By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian’s U.S. environment correspondent

What is the state of play for climate change legislation in America?

Barack Obama put his reputation on the line at Copenhagen by saying America would act on climate change. Now it’s up to Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey bill last June which would set a price on carbon, and would put progressively tighter limits on greenhouse gas emissions with a 17 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050.

Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, passed a nearly identical version of the bill out of the Senate environment committee last November. But action in the Senate has stalled. Boxer stared down a Republican boycott to get a bill through her committee. But Democrats are deeply reluctant to throw themselves into another full-on confrontation with Republicans so soon after the bruising battle over health care reform.

What happens next?

U.S. environmental organizations say there is still a good chance the Senate will move ahead on a climate change bill this year. A triumvirate of Senators — Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham, and Independent Joe Lieberman — are working to craft a climate change bill they think would have a good chance of getting support from Republican as well as Democratic Senators. Kerry had earlier promised a blueprint late last year. The newest deadline is at the end of this month. The Senate is then expected to begin its push in the spring.

Did the Copenhagen climate summit hurt or help prospects for the bill?

Obama’s 13 hours on the ground diplomacy at Copenhagen was seen as evidence of his commitment to action — which should help give momentum to the bill. The deal reached at Copenhagen by the biggest emitters — though it fell far short of hopes for the summit — also includes important concessions from China to begin curbing its rate of emissions, and to open its books on how it cuts emissions. That will help neutralize the argument that China is not doing its bit, and that America would give up competitive advantage if it took on energy reform.

Will the Senate bill look just like Waxman-Markey?

Not entirely. Kerry and Graham are determined to get Republican support, which means there will mean a number of hard compromises for environmentalists. One is an expansion of nuclear power, with Republicans pushing hard for more cheap government loans for new plants, plus streamlined regulations. There is also a push for offshore oil drilling. Other ideas include limiting the kinds of industries that would be compelled to begin reducing their emissions. One proposal under discussion would only put an emissions cap on power plants.

What about the U.S. midterm elections?

The Democrats anticipate losses in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 2010 elections which will further impair the prospects of getting climate change law. But even the approach of the 2010 elections are making an impact.

Democratic leaders say the Senate must pass climate change bill by spring 2010, if there is to be any U.S. legislation at all. Democrats from coal and old industry states will be cautious about signing up to sweeping energy and climate laws in the run-up to midterm elections in November 2010. The oil, coal and manufacturing lobbies have been spending millions to frame the proposed laws as measures that will fuel unemployment and increase home heating bills.

What if the Senate fails to act?

Climate change legislation may stall in the Senate, but the federal government, and several states and cities are moving ahead. The business world is also coming on side. The Obama administration has raised fuel efficiency standards for cars. California, the biggest state, has ordered power companies to get one-third of its electricity from clean and renewable energy by 2020. Perhaps most importantly, the Environmental Protection Agency said last month that it would begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions. However, some Republicans want to keep the EPA out of that role. The Senate is due to vote on January 20 on whether to delay EPA regulatory action.

How does this affect a global deal to curb carbon emissions?

One of the key outcomes from Copenhagen is a commitment from industrialized countries to raise $100 billion a year from 2020 to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to climate change. But America’s promise to mobilize its share of the $100 billion depends on the establishment of a carbon market — which will be created through climate change legislation. Obama administration officials have said America will raise its share from a variety of sources — not just government funds. No climate change law means no U.S. carbon market and sharply reduced funds for poor countries.

First published on The Guardian.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of U.S. obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the U.S. Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tons of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialized world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial is being published on Dec. 7 by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

Spread the news on what the føck is going on in Copenhagen with friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, or smoke signals.

Anyone watching an hour or two of the “hearings” in Manchester last weekend on which this report was based could not fail to have been similarly cheered. The idea behind them was simple: we hear endlessly about the havoc unabated climate change will wreak, about long-term emissions targets and diplomatic wrangling over who will commit to them. But the countless ingenious ideas for tackling the problem emanating from universities, thinktanks, front rooms and sheds across the planet get rather less attention. So the Guardian teamed up with the Manchester International Festival to mount a search for the best of them.

Why Manchester? As the world’s first great industrial city, it was arguably the birthplace of man-made warming. So just as Robert Angus Smith pioneered our understanding of atmospheric pollution here in the 1840s, experts and thinkers from around the world would gather in the city to grapple with the longer term legacy of its once mighty mills and factories.

To underscore the project’s connection to the city’s carbon hungry past, the hearings were held in Manchester Town Hall, Alfred Waterhouse’s neo-gothic cathedral to manufacturing and mercantilism. Above the scientists, entrepreneurs and inconoclasts presenting their ideas, the great vaulted ceiling documented the countries and cities to which the city once dispatched its wares; outside the mosaic floors were decorated with the bees that embodied its 19th century self-image as a hive of industry.

The hearings themselves were perhaps best described as a cross between a judicial inquiry and an episode of the British TV show Dragons’ Den. Chaired by Lord Bingham – formerly Britain’s most senior judge – a panel of experts heard half hour pitches from advocates for each of 20 ideas shortlisted following a global appeal for innovative solutions to climate change. The panel, in consultation with the eminent climate scientist John Schellnhuber, picked the 10 most promising ideas – somewhat reluctantly since our experts felt all of the proposals aired in Manchester were worthy of more consideration. Now it’s over to you: you can watch short video presentations of each of the ideas featured in this supplement on our website and vote for the ones you think will be most effective. Better still you might help to implement them by offering support or capital.

The ideas heard in Manchester ranged from the wackier edges of science fiction to well-advanced products poised to roll off production lines. From the wilder shores came Professor Stephen Salter, an Edinburgh University engineer with a plan to increase the whiteness of clouds using a fleet of remote-control sailing ships spraying a fine mist of seawater into the air. But anyone tempted to dismiss his plan as the product of a crank who has spent too much time in the shed would do well to note that Salter was the man behind the Edinburgh Duck, a pioneering 1970s design for harnessing wave energy.

Another variation on the marine theme came from former management consultant Tim Kruger who proposed tipping large amounts of lime into the ocean. This, he claimed, would increase the sea’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as reduce the dangerous acidity which has also been a byproduct of decades of emissions. His compelling presentation was only slightly undermined by his own admission that such a plan would currently be illegal.

Mark Capron, a former naval engineer from California, was also frustrated by prosaic legal considerations. His idea involves farming algae out at sea and then digesting it in thousands of “giant stomachs” under the surface. The algae would absorb carbon dioxide and produce methane which could be used to produce energy. The trouble is that he fears building a prototype in his garage would breach local safety regulations.

Among the more developed ideas presented, Peter Scott made the case for simple, super-efficient cooking stoves. Burning wood (and other biomass) for cooking, largely in the developing world, was responsible for 10-20% of global emissions he told the panel. His stoves could cut the annual CO2 emissions of a household by 1-3 tonnes. The only downside, he noted ruefully, was that a local manufacturer in Malawi had been so successful that he had splashed out on a fleet of SUVs. “I haven’t worked out the CO2 implications of that yet.”

Another idea tantalisingly close to crossing the threshold from brainwave to reality was proposed by entrepeneur Mike Mason. He described dishwasher sized “ceramic fuel cells” which could produce enough electricity to power a home as well as hot water. Because they were vastly more efficient than the power stations which produce electricity for the grid, and also obviated the need for hugely wasteful transmission of power along along hundreds of miles of cable, they could achieve massive carbon savings. And the first domestic models would go on sale next year with a price tag of around £3,000.

Many green activists are intensely sceptical about the search for technological “fixes”, particularly those that aim soley to mitigate the effects of warming. They warn that trying to invent our way out of trouble is a way of avoiding the changes to our way of life that are really required. But by no means all the advocates presenting in Manchester placed their faith in technology.

One of the most quietly inspiring presentations came from Rosemary Randall, a Cambridge psychotherapist who had been puzzled by the ability of people at the same time to acknowledge the threat of climate change and in no way change their high carbon lifestyle. Randall designed a series of “carbon conversations” in which she encourages people to explore their attitude to consumption, identity and status. People who have been on her course of six meetings typically reduce their emissions by a tonne immediately and then plan to cut in half within two to five years. Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation offered an even simpler prescription: consume less. It might even make us happier too.

Some of the ideas presented were so lateral that even our panel of seasoned experts looked wide-eyed at times. An engaging Australian accountant and farmer called Tony Lovell showed photographs of arid, dust-blown landscapes alongside images of lush vegetation. The difference? The farmer on the green side had been forcing his cattle to mimic the great migratory wildebeest herds of the Serengeti.

If some of the schemes outlined in Manchester would once have seemed too radical to attract serious attention from governments and money men, the presence of climate secretary Ed Miliband at the event suggested that policymakers now recognise that they must cast the net for solutions wider than in the past. Here we lay out the best ideas that our net brought in. Now, Mr Miliband, what will you do with them?

This piece was written for The Guardian by Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in Britain.

Ten months have passed since pointing out that we have, at best, 100 left before a new, far more dangerous phase of global warming begins. The “chatter” of concern is getting louder. But at the same time, the political system in Britain has been wracked and absorbed more by its own inadequacies than by this fundamental threat to civilisation.

The fall of the Roman Empire was due to a large extent, writes the historian Adrian Goldsworthy, to a system of government that became inward-looking and weakened by internal dissent. Gone was the singular focus from the golden days of the Republic, when a small, trusted coterie of around 1,000 administrators ran the whole empire efficiently.

In its place was a bloated, inefficient and suspicious bureaucracy of 35,000, seeking power and personal advantage. Worst of all, gripped with self-obsession, they took their eyes off the Goths at the gates, and paid a devastating price. Any similarities to actual people alive today and current political circumstances are, of course, entirely unintended and circumstantial. Goldsworthy points out that every age can project its own experience onto the Romans, which just goes to show how much they did actually do for us.

In the last ten months, support for needing to take radical action over countdown period has been far and deep. Nobel prize winners from Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC to Wangari Maathai of the Kenyan Green Belt movement have leant support, thousands of individuals have too, along with groups whose memberships run into the many millions. Even “spiderman”, in the form of French free climber Alain Robert, has risen, literally, to the cause.

Yet, in spite of the support that investing in the great transition could give to a weakened economy, the new and additional resources being made available are paltry compared to the support given to the financial sector. Around the world, as states become more acutely aware of the threats to food and energy security stemming from our ecological overreach, they are taking action. But they are just as likely to be eyeing the natural resources of other, weaker states to meet their rising consumption, as they are to be changing consumption patterns to live within their environmental means. Land grabs for food and biofuels seem to hit the news with growing frequency.

Technological optimism is all around us. “You cannot predict the future and unimagined solutions come along; they always have done,” we are reassured. Whenever there is a great problem, human ingenuity finds a techno-fix. Who could have predicted the chemical fertilisers for our food system, which thwarted Malthusian pessimists? The problem is, with the timeframe to act on climate change, those solutions that are meant to allow us to carry on as usual should have arrived years ago and be in place now. Now, with at best 90 months left on our clock, we have a challenge that will be a bit like the first time a child jumps from the top diving board into the swimming pool.

Both terrifying and thrilling, we need to brace ourselves for the fastest descent in the use of fossil fuels that a society like ours will ever have faced. It will need technology, behaviour change and regulations to ensure fair shares and equity on the way down. We don’t know everything that will happen on the way down. But if we get it right, I suspect that we will rediscover several important things along the path that have been largely lost or forgotten: something about the importance of community, about our own ingenuity and ability to do things for ourselves, and something also about how deeply connected to, and ultimately dependent on nature, we really are.

The following post was written by The Guardian’s Dunan Clark

The climate change debate often seems to focus more on the problems than on the solutions. It’s not hard to understand why: almost every week brings another scientific report predicting impacts sooner and more devastating than we were previously expecting.

With so many gloomy headlines, it would be easy to believe that irreversible runaway climate change is now inevitable. But that’s not true – at least, not yet. The world is packed full of ingenious people with ideas for tackling global warming, either through emissions cuts, the removal of CO2 from the air or even the reflection of sunlight into space.

The problem for policymakers, investors and others attempting to pave the way for a low-carbon future is knowing which of these many solutions to get behind. Should we, as some scientists have suggested, spend our environment budgets on painting the world’s roofs white or filling the Sahara with solar panels? Or might it be better to focus on reducing demand? If so, is that better done with, say, energy monitors in homes or the encouragement of bottom-up campaigns to give green makeovers to towns and districts? Or do we need to do all the above?

In order to work out which climate solutions are likely to be the most effective, and to showcase new ones that haven’t yet made the headlines, the Guardian has teamed up with the Manchester International Festival (MIF) and high-profile thinkers in an ambitious project called the Manchester Report.

The first stage is to invite anyone with a plan for tackling climate change to let us know about it. Whether you’re an an inventor, a geo-engineer, a policy-maker or a member of the public with a great idea to encourage greener lifestyles, we want to hear from you. Simply complete and return the short form available on the festival’s site.

A dozen of the most promising applicants will be invited to present their idea to a high-calibre panel of experts in front of a live audience at Manchester Town Hall on the weekend of 4 and 5 July. The panel, chaired by Lord Bingham, previously the UK’s chief justice, and featuring leading lights from the worlds of science, business and policy, will rate the various ideas in terms of their feasibility, impact and commercial potential. .

The results of this landmark event will form the basis of a report – the Manchester Report – to be published two weeks later at the end of the festival. The report will not only be made available online but also sent to policy-makers, to help them decide which low-carbon solutions to support in the run up to this year’s crucial climate summit in Copenhagen.

Republished via The Guardian Environment Network

America’s oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama’s plan to build a clean energy economy.

The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass “cap and trade” legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

A defeat for the bill would have global consequences. The international community is depending on America, as the world’s biggest per capita polluter, to set out a firm plan for getting off dirty fuels in the months before crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Without such action, the chances of getting a deal that scientists say is vital to limiting dangerous climate change are much reduced.

Those high stakes have intensified the fight for control over America’s energy future. “There are an awful lot of people who have an awful lot to gain and lose and they have been acting accordingly,” said Evan Tracey, founder of the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), who has tracked the proliferation of climate change ads.

But it is an unequal contest. Liberal and environmental organisations, as well as the major corporations that support climate change legislation, say they are being vastly outspent by fossil fuel interests.

“These guys are spending a billion dollars this year convincing Americans that they are clean, green, cuddly and warm,” said Bob Perkowitz, founder of the eco- America PR firm. Perkowitz is to brief the White House yesterday on a new environmental messaging strategy. “The enviros are getting their message out, but they are being outspent by 10 to one.” he said.On advertising, the ratio is about three to one. The oil and coal industry spent $76.1m on ads from 1 January to 27 April, according to CMAG data seen by the Guardian. Environmental groups, led by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, the Environmental Defence Fund and the Sierra Club, spent $28.6m on ads in the same period, Tracey said.

Despite its global significance, the fate of the draft “cap and trade” bill now lies in the hands of just a dozen Democrats, who have yet to back Obama’s energy transformation. The Democratic leadership cannot take their support for granted. Seven of those pivotal Democrats received campaign donations in excess of $100,000 from the oil and gas industry, coal producers, and electricity firms during last year’s elections, according to an analysis provided to the Guardian by the Centre for Responsive Politics.  Another two received more than $90,000 last year.

Environmentalists say those Democrats, who hold the balance of power on the committee, pose a far greater threat to the chances of passing climate change legislation than a full vote in the House of Representatives. “If they can get that bill through the subcommittee what is going to emerge is a piece of legislation,” said Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defence Fund. “So this is ground zero for the vote.”