Business Of Green: Going to the rooftops to stop climate change (Climate Change, Solar Power)

BUSINESS OF GREEN

Business Of Green: Going to the rooftops to stop climate change

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

In the past few years solar panels and wind turbines have become familiar friends, comforting images that give us hope for a greener future. Featured in the media and in corporate advertising, these new technologies have replaced cute pandas as an icon of environmental correctness. But how many people out there have heard of green roofs, which may be an equally powerful tool for dealing with climate change? Not many, I bet.

Why? Green roofs are often homely, not photogenic. They are made of plants, not zippy new technology. Most important, perhaps, it is hard for large corporations to make a profit installing green roofs - so they are not promoted or featured in glossy advertising. Creating a green roof, or living roof, involves putting down soil and plants on top of buildings - apartment blocks, corporate headquarters, even private homes - a practice that has multiple benefits for the environment.

A green roof is wonderful insulation for the building below, keeping it cool in summer and vastly reducing energy needs. In cities, green roofs help absorb CO2 and have a cooling effect. They soak water from rains, taking pressure off drainage systems. They give local species - plants, birds and insects - a place to roost, preserving biodiversity. "There are not many technologies that give you so many environmental benefits," said Dusty Gedge, co-founder of LivingRoofs.org, a group that promotes and provides advice for green roof installation in London. "But a living roof is not a piece of hardware that you can just install; it's an ongoing process. So architects and builders and consumers have a hard time dealing with it. It's not like a solar panel."

Ed Snodgrass owns Emory Knoll Farms in Maryland, the biggest nursery devoted exclusively to green roof plants in the United States. He said that green roofing was a difficult sell because it was hard for consumers to grasp and quantify the diverse benefits, and because it did not satisfy people's desire for a quick solution. "A solar panel fits into our need for problem solving: It increases capacity so you still get to have the SUV," Snodgrass said. "But a green roof is a living, complex system."

A handful of cities around the globe - like Linz, Austria; Potsdam, Germany, and Portland, Oregon - have promoted the planting of green roofs for more than a decade as a method to deal with excess rainwater runoff or simply to increase the green in the local environment. More recently, cities from Toronto to London to New York are exploring them too, but now as a way to blunt the effects of global warming. They are considering implementing plans that would require large buildings or new buildings to be topped off with green roofs. Or giving tax breaks to builders and developers who create them.

These days, green roofs have some well-placed fans. Green roofs "have a dramatic impact on energy use, greenhouse gas emission and parenthetically on the energy bills of every business and residence in all those buildings," said Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president, in a recent speech in New York.

In fact, Clinton suggested, green roofs could be a powerful source of jobs as well. "You cannot outsource these jobs. Someone has to be standing on that roof. This is not data processing. You've got to actually be there." The fact that all green roofs are inherently local, however, also "makes it hard to develop an infrastructure," Gedge of LivingRoofs.org acknowledges. "There is no powerful economic driving force - like the companies that sell wind turbines - to promote green roofing."

"If you call a company with experience in Stuttgart and say I want one in the Philippines, it won't work," Snodgrass said. While his company ships to Oregon, it is only because no one is growing green-roof plants there yet. "It would be far better to have a local nursery," he said. While green roofs are relatively cheap to install, the building underneath must have a good seal and the garden needs to be maintained. For cities, some of the benefits of green roofs are simple math. When the sun shines on a tar roof, the temperature can go up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit (76 degrees Celsius). That absorbed heat not only roasts the apartments below, but also releases heat into the air, creating a "heat island" effect, raising urban temperatures 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the surrounding suburbs. "That created a huge stress on the air-conditioning load, which has led both Chicago and Atlanta to look into green roofs," Snodgrass said.

When a roof is sealed, covered with a layer of dirt and planted, it does not serve as a heat sink. Once installed, developers have found other unanticipated benefits. When the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston installed green roofing, it was initially for storm water management. But managers soon discovered that guests loved rooms overlooking the plants.

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How to cool the globe (Climate Change, Solar Power)

China's green energy gap

By Keith Bradsher

BOXING, China: By next autumn, a muddy construction site here in a rural part of eastern China will give way to a small power plant that burns corn stalks and cotton stalks to generate electricity for nearby villages and steam for a neighboring industrial complex.

The plant would be ready sooner, but only four companies in China make the specialized precision boilers that the biomass plant requires. And all those companies are plagued by backed-up orders and delivery delays. Similar problems bedevil the wind turbine industry in China. The same big utility company building the green plant in Boxing, CLP, has just opened a coal-fired plant in southernmost China. On schedule and built for half what it would cost in the West, that plant will generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity — compared with 6 megawatts from the Boxing biomass plant. CLP is so impressed that it is bidding to build coal-fired plants in India with Chinese technology.

These are the realities faced by companies seeking to make themselves more environmentally friendly in China, where coal is king. Coal-fired plants are quick and cheap to build and easy to run. While the Chinese government has set goals for increasing the use of a long list of alternative energies — including wind, biomass, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear — they all face obstacles, from bureaucracy to bottlenecks in manufacturing. CLP's differing energy choices are a case study in how one company grapples with the need to provide electricity to hundreds of millions of impoverished Asians even as it is under a self-imposed goal of trying to limit emissions of global warming gases.

Controlled by the Kadoorie family — one of Hong Kong's wealthiest, with a long history of supporting environmental causes — CLP's board began considering a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday. While the details are still being worked out, the company plans to commit itself to "material and dramatic reductions" in such emissions in industrialized countries like Australia, while seeking to control growth in emissions in developing countries, like China, said Andrew Brandler, CLP's chief executive.

"We think the world has to address the issue of climate change as a matter of urgency," Brandler said.

Yet CLP's operations are growing so quickly in China, India and other developing countries in response to soaring electricity demand that Brandler said the company's total emissions of global warming gases may actually increase in the short term.

The problem is particularly acute because governments across Asia, from China and India to Indonesia and the Philippines, are turning mainly to coal to meet their soaring electricity needs and prevent blackouts, even though coal produces more global warming gases than any other major source of electricity. China's increase has been the most substantial. The country built 114,000 megawatts of fossil-fuel-based generating capacity last year alone, almost all coal-fired, and is on course to complete 95,000 megawatts more this year. For comparison, Britain has 75,000 megawatts in operation, built over a span of decades.

The most talked-about alternative to coal in China involves plans to quadruple the country's share of power from nuclear energy by 2020. But the plan, which contemplates dozens of reactors, still amounts to just 31,000 megawatts of nuclear power over the next dozen years. "That's minuscule," said Jonathan Sinton, a China expert at the International Energy Agency. China builds more coal-fired capacity than that every four months. Two big questions linger over even those modest goals: can equipment be manufactured for dozens of nuclear reactors, and can China train enough workers to run them? At CLP's Daya Bay nuclear plant in Shenzhen, a house-sized dome of specially hardened steel sat next to an immense crane one recent morning, waiting to be swung and bolted into position as part of the site's sixth reactor. But at least Daya Bay's dome is here — reactors elsewhere in China wait up to several years. Only a handful of steel mills around the world can cast the thick domes, and only now are the first two mills in China taking delivery of equipment to make them.

The plant's 1,750 employees, meanwhile, are training 500 interns at a time, according to Stephen Lau, the first deputy general manager of the plant; the government-owned nuclear power company asked that 1,000 be trained at a time, but the joint venture running the plant could not handle that many.

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Changing climate haunting tourism (Global Warming Problem)

BUSINESS OF GREEN

Changing climate haunting tourism

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

PARIS: It is often said that farmers are on the front lines dealing with global warming, their livelihoods being extraordinarily dependent on the weather. But tour operators and resort owners are not far behind.

Imagine a ski resort whose chairlifts are in the lower reaches of mountains, without decent snow. Or a scuba club whose reefs succumbed to warmer and stormier seas. Or a golfing hotel in a district where water shortages made it impossible to keep fairways green. All are real possibilities, industry experts say, and in fact, early effects are already being felt. And so, this month, the United Nations convened a conference, "Climate Change and Tourism," for tour operators and officials from nearly 100 countries to discuss the impact of global warming on their livelihoods. "The tourism industry must adapt rapidly," the final report concluded.

"The entire tourism product will be affected - every destination has a climate-related component," Geoffrey Lipman, assistant secretary general of the UN World Tourism Organization, said by telephone from the meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland. If the climate is going to change, "which we know it will, we'd all better adapt," he said. "Some people are going to find that they had tourism before and don't now," Lipman said. "In the Canadian Rockies it may be the reverse."

In the developed world, tour operators do not generally face a crisis, though profits will depend on successful adjustment. But along the equator, keeping the tourist industry afloat is often a matter of national survival. In much of Africa for instance, tourism is the major source of income and often the only source of foreign currency. Yet there is a heavy cost. With the industry's reliance on cars and buses, air-conditioning and especially air travel, tourism is a major source of warming gasses. It accounts for about 5 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the Davos conference concluded. And poor countries normally do not have the money to make any eco-friendly changes.

"It's nice to talk about reducing air travel but many nation states depend on it," said Lipman, of the UN tourism organization. "Think about what happens to New Zealand and Australia. More important, what happens to poor countries - the Maldives, Seychelles and Africa - who need it because it is the only way to get tourists in." Recognizing that tourism and climate change are intimately intertwined, Fiji combined its Ministries of the Environment and Tourism this summer.

"Tourism is the vehicle for poverty alleviation in Fiji - that's how important it has become," said Banuve Kaumaitotoya, permanent secretary of Fiji's new Ministry of Tourism and Environment, who attended the Davos conference. "Without it, our economy would collapse. So we have to plan to mitigate and adapt to climate change." For some destinations, both warm and cold, climate change is already having an impact on tourism and planning.

In Fiji more frequent storms that scientists say are caused by warming are eroding mountains and driving dirt and fresh water into the sea. That threatens to erode pristine beaches, and endangers coral reefs which need considerable salt in the water. Fijian planners are trying to gauge the course of such change and set new standards, like guideline for how far above the water bungalows should be built to be safe if the sea level rises. "At the moment the effect is subtle, but we don't want our reefs - our island - to disappear," Kaumaitotoya said.

At the Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort in Canada, glaciers are receding and good snow is found higher up the mountain than 10 years ago. "We've been building lifts higher, in more snow-reliant zones to give us more stability," said Arthur De Jong, the mountain planning and environment resource manager at the resort. Ski lifts last 25 years, De Jong said. To decide where to place new ones, the resort has run a mix of computer simulations to try to determine where the snow will be depending on varying calculations of how much the temperature might rise over 30 years.

In addition, the resort has a broader green plan. It is making energy to run the lifts from snow runoff on the mountain. Its ski village is car free. And the resort has diversified from snow and it now has a booming summer business as well.

But undertaking new engineering projects and computer simulations take money and expertise that are in short supply in much of the world. "Adaptation is expensive and the finances are a big challenge for place like Kenya," said Judith Gona, executive director of Ecotourism Kenya, which is trying to make that country's travel industry greener.

"In recent years Kenya has become a mass tourism destination - hotels were built to hold as many people as possible. Things like air-conditioning systems are not very efficient." "It is difficult to put money into green, even if people know they should." In the short term, global warming provides opportunities too, especially in temperate zones. Warming trends have lengthened the golfing season in Antalya, Turkey, by over a month, said Ugur Budak, golf coordinator of Akkanat Holdings there.

Golfing used to begin in March. But tourists from Britain and Germany are now coming to Antalya in February. "Winters are milder so the effect on us for now is good," Budak said. So far there had not been problems like the water shortages experienced in other parts of the world, he said, "But we know we could be vulnerable in the future."

At the end of the Davos conference, the UN World Tourism Organization advised travelers to take the climate into account and "where possible to reduce their carbon footprint." But if Europeans stop flying to Fiji or Antalya, poverty will worsen, tourism officials said.

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European Union moves to reduce aircraft emissions (Climate Change, Solar Power)

European Union moves to reduce aircraft emissions

By James Kanter

PARIS: One of the boldest attempts by the European Union to impose its climate policy on other parts of the world received a boost Tuesday when legislators voted to strengthen a plan to cap carbon emissions from aircraft flying to and from Europe.

The proposal mirrors an existing carbon credit trading system that the EU uses to combat global warming and meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Under the current system - which exempted airlines - governments set carbon dioxide limits for producers of power, cement, fuels, pulp and paper. Companies must then purchase credits if they exceed those targets. The new measures, approved by the European Parliament, drew immediate criticism from the U.S. government and from the airline industry. They argued that the rules broke with international aviation practices, would cost companies billions of dollars and could lead to sharp increases in airline ticket prices.

"Any sort of emissions trading system should be done on the basis of mutual agreement between governments," said Carl Burleson, the director of the office of environment and energy at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. "If one government wants to include another airline in their system, then it should come and talk to that government."

Burleson said the EU measures remained proposals, and so it was premature for him to comment on whether the United States would bring a case against Europe for unfair trade practices at the World Trade Organization. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative had no comment. On the opposite side, some environmental groups criticized the measure - which still must be approved by individual EU states - as far too timid. But members of the European Parliament said that including airlines in Europe's emissions trading system would set an important precedent and could be emulated by other countries.

"We want a worldwide system as soon as possible," said Peter Liese, a German member who helped to guide the legislation through the assembly, which met in Strasbourg. "There must be an end to the status quo that nothing is done in the aviation sector, which has predominated for many years now."

Liese added that two-thirds of all aircraft emissions are from intercontinental flights.

Under the draft approved Tuesday, all flights arriving or departing from Europe would be included under the European system from 2011, rather than from 2012 - the date originally proposed by EU officials.

Airlines would be allocated some permits for their emissions but would have to buy more than originally planned in an auction. In addition, airlines would have to buy more than other regulated industries to compensate for the more severe kinds of damage aircraft are believed to be causing while emitting greenhouse gases at high altitudes.

The vote was a blow to the airline industry, which has been lobbying against the legislation and which branded the move by Europe as an ineffective regional attempt to tackle a problem that requires a global solution.

"Even if Europe shut aircraft emissions down to zero but didn't bring the rest of the world with them, it would have minimal impact on the environment," said Anthony Concil, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. "We fear that legislators have succumbed to winning political favors with a local audience, but that is short sighted as it could result in diplomatic and trade wars."

Liese said the EU officials had "very good legal arguments" for their plan. He said the Parliament approved amendments making it possible to modify the legislation in the future so that it could be made compatible with other countries, like the United States, if they came up with a comparable plan to tackle emissions from aviation.

The legislation represents another looming cost to the industry and to passengers, who would pay more for tickets at a time when airlines already are raising ticket prices to offset the rising costs from the spike in the price of a barrel of oil, which has been hovering at levels approaching $100.

As a result of high fuel costs, Air France said Tuesday that it was increasing its fuel surcharge on tickets by €2, or $2.90, per segment on short- and medium-haul flights and by €10 on long-haul flights. The airline said it would withdraw the increases when the price of a barrel of oil stabilized at levels below $80.

Taneli Hassinen, a spokesman for Finnair, said that his airline had calculated this year that the EU system would cost the airline €50 million each year. With the amendments made Tuesday, he said that figure would be higher still.

Passengers would face more expensive ticket prices as airlines passed through the costs, and he warned that European airlines would be at a disadvantage to overseas competitors that operate fewer European routes.

"For European carriers the worry is that this emissions system will probably have a certain impact on competition if the other guys - American, Asian, and African carriers - are not participating," said Hassinen.

The legislation still must be approved by Parliament in a further reading and by individual EU governments before it can become law.

Yet it was already being criticized by some environmentalists as insufficient to tackle the contribution that aviation makes to climate change.

"The legislation is inadequate and threatens EU targets for cutting emissions," said Richard Dyer, an aviation campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

EU governments agreed this spring to cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30 percent by 2020. But Dyer said that the aviation industry was growing so rapidly that if it was left unchecked while other industries make cuts, it could become the industry responsible for the majority of emissions in Europe before 2050.

Dyer was particularly disappointed that under the EU proposal, jets weighing less than 20,000 kilograms, or 44,000 pounds, would be exempted from the system. That category includes many business jets, "We don't think it sets a very good example to exclude a very rapidly growing sector that ferries high earners around the world," he said.

But Liese said legislators had struck a blow against special exemptions by including diplomatic and other government flights in the system. "Governments have to set an example and should not have privileges," he said. Burleson of the FAA said that the experience in recent years in the United States showed that airlines could reduce emissions without the legislative approach taken by Europe.

U.S. airlines, Burleson said, were carrying more passengers and more freight than they were just seven years ago, and he said the industry still had been able to cut CO2 emissions by several million tons a year because of more efficient aircraft and other reasons, including improvements to air traffic management. Environmental campaigners say that even if fuel efficiency is increasing - leading to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions on each flight - the number of flights still is growing faster rate than fuel efficiency is improving.

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U.S. states, impatient with Washington, are creating accords to cap greenhouse gases (Climate Change, Solar Power)

U.S. states, impatient with Washington, are creating accords to cap greenhouse gases

By John M. Broder

WASHINGTON: Frustrated with the slow progress of legislation on energy and global warming in Washington, the nation's governors have created regional agreements to cap greenhouse gases and are engaged in a concerted lobbying effort to prod Congress to act. Beginning Monday, three Western governors will appear in a nationwide television advertising campaign sponsored by an environmental group trying to generate public and political support for climate change legislation now before the Senate.

The 30-second ad features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California; Jon Huntsman Jr., Republican of Utah; and Brian Schweitzer, Democrat of Montana, standing in casual clothes in scenic locations talking about the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions. The nation's governors are acting, but Congress is not, they say. "Now it's their turn," Schwarzenegger says.

Separately, in Milwaukee on Wednesday, nine Midwestern governors and the premier of Manitoba signed an agreement to reduce carbon emissions and set up a trading system to meet the reduction targets.The Midwestern accord is modeled on similar regional carbon-reduction and energy-saving arrangements among Northeastern, Southwestern and West Coast states.

The advertising campaign is underwritten by Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that is pressing for quick action on a climate change proposal sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and John Warner, Republican of Virginia. The Lieberman-Warner legislation would cap carbon emissions at 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and set up a system for polluting industries to trade emissions credits to meet the goals. Like other such bills before Congress, it would provide incentives for research on capturing and storing carbon dioxide from power plants as well as subsidies to help the poor handle the higher costs of electricity in a carbon-constrained economy.

The bill is now before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee's chairwoman, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said she hoped to bring the bill to a vote of the full committee by Dec. 6.

There is no schedule for action after that, however. The governors say state leaders are moving to reduce climate-affecting emissions, while the current Congress has so far failed to pass any significant legislation on climate change or energy.

"In state after state, we're taking action," the governors say, taking turns speaking. "Now it's time for Congress to act by capping greenhouse gas pollution." In an interview, Huntsman said: "With just weeks left in the legislative calendar, there has been no vote yet dealing realistically with greenhouse gas pollution. We in the West are already wrestling with it and setting ambitious targets."

He said action on the national level, in the form of the Lieberman-Warner legislation or a similar economy-wide carbon cap-and-trade scheme, was preferable to the patchwork system that states were putting in place. Schweitzer said dealing with global warming was the "greatest imperative" of this and future generations.

"We need to find a sustainable, renewable American energy supply so we will not commit the next generation to fight another oil war," he said. Schweitzer added: "Here's a novel concept for Congress. Do something. Anything. Move."

Environmental Defense is spending $3 million to broadcast the advertisement, which will appear in 17 markets in 11 states over the next few weeks, said the group's president, Fred Krupp. The ad will also appear during the Sunday morning talk shows on Nov. 25. The Midwestern governors expressed similar impatience. They have banded together to set up a regional emissions control program, to expand production of biofuels and to cooperate on environmental and energy infrastructure projects, like an interstate pipeline for moving carbon emissions from power plants to underground storage vaults.

Governor James Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat who is chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association, said the states in his region were all moving independently toward greater energy efficiency and planned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that it made sense to work in concert.

"In the absence of a federal plan we have to move forward," Doyle said, speaking in Milwaukee at an energy summit meeting of Midwestern governors. "On top of that, this recognizes that, federal plan or no federal plan, the Midwest is uniquely positioned to be a major force in the developing new energy world."

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Greenhouse gases at near-record levels in 2005 (Climate Change, Solar Power)

Greenhouse gases at near-record levels in 2005

By James Kanter

PARIS: The volume of greenhouse gases emitted by industrialized nations rose to near-record levels in 2005, the United Nations said Tuesday, two weeks before political leaders meet in Bali, Indonesia, to agree on a road map for negotiations on a new global treaty to fight climate change.

Among the nations responsible for the rising trend was the United States and a number of former Soviet bloc countries that advanced economically without restraining their pollution levels, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"The story is that emissions are going up in a worrying way," de Boer said. Several countries "must do more to rein in their emissions" so that the volume of planet-warming gases peaks and starts to decline within 15 years, he said, echoing warnings made last week by UN scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Overall, the volume of emissions from highly developed areas of the world like Canada, Australia and parts of Western Europe rose 11 percent between 1990 and 2005, according to the report. Emissions from the United States climbed 16 percent over the same period and, on current trends, were projected to rise 26 percent above 1990 levels by 2012, the body said.

Emissions from many former Soviet bloc countries actually fell until the mid- to late 1990s. But that trend had reversed as those economies revived. In Russia, emissions between 1998 and 2005 had grown about 12 percent, according to UN officials.

"The numbers just confirm the trends we have seen," said Henrik Hasselknippe, an emissions expert with Point Carbon, a consultancy. "It's no surprise that 2005 brought with it huge emissions, and one would expect the same in 2006 because we've not seen any huge structural changes."

Looming over the talks in Bali is whether the United States, which refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, will join a new global treaty on climate change even if fast-developing countries like China and India continue to resist making cuts.

On Tuesday, officials at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is based in Bonn and which oversees the parent treaty that led to Kyoto, emphasized that many of the countries participating in the existing treaty were expected to make much more progress in cutting greenhouse gases than countries outside of the treaty.

Countries that signed the treaty were on target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 11 percent in the five years through 2012 compared with 1990 levels - easily beating their target to cut emissions by an average of about 5 percent.

In some cases, these countries would make cuts by installing more efficient energy systems and by reducing their use of fossil fuels, said UN officials. Some of these countries also would buy their reductions from developing world countries, which can earn credits by committing to carbon-reducing projects.

But de Boer warned that car use across all industrialized countries remained a concern, with emissions in the transport sector showing the highest rate of growth in any economic sector - up 18 percent in 2005 compared with 1990 levels.

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Asian nations pledge to act on climate change (Global Warming Problem)

Asian nations pledge to act on climate change

The Associated Press

SINGAPORE: Some of the world's biggest polluters - including China, India and Australia - pledged new protections against the devastation of climate change and global warming at an Asian summit meeting Wednesday. Climate change dominated the agenda at the one-day East Asia Summit, which included the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The leaders were expected to issue a joint statement calling on the international community "to urgently act to address the growth of global green gas emissions." According to the draft of the joint statement, the summit will call on the 16 countries to actively take part in forging a new environmental blueprint to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. But Rafael Senga of the global conservation group WWF said the draft declaration falls short of the region's ambitions.

"Major players in the region, like China and India, should show leadership in crafting a global consensus towards concrete targets and decisive action," he said. He said the Singapore summit is the litmus test for the major climate conference next month in Indonesia to create a successor to Kyoto.

"Rhetoric must be scaled down, and genuine regional cooperation on sustainable energy must be scaled up," Senga said, adding that Asian nations have tremendous potential for developing a clean energy sector. The Kyoto Protocol requires developed countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But the United States and Australia have refused to join it because it exempts China and India, two major polluters.

Australia, the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter on a per capita basis, says the emission targets would hurt Australian industries and give competitive advantages to developing countries. The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, told reporters there were signs India and China have recognized they need to take action to stabilize and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

"They are not going to take the view that only developed countries should deal with this issue," Downer added. "I think there has been a turning of the tide in terms of China and India's position on climate change." China's booming economy has propelled it past the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the atmospheric pollutant that is primarily responsible for global warming.

Two-thirds of China's power comes from coal, which releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other energy source. Over the next five years, the country expects to complete at least one new coal-fired power plant each week. In India, several automakers are competing to provide affordable cars to the country's enormous middle class. Some 300,000 cars were registered last year in New Delhi alone.

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A roadmap on climate change (Global Warming Problem)

BALI I

A roadmap on climate change

By John F. Kerry and Jonathan Lash

After years of denial, delay, distraction and distortion, climate change is changing the political climate. Australia's John Howard recently became the first national leader voted out of office in large measure because of his failure to respond to citizens' concerns about global warming. Newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said he'll make global warming his first priority in office. Australia's awakening is not an isolated example. Eighty-three percent of Chinese support action on climate change. Between 2006 and 2010 China plans to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent, increase use of renewable energy sources by 15 percent and continue their very large scale reforestation program.

The dialogue in the United States is also shifting, albeit too slowly. While all of the Democrats running for president endorse strong action to reduce emissions, among the Republicans, Senator John McCain is the lone sponsor of national legislation to combat warming, and while Fred Thompson acknowledges global warming on his Web site, he won't concede it's human-caused. In the many presidential debates the moderators have asked about global warming only once. The pundits and the politicians still need to catch up with what is happening out in the grassroots and across the country. A few weeks ago five Midwestern states, including Illinois, Kansas and Michigan, announced their intent to cap their greenhouse gas emissions and launch a regional emissions trading program. They are following the lead of 10 Northeastern states and six Western states led by California.

Together these states include more than half of the U.S. economy. Twenty-seven companies - including General Electric, General Motors, DuPont, Caterpillar, oil, mining, and utilities - have joined with leading environmental groups to ask Congress to act swiftly to impose economy-wide limits to reduce emissions. The problem is, time is running out. This fall, British scientists published findings that emissions of carbon dioxide are rising 30 percent faster than previously thought. The surge in emissions suggests that the dangerous impacts of climate change will come at us even faster in the coming decades.

That is why the international climate meeting in Bali, Indonesia, is a crucial test. Representatives of more than 180 nations are meeting to chart a course toward a new global agreement to control climate change. The world knows no agreement can succeed without the United States. While the president has acknowledged global warming as a problem, he has refused to commit the United States to emissions reductions, or to embrace a global target for halting the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before they double from pre-industrial levels.

President George W. Bush must acknowledge that the evidence now shows that action on warming is urgent. He must commit the United States to firm emission reductions and support bipartisan efforts in Congress to pass legislation to combat climate change. If he does, he would be in a strong position to ask other nations to respond. Every nation present at Bali also knows they cannot succeed without China. Bush could lead here too. He should Instruct Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to join Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on his coming trip to China to find common ground with China on global warming. Negroponte was the top environmental official in the State Department under President Ronald Reagan, and played a major role in the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, one of the greatest successes in international environmental diplomacy.

After Beijing, the president should send Negroponte to Bali, where, as of now, the United States is be the only major nation not represented by a ministerial level official. Negroponte should lay out a roadmap to achieve a fair and inclusive global agreement to reduce emissions and stop warming at two degrees Celsius.The roadmap should set the stage for expanding the existing emissions trading market, promote an efficient and effective technology development and implementation program and launch an aggressive effort to protect the world's remaining forests.

This will require innovative financing and investment - and, if properly implemented, will create major new opportunities for American industry. The roadmap must also begin to work out how the globe will adapt to the changes our inaction has wrought. A few weeks ago Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue led a prayer for rain in drought parched Atlanta. Some of his fellow citizens brought umbrellas. It even rained a bit. We should all not just pray for success in Bali, but work to make it a reality.

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The climate in Bali and in Washington (Global Warming Problem)

The climate in Bali and in Washington

So far, this has been an encouraging year for people who care about global warming. Governors have signed regional agreements to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The federal courts are pressing Washington to take action. Venture capitalists have poured money into cleaner fuels. Polls show rising public concern.

What's still missing is a concrete national and international strategy for a problem that does not respect any borders. The days ahead will tell a lot about whether the world, and especially the United States, is prepared to do more than just talk about the problem.

Representatives from 190 countries will gather in Bali this week to begin framing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012. On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will try to finish and send to the Senate floor an ambitious bill aimed at cutting emissions in the United States by 15 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by mid-century.

The meetings in Bali and Washington are intimately linked. Progress globally will depend heavily on whether Washington, after years of delay and denial, is prepared to follow Europe's lead and impose mandatory controls on emissions. As the dominant producer of heat-trapping gases, the United States cannot expect other countries to make costly investments in new ways of producing and using energy unless it acts decisively at home. The Senate bill represents such an effort. It would impose a steadily declining cap on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Companies would be assigned emission allowances, which could then be traded on the open market, with more-efficient companies selling excess allowances to less-efficient companies that could not immediately meet their quotas.

The government would distribute the allowances in two ways, giving some away and charging companies a fee for the rest. The proceeds would be used to offset higher energy costs for low- and moderate-income consumers and to finance investments in new and cleaner technologies. The bill's main flaw is that in its early stages it gives away too many free allowances to coal-fired power plants.

This is thought to be necessary to attract votes from coal-state senators. But it represents a windfall for older, dirtier plants and could keep them running far longer than necessary. This should be fixed before the bill goes to the floor.

On balance the bill represents an important first step toward restoring America's credibility at a time when the world needs American leadership. There is no consensus among the nations assembling in Bali about what to do next. Should there be a global cap-and-trade system? Smaller regional agreements? Or an agreement among a core group of big emitters - an idea gaining increasing traction among environmentalists and even the White House?

Whatever happens, China and India have to be part of the equation.

Along with other developing countries, both were exempted from making any commitments to reduce emissions at Kyoto on grounds that the industrialized countries bore the heaviest historical responsibility.

Given the extraordinary growth in both countries, that argument is no longer sustainable. But it will be much easier to get China, India and others to adopt aggressive policies if the United States is also on board.

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Aid scarce for countries vulnerable to climate change (Global Warming Problem)

Aid scarce for countries vulnerable to climate change

The Associated Press

BALI, Indonesia: Victims of climate change, real and potential, appealed Tuesday for a sharp increase in international aid to protect them from rising seas, crop-killing drought and other likely effects of global warming, and to provide them with compensation.

"We cannot wait. We need to do something now," said Rizaldi Boer, a climatologist in Indonesia, some of whose farmers are already suffering from unusual dry spells blamed on climate change. To date, the so-called Adaptation Fund, which is being developed under UN climate agreements to help poorer countries to adjust to a warmer world, has drawn just $67 million for a task the World Bank estimates will cost tens of billions of dollars a year. The nearly 190 nations assembled here for the annual UN climate conference are taking up the fund's future, among other issues, on an agenda aimed chiefly at launching a two-year negotiating process to seal a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

That 175-nation accord requires 36 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a key source of global warming, by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrial nation to have rejected Kyoto. he European Union and others are seeking a post-Kyoto agreement that would mandate much deeper reductions by industrial nations - including, they hope, the United States - in carbon dioxide and other such emissions by power plants, factories, vehicles and other sources. Many here also want to see China and other major emerging economies take steps to curtail the growth of their emissions. The two weeks of talks promise to be difficult, with success far from guaranteed.

Operation, control and funding of the Adaptation Fund has been debated for years at these meetings of parties to UN climate treaties. The UN climate chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters Tuesday that he hoped this meeting would finally make the fund operational.

The fund is expected to finance climate-change projects ranging from sea walls, to guard against rising oceans, to improved water supplies for drought-stricken areas and training in new agricultural techniques. All acknowledge, however, that the available funds are relatively paltry. The fund is financed by a 2 percent levy on revenues generated by the Clean Development Mechanism, the program whereby industrial nations pay for "carbon credits" produced by emissions-reduction projects in the developing world - credits that are then counted against reduction targets at home.

Those levies thus far are "tiny compared to the need," said Kate Raworth, a senior research with the aid group Oxfam International. Oxfam and other advocacy groups favor a broadening of Adaptation Fund revenue sources, perhaps to include aviation taxes or direct taxes on all fossil-fuel use.An Oxfam news conference was joined by a representative of the people of Papua New Guinea's Carteret islands in the far western Pacific, who are believed to be among the world's first "climate refugees."

As seas expand from warming and the runoff of melting land ice, they are eating away at tiny places like the Carterets, a sandy atoll of a half-dozen islands. Its 3,000 people are preparing to abandon the islands over the next several years, resettling on designated land on nearby Bougainville island.

Bill would limit power plants

New Zealand introduced legislation Tuesday to ban new fossil-fuel-burning power plants that burn fossil fuels for a decade. The bill also proposes a carbon-trading scheme for reducing greenhouse gases, The Associated Press reported from Wellington.

New thermal electricity generation above 10 megawatts whose fuel source is more than 20 percent oil, coal or gas would be banned under the 10-year plan, Climate Change Minister David Parker said. Already, 65 percent of electricity in New Zealand is generated from renewable resources, mainly hydroelectric plants.

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A leading Asian utility to cut carbon emissions (Climate Change, Solar Power)

A leading Asian utility to cut carbon emissions

By Keith Bradsher

HONG KONG: CLP, one of Asia's largest power utilities, plans to commit itself on Friday to sharply reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide. The company plans to cut the amount of carbon dioxide it emits with each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by 4.8 percent over the next three years, and 76 percent by 2050. To do so, it will step up its investments in nuclear power, natural gas, renewable energy and so-called clean coal technologies.

Timed to coincide with climate change negotiations currently under way in Bali, CLP's announcement is the latest step by the power industry in addressing emissions of global-warming gases, especially carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas. CLP's decision is especially noteworthy, energy experts said, because power companies active in developing countries rarely undertake such initiatives. CLP, of Hong Kong, has large investments in mainland China, Thailand, Taiwan, India and Australia.

Developing countries are not subject to the emissions limits set under the Kyoto Protocol, but the United States and the European Union are pressing them, at the Bali talks, to at least agree to discuss binding limits for developing countries as well. "We believe that if everyone takes an approach like this, the magnitude of global warming may be limited to approximately 2 degrees Celsius to 3 degrees Celsius so that the most catastrophic effects of climate change may be off," said Andrew Brandler, the chief executive of CLP Holdings, according to an advance copy of his statement. Two to three degrees Celsius is equal to 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. A United Nations panel warned last month that an increase of even this magnitude could cause a rapid rise in sea levels, as ice sheets melted, and the extinction of many species.

The company's plan is less ambitious than those of some utilities in Japan and France, which have set much lower emissions targets and already rely heavily on nuclear energy, which produces practically no global-warming gases.

Setting its limit only in terms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity also means that CLP is not committing itself to reducing its total carbon output, or limiting the amount of electricity it generates. "If you generate more power, then absolute emissions of carbon dioxide will increase," said Frances Yeung, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace. On Thursday, Greenpeace protesters scaled a fly ash silo at one of CLP's coal-fired power plants and hung a banner reading, "Climate Change Starts Here."

A CLP spokesman, Carl Kitchen, said the company was not limiting its overall emissions because it operates in rapidly growing electricity markets and does not want to limit its options. As if to underline that, Credit Suisse predicted in a research report Thursday that mainland China's power consumption would continue growing by 11 to 14 percent a year for the next three to five years. China's rapid expansion of mostly coal-fired electricity generation is the main reason it has overtaken the United States as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris.

Jeremy Carl, a research fellow specializing in Asian energy issues at Stanford, said it might be better for the environment if CLP did build more power plants, rather than letting other companies meet Asia's growing needs. "Certainly they are going to be a lot more efficient than the big mainland power companies" in China, or the electric utilities in India, Carl said.

CLP estimates that its operations now emit 1.85 pounds of carbon dioxide for each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. The company's plan calls for cutting emissions to 1.76 pounds in 2010, 1.54 pounds in 2020, 0.99 pound in 2035 and 0.44 pound in 2050. By comparison, China's utilities emit 2.23 pounds a kilowatt-hour, those in the United States, 1.40 pounds and Japan's, just 0.78 pound, according to data from Carbon Monitoring for Action in Washington, which gathers such data with the goal of drawing attention to climate change.

One reason for the difference is that Japanese utilities rely heavily on nuclear power and natural gas, while most of CLP's operations are in nations where coal is cheap and abundant, like China, India and Australia, as it is in the United States.

Reaching CLP's goals could be difficult, as many clean coal technologies either produce only modest reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, are very expensive or are simply not yet technologically feasible. For example, the company's plan to meet its later targets assumes that it will become possible to capture and sequester the carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.

But the technology to do so is still under development and could prove costly even if perfected. The company also plans to use more natural gas, which produces less soot and carbon dioxide than coal. It has sought government permission in Hong Kong to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in a marine conservation area with fairly deep water, situated close to power plants.

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Bali update: Pushing for action, not talk, on climate change (Global Warming Problem)

Bali update: Pushing for action, not talk, on climate change

By Andrew C. Revkin

The diplomats and officials gathered in Bali to shape talks leading to a new climate treaty are beginning to feel the heat. In public conference rooms and private hotel suites, they are (in theory at least) trying to prepare a two-year "road map" for updating the faltering 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the world's first experiment in common action to limit global warming. But they are outnumbered by armies of observers, including climate scientists, college students in polar bear costumes, and gray-suited lobbyists for companies that stand to win or lose big in a world shifting away from fossil fuels. (Potential winners: manufacturers of wind turbine blades and nuclear power plants. Potential losers: companies dealing in coal and oil or products that depend on those fuels.)

On Thursday, a delegation of scientists released a "Bali Declaration" in which more than 200 experts in climate, energy, ecology and other related fields called on the negotiators to commit to concrete steps to cut emissions promptly and sharply. This is a big departure from the work of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change over the last 20 years, in which scientists have periodically laid out "what if" scenarios for emissions, warming, impacts and responses, but avoided defining how much warming is too much. The declaration said that the IPCC and other studies pointed to clear-cut ecological and social dangers above a threshold of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit of additional warming. The only way to avoid that threshold, the scientists said, is to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 from their levels in 1990. And the only hope of doing that lay in starting now, they said.

"For climate negotiators to do their job, they have to realize what climate science is telling them: Climate change is real and urgent and requires strong action now," said one of the signers, Richard Somerville, a climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and an IPCC author. Other observers are acting as a sort of truth squad, revealing back-corridor maneuvers that clash with their goals. Green campaigners handed out their latest set of "Fossil of the Day" awards to countries they accuse of trying to prevent any treaty addendum that includes binding limits on greenhouse gases.

In an e-mail message, Jamie Henn of the Step it Up 2007 organization ran down the award "winners" for Friday: "Third place went to the U.S. and Canada for refusing to accept a draft proposal from the G77, a group of developing countries, for technology transfer as a key component of future discussions. Second place was scooped up by the U.S. as well, this time for re-opening the Major Emitters (or as they call it, Major Economies) negotiations in the midst of the Bali negotiations, distracting from the process at hand. And the first place prize went to, drum roll please, Canada, for refusing to take on absolute emissions reductions targets unless developing countries do so as well - ignoring Canada's historical responsibility and its vastly higher per capita emissions compared to developing countries."

Libertarian groups aligned with industry have been fighting back, blogging and sending out news releases pooh-poohing the effectiveness of the only existing supplement to the original treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. That pact requires the three dozen participating industrialized countries to cut emissions well below levels measured in 1990, but - for the most part - they are not on track to do so. A report challenging the effectiveness of any new Kyoto-style agreement was posted online by a coalition of dozens of private groups opposed to top-down approaches to such problems. Jerry Taylor, an economist at the Cato Institute, also sharply criticized the scientists' statement, saying, "I do not believe that 'the experts' in any field should be dictating climate policy because there are plenty of important value judgments built in to those policies, and experts, however defined, have no objectively better values than you or I." The intensifying activity reflects that next week is crunch time. That's when energy and environment ministers, a sprinkling of prime ministers and presidents, and other senior officials try to close out a negotiating plan that, the United Nations hopes, will end with a Copenhagen Protocol (the 2009 meeting is in that city) that could be in force by the end of 2012, when the Kyoto agreement's emissions limits expire.

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In duck blinds, visions of global warming (Climate Change, Solar Power)

In duck blinds, visions of global warming

By William Yardley

Rich Hill, Missouri: After 32 years of hunting ducks in the wetlands of Missouri, Chuck Geier knows when temperatures will drop and waters will freeze. That means he also knows when the birds will fly and hunting will be best. Except that much of what he knows is now in question.

"It used to be by Dec. 6, this place was frozen," said Mr. Geier, 51, a national sales manager for a telecommunications company. "That's not true anymore." From the "prairie potholes" of Canada and the upper Midwest to the destination states of Arkansas and Louisiana, the rhythms of the cross-continental migratory bird route known as the Mississippi Flyway are changing. In Missouri, where the average winter temperature has been rising, hunters say birds are arriving later and sticking around longer before bolting for warmer redoubts. Elsewhere, wetlands are not freezing over the way they once did. As hunters point their shotguns toward the sky and fire, a question echoes in the spent powder: what is up with the ducks? "People say it's cycles, every five to seven years, but it's just been too long," Mr. Geier said of the warming trend, which he traces to the late 1990s. "It's a wake-up call." Five-year averages for "duck use" days on some conservation areas in Missouri show peaks that come a week or more later in the year than do the 30-year averages. Hunters have said in state surveys they want later hunting seasons, reflecting the later arrival of major weather systems that move birds into the state. In Missouri, the average winter temperature this decade has been about 35 degrees, roughly 2 degrees higher than the previous peak around 1930.

"We're having milder falls, later winters," said Dave Erickson, chief of the wildlife division for the Missouri Department of Conservation. "What we don't know is if the trend that affects migration and the hunters' desire for a longer hunting season is a temporary fixture or a permanent fixture." Sure science is elusive. Scientists and state wildlife officials say there is not clear-cut data to support the reports of changes in duck behavior, but the patterns are familiar. They note that various other animal species, including songbirds, frogs and foxes, are developing different patterns for breeding and migration.

"We're seeing northern range shifts of lots of birds and butterflies," said Camille Parmesan, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Texas and a member of the United Nations panel that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work documenting climate change. Many hunters, wildlife officials and scientists say the changes have added new mystery to waterfowl migration and to how to manage it. Against an uncertain future, state wildlife agencies and conservation groups that cultivate waterfowl populations are re-examining some longstanding conservation approaches and questioning whether business as usual needs to change. Why, after all, some wildlife experts ask, should money still be poured into cultivating traditional breeding grounds like the prairie potholes of the upper Midwest if some climate forecasts prove true and those areas get too dry for ducks? "The birds will not be there if you don't have the same kind of general patterns of moisture and grasslands to nest in," said Alan Wentz, who oversees conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited, a group that works to conserve and restore wetlands. Similar questions are being raised elsewhere. Some experts on Pacific salmon argue for diverting conservation resources away from areas where water temperatures are forecast to become too warm for survival. Some big game experts say deer and elk in many Western states might not leave higher elevations for traditional hunting areas because the weather will be milder. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is already happening. Other animals, like moose in northwest Minnesota, are disappearing from some of the southern latitudes that they have traditionally inhabited.

Matt Hogan, the executive director of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which represents state wildlife divisions, said the prospect of climate change was presenting wildlife with a new kind of threat. The association devoted part of its annual meeting in September to climate change and wildlife management. "I know what I can do to mitigate this housing subdivision, but how do I mitigate that?" Mr. Hogan said of climate change. "A lot of it is saying, 'O.K., what do I have to do to address this?'" Concern is widespread. Consensus is not. Many hunters are fond of calling themselves the original environmentalists. But in a sport with a distinct rural identity, many are not about to get behind Al Gore.

Some are just as quick to blame farming practices of big agricultural companies or government feeding programs for changes in duck behavior. In many areas, wildlife have also changed their behavior when their habitat has been damaged by development and when it has been improved by conservation efforts, like converting farmland to forests. "We were conservationists before 'green' was even a popular word," said Allen Morris, known as Horntagger, who lives in Jackson, Mo. "We have sacrificed and used money for licenses to save land for the wildlife, but in the mainstream media, you never hear about it."

Mr. Morris dismissed "so-called global warming" as having no impact on hunting. Some biologists are divided, too. National conservation groups typically are more inclined to say climate change is already affecting wildlife and hunting. "This actually is happening," said Douglas B. Inkley, a senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation and an author of "The Waterfowler's Guide to Global Warming." "The evidence is there," Mr. Inkley said, noting bird migration, changes in amphibian behavior and even impacts on lobsters in warming Atlantic waters. "We have both the scientific and we have the anecdotal, and then on top of that we have the theoretical based on climate models." Virginia Burkett, the chief scientist for global change research at the United States Geological Survey and a member of the United Nations panel that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, said scientists have already tracked changes in the breeding and migration patterns of many species because of warming, although they have not focused on game animals. Red foxes are moving north, Ms. Burkett said. More than two dozen types of birds are nesting earlier. Three species of warbler are expected to move completely out of the United States. Squirrels in Canada and frogs in the United States have had their breeding patterns affected. Ms. Burkett, a former director of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said that while development and land-use changes have had the most impact on wildlife in the past, "the affect of climate is much more likely to be a player in the loss of wildlife in the coming decades." She warned against wildlife managers using previous patterns to manage for the future. "Relying on historical data alone," she said, "can lead to mal-adaptation and the setting of seasons and bag limits that may no longer sustain populations, for both fish and wildlife."

Even if climate change hurts habitat in some places, it could improve it in others. For all the uncertainty, times are good right now for many hunters, depending on where and when they hunt. Here in west-central Missouri, the ducks come late, but with the prairie potholes now wet after a long drought and with aggressive feeding programs in place on farms and wetlands, they come in abundance. Hunting seasons once restricted to 30 days by the federal government have been extended to 60. By 10 a.m. on a recent morning in the Schell-Osage Conservation Area, Bob Wafel was one bird short of the daily limit imposed by the state. His black Labrador, Gunner, licked blood from the feathers of the five dead ducks that lay limp in the blind. Mr. Wafel, 55, a barber from nearby Appleton City, lighted a cigar. "I think weather goes through cycles," he said, "and I think you'll have them warmer cycles." Later, after bagging his sixth bird and with the optimism of a man who rises at 2 a.m. on winter mornings to sit in a dark, muddy, freezing hunting blind, Mr. Wafel added, "Maybe the cycle we're going through now was before anybody kept track of the weather."

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