By Judy Dempsey
    International Herald Tribune

    Wednesday 19 December 2007

German party launches effort.

    Berlin - The Social Democrats are calling for sanctions on energy-intensive US export products if the Bush administration continues to obstruct international agreements on climate protection, the party's leading environmental specialist said yesterday.

    The move, after the United Nations climate conference last week in Bali, Indonesia, has won strong support from the Greens and other leftist groupings in the European Parliament. Those factions will renew their bid to impose such levies when the Parliament reconvenes next month.

    It also signals a big effort by the Social Democrats to take the initiative on the environment and perhaps reshape it as a foreign policy issue that could affect relations between Berlin and Washington.

    Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken the lead on climate change, both domestically and internationally, leaving her junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats, frustrated. The opposition Greens have also lost ground on an issue they had long dominated.

    But with three important state elections next year, the Social Democrats, still floundering in the opinion polls, are revamping their program to stem the decline of public support, party officials say.

    "Merkel has made climate change a big issue and has tried to bring the Bush administration on board, so far without success," said Ulrich Kelber, deputy parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats and an environmental specialist who is leading the campaign to impose levies on energy-intensive US products.

   
    By Peter N. Spotts
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Monday 17 December 2007

Developing countries flexed their muscles in unprecedented ways at the climate talks, suggesting the old north-south power equation is changing.

    Nusa Dua, Indonesia - In a tumultuous, overtime finale that capped two weeks of intense talks, ministers from more than 180 countries headed home this weekend with a framework for negotiating a new global-warming agreement by 2009.

    In the process, the talks appear to have sealed a major shift in the geopolitics of climate change.

    In part, this change has come about because the US is now more intensely involved in talks than at any other time during the Bush administration, says Artur Runge-Metzger, who heads the European Commission's climate-change programs.

    But the big shift has come from developing countries, known collectively as "the G-77 plus China."

    Led by China, South Africa, Brazil, and other rainforest-heavy countries, the group is beginning to flex its muscles in ways observers here have not seen before.

    In the past, analysts say, industrial countries cut the deals and essentially presented developing countries with the results. No longer. Nowhere was the change more apparent than on the unplanned 13th day of the conference.

    At issue was wording on adaptation, technology transfer, and financing. Developing countries offered text changes that the US had opposed throughout the talks on the floor of the final plenary session.

    
    By Tom Athanasiou
    Grist.org

    Monday 17 December 2007

The Bali meeting, and the lessons learned.

    It's important, this time, to draw conclusions, and to do so publicly. Because Bali has taken us - barely and painfully - over a line and into a new and even more difficult level in the climate game we'll be playing for the rest of our lives. In fact, it's not too much to say that, with the realizations of the last year and their culmination at the 13th Conference of Parties, the game has, finally, belatedly, begun in earnest.

    First up, we knew going into Bali that if the old routine continued without variation, we'd really be in trouble. The timing of this meeting alone made this clear. Here we were, after the skeptics, after the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, after Gore's (and the IPCC's) Nobel Prize. We know now how grave the situation is. So it's with great relief that I'm able to say that, judging at least by Bali, the game has indeed changed - except, of course, for the United States.

    The most important change was that the G77, the South's negotiating bloc, did not put its unity above all else. This unity was always easy to understand, for the South is weak and the G77's members know all too well that when they don't hang together they hang separately. But it's been clear for years now that the G77's unity can itself be a terrible problem, one that allowed its most retrograde members (the Saudis come to mind) to override the interests of weaker parties (like, for example, the Alliance of Small Island States). So Bali, the COP where China, South Africa, and Brazil stepped forward to announce their willingness to take on binding "commitments or actions," was a real breakthrough, not least because the attached condition - "measurable, reportable and verifiable" assistance from the industrialized to the developing countries - was so widely understood as being both just and inevitable.

    Not that we didn't already know that, without southern support for rapid action, there won't be any. But the G77's "flexibility" gave us a different kind of knowledge, concrete knowledge of a deal made and a way forward. While it didn't change everything, it changed a great deal.

   
    By Les Blumenthal
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Sunday 16 December 2007

    Forget about sea levels rising as glaciers and polar ice melt, and increasing water temperatures affecting global weather patterns. As the oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they're gradually becoming more acidic.

    And some scientists fear that the change may be irreversible.

    At risk are sea creatures up and down the food chain, from the tiniest phytoplankton and zooplankton to whales, from squid to salmon to crabs, coral, oysters and clams.

    The oceans are already 30 percent more acidic than they were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as they absorb 22 tons of carbon dioxide a day. By the end of the century, they could be 150 percent more acidic.

    "Everything points to dramatic effects," said Richard Feely, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. "There are suggestions the entire ecosystem could change over time."

   
    By George Monbiot
    The Guardian UK

    Monday 17 December 2007

America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested interests in oil and gas fund its political system.

    "After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session."

    These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11 - I mean to say, December 11 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto protocol. George Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

    The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore's team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement.

    Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy "hot air" from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore's scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren't producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

    
    By Ian Sample
    The Guardian UK

    Friday 14 December 2007

    The majority of the world's coral reefs are in danger of being killed off by rising levels of greenhouse gases, scientists warned yesterday. Researchers from Britain, the US and Australia, working with teams from the UN and the World Bank, voiced their concerns after a study revealed 98% of the world's reef habitats are likely to become too acidic for corals to grow by 2050.

    The loss of big coral reefs would have a devastating effect on communities, many of which rely on fish and other marine life that shelter in the reefs. It would leave coastlines unprotected against storm surges and damage often-crucial income from tourism. Among the first victims of acidifying oceans will be Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest organic structure.

    The oceans absorb around a third of the 20bn tonnes of carbon dioxide produced each year by human activity. While the process helps to slow global warming by keeping the gas from the atmosphere, in sea water it dissolves to form carbonic acid - rising levels of which cause carbonates to dissolve. One of these minerals, aragonite, is used by corals and other marine organisms to grow their skeletons. It is particularly susceptible to carbonic acid. Without it, corals become brittle and are unable to grow and repair damage caused by fish, snails and natural erosion.

    The scientists used computer simulations to model levels of aragonite in the world's oceans from pre-industrial times, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels stood at 280 parts per million. Present day levels of carbon dioxide are 380ppm, but scientists expect the figure will rise substantially by the end of the century.