Breakthrough Institute Fails to Flatten Climate Economics

Frank Ackerman

Why does the Breakthrough Institute insist that everyone else besides them who cares about the environment is wrong, wrong, wrong? Their latest, called “The Creative Destruction of Climate Economics,” is a swipe at those misguided souls who think putting a price on carbon emissions would help combat climate change.

Breakthrough, according to its website, aims “to modernize liberal-progressive-green politics” and to accelerate the transition to an “ecologically vibrant” future. They “broke through” into well-funded fame in 2003 with their attack on environmentalists for failing to emphasize the economic concerns of ordinary Americans, such as jobs – thereby alienating  the major environmental groups, who had been talking about jobs and the environment for years.

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Pollution: The Great Leveller

Sunita Narain

A harried parent called a few weeks ago. She wanted to know if the pollution levels in Delhi were bad and if so how bad. The answer was simple and obvious. But why do you need to know? Her daughter’s prestigious school (which I will leave unnamed) had sent a circular to parents, saying they are planning to shift to air-conditioned buses because they were worried about air pollution. She wanted to know if this was the right decision.

My answer changed. The fact is that pollution levels are high and we do need to find ways to bring them under control. But the solution is not to think that the rich can find ways to avoid breathing the air, and so keep pollution at bay. I asked her if the school was also planning to build an air-conditioned funnel for walkways and an air-conditioned gymnasium so that children would not be exposed to this foul air. Read the rest of this entry »

Valuing the Oceans: The costs of climate change

Frank Ackerman

When you picture the effects of climate change, does a dying ocean come to mind?

Alongside the better-known terrestrial impacts of global warming, there are immense – and costly – damages that will occur beneath the waves. If we continue on our present course of unchecked carbon emissions, the losses due to climate change in five key ocean services could reach $2 trillion annually by the end of this century. Two-thirds of those losses could be avoided, effectively saving almost $1.4 trillion a year by 2100, if we embark on a rapid reduction in emissions to stabilize and protect the earth’s climate.

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Can a low-carbon economy thrive in a resource-constrained world?

Eric Kemp-Benedict, Amanda Fencl and Elena Dawkins, guest bloggers

There’s a growing momentum around the world to build a ‘green’ economy – with a special focus on energy – as a key strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous climate change while also increasing energy security.

But resource constraints could hinder this endeavour. Low-carbon technologies such as photovoltaics, wind turbines, and electric and hybrid cars, for example, use metals that are mined only in a handful of countries, which can limit their availability. This is already a major international issue, as evidenced by the recent complaint filed by the U.S., the EU and Japan with the World Trade Organization, challenging China’s restrictions on exports of rare-earth metals.

Biofuels development, meanwhile, has faced substantial push-back because of concerns that fuel crops will displace food crops – or displace forests and vitally important ecosystems. In addition, these crops compete for what are often limited water resources.

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New business for new renewables

Sunita Narain

It was a trade exhibition abuzz with the restrained chatter of busy suited executives at company stalls making contacts and finalising deals. Nothing out of place except that this trade was about renewable energy technologies, which have unconventional reasons for growth. First, these technologies are seen as the most economical and feasible source of energy for millions of people unconnected to the electricity grid and having no electricity to light their houses or cook their food. This energy poverty is disabling and needs to be eradicated. Introduction of decentralised and improved technologies paves the way to catapult the poorest of the households into the most modern systems. Secondly, these technologies—from wind and solar to biomass—provide cleaner low-carbon energy options to combat climate change. These are future systems critical for survival of all.

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South Africa’s Carbon-Tax Debate Disappoints

Patrick Bond
(also available in Portuguese at INESC)

To be sure, it’s a difficult period for imposing new environmental taxes, given ongoing financial sector power over public policy. With the entry of European Union airlines into the region’s fast-collapsing Emissions Trading Scheme, a group of non-European countries led by the Chinese is revolting against paying higher air fares to and from Europe.

There are bad and good arguments about carbon taxation here. According to a China Daily report, “Europe’s compulsory charges are set to have great impact on China’s aviation industry, and more profound influences may be found in the export sector. China therefore strongly opposes the EU’s unilateral action, viewing the EU’s move as violating the United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention and related regulations of the International Air Transport Association.”

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Shale gas: dubious game-changer

Sunita Narain

The United States has always been the climate change renegade. For the past 25-odd years, since negotiations for a global agreement to combat the threat of this potential catastrophe began, the US has been the naysayer, pushing against a deal, weakening the draft and always hiding its inaction behind the legitimate growth of emissions in countries like China and India.

This much we know. We also know that this issue has lost so much traction in that fuel-guzzling country that Barack Obama, who came with a promise of change, has backed down on any discussion on climate change. In 2008, after he was elected on a promise of change in the climate change policies of the Republican government, Obama announced, “this is the moment when the rise of oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. But since then, little has happened to cut emissions at the scale and pace needed. In the current elections, Obama does not mention the C-word and climate change is a non-issue. The US has no interest in taking the lead in this matter. But, as I said, this is what we know. There is a new development afoot that could push the US to ‘clean energy’ but the zillion-dollar question is if this will be good or bad for the future.

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Human rights approach to climate change

Martin Khor

Climate change is also a human rights issue, as indicated by the seminar organized by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister Dr Dipu Moni described the devastation caused by climate-linked disasters which threaten its people’s rights to food, water, health and housing.

The Philippines is in an equally precarious situation. Its Commissioner for Climate Change, Mary Lucille Sering, spoke of how many storms and floods killed many hundreds of people last year and the country has to spend or find US$8 billion to rebuild damaged areas and property.

The two-day meeting arose from a resolution of the Human Rights Council last September reiterating concern on how climate change poses an immediate threat to people and has adverse implications for the full enjoyment of human rights. It called for a seminar to clarify the issues.

A major question is how the interface between the climate issue and human rights should be framed.

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A farewell to growth?

Matías Vernengo

It has been common for certain progressive groups to suggest that better income distribution and no growth, or even degrowth more recently, would be better than the capitalist driven consumerist growth process [for a critical review of this literature go here]. Several different strands of thought are involved in this view, and it would probably be worthwhile to disentangle them all.

First, there is an obvious Malthusian flavor to this view, going back to the dire predictions by the Club of Rome in the early 1970s, as a result of limited availability of non-renewable resources. Peak oil has been predicted a few times since. And yes it may very well happen in the near future, but somehow I doubt it. Remember that we moved away from coal and steam engines to oil and combustion ones, not because coal disappeared or became truly scarce, but simple because technological change made it less important as a source of energy (and yes we still burn a lot of coal).

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EU’s airlines carbon tax starts trade wars over climate change

Martin Khor

A group of 26 countries are organising themselves to retaliate against the European Union for its move to charge airlines for the greenhouse gases they emit on flights into and out  of Europe.

This seems to be the start of a trade war fought over climate change.

Many countries whose airlines are affected – including China, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Brazil and the United States – consider this to be unfair or illegal or both.

This is the first full-blown international battle over whether countries can or should take unilateral trade measures on the ground of addressing climate change.

Developing countries in particular have been concerned over increasing signs that the developed countries are preparing to take protectionist measures to tax or block the entry of their goods and services on the ground that greenhouse gases above an acceptable level are emitted in producing the goods or undertaking the service.
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