Send A Colleague to Copenhagen

I won't be attending the Copenhagen climate conference but my colleague David Kroodsma still has a shot to do so if he wins the Huffington Post contest to send a citizen journalist (You can vote for him here). David is a writer, climate-energy expert, and bicycle adventurer with degrees in physics and climate science. He and I met last year on the Climate Ride while we were traveling to Washington to lobby for clean energy. Prior to that, David bicycled across North and South America to raise awareness of global warming and he has since documented his journey in a forthcoming book.

I spoke with David recently about the city of Copenhagen and how one-third of commuters there use bicycles. Below is an excerpt from his book where he talks about the choice world cities face: They can either copy Copenhagen, or they can copy American cities such as Los Angeles. The excerpt is from his chapter on Colombia. David visited Bogota and saw how investments in public transportation and bicycle infrastructure have helped to reduce carbon pollution and make the city a more pleasant place to live.

Something else remarkable has happened in Colombia over the past decade: the country has reduced its carbon dioxide pollution. Some of this reduction has been because of an increase in hydroelectric power—eighty percent of the country's electricity comes from dams—and a decrease in coal-fired power. But the Transmilenio [the public transit system] and bikeways have also had a serious effect, perhaps decreasing Bogotá's pollution by over half a million tons of carbon dioxide a year and cutting Bogotá's total pollution by a few percent. Car use in Bogotá has dropped significantly, and nearly twenty percent of daily trips are via the Transmilenio, an efficient service that didn't even exist a decade earlier. Bogotá shows that reducing pollution often has ancillary benefits. The city didn't set out to reduce pollution. The city set out to make itself more livable, and consequently reduced fossil fuel use.

If cities in the developing world decide to copy Bogotá, how big of a difference would it make? In the next thirty years, almost all growth in greenhouse gas pollution is expected to come from developing nations such as Colombia—nations where living standards are rising rapidly. Cities in these countries are growing rapidly, and decisions made today will decide the transportation infrastructure for decades to come.

A city like Bogotá could look to U.S. cities like Los Angeles where the majority of commuters drive, or they could look to European cities such as Copenhagen where transit is evenly divided between personal automobiles, public transportation, and bicycles. Whereas the average citizen of Los Angeles produces about five tons of carbon dioxide per person through transportation, the average citizen of Copenhagen is responsible for less than one and a half tons per person from transportation.

Half of the world's population now lives in urban areas, and the difference between these cities copying the transit system of Los Angeles versus copying the transit system of Copenhagen is thus a difference of about 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Given that global carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels is roughly 30 billion tons today, the difference between a world of Los Angeleses and Copenhagens is dramatic.

Here is David's video for the HuffPo Hopenhagen contest. Don't forget to vote:

In Copenhagen Poker Game, a Climate Ethic?

Last night I attended the Carnegie Council-sponsored Japan Society panel "Copenhagen & Beyond" on the upcoming climate change negotiations in December with experts Masayoshi Arai (METI), Elliot Diringer (Pew Center), Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhenmin Liu, and Takao Shibata (the former chairman of the Kyoto Protocol working group).

As moderator, Jim Efstanthiou of Bloomberg began by noting that no binding climate change deal is expected in Copenhagen this December since rich countries seem to be holding back their cards in a game of climate poker. The panelists basically agreed that the most we can expect in December is a political agreement or declaration since governments simply are not ready to make a deal. Diringer predicted the low end outcome would be a political declaration with "some money on the table." A higher achievement in Copenhagen would spell out the legal and institutional architecture to pave the way for a binding agreement. He said that would represent a success. Even in the Bali meeting, the Dec. 2009 deadline for Copenhagen was seen as "too soon" for agreement on legal commitments. Shibata hoped that the world would avoid the mistake made in Kyoto--producing an agreement that is "unratifiable" in the U.S. Congress. Liu strongly stressed the importance of finding some agreement in Copenhagen; otherwise it would be "a tragedy" for humanity--politicians who said there will be progress will look like liars.

A major theme of the discussion was the ethical principles of the climate change negotiations. Shibata remarked that the Hatoyama Administration's 25 percent greenhouse gas reduction target is contingent upon having a fair and effective global framework for negotiation in place. (By the way, showing how dramatic that goal is, Arai said, Japan's 25 percent target would represent the equivalent of eliminating the greenhouse gases emitted from the entire transport, electricity, or industrial sector in Japan. I have also heard that the Hatoyama goal was sprung on industry and the bureaucracy without consultations and companies are now waiting to see any action taken.)

Fortunately, a fair framework is in place: The overarching global goal is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference. The intention in the Kyoto Protocol was to include commitments from developing countries but it proved impossible since the commitments from rich countries were incomplete.

In any case, toward achieving this goal, the basic principles from the Kyoto Protocol, which shouldn't be thrown away according to Liu include: 1. global cooperation; 2. common but differentiated responsibility; 3. all states have obligations. Liu advocated for specific quantitative commitments from Annex One (rich) countries while poorer countries should be simply required to "do more," including technology transfer, innovation, and government-to-government cooperation. In other words, Liu said that inter-governmental actions for mutual benefit need to be considered--not just market mechanisms. Efstathiou wondered if we were headed toward "carbon cap equivalents." This description below is from a Center for American Progress article:

With this carbon cap equivalents approach the better measure of what each country is doing is derived by adding up the full range of supplemental and complementary proposals to each country’s carbon cap and converting this into one comparable figure of what these emissions reductions would effectively amount to if they had been the result of a carbon cap alone. The modeling will be complex, but we should open up the language of the hoped-for Copenhagen treaty so that signatory nations can demonstrate their acceptance of the treaty goals through such equivalents—representing the full range of their policy profile to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—above and beyond their formal cap.

Diringer predicted that developing countries will be asked to describe their climate change policies consistent with their development goals but will not be asked to impose economy-wide caps. The framework for developing countries will be flexible but binding so that there will be a stronger collective impact through mutual commitments. As Liu said, it would be unfair to ask developing countries to forgo the benefits of industrialization. Coincidentally, a couple of people questioned the very meaning of the Annexes since economic growth is concentrated in emerging economies.

For rich countries like the United States, the risk is not in adopting climate change mitigation mechanisms or their impact on industrial competitiveness. The idea that climate change mitigation is inconsistent with industrial competitiveness is outdated. Instead, Diringer said, the risk is that the United States will fail to create the incentives to adopt future technologies, like China is trying to do.

The gorilla in the room was enforcement. Fortunately, the final question from the audience was direct: How will states' commitments be enforced? The panel agreed that enforcement mechanisms can't be punitive but rather should be facilitative. Commitments must be clear but not onerous. In that way, countries that fail to meet their commitments will be "named and shamed."

Mexico's Proposed Climate Change Green Fund

The climate negotiations in Copenhagen will need to determine how we finance adaptation and green technology for the developing world. To this end, Mexico has been floating a proposal for a World Climate Change Fund for at least a year now.

Some of the ideas and principles driving the Green Fund are outlined in a presentation on Innovative Finance Mechanisms by Carolina Fuentes. She suggests that the fund would have the following advantages:

–Increased access to financial and technical resources
–Expansion of the global mitigation scale, Developing countries will have positive incentives to widen their mitigation efforts.
–Broader participation, The governance scheme of the Fund will be open to all countries.
–A predictable and verifiable regime, activities will be subject to independent supervising.
–Not necessary to demonstrate additionality, since the Fund is not a compensatory mechanism to offset emissions.

Is it a promising sign that the U.S. embassy in Mexico City included the proposed Green Fund in a February memo?