The Environment as our Common Heritage

James K. Boyce

What does it mean to say that the environment is our “common heritage”? On one level this is a simple statement of fact: when we are born, we come into a world that is not of our own making. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the natural resources on which our livelihoods depend, and the accumulated knowledge and information that underpin our ability to use these resources wisely – all these come to us as gifts of creation passed on to us by preceding generations and enriched by their innovations and creativity.

Yet once we take seriously – as I do – the proposition that this common heritage belongs in common and equal measure to us all, we move beyond a positive statement of facts to a normative declaration of ethics. We move beyond an understanding of what is to an assertion of what ought to be.

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Environmentalism of the Poor: What democracy is teaching us

Sunita Narain

Triple Crisis is pleased to welcome Sunita Narain, Director of India’s Center for Science and the Environment and editor of “Down to Earth” magazine, as a regular blogger.

In India, where I live and work, the environmental issue is at an important juncture, which has important lessons for the world, if we care to listen.

Today, all over the country, there are growing protests against what are considered development and infrastructure projects. At the site of the coal power plant in Sompeta in Andhra Pradesh, the police opened fire on some 10,000 protesters, killing two. People were fighting against the takeover of their water bodies by the thermal power project. In the alphonso mango-growing Konkan region farmers are up in arms against a 1,200 megawatt thermal plant, which, they say, will damage their crops because of pollution. In Chhattisgarh, people are fighting against scores of such projects, which will take away their land or water. I have just written about yet another such fight, where farmers told me that the proposed cement factory, being built in their watershed, can only be built after killing them.

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Complex Implications of the Cancún Climate Conference

Triple Crisis blogger Martin Khor originally published this commentary on the shallow successes and deeper failures of December’s Cancún climate change conference in Economic and Political Weekly.

Complex Implications of the Cancún Climate Conference

When the dust settles after the Cancun climate change conference of the United Nations, a careful analysis will find that the adoption of the “Cancun Agreements” may have given the multilateral climate system a shot in the arm, but that the meeting also failed to save the planet from climate change and helped pass the burden of climate mitigation onto developing countries. Instead of being strengthened, the international climate regime was weakened by the now serious threat to close the legally binding and top-down Kyoto Protocol system and to replace it with a voluntary pledge system.

Read the full article at Economic and Political Weekly.

US should exercise green power

Kevin P. Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher published the following opinion article in the Guardian on the Obama administration’s decision to file a WTO suit against China for its “trade distorting” green technology policies. He argues that the US should instead focus on making its own domestic investments in green energy.

US should exercise green power

To kick off 2011, the Obama administration has had the audacity to file suit at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s policies to build green technologies.

This action is deeply flawed. The US should not try to beat China down, but should pursue its own green jobs policy and reform the WTO, so the rules allow countries to combat climate change.

The United States and China are the world’s largest emitters of the greenhouse gases. Together and separately, each nation should be doing all it can to develop clean technologies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

That is not how the Obama administration has seen it. Repeatedly, at United Nations climate negotiations, the US has said that it will do little to combat climate change unless China does. Moreover, the US has stated it will not provide any financial assistance to China to help reduce emissions. With no US support, China was left to its own devices.

Read the full article at the Guardian.

US should exercise green power

Kevin P. Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher published the following opinion article in the Guardian on the Obama administration’s decision to file a WTO suit against China for its “trade distorting” green technology policies. He argues that the US should instead focus on making its own domestic investments in green energy.

US should exercise green power

To kick off 2011, the Obama administration has had the audacity to file suit at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s policies to build green technologies.

This action is deeply flawed. The US should not try to beat China down, but should pursue its own green jobs policy and reform the WTO, so the rules allow countries to combat climate change.

The United States and China are the world’s largest emitters of the greenhouse gases. Together and separately, each nation should be doing all it can to develop clean technologies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

That is not how the Obama administration has seen it. Repeatedly, at United Nations climate negotiations, the US has said that it will do little to combat climate change unless China does. Moreover, the US has stated it will not provide any financial assistance to China to help reduce emissions. With no US support, China was left to its own devices.

Read the full article at the Guardian.

Spotlight Cancún: The new Climate Technology Mechanism: an opportunity to seize

Ahmed Abdel Latif, Guest Blogger
Another in a series from the Triple Crisis Blog and the Real Climate Economics Blog on the Cancún Climate Summit.

The agreement to establish a new Climate Technology Mechanism is one of the concrete outcomes of the Cancun climate change conference which has gone relatively unnoticed, in contrast to other important decisions such as the creation of a Green Climate Fund and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).

The main goal of the Mechanism is to accelerate the development and transfer of climate friendly technologies, in particular to developing countries, to support action on climate mitigation and adaptation. It is premised on the wide recognition that the large scale diffusion of these technologies is pivotal to global efforts to reduce green house gas emissions.

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Spotlight Cancun: Climate Defeats Come from Washington, not Cancun

Frank Ackerman

Triple Crisis blogger Frank Ackerman published the a short post-mortem on the climate negotiations on Grist:

What should we learn from the dual disappointment of Copenhagen and Cancun? The climate policy war isn’t over, but those who are fighting to cut global emissions haven’t won the last few rounds. The decisive defeat in this latest battle, however, did not occur at an international conference. Rather, it took place in Washington, D.C. …

…read the rest of the post on Grist

Stop Free Pollution: Going Beyond Cap and Trade

James K. Boyce

Some of the best things in life are free. Unfortunately, so are some of the worst.

When polluters dump poisons into our air and water, they do it for free. This means they have no incentive to curb emissions. It also means that our air and water effectively belong to them, not to those who breathe the air and drink the water.

Regulation

Environmental regulations limit what polluters can lawfully discharge into our air and water. The damage control they provide is of great value. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that from 1970 to 1990 alone the Clean Air Act saved more than three million lives. Critics can argue about whether the regulations should be tighter or lighter, but no sensible person would advocate jettisoning them altogether.

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Spotlight Cancún: Cancún Success – Compared to What?

Tom Athanasiou, Guest Blogger
Another in a series from the Triple Crisis Blog and the Real Climate Economics Blog on the Cancún Climate Summit.

Cancun was not a surprise.   Nor was it a failure.  This much is easy to say.

But was it a success?  This is a more difficult question.  I used to have an irritating friend.  Every time you made a strong, implausibly simple claim – something like “Cancun was a success” – he would reply “Compared to what?”  It was a pedantic device, but it worked well enough.  It made you think, which, I suppose, is why it was irritating.

Compared to what the science demands, Cancun was obviously a failure.  The Climate Tracker crew made that clear in an evaluation filed before most people even got home – if the pledges in the Cancun Agreements are delivered upon, but only just barely, the result would be at least 3.2C of warming, and possibly far more – the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere would be about 650 ppm in 2100.

Why then wasn’t Cancun a failure?  Because, just maybe, it will put us onto a better road.

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Spotlight Cancún: The Road to Rio

Kelly Sims Gallagher, Guest Blogger
Another in a series from the Triple Crisis Blog and the Real Climate Economics Blog on the Cancún Climate Summit. This piece was previously posted by the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP).

What to make of the new Cancun Agreements?  Those lauding the agreement seem to be relieved there was any agreement at all. UN Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres declared, “Faith in the multilateral climate process has been restored.” But, the agreement itself does little except make more concrete many of the provisions already agreed to in last year’s Copenhagen Accord by enshrining these agreements in a formal decision of the Conference of Parties.  In fact, the multilateral process seems hardly improved, and most of the difficult decisions were deferred to the future.

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