Going green in Cancun

My wife’s family has a tradition during cold winters. They buy puzzles, spread them on one end of a dining room table made for ten, and start putting them together.

It may take weeks, but everybody who walks past feels compelled to put in a piece or two, or sit down to work on the puzzle and socialize for an hour or two. I’ve always been curious, so it was only natural that I was sucked into the tradition 20 years ago.

Looking at climate change is kind of like working those 5,000-piece puzzles. The table’s just bigger.

There might be a corner piece in India, a whole strip of the side in Siberia, a little scrap of the middle in Kentucky. But as you gradually stick these pieces together, a picture begins to emerge.

We had a cold December in the eastern half of the U.S., so of course there is no such thing as global warming. That’s the argument of those who still believe with all their hearts that climate change is a hoax. They heap scorn on scientists who say a colder than average winter in some parts of the world is a symptom of climate change, because it just sounds so ridiculous that warming causes cooling.

Actually, it’s not ridiculous; it’s just a piece of the puzzle.

The problem is, most people don’t really pay attention to details, and puzzles are all about details. In defense of most Americans, unless they go looking for more information they’re probably only going to get what’s spoon-fed to them by the 24-hour cable “news” channels. But, to quote the X-Files, the truth is out there. It just takes a little initiative, and a propensity for puzzles.

Take that statement that cold means hot. It’s a puzzle piece that’s half red and half blue. The detail is, that there is a high pressure system over the Arctic. Remember your weather map on TV? High pressure keeps out the cold air. It has to push around the high.

So when cold weather pushed around the high in the Arctic, it pushed into North America – specifically the eastern U.S. – and caused a colder than normal winter. Let’s call that a middle piece in the puzzle. Middle pieces are always harder to see.

Then there’s the massive flooding in India, Pakistan and China last year. A fifth of Pakistan – an area the size of Florida – was under water at one time. Most people saw tht on the news. The detail is that climate experts blame it on a warmer-than-normal Indian Ocean causing the normal monsoons in the region to merge with the seasonal rains in Afghanistan for days rather hours, which would be normal. The result was another piece of the puzzle.

In the Asian end of Russia, temperatures last summer reached above 107 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in recorded history. I don’t think I even saw that on the U.S. news, but you’ll find it if you go looking. It was part of the same heatwave that hit Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the U.S. Even with the cold December here, 2010 was the hottest year on record.

Speaking to journalists in Cancun in November, Dr. Saleemul Huq, senior climate change fellow at the International Institute for Environmental Development and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, dismissed climate change deniers. Specifically, he targeted those in the U.S. Senate, whose opinion he contrasted to that of people in the developing world who are directly affected by extremes like the Pakistan flooding.

“In the developing world, everyone knows something damned strange is happening to the weather,” said Huq, a Bangladeshi scientist based in London, England.

The latest “damned strange” thing happening, and the latest piece of the puzzle, is in Australia – not at all part of the developing world. For those who haven’t gone looking for this piece of the puzzle, you can find it here: http://bit.ly/iiJrKu.

Northeastern Australia has disappeared under a flood one official described as “biblical” in size. As of Sunday morning, an area in the states of Queensland and New South Wales the size of Germany and France combined was under water. Rainfall for December was nearly three times the monthly normal, and it was still raining on January 3 (Australia is a day ahead of the U.S.).

To understand how that piece of the puzzle affects Kentucky, Queensland produces half of the world’s coking coal, or met coal as it is known here. According to the newspaper The Australian, prices can be expected to rise to $300 USD per tonne from $246 USD (about $272.16 from $223.17 per short ton).

Lest you think this is good news for Kentucky, consider the fact that this is also expected to lead to a steel shortage (affecting the auto and construction industries in Kentucky), and will almost surely to increased electric bills, since most of Kentucky’s electricity comes from coal. Rates have to be approved by the public service commission, but not the cost of the fuel used to produce the electricity. You’ll find the effects of the Australian flooding under “fuel adjustment,” on your bill.

Puzzles don’t always fit together the way you expect.

While a recent study by the University of Maryland showed people who watch Fox News are 30 percentage points more likely to believe that climate change is a hoax than people who don’t watch it, people who read the Sydney Morning Herald probably aren’t going to make the same mistake.

In a powerful story in this morning’s edition, the SMH lays out the case for climate change in no uncertain terms. Adam Morton writes that the global aid agency Oxfam estimates the number of people who died because of weather anomalies in the first nine months of 2010 doubled over 2009, that 1998 is the only year in history hotter than any year after 2000, and that 2010 marked the first time that recorded temperatures in northern Russia topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can find Morton’s story at http: http://bit.ly/ffr6PT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it plans to write new rules on carbon pollution from power plants and refineries within the next 12 months.

Carbon-containing gases such as carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases that have been shown to trap heat energy near the Earth’s surface, contributing substantially to climate change. Fossil fuel power plants, mostly coal-fired, and petroleum refineries account for nearly 40 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., the EPA estimates.

The new rules will be proposed as part of a settlement agreement with states, local governments and environmental groups that banded together to sue the EPA for failing to properly enforce the Clean Air Act. After a comment period beginning early in 2011, the new rules for power plants are expected to be released in July. New rules for refineries are expected in December 2011. Both sets of rules would take effect in 2012.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement that carbon rules will make for healthier kids and families, and lead to job creation.

“Carbon pollution poses serious threats to Americans’ health, our economy and our future. We’re pleased that EPA is working to deliberately bring this dangerous pollution under control, focusing on the biggest polluters first,” he said. “This is a major endeavor and the timeline laid out in today’s announcement balances the need for public input with the urgency to act quickly.”

The new rules are a step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels, a target set by the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, and again in the Cancun Agreements approved just two weeks ago during the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Mexico.

Those agreements are not legally binding and do not have to be ratified by the Senate, since the convention has already been ratified. However some Republican members of Congress are already looking for ways to take away EPA’s ability to regulate emissions in an effort to hamstring the Obama administration’s ability to live up to such agreements.

With many Republicans denying that climate change exists, or at least denying that man contributes to it, the administration is likely in for a fight over the new rules when the new Congress convenes.

Nations meeting in Cancun to address the effects of climate change reached agreements that most expect to be the framework for a legally binding treaty to be negotiated in the coming year, and perhaps be approved during a meeting in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011.
Meetings lasted until 2 a.m. local time, when delegates approved the deal over the objections of Bolivia, which gained on support from other nations, according to reports from inside the closed-door meeting.
The agreements keep alive the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was ratified by all countries except the United States, and create a Long-term Cooperative Agreement which brings the United States into parity with the rest of the world.
Perhaps most importantly, the agreements show that there is universal consensus among the world’s governments that climate change is real, and that man’s activities are a major contributor to that change.
“Cancun has done its job. The beacon of hope has been reignited and faith in the multilateral climate change process to deliver results has been restored,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. “Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause. They have shown that consensus in a transparent and inclusive process can create opportunity for all,” she said.
“Governments have given a clear signal that they are headed towards a low-emissions future together, they have agreed to be accountable to each other for the actions they take to get there, and they have set it out in a way which encourages countries to be more ambitious over time,” she said.
The Cancun Agreements state the world’s intention to:
• prevent global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius
• reduce emissions of 25-40 percent by 2020
• establish a “Green Fund” with money from developed countries to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate climate change
• establish a program to curb carbon emission and reduce atmosphere carbon through reforestation and the prevention of deforestation (this program will also support a market for carbon credits for forests, proving a financial incentive for countries not to cut trees)
• create a mechanism to transfer technology from developed countries to developing countries to assist with adaptation to climate change and mitigation of pollution.
Greenpeace was generally supportive of the deal. Though it acknowledged that it does not go far enough, the global environmental organization said it is movement in the right direction. It pointed out that while the agreement set out the mechanism to establish a fund to help developing countries combat the effects of climate change, that fund will be empty.
“Cancun may have saved the process but it did not yet save the climate,” Greenpeace International Climate Policy Director Wendel Trio said in a statement. “Some called the process dead but governments have shown that they can cooperate and can move forward to achieve a global deal.”
The organization faulted the United States, Japan, Canada and Russia. Japan and Russia had said they will not sign a second commitment to the Kyoto protocol, and Canada, while not as explicit, also did not want to continue that treaty. The United State never ratified Kyoto in the first place, and held out for an agreement that covers all of the points set out in a document written at the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen last year.
Non-governmental organizations at the meeting this week said the agreement reached includes virtually everything that was in the Copenhagen Accord.
Details of the 100-page Cancun Agreements will emerge over the next several days, and negotiations on this document will continue for the coming year. Delegates will meet again Nov. 28-December 9, 2011, in Durban, South Africa.

The United Nations negotiations to address man-made climate change are still ongoing in the Moon Palace Resort in Cancun, Mexico. Draft texts were released late Monday afternoon of two agreements — one on a second commitment by countries that signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol limiting emissions and setting up a fund to help with mitigation in developing countries, and the other to bring the United States into a comparable treaty.
Response among non-governmental agencies is generally positive, though they are not happy with the fact that no actual money is committed, but the non-governmentals don’t matter. There are 194 countries involved, and all of them have to agree on every point or nothing goes forward.
After two weeks of everyone at the Conference of Parties (COP16) blaming the United States for hanging up the process the blame is now shifting to Bolivia, which has said it will reject the texts put forth tonight.
Word went around earlier that delegates were trying to change flights because the meeting is expected to run into Saturday.

On the final day of the 16th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the atmosphere in Cancun has changed.
I have been here for 14 days, and every day the number of emails and the number of Tweets on Twitter has increased.
Not today.
The 30-40 emails per night have ceased. The Twitter “fail whale” has yet to breach this morning.
The delegates met long into the night last night, and it’s not expected to be any different today. Observers are still hoping for a set of agreements that will lead to a legally binding protocol in Durban, South Africa, next year. With still no agreement on major points and Russia joining Japan in opposition to a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol that was agreed to in 1997, no one expects a legally binding agreement this year.

If there is one thing that is agreeable to all of the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, it is the need for transparency.
The United States has lamented the lack of transparency in the reporting of pollution output by other countries. Bolivia daily calls for transparency among negotiators. China says that every nation should be as a transparent as it is.
But for all of the hue and cry for transparency, the United Nations just isn’t made that way. It is not and never will be a transparent organization, and the COP is positively byzantine. It’s too big and too complex to ever be accessible to anyone who doesn’t make their fulltime vocation.
It’s no wonder that the science of climate change gets pushed into the weeds. In order to get the science, anyone interested in reporting or even attending the meeting must first hack through a jungle of jargon. There is COP16, COP/MOP, UNFCCC, IPCC, REDD, REDD Plus, AWG-KP, AWG-LCA, AOSIS, SIDS, LDC, NGO, BINGO, Annex 1, Annex 2, CCS, CDM, NAMAs, mitigation, adaptation.
This is by no means a complete list.
Even hardcore policy wonks get confused. A colleague covering one of the negotiating sessions related how two delegates from different countries negotiated one of the finer points of climate change policy for several minutes before one finally asked the other which policy document was under discussion. I asked one long-time observer about CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) only to be asked what the acronym stands for, and another was unsure what BINGO (Business and Industry Group) is. Andy Revkin, environmental blogger for the New York Times’ environmental blog Dot Earth, related in a post yesterday how an inaccurate description of the scientific conclusions on climate change made it into a draft proposal to be considered by delegates. The mistake basically hinged on where the word “unequivocal” appeared in a sentence.
Once participants, observers, NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) and the press have cleared a path though the forest of esoteric lingo, they must then navigate a crocodile-infested swamp of international politics. Everyone here has an agenda, and it is virtually always hidden.
The U.S., for example has set up a single email address through which all questions for its delegation must be routed. When I sent a question about the projected decline of coal production in Appalachia, which now supplies 42 percent of the nation’s coal, and how that might affect the U.S. negotiating point, the answer I received was “We have received your message and we will take your request into consideration.” The question was sent Nov. 30, and they are apparently still considering.
A couple of days ago a “spontaneous” protest broke out in one of the rooms, after which security guards led the demonstrators outside where they met with the Bolivian representative, who had a speech already prepared for the occasion.
This morning I stopped in the room where the BINGO (Business and Industry Group) meets before time for the meeting to begin. I was there for less than five minutes when I was informed that it was a closed meeting and I would have to leave. This is the group that includes the people interested in carbon capture and sequestration, and one participant whom I met on the street informed me that the CCS subgroup even excludes the rest of the business and industry people from its daily strategy session, which is held in the corner of the room, away from prying eyes and ears.
So much for transparency.
Unfortunately, all of these opaque proceedings have effectively obscured the real reason these meetings take place to begin with. That reason is the one short, scientific phrase that Andy Revkin noticed was misquoted in a UN document earlier this week;
“3. Recognizes that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid twentieth century is very likely due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, as assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report;”
Translation?
Climate change is real, and we’re probably the main cause of it.

Diplomatic language is rarely clear, but Christina Figueres’ statement this afternoon on the progress of negotiations at the COP16 was both clear and grim.
While she attempted to be upbeat as she opened her remarks, it quickly became clear that negotiators are still miles apart on any deal.
Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said negotiations are stuck on how parties are going to proceed on continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty on approved in 1997 by every country except the United States. The treaty is the legally binding document under which most countries are attempting to reduce air pollution that causes climate change, and is the instrument through which rich countries in the developed world are to transfer money and technology to developing countries to assist in adaptation to climate change and mitigation of its effects. There is also disagreement on among the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA), the negotiations to bring the United States into an international treaty on climate change.
Thus far, Figueres said all developed nations and 32 developing nations have submitted proposals for consideration by the parties to the convention.
“It is more than we’ve ever had, and at the same time it is completely inadequate to meet the two-degree (temperature rise) limit set out in the Copenhagen Accord,” Figueres said.
Delegates from the 194 countries have three days left to reach an agreement on Climate Change before adjourning. If an agreement is not reached, the work will continue in November 2011 in Durban, South Africa.

Among the business suits, mini-skirts and the ubiquitous guayabera shirts, there is one garment that is nowhere to be found in the exhibit hall and negotiating rooms of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the corridors in Cancun, there are no T-shirts that say “Friends of Coal.”
In fact, even though coal is the world’s largest source of man-made greenhouse gases, there seems to be little interest in it here from either side.
The Conference of Parties or COP16 is a Mecca for lobbyists. Everyone here wants something from their national delegations, and most everyone wants to be recognized for their cause. There is a pyramid of boxes urging countries to “end your addiction” to fossil fuels, there are T-shirts saying “I (Heart) KP,” worn by those who want a second commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, booths set up by Greenpeace, the Climate Action Network and TckTckTck. But no where is there any information about coal – good or bad.
Even the coal lobby seems to be keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. A blog about the COP16 on the World Coal Association’s web site barely mentions the word coal.
But that doesn’t mean coal’s voice isn’t being heard.
According to Greenpeace, coal is likely to get something from the negotiations that it wants very much – an agreement among nations on carbon capture and sequestration.
CCS is a process by which carbon dioxide is captured from smoke-stack pollution, then injected into the rock strata through deep wells. There is one industrial-scale CCS facility in Norway, and there is a test site in Hancock County, Kentucky.
Paul Winn with Greenpeace in Australia, one of the world’s leading coal producing countries, said CCS results could be uneven at best, and it’s not a technology environmentalists would prefer not to see put into common practice.
“When they don’t have a suitable geography for sequestration, we’re likely to have significant leakage,” Winn said.
But despite that, there has so far been no huge outcry about the proposal, or about anything to do with coal.
The premier of an anti-coal movie in the posh Now Sapphire Riviera hotel five kilometers south of COP16 on December 6 drew only two members of the press and no delegates. Even the non-governmental agencies (NGOs in UN speak) weren’t there, and Greenpeace public relations people at the conference hadn’t even heard of the movie or the organization that made it.
Jim Gonzalez, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and head of the Renewable Energy Accountability Project (REAP) dismissed the low turnout.
“It’s nine in the morning. We’ll see what happens at 6 o’clock tonight” when a second showing was scheduled, he said.
Gonzalez’ son Jaime Gonzalez directed the film, which is mostly a collection of stock footage with original interviews with actress and anti-mountaintop removal activist Daryl Hannah and a handful of others.
The film is loaded with statistics about the environmental and economic damages attributed to coal, but it comes across as heavy handed and superficial. And despite the high-profile venue and the obvious attempt to be a major player in the debate over coal, the filmmakers have never visited the coalfields. Instead they relied on news reports, statistical information and the interview with Hannah, who was arrested during a protest at a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia.
The film is intended to support REAP’s call for a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, and a sunset law preventing plants from operating for more than 50 years.
Asked about the likelihood that it will have any effect on convincing those not already sure of coal’s downside, Jaime Gonzalez said he wasn’t concerned. The film isn’t intended to convince people outside the anti-coal movement, he said.
“Usually, the people who are on board are under-informed,” he said. “The base needs to be galvanized.”
And the “base” definitely isn’t galvanized at Cancun.

Filiberto Yam Buenfil, a Mayan from Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Mexico, near the Belize border, rests against one of the trees his people have planted in the jungle of Much

By SAM ADAMS

Cancun. This is the meeting place.
It is the place where United Nations delegates from all over the world are meeting to discuss climate change, the place where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean Sea, where the Yucatan Jungle meets the ocean.
But three hours south of here, in the heart of that jungle, is where the rubber meets the road. The predominately Mayan city of Felipe Carrillo Puerto has a population of 21,530, and it is poor. Here, residents will soon learn whether the United Nations’ reforestation program is a dream come true, or merely a dream.
There are 48,000 hectares of jungle (118,610 acres) surrounding the city in the Ejido de Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Much of that land was once plantation fields, but slowly the jungle is taking it back with help from the local residents. And as they help the jungle regenerate, they are looking to the jungle – and the carbon credits envisioned under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – to help them survive. They have named their 1,230-hectare (3,309-acre) pilot area appropriately in Mayan Much’ Kanan K’aax – “Together, we take care of the jungle.”
In Mexico, 70 percent of the land is owned by ejidos – community groups similar to land trusts in the United States. Unlanded laborers can belong to those ejidos and make their living from the land. There are 240 owners in the Ejido de Felipe Carrillo Puerto. But with large chunks of land being cleared for development of hotels and other tourism related uses along the coast, many more being given over to agriculture for agave (the key ingredient in tequila) and other crops, many people are being forced off that land and the forests that are left are becoming more and more precious.
That’s why the people of Felipe Carrillo Puerto are looking to United Nations reforestation program as a way to make money without cutting down all of the trees, and without leaving the land the government promised them.
This is important to climate change, because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and its production by man creates a blanket effect around the earth, holding solar radiation in and wreaking havoc with weather patterns. Since trees “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen, carbon from the atmosphere is effectively sequestered by the trees. The carbon is then stored in the wood until it is burned.
Filiberto Yam Buenfil, one of the ejido members, said through an interpreter that the people have been working on a pilot project at Much’ Kanan K’aax for 10 years, but it will take 35 for the canopy to close above them. The pilot project area is former plantation land used to extract a tree sap called sicte in Mayan or chicle in Spanish – the original chewing gum used by the Mayans and exported for commercial gum (Chiclets) until artificial gums were developed. There is little demand for the organic gum now, and the plantation at Much’ Kanan K’aax was largely a monoculture of gum trees fragmented by agriculture. It sequestered little carbon, and provided little natural habitat.
The group has now planted six species of native trees, including mahogany and yax che.
Ancient Mayans believed the yax che was the tree of life that held together the three levels of the universe. Those who lived a good life climbed the tree to the higher level of the universe, while those who didn’t sank to its roots in the underworld. It is still a sacred tree for the Mayans, but also a tree that they hope will be a tree of life for them today. It grows quickly, a cottony fiber that grows from it can be used for mattresses and pillows, and when its life cycle is over, it can be cut and used for paper and plywood.
The ejido is carefully measuring the carbon available from each species. The way they are doing this has now been certified by the Mexican government, but it demonstrates just how difficult it can be determine how much Carbon a tree holds.
David Lopez Meirlin of the non-profit U ‘Yo’ Olche said the process entailed measuring and cutting trees, weighing them, drying them, weighing them again, then burning the wood and measuring again. Though repeated experiments, they developed a formula that now allows them to place an expandable metal band around the trees five feet from the ground, and estimate the amount of carbon the tree contains.
They hope to sell this sequestration as credits to the energy-hungry hotels along the Mayan Riviera beginning next year, and also to investors internationally.
Whether this process will actually work is uncertain. The carbon credits were made possible by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, but Japanese negotiators at the COP16 said this week that their country will not sign onto any extension of the Kyoto agreement. Observers believe this will destroy the carbon market, and the $12 per ton of sequestration that the Mayans expect will evaporate.
If that happens, the dreams of the Mayans at Much’ Kanan K’aax may descend into the roots of the yax che.