Climate Change - February 2009

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Video Interview: Roger Ballentine, former Chairman, White House Task Force on Climate Change

Roger Ballentine, President of Green Strategies discusses climate change with Olivier Kamanda. Mr. Ballentine served as Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force and Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Initiatives under President Clinton. He is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

February 25, 2009

Olivier Kamanda

Climate Change - February 2009

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No More Cheap Machines: Climate Change and China

We are now looking at a future climate that is beyond anything seriously considered in model simulations. Only a couple years ago, experts predicted China would not surpass the United States in carbon dioxide emissions until sometime after 2030. Now that milestone has already been passed. Last year, China became the largest producer of green house gases and, just last month, it became the biggest purchaser of automobiles in the world. To quote the China Daily: “the bike has been downgraded from one of the most significant family purchases some twenty years ago to a cheap machine used mainly by the poor.” Now, China also has the largest number of internet users, not to mention the most pigs, in the world. These changes – which make a meaningful impact on global warming, information disclosure and consumption, across the spectrum from livestock methane to the demise of bicycles, how and what people think about climate change fundamentally alters the conversation of how China’s society should proceed from here.

March 2, 2009

Steven Q. Andrews

Climate Change - February 2009

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Scaling the Climate Summit: Reaching a Deal This December Will Be a Major Climb

The European Union has declared as one of its main policy objectives for 2009 the signing of a global treaty on climate change. In December, a summit to address the issue will be held in Copenhagen under the umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A leader in addressing climate change, the EU confirmed its intention to unilaterally reduce emissions with its Climate and Energy Package in December 2008. Combined with the Obama Administration’s promise to cooperatively tackle the issue of climate change and publicly-made commitments by major developing nations (see Brazil’s national plan, for example), this made the challenging task of reaching a global deal seem less daunting.

March 2, 2009

Dominic Marcellino

Climate Change - February 2009

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This BRIC Stands Out: Brazil's Outsized Role in the Fight Against Global Warming

In 2009, Brazil experienced two major milestones, which, while seemingly unrelated, have significant implications for the future of global climate change. First, U.S. car purchases in 2009 are predicted to be eclipsed for the first time by purchases by BRIC nations, an informal grouping of the four major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with Brazil alone experiencing a rise by nearly a third in auto sales two years in a row. Given the fact that cars were responsible for 6.3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions measured in 2000, as reported by 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, the rapid growth of auto purchases by BRIC countries is likely not only to profoundly impact the pace of climate change, but also the strategies utilized to combat global warming. In recent decades, Brazil has adopted one such strategy through its embrace of biofuels.

March 2, 2009

Adam Benz

Climate Change - February 2009

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From the Mountain to the Sea: 'Climate Change' Changes More Than Just the Weather

This month, ten underprivileged youth from Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana will climb Mount Kilimanjaro in order to draw international attention to climate change in Africa. The trip to the “rooftop of Africa” is sponsored by the Kilimanjaro Initiative, named after Africa’s highest mountain. The climb is also supported by the United Nations' UNite to Combat Climate Change campaign. The U.N. Special Advisor on Sport for Development and Peace, Wilfred Lemke announced, “[t]his year’s climb will highlight–with the melting ice of Mount Kilimanjaro as a backdrop–how global warming has a direct impact on the living conditions of individuals and communities throughout the world.” But the mountain range is not the only region of Africa devastated by climate change.

March 2, 2009

Olivier Kamanda

Climate Change - February 2009

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The Role of the Arab World in the Post-2012 Climate Negotiations

At the end of 2007, countries who signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started a two-year process to draft a new climate change agreement, to be completed and signed at the December 2009 meeting of climate negotiators in Copenhagen, Denmark. The start of agreement negotiations closely followed a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announcing that countries would have to end their growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by no later than 2015 to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of raising the earth’s average surface temperature in 2000 by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

March 2, 2009

Climate Change - February 2009