Selecting the Next U.N. Climate Chief: Mr. Secretary-General, Be Bold

Adil Najam

It is hiring season at the UNFCCC.

More precisely, the Bonn-based secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is seeking a new Executive Secretary, after the incumbent – Yvo de Boer, the third European in a row to have headed the secretariat – decided to resign after less than four years in office.

The deepest memories of Mr. de Boer’s term will remain the hype that was generated around and the subsequent failure of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations to come up with any meaningful results. In fairness, Copenhagen cannot be blamed on Mr. de Boer. Things unraveled as they did largely for reasons outside of his control and despite his efforts.  However, the timing of his departure now gives the United Nations Secretary General – who will ultimately decide on his replacement – the responsibility to find someone who can help put the climate negotiations that are now in utter disarray back on tracks. He also has the opportunity with this appointment to give real direction to the ongoing debate on improved global environmental governance (GEG), which has been floundering and rudderless for some years.

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Cleaning up the Clean Development Mechanism: Performance Standards needed to ensure carbon reductions, development benefits

Lyuba Zarsky

The crisis in global climate talks may have clouded the future of the Kyoto Protocol but the Clean Development Mechanism seems to have a life of its own. The CDM, one of Kyoto’s three implementation mechanisms, allows companies in developed countries with Kyoto targets to offset their emissions by buying “certified emission reductions” (CERs) from investment projects in developing countries. As of November, 2009, some 1,860 projects in 58 countries were registered with the CDM, with another 400 in the pipeline. Some 335 million CERs have been created, worth, at a carbon price of $10-30/ton, $3-10 billion.

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Why is Obama Drilling?

Frank Ackerman

Once upon a time, “There’s Only So Much Oil in the Ground” was a popular song that could be heard on the radio. The year was 1974, and Tower of Power, an Oakland-based soul and funk band, was enjoying some commercial success. They made the year’s top 100 with “What is Hip?” In addition to the important topics of being young, hip, and falling in and out of love, they sang about the energy crisis. Following a brief OPEC oil embargo, the price of crude oil (in today’s dollars) jumped from $23 per barrel in 1973 to $41 in 1974. Everyone was thinking about the world’s finite and diminishing supplies of oil. As the song continued, “Sooner or later there won’t be much around.”

Now it’s later. What have we learned in the decades since OPEC, Tower of Power, and others brought the oil crisis to our attention? Back then, the Nixon administration’s energy policy included a big push to open the outer continental shelf to offshore oil and gas production. In 2010, the Obama administration has announced plans to open more of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas production.

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Clear Economics

James Boyce

The United States Congress is expected to take up the Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act in the coming months. The bill – a potential breakthrough in U.S. climate policy – was proposed in December by Senators Maria Cantwell of Washington and Susan Collins of Maine. In preparation for that debate,  Matthew E. Riddle and I have analyzed the household-level impacts of the bill’s cap-and-dividend climate policy and how these differ across the income spectrum and across the states.

A new report, Clear Economics, shares our findings that the CLEAR Act delivers positive net benefits to the majority of households  in every state: what these households will receive in dividends exceeds what they will pay as a result of higher fossil fuel prices.  We also suggest ways in which the interstate differences in impacts could be further reduced or eliminated altogether, and assess state-by-state job creation that will result from public investments in the clean energy transition.

Financing the fight against climate change: Where are the governmental shareholders?

Gerhard Schick

According to UNDP, limiting global warming to less than 2° Celsius above the pre-industrial era is estimated to require about $250 billion a year in additional investment to “green” the world economy in 2010-2015.  Governments would be wise to meet this target by investing in low-carbon development – particularly since the cost of the alternative is much more expensive.  However, high and rising government debts will significantly preclude this path.

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Climate Change and the U.S.: Is the Environmental Protection Agency under-pricing carbon?

Frank Ackerman

What will the US do about climate policy? The ongoing paralysis in Congress makes it clear that failure actually is an option. For those who long for success, the best hope may be EPA regulation of carbon emissions. Yet far from setting an ambitious new course, EPA may be following the worst of traditional economics – effectively arguing, in opaquely technical language, that climate change isn’t such a big deal, so the right policy is to do almost nothing.

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Beyond Copenhagen: Searching for climate resilient development paths

Lyuba Zarsky

Nobody was surprised by the February 19 announcement of the resignation of Yvo de Boer as head of the UN’s climate talks.  In Copenhagen,   De Boer presided over the most chaotic, costly and in the end, fruitless attempt to negotiate a multilateral treaty in the history of global environmental governance.

In the wake of Copenhagen, climate activists, experts and leaders alike are asking “what way forward”? Some, like the South Centre’s Martin Khor, are gearing up for the next round of global talks, which will be held in Mexico in July.  Others are refocusing energies on national or state level climate policy, including key states like California. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, is hosting an alternative climate conference in April to build political support for the concept of “climate debt” and to press for a “declaration of the rights of mother nature.”  De Boer himself has thrown in his lot with business—he will join KPMG as an advisor on global climate and sustainability.

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Climate in Crisis, and Crisis in Climate Talks

Martin Khor

One of the three crises covered in this blog is the ecological crisis.  And in this sphere, climate change has emerged as perhaps the most serious of the ecological issues, because of its systemic threat to the global environment and to the survival of humanity itself.

The seriousness of the climate crisis has been accepted worldwide in recent years.  There are the skeptics and the industries who are fighting this acceptance, and they have recently given some serious blows to the credibility of some climate scientists and the way climate science is conducted. But despite Climate-Gate and the uncovering of some Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) errors, such as the melting of Himalayan glaciers, much of climate science remains intact.

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Carbon Caps: Who gets the cash?

James Boyce

Any policy that limits supply of fossil fuels must raise their price. An inexorable economic logic binds price to scarcity, regardless of whether scarcity arises from OPEC-engineered production limits, climate policies to cap carbon emissions, or other initiatives that keep fossil fuels in the ground.

The key question is who gets the money? As governments move to cap carbon emissions, attention is turning to this hundred-billion-dollar question. In video interviews on the Real News Network, economist James K. Boyce outlines three possibilities:

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