Hill Heat

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that he will convene an informal high-level event in New York on the margins of the General Assembly on 24 September to promote discussion on possible ways to move the international community toward negotiations on new global agreement on climate change at the upcoming United Nations climate change conference in Bali in December.

The Secretary-General hopes that world leaders will send a powerful political signal to the negotiations in Bali that “business as usual” will not do and that they are ready to work jointly with others towards a comprehensive multilateral framework for action on climate change for the period after 2012.

The Secretary-General informed Permanent Representatives and Permanent Observers to the United Nations of the event, which will be informal and will seek to reaffirm the importance of addressing climate change in a global forum and provide an opportunity to involve all countries in the multilateral process. The high-level event would not seek to engage Governments in negotiations on the outcomes in Bali nor seek a negotiated outcome.

Is there a scientific basis for anticipating that human-induced climate warming does and/or will affect hurricanes in some way, over and above natural climate variability? Do observations and model simulations support that expectation, or are there issues with data and observations that make the task of sorting out linkages more difficult? If the latter, what are the observational and data issues that continue to make this a challenging scientific problem? What do we know now that we did not know two years ago? What role do model simulations play in helping to sort out linkages, if any, between global warming and hurricanes, in the absence of data/observation or the presence of unreliable data/observations? How can we best develop a coordinated national effort to provide urgently required information for planning, community response and infrastructure development.

Moderator

• Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers

• Dr. Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
• Dr. William K. M. Lau, Chief, Laboratory for Atmospheres, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
• Dr. Greg Holland, Director, Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division, Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
• Dr. Gabriel Vecchi, Research Oceanographer, Climate diagnostics Group, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab/NOAA, Princeton, NJ.
• Thomas R. Knutson, Research Meteorologist, Climate Dynamics and Prediction Group, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab/NOAA, Princeton, NJ.

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a Congressional briefing with Sir Nicholas Stern a year after the release of the landmark “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.” The Stern Review represented a key milestone in our understanding of the urgent need to take action and the associated costs of tackling climate change. The headline message that the cost of action would be far less than the cost of inaction was a catalyst for many governments to increase their efforts in the fight against global warming.

In the run up to the next UN meeting on climate change in Bali (December 2007), there are a number of complementary processes taking place, including the UN Secretary-General’s meeting in New York on September 24 and the US Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and Climate Change in Washington on September 27-28. How will the findings of the Stern Review affect these meetings? Will the policy recommendations recommended by the Review be considered as part of the final deal?

Sir Nicholas Stern will speak about these issues, which will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Briefing speaker:

• Sir Nicholas Stern, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics Asia Research Centre and author of the “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change“

The Stern Review was commissioned by Gordon Brown, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer and now the British Prime Minister. The Stern Review’s principal conclusion was that tackling climate change is a pro-growth strategy. It found that the earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be. The Stern Review surprised many policymakers in terms of describing the relatively small cost of action versus the significant costs of inaction, i.e. stabilizing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cost about one per cent of annual global output by 2050. If no action is taken, climate change will reduce global consumption per head by between five and 20 percent. In addition, markets for low-carbon energy products are likely to be worth at least $505 billion per year by 2050.

This briefing is open to the public and no reservations are required. For more information, please contact Fred Beck at [email protected] or 202.662.1892.

During the last week of September, three high-profile global meetings will address the challenge of climate change. On Monday, September 24, the United Nations will convene a unique High-Level Session of the General Assembly, at which dozens of heads of states will address this topic. Starting Wednesday, September 26, the Clinton Global Initiative will bring governments, business, NGOs and media together to catalyze concrete action to address climate change. Starting Thursday, September 27, the Bush administration will host representatives of leaders from 15 major economies for an unprecedented meeting on this topic.

To preview these events and assess their significance, Brookings will host a forum on Friday September 21. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

Introduction:

• Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institution

Moderator:

• Carlos Pascual, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution

Panelists:

• Yvo de Boer, Executive Director, United Nations, Framework Convention on Climate Change
• David B. Sandalow, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, chair of the Energy & Climate Working Group at the Clinton Global Initiative

Ambassador Room Hilton Embassy Row 2015 Massachusetts Ave, NW

Institute of Ecosystem Studies President Dr. William Schlesinger is going to be speaking at 6:00 pm this Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., about his recent work on the interaction between forests and climate—and its implications for how and whether carbon offsets should be allowed.

Glenn Hurwitz has more at Grist.

Before coming to IES, Dr. Schlesinger served in a dual capacity at Duke University, as both the James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry and Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

255 11th Street SE (close to the Eastern Market metro stop)

RSVP with Glenn Hurwitz (glenn dot hurowitz at ecologyfund dot net)

Business meeting to consider original bills entitled, “American Infrastructure Investment and Improvement Act”, “The Habitat and Land Conservation Act of 2007”, and to review and make recommendations on proposed legislation implementing the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to learn about the impacts climate change is having on ecosystems, in particular those changes that are rapid, large, and potentially irreversible. We now have evidence that there may be thresholds that, once crossed, will present serious coping challenges to humans. This raises a major strategic challenge in the climate policy debate before this Congress: What concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere might lead to environmentally, socially and economically unacceptable impacts?

In response to this question, a project was developed jointly by the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, the Joint Global Change Research Institute, and The Nature Conservancy, entitled “Understanding the Consequences of Thresholds in Global Change and Their Implications for Decision-Making.” The project promotes understanding of the physical, natural, and social dynamics that underlie ecological thresholds in order to better inform ongoing adaptation measures and response options across scales of decision-making. Our panel will focus on the work of this important initiative and its draft report, which is based on the first of a series of meetings that took place in 2006. Case studies presented at the meeting included impacts on the critical ecosystems of the American Rockies and Alaska such as: drought in the Colorado River Basin; bark beetles in Western Canada; and forest die-off and die-back in the West. Our speaker panel includes Ecothresholds Project participants and other experts:

• Dr. Anthony Janetos (Moderator), Director, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/University of Maryland
• Dr. Ed Miles, Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Professor of Marine Studies and Public Affairs, University of Washington
• Dr. Neil Cobb, Director, Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Northern Arizona University
• Dr. Mark Eakin, Coordinator, NOAA Coral Reef Watch, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Dr. John Wiens, Lead Scientist, The Nature Conservancy
• Michael Bradley, Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership

The Ecothresholds Project envisions workshops and conferences to engage resource managers and practitioners to explore responses to threshold effects that challenge the condition of ecosystem services and the foundation of a range of natural resource management practices. Creating a dialogue between this project and policymakers will help ensure that the major strategic questions being addressed by this project will be incorporated into the federal policy debate on climate change.

This briefing is open to the public and no reservations are required. For more information, contact Fred Beck at 202-662-1892 ([email protected])

The Urban Land Institute will hold a news conference to release a report titled “Growing Cooler: The Evidence” that will discuss the relationship between urban development and carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles.

Contact: Nicole Daigle at 202-715-1553

Urban Land Institute, 1025 Thomas Jefferson St. N.W., Suite 500 West

10:15 Hobson: We agree with the DOE that the potential for wind energy and solar energy in the Southeast are limited. Solar will not be a large source. Landfill methane will be a good source for small-scale generation. We think that a national one-size-fits-all standard is bad. We must either buy credits or pay an alternative compliance payment to the government. It essentially imposes a tax on resource-poor areas. We’ve assessed that 15% impact on our customers. It would be a billion dollars a year. There are 25 states with renewable portfolio standards. Not one of the 25 states’s standards is consistent with the proposed national standard. We believe federal funding and incentives with local standards is the best way.

10:20 Reedy: “I’d put my money on the sun.” That was Thomas Edison in 1931. The president’s vision for the DOE’s solar initiative lies behind the forces under discussion today. I spent most of my career with utilities. Ultimately utilities make decisions all about risk. How can inherently risky ventures such as steam-powered coal plants work? They are very complicated, have unreliable fuel sources, and offer environmental risks. Renewables will lower the risk.

• Economic feasibility: PV systems without financial incentives are projected to cost 9 cents per kilowatt hour by 2020 instead of 31 cents now. Florida consumers pay 12 cents now. By 2020 they can be expected to pay 18 cents per hour. One major frustration to the solar industry is comparing the base rate of convention to the peak rate of solar.