Hill Heat

The UNFCCC will convene at Bali to set the post-Kyoto roadmap in five interrelated meetings: COP-13, CMP-3, SBSTA-27, SBI-27, and Resumed AWG-4.

Overall agenda

An international agreement needs to be found to follow the end of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period, which ends in 2012. In order to avoid a gap between then and the entry into force of a new framework, the aim is to conclude a new deal by 2009 to allow enough time for ratification.

The “Bali roadmap” would establish the process to work on the key building blocks of a future climate change regime, including adaptation, mitigation, technology cooperation and financing the response to climate change. But it would also need to set out the methodology and detailed calendar of work for this process.

A major step forward was taken at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June, where the G8 leaders agreed to negotiate a post-2012 deal within the United Nations framework, with the goal to have an agreement in place by 2009. Significantly, this was supported by the Group of 5 countries with emerging economies: China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

In September, the United Nations Secretary-General hosted an unprecedented high-level event on climate change in New York, attended by over 80 heads of state or government. This was an expression of the political will of world leaders at the highest level to tackle climate change through concerted action, and they gave a clear call for a breakthrough at the conference in Bali. It was followed by the Major Economies Meeting on Climate Change and Energy Security in Washington on 27 and 28 September, where the United States government clearly voiced its desire to contribute to the UNFCCC process.

The abbreviations refer to:

• Conference of the Parties (COP), Thirteenth session.
• Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), Third session.
• Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), Twenty-seventh session.
• Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), Twenty-seventh session.
• Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG), Fourth session (resumed from August Vienna session)

Presaging next week’s Climate Change Conference in Bali, the United Nations has released its 2007-2008 Human Development Report, a call to action on climate change using stark moral language.

Climate change is the defining human development issue of our generation. All development is ultimately about expanding human potential and enlarging human freedom. It is about people developing the capabilities thatempower them to make choices and to lead lives that they value. Climate change threatens to erode human freedoms and limit choice. It calls into question the Enlightenment principle that human progress will make the future look better than the past. . .

Our starting point is that the battle against climate change can—and must—be won. The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act. If we fail to prevent climate change it will be because we were unable to foster the political will to cooperate.

Such an outcome would represent not just a failure of political imagination and leadership, but a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history. During the 20th Century failures of political leadership led to two world wars. Millions of people paid a high price for what were avoidable catastrophes. Dangerous climate change is the avoidable catastrophe of the 21st Century and beyond. Future generations will pass a harsh judgement on a generation that looked at the evidence on climate change, understood the consequences and then continued on a path that consigned millions of the world’s most vulnerable people to poverty and exposed future generations to the risk of ecological disaster.

The New York Times coverage: U.N. Warns of Climate-Related Setbacks.

Last week the 9th Court of Appeals issued a 90-page decision in Center for Biological Diversity v. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration/California v. NHTSA in favor of the plaintiffs. The suit was brought against NHTSA’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for light trucks – i.e., SUVs – issued in April 2006, in part for NHTSA claiming that the value of reduced greenhouse gases would be zero. NRDC, ED, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and 11 states and the District of the Columbia joined as plaintiffs.

The NHTSA is tasked by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) to set CAFE standards. Its April 2006 ruling raised the light truck standard from 22 to 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010.

The court agreed with the states that NHTSA must take into account greenhouse gases, as required by the National Environment Protection Act (NEPA) following the Massachusetts v EPA Supreme Court decision: “There is no evidence to support NHTSA’s conclusion that the apppropriate course was not to monetize or quantify the value of carbon emissions reduction at all.”

In addition to agreeing that the agency conducted an inadequate environmental assessment under NEPA, the court found that NHTSA’s regulations violated EPCA in four key areas, including the “SUV loophole” (“failure to revise the passenger automobile/light truck classifications”):

NHTSA’s failure to monetize the value of carbon emissions in its determination of the MY 2008-2011 light truck CAFE standards, failure to set a backstop, failure to revise the passenger automobile/light truck classifications, and failure to set fuel economy standards for all vehicles in the 8,500 to 10,000 lb. GWR class, was arbitrary and capricious and contrary to the EPCA. We therefore remand to NHTSA to promulgate new standards consistent with this opinion as expeditiously as possible and for the earliest model year practicable.

Warming Law’s comprehensive coverage:

• BREAKING: 9th Circuit Rules That Feds Must Account for Climate Change
• On Cloud 9(th Circuit) For Thanksgiving
• Delights in the Details
• “NHTSA can’t have it both ways”: NEPA and GHG

CBO will hold the 2007 Director’s Conference on Climate Change on Friday, November 16, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CBO Director Peter Orszag will host the conference, which will feature leading researchers addressing key questions in the debate on climate change.

Allocating Allowances: Efficiency and Distributional Effects

• Lawrence Goulder, Stanford University
• Richard Goettle, Northeastern University
• Dallas Burtraw, Resources for the Future
• Gilbert Metcalf, Tufts University

Near-Term and Long-Term Emissions Reductions: Technology, Coverage, and Costs

• Howard K. Gruenspecht, Energy Information Administration
• Francisco De La Chesnaye, Environmental Protection Agency
• Henry D. Jacoby, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• John P. Weyant, Stanford University

Space is limited so please register in advance by emailing the CBO Office of Communications contact below.

The Director’s Conference is held each year to bring outside experts together with CBO analysts in a collaborative effort that helps further the agency’s research agenda.

Press Contact: Melissa Merson Director of Communications (202) 226-2602 [email protected]

Following the GoogleAds on this site may lead to these coal industry websites:

• Americans for Balanced Energy Choices

From SourceWatch:

Formed in 2000 to develop astroturf support for coal-based electricity, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) promotes the interests of mining companies, coal transporters, and electricity producers. ABEC’s website is registered to the coal industry trade organization Center for Energy and Economic Development.

• Clean Coal USA

Clean Coal USA is an openly industry-funded site. The members are the following trade groups: The Association of American Railroads, the coal industry lobby group Center for Energy and Economic Development, the electric power industry lobby group Edison Electric Institute, the National Mining Association, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

The National Wildlife Federation has launched a campaign to get a total of 218 sponsors for the Waxman (HR 1590, equivalent to Boxer-Sanders) or the Olver-Gilchrest (HR 620, equivalent to McCain-Lieberman) cap-and-trade climate bills. The two bills combined have 170 co-sponsors. NWF is targeting what they call The Final Fifty, fifty legislators who have not co-sponsored either bill.

Healthy Families and Communities Subcommittee (Chairman McCarthy, D-N.Y.) of House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing on the future of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Sen. Kerry presiding.

Witnesses Panel 1

• Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, Department of State
• Dan Reifsnyder

Panel 2

• Timothy Wirth, President, United Nations Foundation
• Dr. Richard Sandor, Chairman and CEO, Chicago Climate Exchange
• Dr. Jonathan Pershing, Director, Climate, Energy, and Pollution Program, World Resources Institute

2:40 Kerry The 95-0 vote against the Kyoto treaty was not meant as a rejection of action on climate change.

2:45 Lugar It is critical that the international dialogue on climate change move beyond the disputes of the Kyoto protocols.

2:48 Dobriansky Climate change is a serious problem and humans are contributing to it. We are committed to doing our part. At Bali we will work to launch a new phase in climate diplomacy. The US is committed to concluding this effort by 2009. I recently met with key heads in Bogor, Indonesia. There are four key factors: mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology. We enter the Bali meeting with an open mind. Our deliberations will be guided by two considerations: environmentally effective and economically sustainable.

. . .

3:46 Reifsnyder The threat of sanctions and tariffs is not popular.

The events in the Science and Society: Grand Challenges series will be held every Monday night in November from 6pm to 7:30pm in the AAAS Auditorium at 1200 New York Avenue. A reception will start at 5pm.

November 12th’s discussion will be about “Meeting the Global Energy Demand”

Speakers

• John Holdren, Director of the Science, Technology & Public Policy Program at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government
• Lori Ryerkerk, General Manager of Government Relations at the ExxonMobil Corporation.

The first discussion was on “Climate Change”, and future discussions will be on “Managing a Pandemic” and “Containing the Spread of WMDs” and will feature experts from the White House, and the Center for American Progress.

RSVP.

(Cross-posted from Warming Law, which focuses on covering and analyzing the fight against global warming from a legal perspective. My name is Sean Siperstein, and I run Warming Law as part of my work for Community Rights Counsel, a non-profit, public interest law firm that assists communities in protecting their health and welfare. Follow the links for more info. about Warming Law; about CRC’s work and history; and for those truly curious, about me. Thanks for the opportunity to join the discussion; I really look forward to it!)

On Thursday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) convened the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to delve into whether the EPA acted properly in approving a permit for a coal-fired power on tribal land in Utah—its first such decision since the Supreme Court’s determination that CO2 is an air pollutant—despite the continued opposition of several environmental groups. Readers can check out the committee’s website for complete video of the fireworks-filled hearing and all testimony.

The hearing’s central witness was EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, who testified that because EPA is still in the process of formulating regulations in response to Mass. v. EPA, CO2 is, for the time being, still not a "regulated pollutant" under the Clean Air Act—and thus, EPA "simply lacks the legal authority…to impose emissions limitations for greenhouse gas emissions on power plants."

Under intense questioning, Johnson continued to stand by his basic talking points, arguing again that EPA’s failure to regulate CO2 keeps it from even beginning to consider it in assessing proposed power plants. Reporting on the hearing, Ryan Grim of the Politico parses Johnson’s testimony and sees something beyond legal reasoning possibly at play here:

Johnson has a tight line to walk: He has to show that he’s in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling while not committing to doing too much. “I have to abide by the law as it’s written today,” Johnson says.

He also thinks that “we must continue to improve our knowledge of the science,” but promises that the EPA is “developing regulations to pursue it from a regulatory standpoint” using a “deliberative and thoughtful process.”

Democrats aren’t buying. “No, you’re not,” Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) tells him flatly. “You’re looking for any avenue you can to avoid doing it.” Several Democrats bring up the EPA’s long-running refusal to approve a waiver for California to enact its own carbon regulation scheme.

The primary argument against Johnson’s take was provided by David Doniger of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who asserted that EPA does have a mandate to move forward, and in doing so should have quickly concluded that new coal-fired plants ought not be approved without significant mitigation strategies. In doing so, Doniger cites several decisions by businesses and state regulators  indicating that concrete action is possible, and summarizes the four main arguments of environmental organizations’ latest formal comments objecting to EPA’s decision: