Obama dips a toe and REDD gets let out of the cage

Barack Obama has made his first tentative steps towards Copenhagen, invoking the military implications of catastrophic climate change in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. While in Oslo the Norwegians evidently convinced him of the merits of their joint proposal with Brazil to limit deforestation.

This is the first major coverage of the thorn encysted issue of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). The basic idea is that deforestation and degradation (loss of carbon from forest activities) is a significant global emitter and can be knocked off fairly cheaply. Developed countries like the idea of being able to cheaply stop emissions in other nations to offset their own, while developing nations stand to earn significant income. Aside from concerns about the effectiveness of such offset/trading schemes, REDD is a minefield of dubious carbon accounting, self-interest, vested-interest consultants and secondary impacts (for example on forest dependent communities).

Brazil sees the Amazon as being able to support a ‘sustainable’ crop other than rubber and brazil nuts – offset dollars. A positive side effect could be stopping emissions, however, with Brazil keen to ensure that the mechanism does not only provide a ‘get-out-of-jail-relatively-cheaply’ card for rich nations.

U.N. climate supremo Yvo De Boer also delicately poured lukewarm water on the proposal by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS – 43 nations) and supported by 48 Least Developed Countries to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

The calm and erudite Grenadian diplomat and AOSIS spokesperson Dessima Williams informed the conference that “We bring empirical evidence to Copenhagen of what climate change is doing now to our states.” From the response of the rich nations it appears they’ll be taking back the reams of empirical evidence to use as sandbags.

Yesterdays ‘run-to-the-hills’ award was won fairly and squarely by a team from the E.U.-funded European Project on Ocean Acidification, a 27 institute, 100 scientist review, with The Guardian reporting that “The world’s oceans are becoming acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the last 55m years, threatening disaster for marine life and food supplies across the globe.” Fishing from the pier at Tinderbox may never be the same again.

The U.K. Met Office also released a report which shows that to have a 90 percent chance of keeping temperature rises under the magic two degrees, negative emissions (i.e. less than zero) and geo-engineering (such as artificial carbon draw down and artificial cooling) will be required with an emissions peak in the next few years.

The Australian, after putting in some solid journalistic work over COP15 thus far (excluding the re-hashing of one story two days running) had a stumble today, buggerising around in the corner with a meaningless story about how the Australian delegation is half as large again as the U.K.’s.

K-Rudd blamed the states for the enlarged contingent, though the PM didn’t disclose how many in-flight meal consultants or hairdryer logistics officers were travelling. The Oz, in a separate story on the same issue, did uncover a ‘baggage liason officer’ (really), though rumour has it that his job is more to do with explaining Kev’s coal addiction, our world-trailing targets, and Tony Abbot rather than having a hairdryer in the holster at all times. (I first speculated that the ‘baggage liason officer’s’ job was to explain what Peter Garrett actually does but this seems unfair in light of Garrett’s recent game-lifting).

Jacqueline Head, of Al Jazeera, has written a great story about Australia’s apparently paradoxical actions regarding climate change, with contributions from pre-eminent British science writer Fred Pierce and commentary from Leon Ashby, president of the world’s first (Australian) Climate Sceptics Party and former luminary of the resource development promotion astroturfing group the Australian Environment Foundation.

The piece opens with an observation on our national stocks of common sense:
“In a country that has suffered years of devastating droughts, catastrophic bushfires and soaring rates of skin cancers due to a gaping hole in the Ozone layer, one might expect a rising tide of popular and political pressure for the government to take steps to tackle climate change.

Not in Australia.”

Sceptic activity also came across the radar of The Huffington Post, who reported the onstage harassment of noted U.S. scientist Dr Stephen Schneider in Copenhagen by a lone sceptic who became agitated after Dr Schneider mentioned the Climategate affair. I’m trusting that Australia’s engorged delegation didn’t have room for an official ‘agitated lone sceptic’. Steve Fielding was probably busy anyway.

Back with more tomorrow at COPVoices. http://copvoices.blogspot.com/