The Matterhorn, as seen from Zermatt, Switzerland, March 2009. Skiing in Zermatt, Switzerland this past winter it was obvious that snow levels were decreasing at an unusual rate, as discussed in the Convention report.

A major publication from the EU’s Convention on the Protection of the Alps last week, revealed the dramatic effects of climate change on the Alps region.

The Convention on the Protection of the Alps was established in 1991 and is headquartered out of Bolzano, Italy. The Convention report published on 17 June 2009 is its second magisterial report. It reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering serious flooding while southern ranges are generally seeing huge reductions in snow fall. Average Precipitation levels have decreased 10 % in the south-east of the region.

Marco Onida, secretary general of the Convention, recognizes that “the European climate is dividing in two…the result will be havoc for the Alps and the communities and wildlife that rely on the area.” The Alps’ most famous peaks, such as Mont Blanc, The Matterhorn, and Monte Rosa, mark the division between the wet north and Italy and Slovenia in the dryer south of the region.

The current analysis of changes to be made to the Swiss-Italian border is a prime example of such geo-political changes driven by climate change. The Italian military has been tracking changes as glaciers on the border melt over the last thirty years. Italian Brig. General, Carlo Colella (Florence) suggests that in some places the border could change up to 100 m. It is also believed that Italy will gain territory as the glaciers in the Southern Alps are melting at a faster rate.

The border in question was last changed in 1861 when Italy became a unified state. Now the Italian government is involved in changing their national legislation to allow such a border change; Switzerland requires no such change to law. Colella acknowledges that “after the border change with Switzerland, the Italian-French border will come under consideration.”

Outside of creating complex border issues, climate change in the Alps has begun to have profound implications for agriculture and tourism. Northern villages already face flooding and water shortages and decreased snowfall in the south have already started to hit the tourism industry. Additionally, Alpine species are being driven further up the mountains; thus, exotic and invasive plant species are starting to take hold lower down in the Alpine system.

The Convention report points to the environmental burden, especially with regards to expediting climate change, from the increased demand for artificial snow by the tourism industry. This is a necessary step in order to sustain the winter sports industry, which is the economic mainstay of the area. But it is a catch-22 scenario, under which generation of artificial snow further burdens already stressed water and energy supplies.

Ultimately, changing patterns of rain and snowfall, shrinking glaciers, and raising temperatures are seen by the Convention report as the greatest challenges to Alpine villages. The Convention report cites Italy’s 178 mile-long Tagliamento (in the northeast of the country) as the only Alpine river to not suffer drastic modifications to date. Dr. Onida said that “the Alps are the water tower of Europe, but much of the water is no longer reaching the places downstream where it is actually needed for ecosystem [stability], agriculture, and energy [generation].” He does acknowledge the very real struggle between agriculture and tourism for scarce water supplies.

Only time will tell how national borders will change and whether climate change will lead to intense battles between tourism and the survival of Alpine villages. The eight Alpine countries – France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Slovenia, and Hungary – are taking action through the Alpine Convention. There may be time and the means to manage and mitigate some of the most extreme effects of climate change in the Alps.

In a landmark vote on Capitol Hill today, The House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, which lays the foundations for a cap-and-trade system in the US. The vote was narrowly passed with 219 for and 212 against.

In the run up to the vote today some pundits said that the vote would pass, while others said it would fail.  Conventional wisdom, however, suggests that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not have put it to a floor vote unless she knew she had the votes in the bag.  In a vote this tight, those that fall on the dividing line can have a disproportionally-large influence on the Bill.  This phenomenon was well illustrated by the extra 0.25% of permits that were allocated to refineries at the last minute in order to win over Rep. Harry Teague.

The reception has been mixed in the US, with House Republican leader John Boehner calling it “the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House of Representatives.”  On the other hand the response internationally has been largely positive.  In a meeting with Obama earlier today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the bill: “This is, indeed, a sea change that I see [...] this really points to the fact that the United States are very serious on climate.”  Although the bill has been widely supported by environmental groups, some say it does not go far enough.

The vote today does not guaruntee the passage of the bill into law, as it must first face the daunting task of passing the Senate.  Nonetheless, Obama’s victory today gives him some important extra cards to play in the run up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December.

The Rudd government has just released (19/06/09) draft regulations for the Australian Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), outlining how carbon emissions will be measured and industry compensation calculated. The draft regulations specify the framework for the Emission Intensive-Trade Exposed assistance program, application procedures and reporting requirements for eligible entities under the program.

The regulations just published are the first of several disclosures on how the country’s emissions trading scheme will take shape, Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said. The rules outline some of the highly emissions-intensive sectors that will receive up to 94.5 per cent of their expected needed amount of emission permits for free under the CPRS.
Production of carbon black, methanol, silicon, bulk flat glass, newsprint, and zinc will all be counted in this category. Moderately emission-intensive sectors will get up to 66 per cent of their allowances free of charge.

Treatment of energy-intensive trade-exposed industries under the carbon scheme is playing a major role in Australia’s debate on how to tackle climate change, as many industries and the Opposition fear jobs will be lost to countries without carbon regulations, such as China and India. In addition, Greens strongly oppose the draft, as stated by Senator Christine Milne: “The draft regulations confirm that the carbon pollution reduction scheme will be a multi-million dollar wealth transfer from the people to the big polluters, and that stands in the way of protecting the climate,” (ABC 19/06/09)

The Government says it is releasing the draft regulations earlier than normal because it wants to give MPs as much information as possible. It is indeed trying to get senators to support its scheme in an effort to have the legislation passed by the Senate next week. But the ETS legislation is in trouble. The Opposition, which does not want to vote on the scheme until next year, plans to filibuster all week to avoid it being put to a vote at all. The Greens have vowed to vote the scheme down but do not support delaying the vote. (ABC 18/06/09) If the bill is defeated, or there is a vote to defer it until August, either will count as a refusal by the Senate to pass it. In this case, things could start to become very difficult for the Rudd government, possibly triggering an early election before the end of the year. (SMH 19/06/09)

President Obama, in close discussions with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is to give the green light for US consumption of oil sand oil, or rather the import of fuels considered among the “dirtiest” in the fuel market. In a meeting last week, President Obama decided that the Canada’s oil sands represented an important part of national security supplies for petroleum in America’s near future.

The move is not without immediate precedent, as Francois Cardinal at cybercress.ca notes, both Hillary Clinton had offered support for oil sands at a recent conference on energy security, and Obama’s national Security adviser General Jim Jones was similarly adamant that the US would be foolish to reject the possibility of a stable source from a close partner in Canada.

The move will disappoint many in the green movement, given Obama has previously been less supportive of oil sands, noting that the Us needed to ween itself off dirty and dangerous oil supplies. In particular at a recent summit with Canada, President Obama described US coal as equivalent to Alberta’s oil sands, given environmentalists hope that the US would take a tough line demanding far reaching cleanup efforts if the oil sands were ever to be imported.

Speaking at a recent energy conference the Calgary Herald noted Energy Secretary’s Chu’s position

“This is energy that one hopes to develop in a clean way, and so that you can decrease the environmental footprint, both in the energy invested in order to recover it and on the local environmental issues,” Chu said Monday in response to a Herald query.

“There are also environmental issues having to do with the recovery of the oil sands, the very tarry stuff that’s left behind, the residues. There haven’t been solutions to that yet,” added Chu, who met privately with Premier Ed Stelmach on Monday for about 30 minutes”

How far the environmental issues are pushed depends on a large number of factors, in terms of Canada’ s federal Climate policy projects such as oil sands are only required to reduce the intensity of their energy consumption in order to keep with Canada’s GHG targets, in short allowing growth in absolute Carbon emissions. Worse, of the projects designed to reduce emissions from critical polluting sectors, most of Canada’s research investment is going to “clean coal” rather than oil sands:

“Alberta Minister of Environment Rob Renner said Tuesday that the lion’s share of $ 2 billion planned for the burial of carbon was destined for the coal industry”

However, environmental movements within Canada, have made strong progress in other states such as British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec which could increase the pressure on states such as Alberta to set more ambitious reduction targets and forcing them to channel greater investment into cleaning up the oil sands. Furthermore, the role of California the US’s biggest car using state has effectively banned Alberta oil unless it cleans up, through regional Environmental alliances such as the WCI such policy could be diffused throughout other key states, potentially even within Canada.

In summary, oil sands as noted previously now look set for a stable future, one albeit without the much feared spectacular growth that marked environmentalists concerns prior to the recession and one in which increasing pressure will probably be put on the oil sands to reduce their environmental impact, but in terms of derailment, the oil sands appear to have escaped that pitfall.

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (image credit: NOAA)

This week the United States government has finally released the long awaited report entitled Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. This is the first report dealing with climate change impacts to have been released in nearly a decade (though Congress has mandated annual updates on the science of climate change and a comprehensive report every four years is required by federal law, none has been released during the Bush years), and is the most detailed and comprehensive to have ever been written by a US agency.

Commissioned by the US Global Change Research Program, it is a collaborative effort by experts from 13 US government science agencies as well as from several universities and research institute. The report, which uses the most up-to-date scientific findings, updates the latest IPCC reports and breaks climate change impacts – both current and expected – by US region and economic sectors.

I won’t go into the impacts mentioned in the report – those have been detailed in other places (see for example NOAA’s press release for the main findings, or more detailed breakdowns by regions and sectors), and are not new in themselves, as this is in essence a review of scientific publications similar to the IPCC reports. The exciting part for me is that for the first time Americans are presented with government sponsored, easy to read and detailed information about the impacts that will – and already are – affecting them directly. I don’t think that I am being too optimistic in hoping that this report – published just before an expected House vote on the Waxman – Markey bill next week – will be a beginning of a long overdue paradigm shift in the American public. 

After all, there are reasons why most Americans don’t believe that climate change in happening, that it is man made, or that its consequences will affect them, and one of these reasons is that official information has been so sorely lacking from the public debate. Even when reporting natural disasters such as hurricanes and droughts, most newspapers have so far failed to make a connection to climate change. Now however, NGOs have been quick to pick up this report and rely on its clout to encourage their members to act, or just to remind them that climate change is real and it is about to affect us all.

Over the past two weeks, delegates from 183 countries convened in Bonn, Germany to create negotiating texts under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for consideration in Copenhagen this December. In focus at Bonn was the enhancement of international climate change cooperation, particularly as it relates to the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. In all, over 4,600 participants were in attendance, consisting of government delegates, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, representatives of the private sector, academia, and the media.

The Bonn Climate Change Talks, which began on June 1st and concluded on June 12th, consisted of four meetings as part of the UNFCCC: the sixth session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA 6), the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Protocol met for its eighth session (AWG-KP 8), and both the Convention’s Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) held their 30th sessions.

A brief summary of the meeting results are as follows:

AWG-LCA 6

The meeting by the AWG-LCA focused on the negotiating text development and was largely a success, resulting in a 200-page draft negotiating text. The draft managed to hold to elements addressed under the Bali Action Plan such as a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, adaptation, mitigation, finance as well as technology and capacity-building.

AWG-KP 8

The AWG-KP considered the various proposals put forth by the Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately, these discussions resulted in less success than that of the AWG-LCA 6. Over the course of the plenary sessions, the parties were unable to reach an agreement on emission reduction targets post-2012 and developing countries expressed disappointment at the proposals made by Annex I countries. According to John Ashe, the Chair of AWG-KP, while options for the treatment of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) to reduce emissions saw great progress, both aggregate emission reduction targets and individual targets have yet to be decided. In addition, the negotiating group remained far from the target range required by science to avoid the severe climate change impacts.

SBI

In focus for the SBI was the development and transfer of technologies. Three reports were produced by the Expert Group on Technology Transfer (including future financing options, long-term strategies, and indicators of performance). Furthermore, the SBI produced an agreement to reconstitute the Consultative Group of Experts on Non-Annex I National Communications. Unfortunately, the second comprehensive review of the capacity-building framework under the Protocol and the Convention was met with a lack of agreement.

SBSTA

The SBSTA considered such issues as the methodology, technology transfer, research and systemic observation, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (referred to as REDD). The methodologies that make it possible to both monitor and report emissions from deforestation (accounting for 20% of greenhouse gas pollution) made solid progress. However, the SBSTA failed to come to an agreement on REDD for the COP draft.

Despite lack of agreement in various areas of discussion over the past two weeks, the meetings in Bonn resulted in the adoption of 31 conclusions and seven draft decisions. According to Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, “A big achievement of this meeting is that governments have made it clearer what they want to see in the Copenhagen agreed outcome…In my view, an ambitious and effective agreed outcome in Copenhagen is in sight – an outcome that provides a strong and definitive answer to the alarm raised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

The Bonn session marked the second in a series of five major UNFCCC meetings occurring this year in preparation for the UN Climate Change Conference, taking place from 7th-18th of December in Copenhagen. The next step in the process toward Copenhagen is for parties to refine the specifics of the text for discussion at the next Bonn meeting in August, followed by another session in Bangkok in late September and a gathering in Barcelona in early November.

The second two-week round of UN-led climate talks, held in Bonn, met with some critical feedback, though there were notable highlights in the dialogue.  One such highlight was the pitch four of the world’s largest air carriers made for a worldwide emissions limit for all airlines as part of the deal to be reached in Copenhagen this December.

The Aviation Global Deal Group (AGD), which includes British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Air France/KLM and Virgin Atlantic, presented what they deem an “ambitious, equitable, and effective” regime of emission caps for all airlines.  This proposal is an effort to include the industry in a climate treaty that 192 nations aim to agree upon this December.  The UN estimates that airlines account for about 3 % of global emissions.  The airline industry has not been subject to GHG regulations up to this point.

Executive secretary of the UN’s climate-change agency, Yvo de Boer, does admit that “it’s very hard to say if aviation will be included” in a final agreement in Copenhagen.  Regardless, airlines are expected to be included in EU regulations in 2012.  The USA has also proposed future legislation on airline CO2 output.  The AGD specifically discussed capping carriers’ GHG output based on annual fuel purchases.  Companies overshooting their target would have to buy permits from those emitting less than their allocation.  Revenue from auctioned permits would go towards helping developing countries adapt to climate change and developing cleaner air travel technology.

Yet, the Bonn talks were described as yielding little true consensus. France’s climate ambassador, Brice Lalonde, said that compared to previous sessions, in Bonn “the attitudes were more constructive, but the level of ambition was lower.”  His specific criticism was that it is now commonly accepted knowledge that global emissions have to be halved by 2050 (compared with 1990 levels), implying an 80 % reduction by industrialized countries. It is also generally agreed that the emissions levels in developing countries must start falling by 2025 at the very least.   But in Lalonde’s opinion, “no one is signing up” – in which statement he is also rather critical of the EU’s involvement.

The driving issues, such as who should cut their emissions and how soon, as well as the question of technology transfer to poor countries, require specific road mapping exercises – for example the proposal by the AGD.  Just last month in a major meeting in Paris (reported in a previous Climatico article), representatives from France and Germany were ardent in their call for flexibility in the mechanisms by which climate change mitigation occurs, so long as it does indeed occur.  Perhaps it will be industry partnerships of multi-national firms that ultimately pushes – or flies—  climate change negotiations over this precarious negotiation standstill?

Environmental issues are central to the new government’s plan. Refusing to sign up to “any legal commitments or binding, mandatory targets on climate change”, Jairam Ramesh, the new Environment and Forests Minister reiterated that India will stick to its own climate change initiative: the eight national missions announced in the NAPCC last year. Perhaps reacting to the much repeated criticism of the climate change action plan, the government has stressed the need for more “action” and less “talk” this time around.

To start, the self certification clause that would have allowed industries to simply “self certify “ the environmental impact of any expansion will be dropped. BT Brinjal will not be hitting the supermarket shelves anytime soon either as the government has indicated that a comprehensive study on genetically modified foods is needed before clearance for any new foods will be given.

While the finance ministry may be keen on doing away with these “anti-market” environmental obstacles, Jairam Ramesh has declared that he will focus his energies on strengthening the regulatory system and ensuring stricter environmental norms. Environmental laws have long been seen in India as obstacles to development and growth. Arguing that a more accountable and transparent system will integrate environmentalism into the country’s economic model creating a more sustainable growth plan, Jairam Ramesh hopes to set up new overseeing authorities as well. The new government has announced that the current Central Pollution Control Board will be converted into a new environmental protection authority. Biodiversty and wildlife protection authorities and a new public environmental research institute will also be set up.

This new pro environment stance taken by the government is a good start. Till now, the environmental ministry has generally maintained a low profile and a strong environmental ministry that is ready to a take a stand is a welcome change.  India really needs to start putting in place the promised missions and enforcing environmental standards. But there also is pressure on the government to maintain economic growth rates during the economic slowdown and in order to do so it appears they have realised that India will have to match economic growth with environmental protection and adaptation.

According to a UNEP report, investment towards renewable energy in India increased by 12 percent this past year, with a 17 percent rise in investment in the wind energy sector and India has been lobbying at the international level for more technology transfer. At the domestic level, the new Minister has set the right tone. But for India to come out on top, the government has to follow through these next five years.