Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Climate Progress


Climate Progress


Veterans Day, 2029

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 10:03 AM PST

This post is an update of Memorial Day, 2029.

resource_wars_cover.jpgThe two worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise, Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly than either of those: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don't leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source — if not the source — of two of our biggest recent wars.  As the NYT reported in August:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide — possibly even a world beyond 400 ppm — crosses carbon cycle tipping points that threaten to quickly take us to 1000 ppm.  It is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees — hundreds of millions by the second half of this century — all clamoring to occupy the parts of the developed world that aren't flooded or desertified.

In such a world, everyone will ultimately become a veteran, and Veteran's Day and Memorial Day will fade into obscurity, as people forget about a time when wars were the exception, a time when soldiers were but a small minority of the population.

So when does this happen?

Thomas Fingar, "the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst," sees it happening by the mid-2020s:

By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change "could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," Fingar said, while the United States will face "Dust Bowl" conditions in the parched Southwest….

[Glad to see somebody serious understands what is coming (see "Sorry, delayers & enablers, Part 2: Climate change means worse droughts for SW and world")].

He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world.

Significantly, the UK government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, laid out a similar scenario in a March speech to the government's Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster. He warned that by 2030, "A 'perfect storm' of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions," as the UK's Guardian put it.

You can see a five-minute BBC interview with Beddington here. The speech is now online. Here are some excerpts:

We saw the food spike last year; prices going up by something in the order of 300%, rice went up by 400%, we saw food riots, we saw major issues for the poorest in the world, in the sense that the organisations like the World Food Programme did not have sufficient money to buy food on the open market and actually use it to feed the poorest of the poor.

So this is a major problem. You can see the catastrophic decline in those reserves, over the last five years or so, indicates that we actually have a problem; we're not growing enough food, we're not able to put stuff into the reserves….

So, what are the drivers? I am going to go through them now very briefly.

First of all, population growth. World population grows by six million every month — greater than the size of the UK population every year. Between now and… I am going to focus on the year 2030 and the reason I am going to focus on 2030 is that I feel that some of the climate change discussions focusing on 2100 don't actually grip…. I am going to look at 2030 because that's when a whole series of events come together.

By 2030, looking at population terms, you are looking at the global population increasing from a little over six billion at the moment to about eight billion….

… you are going to see major changes but particularly in the demand for livestock — meat and dairy….

… By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50%. Can we do it? One of the questions. There is a major food security issue by 2030. We've got to somehow produce 50% more by that time.The second issue I want to focus on is the availability of fresh water…. The fresh water available per head of the world population is around 25% of what it was in 1960. To give you some idea of this; there are enormous potential shortages in certain parts of the world… China has something like 23% of the world's population and 11% of the world's water.

… the massive use of water is in agriculture and particularly in developing world agriculture. Something of the order of 70% of that. One in three people are already facing water shortages and the total world demand for water is predicted to increase by 30% by 2030.

So, we've got food — expectation of demand increase of 50% by 2030, we've got water — expectation of demand increase of 30% by 2030. And in terms of what it looks like, we have real issues of global water security.

…. where there is genuine water stress [in 2025 is] China and also parts of India, but look at parts of southern Europe where by 2025 we are looking at serious issues of water stress….

So, water is really enormously important. I am going to get onto the climate change interactions with it a little bit later but water is the one area that I feel is seriously threatening. It is so important because a shortage of water obviously interacts with a shortage of food, there are real potentials for driving significant international problems — what do you do if you have no water and you have no food? You migrate. So one can have a reasonable expectation that international migration will occur as these shortages come in.

Now, the third one I want to focus on is energy and, driven by the population increase that I talked about, the urbanisation I talked about and indeed the movement out of poverty…. For the first time, the demand of the rest of the world exceeded the demand of energy of the OECD….. Energy demand is actually increasing and going to hit something of the order of a 50% increase, again by 2030.

Now, if that were not enough… those are three things that are coming together. What will the world be like when that happens? But we also have, of course, the issue of climate change. Now, this is a very familiar slide to you all but we are shooting for a target of two degrees centigrade, a perfectly sensible target. There is enormous uncertainty in the climate change models about that particular target. It is perfectly reasonable to say 'shouldn't we be shooting for one degrees centigrade or, oddly enough, it is perfectly reasonable to say 'shouldn't we be shooting for three degrees centigrade', the only information we have is really enormously uncertain in terms of the climate change model.

Shooting for two seems a perfectly sensible and legitimate objective but there are enormous problems. You are talking about serious problems in tropical glaciers — the Chinese government has recognised this and has actually announced about 10 days ago that it is going to build 59 new reservoirs to take the glacial melt in the Xinjiang province. 59 reservoirs. It is actually contemplating putting many of them underground. This is a recognition that water, which has hitherto been stored in glaciers, is going to be very scarce. We have to think about water in a major way….

The other area that really worries me in terms of climate change and the potential for positive feedbacks and also for interactions with food is ocean acidification….

As I say, it's as acid today as it has been for 25 million years. When this occurred some 25 million years ago, this level of acidification in the ocean, you had major problems with it, problems of extinctions of large numbers of species in the ocean community. The areas which are going to be hit most severely by this are the coral reefs of the world and that is already starting to show. Coral reefs provide significant protein supplies to about a billion people. So it is not just that you can't go snorkelling and see lots of pretty fish, it is that there are a billion people dependent on coral reefs for a very substantial portion of their high protein diet.

… we have got to deal with increased demand for energy, increased demand for food, increased demand for water, and we've got to do that while mitigating and adapting to climate change. And we have but 21 years to do it….

I will leave you with some key questions. Can nine billion people be fed? Can we cope with the demands in the future on water? Can we provide enough energy? Can we do it, all that, while mitigating and adapting to climate change? And can we do all that in 21 years time? That's when these things are going to start hitting in a really big way. We need to act now. We need investment in science and technology, and all the other ways of treating very seriously these major problems. 2030 is not very far away.

Some of this can be avoid or minimized if we act now. Some of it can't. But if we don't act strongly now, then by Memorial Day 2029, many of the global conflicts will either be resource wars or wars driven by environmental degradation and dislocation (see "Warming Will Worsen Water Wars). Indeed that may already have started to happen (see "Report: Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Trigger Darfur Crisis).

For one discussion of the kind of wars we might be seeing, albeit for the year 2046, here is a three-part radio series on Climate Wars.

Fortunately, veterans and security experts and politicians of all parties have begun working together to avoid the worst.  In the op-ed announcing their breakthrough Senate climate partnership, Senators Graham (R-SC) and Kerry (D-MA) said one of the key reasons they joined forces to pass climate and clean energy bill is that "we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security."

A key leader on climate and energy security has been the conservative Virgina Republican, John Warner, who is pushing hard to pass the clean energy bill — because he is a former Navy secretary and former Senate Armed Services Committee chair and because he is a former Forest Service firefighter now "just absolutely heartbroken" because "the old forest, the white pine forest in which I worked, was absolutely gone, devastated, standing there dead from the bark beetle" thanks in large part to global warming.

Warner's is "trying to build grass-roots support for congressional action to limit global warming," as Politics Daily reported.  "He is traveling the country to discuss military research that shows climate change is a threat to U.S. national security." Here is part of PD's interview:

PD: Does the responsibility fall to us to respond to the consequences of climate change?
JW: Not exclusively, but we're often in the forefront of response to these things. We're the nation with the most sealift. The most airlift. We have more medical teams which are mobile, more storehouses of food and supplies to meet emergencies. And throughout our history, from the beginning of the republic, America's always had to respond to certain humanitarian disasters.
PD: What are some examples of destabilization due to climate?
JW: One clear case of it is Somalia. [In the early 1990s] the prolonged drought began to tie up the economy, the food supplies. There was a certain amount of political and economic instability. Where you have fragile nations . . . a serious climactic problem will come along, with a shortage of food or water, and often those governments are toppled. And then they fall to the evils of . . . terrorism or others who try to exploit these fallen governments. You saw it in Darfur. You saw it in Somalia. This political instability and weakness is given the final tilt by a problem associated with climactic change.

Our choice today is clear.  We can continue listening to the voices of denial and delay, assuring that everyone ultimately becomes a veteran of the growing number of climate-related conflicts.

Or we can launch a WWII-scale effort and a WWII-style effort to address the problem as Hansen and I and others have called for.  That is our most necessary fight today.

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Maryland county draws a "car-free blueprint for growth"

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 07:58 AM PST

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2009/11/10/PH2009111020036.jpg

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county's growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit stations as long as they also construct bike paths and walkways, put shops and other amenities nearby, and use environmentally friendly construction methods.

I don't do a lot of local area reporting, but this front page (!) Washington Post story, "Montgomery draws a car-free blueprint for growth," seemed newsworthy.  The picture above is of the Rockville Pike corridor, and anyone who has driven around Rockville knows it is as car-centric as anywhere in America.

The county is working to change that:

Most suburban growth plans — including Montgomery's, until Tuesday — discourage development in congested areas, including those near public transit, and encourage construction in more sparsely populated communities, on the theory that new developments should arise where traffic is still tolerable.

But Montgomery's new plan takes a different tack, one that smart-growth advocates say is long overdue. With the population nearing 1 million, the Washington suburb is substantially larger than the big city to its south but is still managing growth as if everyone can hop in a car and quickly get where they want to go.

The county's growth policy is revisited every two years. The new plan could boost efforts to redevelop the jumbled White Flint area along Rockville Pike and provide new impetus to build a "science city" spearheaded by Johns Hopkins University west of Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg….

The council also endorsed a plan from County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), whose district is likely to be the epicenter of much of the urban-style growth, to use development fees to improve a transit system that commuters say is increasingly inadequate….

Planners predict that 200,000 people are likely to move to the county in the next 20 years, bumping the population to more than 1 million. To find a way to house the expected newcomers and get them to and from work, the Planning Board had recommended that developers get discounts and rewards if they are willing to idle their properties for a few years and to build denser development and taller buildings, up to 300 feet in some areas, near the county's Metro stations.

The Planning Board has also tried to make improving transit an ironclad condition of much new development.

When the board approved the proposed science city in July, members were adamant that it could not be built unless the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway bus or rail system is funded and built. Funding transit, however, is up to federal, state and local lawmakers, all of whom are struggling with massive budget shortfalls, so the Planning Board can advocate for but not create it.

As the price of oil returns to and then exceeds its previous records, funding for bus or rail systems will become a bigger and bigger priority state and federal level, so it is important for local planners to start designing for that.

And while I'm not certain the phrase "car-free" is a fully accurate description of what Montgomery County is pursuing, they deserve kudos for this smart growth plan.

Related Post:

News ads for clean energy and climate bill from Vote Vets and League of Conservation Voters

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 06:45 AM PST

If you want to help keep the Vote Vets ad on the air, click here.

And this is the new LCV ad to "stop Big Oil's bid to kill clean energy legislation":

If you want to help LCV put that ad on the air, click here.

In "Act of Despicable Hubris," coal front group ACCCE exploits veterans groups to push dirty energy agenda

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 05:09 AM PST

You may recall from September that the dirty coal group's 14th forgery impersonated American veterans, whereas real vets support strong action on climate and clean energy — as does GOP Senator John Warner, former Armed Services Committee chair. The coal industry is still up to its dirty tricks, as made clear in this Think Progress repost.

accce-whoThe American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — a front group of big utilities and coal companies — is no stranger to fraud. During the summer's House debate on cap-and-trade legislation, lobbyists working on behalf of the coal group sent forged letters to members of Congress, and lied under oath about it. Now, ACCCE is trying to exploit Veterans Day by misrepresenting veterans groups in an email to supporters:

With Veterans Day around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the military personnel who are involved in ensuring our country is protected.

Energy security is one issue that has become increasingly important to our veterans. In fact, national veterans groups Votevets and Operation Free are urging the government to become more energy independent and less reliant on foreign oil.

We can do this by using the abundant domestic fuels we already have. With more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.

The letter implies that VoteVets and Operation Free support ACCCE and its dirty energy agenda, but the the two groups are actually vocal backers of clean energy legislation. VoteVets excoriated ACCCE for citing them in the email, writing that VoteVets "will never advocate the continued use of carbon based fuels" and that ACCCE is trying "to hijack America's Veterans" in "an act of despicable hubris."

Operation Free — a veterans group which is dedicated to fighting climate change — was also quick to condemn ACCCE. In a blog post, Operation Free wrote that the email "dishonors Veterans day" and is "insulting to all of the Veterans who are fighting to protect America's national security by supporting clean, American power."

Will ACCCE acknowledge their continued misrepresentation and apologize for using Veterans Day as a prop to support an agenda that many veterans oppose?

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Must-see video of Sen. Kerry grilling AEI's Kenneth Green: "You just can't just throw that stuff out there."

Posted: 10 Nov 2009 04:53 PM PST

Senator Kerry:  Has your study been peer reviewed?
Kenneth Green:  No, I don't work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don't work for a university.

Steven Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently said, "The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining."  He may have had in mind his AEI colleague Kenneth Green, whose lack of knowledge on climate was laid bare for all to see by Sen. John Kerry in today's Finance Committee hearing:

I don't know what is more revealing and embarrassing for Green and AEI — that Green couldn't actually name a single peer-reviewed study in his defense or that when Kerry calls him on it, his only defense is an appeal to authority — his own "opinion" (!):

Green:  All I can say, Senator, is that I read the IPCC reports, the science of climate change report in its totality cover to cover, I follow the latest journals, my doctoral degree is in environmental science and engineering.  I daresay I'm capable of understanding the literature and forming my own opinion. I –

Kerry (interrupting):  Has your study been peer reviewed?

Green: Pardon me?

Kerry: Has your study been peer reviewed?

Green: No, I don't work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don't work for a university.

That is uber-weird.  Green seems to be suggesting (falsely) that you have to work for a university to write peer reviewed research.  Play the video.  It sure sounds that way — otherwise the second sentence is a pure non sequitur.

Kerry: So, you don't submit your studies for any peer review?

Green: Ah, no.

Kerry: You realize that there are something like two or three thousand studies all of which concur which have been peer reviewed, and not one of the studies dissenting has been peer reviewed?

Green: That's not correct, Senator.

Kerry: Show me a peer reviewed study.

Green: I'll send you a list.

Kerry: Please, because nobody else has.

Green: I'll be glad to.

With the help of AEI's staff, Green will probably be able to find a handful of now-debunked peer-reviewed studies that "support" his position, but it remains telling that he couldn't name a single one when asked in a public forum.  Kerry called his bluff, and Green folded.

Here's the early part of the exchange:

Green:  Canada, for instance, can agree to a target and if they don't do anything they can't be sued into government compliance.  The U.S. is unique in the status it gives treaties, when we sign a treaty, we live up to it.  Other countries can sign treaties and not live up to them.  That is a fundamental difference that makes the U.S. hesitant to embrace treaties as a general role, and I think wisely because treaties have a very high status in American law that is not necessarily reflected in the other countries.

Kerry:  Well, actually Dr. Green, that's not entirely true. (Laughs a little)  I'm sorry.

(Republican senator demurs in the background)

Well, let me tell you why it's not, Senator:  I was at the treaty signing which we ratified unanimously in the U.S. Senate — the 1992 framework convention, which George Herbert Walker Bush negotiated, and it's been 18 years since, and we haven't done a thing to meet it.   In last 8 years emission in U.S. in green house gasses went up 4 times faster than in the 1990s.  So that's the reason we're talking about the need to move to a mandatory reduction — because we didn't, and nobody else did, either.  A few people tried, here and there.  So you just can't just throw that stuff out there and say we do it, they don't, blah blah blah.

You don't accept that you have to hold it at 2 degrees.  You may know something that thousands of other scientists don't.  You know, they won a Nobel Prize; you and I didn't.   And they won it for their work that said you got to hold it at 2 degrees Centigrade.

The G 20 … said we have to hold it at 2 degrees Centigrade.  Maybe you know something we don't about where the tipping point is.  But I got a lot of scientists that I respect, who's life work — from John Holdren who's now the science advisor to the president, to Jim Hansen over at NASA and a bunch of others — who tell us that we have a ten year window to meet the standard of keeping the temperature from rising over 2 degrees Centigrade, or you reach a tipping point….

All of the evidence is coming back faster and to a greater degree than they predicted underscoring the predictions they made.  At some point you have to step back and say these guys are making sense because what they said is going to happen is happening and it's happening faster and at a greater risk.

If this had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it.  Here's more:

Kerry: Every most recent scientific update, and I get them periodically.  I ask them to come in and say what's happening; is it less than, what's the rate?  And without exception they look at me and say "Senator, I can't even talk about some of the things that are happening today publicly because people won't believe it."  Like columns of methane rising out of the ocean floor that you can light a match to and it will explode and burst into the open air because the permafrost is melting.

We just voted $400 million to move Newstalk, Alaska, to move it inland because of what's happening in terms of the ice melt.  There's some 400 villages threatened.  Ask Lisa Murkowski, or Mark Biggouch about what's happening in Alaska.

All I can say to you is that we have to employ the Precautionary Principle here.  If I've got a few thousand scientists over here and you and a few others over here, the weight is pretty heavy to say to me that as a public person I ought to implement the precautionary principle.  And if I have chief executives like Jeff Immelt, Lou Hay, and Chad Holliday of Dupont and a bunch of other people who run Fortune 500 companies telling me, "Senator, we have to price carbon.  And we want certainty in the market place," I'm going to listen.

Unless you can give me an overpowering reason why those guys are all wrong, and I don't think you have….

Green:  All I can say, Senator, is that I read the IPCC reports….

He may have read them, but he didn't get anything out of them.

Green's lame defense of himself is no surprise since he regularly spouts stuff like, "No matter what you've been told, the technology to significantly reduce emissions is decades away and extremely costly" — from a 2008 speech AEI later removed from their website (excerpts here).  And last month, he weirdly compared EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to Clint Eastwood and carbon polluters to criminals.

Kudos to Senator Kerry for exposing this American Enterprise Institute "expert."

CAP's Russell Sterten helped with this post.

Supermodel: Why I Took It Off For Climate Change

Posted: 10 Nov 2009 01:52 PM PST

Our guest blogger is supermodel Cameron Russell, a junior at Columbia University and the organizer of the "Supermodels Take It Off For Climate Change" video for the 350.org movement.  This is a Wonk Room repost.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The whole "Supermodels take it off for climate change" project happened from start to finish in a little under two weeks and 300 phone calls–who knew production was so complicated! All the girls — Rachel Alexander, Shannon Click, Hanne Gaby, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, and Nicole Trunfio — are my friends and loved shooting the video for a good cause, so that part was relatively easy to pull together. But let me tell you who was really responsible.

Indirectly there are three people responsible for this video: Tibor Kalman, Bill McKibben, and Robin Chase:

My all-time hero Tibor Kalman showed the world the ability of mass media to convey serious images and create real discussion (think 90's Benetton advertisements of people with AIDS). Climate change, which is often seen as very political or scientific, needs to be made a people's issue. My hope is that this ad helps re-brand environmentalism.

Bill McKibben, advocating scientist James Hansen's target of 350 ppm CO2 to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, leads the 350 movement — a widely successful environmental action campaign that remains in close touch with science and politics.

Finally Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and Goloco, is my mom and raised me in a household that didn't drive when it could be avoided, bought used clothes and almost nothing else, and led our family and friends by example showing us that it doesn't matter how much you have. She also taught us to appreciate our personal and unique strengths, skills and experience, and figure out how to put them to good use.

There were at least 26 other people directly involved in making it. Eleven other models donated their free time, a precious day off for these top girls who work nearly every day from their late teens to as late as their early 30's. Some of them have professional lives outside of modeling too. Cystal Renn just put out a book called Hungry about her transformation into a plus size model — it's been incredibly successful and earned her a spot on Oprah. Nicole is the host of Bravo's "Make Me a Supermodel" show. Heidi is the proud mother of two year-old Liam.

Then there was a whole team of people that made the girls look amazing: a stylist, Shandi Alexander, and her two assistants, a hairdresser, Kevin Ryan, and his two assistants, and two make up artists, Jesse Lawson and Fara Homidi, who all donated their free time as well. Then there was our amazing director Damani Baker, the three guys who assisted him, and Andrew Zuckerman who took still photos. There was my co-prodcuer Alex Vlack who also let us use his studio and turn his office into a wardrobe room. Finally there was Christana Tran and Heather Hughes who work at Women and Supreme model management that helped provide designer clothing and coordinate models.

Obama will go to Copenhagen — if he can seal a deal

Posted: 10 Nov 2009 01:27 PM PST

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he would travel to Copenhagen next month if a climate summit is on the verge of a framework deal and his presence there will make a difference in clinching it….

"If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that's something that I will do," Obama told Reuters in an interview.

I had written back on October 9, after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, that it looks like Obama will be going to Copenhagen after all.

The only question is whether there will be enough progress to motivate him to come.  Reuters notes that the President remains optimistic n spite of the too-slow movement in the Senate:

Obama, who has faced resistance from opposition Republicans and even some fellow Democrats to setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions, acknowledged that the U.S. Senate would not pass climate change legislation before Copenhagen.

Delays in the U.S. Congress have rankled European allies and added to questions about how significant the deal that emerges from Copenhagen will ultimately be.

But Obama insisted he remained optimistic that the December 7-18 summit could yield a "framework" agreement.

"I think the question is can we create a set of principles, building blocks, that allow for ongoing and continuing progress on the issue and that's something I'm confident we can achieve," he said.

Finally, it has been obvious for a while that a framework deal between the U.S. and China was key to enabling both domestic and international action (see "Does a serious bill need action from China?").  The Administration has been pursuing it aggressively for a while (see "Exclusive: Have China and the U.S. been holding secret talks aimed at a climate deal this fall?").

Now the president has publicly stated he expected such a framework deal to be achieved this month:

Obama made clear he considers his talks with Chinese leaders during an Asia tour later this month to be crucial in clearing remaining obstacles to some kind of accord.

"The key now is for the United States and China, the two largest emitters in the world, is to be able to come up with a framework that, along with other big emitters like the Europeans and those countries that are projected to be large emitters in the future, like India, can all buy into," he said.

"I remain optimistic that between now and Copenhagen that we can arrive at that framework," he added.

If he succeeds, then I do think Copenhagen will achieve what is needed to advance the prospects for international deal, the President will come and a global framework will be agreed to — with a follow-on global meeting set for six months later — then the U.S. Senate and then the entire Congress will pass a climate bill, and we will finalize the international agreement by the end of next year.