climate change mitigation

Worth about $20 million per word

Eliciting gasps and goosebumps at a press conference this morning at the Clinton Global Initiative in midtown Manhattan, Richard Branson, CEO of the mega-conglomerate Virgin Group, announced a commitment to invest a staggering $3 billion toward solving climate change, focusing his investments on developing biofuels and other oil alternatives. The transcript of his public vow follows:

After months of gloom and doom, Gore’s all about solutions

Against a backdrop of eight American flags -- ceremoniously arranged behind a podium emblazoned with the scales of justice -- Al Gore took the stage at the New York University Law School early this afternoon to deliver what was billed in press releases as a "major policy address on global warming."

Major it was -- in terms of the media turnout, anyway. There were nearly a half-dozen cameras rolling and most major publications represented.

It was also major in terms of length (over an hour of factually dense commentary, sans visual aids) and gravitas (a more somber, more serious, dare I say more presidential Gore than the one we've seen pumping his fists and cracking jokes as he roars across the country on his climate lecture circuit). And major enough to have elicited rumors, as reported in the Independent yesterday, that the White House is hoping to steal Gore's climate thunder.

As with most policy addresses billed as "major," the rhetorical flourishes were legion. Take, for instance, the way Gore framed the address:

Media Shower: UK edition

Welcome to the (not-so-special) U.K. edition of Media Shower!

First off, we have the BBC's focus on climate change chaos. Over at the BBC website, you'll find eight short documentaries (which don't want to play for me), in-depth coverage of climate change (including this guide), and a SETI@home-inspired climate change experiment.

And then we have this:

This commercial is part of the Friends of the Earth "The Big Ask" campaign, which is about "tackling the biggest question the world faces -- how do we stop dangerous climate change?" Doubt you'd see an ad like this here in the States.

Adaptation

The other issue that's come up in Pielke-Roberts Mild Disagreement '06 is the relative importance of mitigation vs. adaptation, climate-change wise. A couple of issues need to be distinguished here.

First, the substance: According to Roger, the "Kyoto Protocol, as is the FCCC under which it was negotiated, is in fact strongly biased against adaptation." It frames money spent on adaptation as money directly drained from mitigation (which it says would make adaptation unnecessary). I'm no expert on the FCCC, but this jibes with what I've read, and I agree with Roger that it's not a smart way of framing things.

Peak oil, coal, and bizarre optimism

So last week Salon ran a big story on peak oil by Katharine Mieszkowski. It was decent, though focused a bit too much on the loony fringes. I guess the temptation to do that is irresistible when trying to make a long story about the Hubbert Curve and Venezuelan oil reserves compelling.

In response, John Quiggen (at the usually excellent Crooked Timber group blog) wrote a response I can only characterize as bizarre. But the comments under the post don't treat it as bizarre. And Ezra Klein linked to it as though it proved something, and then ladled more bizarritude on top. So either these guys -- who I regard as considerably smarter than yours truly -- are missing something, or I am. Let's take a tour.

Quiggen's point, briefly, is this: Peak oilers falsely exaggerate the problem by conflating oil with fossil fuels generally, implying that running out of the former means running out of the latter. But there's actually tons and tons of coal left, and it wouldn't be too hard to do what we do with oil with coal instead. So, you know, global warming's a problem, but running out of oil isn't.

I think that's a fair summary. And I think it's nuts.

GAO to investigate whether Cooney’s editing was illegal

Chris Mooney has a good catch today: Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have asked the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, to determine whether recently-resigned Bush administration official Philip Cooney violated federal statutes against obstruction of Congress and false statements.

Cooney, as you may recall, is the former oil industry lobbyist, turned chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality who edited research reports to play up uncertainties about global warming. Turned, uh, oil industry lobbyist. (To everything turn, turn, turn, eh?)

Lautenberg and Reid are also asking the Climate Change Science Program to retract the redacted reports, writes Chris. "I don't know what kind of results this will achieve, but it's a new tactic, as well as a strong demonstration that Congress is getting serious about the science abuse issue."

Forget about CO2 for a minute already

It's a dirty secret in the blog world that occasionally bloggers will recommend that their readers read something that they themselves have not read. (Gasp.) But not this blog! At least, not any more! Or rather, at least not this time!

Yesterday I was going to recommend "Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate" (PDF), a new paper by Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz (found via their excellent Prometheus science blog). But then I realized that it's a PDF, it's wonky, it's written in dry academic language, and y'all would never read it. And really, how could I expect you to if I hadn't? So last night, I read it.

My initial reaction: They make an extremely good point. Enviros need to reconsider their monomaniacal focus on cutting CO2 emissions.

Go beneath the fold for a brief summary.

Calling Africa to action on climate

Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai and George W. Bush agree on one thing: developing nations need to do more to curb the threat of climate change. (Of course, they don't agree on the much more vexing question of whether overdeveloped nations -- one highly overdeveloped nation in particular -- should do anything to address the ballooning problem ...)

On climate change, other nations get cracking while the U.S. is slacking

The recent Milan conference on the Kyoto Protocol started out with a bang — a commotion of rumors about Russia’s ratification of the treaty — and went out with a whimper, offering no clear signal that the landmark accord on climate change would ever become international law. But one important development became clear amidst the […]