Coming soon: "Kyoto Lands"

"So boring, boring, boring," sighed the handsome delegate from the Third World country. "The Annex I parties just blah-blah-blah about absolutely nothing. We have no part in this. I made my silence speak for me today," Margaret declared as we trudged our way to the subway stop last night. The hour was near eleven o'clock. Tiredness had been earned.

We spoke of the issues during the half-hour ride "home." What did these two delegates expect of the land-use and forestry piece of this Protocol puzzle? Emily, a second delegate, sweetly volunteered that the bookkeeping would likely become a new great source of graft and corruption. "After all," she said with a twinkle, "what do YOU think will happen when, hypothetically of course, the numbers do not look so good and some computer whiz knows how to change them without anyone noticing?" "Further," she teased, "what do YOU think will happen to that park when gold is discovered under that so-called Kyoto land?"

Only a few Americans have taken notice of this land-based mischief called LULUCF (Land use, land-use change and forestry). Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of the recent book, "The Satanic Gases," is one of those few. This March, Michaels wrote on the increase in global-scare reports.

His article included, "The Gore team is banking on some type of national weather disaster this summer. They hope to call attention to global climate change and their belief that uncaring Republicans refuse to pass the Kyoto protocol on global warming. This UN document will cost the country a fortune and has the potential to relegate an amazing percentage of our land - the United Nations calls it Kyoto lands - to their watchful eyes.

They are about to release a report [note, that report was released here in Bonn this week.] that puts just about all U.S. forested land in this category, as well as much of our farmland. That's easily half the country."

Land-use and forestry, as an emission reduction project, would be projects that reduced or eliminated logging, prevented the conversion of a forest to agricultural uses and prevented humans from releasing carbon dioxide from the soil, litter, and the trees themselves. The creation of national parks, wilderness areas and conservation easements that would remove land from use changes in perpetuity are actions taken to address the duration aspect of land and timber. Land use and forestry would have the goals of emission avoidance, reduction and mitigation. Such a project is located today in Bolivia. The size includes 1.5 million acres. The partners are the Bolivian government, The Nature Conservancy, American Electric Power, BP Amoco, and PacifiCorp. Funding has been $9.6 million initially. The project life is scheduled to be 1997-2026. Estimated total carbon benefits are 7 to 14 million metric tons of carbon.

The Nature Conservancy also developed the Rio Bravo Carbon Sequestration Project in Belize and recently initiated a third project in Brazil, the Guaraquecaba Climate Action Project.

How can land use projects address the permanence issue? The Nature Conservancy last night tackled this question in a two-hour side bar titled "The Duration of Carbon Benefits from Forest-based Activities in the CDM." Co-hosted by Societe General de Surveillance, PartnerRe Agricultural Services, and EcoSecurities, this program discussed project design, liability offset, buffers, certification, ton years, and insurance.

No-till agriculture today, and the eventual abandonment of agricultural lands through in-perpetuity agreements should change the face of land. As the World Bank had written, "At the end of the commitment period a combination of reduced pressure for agricultural conversion and increased local demand for environmental amenities may result in indefinite protection of forests that would otherwise have been destroyed for ephemeral economic gains."

"Ton years" is a response to the permanence issue of land use and forestry. "Ton-year" crediting schemes were explained during the sidebar this way: Projects would receive fractional credits for each year that a ton of carbon is kept out of the atmosphere. [Just a new age way of being paid not to plant?] A conversion factor of ton year to perpetual ton will be chosen by the policy makers.

Some delegations, feeling decidedly land poor, critically attack the inclusion of land use and forestry in the CDM mechanism as the creation of entitlement. They argue that either large countries or rich countries, or both, would be allowed through this use of sinks to plant or proclaim wildlands their way around stringent and severe energy belt-tightening at home.

June 14, 2000

Sinks raise NGO dander

Just why exactly don't environmental NGOs want sinks projects to be credited as a mechanism?

This and other burning questions like "What is carbon leakage?" were asked and answered yesterday at one of the two press briefings scheduled this week.

To my lead question, Robert Watson, Chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) answered forcefully that the rub resulted from the difference between science and politics.

"Scientifically," Watson stated, "the removal of carbon from the atmosphere by forests and land-use change is good for the climate. But, politically, this use of sinks might take the focus off reductions of emissions from energy production."

"Trees, also, are not a permanent sequestration of carbon," Watson continued. "Additionally, monitoring and measuring might result in undue credits or undue debits because carbon changes on the ground surface may not result in atmospheric changes."

Answering my second question within the first, Watson explained that carbon leakage occurs when deforestation is slowed in one spot, only to show up in another. Watson stressed that driving forces behind any deforestation needed to be so well understood that such an unintended consequence as pushing deforestation to a new area did not result.

Environmentalists see sinks to be loopholes. They don't want this easier path available. They are strident about it. A global coalition of environmental groups including WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth issued yesterday a press release warning that the Kyoto Protocol was "Heading for the Rocks."

"If governments don't pull the helm over, the Kyoto Protocol is heading for the rocks," said Jennifer Morgan of WWF International.

The forestry activities of Canada, Japan, Australia, USA, New Zealand, Sweden and France were said to "favour rules which would give incentives to chop down old-growth forests and replace them with new plantations from which they can claim pollution credits."

Other voices chimed in. "The Kyoto Protocol is slowly but surely being destroyed as governments seek to open up loophole after loophole. It would allow them to avoid doing anything to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels, which is the primary cause of climate change," warned Karla Schoeters of Climate Network Europe.

Mie Asaoka of Kiko Network added to the protesting chorus. She claimed, "Just as surely as we are seeing the world warm, and the first signs of climate disasters ahead like the floods in Mozambique and the big storms in Europe at the end of 1999, the main polluters are trying to escape putting their own house in order."

While these NGOs are certain the climate will self-destruct without their stringent climate policies, a different view was put forward by Bert Metz, Co-chair of Working Group III on Mitigation.

Metz's slide presentation at the press briefing concluded with his pronouncement that "Low Greenhouse Gases scenarios are possible WITHOUT any specific climate policy." Metz's special report on emissions scenarios utilised six computer models. The modellers assumed the driving forces of climate changes to be:

• Population (rates coming down)

• Economics (world is richer)

• Technology (most important variable)

• Land-use

• Energy (use of renewables growing)

Metz's computer-generated scenarios raised the upper end of a temperature increase projection to 1.0 degrees-5.0 degrees Celsius from the older projection of 1.0 degree-3.5 degrees Celsius by year 2100.

It is worth repeating Metz's conclusion.

"Low greenhouse gasses are possible without any specific climate policy."

June 13, 2000

Only Losers Invited?

"Only projects that would not have been economic without CDM credits should be eligible. The CDM must not become a 'top up' for projects that are already profitable, as these will proceed anyway. The idea must be to encourage projects that would not otherwise be able to proceed."

Greenpeace declares that the above is a feature that must be included in any CDM. Their briefing paper is titled The Clean Development Mechanism: Used by renewable energy or Abused by coal & nuclear?

The entire paper continues the groan and the howl that has been heard ever since Kyoto in 1997. As a South American nation delegate said yesterday, "The minute Kyoto said what needed to be done, the affected players began to seek ways to do it at the least cost."

Does that sound unreasonable?

How sustainable is any project, anyway, that cannot pay for itself?

Greenpeace seems to be trying to have it both ways. Their paper pridefully states that "many renewable technologies are now tried, tested and cost effective." Is cost effectiveness a virtue only when associated with wind, solar or biomass, but not when connected to coal or nuclear?

The defense of this seemingly schizophrenic position is that social engineering is more valuable than mere economic losses. "The CDM is not solely designed to reduce carbon emissions. It is also mandated to assist developing countries to achieve sustainable development."

Keep in mind that what is "sustainable development" is truly in the eye of the beholder. Greenpeace, being omniscient, knows that neither coal, nuclear, large hydro nor sinks projects can be sustainable. Thus, those technologies are to be excluded. The claim is that "only 100% emission free, 100% sustainable, will ensure the CDM's environmental integrity."

Why is Greenpeace railing against coal and nuclear? Calling them "dirty industries," Greenpeace argues that "clean coal projects lead to the locking in for long periods of time carbon-intensive capital stock and send entirely the wrong signals to the energy market regarding its investment direction. Nuclear power is similarly unsustainable because of nuclear reactor safety, waste disposal and transport concerns, and the risk of nuclear weapons technology proliferation. It is therefore all the more worrying that the CDM could be used as a vehicle for nuclear and coal promotion."

Why is WWF railing against the same things? Jennifer Morgan, WWF's Director Climate Change Campaign, supports the position that "an environmental screening process should ensure that all CDM and JI (joint implementation) projects pass a sustainability test before being eligible for certified emissions reductions under the CDM. As a basic principle, nuclear power, large hydro and coal are non-sustainable technologies and should explicitly be excluded from the CDM. Sinks projects (carbon sequestration) should not be eligible under the CDM, as Article 12 explicitly deals only with emissions reductions."

How can it be that there is anyone in this year 2000 that thinks they know just exactly all the energy technologies that both exist and will exist? Why would any member of this incredible generation of change and astonishing discovery feel compelled to make finite lists?

Perhaps all this ranting is better understood when the basic Greenpeace and WWF positions are revisited.

Environmental NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF have never liked any Kyoto mechanism. They view all of the mechanisms (CDM, JI, trading and even the EU bubble) as loopholes. They want domestic reductions, period. They want the wrenching transformation of society that Al Gore's EARTH IN THE BALANCE demands.

This is the short list of permissible energy technologies:

• Thermal and electric solar power

• Wind power

• Small hydroelectricity

• Geothermal

• Biomass

• Wave and tidal power

The EU supports such a list and the U.S. does not.

Humanity needs all the energy it can muster from all the sources available. Each type of technology on this list has its own special application in some place, for some time and at some cost; and each has its own environmental problems. Not one on this list is a panacea. Even taken altogether, these technology options do not now make a significant contribution to our energy supply, and their ability to do so in the future will take decades.

Additionally, renewable is not necessarily sustainable. For instance, close inspection finds wind generation so tied to large parcels of land that, in that sense, it could be classified, like coal mining, as an extractive-based activity with inherent limitations.

But, the environmental NGOs are quick to warn of the calamity that will befall us all if parties don't do it their way. "If these considerations are not taken into account, we run the serious risk of postponing the measures that, in light of the increasingly frequent climate-related disasters, are becoming ever more urgent."

June 12, 2000

Cashing-in on global warming

John Palmisano is busily setting up European and Washington, DC, offices expecting to make a ton -- on tons of carbon.

Palmisano exemplifies the business entrepreneur ready to profit from hot air. If the United Nations is going to categorize carbon dioxide emissions as pollutants, then there will be those, like Palmisano, who will make markets advising energy, transportation, manufacturing and agricultural players about trading in the new commodity.

Palmisano resigned in early May from Enron to create his own company. John Palmisano & Associates now specializes in commercial and policy aspects of greenhouse gas trading, of energy efficiency and renewable energy, and of emissions trading, offsets, and bubbling in the United States. He isn't alone.

Like Palmisano, other hopeful businessmen flock around perennially-worried non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and indefatigable nation state delegates as the formal week of the Twelfth Session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB-12) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) gets underway today in Bonn, Germany.

For many, this begins their second week, not first.

An informal workweek ended Friday.

Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) summed up what the mood was by the end of last week. "Some participants have expressed concern over what they feel is undue haste in these meetings to produce the basis for negotiating texts," ENB wrote. "The land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), mechanisms and adverse effects groups," seemed especially rushed. The comment continued, " While they applaud progress, they fear that the urgency in the lead-up to the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6) means negotiations may be pushed more rapidly than they are prepared for at this stage. Indeed, some delegates sense that these informal meetings have reached the limits of their mandate."

At a pace that is too rapid for some and far too slow for others, all aspects of the Kyoto Protocol are being word-smithed. The goal is to have a final document for both negotiation and acceptance by November's COP6 at The Hague. Ratification is envisioned by 2002. Fast or slow, all hands are hard at work.

Representatives from the business community, including the International Chamber of Commerce and the International Climate Change Partnership, are working hard on matters that don't begin to make any sense unless one has been following along for several seasons. They recommend that parties agree to create clear definitions on fungibility and tradability, to eschew quantitative restrictions in the mechanisms, to provide clarity on the proposed institutional controls for Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM), to create a strong and fair compliance system, and to approve mechanisms for fast-track CDM crediting.

Are you following this?

Is anyone discussing the negligible effect upon the climate that is projected even when this treaty is fully implemented?

No.

All speakers mirror roughly what the FCCC Executive Secretary, Michael Cutajar, keeps repeating. His warning goes, "The global climate system is being destabilized by the economic and demographic growth of the last two centuries. The impacts of warming are mostly negative. Climate change is a case of environmental dumping on a global scale."

Oh?

Climate Change Meetings in 2000

June 12, 2000