What 2 degrees would look like

Despite the optimism of climate gurus like Robert Stavins and Trevor Houser with the results of Cancun, a temperature rise of 2 degrees is almost certain and adaptation is here to stay. That's why these two videos by CCAFS (a new CGIAR initiative focused on climate change, agriculture and food security) are interesting. They feel overly scripted and a bit contrived (hasn't the Sahara been shifting back and forth for centuries, even before it had any help from us?), but nevertheless provide some anecdotal illustrations of what agriculture looks like when temperature varies by two degrees. There is a lot of adaptation (e.g. growing trees to shade coffee plants) and also some shift to livestock cultivation as hotter temperatures make land more arid and marginal. Maybe the latter is another sign that we should all just go paleo...

After Copenhagen? Cochabamba

Depressed about the failure of Copenhagen? Bolivian president Evo Morales isn't:

On Tuesday, Morales called the Copenhagen summit "a triumph of the people" because "the presidents came, proposed and went without hearing, but this time they could not impose their declaration."

It's not that he's not concerned about the earth, he just has an alternate solution in mind:

Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday he's inviting activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative climate conference following the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements.

The leftist leader said the April 20-22 meeting in Cochabamba will include indigenous peoples, social movements, environmentalists and scientists as well as governments "who want to work with their people."

Morales said the meeting is meant partly to pressure industrialized nations to accept that they have a "climate debt" to poor countries and will work toward an international court on environmental crimes.

Other topics will include a "universal proposal for the rights of mother earth" and the transfer of technology.

Stavins on Copenhagen

Robert Stavins breaks down the Copenhagen Accord in some depth. Overall he seems guardedly optimistic with what emerged at the last minute, and reminds us that

The climate change policy process is best viewed as a marathon, not a sprint.

Update: Jeff Sachs, on the other hand, is not happy (and specifically unhappy with Obama). And neither are greentech businesses, as carbon prices fall in response - definitely not a good sign for the prospects of a strong international carbon market any time soon.

Via Mankiw and Environmental Capital.


Update 2: Sachs' nemesis Bill Easterly is similarly unimpressed, but thinks expectations were far from realistic.

Regarding carbon markets, prices were down ~10% - substantial, but not an unmitigated disaster. This is a highly unscientific comparison, but note that at current exchange rates these prices are around $15/ton of CO2e, compared to a proposed cap of $28/ton in the early years of Waxman-Markey, so we are still very much in the same ballpark.

Copenhagen in a sentence

Via Tim Haab at Environmental Economics:

Technologies to cut back carbon dioxide emissions from factories and vehicles that feed the global economy add costs to fuel, food and more, an option that appeals neither to industrial nations struggling with the global economic meltdown or developing nations trying to ramp up economic growth.

Is green technology like vaccine technology?

India's former intransigence on GHG emissions has unfortunately quickly reasserted itself after a brief hiatus.

Then just yesterday, India’s prime minister ratcheted up the rhetoric again, reiterating the need for developed countries to provide developing countries with the wherewithal to clean up their economies—essentially for free. From the FT:

“Climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public good,” [Prime Minister Manmohan] Singh told the United Nations-sponsored Delhi High Level Conference on Climate Change: Technology Development and Transfer. “Such an approach has been adopted successfully in the case of pharmaceutical technologies for the benefit of HIV/Aids victims in developing countries. The moral case of a similar approach for protecting our planet and its life support systems is equally compelling.”

Chinese officials quickly echoed the call, saying that access to advanced technologies was “crucial” to the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit. That repeated call for unfettered access to clean technology is the one thing that unsettles big companies (such as General Electric, Siemens, and the like) which are otherwise thrilled about the business prospects of a world dedicated to rebuilding its entire energy infrastructure.

The comparison of green technology to pharmaceutical technology is a brilliant one for developing countries – if I were them I'd ride it for all it’s worth.