the row over the U.N. climate panel error as overblown but said it served as a useful reminder of the gaps in global glacier monitoring and the need for a far better picture.

“It certainly brought attention to the problem,” said Armstrong.

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Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.

The GM vegetable has undergone field trials since 2008 and received approval from government scientists in 2009.

But there has been a heated public row over the cultivation of the GM crop.

The BBC’s Geeta Pandey, who was at the news conference in Delhi, says Mr Ramesh’s decision has put any cultivation of GM vegetables in India on hold indefinitely.

‘Difficult decision’

“Public sentiment is negative. It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary, principle-based approach,” Mr Ramesh said.

He said the moratorium on growing BT brinjal – as the variety of aubergine is known in India – would remain in place until tests were carried out “to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals”.

The minister said “independent scientific studies” were needed to establish “the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment”.

Mr Ramesh said it was “a difficult decision to make” since he had to “balance science and society”.

“The decision is responsible to science and responsive to society,” he said.

India is the largest producer of aubergines in the world and grows more than 4,000 varieties.

Indian seed company Mahyco – partner of US multinational corporation Monsanto – which has developed BT brinjal, says the GM vegetable is more resistant to natural pests.

But anti-GM groups say there are serious health concerns and they allege that consumption of GM crops can even cause cancer.

The government-controlled Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) approved BT brinjal for commercial cultivation in October 2009.

Following an uproar from farmers and anti-GM activists, the environment minister held a series of national consultation meetings across India.

Several of the aubergine-growing Indian states have already said they were opposed to BT brinjal.

India allowed the use of genetically modified seeds for cotton in 2002.

Source BBC News

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The Government’s formal submission to the Copenhagen Accord – the widely criticised agreement hatched between the US and major developing countries at the conference last month – pledges to cut emissions between 5 and 25 per cent below 2000 levels. It is the same range taken to the December meeting, bucking some expectations the Government would commit to a specific target.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the Government would stick to its minimalist position unless there was substantial and verifiable action internationally.

If the impasse in global climate negotiations is not resolved in 2011, the Government will set a 5 per cent target under its proposed emissions trading scheme, giving business certainty for the planned start of full trading in July 2012.

Green groups criticised the Government for putting the onus on developing countries to prove they are serious about tackling climate change before Australia moves beyond 5 per cent.

Several analyses have estimated that commitments made in the lead-up to last year’s Copenhagen summit would trigger Australia signing up to about a 15 per cent cut.

But Senator Wong said Australia’s position ”was consistent with our commitments to do no more and no less than the rest of the world”.

The target would not be increased above 5 per cent until:

? Global climate policies become ”sufficiently clear”, including specific targets from major rich nations and verifiable climate policies from China and India.

? The credibility of other countries’ commitments is established through either a ”robust” agreement at the next major climate conference in Mexico in November or verifiable commitments to action by the US, India and China and other major emitters.

? The assumptions underpinning global emissions accounting and carbon markets are clear.

It is the first time Australia has placed demands on specific countries in setting out its conditions for an emissions cut of greater than 5 per cent. It suggests Australia will not increase its target unless climate legislation passes the US Senate.

Interpretation of the conditions will also depend on the definition of ”verifiable” emissions cuts. China and India have fiercely resisted demands they allow external scrutiny of their emissions, agreeing only to pass on their own measurements to be followed by ”international consultations and analysis”.

Former government climate adviser Ross Garnaut last night said it was appropriate that the Government kept to its 5-25 per cent range until it had seen that other countries had confirmed their promises in formal submissions, due by January 31.

The announcement of the accord targets comes as the Government is set to introduce its revamped emissions trading legislation next Tuesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused to be drawn on whether the Government would bring back the legislation if it was defeated so it could be put to a joint sitting if there was a successful double dissolution.

Source Sydney Morning Herald

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World leaders insist that the climate deal clinched in desperation at the UN summit in Copenhagen is the best that can be done as they return home to a lashing from critics.

Newspapers have widely called the summit accord a failure and experts such as the head of a Nobel Peace prize-winning climate panel says ‘urgent’ action is now needed.

US President Barack Obama acknowledged that all of the world’s polluters will quickly have to do more, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the critics will only hold up the battle against rising temperatures that threaten devastating floods, storms and drought.

Obama returned to the White House and said ‘extremely difficult and complex negotiations’ had been needed in Copenhagen.

‘This breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come,’ he said.

But even the US leader said ‘we will have to build on the momentum’ and get the US Congress to pass mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Merkel, who will host a new international meeting in Germany in 2010, hit back at the critics.

‘It is a first step toward a new world climate order, nothing more but also nothing less,’ she told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

‘Those who are only putting Copenhagen down are helping those who want to blockade rather than move forward.’

Germany will host a follow-up meeting of environment ministers in Bonn in June, ahead of another summit in Mexico City next December. ‘We now need to build on Copenhagen,’ she said.

The Danish chair of the UN climate summit, Connie Hedegaard, said on Sunday she thinks it will be difficult to gather together so many world leaders again for a new conference, though the effort must be made.

‘I think it will be very difficult,’ she told AFP, but added that the world still needs to set binding objectives on reducing carbon emissions. ‘If not I’m afraid that too much time will pass before the world does what is necessary’ to stop global warming, she said.

The Copenhagen Accord, only passed by a procedural motion after two weeks of tense negotiations, has been widely condemned as a backdoor deal that excludes the poor and dooms the world to disastrous climate change.

The agreement was assembled by the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and major European nations, after it became clear the 194 nation summit was in danger of failure.

China, the world’s top polluter, has given the warmest welcome to a summit that experts say it has benefitted from by making the fewest concessions.

‘With the efforts of all parties, the summit yielded significant and positive results,’ Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in a statement.

At the same time China’s foreign ministry spokesman on Sunday hit out at critics of the closed nature of the accord, saying Beijing had always maintained close contact and coordination with all countries during the summit.

‘China is a developing nation, we… firmly maintain the development rights of developing countries, and firmly maintain the unity and coordination of emerging nations,’ Qin Gang said in a statement on the ministry’s website.

The summit set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius but did not spell out the important global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 that are the key to holding down temperatures.

The summit promised $US100 billion ($A112.78 billion) for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, but has not given a fixed payout plan.

So far, the United States has promised to contribute $US3.6 billion ($A4.06 billion) in climate funds for the 2010-2012 period, with Japan contributing a total of $US11 billion ($A12.41 billion) over the same period, and the European Union $US10.6 billion ($A11.95 billion).

Even UN chief General Ban Ki-moons admitted the agreement had failed to win global consensus and would disappoint many who demanded stronger action against climate change.

‘Many will say that it lacks ambition,’ Ban told the end of the summit. ‘Nonetheless, you have achieved much.’

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said: ‘Developing countries, certainly Africa, are very concerned and very suspicious of the developed countries on whether they are really genuine in making these offers.’

‘In the next few weeks and months we will have to work very hard to see that, before the end of 2010 if not earlier, we get a binding agreement that really moves action in the direction we need,’ he told the Indian NDTV television channel.

‘We really have to move on rather quickly to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. There is growing evidence of the impacts of climate change and if we delay action these impacts are going to become much worse, far more serious,’ he warned.

The Wall Street Journal called the Copenhagen deal ‘a pre-emptive dead letter because countries like China, Brazil and India said they were unwilling to accept anything that depressed their economic growth’.

Source

Pacific Islands and some African countries fear an average rise of two degrees in temperature will be enough to wipe them out.

But fast-growing economies such as China, India and South Africa say even a lower target would stifle their economies.

The US says it will help poor countries but rejected the need for compensation.

China has filed an official complaint after one of its ministers was stopped from entering the conference for three days.

Source

So what are some of the numbers and how do they stack up?

Here are the top six contributors on 2007 figures.

Coming in at number one on the greenhouse hot list is China

Total emissions                                     6.1b tonnes 

Population                                            1,327 million

Share of the world population               20%

Share of the world CO2                       21%

Per Capita CO2                                   4.6 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              50%

Transport         7%

Industry            28%

Buildings           6%

Other               9%

At number two we have the United States

Total emissions                                     5.7b tonnes

Population                                            306 million

Share of the world population               5%

Share of the world CO2                       20%

Per Capita CO2                                   18.7 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              43%

Transport         31%

Industry            8%

Buildings           9%

Other               8%

At number three is the European Union

Total emissions                                     3.9b tonnes

Population                                            496 million

Share of the world population               7%

Share of the world CO2                       13%

Per Capita CO2                                   7.8 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              37%

Transport         25%

Industry            13%

Buildings           15%

Other               10%

In fourth place we have the Russian Federation

Total emissions                                     1.6b tonnes

Population                                            142 million

Share of the world population               2%

Share of the world CO2                       5%

Per Capita CO2                                   11.1 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              55%

Transport         15%

Industry            12%

Buildings           9%

Other               9%

Coming in at fifth is India

Total emissions                                     1.3b tonnes

Population                                            1,123 million

Share of the world population               17%

Share of the world CO2                       5%

Per Capita CO2                                   1.2 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              56%

Transport         9%

Industry            18%

Buildings           8%

Other               8%

Picking up position number six is Japan

Total emissions                                     1.2b tonnes

Population                                            128 million

Share of the world population               2%

Share of the world CO2                       4%

Per Capita CO2                                   9.6 tonnes

Emissions by sector

Power              41%

Transport         19%

Industry            20%

Buildings           12%

Other               7%

After months of diplomatic activity, there is progress being made towards a meaningful Copenhagen accord in which all countries pledge to take action against the global threat of climate change.  Following bilateral meetings with the President and since the United States announced an emissions reduction target that reflects the progress being made in Congress towards comprehensive energy legislation, China and India have for the first time set targets to reduce their carbon intensity. There has also been progress in advancing the Danish proposal for an immediate, operational accord that covers all of the issues under negotiation, including the endorsement of key elements of this approach by the 53 countries represented at the Commonwealth Summit last weekend.  

This week, the President discussed the status of the negotiations with Prime Minister Rudd, Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy, and Prime Minister Brown and concluded that there appears to be an emerging consensus that a core element of the Copenhagen accord should be to mobilize $10 billion a year by 2012 to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable and least developed countries that could be destabilized by the impacts of climate change.  The United States will pay its fair share of that amount and other countries will make substantial commitments as well.  In Copenhagen, we also need to address the need for financing in the longer term to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.  Providing this assistance is not only a humanitarian imperative – it’s an investment in our common security, as no climate change accord can succeed if it does not help all countries reduce their emissions.

Based on his conversations with other leaders and the progress that has already been made to give momentum to negotiations, the President believes that continued US leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the Copenhagen conference on December 18th rather than on December 9th. There are still outstanding issues that must be negotiated for an agreement to be reached, but this decision reflects the President’s commitment to doing all that he can to pursue a positive outcome.  The United States will have representation in Copenhagen throughout the negotiating process by State Department negotiators and Cabinet officials who will highlight the great strides we have made this year towards a clean energy economy.

Source The White House Press Office

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Danish government for its generous invitation to host this fifteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and the enormous commitment and work it has shown to make it a success. The time for climate action is now, at Copenhagen. Source UN