Copenhagen | News & Views

The Impact of Global Temperature Rise – Interactive Map

The impacts of climate change will be widespread across the globe. In order to understand more about what the human impact of high-end climate change might be, and therefore what would happen if a successful agreement can not be reached at Copenhagen, the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre has produced a map outlining some of the impacts that may occur if the global average temperature rises by 4 °C (7 °F) above the pre-industrial climate average. The map represents the latest peer-reviewed science on the impacts.

Using the map: This interactive version of the 4 degree map allows you to select which impacts you want to see, zoom on specific geographies and access more information about the science behind the map.

COP15 – Pictures

Copenhagen Summit – Day 1 Summary

The much anticipated United Nations Climate Change negotiations have begun in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. It’s two weeks to go and it’s crunch time for a binding global climate deal.

The Bella Centre is a hive of activity, as 192 countries converge to agree a global deal on climate change. The formal sessions begun this morning, with an opening plenary at 10am, local time. Outside the negotiations hall, demonstrators, NGOs and others are also gathering, pressing on the urgency of a global deal.

Highlights from day 1 are;

COP15 Cultural Opening Ceremony – Short film and Danish jazz legend open COP15. More than 2000 delegates watched the four-minute long film ‘Please Help the World’ when COP15 opened this morning. Thousands of other delegates watched the opening on screens in meeting rooms at the Bella Center. “We have made a film which speaks to the heart rather than to the brain,” says the Danish director of the film Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen.

Wave March - More than 50,000 people joined a climate change march in central London calling for world leaders to agree a deal to protect the environment at their negotiations in Copenhagen this month. Celebrities and campaigners joined workers, students and families on a colourful and musical march, called The Wave, from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to the House of Parliament.

UK’s Pay as You Save scheme – Hundreds of homeowners across the country are being offered the chance to install energy saving technologies at no upfront cost in an initiative timed to mark the launch of the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Homeowners in Birmingham, Sunderland, Stroud and the London Borough of Sutton will test out new ways to finance whole house energy makeovers under the Government’s £4m Pay As You Save scheme.

UK’s Pay as You Save scheme Hundreds of homeowners across the country are being offered the chance to install energy saving technologies at no upfront cost in an initiative timed to mark the launch of the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

South African targets for reducing the growth in carbon emissions - South Africa has become the latest emerging economy to set out targets for reducing the growth in carbon emissions. President Jacob Zuma said that South Africa would undertake mitigation actions that will result in a deviation below the current emissions baseline of around 34% by 2020 and by around 42% by 2025.

Hopes rise as Obama and Singh commit to attend final day of talks - Hopes of a global deal on climate change were further raised after US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced they would attend the final negotiating stages of the Copenhagen summit.

The White House said that the President would arrive for the final day of official negotiations on 18 December rather this Wednesday, 9 December, as originally planned.

Newspapers urge governments to make Copenhagen a success - As the historic climate change conference opened in Copenhagen and optimism of a successful outcome continued to build, Britain’s leading newspapers used their final leader columns to urge the world’s governments to make the meeting a success.

The Guardian used the whole its front page on Monday 7 December to carry a joint editorial being shared by 56 newspapers in 45 countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

PM :’I will do everything in my power to succeed’ - Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband used the final weekend before today’s opening of the Copenhagen climate change conference to hammer home the message that there is a scientific consensus behind the need for action.

In a series of interviews in newspapers and on television politics programmes, they warned that people who spread doubt over the science behind man-made global warming risked ’sabotaging’ an agreement to cut harmful greenhouse has emissions.

World only a ‘few billion tonnes’ short of climate target – The offers that countries have already made to reduce their carbon emissions are only a ‘few billion tonnes’ short of the total cuts needed to hot the target of capping the rise in global temperatures, Lord Stern said in Copenhagen as the climate change conference got underway.

Countries meeting at the United Nations climate change conference may be closer than some observers realise to agreeing the emissions cuts required to give the world a reasonable chance of avoiding global warming of more than 2˚C above pre-industrial levels, he said.

>>>Source; Act On Copenhagen

Homeowners in Birmingham, Sunderland, Stroud and the London Borough of Sutton will test out new ways to finance whole house energy makeovers under the Government’s £4m Pay As You Save scheme.

November 09 – Top 10 Eco News Stories

The MoreEco team has put together its favourite to top 10 eco news posts from last month. Hopefully this will keep you up to date with what’s going on with green news currently!

Top 10 Eco Friendly Countries

Algae is a “realistic” car fuel

The Road to Copenhagen: Less than 40 days to go

Play the Oxfam Climate Challenge with Heather Graham and Mackenzie Crook

National Tree Week 2009

Recycling is UK’s favourite activity!

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree

Go Ahead Try Cutting 10% of Your Emissions in 2010

Cynicism over Copenhagen Treaty

We still have a chance to save polar bears

Play the Oxfam Climate Challenge with Heather Graham and Mackenzie Crook

Climate change is happening now. It is already costing the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people; those who suffer first and worst. This is a problem that can be solved.

In December, in Copenhagen, the world’s leaders will meet to discuss a united response to the problem of climate change. This conference offers the world its best chance yet to agree a solution. The solution must be fair and safe for all – and it must be binding.

Think you know about climate change?

Well here’s your chance to prove it. Take Oxfam’s climate challenge quiz. Play along with Heather Graham and Mackenzie Crook. Test your knowledge. Challenge your friends. And to find out more about Oxfam’s climate change campaign, head to http://www.oxfam.org/climate

Games include: Boiling Point; Trains, Planes and Bananas; and Pollution Solution.

There’s a button to sign an Oxfam petition on climate change and an option to share the game on your Facebook account. Oxfam have also hooked the climate challenge up with Nokia phones, so it’s available as an Ovi app.

Don’t forget you can do all your eco christmas shopping at Oxfam to support their causes and still earn 8% MoreEco cash back.

Cynicism over Copenhagen Treaty

The UK government says it is highly unlikely that a new legally binding climate treaty can be agreed this year – and a full treaty may be a year away.

Two years ago, the world’s governments vowed to finalise a new treaty at next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen.

Climate Secretary Ed Miliband has until now said it could be done – but now he says only a political deal is likely, echoing some other senior figures.

Developing countries reacted with frustration and disappointment.

“When we left (UN talks in) Bali two years ago, we all expected that would be agreeing on a legally binding outcome to respond to the urgency… that we were on the verge of catastrophic climate change, so we’re very disappointed,” said Selwin Hart from Barbados, speaking for the group of small island developing states.

“If we don’t take urgent and ambitious action, the reality is that some small island developing states will not be around within a couple of decades – certainly not by the end of the century.”

This is thought to be the first time that UK ministers have acknowledged the slim chances of achieving anything legally binding.

In the middle of October, Mr Miliband said a new treaty looked “more do-able” following a meeting of the Major Economies Forum in London.

His comments now echo warnings from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern that only a “politically binding” agreement can now be achieved.

Officials then warned it could take up to a full year to finalise the treaty.

The UK government says it is highly unlikely that a new legally binding climate treaty can be agreed this year – and a full treaty may be a year away. Two years ago, the world’s governments vowed to finalise a new treaty at next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen. Climate Secretary Ed Miliband has until now said it could be done – but now he says only a political deal is likely, echoing some other senior figures.

Developing countries reacted with frustration and disappointment.

This is thought to be the first time that UK ministers have acknowledged the slim chances of achieving anything legally binding. In the middle of October, Mr Miliband said a new treaty looked “more do-able” following a meeting of the Major Economies Forum in London. His comments now echo warnings from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern that only a “politically binding” agreement can now be achieved.

Officials then warned it could take up to a full year to finalise the treaty.

View full article at bbc.co.uk

Image sourced from bbc.co.uk - Activists strung a banner from Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia church

Saving the trillionth tonne

In a week that sees the final round of preliminary talks on a new UN climate treaty, where delegates seem to be focusing on emissions in 2020. Myles Allen argues that they must not lose sight of the much greater challenges that lie beyond 2020 or they risk wasting another decade in the battle against dangerous climate change.

On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a single tonne of anthracite coal was unveiled in the Science Museum in London as part of a new exhibition on climate change.

Not, you might think, anything particularly remarkable about that, except that this is not any old tonne of coal: it will be, as close as we can estimate it, the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide since industrialisation began in the 18th Century.

The Science Museum, London, and University of Oxford are committed to looking after it for as long as it takes, and solemnly escorting it down to a power station or wherever it can be used most efficiently when total carbon emissions from human activity reach one trillion tonnes.

If, that is, that time ever comes.

The trillionth tonne matters because carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Once released, it continues to influence the climate more or less indefinitely unless active measures are taken to scrub it out again, which is not something anyone knows how to do on any scale.

Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year

This is estimated to have caused just under 1C (1.8F) of global warming (other things affect global temperature as well but, as it happens, their effects more-or-less cancel out over this period).

So if we release another 500 billion tonnes, we commit the Earth to a most likely warming of about 2C, which is widely regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, and a rubicon that governments of G8 countries and other major economies pledged this year not to cross.

Over the past couple of decades, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have risen by an average of 1.6% per year, even allowing for the occasional blip like the collapse of the Soviet Union and this year’s recession.

Emissions from deforestation have continued steadily.

Trend setting

Emissions resulting from human activity are expected, on balance, to add to the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the future, so if we are to keep the overall warming to less than 2C (or, for that matter, retain any hope of carbon dioxide levels eventually recovering back down to 350 parts per million, or avoid dangerous levels of ocean acidity), we cannot afford to release the trillionth tonne, ever.

What can you do?

Clearly, reducing your carbon footprint helps. Emitting carbon more slowly buys time, which we will certainly need.

But to solve the problem in the long term, we need to reduce net emissions, in effect, to zero.

Campaigners say atmospheric carbon must not pass 350 parts per million

You can’t do this on your own, no matter how heroic a consumer you are.

You could reduce your lifetime carbon footprint to zero – by making your home zero-carbon, never use a car and grow your own food – and save the world from dangerous climate change for just a mere two seconds.

So the most important thing you can do is make sure your government recognises the importance of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in climate policy.

At a previous round of negotiations, in Bonn in June, a group of us presented an open letter to the negotiators urging them to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide.

We did not call for a specific cap: just an acknowledgement that the principle would fundamentally alter the focus of future negotiations. The aim would no longer be to ration out emissions; the aim would be to ban them, just as we banned CFCs. We didn’t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorant.

As far as we can tell, that request fell on deaf ears: “This was not the focus of the negotiations at present.”

Odd, when cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal determinant of the risk of dangerous long-term human-induced climate change.

And next time you are in London, drop in to the Science Museum to pay your respects to the trillionth tonne.

On Thursday, 22 October 2009, a single tonne of anthracite coal was unveiled in the Science Museum in London as part of a new exhibition on climate change. Not, you might think, anything particularly remarkable about that, except that this is not any old tonne of coal: it will be, as close as we can estimate it, the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide since industrialisation began in the 18th Century.

If, that is, that time ever comes.

Emissions since 1750 comprise of just over half a trillion tonnes of carbon (you can keep track of the number, and the countdown to the release of the trillionth tonne, on the trillionthtonne.org website). This is estimated to have caused just under 1C (1.8F) of global warming (other things affect global temperature as well but, as it happens, their effects more-or-less cancel out over this period). So if we release another 500 billion tonnes, we commit the Earth to a most likely warming of about 2C, which is widely regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, and a rubicon that governments of G8 countries and other major economies pledged this year not to cross.

If these trends continue, which is a relatively conservative “business-as-usual” scenario, we will release the trillionth tonne sometime in the 2040s – a date that is steadily advancing, as the underlying trend is for faster growth in recent years. Emissions resulting from human activity are expected, on balance, to add to the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the future, so if we are to keep the overall warming to less than 2C (or, for that matter, retain any hope of carbon dioxide levels eventually recovering back down to 350 parts per million, or avoid dangerous levels of ocean acidity), we cannot afford to release the trillionth tonne, ever.

What can you do?

Clearly, reducing your carbon footprint helps. Emitting carbon more slowly buys time, which we will certainly need. But to solve the problem in the long term, we need to reduce net emissions, in effect, to zero. Campaigners say atmospheric carbon must not pass 350 parts per million You can’t do this on your own, no matter how heroic a consumer you are. You could reduce your lifetime carbon footprint to zero – by making your home zero-carbon, never use a car and grow your own food – and save the world from dangerous climate change for just a mere two seconds.

So the most important thing you can do is make sure your government recognises the importance of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in climate policy. At a previous round of negotiations, in Bonn in June, a group of us presented an open letter to the negotiators urging them to acknowledge the need to limit cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. We did not call for a specific cap: just an acknowledgement that the principle would fundamentally alter the focus of future negotiations. The aim would no longer be to ration out emissions; the aim would be to ban them, just as we banned CFCs. We didn’t save the ozone layer by rationing deodorant. As far as we can tell, that request fell on deaf ears: “This was not the focus of the negotiations at present.” Odd, when cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal determinant of the risk of dangerous long-term human-induced climate change.

And next time you are in London, drop in to the Science Museum to pay your respects to the trillionth tonne.

Please read the full article here: BBC.co.uk

Image from same source: BBC.co.uk

Larry Elliott: We Should Pay for the Developing World to go Green

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Larry Elliott, from the Guardian, discusses Gordon Brown’s notion that rich western banks should pay for the world to go green:

The response was predictable. No sooner had Gordon Brown expressed enthusiasm for a global transaction tax than the backlash began. Not something we like, said the Americans. We want lower not higher taxes, said the Canadians. Too hard to enforce, said the International Monetary Fund.

This is the last gasp of an ancien régime. The banks in 2009 are the Bourbons in 1789, the Romanovs in 1917. They existed in a bubble of privilege and took the public for a ride. They caused a financial crisis and triggered the biggest economic crash since the 1930s. They now expect the state to clear up the financial mess caused by this greed and stupidity through public spending cuts and higher taxes.

As the prime minister noted in St Andrews on Saturday, this is not on. “There must be a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public, based on trust and just distribution of risks and rewards,” Brown said. Amen to that. He is 100% right and he deserves support.

Finance ministries were initially dismissive about debt relief but were eventually won over. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have both backed the idea of a transaction tax; Brown’s intervention means there is now a powerful bloc challenging the status quo.

Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, was sniffy about Brown’s idea at the weekend, but Downing Street is encouraged by the Obama administration’s willingness to cooperate internationally in a clampdown on tax havens.

The political argument in favour of reform is strong. Firstly, policymakers want to put in place measures to reduce the risks of future financial crises. Secondly, financial institutions provide an easy source of revenue at a time when governments are counting every penny.

Poor countries did not cause the crisis yet have been badly hurt by it. They need money to develop low-carbon growth strategies. Without a willingness by the west to bankroll greener economic strategies in the developing world there will be no climate change deal. The portents are bad for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen. Indeed, the negotiations are starting to echo the global trade liberalisation talks, which began in Doha eight years ago this week and are still going nowhere.

Rich countries have found that the bigger developing nations are no longer prepared to be pushed around. In all previous rounds, the European Union and the United States have imposed a private deal on the rest of the WTO membership: the big change during the Doha talks has been the no-nonsense approach of Brazil, India and China. They have refused to roll over in the face of bullying tactics from Brussels and Washington, demanding that the developed world provide compensation to poor countries for the biased outcomes of previous rounds.

The stakes are much higher in Copenhagen. If the scientists are right, then the international community cannot afford a decade of delay in concluding a deal on climate change. Developing countries say – with some justification – that the west has been responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gases and that rich countries should therefore shoulder most of the burden when it comes to cutting emissions. India has more people without electricity than live in the EU.

Rich countries – particularly the US – argue that there can be no deal unless the larger developing countries participate. They, too, have a point. While the stock of greenhouse gases is certainly the responsibility of the developed world, the flow of new emissions will come from the fast-growing emerging countries, where demands for energy are increasing exponentially. Four-fifths of the growth in emissions between now and 2030 will come from those developing nations.

Please read the full article at Guardian.co.uk

Please read the full article at: Guardian.co.uk

The Road to Copenhagen: Less than 40 days to go

Major global meetings have been taking place over the last month, in and outside the formal UN climate change process. But with less than 40 days to go now, the COP15 conference in Copenhagen this December is starting to come into view.

Last month’s climate change summit in New York showed some gain in political momentum, though a further preparatory UN meeting in Bangkok highlight the remaining presence of a gap between developed and developing countries, seemingly based above all on a mutual lack of trust. The main differences in thought are:

Should a new legal instrument be introduced to replace Kyoto and be the foundation for a binding and comprehensive international agreement on climate?
This is what the EU would like, primarily to bring the US into the new arrangements, but the proposal met with some resistance at Bangkok. The rest of the developing world is suspicious of developed countries aiming to dodge ambitious new post-2012 targets. The approach was further undermined by the US freely acknowledging that they will be in no position to commit to any binding agreement.
Unfortunately there has been little progress on agreeing mid-term targets for developed countries and commitments from developing countries. Norway brightened the political landscape by pledging an impressive 40% cut in 2020 compared with 1990 levels, but in general the impasse remains
Financing discussions for climate mitigation and adaptation, essentially the wealth transfer from the developed to the developing world to finance climate actions, are still focussed on the institutions necessary to administer funds rather than concrete pledges themselves.

What can we hope to see from Copenhagen?

We have reason for remaining optimistic: a “successful” Copenhagen declaration can still be made if the outcome were roughly as follows:

A strong political declaration is made to agree a way forward on how to address the post-2012 Kyoto period, which must include targets and actions
A process is agreed on management of climate adaptation funds
An agreement is made to continue existing and new financial market mechanisms post-2012
A process is discussed that sees common international standards for measuring, reporting and verifying emission reductions
An agreement is made to tackle deforestation through a global international mechanism

There is still time for significant and necessary breakthroughs to be made at a political level. It will require strong leadership and continued pressure from people across the world.