Highlights of Jonathan Pershing's Post-Cancun Update at CSIS on January 5th

Jonathan Pershing, the Deputy Special Climate Envoy for the U.S. State Department, spoke at CSIS on January 5th. To watch the video and find his powerpoint, click here: http://csis.org/event/post-cancun-update.

For those of you who don't have a spare 64 minutes to watch the video, I've highlighted a few key points. Please note that despite punctuation, this is not a transcript and these are not exact quotations, but an honest attempt at very close paraphrases of what Dr. Pershing said.

At the beginning of the talk, Jonathan Pershing gave a history of the UNFCCC process and emphasized that the U.S. was alone in not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

'The structure of Kyoto would not work for us. Copenhagen represents a shift from a top down method to a bottom up structure in which countries make pledges and move forward and take actions suitable to their national circumstances. They can do quite diverse things to cause reductions without a top-down dictation of how reductions ought to be achieved, which was the pre-Copenhagen paradigm. The new paradigm ends up incorporating a much lager group. It's no longer just OECD participating. Now anybody who wants obligations and is prepared to step forward can do it. All major economies made emissions reductions commitments and inscribed in a 2 page list called the Copenhagen Accord.'

What were the big paradigm shifts that occurred in Cancun?

'There is a new framework happening that is the result of an underlying structure developed in Copenhagen. Many countries didn't like the Copenhagen Accord for many reasons: because process was closed, because they felt it was new and too different and because it obligated countries who thought they should not have to act. The past year was a big diplomacy year. There is now a global consensus that it is true that we need a worldwide agreement, not just one that accounts for 25%, of emission like the Kyoto Protocol, and now we have different expectations based on different national needs/situations. We now have commitments that cover over 80% of GHG emissions. Under Kyoto, GHGs rose 40%, so it wasn't so successful. Annex 1 countries did not fail (in fact most are below the Kyoto obligations), but global emissions still went up 40% in 17 years. This is not a workable scenario for the future. So, this new paradigm of everyone acting may be better, especially for India and China, as actions start to show up on the global stage. Programs underway in China are significant: the incentives for RE in China are so big that the WTO might soon get involved.'

When the question and answer sessions came, he spoke a first about the goal of keeping the climate from changing less than 2 degrees.

 'The 2 degree goal is a very useful framing construct. The 2 degrees frames a goal aside of all the legal/technical stuff. If U.S. and other countries take current steps and stop there, we would not meet this goal. If we take current steps and then iterate and elaborate additional steps, then we could get there. You can't, in our view, set something up in the next 10 years about how to get there. Trying to set up a vision and rational and plausible pathway to get there is essential. Current emissions pledges are a legitimate first step, but they are not enough.'

Someone named Vicky asked a question about Bolivia's objection to the agreement in Cancun and was probably hoping that Jon would talk a little bit about why Bolivia objected. Instead, he answered it in terms of UNFCCC procedures.

'Bolivia was the only country to object to the agreement reached in Cancun. Countries have never adopted rules for themselves for UNFCCC procedures. They must be adopted by consensus, and so rules cannot be adopted because of Rule 42, which is a voting rule. If there is an overwhelming view that chair has that room is in agreement, then they will move the process forward. We don't want a formal definition of consensus. Instead, business is conducted by a general consensus as decided by chair after surveying the room. In Copenhagen 30 countries objected, so there was significant objection in the room. In Cancun, there was only Bolivia. Bolivia alone did not reflect the room. In that sense the room and the large view of the room moves us forward.'

And, there was a little bit of talk about legal versus non-legally binding agreements.

'Jairam Ramesh, the environment minister from India said in his parliament that it is good that the agreement is not legally binding because India could not take legally binding obligations. Right now, China would probably not take legally binding obligation. LCDs would also probably not accept legally binding obligations. The U.S. will not accept legally binding agreement in this context. If the agreement has different character, either if all have leg binding, or if focused on other elements, then it could work, but KP's paradigm of binding for developed and nonbinding for developing; well, the U.S. will not be a part of that. I don't believe that Durban will yield necessary paradigm shift for legally binding pledges.'

Finally, just in case some journalist in 2050 is looking for historical opinions about geo-engineering, I'll let you all know that you can hear Pershing say something about it at the very end of the video.

National Security and Climate Change

“We in the very top of the Navy absolutely believe that climate change is real, it is a threat to national security, and we have to deal with it now.”

Rear Admiral Titley said this yesterday at the international climate negotiations here in Cancun at the U.S. Department of Defense Panel on National Security Implications of Climate Change. He went on to say that “our world is changing because of gasses that are put there [in the atmosphere] by human activity.”

These words followed those of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy Amanda Dory who said that “the climate is already changing in troubling ways that have implications for national security.” She described how climate change is being considered by the the DOD as one of the many factors making the world a less safe place in the future. Climate change makes the list of “Enduring Trends” in the Quadrennial Defense Review because it “will shape the future security environment for the foreseeable future” along with resource scarcity, disease, and demographics. According to Dory, the Quadrennial Defense Review is the DOD's “preeminent defense strategy document” that evaluates “plausible future challenges," in terms of prevention and “deterrents of future conflicts."

Dory touched on how climate change will destabilize weak states and challenge strong states. Other speakers cited research related to climate change and investments by the military to reduce its carbon footprint.

Guest Post: Health and Climate Change

I have had the good fortune of meeting Sudhvir Singh, a medical student from Auckland, New Zealand who is here at the negotiations with the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations. Below is a guest post he has asked me to share that summarizes recent research on the connections between health and climate change.

" When most people think of climate change, they probably think of rising sea levels, dying polar bears and controversial, boring discussions about carbon emissions that never seem to progress. This reflects a lack of understanding of the profound impacts of climate change on human health. Indeed, the well-respected medical journal The Lancet describes climate change as the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century. Appreciating the relationship between climate change and health adds to the argument for urgent mitigation by underlining the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to both health and the economy.

In most simple terms, global climate change will affect health directly by increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events – including some of the natural disasters that we commonly see and hear on the daily news such as floods, storms and heat waves. The devastating floods in Pakistan this year and the deadly European heat wave of 2003 (which claimed more than 40,000 lives) are the type of events that are likely to become more common in the future. This, along with rising sea levels and the increasing demand for scarce resources, will result in forced migration and potential conflict. As many crops will have poorer yields, food security and human nutrition is likely to be threatened. Environmental change will also alter the conditions under which vector-borne infectious diseases spread. For example, mosquitoes will be able to inhabit new geographic areas and therefore expose more people to diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. These adverse health impacts will impact poorer countries to a much greater extent than developed countries, an injustice that cannot be ignored.

Simple actions taken to live more sustainably have profound benefits to health and save money by reducing health care expenses. For example, consuming less meat and more fresh produce and choosing to cycle, walk or use public transport instead of driving are healthy lifestyle choices that reduce the risk of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing the number of coal-fired power plants in favour of renewable energy sources would simultaneously reduce the occurrence of respiratory illnesses such as obstructive lung disease and lung cancer. The Health and Environment Alliance has estimated that if the EU reduced carbon emissions by 30% by 2020, there will be an associated reduction in healthcare costs of up to €30.5 billion per year, which represents 2/3 of the costs of implementing a 30% reduction compared to a 20% reduction. Action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will therefore result in substantial benefits to health and to the economy.

Appreciating the human impacts of climate change is an important addition to the argument for urgent mitigation. To find out more please visit the World Health Organization climate change and health webpage (http://www.who.int/topics/climate/en/) or Physicians for Social Responsibility (http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/global-warming/). Please also visit our blog for information about how you can help join the health movement and our network 'Young Friends of Public Health'
(www.ifmsa.wordpress.com)."

-Sudhvir Singh, International Federation of Medical Students' Associations

Climate Negotiation Basics

It is tough to understand what happens at the climate negotiations and how it happens, but I am starting to wrap my head around it. Within the negotiations process, groups with similar interests come together to form coalitions to amplify their affect. Within these groups there are subgroups and sometimes sub-subgroups for specific policy issues and/or regional concerns. Any country can be part of as many or as few groups as they like. It's a strategic decision, and often times it is limited by the size of a particular country's delegation. This grouping system means that a group must reach a consensus and then, as a group, try to express and advance their ideas about the treaty in opposition/relation to all the other groups fighting for space with the eventual goal of putting their ideas, or some form of their ideas, into the final document that will someday become the international climate treaty.

This leads to an immensely complicated process of policy point trading. The U.S. might not care so much about Land Use and Land Use Change policy dealing with swamps, so they might trade this point with AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) for support on the framework of how we keep track of carbon emissions from manufacturing. Even with this great political game going on, it's really boring to watch: it all happens in a room filled with rows and rows of negotiators sitting at long tables with country placards and microphones being called upon one after the other to express support or dissent for proposals. Once a negotiator is called upon they could talk for 10 minutes (often done to deliberately waste time or to create a sense of urgency around consensus for a particular issue), or they could say 3 words (perhaps indicative of a desperate negotiator trying to save time).

When an agreement is reached on the ideas surrounding an issue, then the words of the text have to be decided. This means a bracketing of text. Yes, [brackets]. A sentence might look like...We must have [a robust legal framework surrounding the transfer of adaptation technologies][protect intellectual property rights with a strong international legal framework][pass sanctions on countries who fail to adequately protect intellectual property rights of parties allowing access to adaptation technologies]. And so on and so on, and then you pick and fight for your favorite wording, or you add another bracket. Or, and if you don't like version 1 and just can't live with the bracket situation happening, then you could always submit version 1a, 1b, 1c with language of your own.

Right now, Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and the rest of the world are at a standstill about adding a target of limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius in a shared vision text (which is more like a mission statement than anything else). The Bolivians (super socialist) are pushing for a 1 degree Celsius change, the rest of the world is asking for 1.5 degrees Celsius, and Saudia Arabia (a long time obstructionist of the climate negotiations) is pushing for 2 degrees Celsius. So the text looks like this now [1.0][1.5][2.0].

A quick dip into the geo-politics of why this is happening...The Bolivians see themselves as being one of the few countries to genuinely represent and push for indigenous rights. They're undergoing a big socialist movement now that is giving the indigenous majority there a role in the government for the first time, and so they are very blunt as negotiators and push for things that the rest of the world will not ever accept. The Saudi Arabians, our allies who produced Osama bin Laden and the 911 high-jackers, have been trying to slow and stop this process for years. They continue to profit from the inelastic demand of oil and the money applied by the U.S. and other nations to have some influence over OPEC. The rest of the world is doing a lot of talk here about shifting away from heavy dependence upon oil, which is bad news for the Saudi's cozy position, so they obstruct, delay, and block reasonable proposals, like the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for the effects of climate change in the shared vision part of the text.

And, that's an oversimplified explanation to one single little bracket fight going on now. There are hundreds happening on all different subjects here in Cancun today.

Reaction to Steven Chu's Talk at the COP16

I am grateful for the access to high government officials here in Cancun, and I am glad that Steven Chu chose to end his speech with a quotation that called for inter-generational equity.

I showed up to hear the Secretary of Energy for the United States government come to talk to a knowledgeable audience at the climate change negotiations about energy policy in the U.S. Instead we got an earful of praise of the wonders of science, a twenty minute explanation of how climate change was happening, a harangue upon the minutia of future battery technology, and speculations bringing scientists together to invent new technology to combat climate change. The irrelevance of Steven Chu's words to an audience hungry to hear more might have been made up by some real engagement with people through a question and answer session, but, oh no, look at the time, sorry, we just couldn't have predicted that if we have Steven talk now then he would have to leave immediately afterwards to catch a plane. Really it is just a huge logistical failure on our part...I wish I could argue with the airlines (said the handler), but, you know, this guy is only in charge of a major government department and so he couldn't possibly have been put on another flight. D


Taking a wider view, are these irrelevant presentations and lack of engagement strategic messaging? Nothing new or significant has been said, and ideas about climate change have been tossed around completely apart from the ground of U.S. climate and energy policy. This is certainly relective of what is happening in the negotiations (what the U.S. are doing in the negotiations), but the State Department does a lot better about communicating the reality and the feasible possibilities of policies that could be adopted to mitigate climate change.

I can't help but take a swipe at the DOE communications team and say this: if you're listening, get some training from Ben Kobren (Pershing's communication guy) about how to better do your job. It was definitely a big waste of time for anyone informed and interested in climate change and energy issue.

A Key Argument of the International Climate Change Negotiations: Total vs. Per Capita Emissions

One key argument necessary to have a good understanding of the international climate negotiations are the Total Emissions versus Per Capita Emissions debate.

Total Emissions versus Per Capita Emissions:

The developed world generally argues along the Total Emissions line of logic. In this argument, the parties that pollute the most total are primarily responsible for the climate change, and so they bear most of the responsibility for fixing the problem. Ever since China passed the U.S. in total CO2 emissions in 2008, this has been an argument that works its way into U.S. climate policies.

Many countries in the developing world argue along the Par Capita Emissions line. In this argument the countries which have the highest per capita emissions are more responsible for climate change. The countries with the highest per capita emissions (or, carbon footprints) are, by and large, the most developed countries. There is an implicit idea here that because we as a species share the atmosphere, then eventually we should roughly be polluting the same amount.

This debate gets into many wider ideas about how our leaders are approaching the climate problem. When the U.S. touts the total emissions argument and demands that China cuts its greenhouse gas emissions because they are the world's number one polluter, China might fire back that each one of their citizens polluted 4 times less than the average U.S. citizen, and that their citizens should have the right to pollute just as much as the citizens in the U.S.

For a visual of the total and per capita numbers, click here: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html

These lines of argument are usually not so rigidly one-sided (China this, U.S. that), but they do crop up as major thematic points in the conference in the many policy debates going on in the conference. A big idea is that because the world economy is primarily driven by the combustion of carbon-based fuel, then in order to develop and grow economies and improve standards of living and pull people out of poverty, developing countries must produce more CO2 in order to develop. Developing countries believe that developed countries have no right to try to limit their CO2 emissions because that means essentially limiting their development and economic growth. Developed countries, on the other hand, are worried by the models that suggest if more people in the developing world do reach comparable levels of per capita emissions as they have in the developed world have, then very bad things will start to happen. Connected to all of these arguments are ideas about the links between prosperity and emissions, past emissions (huge for industrialized nations, not so huge for India or China) and future emissions (skyrocketing for India, China, and Brazil), and how to reasonably share the responsibility and liability of climate change.

Emerging from all this debating is the general consensus among most nations about the most fair thing to do. Developed countries must 1) reduce their own total and per capita emissions while 2) helping developed countries transition to more sustainable growth paths so that they will not have to pollute more to grow their economies and developed countries must also (3) aid developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change that they had little to do in bring about. Reducing emissions in developed countries (1) means, among other things, investing in energy efficient infrastructure and in low carbon energy sources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Helping developed countries not pollute so much as they grow their economies (2) means making alternative clean technologies accessible and affordable to these countries through technology transfer and help financing the investments necessary for a lower-carbon economy as they grow. Aiding developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change (3) means helping people cope with the specific effects of climate change. One specific example of this would be aiding a country in building a dike to keep the ocean from encroaching upon its land as sea-level rise occurs.

So, those are some international climate change basics for you, stated in a very general way to make it accessible. There is a lot more to it than this, of course, but this is one angle to approach understanding everything that will go on in Cancun. Debating specific points of the climate treaty (finance, REDD, technology transfer, mitigation, and adaptation) tends to be immensely complicated because any nation can weigh in on any point being set down into words. It is an immensely complicated and tedious process, but it is also the world's best hope to minimize the effects of climate change.

A Note About Lord Monckton and SustainUS

So, a bit about the events surrounding the video. Some SustainUS youth disrupted Lord Monckton's meeting, then Lord Monckton called SustainUS and a Jewish grandson of someone who escaped from Nazi Germany “Hitler Youth,” then he lied to the Associated Press about it, saying “it was not I who called them Hitler Youth. It was three Germans and a Dane in the Audience.” The BBC got a hold of both videos and played them one after the other. So, Lord Monckton was not only discredited because he acted as an extremist in calling youth “Hitler Youth,” but also because he lied about doing it and then got caught in his own lie on national television in Great Britain.

Sure, maybe he didn't know that someone was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor initially, but after the youth told Lord Monckton that he was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Lord Monckton knew this and continued to call the youth a member of the Hitler Youth. He went on to say that “the whole air of the Copenhagen conference has the stink of a Nuremberg rally about it” (http://www.picvi.com/video/get.php?id=29296, 2:20). He turned his “Hitler Youth” outburst upon everyone at the Copenhagen conference, namely, every government in the entire world. Comparing a U.N. conference to a Nazi rally is one of the most extreme position on climate change that I have ever heard.