The Economist’s take on the recent announcements by the G2 regarding Copenhagen.
By committing early to a target of 17%, Mr Obama has avoided another pitfall: promising more than Congress looks ready to deliver. The Senate cap-and-trade bill has promised 20% reductions, but it will have a hard road to reach 60 of 100 votes (enough to beat a Republican filibuster). And any climate treaty has an even higher hurdle to clear: 67 votes to ratify. That will be near-impossible if Mr Obama cannot charm out of his new friends, the leaders of China and India, measurable plans to limit, if not cut, their own carbon emissions. And if Mr Obama fails to deliver what he has signed up to, the damage to America’s reputation, and his presidency, will be incalculable.
A globalized world indeed. The brunt of responsibility may be placed on Mr Obama, but the truth is Mr Wen’s position does not suffer the same sort of public scrutiny.
We finished the last post on the G2 topic with a question:
And a question: who is, these days, the most important man alive?
That is anyone’s guess. However, The Economist is also running an online debate, This house believes that China is showing more leadership than America in the fight against climate change. As I write, 73% of voters agree.
Something for bipartisan American politicians, and their constituents to ponder on.
Punchline: being the greatest means acting like it.
Went to see An Education today, at the behest of a friend (cheers, Rali!).
It’s a proper great film, filled with that very special type of moralism and incentive to hard work that you get a lot of around here in Britain. The idea that we may not all be perfect, but that we can make it if we work hard enough, the explicit point that there are not shortcuts – and the encouragement that if we mess up, someone will be there to give us a hand.
Truly inspiring. Should be part of any PhD-student-worried-about-expectations’ curriculum.
Secret weapon for days when I’m sleepy: my “Wake Up” Playlist.
1. The Editors – All Sparks
2. Jimmy Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower
3. Kaiser Chiefs – Oh My God
4. Queens of the Stone Age – Go With the Flow
5. Joy Division – Shadowplay
6. Radiohead – Electioneering
7. The Clash – London Calling
8. Metallica – Ronnie
9. The Killers – Uncle Jonny
10. The White Stripes – Cannon
11. The Hives – Mad Man
Highlights are 8 to 11. Ronnie is Metallica’s nicest, most melodic song apart from the odd ballad, while Uncle Jonny is The Killers’ coarsest, meanest; both are as badass as you like. The last two (Cannon and Mad Man) are especially grouped together to blow your sleepiness into the weeds: quadruple espresso, on the go, through the nose.
The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming
In its Climate Change report, the IEA considers the world needs to keep the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere below 450ppm, to assure temperature does not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius globally. In page 12 of the downloadable excerpt, they describe this being an overshoot trajectory, with concentration peaking at 510ppm in 2035, staying there for some 10 years and then dropping down. Sounds risky, but anyway.
What the report also does is to put a price tag on the reductions needed (calculates the area beneath the Marginal Abatement Curve): $10.5 trillion in energy-related investment, of which 3/4 between 2020 and 2030, because that is where most reductions occur.
So, from an Intergenerational Equity I have to ask: if the burden of decarbonizing the economy falls so heavily in this generation, and it is for us to leave to the next generations a world even better than the one we received, does it make sense to borrow, now, against the future? Regardless of the cost? Borrow to invest, borrow like crazy, and share the bill? If it is our saving that will allow the next generations to live sustainably, how much would they be willing to share the burden with us?
Punchline: the question is always who gets the tab.
The big two are on it – and the real important people sort it out among themselves. First, Mr Obama:
Obama will go to the December 7-18 talks in Denmark on December 9, the eve of a ceremony in nearby Oslo, Norway, where he will collect the Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. … The White House said the United States will pledge in Copenhagen to cut its greenhouse gas emissions roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a drop of about 3 percent below the 1990 benchmark year used in U.N. treaties.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will attend global talks in Copenhagen that aim to forge the basis of a new climate change treaty, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, calling the trip a show of cooperativeness.
China will reduce its carbon intensity — the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of GDP — 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.
“This is a voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions and is a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change,” Xinhua said, quoting the State Council or cabinet.
In the same day… I’ve said before that the age of cooperation needed a push. It seems the push has been achieved in the right place: behind the screen and the cameras, where agreements can be achieved without maniac screams from side to side.
Punchline: hope. And a question: who is, these days, the most important man alive?
Marketeers, careful what you advertise. Remember those glossy illustrations with smoking doctors coming back to haunt the tobacco industry? The oil industry may have done something similar in the past (via Environmental Economics):
Source: http://www.hypothetical-bias.net
it doesn’t get any more ironic (moronic?) than this, does it?
Punchline: sometimes, even marketeers will tell the truth. Are we listening?
Grave sites, once sold and occupied, are intended to be occupied for a very long time, and their sale can’t easily be negotiated if more valuable uses turn up. So there is less turnouver than in other kinds of real estate, with predictable consequences, as this Globe article attests: Supply limited, demand eternal, graveyards fill up.
Is this important in other settings? Yes, indeed. Conservation banking and biodiversity offsets, for instance, are proving a tough pill to swallow by many environmentalists, politicians and public at large. To help tackle some of the questions, conservation easements (the contracts that create a conservation bank) are being sold to society at large as meant to ensure conservation of a species in perpetuity.
The brown pelican, listed as an endangered species even before the 1973 U.S. Endangered Species Act existed, is officially back from the brink of extinction, the Interior Department said on Wednesday.
Source: Reuters
I don’t think there were any conservation banks for Brown Pelicans, but if there were, bank owners and investors would find themselves in a very odd situation, loathing the good news because their assets and investments would have become worthless overnight. 3 S policy, anyone?
Punchline: things change. Don’t create now the perverse incentives of later.
