The Bangkok meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended this week, with no progress among countries to commit to increasing the level of emission reductions for this decade. Why are the climate talks stalemated and what should be done to break the deadlock?
Without much fanfare, U.S. legislators last December unveiled a new climate bill that just might succeed in breaking the political gridlock that has blocked action on global climate change. The bill, co-sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME), is a sharp departure from the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House of Representatives last June but subsequently died in the Senate.
Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
It is generally understood that trees are good for the environment. That the forest will be an important ally in preventing global warming is a less known fact. The European Union (EU), however, seems bound to change that.
On the opening panel of the Arctic Science Summit Week, Jeff Miotke announced, “Climate change policy must be based on sound silence.” It was a poignant and telling slip of the tongue. Miotke, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary of Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental Scientific Affairs, joked that his error might have “just cost me my job.” Then he promptly corrected himself: “sound science not silence.” The audience at the March 2007 meeting, a veritable who’s who of leading polar scientists, burst into laughter.
Miotke’s Freudian slip was bittersweet given the failure of leadership on climate change from Washington in general and the White House in particular. The Bush administration’s legacy of denials has morphed into present-day foot-dragging. In November 2006 the shrill pronouncements of President Bush and his advisors prompted outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to note that climate skeptics “are out of step, out of arguments, and out of time.”
Wayne Gilchrest is a Republican Congressman from Maryland. He chairs the House Climate Change Caucus and has co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to 70% below 1990 levels. Because of his reluctance to deny human responsibility for climate change, Gilchrest was not chosen by Republican leader John Boehner to serve on the recently formed bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. At the end of March, FPIF contributor Michael Shank interviewed Gilchrest in Washington, DC about Kyoto, the congressional tipping point for climate change legislation, and the challenges posed by India and China.
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do. The conventional wisdom focuses on “cap and trade,” also known as tradable emissions permits. The Kyoto protocol, for instance, has instituted a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases (GHGs).
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do.1 Prudent people do not want to risk unacceptable adverse economic impacts, even if they are extremely concerned about global climate change. On the other side, equally prudent people do not want to risk accomplishing too little. The debate is stymied, even though several bills on global warming have been introduced into Congress. ÂThere will be no climate change legislation coming out of my committee this year, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) recently announced. ÂFrankly, I don’t know how to write it, and I don’t think anybody does.Â2