Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
1
Can’t solve climate change – forest fires
Amelia Cheetham, 8-29, 19, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-brazils-burning-amazon-threatensclimate, How Brazil’s Burning Amazon Threatens the Climate
Fires in the world’s largest rain forest have triggered global worries, with environmental
watchdogs blaming President Jair Bolsonaro’s government for encouraging deforestation. But
Bolsonaro has downplayed the crisis and accused some countries offering aid of infringing on
Brazil’s sovereignty. Hormuz and Oil: The Global Problem of a Global Market Brazil’s Amazon
region has seen more than 60,500 fires since January, double the number reported in the same
period last year. The states of Roraima, Acre, Rondonia, and Amazonas have been particularly
hard-hit, and smoke from the blazes has caused midday blackouts two thousand miles away in
Sao Paulo. Fires are not unexpected during Brazil’s dry season, but the number and
intensity of this year’s blazes, combined with Bolsonaro’s response, have focused attention
on the rain forest’s important role in regulating rainfall and climate. The Greenhouse Effect
These fires signal widespread degradation of the rain forest. Historically, the Amazon’s wet,
tropical conditions made it practically fireproof. Now, scientists say, increasing
temperatures and commercial activity are drying it out. Since Bolsonaro’s January
inauguration, the rate of deforestation is up 39 percent compared to the same period in 2018, with
1,330 square miles of rain forest destroyed. Experts link this year’s fires to land clearing by
farmers and loggers. Development and subsequent fires weaken the Amazon, which plays a
critical role in slowing climate change. Its vegetation absorbs about 600 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide annually, and the 2015 Paris Agreement targets likely can’t be reached without
it. Amazon fires have produced 228 million metric tons of carbon dioxide this year, the most
since 2010, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and offsetting the rain forest’s value as
a carbon sink. The Amazon’s wildlife, which makes up 10 percent of the world’s plant and
animal species, is also under threat. Many animals are ill adapted to survive large-scale fires,
and scientists warn that the blazes could kill off species “without [humans] ever knowing they
were there.” Smokes rises from forest fires in Para State, Brazil. Smokes rises from forest fires in
Para State, Brazil. Joao Laet/AFP/Getty Images Share Brazil’s Response Brazil has deployed
soldiers to fight the fires, but Bolsonaro has largely played down the threat. He has lashed out at
concerned watchdogs and world leaders, suggesting at one point that nongovernmental
organizations set the fires in retaliation for government funding cuts. But Bolsonaro’s prodevelopment policies and rhetoric have spurred deforestation and encouraged businesses to clear
the Amazon with impunity, critics say. As international pressure has grown, Bolsonaro has sent
mixed signals. He says Brazil lacks the resources needed to extinguish the fires. However, he has
rebuffed foreign assistance as an attack on Brazil’s sovereignty. When French President
Emmanuel Macron tweeted “our house is burning” last week, Bolsonaro accused him of having a
“colonialist mind-set.” The two leaders continued trading insults, including during the annual
Group of Seven (G7) summit, hosted this year by Macron. This week, the Brazilian president
spurned $20 million in G7 aid; he then agreed to negotiations if Macron were to retract his
comments critical of Bolsonaro. Brazil has accepted planes from Chile and $12.2 million from the
United Kingdom to boost its firefighting capacity. Signal Fires It remains unclear whether
Bolsonaro will accept the G7 aid package. Countries that share the Amazon will meet next week
to coordinate a response—some, including Bolivia, are dealing with their own large fires—and
the crisis is likely to feature at next month’s UN General Assembly, where a summit on climate
issues is already scheduled. The Amazon fires are part of a spate of blazes around the world
worrying scientists. Lesser-known fires in Central Africa are threatening the planet’s
second-largest rain forest, the Congo Basin, and heavily forested areas in eastern Siberia
are burning. Higher temperatures are partly to blame, and experts warn that further
destruction of the world’s rain forests will hasten climate change.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
2
95%+ chance all of their impacts are inevitable
Hannah Goeneka, 8-1, 17, https://www.ibtimes.com/global-warming-2-degrees-unavoidable2100-2-studies-find-2572839, Global Warming By 2 Degrees Unavoidable By 2100, 2 Studies
Find
Two separate studies published online Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change
found Earth will be warmer by at least 2 degrees by the year 2100. The main difference
between the two analyses of climate change was that one used Fahrenheit and the other Celsius to
predict the rise in global temperatures. One study, led by researchers from University of
Washington (UW), used statistical tools and concluded there was “only a 5 percent chance that
Earth will warm 2 degrees [Celsius] or less by the end of this century. It shows a mere 1
percent chance that warming could be at or below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], the target set by the
2016 Paris Agreement.” Read: Global Warming By 2250 Could Make Earth Warmer Than It Has
Been In 400 Million Years UW’s Adrian Raftery, who led the research for the new paper, said in
a statement Monday the 2 degree Celsius rise was a best-case scenario which was achievable only
if there was a concerted and massive effort across all fronts to achieve that goal for the next 80
years. The researchers’ analysis shows an overwhelming 90 percent chance of temperatures
going up by anywhere between 2 and 4.9 degrees Celsius by 2100. SKIP AD “Our analysis is
compatible with previous estimates, but it finds that the most optimistic projections are unlikely
to happen. We’re closer to the margin than we think,” Raftery said in the statement. For their
projections, the researchers used three factors that affect future emissions: the total human
population of the planet, gross domestic product per person, and carbon intensity, which is
a measure of carbon emission for each dollar of economic activity. Statistical projections
were made on the basis of data for the last 50 years. Earth’s population is expected to reach 11
billion by the year 2100, according to the projections, an almost 50 percent increase from the
current world population. But since most of this growth is expected to come from Africa, where
fossil fuel consumption is low, the researchers found this factor to be only a minor one in their
projections. The biggest factor was found to be carbon intensity, which has been dropping in
recent years due to increased energy efficiency across industries. But the study found “a wide
range of possible values of carbon intensity over future decades, depending on technological
progress and countries’ commitments to implementing changes.” Based on various projections,
the study, titled “Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely,” found a median value of 3.2
degrees Celsius for global temperature rise by 2100.
4.5 degree warming inevitable
Ryan Whitwam, August 8, 2018, https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/274986-new-studysuggests-hothouse-earth-could-be-inevitable, New Study Suggests ‘Hothouse Earth’ Could Be
Inevitable
A new analysis suggests that even limiting emissions won’t be able to stop the planet from
warming considerably more than the 2-degree cutoff. Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience
Centre note that Earth’s own feedback mechanisms could mean we’ve already crossed the point
of no return. At present, the climate has warmed more than a degree above pre-industrial
levels, and it’s going up about 0.17 degrees C every decade. Carbon sinks that currently limit
the damage of greenhouse gasses could tip the other way and become sources of carbon past 2
degrees of warming. The feedbacks cited in the study include permafrost, which could thaw
as temperatures increase. Warming oceans could also cause the release of carbon dioxide
and methane from the ocean floor. Forests that currently soak up atmospheric carbon could also
die in many regions, causing the release of all that captured carbon as they decompose. The team
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
3
likens it to a row of dominoes that could topple one after another once we cross the 2-degree
barrier. ADVERTISING If the scenario laid out in the new study is accurate, we could be headed
for a so-called Hothouse Earth, where the global temperature stabilizes at 4-5 degrees above
pre-industrial averages. At that point, global climate would experience radical shifts, and the
oceans would be 10-60 meters higher than today. That would render many currently habitable
areas inhospitable to human life. It might take a century or more for the full effects of Hothouse
Earth to be realized, but the study suggests that is inevitable if we don’t make big changes. We’re
not talking about the end of the world itself, but it might well be the end of the world for humans.
It’s still unclear if global temperatures can be “parked” at or near 2 degrees C. The Stockholm
Resilience Centre study says that simply lowering emissions won’t be enough — we should be
working toward ending the use of fossil fuels by the middle of this century. The world may need
to exert considerable effort to take carbon out of the atmosphere through the use of new
biological carbon stores and as-yet undiscovered technologies that can remove and sequester
carbon.
95% chance we’ll pass 2 degrees now
Jason Lederman, February 22, 2018, https://www.popsci.com/what-happens-if-earth-gets-2degrees-warmer/ , Popular Science, What happens if Earth gets 2°C warmer?
Can countries like the United States, China, and India not just limit but reduce CO2 emissions in
order to keep our planet below the 2°C mark? The outlook is grim. Studies based on IPCC data
say there's a 95% chance we'll pass 2°C by the year 2100—and the detrimental effects of
climate change may be unavoidable. We do have the power to lower our emissions and keep
the worst possible warming at bay. But we're running out of time.
Even 2 degrees is bad
Jason Lederman, February 22, 2018, https://www.popsci.com/what-happens-if-earth-gets-2degrees-warmer/ , Popular Science, What happens if Earth gets 2°C warmer?
If the world gets warmer by two degrees Celsius, we’re screwed. To prevent that, the United
Nations signed the Paris Agreement, an international treaty designed to keep the average global
temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”...A.K.A. what the Earth was like before
factories started spewing greenhouse gases into the air…. And if we warm by 2°C, the world
will be a lot drier, which will impact economies, agriculture, infrastructure, and weather
patterns. Rising temperatures will damage ecosystems and species that cannot adapt, including
those in coral reefs and Arctic areas. Low-lying coastal regions and small islands worldwide are
at risk of disappearing as sea levels rise due to the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic ice melting at
continuously faster rates. 2 degrees celsius could determine the existence of whole nations.
Some say 7 degree warming is inevitable
Mindy Weisberger, 9-28, 18, https://www.livescience.com/63709-trump-climate-report-7degrees.html, 7-Degree Global Temperature Rise Is Inevitable, Trump Administration Presumes
(and Shrugs It Off)
A recently issued environmental report suggests that leaders in the Trump administration have
already shrugged off the possibility of putting the brakes on climate change, a stance that
embraces a catastrophic future for the planet. Scientists have warned that if current levels of
fossil fuel consumption continue unchecked, Earth could warm by as much as 7 degrees
Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by 2100. And according to this report, that prediction is already
accepted by the government as inevitable — and nothing will be done to prevent it, The
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
Washington Post reported today (Sept. 28). [6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change]
4
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
5
Can’t Solve Warming
Nothing solves it
McMartin 13 (Peter, Vancouver Sun Columnist, 3/9/2013, "Global warming’s new
frightening deadline",
www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Global+warming+frightening+deadline/8071552/sto
ry.html)
In April 2009, the science journal Nature published a paper entitled Greenhouse-Gas
Emission Targets for Limiting
Global Warming to 2 C. Its subject was the end of the modern world. At the time, it attracted little notice. It
was a half-dozen pages long. For laymen, its technical content was impenetrable. The purpose of the paper — researched and
written by a team of European scientists headed by Malte Meinshausen, a climatologist with Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact — was to determine just how much time mankind had left before our burning of fossil fuels
would cause catastrophic global warming. The marker for what would be considered “catastrophic”
warming was generally agreed to be anything above a rise of two degrees Celsius in global temperature. “More than
100 countries,” the paper noted, (the actual number was 167 countries) “have adopted a global warming limit of 2°C or below (relative
to pre-industrial levels) as a guiding principle for mitigation efforts to reduce climate change risks, impacts and damages.” The
problem was, no one was exactly sure how much fossil-fuel consumption had already contributed to
global warming, or how much fossil fuel mankind could consume without going over the two degrees Celsius marker. Those
phenomena needed to be quantified. Meinshausen’s team did just that. It constructed a rigorous model by
incorporating hundreds of factors that had never been grouped together before, and then ran them through a thousand different
scenarios. The team’s conclusion? Time was perilously short. It found that if we continued at present
levels of fossil fuel consumption (and, in fact, consumption has been rising annually), we have somewhere
between an 11- to 15-year window to prevent global temperatures from surpassing the two
degree Celsius threshold in this century. And the longer we waited, the worse the odds got. To
quote from a story on the Meinshausen paper by reporter Katherine Bagley of the non-profit news agency, InsideClimate News: “To
have a 50-50 chance of keeping temperature rise below two degrees, humans would have to stick to
a carbon budget that allowed the release of no more than 1,437 gigatons of carbon dioxide from 2000 to 2050. “To
have an 80-per-cent chance of avoiding that threshold, they would have to follow a stricter budget and
emit just 886 gigatons.” To put that in perspective, Meinshausen’s team calculated that the world’s nations had
already produced 234 gigatons by 2006. At our present rate, the paper predicted, the world will surpass
that 886-gigaton figure by 2024 — or sooner, if annual consumption rates continue to rise as
they have. Since the Meinshausen paper was published, several other studies have corroborated its findings.
The math in them comes to basically the same conclusion. “Yes, I use Meinshausen’s study,” wrote Prof. Mark Jaccard,
environmental economist at Simon Fraser University, in an email. “But I also use about five others that basically say the same thing.
The reason they all say the same thing is because the math is trivial — no independent analysts dispute it. “This is
not groupthink,” Jaccard wrote. “Even when we bring in vice-presidents
from oil and coal companies to be parts of the
study groups, they quietly agree. When you are sitting in a meeting at Stanford (University) with top researchers — and away
from your marketing department — it is pretty hard to sustain the myths that ‘business-as-usual’ is OK.” Prof. Thomas Pederson,
executive director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, and former dean of science at the University of Victoria, noted in an
email that “the study was conducted by one of the best teams of climate scientists in the world.” “Given continuing
acceleration of emissions globally,” Pederson wrote, “we’re on or near the worst-case track that
Meinshausen et al. modelled, and that puts us on a probable course for several degrees of
planetary warming by the end of this century. In a word, that will be disastrous.” An even more alarming
assessment comes from University of B.C. Prof. William Rees, originator of the “ecological footprint” concept. “I haven’t read this
particular study,” Rees wrote, “but it sounds about right. If I recall, the United Kingdom’s Tyndall Centre (for Climate Change
Research) suggests that a
90-per-cent reduction in carbon emissions from high income countries may be
necessary. “In any event, various authors don’t believe we have any hope of cutting greenhouse
gases sufficiently in time to avoid a two Celsius degree increase in mean global
temperature since to date, no serious steps have been taken to wean the world off fossil
fuels.” What would serious steps entail? According to the Meinshausen paper, up to 80 per cent of our known
reserve of fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground. “The carbon budget implied by the 2 C
limit,” Jaccard wrote, “means that we cannot be making new investments that expand the
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
6
carbon polluting infrastructure. “This means no expansion of oilsands, no new pipelines (like
Keystone and Northern Gateway) and no expansion of coal mines and coal ports. “This does not mean
shutting down the oilsands. It does not mean shutting coal mines. These will continue to operate for decades. But you
cannot be
expanding carbon polluting production and also prevent 2 C or even 4 C temperature
increase. The industry knows this, but prefers its ads telling us about the jobs and revenue from expanding the polluting
infrastructure.” But
the remedies needed, Rees suggested, might have to be even more draconian than
that. “Even the International Energy Agency and the World Bank have recently conceded that even if present agreed-upon
policies were implemented, the world is likely headed to four Celsius degrees warming by
the end of the century. This would render much of the most heavily populated parts of the
earth uninhabitable ...”
Existing carbon triggers the impact
Daniel Rirdan 12, founder of The Exploration Company, “The Right Carbon Concentration
Target”, June 29, http://theenergycollective.com/daniel-rirdan/89066/what-should-be-our-carbonconcentration-target-and-forgetpolitics?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+
%28all+posts%29
James Hansen and other promi­nent cli­ma­tol­o­gists are call­ing to bring the CO2 atmos­pheric
level to 350 parts per million. In fact, an orga­ni­za­tion, 350.org, came around that ral­ly­ing cry.
This is far more radical than most politicians are willing to entertain. And it is not likely to be
enough. The 350ppm target will not reverse the clock as far back as one may assume. It was in
1988 that we have had these level of car­bon con­cen­tra­tion in the air. But wait, there is more to
the story. 1988-levels of CO2 with 2012-levels of all other green­house gases bring us to a state of
affairs equiv­a­lent to that around 1994 (2.28 w/m2). And then there are aerosols. There is good
news and bad news about them. The good news is that as long as we keep spewing mas­sive
amounts of particulate matter and soot into the air, more of the sun’s rays are scattered back to
space, over­all the reflec­tiv­ity of clouds increases, and other effects on clouds whose over­all
net effect is to cool­ing of the Earth sur­face. The bad news is that once we stop polluting, stop
run­ning all the diesel engines and the coal plants of the world, and the soot finally settles down,
the real state of affairs will be unveiled within weeks. Once we fur­ther get rid of the aerosols and
black car­bon on snow, we may be very well be worse off than what we have had around 2011 (a
pos­si­ble addi­tion of 1.2 w/m2). Thus, it is not good enough to stop all green­house gas
emis­sions. In fact, it is not even close to being good enough. A carbon-neutral econ­omy at
this late stage is an unmit­i­gated disaster. There is a need for a carbon-negative economy.
Essentially, it means that we have not only to stop emitting, to the tech­no­log­i­cal extent
pos­si­ble, all green­house gases, but also capture much of the crap we have already out­gassed
and lock it down. And once we do the above, the ocean will burp its excess gas, which has come
from fos­sil fuels in the first place. So we will have to draw down and lock up that carbon, too.
We have taken fos­sil fuel and released its con­tent; now we have to do it in reverse—hundreds of
bil­lions of tons of that stuff.
Need net negative emissions
Romm 8 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, Senior Fellow at the Center for American
Progress, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, citing Ken
Calderia, atmospheric scientist who works at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of
Global Ecology, Feb 28, 2008, “Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions”,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/02/28/202398/stabilizing-climate-requires-near-zeroemissions/)
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
7
Avoiding climate catastrophe will probably require going to near-zero net emissions of
greenhouse gases this century. That is the conclusion of a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) co-authored by one of my favorite climate scientists, Ken
Caldeira, whose papers always merit attention. Here is the abstract: Current international climate mitigation efforts aim to stabilize
levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, human-induced climate warming will
continue for many centuries, even after atmospheric CO2 levels are stabilized. In this paper, we assess the CO2
emissions requirements for global temperature stabilization within the next several centuries, using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity. We show first that a single pulse of carbon released into the
to hold
climate constant at a given global temperature requires near-zero future carbon emissions. Our results
suggest that future anthropogenic emissions would need to be eliminated in order to stabilize globalmean temperatures. As a consequence, any future anthropogenic emissions will commit the climate
system to warming that is essentially irreversible on centennial timescales. Since the rest of the article is behind a firewall, let me extract a couple of
atmosphere increases globally averaged surface temperature by an amount that remains approximately constant for several centuries, even in the absence of additional emissions. We then show that
key findings: … our results suggest that if emissions were eliminated entirely, radiative forcing from atmospheric CO2 would decrease at a rate closely matched by declining ocean heat uptake, with the result that
In
the absence of human intervention to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, each unit of
CO2 emissions must be viewed as leading to quantifiable and essentially permanent climate
change on centennial timescales. We emphasize that a stable global climate is not synonymous with stable radiative forcing, but rather requires decreasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. We have
while future warming commitment may be negligible, atmospheric temperatures may not decrease appreciably for at least 500 years. In short, the time for dramatic action is upon us. The study concludes:
shown here that stable global temperatures within the next several centuries can be achieved if CO2 emissions are reduced to nearly zero. This means that avoiding future human-induced climate warming may
Bottom line: Stopping global warming is very hard —
easily the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced. The best we can hope for at this point
is to limit warming to below the threshold where the carbon-cycle feedbacks kick into overdrive,
bringing about catastrophe (80 feet of sea level rise, widespread desertification, >50% species loss). In all likelihood we need to slow cut
emissions deeply and quickly enough that we get to the point this century where we can actually
have net negative emissions, by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while emitting almost none.
require policies that seek not only to decrease CO2 emissions, but to eliminate them entirely.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
8
No International Agreement
All climate negotiations have failed
Bruce Jones, 2014, Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and the director of the Project on International
Order and Strategy at Brookings and a consulting professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute at
Stanford University, 2014 Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension Between
Rivalry and Restraint, Kindle Edition
Negotiations on these issues have been like a road map to the new claimants to power. The
summits have been held in Cancun, Mexico; Durban, South Africa; and Doha, Qatar. Each has
made a microstep forward: in Cancun, a $ 100-billion-a-year Green Climate Fund to protect poor
countries against climate change impacts and help them in low carbon development was
established; in Durban, the United States reluctantly agreed to accept that the outcome of the
negotiations would, eventually, be a legally binding agreement, as opposed to a looser
formulation that the United States preferred (notably, it agreed under intense pressure from a joint
coalition of Europeans plus the African states—another story of strange bedfellows in
contemporary global politics). In Doha, some procedural obstacles were removed and “loss and
damage” due to climate change was brought into the discussion, which could in principle make
developed countries financially responsible for their failures to reduce emissions. But none of this
has made any inroads on the core question of serious cuts, by the world's major economies, in
their consumption of carbon-based fuels. The failure to take serious steps toward climate
mitigation through the UN-sponsored negotiating process is one of the major pieces of evidence
used to argue that we now face a G-Zero world. 38 The failure of every summit is met with hair
pulling by the world's climate community, along with denunciations of the moribund state of the
United Nations. Gridlock is the title of one recent account of global governance institutions that
uses climate negotiations as a central case study. Jones, Bruce (2014-03-17). Still Ours to Lead:
America, Rising Powers, and the Tension between Rivalry and Restraint (Kindle Locations 20082020). Brookings Institution Press. Kindle Edition.
India will never agree to carbon limits
Bruce Jones, 2014, Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and the director of the Project on International
Order and Strategy at Brookings and a consulting professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute at
Stanford University, 2014 Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension Between
Rivalry and Restraint, Kindle Edition
The essential issue under debate is whether the emerging powers will have the space to rise
within established international economic rules or whether they will balk at the rules. For the past
seventy years, one of the features of the international economic system (which the West benefited
from) was continuous access to relatively cheap energy and an unlimited right to emit carbon into
the atmosphere. Take away either or both of those features and the system changes significantly.
So from the emerging powers’ perspective, if the West is not serious about mitigating climate
change or refuses to absorb the lions’ share of the costs of a transition to clean energy, then it will
be pulling up the ladder behind it. For an American audience, it is perhaps easier to see this in the
context of India rather than China. Put yourself in the shoes of a democratically elected Indian
politician. There are still over 600 million poor people in your country—almost as many as in the
rest of the world combined— and 400 million of them have no access to electricity. 46 Many of
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
9
them have no access to modern energy sources at all, such as modern cooking fuels. But India has
a lot of coal and can import oil and gas —all carbon-emitting fuels. Is any democratic Indian
government going to consign its people to a future of poverty because global climate negotiations
with the West dictate that India cannot burn carbon the way the West did during its economic
rise? It is impossible. There is simply no way that any Indian politician can argue that India
should curtail its own growth— or put more sympathetically, its effort at poverty reduction— to
accommodate the West's belated concern for climate change . (In the United States, there is a
parallel argument made about the need to continue to develop coal as a cheap energy source
accessible to America's poor —though of course the United States has more options than India on
this front.) Jones, Bruce (2014-03-17). Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the
Tension between Rivalry and Restraint (Kindle Locations 2061-2075). Brookings Institution
Press. Kindle Edition.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
10
Transportation Reductions Won’t Solve
Electricity is 33%, transportation is 26%
EPA 10 (the EPA, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” 2010)
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. In 2010, CO2
accounted for about 84% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth's carbon cycle (the natural circulation of carbon among
the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and animals). Human activities are altering the carbon cycle--both by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere and by influencing the ability of natural sinks, like forests, to remove
CO2 from the atmosphere. While CO2 emissions come from a variety of natural sources, human-related emissions are responsible for the increase that has occurred in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
[1] U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, By Source Note: All emission estimates from the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2010. The main human activity that emits CO2 is the combustion
of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) for energy and transportation, although certain industrial processes and land-use changes also emit CO2. The main sources of CO2 emissions in the United States are
Electricity. Electricity is a significant source of energy in the United States and is used to power homes, business, and industry. The combustion of fossil fuels to generate electricity is
accounting for about 40% of total U.S. CO2 emissions and 33% of total U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions in 2009. The type of fossil fuel used to generate electricity will emit different amounts of CO2. To produce a given amount of electricity, burning coal will produce more CO2 than oil or natural
gas. Transportation. The combustion of fossil fuels. such as gasoline and diesel to transport people and goods is the second largest source of CO2 emissions, accounting for about 31% of total U.S.
CO2 emissions and 26% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. This category includes transportation sources such as highway vehicles, air travel, marine transportation,
and rail. Industry. Many industrial processes emit CO2 through fossil fuel combustion. Several processes also produce CO2 emissions through chemical reactions that do
described below.
the largest single source of CO2 emissions in the nation,
not involve combustion, for example, the production and consumption of mineral products such as cement, the production of metals such as iron and steel, and the production of chemicals. Various industrial
20% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Note that many industrial processes also use electricity and
processes accounted for about 14% of total U.S. CO2 emissions and
therefore indirectly cause the emissions from the electricity production.
Not even an 80% cut is enough
AP 9 (Associated Press, Six Degree Temperature Rise by 2100 is Inevitable: UNEP, September
24, http://www.speedy-fit.co.uk/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=168)
Earth's temperature is likely to jump six degrees between now and the end of the century even if
every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update. Scientists looked at emission plans from 192 nations and
calculated what would happen to global warming. The projections take into account 80 percent emission cuts from the U.S.
and Europe by 2050, which are not sure things. The U.S. figure is based on a bill that passed the House of Representatives but is running into resistance in the
Senate, where debate has been delayed by health care reform efforts. Carbon dioxide, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, is the main cause of global warming, trapping the sun's energy in the
Much of projected rise in temperature is because of
developing nations, which aren't talking much about cutting their emissions, scientists said at a United Nations press
conference Thursday. China alone adds nearly 2 degrees to the projections. "We are headed toward very serious changes in our planet," said Achim Steiner, head
of the U.N.'s environment program, which issued the update on Thursday. The review looked at some 400 peer-reviewed papers on climate over the last three years. Even if the developed
world cuts its emissions by 80 percent and the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050, as some
experts propose, the world is still facing a 3-degree increase by the end of the century, said Robert Corell, a prominent U.S. climate
atmosphere. The world's average temperature has already risen 1.4 degrees since the 19th century.
scientist who helped oversee the update. Corell said the most likely agreement out of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December still translates into a nearly 5-degree increase in world
temperature by the end of the century. European leaders and the Obama White House have set a goal to limit warming to just a couple degrees. The U.N.'s environment program unveiled the update on peer-reviewed
climate change science to tell diplomats how hot the planet is getting. The last big report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out more than two years ago and is based on
Global warming is speeding up, especially in the Arctic, and that means that some top-level
science projections from 2007 are already out of date and overly optimistic. Corell, who headed an assessment of warming in
the Arctic, said global warming "is accelerating in ways that we are not anticipating." Because Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are
melting far faster than thought, it looks like the seas will rise twice as fast as projected just three years ago,
Corell said. He said seas should rise about a foot every 20 to 25 years.
science that is at least three to four years old, Steiner said.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
11
350 PPM Solvency Key
350 ppm takes 97% emissions reduction by 2050, 450 takes 80%
Goodstein at al. 9 (Eban Goodstein is the director of the Bard Center for Environmental
Policy and Bard’s new MBA in Sustainability in NYC. Kristen Sheeran is the director of
Economics for Equity and the Environment Network (E3), a nationwide network of economists
developing new arguments for environmental protection with a social justice focus. Her research
is focused on the tension between equity and efficiency in public goods provision, the political
economy of environmental policy, and climate change mitigation. She is author of Saving Kyoto
(New Holland, 2009) with Graciela Chichilnisky. Frank Ackerman is director of the Climate
Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, an independent research
affiliate of Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He is also a founding member of Economics for
Equity and the Environment. 7 Oct 2009, “The economics of 350”, http://grist.org/article/theeconomics-of-350/)
And so, what four years ago was a heroic target of 450 ppm has suddenly become a mindboggling target of 350 ppm. Instead of global emissions cuts of 80 percent from 1990 levels by
2050, 350 requires 97 percent reductions: a complete conversion to renewable energy systems by
mid-century, with the world economy virtually free of carbon emissions. This is a far more
demanding goal than any of the leading policy proposals under discussion today. Game over? No.
Just time to adjust our thinking about what is possible.
350 ppm is the red-line threshold – fast-forcing and positive feedbacks mean
anything above that is catastrophic
McKibben 7 (Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College,
American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of
global warming, no date, but website was founded in 2007 so whatever,
http://www.350.org/en/node/48)
The question of what target to aim for in the fight against global warming has always been vexed, and
for one simple reason: filling the atmosphere with carbon is at base a huge experiment, one we've
never conducted before. It's always been tough to judge exactly where the danger lies. At first in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the number we routinely used
was 550 parts per million CO2—mostly because it was double the pre-Industrial Revolution
concentrations and hence easy to model. But it became something of a red line through dint of sheer repetition—I remember writing an op-ed for the New York Times
excoriating the Clinton administration for hinting that it might be okay to go past a 550 ceiling. As time went on, it became clearer that the dangerous
thresholds lay somewhere lower, and we began to use—almost interchangeably—450 parts per million, or 2
degrees Celsius. Science doesn't actually know if 450 ppm and 2 degrees are the same thing, and no one
knows how much change they would produce. Again, these were guesses for the point at which catastrophic damage would begin—they were more plausible, but still not based
on actual experience. They also reflected guesses of what was politically possible to achieve. They were completely defensible, given the lack of data (though the 2C target was always
problematic strategically since Americans don't use centigrade measurements and hence have no real idea what 2 degrees Celsius means.) In the summer of 2007, though,
with the rapid melt of Arctic ice, it became clear that we had already crossed serious thresholds.
A number of other signs pointed in the same direction: the spike in methane emissions, likely
from thawing permafrost; the melt of high-altitude glacier systems and perennial snowpack in
Asia, Europe, South America and North America; the rapid and unexpected acidification of
seawater. All of these implied the same thing: wherever the red line for danger was, we were
already past it, even though the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was only 390 parts per million, and the temperature increase still a shade below 1 degree C. In early 2008, Jim
Hansen and a team of researchers gave us a new number, verified for the first time by real-time observation
(and also by reams of new paleo-climatic data). They said that 350 parts per million CO2 was the upper
limit if we wished to have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
12
which life on earth is adapted." That number is unrefuted; indeed, a constant flow of additional
evidence supports it from many directions. Just this week, for instance, oceanographers reported
that longterm atmospheric levels above 360 ppm would doom coral reefs worldwide. It is, therefore, no
longer possible to defend higher targets as a bulwark against catastrophic change. The Global Humanitarian
Forum reported recently that climate change was already claiming 300,000 lives per year—that should qualify as catastrophic. A new Oxfam
report makes very clear the degree of suffering caused by the warming we've already seen, and adds "Warming of 2 degrees C entails a devastating future for at least 600 million people," almost all of them innocent
If the Arctic melts at less than one degree, then two degrees can't be a real target.
This is simply how science works. New information drives out the old. You could, logically, defend targets like
450 or 2 degrees C as the best we could hope for politically, especially if you add that they represent absolute upper limits that we must bounce back below as quickly as possible. But even that is politically
problematic, because it implies—to policy makers and the general public—that we still have atmosphere left in which to put
more carbon, and time to gradually adjust policies. We don't—not with feedback loops like methane release starting to
kick in with a vengeance. It is, we think, far wiser to tell people the best science, in part because it motivates action. It's the difference between a
doctor telling you that you really should think about changing your diet and a doctor telling you
your cholesterol is already too high and a heart attack is imminent. The second scenario is the one that gets your attention. A number
of small island nations and less developed country governments have joined leaders like Al Gore in
enunciating firmly the 350 target, and equating it with survival. Climate coalition groups like TckTckTck have also endorsed the target,
as have a growing coalition of hundreds of organizational allies. Here's the important thing to remember: arguing for 350 is not making "the perfect the
enemy of the good." It's making the necessary the enemy of the convenient. We were aware that we wouldn't get an
of any role in causing this trouble.
agreement in Copenhagen that rapidly returns us to 350—even if we do everything right it will take decades for the world's oceans and forests to absorb the excess carbon we've already poured into the atmosphere.
But that's why we've got to get going now—and at the very least we have a number to explain why the agreement that did emerge is insufficient and needs to be revised quickly and regularly. We can use it to make
Copenhagen a real beginning, not an end for years to come the way Kyoto was. In the end, everyone needs to remember that the goal at Copenhagen was not to get a "victory," not to sign an agreement. It's to actually
take steps commensurate with the problem. And those steps are dictated, in the end, by science. This negotiation, on the surface, is between America and China and the EU and India and the developing world;
Physics
and chemistry have laid their cards on the table: above 350 the world doesn't work. They are
not going to negotiate further. It's up to us to figure out, this year and in the years ahead, how to
meet their bottom line.
between industry and environmentalists; between old and new technology. But at root the real negotiation is between human beings on the one hand, and physics and chemistry on the other.
Solvency is a yes/no question – past 350 climate predictions are impossible
because feedbacks spiral out of control
Cary 12 (John Carey, Scientific American (November 2012), 307, 50-55, “Global Warming:
Faster Than Expected?”, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1112-50)
Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees Celsius, perils such
as catastrophic sea-level rise could be avoided. Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global
feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even
before the two degree C “limit” is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting
permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide. The
feedbacks could accelerate warming, alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires. Over the past decade
scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate
change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it
was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would
require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm. Now it appears that the
assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is
changing faster than expected. More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had
been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane,
the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking
up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are
sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped
much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we
cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,” says Stefan
Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany. The X factors
that may be pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are long-hypothesized feedback
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
13
loops that may be starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean
water more, which melts even more sea ice. Greater permafrost melting puts more CO2 and
methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes further permafrost melting, and so on. The potential for
faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm
Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm, “we will
have started a process that is out of humanity's control,” warns James E. Hansen, director of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Sea levels might climb as much as five meters
this century, he says. That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok. Meanwhile increased heat and drought could bring massive famines. “The
consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid,
irreversible leap to a much warmer world.
limit, which seems increasingly unlikely, that could be too little, too late.
We access all of their extinction level scenarios – that’s the tipping points arg
above, but specifically:
First, Costello says ocean acidification – only 350 solves
Fisher 11 (Douglas Fisher, Daily Climate editor, citing Oceana, largest international
organization focused on ocean conservation, 2011, “The ocean's acid test”,
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/acid-test/the-oceans-acid-test)
ocean acidification. That change is well underway a consequence of warming that
has already happened and fossil-fuel emissions that have long since been dumped into the atmosphere. In absorbing those emissions the oceans
have buffered humanity from the worst effects of climate change. But in doing so ocean
chemistry has changed, acidifying to levels not seen in 800,000 years. The result, according to a new report issued today by
Oceana, is that today’s ocean chemistry is already hostile for many creatures fundamental to the marine
food web. The world’s oceans – for so long a neat and invisible sink for humanity’s carbon
dioxide emissions – are about to extract a price for all that waste. The effects are not local: Entire ecosystems
threaten to literally crumble away as critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home – from corals to mollusks to the sea
snail – have a harder time manufacturing their shells. Corals shelter millions of species worldwide , while
sea snails account for upwards of 45 percent of the diet of pink salmon. To avoid the most serious problems associated with
acidification, Oceana and other scientists warn, society must hold atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 partsper-million, roughly 25 percent higher than the pre-industrial mark. The rub is that the globe has already passed 385 ppm. And many economists and climatologists figure
the peak will lie somewhere north of 570 ppm before society figures out how to curb emissions.
“Climate change has been happening for a long time,” said Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s senior
director of pollution campaigns and co-author of the report, Acid Test: Can we save our oceans from CO2? The oceans “are so big, so vast, and everyone
thought they were untouchable. But the fact is we’ve been touching them all along.”
The problem is one of many associated with
Second, Deibel says sea rise – if we don’t hold to 350 fast forcing triggers ice
sheets collapse and epic flooding
Goodstein et al. 9 (Eban Goodstein is the director of the Bard Center for Environmental
Policy and Bard’s new MBA in Sustainability in NYC. Kristen Sheeran is the director of
Economics for Equity and the Environment Network (E3), a nationwide network of economists
developing new arguments for environmental protection with a social justice focus. Her research
is focused on the tension between equity and efficiency in public goods provision, the political
economy of environmental policy, and climate change mitigation. She is author of Saving Kyoto
(New Holland, 2009) with Graciela Chichilnisky. Frank Ackerman is director of the Climate
Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, an independent research
affiliate of Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He is also a founding member of Economics for
Equity and the Environment. 7 Oct 2009, “The economics of 350”, http://grist.org/article/theeconomics-of-350/)
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
14
Why 350? At the Rio Earth Summit in 1990, the international community agreed to work to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the global climate.
This statement solidified into a goal of holding further warming to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above 1990 levels; operationally, this suggested that we needed to stabilize CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere at below 450 ppm. So for the past few years, 450 has been the number. And it is a daunting one: at current rates of emissions, we will blow past 450 ppm in less than 30
years. Stabilizing at 450 ppm requires rich countries to immediately cap carbon and begin steep cuts. By 2025, the 450 ppm goal means that emissions have to be falling across the entire planet. Yet now, in 2009,
governments and businesses are just beginning to come to grips with 450. In the developed world, the architecture for a multi-decadal cap-and-cut system is emerging, and in China there is a growing commitment to
clean energy technology, and an inching towards the acceptance of carbon cuts. But
now the scientists have stepped back in. Even if we achieve 450 ppm CO2,
according to the Stern Review, we still face a 70 percent chance that the globe will heat up more than 2.4 degrees C. The last time the earth was that hot sea levels were 75 feet higher. On top of this,
increasing evidence suggests that the earth’s climate system is much more sensitive to the buildup of C02 than conventional wisdom would have it. Initial warming appears more and more
likely to trigger processes that will lead to additional warming: methane released from thawing
tundra and drying arctic wetlands; carbon emitted from burning forests and drying soils. Given this new
evidence, Hansen and others have argued that to avoid triggering the collapse of the ice-sheets, and eventual flooding of
the great coastal cities of the world, we have to hold warming to less than 2 degrees C. And so, in
the year 2007, the new number arrived: 350.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
15
350 Impact – Reefs
Savitz 9 (Jacqueline Savitz, Deputy Vice President for U.S. Campaigns at Oceana, master’s
degree in environmental science with emphasis in toxicology from the University of Maryland,
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, where her work focused on the effects of contaminants on
aquatic life, Executive Director of Coast Alliance, “ACID TEST: CAN WE SAVE OUR
OCEANS FROM CO2?”, http://oceanacidification.net/docs/Acid%20Test%20%20Second%20Edition_June2009.pdf)
Current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are already above safe levels. As a result, significant
changes are already taking place throughout the oceans, from decreasing growth rates of corals on
the Great Barrier Reef to massive coral bleaching events across the tropics. Coral reefs provide important habitat to a quarter
of all marine species and are critical to the lives and livelihoods of many humans. Allowing coral reefs to disappear would result in
intolerable changes throughout the oceans and to the lives of hundreds of millions of humans.
What happens to coral reefs will foreshadow other catastrophic changes that are likely to take
place around the world due to ocean acidification and climate change. To prevent the loss of
coral reefs, and ultimately avert a climate crisis, we must reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide
levels below 350 parts per million (ppm). 4 Unfortunately, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already reached 385 part per million and is still climbing. 5 This
current level is also much higher than it has been at any time over the course of human civilization. 6 In today’s society carbon dioxide emissions are directly tied to our continually growing need for energy. Recent
figures released by the U.S. Energy and Information Administration (EIA) suggest that staying on the current business-as-usual (BAU) path, where current laws and policies remain unchanged, will result in world
energy consumption in 2030 that is 50 percent above 2005 levels. 7 This would result in an atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration of over 570 ppm. 8 If we continue along our current emissions path reefs will
reefs as we know them
would be threatened with extinction. Once we surpass this tipping point coral reefs will shrink
rapidly, 9 and at least half of coral-associated wildlife will become rare or extinct. Shortly after that, coral reef
continue to degrade and could be pushed passed a tipping point, which is likely to occur at an atmospheric carbon dioxide level of around 450 ppm. At this point,
ecosystems will likely be reduced to crumbling frameworks with few calcareous corals remaining. 10 Since coral reefs take decades or even centuries to form, once such damage is done, the impacts will be
To save coral reefs from ocean acidification, we must stabilize atmospheric carbon
dioxide at or below a concentration of 350 ppm. By doing so, we will also prevent other climaterelated catastrophes. Current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels already exceed this amount, and with a projected increase over the coming decades it is vital to get on the right trajectory
irreversible for generations.
within the next few years and to make sure that carbon emissions peak and begin to decline within a decade.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
16
350 Impact – Ocean Acid
Fisher 11 (Douglas Fisher, Daily Climate editor, citing Oceana, largest international
organization focused on ocean conservation, 2011, “The ocean's acid test”,
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/acid-test/the-oceans-acid-test)
ocean acidification. That change is well underway a consequence of warming that
has already happened and fossil-fuel emissions that have long since been dumped into the atmosphere. In absorbing those emissions the oceans
have buffered humanity from the worst effects of climate change. But in doing so ocean
chemistry has changed, acidifying to levels not seen in 800,000 years. The result, according to a new report issued today by
Oceana, is that today’s ocean chemistry is already hostile for many creatures fundamental to the marine
food web. The world’s oceans – for so long a neat and invisible sink for humanity’s carbon
dioxide emissions – are about to extract a price for all that waste. The effects are not local: Entire ecosystems
threaten to literally crumble away as critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home – from corals to mollusks to the sea
snail – have a harder time manufacturing their shells. Corals shelter millions of species worldwide , while
sea snails account for upwards of 45 percent of the diet of pink salmon. To avoid the most serious problems associated with
acidification, Oceana and other scientists warn, society must hold atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 partsper-million, roughly 25 percent higher than the pre-industrial mark. The rub is that the globe has already passed 385 ppm. And many economists and climatologists figure
the peak will lie somewhere north of 570 ppm before society figures out how to curb emissions.
“Climate change has been happening for a long time,” said Jackie Savitz, Oceana’s senior
director of pollution campaigns and co-author of the report, Acid Test: Can we save our oceans from CO2? The oceans “are so big, so vast, and everyone
thought they were untouchable. But the fact is we’ve been touching them all along.”
The problem is one of many associated with
****
What alarms scientists most is the rate of change: The transformation has happened over 250
years, faster than anything in the historical record. And if emissions remain unchecked, Oceana
warned, the oceans in 40 years will be more acidic than anything experienced in the past 20
million years.
Over the next several centuries the pH changes may be larger than any inferred from the geologic
record of the past 300 million years, with the exception of a few rare extreme events, scientists
predict.
The process is fairly simple. For eons prior to the Industrial Revolution, oceans were at
equilibrium with the atmosphere, absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they released.
As humanity started burning fuel, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels started to rise, and the
oceans responded, taking in more and more carbon each year and increasing acidity by nearly 30
percent.
The oceans so far have absorbed some 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have added
to the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and nearly 80 percent of the
heat generated by those gases, according to Oceana.
Today the world’s oceans absorb some 30 million metric tons of extra carbon dioxide every day,
according to scientists – roughly twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each day by the
United States.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
17
The ocean has a number of natural buffers to help with change – ocean sediments and deep water
represent two enormous potential reservoirs – but they all work on vastly slower time scales, said
Richard Zeebe, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
“It’s very difficult to find a nice analogue in the past that’s going to show what we’re going to
experience over the next 200 to 300 years,” he said. “It’s pretty much outrageous what we’ve
done.”
“We are overwhelming the system,” he added. “The system is not quick enough to react. It takes
thousands of years to do this.”
****
Scientists are already seeing harm as the oceans acidify. Reefs are struggling in many parts of the
world, shell growth rates are slowing, life phases – particularly reproductive maturity – are being
thrown out of whack.
Even the healthiest reefs in the most optimum conditions today face a daily struggle to grow
faster than reef dwellers and the ocean can erode them, and the effects grow more dire as
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise.
Somewhere between 450 ppm and 500 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide, for instance, lies a
tipping point where, scientists suspect, reefs become “rapidly eroding rubble banks.” Much
beyond that, Oceana reported, “reefs as we know them would be extremely rare.” Current
projections show that by the end of this century no adequate conditions for coral will remain in
the world’s oceans.
But the chemistry is complex and the variables myriad. Atmospheric carbon dioxide alone does
not determine acidity.
“We cannot look into the past and say atmospheric carbon dioxide was highest in the Cretaceous
(65 to 145 million years ago), therefore this is what the ocean is going to look like,” Zeebe said.
“Time scale is key. Rate of change is key.”
A frequently touted example of rapid change in the geologic record is the so-called PaleoceneEocene Thermal Maximum. About 55 million years ago the Earth abruptly warmed 6°C, the
oceans acidified, atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns shifted and a large number of
bottom-dwellers died off.
That change happened over perhaps 10,000 years – not even close to today’s pace.
“This is hard for many people to understand,” Zeebe said. “You need to separate the different
time scales.”
****
Oceana maintains that holding atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 ppm would prevent the most
dire problems but still represents a concentration above the safe threshold for today’s ocean life.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
18
But for many scientists, that mark is history; in fact current industrial emissions exceed even the
highest scenario – 850 ppm by century’s end – mapped by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, said Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider.
There’s no question 350 ppm represents the safest level, Schneider said. But society will be lucky
to peak at 450 ppm, he said, with a more likely crest north of 550 ppm before emissions stabilize.
“We’re going to have an overshoot,” he said. “The only question is how bad is that overshoot
going to be.”
“Our objective has to be to prevent a ‘much worse,’ rather than pretend we can roll the clock back
to an impossibility.”
The question then becomes how much acidification can reefs handle before they start to crumble.
Unfortunately as scientists learn more, the threshold keeps dropping.
“We’re pretty sure that 560 is too high and we’re almost certain that 700 is too high, but we just
plain don’t know much about whether 350 or 450 would be OK,” said Joanie Kleypas, a marine
scientist studying coral at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Marine scientists have gradually concluded that world carbon dioxide levels will eventually peak
at some higher-than-desired threshold no matter what happens, Kleypas said, and hold hope that
some technology or solution will bring concentrations back down to the threshold level or lower.
There are hazards with this approach, or course, notably the increased likelihood of passing
dangerous tipping points in climate, ocean circulation or general ecological response.
That's why Oceana’s Savitz believes the line must be held at 350 ppm. It is a realistic goal, she
said. “The good news is it’s from lack of trying. We really haven’t done the obvious things or
picked the low-hanging fruit.”
Conservation, for instance, can erase big chunks of projected emissions.
The Oceana report outlines five approaches that together would help drop atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations to 350 ppm and preserve coral, including stopping deforestation and
overfishing, promoting energy efficiency and low-carbon fuels, and regulating carbon releases.
“The better job we do at limiting ourselves, the less (harm) we’ll see,” Savitz said. “But we’re
going to see some impacts. We’re not going to get out of this unscathed.”
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
19
350 Impact – Biodiversity
Lovejoy 8 (Thomas E. Lovejoy, of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the
Environment, chairs the science and technology advisory panel for the Global Environment
Facility. Tim Flannery is professor of environmental and life sciences at Macquarie University.
Achim Steiner is executive director of the UN Environment Program. October 30, 2008, “Our
climate unsafe beyond 350 ppm atmospheric CO2”,
http://westcoastclimateequity.org/2008/10/30/our-climate-unsafe-beyond-350-ppm-atmosphericco2/)
In the course of Earth’s history, life collectively has had a strong influence on atmosphere and
climate. It has helped shape both, and has been shaped by both. Today atmospheric and climate
changes are driven by a single species – ourselves – and they are happening very rapidly.
One of the principal elements in this is carbon, the most basic of the building blocks of living
organisms.
When we burn fossil fuels, we release solar energy captured by ancient green plants and carbon
goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Similarly when current living matter is burned and
degraded, as in tropical deforestation, it too converts into carbon dioxide.
Greenhouse gas emissions are central in the climate agenda. But the key question has always
been, what is a “safe” concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases. The pre-industrial
concentration was 280 parts per million (ppm). Today the concentration is 389 ppm and emission
rates have passed beyond the worst case scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).
Climate scientist James Hansen has suggested that 350 ppm was the concentration beyond which
it was unsafe to go. The rapid retreat as well as thinning of the Arctic Ocean ice is consistent with
that conclusion. So, too, Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity are sending multiple signals that
essentially confirm 350 ppm as the limit. Unquestionably we are beyond where we should be.
Nature is on the move all over the planet, with species changing their natural history (e.g. earlier
blooming) and their geographical location (e.g. often moving northward and up in altitude).
We have also begun to see abrupt threshold change in ecosystems. Coral reefs are being bleached
all over the globe as the fundamental coral animal-alga partnership of reef systems breaks down
at warmer temperatures. Evergreen forests in western North America and in Europe are
experiencing major tree mortality as a longer summer tilts the balance against the trees in favor of
bark beetles.
With major additional temperature increase due from current greenhouse concentrations, major
ecosystem disruption is surely in store. In addition, the growing acidity of the oceans (as they
absorb carbon dioxide) is already affecting some marine food chains. The outlook for the species
and ecosystems so fundamental to human existence is truly grim at higher greenhouse gas
concentrations and consequent climate change.
Clearly the imperative should be to peak at as low a concentration as possible and then come
down to the safe level. Once in the atmosphere, a carbon dioxide molecule will stay there for 100
to 1,000 years. We need ways to remove it and reach the safe level more quickly.
Fortunately Earth’s living systems can contribute to that goal in a significant way. That is why
forests have been part of the climate change agenda from the outset. But the time has come to
scale up to the planet’s ecosystems as a whole.
In the last 300 years, the planet’s ecosystems have released a staggering amount – between 200
and 250 billion tons – of carbon, as landscapes have been converted for human uses such as
agriculture and cities. Were some of that to be recovered, with each billion tons restored to
ecosystems the atmospheric concentration would be reduced by one part per million.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
20
It is more complicated than that because of the equilibrium between atmospheric
CO² and that which has been taken up by the oceans, but the potential to remove
CO² from the atmosphere by restoring biodiversity and carbon is clearly of major consequence.
Recent studies suggest that restoring degraded grazing lands worldwide could take up billions of
tons of carbon, maybe even as much as the difference between current greenhouse gas
concentrations and the “safe” 350. Reforesting degraded rain forest lands has enormous potential
also. Both would have biodiversity conservation benefits as well. Restored grazing lands actually
would provide improved grazing and there is no reason the forest couldn’t be used for forest
products. Peat lands would have an important role to play.
There are complications: The climate is still changing and affecting ecosystems, human
population is growing, and demands for food and biofuels will command their part of the
landscapes. Those are huge factors that could work against the role ecosystems can play in
reducing the greenhouse gas climate change threat, but increasing carbon retention by agricultural
ecosystems can make a contribution in its own right.
Charcoal from plant waste is a relatively long-term way to add carbon to soils and could
conceivably remove a significant fraction of the
CO² from the atmosphere we add annually. In addition, it is essential to integrate concerns for
equity in land use and tenure, rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and livelihoods
of farmers and herders.
This in no sense reduces the imperative to redesign the energy base of human societies. It is as
urgent as ever. The scale of the change needed is not beyond our abilities. Together the ecosystem
and energy approaches both help reduce the peak amount of gases in the atmosphere (and
consequent climate change) and can get us back to the safe level as fast as possible.
Nations are already preparing for the upcoming meetings in Poland and then Denmark of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change. The time has come to look at this as a whole, and at
the scale of the problem – namely the entire planet.
Notions of planetary engineering abound, but this is the only one essentially free of potential
unintended environmental consequences. We need to turn to the rest of the living planet to
influence atmosphere and climate as it has done in the past.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
21
350 Impact – Sea Rise
350 is the best threshold, fast-forcing triggers ice sheet collapse
Goodstein et al. 9 (Eban Goodstein is the director of the Bard Center for Environmental
Policy and Bard’s new MBA in Sustainability in NYC. Kristen Sheeran is the director of
Economics for Equity and the Environment Network (E3), a nationwide network of economists
developing new arguments for environmental protection with a social justice focus. Her research
is focused on the tension between equity and efficiency in public goods provision, the political
economy of environmental policy, and climate change mitigation. She is author of Saving Kyoto
(New Holland, 2009) with Graciela Chichilnisky. Frank Ackerman is director of the Climate
Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, an independent research
affiliate of Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He is also a founding member of Economics for
Equity and the Environment. 7 Oct 2009, “The economics of 350”, http://grist.org/article/theeconomics-of-350/)
Why 350? At the Rio Earth Summit in 1990, the international community agreed to work to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the global climate.
This statement solidified into a goal of holding further warming to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above 1990 levels; operationally, this suggested that we needed to stabilize CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere at below 450 ppm. So for the past few years, 450 has been the number. And it is a daunting one: at current rates of emissions, we will blow past 450 ppm in less than 30
years. Stabilizing at 450 ppm requires rich countries to immediately cap carbon and begin steep cuts. By 2025, the 450 ppm goal means that emissions have to be falling across the entire planet. Yet now, in 2009,
governments and businesses are just beginning to come to grips with 450. In the developed world, the architecture for a multi-decadal cap-and-cut system is emerging, and in China there is a growing commitment to
now the scientists have stepped back in
clean energy technology, and an inching towards the acceptance of carbon cuts. But
. Even if we achieve 450 ppm CO2,
according to the Stern Review, we still face a 70 percent chance that the globe will heat up more than 2.4 degrees C. The last time the earth was that hot sea levels were 75 feet higher. On top of this,
increasing evidence suggests that the earth’s climate system is much more sensitive to the buildup of C02 than conventional wisdom would have it. Initial warming appears more and more
likely to trigger processes that will lead to additional warming: methane released from thawing
tundra and drying arctic wetlands; carbon emitted from burning forests and drying soils. Given this new
evidence, Hansen and others have argued that to avoid triggering the collapse of the ice-sheets, and eventual flooding of
the great coastal cities of the world, we have to hold warming to less than 2 degrees C. And so, in
the year 2007, the new number arrived: 350.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
22
350 Good – Paleoclimatics
Prefer paleoclimatic analysis – other thresholds rely on models that don’t
take into account long CO2 lifetimes and slow feedback processes –
examining the history of the earth is the best way to account for complexity
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, 1,2* Makiko Sato, 1,2 Pushker Kharecha, 1,2 David Beerling, 3
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, 4 Mark Pagani, 5 Maureen Raymo, 6 Dana L. Royer, 7 James C.
Zachos 8, 1 NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. 2 Columbia
University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10027, USA. 3 Dept. Animal and Plant Sciences,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. 4 Lab. des Sciences du Climat et
l’Environnement/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, CEA-CNRS-Universite de Versailles SaintQuentin en Yvelines, CE Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. 5 Dept. Geology and
Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA. 6 Dept. Earth Sciences, Boston
University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. 7 Dept. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan
University, Middletown, CT, 8 Earth & Planetary Sciences Dept., University of California, Santa
Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”,
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf)
Paleoclimate data and ongoing global changes indicate that ‘slow’
climate feedback processes not included in most climate models, such as ice sheet
disintegration, vegetation migration, and GHG release from soils, tundra or ocean sediments, may
begin to come into play on time scales as short as centuries or less [7]. Rapid on-going climate
changes and realization that Earth is out of energy balance, implying that more warming is ‘in the
pipeline’ [8], add urgency to investigation of the dangerous level of GHGs. A probabilistic analysis [9] concluded that the
long-term CO2 limit is in the range 300-500 ppm for 25 percent risk tolerance, depending on climate sensitivity and non-CO2 forcings. Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 and
climate requires that net CO2 emissions approach zero, because of the long lifetime of CO2 [10, 11]. We
use paleoclimate data to show that long-term climate has high sensitivity to climate forcings and that the present global
mean CO2, 385 ppm, is already in the dangerous zone. Despite rapid current CO2 growth, ~2 ppm/year, we show that it is
conceivable to reduce CO2 this century to less than the current amount, but only via prompt
policy changes. 1.1. Climate sensitivity A global climate forcing, measured in W/m 2 averaged over the planet, is an imposed perturbation of the planet’s energy balance. Increase of solar
irradiance (So) by 2% and doubling of atmospheric CO2 are each forcings of about 4 W/m 2 [12]. Charney [13] defined an idealized climate
sensitivity problem, asking how much global surface temperature would increase if atmospheric
CO2 were instantly doubled, assuming that slowly-changing planetary surface conditions, such
as ice sheets and forest cover, were fixed. Long-lived GHGs, except for the specified CO2 change, were also fixed,
not responding to climate change. The Charney problem thus provides a measure of climate
sensitivity including only the effect of ‘fast’ feedback processes, such as changes of water vapor,
clouds and sea ice. Classification of climate change mechanisms into fast and slow feedbacks is
useful, even though time scales of these changes may overlap. We include as fast feedbacks aerosol changes, e.g., of desert dust and
marine dimethylsulfide, that occur in response to climate change [7]. Charney [13] used climate models to estimate fast-feedback doubled CO2 sensitivity of 3 ± 1.5°C. Water vapor increase
and sea ice decrease in response to global warming were both found to be strong positive
feedbacks, amplifying the surface temperature response. Climate models in the current IPCC [2]
assessment still agree with Charney’s estimate. Climate models alone are unable to define
climate sensitivity more precisely, because it is difficult to prove that models realistically
incorporate all feedback processes. The Earth’s history, however, allows empirical inference of
both fast feedback climate sensitivity and longterm sensitivity to specified GHG change
including the slow ice sheet feedback.
Our current analysis suggests that humanity must aim for an even lower level of GHGs.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
23
350 Good – Experts
We have the best scientists
Nature 9 (world's most influential and highly cited scientific journal, according to the 2010
Journal Citation Reports Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011), “A safe operating space for
humanity”, Nature 461, 472-475 (24 September 2009). Authors: Johan Rockström, executive
director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Stockholm Resilience Centre and
professor of natural resource management at Stockholm University. Will Steffen professor at and
executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute, member of the
Australian Climate Commission. Kevin Noone, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the
Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University, Åsa Persson, Post-Doctoral fellow at the
Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. F. Stuart Chapin, III, professor of Ecology
at the Department of Biology and Wildlife of the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of
Alaska, former President of the Ecological Society of America. Eric F. Lambin, Professor at the
Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve,
Belgium. Timothy M. Lenton, Chair in Climate Change/Earth Systems Science at the University
of Exeter, Marten Scheffer, Professor of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management group
at Wageningen University, Carl Folke, Professor of Systems Ecology at Stockholm University,
fellow at The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. Dr. Björn Nykvist is a
Research Fellow at Stockholm Environment Institute at Stockholm University, Cynthia A. de
Wit, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, Stockholm University, Terry Hughes,
Professor, Federation Fellow, and Centre Director at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral
Reef Studies, Sander van der Leeuw, Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social
Change at Arizona State University, Henning Rodhe, Professor emeritus of Chemical
Meteorology, Sverker Sörlin is a Professor in the Division of History of Science and Technology
at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Peter K. Snyder, assistant professor in the
Department of Soil, Water, and Climate and the Department of Forest Resources at the University
of Minnesota, Robert Costanza, Professor of Sustainability at Portland State University in
Oregon, Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and former
Director of International Affairs at the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural
Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas). Professor Malin Falkenmark is a globally renowned
water expert and currently serves as Senior Scientific Advisor to the Stockholm International
Water Institute, Louise Karlberg, PhD, is a research fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Robert W. Corell is an American global climate scientist, Principal for the Global Environment
Technology Foundation, an Ambassador for ClimateWorks, Professor II at the University of the
Arctic’s new Institute of Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry and a Professor II at the University of
Tromso. He is a Partner of the Sustainability Institute and it’s C-ROADS Climate Interactive
Initiative, and Head of US Office for the Global Energy Assessment, Dr. Victoria Fabry is a
Professor of Biological Sciences at California State University San Marcos and a Visiting
Scientist at USCD Scripps Institution of Oceanography, James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at
Columbia University, Brian Walker, Chief of the Division of Wildlife and Ecology at Australia's
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Chairman of the Board, Beijer
International Institute of Ecological Economics, Swedish Academy of Sciences, and chair of
Resilience Alliance. Diana Liverman, Professor and co-director of the University of Arizona
Institute of the Environment, Katherine Richardson is Professor in Biological Oceanography at
the University of Copenhagen, Paul Jozef Crutzen is a Dutch Nobel prize winning atmospheric
chemist, professor at Department of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for
Chemistry, Jonathan Foley is the director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
24
Minnesota, where he is a professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in the Department of
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior.)
Anthropogenic climate change is now beyond dispute, and in the run-up to the climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, the international
discussions on targets for climate mitigation have intensified. There is a growing convergence towards a '2 °C guardrail' approach,
that is, containing the rise in global mean temperature to no more than 2 °C above the preindustrial level. Our proposed climate boundary is based on two critical thresholds that separate
qualitatively different climate-system states. It has two parameters: atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and radiative forcing (the rate of energy change
per unit area of the globe as measured at the top of the atmosphere). We propose that human changes to atmospheric CO2 concentrations should
not exceed 350 parts per million by volume, and that radiative forcing should not exceed 1 watt per square metre above pre-industrial levels. Transgressing these
boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change, such as the loss of major ice sheets, accelerated sea-level rise and abrupt shifts in forest and agricultural systems. Current CO2 concentration stands at
There are at least three reasons for our proposed climate
boundary. First, current climate models may significantly underestimate the severity of longterm climate change for a given concentration of greenhouse gases 12. Most models11 suggest
that a doubling in atmospheric CO2 concentration will lead to a global temperature rise of about 3
°C (with a probable uncertainty range of 2–4.5 °C) once the climate has regained equilibrium. But these models do not
include long-term reinforcing feedback processes that further warm the climate, such as decreases
in the surface area of ice cover or changes in the distribution of vegetation. If these slow
feedbacks are included, doubling CO2 levels gives an eventual temperature increase of 6 °C (with a
probable uncertainty range of 4–8 °C). This would threaten the ecological life-support systems that have developed
in the late Quaternary environment, and would severely challenge the viability of contemporary
human societies. The second consideration is the stability of the large polar ice sheets.
Palaeoclimate data from the past 100 million years show that CO2 concentrations were a major
factor in the long-term cooling of the past 50 million years. Moreover, the planet was largely icefree until CO2 concentrations fell below 450 p.p.m.v. (100 p.p.m.v.), suggesting that there is a critical threshold between 350 and 550 p.p.m.v. (ref.
12). Our boundary of 350 p.p.m.v. aims to ensure the continued existence of the large polar ice
sheets. Third, we are beginning to see evidence that some of Earth's subsystems are already
moving outside their stable Holocene state. This includes the rapid retreat of the summer sea ice
in the Arctic ocean13, the retreat of mountain glaciers around the world11, the loss of mass from
the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets14 and the accelerating rates of sea-level rise during
the past 10–15 years15.
387 p.p.m.v. and the change in radiative forcing is 1.5 W m-2 (ref. 11).
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
25
AT: 450/550
McKibben answers this –
[ ] 550 is the result of doubling industrial revolution CO2 levels for
convenient modeling, totally arbitrary and superseded by new analysis
[ ] 450 doesn’t take into account paleoclimatic data and fast forcing –
positive feedbacks will accelerate warming beyond modeled levels
450 = zero ice = extinction
Romm 8 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, Senior Fellow at the Center for American
Progress, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, citing Jim
Hansen, heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981. He is
also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia
University. “Hansen (et al) must read: Get back to 350 ppm or risk an ice-free planet”,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/17/202450/hansen-et-al-must-read-back-to-350-ppm-orrisk-an-ice-free-planet/?mobile=nc)
Hansen’s earlier analysis arguing that the real-world or long-term climate sensitivity of the planet to
550 ppm] is 6°C — twice the short-term or fast-feedback-only climate sensitivity used by the IPCC. [You might want to read
this post first since it is a bit clearer on the difference between the two sensitivities.] The key paleoclimate finding of the article: We infer from
the Cenozoic data that CO2 was the dominant Cenozoic forcing, that CO2 was only ~450 ppm when Antarctica glaciated, and
that glaciation is reversible. That is, if we stabilize at 450 ppm (or higher) we risk returning the planet to conditions when it
was largely ice free, when sea levels were higher by 70 meters — more than 200 feet! Three years ago, Hansen (and others) argued in Science that [due to fast
feedbacks], we would warm another “0.6°C without further change of atmospheric composition”
This paper is really just a continuation of
doubled CO2 [
[i.e. with no more CO2 emissions]. Now he’s saying “Warming ‘in the pipeline’, most due to slow feedbacks, is now about 2°C.” So the paper concludes: An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing
If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is
not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
26
AT: 2 Degrees
Two degrees is the result of political expediency – it’s a suicide pact
McKibben 12 (Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College,
American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of
global warming, JULY 19, 2012, “Global Warming's Terrifying New Math”,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math20120719#ixzz26BZi8vrG)
The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase
in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius." And in the very next paragraph, it declared that "we agree that deep cuts in
global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." By insisting on two degrees – about 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum. It was as
conventional as conventional wisdom gets. The number first gained prominence, in fact, at a 1995 climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then the German
minister of the environment and now the center-right chancellor of the nation. Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of
the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most
scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent
more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the
oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact,
many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much
above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on
hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief
biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees
Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is
even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription
for long-term disaster." At the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman for small island nations warned that many would not survive a two-degree rise: "Some countries
will flat-out disappear." When delegates from developing nations were warned that two degrees would represent a "suicide
pact" for drought-stricken Africa, many of them started chanting, "One degree, one Africa." Despite such well-founded
misgivings, political realism bested scientific data, and the world settled on the two-degree
target – indeed, it's fair to say that it's the only thing about climate change the world has settled
on. All told, 167 countries responsible for more than 87 percent of the world's carbon emissions have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, endorsing the two-degree target. Only a few dozen countries have
rejected it, including Kuwait, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Even the United Arab Emirates, which makes most of its money exporting oil and gas, signed on. The official position of
planet Earth at the moment is that we can't raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius –
it's become the bottomest of bottom lines. Two degrees.
New feedback models prove
Cary 12 (John Carey, Scientific American (November 2012), 307, 50-55, “Global Warming:
Faster Than Expected?”, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1112-50)
Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees Celsius, perils such
as catastrophic sea-level rise could be avoided. Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global
feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even
before the two degree C “limit” is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting
permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide. The
feedbacks could accelerate warming, alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires. Over the past decade
scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate
change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it
was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would
require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm. Now it appears that the
assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
27
changing faster than expected. More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had
been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane,
the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking
up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are
sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped
much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we
cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,” says Stefan
Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany. The X factors
that may be pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are long-hypothesized feedback
loops that may be starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean
water more, which melts even more sea ice. Greater permafrost melting puts more CO2 and
methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes further permafrost melting, and so on. The potential for
faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm
Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm, “we will
have started a process that is out of humanity's control,” warns James E. Hansen, director of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Sea levels might climb as much as five meters
this century, he says. That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok. Meanwhile increased heat and drought could bring massive famines. “The
consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid,
irreversible leap to a much warmer world.
limit, which seems increasingly unlikely, that could be too little, too late.
They also don’t solve – 2 degrees requires 450ppm CO2 which needs 80%
emissions reduction, that’s Goodstein, electricity generation doesn’t fill the
gap
More evidence – fuel economy and efficiency measures aren’t bridging the
gap to reduce under 2 degrees
Plumer 12 (Brad Plumer, energy and environmental issues journalist at the Washington Post,
04/29/2012, “How’s the world doing on its climate goals? Not so well.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/hows-the-world-doing-on-its-climategoals-not-so-well/2012/04/29/gIQAdkiSpT_blog.html)
Each year, the International Energy Agency puts out a study of what technological advances are
needed to keep global warming below 2°C. The 2012 report (pdf) is out and the grades are dismal:
Aside from a recent boom in wind and solar power, the world isn’t making much progress. The IEA
doesn’t just look at recent trends in greenhouse-gas emissions — after all, those can rise and fall with the economy. Instead, it looks at what clean-energy technologies are actually coming online. If the
world wants to avoid a 2°C rise in global temperatures (and here’s an explanation of why we might want to do that), then we’ll
need a certain amount of low-carbon infrastructure in place by 2020, the IEA says. That means a mix of wind
turbines, nuclear reactors, energy-efficient cars and buildings, and so on. And, for most of those things, countries are way behind . Here’s a rundown:
Cleaning up coal plants. The IEA has recommended that countries around the world need to have at least 38 coal plants that capture and store the carbon up and running by 2020 in order to stay on pace to meet that
2°C climate target. Currently, there are no such plants operating. What’s more, the report notes, nearly half of the new coal plants built in 2010 aren’t even up to the latest efficiency standards. Nuclear power. The
IEA has estimated that the world’s nuclear power capacity needs to nearly double by 2025 to help meet climate targets. Right now, nuclear capacity is actually shrinking. Countries like Germany, Japan, Belgium and
Switzerland are planning on phasing out their reactors in the next decade. While many countries are still building reactors — China alone has 26 in the works, and Russia has 10 — the IEA expects the world to miss
its nuclear goals. Solar, wind and other renewables. Here the IEA is more optimistic, noting that solar-panel prices are plummeting, countries are building hydropower dams and geothermal plants at a rapid clip, and
wind turbines are sprouting up everywhere. Countries are making slower progress on advanced renewables, such as concentrated solar power plants and offshore wind turbines. But in the past decade, renewable
Vehicle fuel economy. The IEA
estimates that fuel economy needs to improve by an average of 2.7 percent per year by 2030 in
order to keep the share of emissions from transportation under control. We’re not on pace there,
either. Right now, the cars and trucks of the world are getting more efficient at a 1.7 percent
annual pace. Some countries — like the EU and the United States — are improving quite steadily.
Others, like India, are actually becoming less fuel efficient, although that’s largely because more
and more people are now able to buy vehicles. Buildings. The IEA argues that improving the energy efficiency of buildings is one of the easiest ways for the
power has been growing at a 27 percent annual rate, and if it continues that pace, renewables should meet the IEA’s expectations.
world to rein in its carbon emissions. Residential and commercial buildings, after all, account for 32 percent of energy use around the world. And for the most part, people know how to insulate buildings better,
install efficient lighting, and so forth. But with a few exceptions, most countries have been slow to adopt stricter building codes, to promote solar thermal systems to heat buildings, and to speed along the adoption of
energy-efficient appliances.
If the world wanted to make a concerted push to meet this 2°C target, the IEA notes,
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
28
then all of these different sectors — from electricity to vehicles to buildings — would have to
chip in to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s what this looks like in graph form. “6DS” is the track we’re currently
on, with a balmy 6°C of warming in our future. To get down to “2DS,” or 2°C, a whole bunch of sectors need to contribute: Right now, however, only
renewables are pulling their weight. The IEA says the main problem is that most countries don’t have stable, reliable policies to promote these clean-energy technologies. They recommend the usual batch of
solutions — a price on fossil fuels, new standards for energy efficiency, and more money for research and development. All told, the IEA estimates, meeting that 2°C target would require $5 trillion in energy
investments between now and 2020. That, in turn, would save $4 trillion in fossil fuel costs. And, over the next 40 years, the benefits from energy savings and reduced emissions would keep growing and eventually
outweigh the costs. For now, though, the world’s nowhere near that point.
Seriously it’s not happening
Fogarty and Doyle 12 (David Fogarty and Alister Doyle, staff writers at Reuters, 11/28/12,
“As nations haggle, global carbon cut targets get impossibly deep”,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/us-climate-talks-targets-idUSBRE8AR14T20121128)
U.N. talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and
factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases. An overriding long-term goal set by all
nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial
Revolution is fast slipping away. "The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished,"
Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Research Organization, told Reuters. Disagreements mean the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7
have scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to
start by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the U.S. Northeast last
month. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent
since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about
3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s. Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing
For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must
quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since
pre-industrial times. "The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect
between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls," Alden Meyer of the Union of
Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks. Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of
by about 3 percent a year over the next decade.
them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week. Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and
global emissions will
need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than
it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C. And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming
are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030. POLLUTION In some projections,
sunshine. "Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters.
Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said. The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world
gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak
deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich
and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances
of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40
rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012.
by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C. But
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
29
AT: Try or Die
No try or die – if the risk of solving their impact is statistically identical to
zero then you should throw it out
Hansson 5 (Sven Ove Hansson, professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of
Philosophy and History of Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm,
Sweden, “The Epistemology of Technological Risk”,
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v9n2/hansson.html)
It is easy to find examples in which many of us would be swayed by considerations of unknown dangers. Suppose, for instance, that someone proposes the
introduction of a genetically altered species of earthworm that will aerate the soil more efficiently. If introduced in nature, it will ultimately replace the common earthworm. For the sake of argument we may assume
that all concrete worries have been neutralized. The new species can be shown not to induce more soil erosion, not to be more susceptible to diseases, etc. Still, it would not be irrational to say: "Yes, but there may be
other negative effects that we have not been able to think of. Therefore, the new species should not be introduced." Similarly, if someone proposed to eject a chemical substance into the stratosphere for some good
purpose or other, it would not be irrational to oppose this proposal solely on the ground that it may have unforeseeable consequences, and this even if all specified worries can be neutralized. However,
it
would not be feasible to take such possibilities into account in all decisions that we make. In a sense,
any decision may have catastrophic unforeseen consequences. If far-reaching indirect effects
are taken into account, then – given the unpredictable nature of actual causation – almost any
decision may lead to a disaster. In order to be able to decide and act, we therefore have to
disregard many of the more remote possibilities. Cases can also easily be found in which it was an advantage that far-fetched dangers were not taken
seriously. One case in point is the false alarm on so-called polywater, an alleged polymeric form of water. In 1969, the prestigious scientific journal Nature printed a letter that warned against producing polywater.
The substance might "grow at the expense of normal water under any conditions found in the environment," thus replacing all natural water on earth and destroying all life on this planet. (Donahoe 1969 ) Soon
afterwards, it was shown that polywater is a non-existent entity. If the warning had been heeded, then no attempts would had been made to replicate the polywater experiments, and we might still not have known that
appeals to the possibility of unknown dangers may stop investigations and
thus prevent scientific and technological progress. We therefore need criteria to determine when the possibility of unknown dangers should be taken
polywater does not exist. In cases like this,
seriously and when it can be neglected. This problem cannot be solved with probability calculus or other exact mathematical methods. The best that we can hope for is a set of informal criteria that can be used to
1. Asymmetry of uncertainty: Possibly, a
decision to build a second bridge between Sweden and Denmark will lead through some
unforeseeable causal chain to a nuclear war. Possibly, it is the other way around so that a decision
not to build such a bridge will lead to a nuclear war. We have no reason why one or the other of
these two causal chains should be more probable, or otherwise more worthy of our attention, than the other. On the other hand, the introduction of a new
support intuitive judgement. The following list of four criteria has been proposed for this purpose. (Hansson 1996)
species of earthworm is connected with much more uncertainty than the option not to introduce the new species. Such asymmetry is a necessary but insufficient condition for taking the issue of unknown dangers into
serious consideration. 2. Novelty: Unknown dangers come mainly from new and untested phenomena. The emission of a new substance into the stratosphere constitutes a qualitative novelty, whereas the construction
of a new bridge does not. An interesting example of the novelty factor can be found in particle physics. Before new and more powerful particle accelerators have been built, physicists have sometimes feared that the
new levels of energy might generate a new phase of matter that accretes every atom of the earth. The decision to regard these and similar fears as groundless has been based on observations showing that the earth is
already under constant bombardment from outer space of particles with the same or higher energies. (Ruthen 1993) 3. Spatial and temporal limitations: If the effects of a proposed measure are known to be limited in
space or time, then these limitations reduce the urgency of the possible unknown effects associated with the measure. The absence of such limitations contributes to the severity of many ecological problems, such as
4. Interference with complex systems in balance: Complex systems
such as ecosystems and the atmospheric system are known to have reached some type of balance,
which may be impossible to restore after a major disturbance. Due to this irreversibility, uncontrolled interference with such systems is
connected with a high degree of uncertainty. (Arguably, the same can be said of uncontrolled interference with economic systems; this is an argument for piecemeal rather than drastic economic reforms.) It
might be argued that we do not know that these systems can resist even minor perturbations. If
causation is chaotic, then for all that we know, a minor modification of the liturgy of the Church
of England may trigger a major ecological disaster in Africa. If we assume that all cause-effect
relationships are chaotic, then the very idea of planning and taking precautions seems to lose its
meaning. However, such a world-view would leave us entirely without guidance, even in situations when we consider ourselves
well-informed. Fortunately, experience does not bear out this pessimistic worldview. Accumulated experience
and theoretical reflection strongly indicate that certain types of influences on ecological systems can be
withstood, whereas others cannot. The same applies to technological, economic, social, and
political systems, although our knowledge about their resilience towards various disturbances has not been sufficiently systematized.
global emissions and the spread of chemically stable pesticides.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
30
AT: Displace Coal
Displacing coal NOT ENOUGH – need improved foresty and agricultural
practices, sequestration in soil, CO2 air capture, biochar to stay under 350
ppm
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, 1,2* Makiko Sato, 1,2 Pushker Kharecha, 1,2 David Beerling, 3
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, 4 Mark Pagani, 5 Maureen Raymo, 6 Dana L. Royer, 7 James C.
Zachos 8, 1 NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. 2 Columbia
University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10027, USA. 3 Dept. Animal and Plant Sciences,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. 4 Lab. des Sciences du Climat et
l’Environnement/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, CEA-CNRS-Universite de Versailles SaintQuentin en Yvelines, CE Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. 5 Dept. Geology and
Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA. 6 Dept. Earth Sciences, Boston
University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. 7 Dept. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan
University, Middletown, CT, 8 Earth & Planetary Sciences Dept., University of California, Santa
Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”,
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf)
even with phase-out of coal emissions and assuming IPCC oil and gas reserves, CO2 would remain above 350
ppm for more than two centuries. Ongoing Arctic and ice sheet changes, examples of rapid paleoclimate change, and other criteria
cited above all drive us to consider scenarios that bring CO2 more rapidly back to 350 ppm or less. Policy
relevance. Desire to reduce airborne CO2 raises the question of whether CO2 could be drawn from the
air artificially. There are no large-scale technologies for CO2 air capture now, but with strong
research and development support and industrial-scale pilot projects sustained over decades it
may be possible to achieve costs ~$200/tC (79) or perhaps less (80). At $100/tC, the cost of
removing 50 ppm of CO2 is ~$10 trillion. Improved agricultural and forestry practices offer a more natural way
However,
to draw down CO2. Deforestation contributed a net emission of 60±30 ppm over the past few hundred years, of which ~20 ppm CO2 remains in the air today (2, 81, figs S12, S14). Reforestation could absorb a
Carbon sequestration in soil also has significant potential. Biochar,
produced in pyrolysis of residues from crops, forestry, and animal wastes, can be used to restore
soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to millennia (82). Biochar helps soil retain
nutrients and fertilizers, reducing emissions of GHGs such as N2O (83). Replacing slash-andburn agriculture with slash-and-char and use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar
production could provide a CO2 drawdown of ~8 ppm in half a century (83). In Supplementary Material we define a
significant fraction of the 60±30 ppm net deforestation emission.
forest/soil drawdown scenario that reaches 50 ppm by 2150 (Fig. 6B). This scenario returns CO2 below 350 ppm late this century, after about 100 years above that level. More rapid drawdown could be provided by
Low-input high-diversity biofuels grown on degraded or marginal
lands, with associated biochar production, could accelerate CO2 drawdown, but the nature of a
biofuel approach must be carefully designed (83, 85-87).
CO2 capture at power plants fueled by gas and biofuels (84).
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
31
Alternative Causality
Alt causes:
Agriculture
Earth Save 2011 (Date is last mod citing Jim Hansen, heads the NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
at Columbia University, , March 1, A New Global Warming Strategy,
www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm)
Unfortunately, the environmental community has focused its efforts almost exclusively on abating carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions. Domestic legislative efforts concentrate on raising fuel economy standards, capping CO2 emissions from power plants, and investing in alternative energy sources. Recommendations
to consumers also focus on CO2: buy fuel-efficient cars and appliances, and minimize their use. , This is a serious miscalculation. Data published by
Dr. James Hansen and others show that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of observed atmospheric
warming. Though this may sound like the work of global warming skeptics, it isn’t: Hansen is Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute
for Space Studies who has been called “a grandfather of the global warming theory.” He is a longtime supporter of
action against global warming, cited by Al Gore and often quoted by environmental organizations, who has argued against skeptics for subverting the scientific process. His results
are generally accepted by global warming experts, including bigwigs like Dr. James McCarthy, co-chair of the International Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group II. The focus solely on CO2 is fueled in part
Many
other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands
of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred
years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem. Even this overstates the effect
of CO2, because the primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols.
Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2. The surprising result is
by misconceptions. It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming.
that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term! This result is not widely known in the environmental community, due to a fear that polluting industries will use
it to excuse their greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists had the data reviewed by other climate experts, who affirmed Hansen’s conclusions. However, the organization also cited
CO2 may have little influence in the nearterm, reductions remains critical for containing climate change in the long run. Aerosols are short-lived, settling out of the air after a few months, while CO2 continues to heat the atmosphere for decades to
climate contrarians’ misuse of the data to argue against curbs in CO2. This contrarian spin cannot be justified. While
centuries. Moreover, we cannot assume that aerosol emissions will keep pace with increases in CO2 emissions. If we fail start dealing with CO2 today, it will be too late down the road when the emissions catch up
non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global
warming we’re seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next fifty years . If we
wish to curb global warming over the coming half century, we must look at strategies to address non-CO2 emissions. The strategy with the most impact is vegetarianism. Methane and Vegetarianism By far
the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane
worldwide is animal agriculture. Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more
powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since preindustrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled. Whereas human sources of
CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as
much methane as all natural sources. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of
with us. Nevertheless, the fact remains that sources of
organic matter in wetlands—the primary natural source of methane. With methane emissions causing nearly half of the planet’s human-induced warming, methane reduction must be a priority. Methane is produced
And
this source is on the rise: global meat consumption has increased fivefold in the past fifty years,
and shows little sign of abating. About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive
processes of livestock, and while a single cow releases a relatively small amount of methane, the
collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is
enormous. An additional 15% of animal agricultural methane emissions are released from the
massive “lagoons” used to store untreated farm animal waste, and already a target of environmentalists’ for their role as the number one source of water pollution in the
by a number of sources, including coal mining and landfills—but the number one source worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year.
U.S.
Aviation
Monbiot 7 George, Professor @ Oxford Brookes University, Heat: How to Stop the Planet
from Burning, pg. 174
Aviation has been growing faster than any other source of greenhouse gases. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of
people using airports in the United Kingdom rose by 120 per cent, and the energy the planes consumed increased by 79 per cent. Their carbon dioxide emissions almost
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
32
doubled in that period- from 20.1 to 39.5 million tones, or 5.5 per cent of all the emissions this country produces. Unless something is done to stop this
growth, aviation will overwhelm all the cuts we manage to make elsewhere. The government predicts that, if
sufficient capacity were provided, the number of passenger passing through airports in the United
Kingdom will rise from roughly 200 million today to ‘between 400 million and 600 million’ in
2030. It intends to ensure that this prophecy comes to pass. The new runaways it is planning
‘would permit around 470 million passengers by 2030’.
Deforestation
Guardian 11 (“How do trees and forests relate to climate change?” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/11/forests-trees-climate)
Deforestation, and especially the destruction of rainforests, is a hugely significant contributor to climate change.
Scientists estimate that forest loss and other changes to the use of land account for around 23% of current man-made CO2
emissions – which equates to 17% of the 100-year warming impact of all current greenhouse-gas emissions. As children are taught at school, trees
and other plants absorb CO2 from the air as they grow. Using energy from the sun, they turn the carbon captured from the CO2 molecules into building
blocks for their trunks, branches and foliage. This is all part of the carbon cycle. A mature forest doesn't necessarily absorb much more CO2 that it
releases, however, because when each tree dies and either rots down or is burned, much of its stored carbon is released once again. In other words, in the
mature forests is not that they reduce the amount of CO2 in the air but that they are
huge reservoirs of stored carbon. If such a forest is burned or cleared then much of that carbon is
released back into the atmosphere, adding to atmospheric CO2 levels.
context of climate change, the most important thing about
Transportation
Walker and King 8 Gabrielle, PhD in Chemistry, Sir David, Director of the Smith School of
Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and a senior scientific adviser to
UBS, The Hot Topic, pg. 110
Transportation has received so much attention in the climate change story that we have given it a chapter of its own. This sector currently makes up 13 percent
of global greenhouse emissions, and after power generation it is by far the fastest growing. It’s
also by far the most talked about, probably because it’s the one area in which individuals can
make the most dramatic difference. Almost all the energy for transportation comes from petroleum, and unless there is a dramatic change from our current path,
greenhouse emissions from transportation will be 80 percent higher in 2030 than they are today.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
33
AT: Climate Talks Solve
Nothing’s happening
Fogarty and Doyle 12 (David Fogarty and Alister Doyle, staff writers at Reuters, 11/28/12,
“As nations haggle, global carbon cut targets get impossibly deep”,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/us-climate-talks-targets-idUSBRE8AR14T20121128)
U.N. talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and
factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases. An overriding long-term goal set by all
nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial
Revolution is fast slipping away. "The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished,"
Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Research Organization, told Reuters. Disagreements mean the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7 have
scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to start
by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the U.S. Northeast last month.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent since
1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about 3 percent a
year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s. Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing by about 3
For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must
quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since
pre-industrial times. "The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect
between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls," Alden Meyer of the Union of
Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks. Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of
percent a year over the next decade.
them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week. Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and
global emissions will
need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than
it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C. And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming
are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030. POLLUTION In some projections,
sunshine. "Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters.
Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said. The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world
gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak
deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich
and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances
of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40
rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012.
by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C. But
IPR stalls
Latif et al. 11 (Ahmed Abdel Latif is Senior Manager, Programme on Innovation Technology
and Intellectual Property at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development;
Keith Maskus is Professor and Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences at University of
Colorado at Boulder; Ruth Okediji is the William L. Prosser Professor of Law at University of
Minnesota Law School; Jerome H Reichman is the Bunyan S Womble Professor of Law at Duke
University School of Law and Pedro Roffe is Senior Associate, Programme on Innovation
Technology and Intellectual Property at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable
Development. November 2011, “Overcoming the Impasse on Intellectual Property and Climate
Change at the UNFCCC: A Way Forward”,
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3105&context=faculty_scholarship)
The global spotlight is once again focused on the challenges of climate change with the annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties kicking off this week
one of the most
contentious – and misunderstood – issues in the climate change debate: the role of intellectual
property rights in the production of and access to mitigation and adaptation technologies. The
rapid development and diffusion of these technologies is a key component of the global response
to climate change. Intellectual property rights have traditionally been the primary policy
(November 28th –December 7th ) in Durban, South Africa. With the international community looking to Durban for results, an important opportunity exists to address
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
34
mechanism for encouraging private investments in innovation, including for the production of
mitigation and adaptation technologies. Yet while global climate change negotiations have made
some progress in the area of technology transfer, as reflected in last year’s agreement in Cancun to establish a Technology Mechanism under the UNFCCC, the role of
intellectual property rights has remained a particularly divisive issue. Not only has no agreement been
reached in this area, but even the path to a constructive and meaningful discussion seems elusive. Unless the role of intellectual property is
addressed in a constructive and balanced manner, the potential for achieving sustainable and
realistic outcomes from the climate talks could be compromised. In this policy brief, we seek to untangle the issues that lie behind
this impasse. We also suggest a possible course for action that, while taking into account a diversity of perspectives, also challenges countries – and other stakeholders – to go beyond entrenched negotiating
Technology transfer is one of the
pillars of the UNFCCC, the overall framework under which international climate negotiations
have taken place in recent years. Article 4.5 of the Convention requires developed countries to “take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the
positions. Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Rights in the Climate Change Negotiations: State of Play Progress on technology
transfer of, or access to environmentally sound technologies and know-how to other Parties, particularly developing country parties to enable them to implement the provisions of the Convention”. In 2007, the Bali
Action Plan, agreed to at the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC, reaffirmed the centrality of technology development and transfer. The Bali Action Plan made it one of the four priority areas to be
addressed in discussions aimed at the “full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012”. It called for: Enhanced action on
technology development and transfer to support action on mitigation and adaptation, including, inter alia, consideration of: (i) Effective mechanisms and enhanced means for the removal of obstacles to, and provision
of financial and other incentives for, scaling up of the development and transfer of technology to developing country Parties in order to promote access to affordable environmentally sound technologies (emphasis
added). 1 The 2010 Cancun conference sought to implement this objective in concrete terms when parties to the UNFCCC agreed to create a new Technology Mechanism for enhancing the transfer of climatefriendly technologies, particularly to developing countries. The Mechanism is composed of two main bodies: the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) and the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN).
The Technology Mechanism is not expected to be fully operational before 2012; meanwhile, a number of important questions still remain unanswered, such as its institutional set-up and its linkages with the Green
the agreement to establish the Technology Mechanism represents an important
milestone in the ongoing efforts to implement the technology transfer provisions of the UNFCCC
and the Bali Action Plan. It has the potential to become a springboard for developed and
developing countries to work together in order to accelerate the deployment and transfer of
technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Impasse on intellectual property rights
Despite these encouraging developments, one issue has remained a constant source of
controversy and disagreement among UNFCCC parties and stakeholders: the role of intellectual
property rights (IPRs) in the transfer of climate-friendly technologies. Since the current cycle of negotiations began in Bali (2007),
negotiating texts on IPRs have remained bracketed, reflecting the lack of agreement on the issue.
2 Nonetheless, the issue continues to resurface. In early September, it was raised at the first meeting of the TEC. India has proposed
that IPRs be added to the agenda of the Durban conference, arguing that “many of the
technologies that can help it and other developing countries achieve a lower carbon growth are
out of their reach due to IPRs and prohibitive costs”. 3 What lies behind this impasse, particularly
when the international community is faced with the ever-pressing need to tackle bigger climate
change issues? There are several possible answers. One might be the strategic negotiating postures of countries and the overall dynamics of the negotiation process. IPRs may
be viewed by some as a possible bargaining chip in a wider package of agreements and
commitments that are still under negotiation, especially given the intense discussions surrounding the fate of the second commitments period by Annex I countries
under the Kyoto Protocol. Another reason for the impasse may arise from the inadequately framed debate over IPRs per se. In effect, two opposing viewpoints have
come to dominate this debate, holding meaningful dialogue ‘hostage’ to categorical affirmations,
with little room for discussion over IPRs’ actual merits. This ideological “face-off” has, in effect,
prevented the emergence of a workable middle ground in the discussions.
Climate Fund. Nevertheless,
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
35
AT: Markets Solve
BAS 8 (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by former Manhattan Project physicists,
Kennette Benedict is current Executive Director, Director of International Peace and Security at
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where she also served as Senior Advisor to
the President. “Aligning Public and Private Interests to Tackle Climate Change”, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists July 2008 vol. 64 no. 3 8-9, doi: 10.2968/064003003)
If markets are to be effective instruments in creating new energy policies to address climate
change, then government and industry must decide how better to calculate the total costs of
energy, who should be involved in setting prices, and who should pay for public goods like clean
air and a benign climate. For example, does it still make sense for the U.S. government to continue
subsidies for oil exploration and drilling–a practice that masks the true cost of carbon-based energy production–or to refuse to place a tax on carbon dioxide emissions?
The genius of markets is in their self-organizing properties. Out of a series of negotiations among buyers and sellers emerges a relatively
efficient means to exchange goods and services. This formula has stood the test of history so far. Based on current
observations, however, Earth may not have time to let markets incorporate and correct for the
externalities causing climate change. In fact, except for the insurance industry, markets have failed miserably even to
recognize climate change. By the time Earth's inhabitants acutely experience the consequences of this market failure–in food shortages due
to drought and flood, the collapse of wild fisheries due to changes in ocean habitats, mass human
migration as sea levels rise, and increasingly large and unpredictable wildfires–it will be too late
to prevent additional catastrophic damage. Indeed, climate change exposes fundamental failures
of markets: Markets do not respond well to forecasts with 50to 100-year time horizons. Nor do
they respond well to the need for quick, large-scale coordinated action intended to yield timely
results.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
36
AT: We Mitigate Worst Impacts
No, 350 is a threshold sufficient to cause extinction, prefer our evidence they
didn’t read any
Framing question – we’re at 385 now, which means disaster is locked in. Plan
just slows down the increase, which does nothing because we’re past the
tipping point – we have to go into REVERSE
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, 1,2* Makiko Sato, 1,2 Pushker Kharecha, 1,2 David Beerling, 3
Valerie Masson-Delmotte, 4 Mark Pagani, 5 Maureen Raymo, 6 Dana L. Royer, 7 James C.
Zachos 8, 1 NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. 2 Columbia
University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10027, USA. 3 Dept. Animal and Plant Sciences,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. 4 Lab. des Sciences du Climat et
l’Environnement/Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, CEA-CNRS-Universite de Versailles SaintQuentin en Yvelines, CE Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. 5 Dept. Geology and
Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, USA. 6 Dept. Earth Sciences, Boston
University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. 7 Dept. Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan
University, Middletown, CT, 8 Earth & Planetary Sciences Dept., University of California, Santa
Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?”,
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf)
industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global
climate. If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive life styles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of prior human history. The
eventual response to doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet, preceded by a period
of chaotic change with continually changing shorelines. Humanity’s task of moderating human-caused global climate
change is urgent. Ocean and ice sheet inertias provide a buffer delaying full response by centuries, but there is a danger that human-made forcings could
drive the climate system beyond tipping points such that change proceeds out of our control. The time
Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that
available to reduce the human-made forcing is uncertain, because models of the global system and critical components such as ice sheets are inadequate. However, climate response time is surely less than the
atmospheric lifetime of the human-caused perturbation of CO2. Thus remaining fossil fuel reserves should not be exploited without a plan for retrieval and disposal of resulting atmospheric CO2. Paleoclimate
today’s CO2, about 385 ppm, is already too high to maintain the climate
evidence and ongoing global changes imply that
to
which humanity, wildlife, and the rest of the biosphere are adapted. Realization that we must reduce the current CO2 amount has a bright side: effects that had begun to seem inevitable, including impacts of ocean
acidification, loss of fresh water supplies, and shifting of climatic zones, may be averted by the necessity of finding an energy course beyond fossil fuels sooner than would otherwise have occurred.
We
suggest an initial objective of reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm, with the target to be adjusted as scientific understanding and
empirical evidence of climate effects accumulate. Although a case already could be made that the eventual target probably
needs to be lower, the 350 ppm target is sufficient to qualitatively change the discussion and drive
fundamental changes in energy policy. Limited opportunities for reduction of non-CO2 humancaused forcings are important to pursue but do not alter the initial 350 ppm CO2 target. This target must be
pursued on a timescale of decades, as paleoclimate and ongoing changes, and the ocean response time, suggest that it would be foolhardy to allow CO2 to stay
in the dangerous zone for centuries.
Their nucitelli evidence says 4C WOULD actually be catastrophic, to hit that
we need sustained decarbonization starting yesterday
Romm 12 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, Senior Fellow at the Center for American
Progress, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, Nov 6, 2012,
“Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires ‘Nearly Quadrupling The
Current Rate Of Decarbonisation’” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/06/1144431/studywere-headed-to-11f-warming-and-even-7f-requires-nearly-quadrupling-the-current-rate-ofdecarbonisation/) Edited for unit conversions
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
37
Our Low Carbon Economy Index evaluates the rate of
decarbonisation of the global economy that is needed to limit warming to 2oC. This report shows that global carbon
The title of the PWC report is sobering, “Too late for two degrees?” So is its main conclusion:
intensity decreased between 2000 and 2011 by around 0.8% a year. In 2011, carbon intensity decreased by 0.7%. The global economy now needs to cut carbon intensity by 5.1% every year from now to 2050.
Keeping to the 2oC carbon budget will require sustained and unprecedented reductions over four
decades. Governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2oC appear highly unrealistic. Here are two more
conclusions that can kill — or maybe cause — a hangover: We have passed a critical threshold – not once since 1950 has the
world achieved that rate of decarbonisation in a single year, but the task now confronting us
is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years…. Even to have a reasonable prospect of getting to a 4°C
scenario would imply nearly quadrupling the current rate of decarbonisation. Despite the many hand-wavers who
assert the optimal climate strategy is more research and development, this is yet another independent analysis that makes crystal clear such a do-little approach would be
suicidal (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“). It bears repeating that warming of 7°F [that’s 4C ~
Suo] or beyond is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond
‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being
stable (i.e. 4°C [7°F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here. Tragically, that appears to be the likely outcome of
business as usual. No wonder the report states bluntly: The only way to avoid the pessimistic scenarios will be radical
transformations in the ways the global economy currently functions: rapid uptake of renewable energy,
sharp falls in fossil fuel use or massive deployment of CCS, removal of industrial emissions and halting deforestation. This suggests a need
for much more ambition and urgency on climate policy, at both the national and international level. Either way, business-as-usual is not an option. Leo Johnson, PWC’s Partner for Sustainability and Climate Change,
rather dryly concludes his letter introducing the report: Business leaders have been asking for clarity in political ambition on climate change. Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across
planning for 4°C [7°F] in 2100 — let alone 6°C [11°F] — is
tantamount to planning for the end of civilization as we know it (see this review of more than 60 recent studies — “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of
the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2ºC, but 4ºC and, at our current rates, 6ºC. Of course,
Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).
And nuccitelli says 2C would be okay, that’s bad science
Two degrees is the result of political expediency – it’s a suicide pact
McKibben 12 (Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College,
American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of
global warming, JULY 19, 2012, “Global Warming's Terrifying New Math”,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math20120719#ixzz26BZi8vrG)
The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase
in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius." And in the very next paragraph, it declared that "we agree that deep cuts in
global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius." By insisting on two degrees – about 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum. It was as
conventional as conventional wisdom gets. The number first gained prominence, in fact, at a 1995 climate conference chaired by Angela Merkel, then the German
minister of the environment and now the center-right chancellor of the nation. Some context: So far, we've raised the average temperature of
the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most
scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent
more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the
oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.) Given those impacts, in fact,
many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target. "Any number much
above one degree involves a gamble," writes Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on
hurricanes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank's chief
biodiversity adviser, puts it like this: "If we're seeing what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees
Celsius, two degrees is simply too much." NASA scientist James Hansen, the planet's most prominent climatologist, is
even blunter: "The target that has been talked about in international negotiations for two degrees of warming is actually a prescription
for long-term disaster." At the Copenhagen summit, a spokesman for small island nations warned that many would not survive a two-degree rise: "Some countries
will flat-out disappear." When delegates from developing nations were warned that two degrees would represent a "suicide
pact" for drought-stricken Africa, many of them started chanting, "One degree, one Africa." Despite such well-founded
misgivings, political realism bested scientific data, and the world settled on the two-degree
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
38
target – indeed, it's fair to say that it's the only thing about climate change the world has settled
on. All told, 167 countries responsible for more than 87 percent of the world's carbon emissions have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, endorsing the two-degree target. Only a few dozen countries have
rejected it, including Kuwait, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Even the United Arab Emirates, which makes most of its money exporting oil and gas, signed on. The official position of
planet Earth at the moment is that we can't raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius –
it's become the bottomest of bottom lines. Two degrees.
New feedback models prove
Cary 12 (John Carey, Scientific American (November 2012), 307, 50-55, “Global Warming:
Faster Than Expected?”, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1112-50)
Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees Celsius, perils such
as catastrophic sea-level rise could be avoided. Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global
feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even
before the two degree C “limit” is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting
permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide. The
feedbacks could accelerate warming, alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires. Over the past decade
scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate
change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it
was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would
require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm. Now it appears that the
assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is
changing faster than expected. More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had
been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane,
the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking
up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are
sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped
much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we
cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,” says Stefan
Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany. The X factors
that may be pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are long-hypothesized feedback
loops that may be starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean
water more, which melts even more sea ice. Greater permafrost melting puts more CO2 and
methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes further permafrost melting, and so on. The potential for
faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm
Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm, “we will
have started a process that is out of humanity's control,” warns James E. Hansen, director of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Sea levels might climb as much as five meters
this century, he says. That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok. Meanwhile increased heat and drought could bring massive famines. “The
consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid,
irreversible leap to a much warmer world.
limit, which seems increasingly unlikely, that could be too little, too late.
They also don’t solve – 2 degrees requires 450ppm CO2 which needs 80%
emissions reduction, that’s Goodstein, electricity generation doesn’t fill the
gap
More evidence – fuel economy and efficiency measures aren’t bridging the
gap to reduce under 2 degrees
Plumer 12 (Brad Plumer, energy and environmental issues journalist at the Washington Post,
04/29/2012, “How’s the world doing on its climate goals? Not so well.”
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/hows-the-world-doing-on-its-climategoals-not-so-well/2012/04/29/gIQAdkiSpT_blog.html)
Each year, the International Energy Agency puts out a study of what technological advances are
needed to keep global warming below 2°C. The 2012 report (pdf) is out and the grades are dismal:
Aside from a recent boom in wind and solar power, the world isn’t making much progress. The IEA
doesn’t just look at recent trends in greenhouse-gas emissions — after all, those can rise and fall with the economy. Instead, it looks at what clean-energy technologies are actually coming online. If the
world wants to avoid a 2°C rise in global temperatures (and here’s an explanation of why we might want to do that), then we’ll
need a certain amount of low-carbon infrastructure in place by 2020, the IEA says. That means a mix of wind
turbines, nuclear reactors, energy-efficient cars and buildings, and so on. And, for most of those things, countries are way behind . Here’s a rundown:
Cleaning up coal plants. The IEA has recommended that countries around the world need to have at least 38 coal plants that capture and store the carbon up and running by 2020 in order to stay on pace to meet that
2°C climate target. Currently, there are no such plants operating. What’s more, the report notes, nearly half of the new coal plants built in 2010 aren’t even up to the latest efficiency standards. Nuclear power. The
IEA has estimated that the world’s nuclear power capacity needs to nearly double by 2025 to help meet climate targets. Right now, nuclear capacity is actually shrinking. Countries like Germany, Japan, Belgium and
Switzerland are planning on phasing out their reactors in the next decade. While many countries are still building reactors — China alone has 26 in the works, and Russia has 10 — the IEA expects the world to miss
its nuclear goals. Solar, wind and other renewables. Here the IEA is more optimistic, noting that solar-panel prices are plummeting, countries are building hydropower dams and geothermal plants at a rapid clip, and
wind turbines are sprouting up everywhere. Countries are making slower progress on advanced renewables, such as concentrated solar power plants and offshore wind turbines. But in the past decade, renewable
Vehicle fuel economy. The IEA
estimates that fuel economy needs to improve by an average of 2.7 percent per year by 2030 in
order to keep the share of emissions from transportation under control. We’re not on pace there,
either. Right now, the cars and trucks of the world are getting more efficient at a 1.7 percent
annual pace. Some countries — like the EU and the United States — are improving quite steadily.
Others, like India, are actually becoming less fuel efficient, although that’s largely because more
and more people are now able to buy vehicles. Buildings. The IEA argues that improving the energy efficiency of buildings is one of the easiest ways for the
power has been growing at a 27 percent annual rate, and if it continues that pace, renewables should meet the IEA’s expectations.
world to rein in its carbon emissions. Residential and commercial buildings, after all, account for 32 percent of energy use around the world. And for the most part, people know how to insulate buildings better,
install efficient lighting, and so forth. But with a few exceptions, most countries have been slow to adopt stricter building codes, to promote solar thermal systems to heat buildings, and to speed along the adoption of
If the world wanted to make a concerted push to meet this 2°C target, the IEA notes,
then all of these different sectors — from electricity to vehicles to buildings — would have to
chip in to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s what this looks like in graph form. “6DS” is the track we’re currently
on, with a balmy 6°C of warming in our future. To get down to “2DS,” or 2°C, a whole bunch of sectors need to contribute: Right now, however, only
energy-efficient appliances.
renewables are pulling their weight. The IEA says the main problem is that most countries don’t have stable, reliable policies to promote these clean-energy technologies. They recommend the usual batch of
solutions — a price on fossil fuels, new standards for energy efficiency, and more money for research and development. All told, the IEA estimates, meeting that 2°C target would require $5 trillion in energy
investments between now and 2020. That, in turn, would save $4 trillion in fossil fuel costs. And, over the next 40 years, the benefits from energy savings and reduced emissions would keep growing and eventually
outweigh the costs. For now, though, the world’s nowhere near that point.
Seriously it’s not happening
Fogarty and Doyle 12 (David Fogarty and Alister Doyle, staff writers at Reuters, 11/28/12,
“As nations haggle, global carbon cut targets get impossibly deep”,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/us-climate-talks-targets-idUSBRE8AR14T20121128)
U.N. talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and
factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases. An overriding long-term goal set by all
nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial
Revolution is fast slipping away. "The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished,"
Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Research Organization, told Reuters. Disagreements mean the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7
have scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to
start by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the U.S. Northeast last
month. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent
since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about
3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s. Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing
For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must
quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since
pre-industrial times. "The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect
between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls," Alden Meyer of the Union of
Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks. Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of
by about 3 percent a year over the next decade.
them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week. Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and
are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030. POLLUTION In some projections,
global emissions will
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
40
need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than
it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C. And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming
sunshine. "Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters.
Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said. The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world
gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak
deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich
and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances
of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40
rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012.
by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C. But
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
*** CLIMATE LEADERSHIP ANSWERS
***
41
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
42
climate leadership fails
Leadership fails – can’t resolve all conflicts between developed and developing countries.
CSM 12 (Karl Ritter, Associated Press / May 24, 2012 “Rich-poor divide bogs down UN climate talks” The Christian Science
Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0524/Rich-poor-divide-bogs-down-UN-climate-talks)
U.N. climate talks ran into gridlock Thursday as a widening rift between rich and poor countries
risked undoing some advances made last year in the decades-long effort to control carbon emissions
that scientists say are overheating the planet. As so often in the slow-moving negotiations, the session in Bonn bogged down with
disputes over technicalities. But at the heart of the discord was the larger issue of how to divide the burden of
emissions cuts
between developed and developing nations. Developing nations say the industrialized
world - responsible for most of the emissions historically - should bear the brunt of the emissions cuts while developed
nations want to make sure that fast-growing economies like China and India don't get off too easy.
China is now the world's top polluter. "There is a total stalemate," said Artur Runge-Metzger, the chief negotiator for the
European Union. Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz The negotiations in Bonn were meant to build on a deal struck in
December in Durban, South Africa, to create a new global climate pact by 2015 that would make both rich and poor nations rein in
emissions caused by the burning of oil and other fossil fuels. But on the next-to-last day of two weeks of talks there was little sign of
progress, as different interpretations emerged on what, exactly, was agreed upon last year. "There is distrust and
The
European Union claims China and other developing countries are backsliding on commitments made in
there is frustration in the atmosphere," Seyni Nafo, spokesman for a group of African countries, told The Associated Press.
Durban to bring the discussion on emissions cuts from both rich and poor nations into one forum, instead of the current structure,
which has two parallel negotiation tracks. Developing countries - backed by climateactivists - accuse the U.S., EU and other
industrialized nations of trying to evade commitments made in previous negotiations and shift
responsibilities for tackling climate change to the developing world. "Developed countries like the U.S., Japan,
Canada and Russia ... have consistently blocked references to the existing legal principles, while
continuing to ignore the fact that their meager emission cut targets expose the world's most vulnerable
people to climate change's devastating effects," said Mohamed Adow, a senior climatechange adviser at Christian
Aid.
International cooperation impossible – political differences
Sussman 4 (October 2004, G., International Politicla Science Review, “The USA and Global Environmental Policy:
Domestic Constraints on Effective Leadership,” http://ips.sagepub.com/content/25/4/349.accessible-long, asb)
Explanations about international affairs generally and global environmental policy in particular tend to focus on interstate
relations and the ability of governments to cooperate. In order to pursue international cooperation and
achieve environmental progress on a global scale, nation-states must overcome their differences, a
point made repeatedly in the literature. When Oran Young (1997: 8-9) drew attention to the international commons and
transboundary externalities, he raised the issue of the potentially adverse environmental consequences
imposed on one party by the actions of another. Similarly, Paarlberg (1997: 149-50) has pointed out that "Most
international relations scholars have depicted global environmental policymaking as an
'international cooperation' problem. The greatest barriers to successful policymaking are
presumed to be differences between governments abroad, not differences within governments at
home." Pamela Chasek (2000: 427) has argued that "states are the final determinants of the outcomes of global
environmental issues." Richard Falk (1971: 37-8) characterized the problem of global environmental policy as one in which
"Each government is mainly concerned with the pursuit of national goals. These goals are defined
in relation to economic growth, political stability, and international prestige." In addition, as Neil Carter
(2001: 238) explains, "Regime formation is aided by the willingness of a powerful nation, or a group of nations, to take a
leadership role by cajoling or bullying weaker states into supporting a treaty" (see also Porter et al., 2000: 13-14).
policymakers will never compromise our power
Eckersley 10 [Robyn - School of Social and Political Sciences,
University of Melbourne. “CLIMATE LEADERSHIP AND US EXCEPTIONALISM” – 2010,
http://apsa2010.com.au/full-papers/pdf/APSA2010_0253.pdf, WSX]
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
43
The separation between legislative and executive powers in the US and the role of institutional veto players certainly raise the bar for
proponents of CBDR by requiring them to muster a filibuster proof super-majority in Congress and garner the support of the
President. However, congressional procedures and veto powers do not explain the ideational character
of the discursive struggle over climate policy in the US, the boundaries of permissible policies or the range of
acceptable reasons for selecting or rejecting particular policies. If Americans were governed not by a presidential and deal
brokering system but rather a parliamentary system with strict party discipline that enabled the chief executive to
control the passage of climate legislation, it is still highly unlikely that even a Democratic chief
executive would support legislation that fulfilled the leadership responsibilities that are demanded
by CBDR, especially as interpreted by China and the G77. This is not simply because CBDR has no resonance with US domestic
political culture; it is also because CBDR directly challenges the US’s superpower status and identity as a
leading state. To put it bluntly, a radical reduction in the US’s carbon footprint according to CBDR
threatens to undermine the US’s military primacy, economic strength and political hegemony.
Despite the bitter US debates over climate policy between Republicans and Democrats, what has remained nonnegotiable
among US political elites through the twenty year history of the US’s involvement in the climate negotiations is that the
US’s identity as a military and economic superpower should not be compromised. The US’s identity as
an exceptional state is reflected, above all, in its grand strategy, which gives meaning and policy substance to the US’s most
fundamental ‘interests’ and provides the overriding ideational framework for US foreign policy. The central pillars of
this
strategy are to secure US military and economic supremacy, promote a stable world capitalist
system according to US liberal ideals, and promote the spread of liberal democracy. None of these
pillars have been interpreted or pursued in ways that are compatible with a low carbon footprint,
planetary sustainability or global environmental justice. No US administration has played an active role promoting environmental
sustainability as a whole-of-government meta-policy at the domestic or international levels. President Carter may have been the first
US President with global environmental ambitions, and he sought to address the US’s growing dependence on imported energy in the
face of an international oil shock, but he also established a military command structure in the Persian Gulf to ensure continued access
to oil in the region. Although the US has sometimes taken strong domestic and international action in
certain environmental policy domains, environmental issues have never been considered to be, or
allowed to impinge upon, matters of ‘high politics’. More typically, however, matters of high politics - particular,
US foreign petroleum policy, and complementary domestic policies such as energy and economic policy - have more often impinged
upon and compromised declared domestic and international environmental norms.
Climate Leadership fails – must be issue specific.
Karlsson et. Al 11 – Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at Copenhagen
Business School (Christer, Charles Parker, Mattias Hjerpe, and Bjom-Ola Linner, February,
“Looking for Leaders: Perceptions of Climate Change Leadership amongClimate Change
Negotiation Participants”, Project Muse WSX)
Issue-Specific Leadership?
Due to the fact that climate change spans a vast array of sectors and since the climate change negotiations address
multiple issue areas, it may be difficult for any one actor to be recognized as a leader on all of the
different issues that fit under the climate change rubric. This raises an interesting question: Is there issuespecific leadership
within the climate change field?
Table 6 below presents the actors
perceived as leaders on climate change by issue interest and the data
mainly confirms the general pattern of dual leadership featuring the EU and China in the leading roles. However,
the pattern emerging from the data does indicate that there is some justification for speaking about issue-specific leadership within the
field of climate change. First, when it comes to the issues of reaching future agreements and mitigation,
the EU and China hold strong positions and are clearly the two actors which prospective
followers look to for leadership. Perceptions of China’s leadership on these issues is somewhat higher than its overall
leadership recognition, nonetheless the results confirm the overall picture of a shared leadership between the EU and China.
However, when we turn our attention to adaptation and equity issues we see that the EU is
perceived as a leader to a much lesser degree than its overall shares. Less than 50 percent of those who
report an interest in equity see the EU as a leader. On these issues the respondents are as, or even more, likely to look to China for
leadership. It is also significant that the G77 to a far higher degree is seen as a leader by those reporting an interest in equity.
A third interesting feature is that the US scores substantially higher as a leader among those who
report an interest in the issues of energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS). The US position is still
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
44
fairly weak, but almost half of those who report an interest in CCS see the US as a leader. This result makes sense in light of the fact
that the US aggressively promoted technological solutions to address the climate problem in fora such as the major emitters meetings
started by the Bush administration. The EU’s position as a leader is once again reaffirmed and China, which has been garnering
attention for its recent large investments in clean energy, also emerges as a possible candidate for leadership with regards to energy
and CCS.
The main conclusion to be drawn from table 6 is that there is indeed some justification to speak of issue-specific
leadership concerning climate change. It is also interesting to note that the pattern we have discerned bears some
resemblance to the Bali building blocks. First, when it comes to the issues of a future agreement and mitigation, it is evident that the
EU and China are both perceived as occupying leadership roles. On issues concerning adaptation and equity, however, a more
fragmented picture emerges and the EU’s position as a leader is much weaker. On these issues China and even the G77 matters as
much as the EU. Finally, when it comes to the issues of technology development and energy, we find a third leadership constellation
as the US is also perceived as a leader alongside the EU and China.
Climate Leadership fails - No influence.
Falkner 5 – (November 15, 2005. “American Hegemony and the Global Environment” International Studies Review. Volume 7,
Issue 4. JSTOR.)
Throughout the history of international environmental politics, the
United States has played an active role in the
creation and design of international regimes and has used its power to pursue its preferred policy objectives. To be
sure, US hegemony has not translated into international policy outcomes in a straightforward
manner. Nor has US foreign environmental policy been consistent over time in terms of its
overall direction. Depending on the environmental issue that is the focus of attention and its broader international
context, America’s hegemony has formed the basis for both international leadership and veto power
in environmental regime formation. There is, thus, no simple correlation between the US position
in the international system and its environmental objectives. As will be argued below, the influence of
competing domestic interest groups and the fragmented nature of the foreign policy system in the
United States are largely responsible for the considerable variation in US foreign environmental
policy over time and across issue areas
US climate leadership fails - domestic political divisions
Falkner 5 – Robert Falkner, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, 2005, "American Hegemony
and the Global Environment," International Studies Review, Volume 7, Issue 4, pages 585-599
As the experience with US policy on biodiversity and climate change suggests, US
presidential leadership abroad is
easily trumped by Congressional opposition at home. The split between the executive and legislative branches of
government became all too apparent in the 1990s. Because the Clinton administration lacked Congressional
support for its international environmental ambitions, it had to backtrack from its support of the
CBD and the Kyoto Protocol, and it was unable to live up to its earlier promises to take the
country back into the multilateral policymaking arena. These two examples suggest that a critical condition
for environmental leadership is, therefore, the building of domestic coalitions in support of an
active foreign policy (Paarlberg 1997:137). Although the success of domestic coalition building will be influenced by the
political landscape of the day, there are structural reasons to suggest that stable and broad-based coalitions are likely
to be the exception rather than the norm, and that domestic fragmentation will remain a pervasive
aspect of foreign environmental policy in the United States.
One important reason for this fragmentation lies in the nature of the American political system.
With its decentralized decision-making process and power separation between the executive,
legislative, and judiciary, US environmental politics proceeds in an often erratic fashion and can
lead to considerable deadlock between competing institutional interests (Kraft 2004:chap. 3).
Presidential leadership can easily be blocked through concerted efforts on Capital Hill, where
lobbyists are likely to find a receptive audience, especially in the runup to Congressional
elections. And although the executive has greater room for initiative in foreign policy, the need
for Congressional approval of international agreements and domestic programs acts as a
dampener on international leadership efforts that are not backed by a broader coalition of interests
at home.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
45
Congress's powerful position in US foreign environmental policy is based on its constitutional
role in the policymaking process in three particularly sensitive areas: its authority to ratify
international treaties; its budgetary and fiscal powers that affect proposals for environmental
taxation, international environmental aid, and other environmental spending programs; and its
general legislative role in establishing and reviewing environmental regulations. All three of these
areas are critical to foreign environmental policy. They affect the ability of the United States to
accede to agreements it has negotiated and signed; they determine the extent to which US
environmental leadership is backed up by promises of international environmental aid; and they
influence the ability of the United States to provide a model for policy innovation through
effective domestic regulation.
Decentralization and the separation of powers in the American political system make it more
difficult for the government to sustain support for international environmental institutions. The
example of global biodiversity policy shows how limited the powers of the White House can be
when faced with determined opposition in Congress. Despite achieving major concessions at the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the United States refused to sign the CBD, mainly over concerns for
intellectual property protection and in response to intense industry lobbying. The Clinton administration
sought to reverse the image of the United States as a global environmental laggard and negotiated with leading biotechnology firms a
solution that would allow the country to sign the Convention. This was to be done through an interpretation to be submitted with the
US signature, which would prevent the convention from infringing on patent rights or commercial opportunities for research and
innovation. In the end, however, it was Congress that refused to ratify the Convention, despite a
broad consensus between industry, environmental groups, and the White House. Until today,
Republican opposition to this particular Convention has prevented full participation by the United
States in this area of international environmental regulation (Falkner 2001:169–171).
Leadership fails – US ambivalence on environmental policies
Ivanova & Esty 8 – Maria Ivanova is Assistant Professor of Government and Environmental Policy at The College of
William and Mary and the Director of the Global Environmental Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and
Policy. **AND Daniel C. Esty is the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. He holds faculty
appointments in both Yale’s Environment and Law Schools. He is the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy
and the Center for Business & Environment at Yale. Summer-Fall 2008, "Reclaiming U.S. Leadership in Global Environmental
Governance," SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 28, Number 2,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/v028/28.2.ivanova.html#back
Recent U.S.
involvement in global environmental governance is characterized by a fundamental
ambivalence about multilateralism and the international institutions that support it. As Edward Luck explains,
“Persistent strains of idealism and cynicism, multilateralism and unilateralism, internationalism
and isolationism have long coexisted across the spectrum of American thinking. The resulting
ambivalence . . . about the soul and shape of America’s place in the world . . . has yet to be resolved either intellectually
or politically, leaving Washington unable to abandon the world organization or to give it full
support.”15 This dual-edged attitude toward international organizations has clearly diminished the
U.S. leadership position and its ability to exert influence in the global environmental domain.16
Wikileaks destroys our chances of cooperation
Newman 11 – (January 24, 2011. “ WikiLeaks Exposes: U.S. & EU Climate Bullying, Bribery & Espionage ” The New
American. Vol. 27, Iss. 2; pg. 25, 4 pgs. Proquest.)
A series of secret U.S. diplomatic cables released during the United Nations COP 16 global- warming summit in
Cancun by the whistle-blower group WikiLeaks exposed American and European officials' use of
monetary incentives, threats, and even espionage to advance their "climate" agenda at the COP 15 in
Copenhagen last year and beyond. The worldwide reaction to the leaks has ranged from fury to gloating and
everything in between. Only a fraction of the more than 250,000 cables has been released so far, and just a few of those were related to
the "climate" negotiations in late 2009. But even what little has come out thus far - analysts are calling it the
"tip of the iceberg" -is raising eyebrows and generating more anti-U.S. sentiment around the
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
46
globe. And the revelations probably didn't help the COPI 6 "climate change" negotiations in Cancun, either. CIA-State Department
"Climate" Espionage It turns out that, at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency and the American
"intelligence" apparatus, the U.S. State Department sent out secret diplomatic cables seeking
intelligence on United Nations bosses, foreign officials, and others. The American regime was
seeking compromising information, Internet passwords, credit-card numbers, DNA and biometrie
data, evidence of non-cooperation with international climate decrees, and much more. News reports
claimed such an operation - basically using diplomats with immunity as spies - could be considered a violation of
international law. For its part, the State Department, while conceding that its staff does gather information around the world,
was insistent that American diplomats should not be considered spies. But experts disagreed, saying the use of diplomats for
intelligence gathering - including the identification of foreign officiais' "vulnerabilities" and dirt that could be used for leverage - is
blatantly improper, not to mention unlawful. The "Negotiations" In terms of the climate shenanigans revealed in the cables, the U.K.
Guardian, an establishment newspaper that received the cables prior to their official release by WikiLeaks, summed it up well:
"Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the
mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to
seek out leverage." The newspaper described some of the revelations in the diplomatic cables,
saying they showed "how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global
warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust,
broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret
global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial 'Copenhagen accord.'"
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
47
UN talks fail
UN talks fail – issue has become too central to economic and political elites.
Cohen 11 (Steven, Executive Director, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, 12/12/11,
“Understanding the Failure of the UN's Climate Talks”, The Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-cohen/understanding-the-failure_b_1142999.html)
If we fast forward to today, in the second decade of the 21st century, the
environmental issue has morphed into the issue of
economic and environmental sustainability. The environment has assumed a new place at the
center of community, corporate, and national policymaking. It is no longer a second-tier issue relegated to those
"environmental types," but a key issue affecting profits, economic growth and political power. The U.N.
climate policy process was designed when the environment was not yet a central issue to the power
elite. The very fact that the U.N. was able to take the lead on this process is an indication that it was
not considered a central issue by the world's political and economic powers. As the implications
of global climate policy for nations and industry became clearer, the U.N. decision making venue
became increasingly irrelevant. Unfortunately, no other venue has been developed to replace it. ¶ Meanwhile, here in the USA we find
ourselves subject to the idiocy of politicians and pundits who pretend that the science of climate change is uncertain. The projections of modern climate
science are increasingly certain, and there is evidence that the planet is already warming as a result of human activity. Moreover, as China, India and
eventually Africa develop into modern economic powers, the impact of fossil fuels on the planet's climate system will only get more intense. Climate
change is the first major global environmental issue, but it will not be the last.¶ Unless something changes, climate issues like sea level rise may be the
least of our troubles. If we do not develop an economic system less dependent on the one-time use of natural resources, not only energy, but water, food
and all sorts of critical raw materials will become more and more expensive. With seven billion people on the planet now and another three billion
coming, the development of a sustainable renewable resource-based economy has become a necessity. The species that really needs healthy ecosystems is
not some endangered sea turtle, but the one you and I belong to--the human species. Energy and climate are the first places we see the strain on the global
biosphere, but they won't be the last.¶ You will know that climate policy, energy policy and economic policy have finally landed in the correct venue
when we see economic ministers running the talks rather than environmental folks. That will tell you that the centrality and priority of these issues has
issue has become too
important for the world's more powerful nations to assign negotiations to the U.N.'s deliberative bodies.¶
As the global economy develops, it becomes increasingly important that global rules of the game be
established and made enforceable. We not only need to ensure that companies can compete on a level playing field, but that poor people
are not asked to trade off food and shelter against exposure to toxics. This will require new forms of global governance that
are beyond current institutional capacities
finally been recognized by the world's actual global policy makers. The U.N climate talks have failed because the
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
48
US not key
Other countries aren’t waiting for America to help solve warming.
Murray 7 (Iain, Vice President for Strategy at CEI., The Washington Examiner , “Five Biggest Myths about Global Warming”,
March 7th, 2007)
Finally, the rest of the world is not waiting for America’s lead on climate change. Europe has attempted to put a
price on carbon and has failed to reduce emissions because of its internal tensions. Measures attempted in
Canada, Japan and New Zealand have also failed. China, India, and the G-77 group of developing nations have outright
refused to accept any restriction on their emissions (China could overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter later
this year). The rest of the world has two reasons for demanding American action: First, blaming America
absolves them of responsibility and, second, emissions restrictions will hobble America’s economy,
allowing the rest of the world to play catch-up. For climate alarmists, these are harsh realities, inconvenient truths if you
will. The global warming debate is rife with confusion and misunderstanding. As a thorough review of the implications of the science,
economics and geopolitics of the debate shows, the supposed cure is worse than the disease.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
49
china leadership now
China leadership inevitable – they have the tech and economic momentum.
Bradsher 10 (Keith – chief Hong Kong correspondent, Jan. 30 “China Leading Global Race to
Make Clean Energy” The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energyenvironment/31renew.html?pagewanted=all)
TIANJIN, China — China
vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to
become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the
West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to
build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable
energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for
a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China. “Most of the energy
equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private
equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy. President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an
alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs
and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress. The United States and
other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling
American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.
Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big,
state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex
here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators. “You have to move
fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast
development in a wind market.” Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008
and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. Yet
renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to
pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will still be from coal. China intends for wind, solar and biomass
energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and
the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest. As
China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s
largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45
billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing. China’s top leaders are intensely focused on
energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy
Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself. Regulators
have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies
for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on
rooftops across China. China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet
demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times
as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will. So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the
world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the
American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production. In the
United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment
or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In
China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy,
particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively. Interest rates as low as 2 percent for bank loans —
the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy —
have also made a big difference. As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in
energy. Although Chinese wages have risen sharply in the last five years, Vestas still pays assembly line workers here only $4,100 a
year.
China has the potential for climate leadership – economic size and Copenhagen
Karlsson et. Al 11 – Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at Copenhagen
Business School (Christer, Charles Parker, Mattias Hjerpe, and Bjom-Ola Linner, February,
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
50
“Looking for Leaders: Perceptions of Climate Change Leadership amongClimate Change
Negotiation Participants”, Project Muse WSX)
The list of possible leadership contenders may even be extended as to include countries such as
China and Brazil. China’s recent behavior suggests that it is less willing to observe former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s
wellknown proscription to “never take the lead” and instead is increasingly focusing on his exhortation, contained in the second half
of that same famous quote, “to do something big.”25 China may be coming to the realization that doing
something big will require leadership and that its growing structural power now makes this a
viable option.
We do not at this point have the full story on why COP-15 failed to produce an ambitious successor agreement to
the Kyoto Protocol. It is clear, however, that China’s negotiating preferences were pivotal in shaping the
final outcome in Copenhagen. Time will tell if China is indeed aiming for a climate change leadership role, but, by
virtue of its economic size and its growing international clout, China already plays a key role in
determining the fate of international climate cooperation and may very well emerge as a future
leader, particularly among developing countries.
China has a far greater influence on world environment than US
Kanter 08 (James (columnist for NY times) June 2008 “China increases lead as biggest emitter
of carbon dioxide”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/business/worldbusiness/13iht13emit.13689957.html)
China is rapidly extending its lead over the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide,
the main greenhouse gas, according to figures released on Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The
agency, which tracks global annual emissions, said the volume of carbon from China was 14 percent higher than
those of the United States in 2007. That compares to emissions from China that were 7 percent higher than
the United States in 2006 and 5 percent below the United States in 2005, according to the agency . It describes
its findings as more up-to-date than similar studies from bodies including the International Energy Agency. Last year, the agency was
the first to identify that China had overtaken the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon. It based its latest findings on
recently published information on energy use from the oil company BP and on cement production, which is a major source of carbon
emissions.
China provides environmental leadership – clean tech.
Rein 09 (Shaun, 09.01.09, “China Is Pulling Ahead On The Environment”, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/01/chinaenvironment-pollution-leadership-citizenship-innovation.html)
The government is actively promoting private investment in clean technology. Despite the protectionism
creeping into China's $586 billion stimulus package, it is even seeking out foreign investment. Why? Because it knows
that multinational corporations can offer superior technology. Foreign companies like General Electric ( GE - news - people ) and
Corning (GLW - news - people ) have taken advantage of this situation to sell water- and air-purifying treatment products, generating
new profits that offset weak sales in the U.S. and Europe. Many Chinese entrepreneurs are launching new
businesses in the field. Analysts often argue that Chinese companies are better at copying than at innovating, but that's not true
anymore. More and more Chinese are studying in the West and gaining management and technical
skills at multinational firms, then venturing out on their own. Look for more innovative Chinese firms to
emerge and become world-class companies. The country is already fast becoming the world
leader in clean technology innovation. Venture capital and private equity businesses are noticing
all this. My firm, the China Market Research Group, interviewed several dozen venture capital and private equity executives in the
last three months, and more than 80% of them told us they expected to invest what adds up to several billion dollars in clean
technology projects in China. Many have already put money into solar companies like LDK Solar ( LDK - news -people )
and Suntech. China's automobile manufacturers may be the most innovative in the world today. Unburdened by a legacy of factories,
unions and gas stations, they are rushing to produce electric cars that are years ahead of anything from Ford Motor ( F - news -people
), General Motors ( GMGMQ.PK - news - people ) or even Toyota ( TM - news - people ). BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett,
is selling electric cars that not only reduce carbon dioxide emissions but are stylish too. Its sales have soared 183% this year to more
than 200,000 cars. Look for the boom in electric cars in China to continue as the government adds tax
breaks and pushes taxi companies and government fleets to go electric. More than 20 million electric bikes have been
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
sold in the last three years too. The technology
51
is improving at both the low end and the high end. China's
economy is going to keep growing, and its growth will continue to strain the environment as wealth increases and more
and more consumers demand packaged goods, cars and electricity to power their lives. The challenges that come with
growth are very real, but so are the steps China is taking to mitigate the damage it causes while taking
up the mantle as a global leader in clean technology.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
52
Europe leadership now
Europe already the climate leader.
Schreurs and Tiberghien 07 (Miranda A. and Yves, “Multi-Level
Reinforcement: Explaining European Union Leadership in Climate Change
Mitigation” Global Environmental Politics, Volume 7, Number 4, November
2007, pp. 19-46 , The MIT Press)
The European Union has positioned itself as the international agenda setter in relationship to
climate change mitigation. At several critical junctures, the EU and its members have adopted policies and programs that have put
it at the forefront of international efforts to address climate change. In January 2007, with an eye towards the post-Kyoto First
the European Commission under a German presidency published a communiqué
calling for limiting mean temperature increases to 2 degrees above pre-industrial times. In March
2007, the European Council confirmed Europe’s commitment to this approach announcing that the EU would cut its CO2
emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, increasing this to 30 percent should
other developed countries agree to take action within the framework of an international agreement. Beyond this,
the European Union adopted a number of other noteworthy policies. In its spring 2007 summit, the European Council
committed to the establishment of a binding target of 20 percent of renewables in the EU’s overall
Commitment period,
total energy consumption and a binding target of 10 percent for biofuels in the total mix of transportation fuel (petrol and diesel)
Europe now has “a clear
leadership position on this crucial issue facing the world.” In its effort to find cost effective ways to reduce emissions,
the EU has also implemented the world’s first international carbon emissions trading
system (ETS), modeled on the successful US sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions trading system established by the 1990 US Clean Air
consumption by 2020. After the agreement was forged, Tony Blair remarked that
Act Amendments. The Directive (2003/87/EC) mandated a system covering approximately 12,000 installations representing just under
half of European CO2 emissions. In 2004, a Linking Directive (2004/101/EC) was passed linking the joint implementation and clean
development mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol to the ETS. The ETS began operating in January 2005. While implementation is still
these policies
go far beyond anything proposed to date by the United States, Japan, or other major
a challenge and the EU has yet to prove that it can lead as effectively in policy outcome as in idea formulation,
and programs
industrialized countries.
Strong EU leadership will continue.
Schreurs and Tiberghien 07 (Miranda A. and Yves, “Multi-Level
Reinforcement: Explaining European Union Leadership in Climate Change
Mitigation” Global Environmental Politics, Volume 7, Number 4, November
2007, pp. 19-46 , The MIT Press)
If the EU succeeds in meeting its burden sharing target, then the EU will have
achieved something of a moral victory vis-à-vis the US. If the EU fails, then cynics are likely to charge that
while Europe is good at setting lofty goals, it is poor at actually implementing them. On the other hand, it could be argued that even
if the EU fails to fulfill its goals completely, it will still have inºuenced policy
change and innovation both at home and internationally through the power of
example in the areas of energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy development,
carbon emissions trading, energy taxes, and joint implementation. The EU, moreover, will
have made a strong case for international cooperation in addressing a serious
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
threat to the planet. The signing and ratiªcation of the Kyoto Protocol has helped to put a variety of new policies and
measures in motion. It has also helped to initiate joint projects among developed and transition countries.
53
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
54
Not Key to US Leadership
Climate leadership not key to overall US leadership
Falkner 5 – Robert Falkner, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, 2005, "American Hegemony
and the Global Environment," International Studies Review, Volume 7, Issue 4, pages 585-599
Second, there
is no simple and straightforward correlation between America's hegemonic position and the
type of environmental diplomacy it is likely to pursue. The fact of hegemony as such does not
determine whether the United States will promote or oppose the creation of international
environmental governance. To some extent, a link can be established between US predominance in the international
political economy and the rise of global environmentalism since the late 1960s, analogous to the way in which it promoted global
economic cooperation after 1945. But unlike trade and monetary policy, environmental policy has never
been central to the US effort to create international order. At times, the US government has used
its economic strength and political influence to promote global environmental objectives. On
other occasions, it has acted as a veto power, blocking progress toward multilateral policymaking.
This suggests that we have no convincing structural theory that can explain the direction and
evolution of US foreign environmental policy.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
55
Cap and Trade CP
The United States federal government should implement a cap-and-trade program.
Cap and trade gives us leverage in climate talks.
Broder 9 (John M, June 26, “House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change”, The New
York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/politics/27climate.html)
Apart from its domestic implications, the
legislation represents a first step toward measurable cuts in carbon
dioxide emissions that administration officials can point to when the United States joins other nations in
negotiating a new global climate change treaty later this year. For nearly 20 years, the United States
has resisted mandatory limits on heat-trapping emissions. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was
in Washington on Friday to meet with Mr. Obama, strongly endorsed the bill even though it fell short of European
goals for reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases. Mrs. Merkel, a longtime advocate of strong curbs on emissions, has been
pushing the United States to take a leading role before the climate negotiations, set for December in Copenhagen.
After meeting with Mr. Obama, she said she had seen a “sea change” in the United States on climate policy that she
could not have imagined a year ago when President George W. Bush was in office. The House legislation reflects a series of
concessions necessary to attract the support of Democrats from different regions and with different ideologies. In the months of horsetrading before the vote Friday, the bill’s targets for emissions of heat-trapping gases were weakened, its mandate for renewable
electricity was scaled back, and incentives for industries were sweetened. The bill’s sponsors were making deals on the House floor
right up until the time of the vote. They set aside money for new energy research and a hurricane study center in Florida. The final bill
has a goal of reducing greenhouse gases in the United States to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by midcentury.
When the program is scheduled to begin, in 2012, the estimated price of a permit to emit a ton of carbon dioxide will be about $13.
That is projected to rise steadily as emission limits come down, but the bill contains a provision to prevent costs from rising too
quickly in any one year. The bill would grant a majority of the permits free in the early years of the program, to keep costs low. The
Congressional Budget Office estimated that the average American household would pay an additional $175 a year in energy costs by
2020 as a result of the provision, while the poorest households would receive rebates that would lower their annual energy costs by
$40. Several House members expressed concern about the market to be created in carbon allowances, saying it posed the same risks as
those in markets in other kinds of derivatives. Regulation of such markets would be divided among the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The bill also sets a national
standard of 20 percent for the production of renewable electricity by 2020, although a third of that could be met with efficiency
measures rather than renewable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power. It also devotes billions of dollars to new energy
projects and subsidies for low-carbon agricultural practices, research on cleaner coal and electric vehicle development. Mr. Gore, who
shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming, posted an appeal on his blog for passage of the legislation. “This bill
doesn’t solve every problem,” Mr. Gore said, “but passage today means that we build momentum for the debate
coming up in the Senate and negotiations for the treaty
talks in December which will put in place a global solution
to the climate crisis. There is no backup plan.”
US cap-and-trade key to climate leadership.
Dimas 7 (Stavros Dimas, EU Commissioner for Environment – Public Service: The European
Union – Issue 13 – April -http://www.publicservice.co.uk/article.asp?publication=European%20Union&id=250&content_n
ame=Environment&article=7538)
Our commitment also creates a secure basis for the future of the EU's pioneering Emissions Trading Scheme and an immediate
incentive for industry to continue investing in low carbon technology. There is growing pressure in the United States
to
set up a federal 'cap-and-trade' emissions scheme similar to Europe's, and this is very encouraging. If it
happens this could help to reconnect the US with international action on climate change, which is essential if
a future agreement is to succeed. The global carbon market will be crucial to achieving the deep
emission reductions needed in the most cost-effective way. We see the EU scheme as the central pillar of a future global market
that links different national or regional schemes with similar levels of ambition. Our tough but fair approach to national emissions
trading caps for 2008-2012, which I know is supported by the UK, underlines our determination to safeguard the scheme's credibility
and ensure that the EU and Member States meet their Kyoto commitments.
Cap–and–trade builds environmental leadership
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
56
Seth Dunn, senior fellow at Worldwatch Institute, 9/22/2002 , Down to Business on Climate
Change: An Overview of Corporate Strategies
<http://www.resourcesaver.org/file/toolmanager/CustomO16C45F42862.pdf>
In addition to influencing government policy individually and through trade associations, business responses to climate change include
a range of internal and external control measures. Internal controls include greenhouse gas inventory and management systems;
internal greenhouse gas reduction targets; internal emissions trading systems; consideration of climate change in outside investments;
and research and investment into energy efficiency, fuel switching and new technologies. BP and Shell have, for example, established
internal cap-and-trade systems for all their business units. Indeed, involvement in trading or other flexibility mechanisms is becoming
a common external control. Over the past five years, governments have increasingly accepted emissions trading
as a policy of choice to address climate change. At the same time, progress in the international negotiations and
the increasing likelihood of emissions limitations have driven the emergence of a market for greenhouse gas emissions.
This trend toward greenhouse gas trading is motivated by both economic theory and empirical
evidence, notably the successes of the US sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions trading programme that was incorporated in
the acid rain programme of the 1990 US Clean Air Act Amendments. The cap-and-trade programme, which has created a
$4 billion market, has helped reduce SO2 emissions much faster, and at lower cost, than expected:
emissions in 2010 are projected to be roughly half their 1980 levels. While the cost to industry is estimated at $1 billion per year, the
health benefits are projected to reach $50 billion by 2010 (see Murphy 2002). While the sulphur emissions trading market arose from
legislation, the early greenhouse gas emissions market has come in advance of finalised government rules. Motivations for firms
to trade are similar to those for adopting climate response strategies in general: demonstrating environmental
leadership, learning-by-doing, hedging and managing risk, and generating revenue. According to the global energy brokerage firm
Natsource, an estimated 200 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) were traded between mid-1997 and mid-2002. (This number
includes trades of reductions as well as financial derivatives based on reductions, but excludes internal corporate trades and small
trades of less than 1,000 tonnes of CO2e.)
Cap-and-trade solves US climate leadership
AP 09
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hdbnLCgcJEg0cdgYQvCnxJqMlOqQD9AOKO080
Industry, economic and environmental groups are making a final push to influence a climate bill that may go before the Senate within weeks.
Investors managing more than $13 trillion in assets called for new global emissions laws Wednesday, illustrating how
the issue has divided even groups that traditionally have opposed new curbs. Speaking at the International Investor Forum on Climate Change,
the global debate over curbing greenhouse
gases has reached a critical point. If the U.S. does not pass substantial climate legislation, few
believe other nations, particularly developing countries, will cut emissions on their own. "We have to
Lord Nicholas Stern, among Britain's most influential economists, said
act now," said Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "Some
things you can postpone. This is not one of them." Stern three years ago issued an influential report on the
global costs of climate change. Greenhouse gases from burning coal and other fossil fuels are blamed for global warming. He
supports the cap-and-trade system that was passed in the U.S. House in June. The new cap-and-trade
rules would, for the first time, place national limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that companies
can release into the atmosphere. The eventual cost to businesses and consumers is at the heart of what has become an intense
informational and lobbying campaign on both sides. Environmentalists and some money managers see cap-and-trade
as the best way to control carbon emissions while oil refiners warn the House bill could make foreign petroleum products
cheaper and lead to even more imports. How the U.S. will proceed on climate change legislation was a major topic at the World Economic Forum in
China last week, and it is expected to be discussed in coming days when President Barack Obama speaks at a ministerial meeting of the U.N. General
Assembly. Todd Stern, the U.S. State Department's special envoy for climate change, said last week that it's
crucial for the Senate
to pass a climate bill. Doing so would give the U.S. the "credibility and leverage" needed to
convince other countries like China and India to cut their pollution.
Stefan Bauschard
Climate Impact Answers
57