Monday, August 17, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Buy Less, Wear More

Posted: 15 Aug 2009 04:54 AM PDT

This CAP post was first published here.

Making your wardrobe less wasteful doesn't mean running out to buy the latest trend in (overpriced) purses made from reprocessed tires. In fact, it isn't necessarily about buying at all. It's about taking care of what you have and buying only what you will use.

Knowing what you own before you got shopping will save you the headache of buying clothes you don't need. Before heading out for a day of shopping, take a few minutes to look through your closet and make some mental notes of what you already have. This will avoid buying that yellow polo shirt that looks eerily similar to the one you bought at last year's end-of-season sale. You'll also save money and keep dust off your closet shelves.

And just because something is on sale doesn't mean you should buy it. Before rushing two armfuls of clothing to the register, consider when you are going to wear what you are buying. You might try going to another store before purchasing anything to decide if you really need it.

Or you could consider shopping at used and vintage apparel stories, which are a great way to prevent clothes from piling up at landfills. You can use Fashion Dig's store locator to find consignment shops or vintage clothing stores in your area.

Taking care of the clothes you already own is another way to get the most out of your wardrobe. Make your clothes last by following care instruction labels, and only wash clothes that are dirty. Try to find a dry cleaner that doesn't use perchloroethylene, a chemical that has been found to cause cancer and contaminate the air.

Wash your clothes in cold water when possible. It saves energy and your clothes won't fade as quickly as in hot water. Air drying your clothes also saves energy and extends the life of your clothing, and the sun's rays serve as a natural sterilizer if you have the space to hang your clothes outside. If you need to replace your washing machine, try to find a front loader that uses less energy and water than traditional washing machines. You can recycle your old washing machine, and the adventurous can attempt to turn theirs into a bread maker.

Paying special attention to leather garments and accessories will prevent you from having to replace them frequently. Keeping your leather shoes polished and treated to prevent water damage will help keep them in good repair. You can also give your shoes a second life by having them resoled for $20 to $40 instead of throwing them out.

Finally, see if you can find a new home for clothes you will never wear again before sticking them in the back of your closet. You can get money back for your clothes by taking them to a consignment shop or a vintage clothing store, but you can also donate them to a local charity. Chances are there's still plenty of life left in them, especially if they've only been worn a few times.

The most crucial missing element in U.S. media coverage of climate change: The ethical duty to reduce GHG emissions

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 01:51 PM PDT

Okay, maybe the most crucial missing element in US media coverage of climate change is an actual understanding of the dire nature of the issue or maybe the still unjustifiable "balance" whereby the other "side" is treated as serious sources, rather than as long-wrong disinformers or maybe how they are blowing the economics issue (see Must-read (again) study: How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — "The media's decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress" and countless examples here).  Still, Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State University has a case to make — and his excellent blog ClimateEthics (a Time magazine Top 15 pick) is the source of this guest post.

I. Introduction: Scottish Versus The US Climate Change Debate
In March, the U.S. State Department asked me to speak to the Scottish Parliament about climate-change policies as they were debating a new climate-change law.

Before I spoke, a Scottish Parliamentarian made an argument that I have never heard any US politician make. The topic of this speech is also curiously largely absent in US media climate change coverage.  The Parliamentarian argued that Scotland should adopt this tough new legislation even though it might be expensive because the Scotts had an obligation to the rest of the world to do so. In other words, those countries most responsible for causing climate change have ethical duties to reduce their emissions even if it costs are significant.  That is, high-emitting developed countries like the United States must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of justice.

In late June, Scotland passed the landmark climate change law that was being debated during my March visit, a law that requires a 42% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, rising to 80% by 2050. (BBC, 2009) On the day the law passed, Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney told the Parliamentarians that passing the world-leading legislation was justified because the climate change affects all the people on of our planet and the Scots had a duty to make the commitments in the law. (TWFY 2009)

The US Congress is striving to pass legislation that would for the first time create binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions 12 years after most of the rest of the developed world bound themselves to reduce emissions in the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, there is not the faintest murmur in the US climate-change debate or in the media's coverage of the unfolding US legislative fight about duties and responsibilities that the United States has to the rest of the world to reduce the threat of climate change. This is so even though the legislation that has passed the House would require 17% reductions by 2020, a commitment that is only 40% of the Scottish requirement.

It can be seen that the Scottish commitment is even more ambitious compared to the US proposed legislation given that Scotland has already reduced its climate change causing emissions by 16% compared to 1990 levels while the US performance amounts to a 17% increase in emissions during the same period. (Devine and Bristow, 2009)(USEPA, 2009).  If you measure GHG emissions on a per capita basis, the Scots' emissions are already only about a half of the US emissions. (10.69 tons CO2e per capita for Scotland, 19. 78 tons CO2e per capita for the US) (FOES 2009, UCS 2009)  For these reasons, the 42% Scottish reduction target by 2020 compared to the US House's proposed legislation of 17% reduction by 2020 must be seen as a huge commitment motivated by Scotland's acknowledged duty to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions.

The climate change debate in the US shows no sign of acknowledging that US climate change policy should be guided by duties to the rest of the world. On August 8th, the New York Times reported that climate change legislation in the United States Senate was being opposed by 10 moderate democrats because it threatens to add to the cost of goods like steel, cement, paper and aluminum.  (Broder 2009)

With the exception of waning arguments against climate-change law on scientific grounds, opposition to climate-change policies in the United States is almost always based on claims that climate-change programs are not in the  national, state or local economic interest.

For instance, U.S. Congressmen Tim Holden, D-Pa. (17th district), recently explained his opposition to federal cap-and-trade legislation because it would increase transportation, energy and business costs while reducing manufacturing jobs. Again and again, politicians opposing climate-change policies justify their position by pointing to some increased costs to their constituents. (Holden 2009)

II. Why Climate Change Must Be Seen As An Ethical Issue

Yet, climate change is a problem that clearly creates civilization challenging ethical issues.  This is so because several distinct features of climate change call for its recognition as creating ethical responsibilities that limit a nation's ability to look at narrow economic self interest alone when developing responsive policies.

First, climate change creates duties because those most responsible for causing this problem are the richer developed countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to the problem's harshest impacts are some of the world's poorest people in developing countries. That is, climate change is an ethical problem because its biggest victims are people who can do little to reduce its threat.

Second, climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world. Climate change, for instance, directly threatens human life and health and resources to sustain life, as well as species of plants and animals and ecosystems around the world.

Climate change harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, heat, and intense storms and damage to homes and villages from rising oceans, adverse impacts on agriculture, social disputes caused by diminishing natural resources, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, and the destruction of water supplies. Climate change threatens the very existence of some small island nations. Clearly these impacts are catastrophic.

In fact, there is growing evidence that climate change is already causing great harm to many outside the United States while threatening hundreds of millions of others in the years ahead. For instance, a recent report by the Global Humanitarian Forum  found that human-induced climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is now affecting 300 million people around the world. (Global Humanitarian Forum, 2009) This report also projects that increasingly severe heat waves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030.

The third reason why climate change is a moral problem stems from its global scope. At the local, regional or national scale, citizens can petition their governments to protect them from serious harms. But at the global level, no government exists whose jurisdiction matches the scale of climate change. And so, although national, regional and local governments have the ability and responsibility to protect citizens within their boarders, they have no responsibility to foreigners in the absence of international law.

For this reason, ethical appeals are necessary to get governments to take steps to prevent their citizens from seriously harming foreigners.

Despite the fact that climate change creates obligations, the U.S. continues to debate this issue as if the only legitimate consideration is how our economy might be affected.

The US press almost never challenges those who oppose climate change on the basis that policies will increase cost. This is curious because the debate at the international level has created a consensus among all countries that those developed countries most responsible for climate change should take the first steps to reduce its enormous threats. In fact the senior George Bush administration in 1992 agreed that the rich developed countries including the United States should take the lead in combating climate change when it negotiated and finally ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (UNFCCC Art. 3, 1992)

In the United States, however, even those supporting climate-change policies often follow the same implicit reasoning on cost by responding that climate-change policies will create jobs. Although this may be true, depending upon the actual policies implemented, this limited focus on job creation undermines the need to help Americans see their ethical duties while giving unspoken support for the notion that the reasonableness of climate change policies turns on whether they will create jobs.

Because the  majority of climate scientists believe the world is running out of time to prevent very dangerous climate change, a case can be made that there is a urgent need to turn up the volume about American duties to others to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

Economists can help us figure out how to meet our obligations at lowest cost, yet increased cost alone is not a sufficient excuse for failing to meet our responsibilities.

By:
Donald A. Brown
Associate Professor, Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law,
The Pennsylvania State University
dab57@psu.edu

References:
AEA Energy & Environment, (AEA), 2009, Greenhouse Gas, Inventories for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:  1990 – 2005, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Facts and Figures, http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/news/facts/

BBC, 2009, Landmark legislation to help Scotland tackle the threat of climate change has been passed unanimously by MSPs, . http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/ hi/ uk_news/ scotland/ 8115597.stm

Broder, John,  2009, Senators Issue Warning on Climate Bill, New York Times, http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 08/ 06/ senators-issue-warning-on-climate-bill.

Devine, Jim, MP and, Bristow Muldoon MSP, (Devine and Bristow), 2009, Livingston Constituency, How Scotland really compares with Ireland, Norway and Finland
http://www.jimdevine.org.uk/EZEdit/popups/uploads/How%20Scotland%20really%20compareshttp: _04.cfm%20with%20Ireland%20Norway.pdf

Friends of the Earth Scotland (FOES), 2009, Facts and Figures, http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/news/facts/

Global Humanitarian Forum, 2009, Human Impact of Climate Change.  http://www.ghf-geneva.org/

Holden, Tim, 2009, Letter to Constituent.

They Work For You.com. (TWFY), 2009, Scottish Parliament debates, 24 June 2009, http://www.theyworkforyou.com/sp/?id=2009-06-24.18787.0

Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 2009, Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions

US Environmental Protection Agency, (USEPA), 2009,  Inventory Of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions And Sinks:1990 – 2007. http://www.epa.gov/ climatechange/ emissions/ downloads09/ InventoryUSGhG1990-2007.pdf

United Nations, (UN), 2009, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate,  http://unfccc.int/ resource/ docs/ convkp/ conveng.pdf

The European trading system has worked — and a new report details lessons for U.S. climate bill

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 10:28 AM PDT

Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years they would never achieve. It now seems clear they will meet their commitment under the terms of the protocol. It will become increasingly difficult for those who don't want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to the European Trading System (ETS) as an obvious failure — as discussed in this June CP post. CAP's Austin Davis has some lessons learned for U.S. legislation.

This week the German Marshall Fund of the United States released a useful new analysis of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) designed to offer powerful and positive recommendations to U.S. policymakers as they debate the design of a potential cap-and-trade program.

The paper's authors hail from a wide range of prestigious academic and the clean energy backgrounds: Michael Grubb, chief economist of the UK's Carbon Trust and chair of Climate Strategies; Thomas L. Brewer, research director of Climate Strategies; Misato Sato of the London School of Economics; Robert Heilmayr of the World Resources Institute; and Dora Fazekas of Climate Strategies. Their premise for the report is straightforward:  While American opinion makers and policy makers vaguely know that Europe has a cap-and-trade system in effect, the lessons we can learn from it and its real and substantive benefits are too often ignored in our public debate. This report aims to fix that.

And the reason Americans should know more about the EU ETS is because it's working. Since 2005, Europe's cap-and-trade system has established a carbon market worth €40 billion (US$56.6 billion) annually and, despite initial stumbling blocks, has reduced emissions by 50-100 million metric tons of CO2 per year (or by around 2.5-5%). Simultaneously, European businesses benefit from Europe's transition to a carbon-free economy since "the EU ETS has increased overall profitability in all participating sectors" while supporting a sizeable boom in clean energy jobs in spite of the global recession.

However, Europe's multifaceted successes required Europeans to carefully evaluate their ETS and reconfigure it on the fly – uncertainties and tribulations that American consumers business can largely avoid. The Europeans divided their cap-and-trade scheme into three phases to provide pause for analysis and reevaluation; this allowed them, for example, to halt the unfortunate practice of European utilities whereby they passed almost all of the costs of carbon onto consumers, reaping huge windfalls from the ETS's free carbon allocations. While Waxman-Markey effectively shields consumers from these abuses "by giving power sector allowances to distribution companies, which then sell these to generators and have an obligation to use the revenues in part to support energy efficiency programs," this kind of acumen seems rare among American policymakers and rarer still in the public debate:

"Many U.S. analysts and politicians know about the EU ETS, but not the analysis that shaped it, the stages of its evolution, or what has been learned. Yet the history of the EU ETS is rich in lessons. This report presents some of these insights, with a particular focus upon the issues around allocation of emissions allowances, costs, competitiveness, and carbon leakage impacts of a cap-and-trade system."

And those insights need to be on the tips of policymakers' tongues. While aspects of the EU ETS still need reform – like its "much greater than originally anticipated" reliance on emissions offsets from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in spite of CDM's gross inadequacies in pricing, measuring, and effectiveness – this report provides extremely pertinent information at a crucial time in the domestic debate.

The report's ten primary conclusions and recommendations are as follows:

1. Emissions trading works

Recommendation: Develop an emissions trading system that learns from and improves upon the EU experience.

2. Everyone will learn

Recommendation: Build in a capacity to strengthen the system if and as experience supports this.

3. Prices can be volatile and impacted by numerous unforeseen factors, which to date have reduced prices below expectations

Recommendation: Consider carefully the lessons from the EU experience on price volatility, around unavoidable uncertainties in emission projections, the contribution of other policies, and systematic tendencies to underestimate the abatement and innovation responses.

[JR:   The volatility problem can be dealt with through 'price collar plus' -- though certainly because the 2020 target is too weak, U.S. emissions allowance prices are likely to stay on the low side.  That said, our Energy Information Administration has a much better handle on total US emissions than Europe had, which is one reason why they issued to many par myths and the price crashed.]

4. GDP impacts are small

Recommendation: Don't let concerns about macroeconomic impacts dictate the environmental targets, Economic impacts have been consistently less than projected.

5. Industry can profit

Recommendation: Resist inevitable pressures from industry to maximize free allocation, but engage companies more constructively in designing and understanding the full implications of the system.

6. International competitiveness impacts are limited to a small number of industry sectors

Recommendation: Concerns about competitiveness impacts should focus on a few potentially exposed industries. For these, tailored solutions should be pursued.

7. Free allocation degrades efficiency and introduces risks either of windfall profits…

Recommendation: Design to minimize net impacts on the aggregate profitability of incumbent sectors, whilst boosting the profitability of cleaner technologies and innovators. Consider possible parallels between electricity production and upstream allocation to refineries.

[JR:  And that is the point of the US allocation scheme -- see Robert Stavins: "The appropriate characterization of the Waxman-Markey allocation is that more than 80% of the value of allowances go to consumers and public purposes, and less than 20% to private industry."]

8. … or additional inefficiencies

Recommendation: A balance of free allocation between absolute and output-based should strive to minimize economic distortions as well as windfall profits. The balance between these two negatives should reflect each sector's ability to pass through prices, its exposure to international leakage, and its potential for emissions abatement through radical innovation or demand reduction.

9. There is a compelling economic rationale to maximize auctioning

Recommendation: Maximize auctioning.

[JR:  Can't argue with that.  Waxman-Markey makes what allocations are needed to get a bill passed, but over time the percentage auctioning rises pretty steadily.]

10. Unilateral border adjustments may be a politically appealing way to respond to domestic pressures from special economic interests, but they risk serious problems in the international trade system

Recommendation: Negotiate multilateral arrangements to contain or structure the use of border adjustments, focused upon minimizing emissions leakage, as and when specific problems can be demonstrated.

As an American, it's difficult to avoid feeling embarrassed by successes of the EU ETS – in spite of its missteps – relative our complete failure to address climate change thus far. While Europe reaps the economic benefits from a clean energy transition and significantly reduces its carbon emissions, we have made almost no legislative efforts on either front. Whether the next report comparing Europe and America's climate legislation is as one-sided as this one will be decided in the Senate during the coming months – and, hopefully, this paper will help make sure that we can hold our own.