While some critics feel that a signed treaty by December is still a stretch of the imagination, a slightly longer timeframe may be more realistic in encouraging countries to climb on board. Countries such as Mexico, India, and China have already stated that more negotiations are needed before the summit in Cancun commences. In the letter the US emphasized the importance of providing “adequate time for countries to consult with each other bilaterally and regionally,” and that smaller gatherings are at least initially preferable.

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This is not the first time that Canada has made a strong commitment to emissions reductions to the UN. Canada signed on to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, committing the nation to CO2 reductions from a 1990 baseline. In spite of this commitment, Canadian emissions continued to rise to an extent.

The US has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, though the commitment is contingent on passing legislation by Congress.

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But on the same day that progress was made, some stunning news was leaked, and then confirmed. Efforts of the Copenhagen climate meeting, if implemented, would lead to an increase in temperatures of 3 degrees C, not 2 degrees C as initially anticipated. According to a posting in the News section of the COP15 website, this could cause:

…a warming of three or four degrees Celsius will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people being flooded each year due to rising sea levels. “There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in Southeast Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, New York, Cairo and London,”

Does this mean that the yet to be agreed upon targets are too weak? Probably. But should we throw the baby out with the bath water? Absolutely not.

We have done nothing for too long, and as the whole world knows the time for action is now. I think that all of us that understand the sciene want ambitious action now and a zero carbon world in the near future. But that was never really in the cards. One of the best outcomes of Copenhagen may be that for the first time ever, the entire world may finally be able to agree on something having to do with carbon emissions. Whether that is codifying the rules for forest protection or coming to an accord on real emissions reductions targets – the agreement is what matters. Targets can be strenghtened and improved. But if the fear of doing too little leads us to doing nothing, then this conference will be viewed as a failure by many.

(Image Courtesy of the AP)

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The event, the Support REDD+ Gala in Copenhagen at the COP15 conference, was hosted by The Coalition for Rainforest Nations and the governments of Gabon, Guyana and Papua New Guinea.

Return to Forest and Tengchong are in southwestern Nicaragua and southwestern China, respectively. In addition to their ecological benefits, the projects benefit local communities by providing, for example, tree planting or other economic opportunities. Also, the reforestation projects will each sequester about 170,000 metric tons of CO2 in their lifetime.

Please donate now to support these important projects that are fighting global warming today! Learn more about What is Missing? and Maya Lin at www.carbonfund.org/unchopatree.

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“We do not have another year to deliberate, nature does not negotiate.”

-Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General

The pessimism in Copenhagen is growing as rifts between nations solidify. As the world watches and thousands continue to protest demanding action, the prospect of a binding treaty diminishes, seemingly by the minute. Rich nations want poorer nations to commit to verifiable and enforceable emissions reductions – a clause that developing nations are reluctant to agree to and is a provision that has not been included in other climate negotiation such as Kyoto and Bali.

Developing nations may be more likely to act if the developed nations such as the United States, the world’s leader in per capita carbon emissions, committed to binding emissions reductions targets first. But the US as of now refuses to commit to an international treaty until a bill is passed in Congress.

Though I am remiss to trivialize the fate of our climate to this, it appears as though we are in the midst of a great global stare down.

But there is hope of real progress coming out of Copenhagen in relation to how the world deals with biological carbon sequestration and trees. Deforestation currently accounts for over 20% of global carbon emissions. Preserving and managing forests can help to significantly cut carbon emissions and potentially help buy the world some time as we figure out how to actually reduce emissions from their dirty sources.

A report from the New York Times states:

A final draft of the agreement for the compensation program, called Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, is to be given on Wednesday to ministers of the nearly 200 countries represented here to hammer out a framework for a global climate treaty. Negotiators and other participants said that though some details remained to be worked out, all major points of disagreement — how to address the rights of indigenous people living on forest land and what is defined as forest, for example — had been resolved through compromise.

Though we all want comprehensive and binding agreements to come out of Copenhagen, that may not be in the cards this year. But through the proper management of our forests we can reduce emissions now as well as preserve biodiversity, improve local environments and support local communities. Laying the groundwork for the reductions of more than 20% of global emissions would be no small accomplishment – lets hope that, at a minimum that victory will be the legacy of Copenhagen.

Want to support forest based projects that are reducing emissions today? Click here for more info.

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Even more surprising was the outright anger and disappointment at President Obama, their president. It’s no small axiom that young people swept Mr. Obama into power, through Iowa, the primaries and general election. Yet, at this evening’s main event of young, idealistic activists, when Obama’s name was mentioned, there was not a sound. One might argue at least there were no boo’s, but I can’t see how this is anything but bad news for the young president.

Activists and turnout win elections, and this may be, as McKibben reminded us last night, “the canary in the coal mine” for Mr. Obama’s political future if he can’t figure out how to deal with climate change.

On the flip side, front runner for President of the Universe: the president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed. President Nasheed is the Maldives’ first democratically elected leader and has committed the tiny island archipelago nation to being carbon neutral by 2020. With chants of “3 5 0″ throughout the hall, the president lifted the audience into a real call to action for a real cause, global survival but more personally the Maldives’ survival.

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But the potential for inaction is great. The divide between rich and poor nations is starting to grow, according to recent reports, over the demands by developed nations for developing nations to reduce emissions. The Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 UN agreement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, required emissions reductions from developed nations and not from developing nations.

Faced with the technological and financial challenges of reducing emissions in the developing world, Mama Konaté, a member of Mali’s delegation said, “The killing of the Kyoto Protocol, I can say, will mean the killing of Africa… Before accepting that, we should all die first.”

By Wednesday, heads of state from all over the world should be in Copenhagen, and by Friday it is expected that about 116 leaders, including President Obama will be present.

The challenge of this final week of negotiations will be how to strike an emissions reductions accord that reduces emissions without compromising developing nations tenuous grasp on economic growth. The world must engage all nations, including China, Brazil, India and others if our climate has a chance to stabilize temperatures at the 2.0 degree Celsius mark of warming.

But if we want developed nations to actually reduce emissions, some say that it will require $100-200 billion dollars of annual subsidies, a check that developed nations don’t want to foot.

Over the next few days, it will be the job of the ministers and administrators that are currently present in Copenhagen to flesh out the details of an agreement. In many regards, the work that gets done today and tomorrow will determine how effective the heads of state can be when arriving later this week.

Image Credit: Washington Post

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Just a few years back, academics suggested carbon would cost $50-100 per tonne, a total non-starter for almost any government initiative to reduce emissions. Yet we are here today, talking about Copenhagen, Waxman-Markey and the Senate bill in large part because of the voluntary actions taken by a relatively small group over the last five or six years to prove the concepts, technologies, methodologies, costs and processes.

Leadership is about stepping up to the plate when others will not, and I am always amazed and appreciative of our thousands of partners who have done just that. This is why it is so important these early leaders receive credit for their voluntary actions. Their vision and commitment turned into the first offset projects and investments.

(I still can’t imagine what it must have been like for the person at a large company to go into their boss’s office a few years ago and say they wanted to offset their electricity use in California by buying these REC-things from Texas, or this carbon offset doohickey from New York.)

Finally, we’re making headway. The EPA has approved their first-ever carbon offset project, which Carbonfund.org has supported and brought through the EPA process. The House of Representatives has passed a great bill, thanks to the leadership of Reps. Waxman and Markey and many others, the Senate is working on a similar version, and thousands of delegates from around the world are in Copenhagen to work on a global deal to reduce emissions by about 80% by 2050.

We’re at a tipping point and Carbonfund.org must now participate in the national and international policy debates to ensure we maximize carbon reductions and verification while unleashing capital, technology and innovation to achieve these goals as quickly and cost effectively as possible. I am heading to Copenhagen this weekend for the climate talks to help push for a global consensus on massive carbon reductions during my lifetime, not just my kids’.

This is a new space for us and we’re working with policy experts to advocate for the best possible legislation in the US on climate change. These next several months will be crucial to our future, and we need the experiences of organizations like Carbonfund.org that have proven the concepts to ensure we get a bill (or treaty) that will work. We’re enlisting the best minds in Washington and as a first step we’re pleased to be working with the Podesta Group, a leading government relations firm, to help Carbonfund.org achieve its objectives.

Done right, fighting climate change will create millions of jobs, save taxpayers money, reduce or eliminate our reliance on foreign oil, reduce our overseas defense responsibilities and help the developing world leapfrog on technologies and help their people. It will also clean the air, reduce asthma and other health effects of burning fossil fuels and save us billions in health costs.

We’d hoped to get a US climate bill in 2009 but 2010 will work too. We’re just so glad we’re all talking climate policy. Finally!

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“Our islands are disappearing, our coral reefs are bleaching, we are losing our fish supplies. We bring empirical evidence to Copenhagen of what climate change is doing now to our states,”

-Dessima Williams, a Grenadian diplomat speaking for Alliance of Small Island States

Global warming induced seal level rise is already happening, and in all likelihood will continue for the foreseeable future. To many of us, this is an abstract concept with little everyday relevance – what do I care if the sea rises 3 millimeters a year? Well, 3mm is a lot when you live on an island small island nation that is barely above sea level.

In Copenhagen, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) – a coalition of 43 small and extremely vulnerable Island Nations – has called for a new legally binding treaty that will cap temperature rises to 1.5 degrees C. The proposed agreements to date have focused on a 2.0 degree C temperature increase target. Holding temperature increases to 1.5 degrees would mean stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at about 350 parts per million (ppm) – currently, concentrations are at about 387ppm and increasing every year.

According to the International Energy Agency, the aggressive shift in the target will add about $10.5 trillion extra in energy-related investment by 2030 – a figure that is untenable to many Nations would would be asked to foot the bill.

Many think that the 2.0 degree C temperature increase target is ambitious considering the current pace of action on the global scale.

The small island nation of Tuvalu has been a vocal advocate of this aggressive target. This nation’s emissions are tiny compared to total global output, and is essentially powerless to stop global warming without a global treaty.

For Tuvalu, the issue of global warming and sea level rise is not abstract. It is real and it is happening now. There is a very real possibility that Tuvalu will be inundated and lost to the sea – sinking 3,000 years of history and culture forever. I have never been to Tuvalu and I didn’t know where it was in the world before today. But the idea of losing it forever saddens me unspeakably, not only on behalf of the residents of the country and others like it, but also because I may never have the option to explore this tiny island nation.

Global warming threatens to relegate nations, peoples, cultures, traditions, foods, animals and so many other things to the history books for good. I hope that our leaders in Copenhagen have the will and commitment to fight to save out climate and the rich diversity of life and cultures it supports. And I hope that as individuals, we are all committed to reducing our carbon footprints today to help make that process a little easier.

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“…Emissions are emissions. You’ve just got to do the math. It’s not a matter of politics or morality or anything else. It’s just math.”

- US State Department envoy Todd Stern

As the U.N. Climate talks in Copenhagen heat up, some predictable arguments are starting to play out in real time. There are still major questions as to whether an agreement is going to be reached, and moreover how that agreement should look and function. Tensions at Copenhagen are rising between nations, and particularly between the U.S. and China.

Todd Stern, a top U.S. State Department negotiator in Copenhagen sums up the American point of view quite well: “If you look around at what countries in the world, they’re actually doing a lot. China has put down a number. It might not be the number everyone would like to see. But it is a significant proposal.”

Mr. Stern diplomatically states that though commitments have been made by nations, they are not quite enough yet (I assume that he is including the U.S. in his assessment).

But currently, the world appears to be waiting for the U.S. to lead, both in terms of action and financial support for green initiatives in developing nations. Developing nations feel as though developed nations have an obligation to do more to reduce emissions, considering developed nations have been spewing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere for centuries now.

The U.S. does not believe that developed nations should be penalized for historical emissions because the world was ‘ignorant’ to the problem of global warming up until modern times.

How the world decides to reconcile these disparate positions is the challenge of Copenhagen.

Stay tuned to the Carbonfund.org blog for regular Copenhagen updates. Carbonfund.org will reporting live from Copenhagen starting next week so check back regularly and follow us on twitter!

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