World must fix climate in less than 10 years: UNDP

Tue Nov 27, 2007 | 11:12am EST

By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible ecological catastrophes, a United Nations report says on Tuesday.

The U.N. Human Development Report issues one of the strongest warnings yet of the lasting impact of climate change on living standards and a strong call for urgent collective action.

"We could be on the verge of seeing human development reverse for the first time in 30 years," Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report, told Reuters.

The report, to be presented in Brasilia on Tuesday, sets targets and a road map to reduce carbon emissions before a U.N. climate summit next month in Bali, Indonesia.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere help trap heat and lead to global warming.

"The message for Bali is the world cannot afford to wait, it has less than a decade to change course," said Watkins, a senior research fellow at Britain's Oxford University.

Dangerous climate change will be unavoidable if in the next 15 years emissions follow the same trend as the past 15 years, the report says.

To avoid catastrophic impact, the rise in global temperature must be limited to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). But carbon emissions from cars, power plants and deforestation in Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere, are twice the level needed to meet that target, the U.N. authors say.

Climate change threatens to condemn millions of people to poverty, the UNDP says. Climate disasters between 2000 and 2004 affected 262 million people, 98 percent of them in the developing world. The poor are often forced to sell productive assets or save on food, health, and education, creating "life-long cycles of disadvantage."

A temperature rise of between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 and 4 degrees Celsius) would displace 340 million people through flooding, droughts would diminish farm output, and retreating glaciers would cut off drinking water from as many as 1.8 billion people, the report says.

In Kenya, children 5 or younger are 50 percent more likely to be malnourished if they were born during a drought year, affecting their life-long health and productivity.

Countries have the technical ability and financial resources but lack the political will to act, the report says. It singles out the United States and Australia as the only major Western economies not to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement signed by 172 countries to reduce emissions. It expires in 2012.

Ethiopia emits 0.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita, compared to 20 metric tons in Canada. U.S. per capita emissions are over 15 times those of India's.

PROPOSED ROAD MAP

The world needs to spend 1.6 percent of global economic output annually through 2030 to stabilize the carbon stock and meet the 3.6-degree Fahrenheit temperature target. Rich countries, the biggest carbon emitters, should lead the way and cut emissions at least 30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Developing nations should cut emissions 20 percent by 2050, the UNDP says.

"When people in an American city turn on their air-conditioning or people in Europe drive their cars, their actions have consequences ... linking them to rural communities in Bangladesh, farmers in Ethiopia and slum dwellers in Haiti," the report says.

The UNDP recommends a series of measures including improved energy efficiency for appliances and cars, taxes or caps on emissions, and the ability to trade allowances to emit more. It said an experimental technology to store carbon emissions underground was promising for the coal industry, and suggested technology transfer to coal-dependent developing countries like China.

An international fund should invest between $25 billion and $50 billion annually in low-carbon energy in developing countries.

Asked whether the report was alarmist, Watkins said it was based on science and evidence: "I defy anybody to speak to the victims of droughts and floods, like we did, and challenge our conclusions on the long-term impact of climate disasters."

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible ecological catastrophes, a United Nations report says on Tuesday.

The bad thing about that movie is that it's poor science masked by a poorly-written action movie.

I think a more realistic film would be Waterworld, which depicts a total melting of the Earth's ice caps to the point where most significant land masses become submerged.

I think there is still a VERY small window to avert the worst of the climate change, but that window is closing rapidly -- and at an exponential rate. That doesn't bode well for us, because by the time we wake up to the problem on a large enough scale to really do something about it, it certainly will be too late. The biggest flaw in our species is that we're reactive as opposed to proactive; we're content to wait until disaster strikes, rather than work to prevent catastrophes before they happen.

I think a more realistic film would be Waterworld, which depicts a total melting of the Earth's ice caps to the point where most significant land masses become submerged.

By David Sokol
Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The adage that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die is on display again as the House considers a massive 932-page climate-change bill, introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), that would establish a "cap and trade" system for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Its sponsors say it will keep low- and middle-income consumers whole while the United States cuts emissions 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 and transitions to a clean-energy economy.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

On paper, the Waxman-Markey bill puts a cost on carbon dioxide by imposing a ceiling, or cap, on greenhouse gas emissions and then setting up a market for regulated industries -- such as the electric power sector -- to buy and sell allowances to pollute under that cap. As the cap is reduced each year, market participants will exchange allowances in a complex auction market.

If you liked what credit default swaps did to our economy, you're going to love cap-and-trade. Just read Title VIII of the bill, which lets investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators participate in the cap-and-trade market. They don't have emissions to cut; they have commissions to make.

The real hidden catch of the cap-and-trade system, though, is that it will require consumers to pay twice: first for emission allowances and then for the construction of new low- and zero-carbon power plants.

Congressional estimates of government revenue from the sale of cap-and-trade allowances range from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Contrary to assurances from the bill's sponsors that utility customers wouldn't have to pay these costs for the first decade, some coal-dependent utilities would be forced to purchase more than half of their allowances when the program is scheduled to begin in 2012. Would these allowances reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? No; that would come when consumers footed a second bill — for the cost of their utilities either to retrofit coal and gas plants to capture carbon — something that cannot be done today on a commercial scale — or to shut them down and build non-carbon-producing nuclear plants and wind farms instead.

In fact, to the extent that cap-and-trade auctions increase ratepayers' bills, they will impede utilities' ability to develop a less carbon-intensive infrastructure.

Markets thrive on volatility. Electricity utilities, on the other hand, are highly regulated to ensure price stability — not volatility — for their customers. The Waxman-Markey bill imposes a market-based (read: unregulated) trading program on a highly regulated industry that must make enormous long-term and least-cost capital decisions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In an unprecedented and unwise fashion, it turns American industry over to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by giving the agency the authority to change the rules on allowances every five years. Is this sound public and economic policy? I think not.

If Congress wants to achieve 83 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the electricity sector can get there, but there is no need for that first cost. Get rid of auctions, speculation, trading, new Wall Street "products" (yes, the bill allows for credit default swaps and carbon derivatives) and the trillions of dollars in government revenue that may end up being spent on other programs. Get rid of the 12 new advisory boards, committees and other institutions established under the Waxman-Markey bill. Focus instead on the most efficient and inexpensive way to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The solution? Keep the cap and remove trading from the equation: Mandate that the industry, over the same 40-year period, simply limit its emissions to the same levels proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill. This can be accomplished with a clear plan that gives states an option: Either they participate in a cap-and-trade program or they elect an alternative compliance mechanism to reach the same greenhouse gas emission goals by working with their utilities to develop a 40-year program of shutting down aging coal plants, retrofitting plants to capture carbon dioxide if the technology becomes available, and/or building zero-carbon energy plants. More important, the carbon dioxide reductions in this proposal can be achieved while providing adequate time to plan to minimize price shock and economic dislocation. It is the states, through their public utilities commissions — not the federal government — that have both the interest and obligation to manage citizens' costs while transitioning to a carbon-free future.

This transformation of our entire electricity sector won't be cheap, but it would be less expensive than the double cost of a complex cap-and-trade program followed by that same transformation.

The writer is chairman of the board of Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which also owns an 18 percent stake in The Washington Post Co.