Here's Why The U.S. Is Morally Obligated To Act On Climate Change

Credit: Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Internationally, the big hurdle to fighting climate change and global warming is figuring out a fair way to divvy up responsibility. Serious efforts to curb carbon emissions will require considerable upfront investment, so who should make those investments and how much? That impasse then influences domestic political reluctance in the United States. If the rest of the world isn't moving, why should we?

Earlier this week, Bloomberg flagged work by the Stockholm Environment Institute and others to nail down answers to those questions with hard numbers. Their conclusion?

As of now, the United States bears fully one third of the burden to reduce global carbon emissions, with much of Europe shouldering nearly another third. It's a bracing conclusion. The latest analysis suggests the per-unit social and economic damage from carbon emissions due to global warming is as much as twice what we thought. Several countries with much more modest obligations than America's have already moved to price carbon, leaving the U.S. sticking out like a sore thumb. Even China is tip-toeing up to it.

Much of the researchers' work comes from the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework. First, they set a global threshold for living standards, below which people are considered free from the responsibility to sacrifice in the fight against climate change. They came up with $7,500 a year in dollars (adjusted for purchasing power parity) - it's the living standard at which malnutrition, infant mortality, low education, and other problems of poverty begin to fade, plus a bit of breathing room. Even then, about 70 percent of the globe lives at or below this level, and taken all together is responsible for only 15 percent of the cumulative global emissions.

Capacity to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation was then defined as all income per person falling above that threshold. As you can see below, the United States' capacity swamps that of both India and China, despite the much larger populations of the latter two countries:

Source: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework

The researchers then tried to quantify responsibility for climate change by accounting for cumulative emissions since 1990, and all projected emissions going forward, while excluding all emissions associated with income below the threshold. Putting it all together, they calculated the "responsibility and capacity indicator" (RCI) for each country. In other words: everyone's fair share of the responsibility to reduce carbon emissions enough to keep the planet's climate under two degrees Celsius of warming.

The result? The United States has 33.1 percent of the global RCI in 2010, dropping to 25.5 percent in 2030. The European Union has 25.7 percent in 2010 and 19.6 percent in 2030. Thanks to its economic growth, China does jump from 5.5 percent in 2010 to 15.2 percent in 2030. But no other country even cracks 8 percent, or changes much over that period.

Source: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework

This shouldn't be surprising. Other data suggests the U.S. can claim a third of the world's carbon dioxide emissions since the mid-1800s, and our per capita emissions top nearly every other nation. We're also the most economically developed nation without a price on carbon, meaning we implicitly subsidize fossil fuel use far more than anyone else.

In fact, the paper notes that even if the advanced countries get their carbon emissions down to practically zero by 2050, the two degree target doesn't give the poor and developing countries much room to work with. That matters, because reducing poverty requires reducing energy poverty, and reducing energy poverty usually means increased carbon emissions. It's possibly the key paradox of human advancement - the world is creeping up on an astonishing reduction in global poverty, even as our greenhouse gas emissions keep driving us towards likely climate and ecological catastrophe. It's what led the International Energy Agency and the World Bank to note that tackling energy poverty and climate change at the same time is going to have a hefty global price tag.

Here in America and the developed west, meanwhile, we've basically got the problem of deep poverty licked. Given the position of extraordinary economic privilege we enjoy in the global order, it's right that the lion's share of the climate change burden falls to us. To that end, the paper suggests establishing an international fund to invest in global climate change mitigation and adaptation, with countries contributing in accordance with their RCI share. Or just use the RCI proportions to calculate direct emission reduction targets for each country.

But it's not grim self-sacrifice. The insurance bill the U.S. is paying for extreme weather disasters - increasing thanks to climate change - far outpaces that of any other country, meaning reducing global warming is in our quantifiable financial self-interest. We also need jobs, and specifically jobs that pay well but are accessible to less educated Americans, in order to avoid falling into an economy with just an upper and lower class, but no middle class. Research suggests renewable energy produces more jobs per unit of energy generated than the fossil fuel industries, green jobs are both more accessible to less educated Americans than all jobs as a whole, and their more likely to involve manufacturing. Finally, if we 're exporting renewable technology to China and the world, rather than importing it when they develop it first, we'll help close our trade deficit and improve the government's finances.

But self-interest aside, at the end of the day there's no escaping the simple morality of the matter. As President Obama pointed out at a prayer breakfast in 2012, quoting Luke 12:48, "for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." He was talking about justly distributing the burden of deficit reduction, but the point applies to carbon reduction just as much.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/06/2110951/us-obligated-clima

Incoming! New Report Notes 14 "Carbon Bombs" Threatening To Blow The Global Carbon Budget

The general scientific consensus is that the average global temperature cannot be allowed to warm more than two degrees Celsius [3.6°F] in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. In fact, a two degree rise alone would threaten the water supplies of hundreds of millions of people, lead to global crop declines, bleach coral reefs around the world, and drive up ocean acidification.

Limiting global emissions between 2010 and 2050 to 1,050 gigatons of CO2-equivalent pollution should give us a 75 percent chance of staying under a two degree rise, according to a new report from Ecofys and Greenpeace, which rounded up 14 "carbon bombs" - the biggest coal, oil and natural gas projects currently being planned around the world.

According to the analysis, the combined effect of these projects alone would dump 300 new gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. That would blow through roughly a third of the allowance that gives us a 75 percent chance of staying under two degrees. Needless to say, if these projects were carried out, it would make it vastly more difficult for the planet to stay on a path that keeps it under the two degree threshold.

Two of the projects can be found in the United States, and a third is deeply bound up with rapidly approaching U.S. policy choices:

• A plan to export new coal from the Pacific Northwest. This would add 420 million tons of carbon a year by 2020. Activists and even some American politicians have already been battling the project for some time.
• Expanded shale gas production. This will add 280 million tons a year by 2020 according to the report. But as David Roberts points out, this estimate relies on the assumption that natural gas fields leak methane at a rate of 3.9 percent. There's evidence that assumption significantly low-balls the problem.
• Tar sands in Canada. This project would be greatly helped along by construction of the Keystone XL pipeline through the lower-48 states. The Obama Administration will decide whether to approve the pipeline sometime after March.

Here's a map of the offenders, put together by The Washington Post's Brad Plumer from the report. (Click the image for a larger version.)

The two biggest offenders in the report were China's plan to ramp up new coal production, creating an additional 1,400 megatons of CO2 emissions a year, and Australia's plan to export 760 new megatons of coal per year. Ironically, both countries were hit by the effects of coal pollution over the course of 2012. Particulate pollution in Beijing literally broke the relevant measuring scales, and Australia was wracked by a record-breaking heat wave and a rash of wildfires, all linked to global warming.

There is some good news in the caveats, as Plumer notes. The energy produced by these projects won't necessarily add on linearly to each other, or to the energy already being produced by fossil fuels. Natural gas from one project could undercut the need for coal from another project, for instance. Or it could displace coal consumption already occurring - a net reduction in carbon output, in the latter instance. (Of course, these projects could also displace energy being produced from renewables. A problem, to put it mildly.)

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/23/1487311/14-carbon-bomb/?mo

Why Claims About Reductions Of U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Misleading

by Kevin Matthews

A person - a public figure, member of the media, maybe even an international climate negotiator - could be confused about U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

In August, 2012, the Associated Press reported this:

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal."

Since August, the misleading meme of shrinking U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has been picked up and carried forward by a variety of respected sources. As recently as November 26, for instance, the Guardian reported on how the findings were influencing climate negotiations:

Greenhouse gas emissions from the US have fallen sharply in recent years, owing to the replacement of coal-fired power generation by gas in the US, following its widespread adoption of shale gas.

Jonathan Pershing, a senior negotiator for the US, said: "Those who don't know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it's enormous."

Given these claims, you'd think that there was solid information that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dropped. But the real story is somewhat different.

Back in August, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that collects and reports certain energy-related data, posted an article centered on this graph:

<hat graph is labeled obscurely, but with partial accuracy, as showing U.S. "carbon dioxide emissions from energy demand."

That's the same as "carbon dioxide emissions from energy use" or "carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption," which is primary data collected by the EIA. It's relatively easy to track in real time, since it's essentially based on adding up the sales figures for coal, oil, and natural gas.

Therein lies the first layer of confusion. The EIA does not include biomass combustion energy, hydroelectric power, or true renewables like wind and solar in its main energy consumption figures. Except for biomass, there is little CO2 associated with the use of these clean energy sources.

So the EIA graph in the article should be labeled as U.S. "carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption." In fact, that's exactly how the graph is labeled in EIA's deeper technical reports. According to the most recent official EPA figures, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption represented about 79% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.

Starting a tally of this U.S. fossil fuel use "grade inflation," we can use these terms:

(CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use) + (CO2 emissions from all other energy use) = (total CO2 emissions from energy use).

The big headline on the EIA article adds another level of exaggeration. It says "U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in early 2012 lowest since 1992." Note the shift from "energy-use" CO2 emissions to "energy-related" CO2 emissions.

The headline is directly wrong because the underlying data does not include CO2 emissions from energy production and distribution such as flaring of natural gas, an increasing element in the U.S. EIA seems to use the this sloppy label regularly.

(CO2 emissions from energy use) + (CO2 emissions from energy production & distribution) = (energy-related CO2 emissions)

The headline also sets people up for another natural error. While CO2 is the biggest greenhouse gas, it's not the only one. It's common practice in adding up climate numbers to convert all the differing units of other greenhouse gases into CO2-equivalent values.

It's tedious to always say "CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions." And pretty often, people just say "CO2 emissions" when "CO2-equivalent emissions" is what they really mean.

That's just a little slippage in our language, but it has big implications for the numbers.

(energy-related CO2 emissions) + (non-CO2 energy-related emissions) = (energy-related greenhouse gas emissions)

Missing Methane

The biggest energy-related non-CO2 emissions are methane - and that's huge.

Estimates of energy-related methane emissions are in flux, as traditional industry numbers are being looked at more closely. Current research, in line with a recent NOAA report, suggests under-reporting by the fossil fuel industry may be on the order of 2 percent of natural gas used, suggesting total methane losses on the order of 4%. Since methane is about 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 (in the time frame of a generation), we can multiply (4% methane leakage) x (21 times GHG impact compared to CO2) = 84%. That shows that methane emissions from the natural gas system may have a CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas impact roughly comparable to the GHG impact in CO2 from burning the gas. While the methane emissions may prove to be somewhat smaller, there's little doubt they are significant.

This is part of the picture described by guest bloggers Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito in the Climate Progress article "Shale Gas And The Overhyping Of Its CO2 Reductions."

By leaving out methane, and other things, the EIA data really only describes one specialized slice of emissions. It's a big slice, but not one to freely generalize from.

Because renewables are missing from the EIA data, which has been widely and inappropriately generalized, it's all too easy for pundits and reporters to simply compare the coal curve and the natural gas curve against the (baseless) overall conclusion of dropping emissions, and then call out lower natural gas prices as the cause of U.S. progress - thus leaving out the significant growth of renewables. But that's another story.

Ultimate Confusion

As noted above, it's apparently been easy for analysts and media alike to take the EIA information to the final level of misinformation, trumpeting that CO2 levels have fallen to their lowest levels in 20 years or that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen sharply.

The claim is wrong, because to get to greenhouse gas emissions overall, all the non-energy-related emissions sources also need to also be included. To summarize and complete the equation:

EIA data: (CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use)
+ (CO2 emissions from all other energy use)
+ (CO2 emissions from energy production & distribution)
+ (non-CO2 energy-related emissions)
+ (all non-energy-related greenhouse gas emissions)
= total greenhouse gas emissions

Methane, flaring, and biomass emissions not included in the primary EIA numbers mean those numbers don't fully reflect energy-related GHG emissions.

According to the official U.S. GHG emissions inventory, the non-energy-related emissions (from agriculture, logging, other land use changes, etc.) represent another ~20 percent of the total, on top of the ~80 percent of GHG emissions that are directly energy-related.

EPA to the Rescue

The EIA used to actually calculate and report its own U.S. total greenhouse gas emissions numbers. That EIA overall GHG inventory was discontinued in 2011, due to mid-year budget cuts, according to an EIA source. However, the agency has never been the source of the official U.S. inventory.

The official U.S. greenhouse gas emissions inventory has been produced for many years by the EPA, following detailed international reporting protocols. It's presented to the United Nations every April, in a careful and fairly hard-to-read formal report.

The most recent official EPA inventory, reported in April 2012 and showing total U.S. emissions for 2010, shows our emissions going up that year:

r> The current EPA inventory report shows total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for 2010 up 3.2% over 2009 emissions, with an average annual growth rate from 1990 through 2010 of 0.5%. It's hard to say what increase or decrease the U.S. inventory for 2011 will show, when the EPA releases it in April 2013, or what the inventory for 2012 will show when it comes out in April 2014. Unless someone is prepared to duplicate the EPA's work, and do it faster, we can expect to wait for those numbers.

Bottom Line

U.S. major media and others have been trumpeting a false meme of declining U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, spinning off from EIA data that actually shows a much narrower trend.

While the primary EIA data represents a large, very specific piece of the overall U.S. emission inventory, it's fundamentally misleading to inflate its importance. Nonetheless, this seems to have been done regularly by the EIA itself, and to an even greater degree by downstream users of EIA information.

In the past, EIA produced an overall emissions inventory. Because energy consumption is easier to collect and report on quickly than other types of emissions, they continue to produce reports including U.S. CO2 emissions from energy use, which the EIA releases at a pace tantalizingly close to real time.

No doubt it's frustrating to media and officials who love to report on realtime score cards, but the only official U.S. greenhouse gas emission inventory comes from the EPA. It takes a while for all the data to be collected and complied - and impatience is no reason to misrepresent the data available.

In any case, year-to-year ups and downs in U.S. emissions are not very meaningful relative to the scale of the climate mitigation challenge we face together. In the U.S., we need to be planning and faithfully implementing, in every sector of our economy, in every government, agency, and large organization, roughly 5% reductions in total greenhouse gas emissions, every year, year-on-year, for the rest of our lives.

And no blip in annual emissions, whether actual or invented, is going to rescue business-as-usual from this fundamental need for real climate action.

Kevin Matthews is Editor-in-Chief of Architecture Week.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/05/1275811/why-claims-about-r

Copenhagen climate summit: Gordon Brown says 'future of humanity' at stake - Telegraph

Arriving in Copenhagen, Mr Brown said: "Over the next three days the leaders of almost every nation on earth will gather in Copenhagen. Their role; their opportunity; their responsibility: to shape the future of humanity. It is a defining moment." To win around developing nations who are resisting limits on their carbon emissions, Mr Brown could back a deal for rich countries to give more money. He is now preparing to make Britain pay into another international fund to help poor countries limit the amount of their forests they cut down for logging and agriculture. Increasing Britian’s “green” spending is controversial because of the size of the Government’s deficit. As he arrived in Copenhagen, Mr Brown, painted an apocalyptic picture of the consequences of failure at the summit, saying that the world economy would suffer an unprecedented “catastrophe” if temperatures rise too far.

Breathing Earth

URL: 

Breathing Earth

Description: 

A real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. It is just a simulation. Although the co2 emission, birth rate and death rate data used in Breathing Earth comes from reputable sources, data that measures things on such a massive scale can never be 100% accurate. Please note however that the co2 emission levels shown here are much more likely to be too low than they are to be too high.

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