Environmental Law Prof Blog

Election 2008 -- The Candidates Speak in Their Own Words -- Part II:Hillary Clinton

During the last year, Foreign Affairs published a series of pieces on the 2008 presidential election, allowing candidates to frame their foreign policy in their own words. Foreign Affairs Election 2008 I am reviewing those pieces for discussions of global environmental issues, including climate change.  I find this a particularly useful approach because it allows candidates to move beyond sound bites and into the substance of what they believe. 

I expect to look at all of the current candidates: Democratic and Republican. The first candidate I am reviewed was Barack Obama. Today's post is Hillary Clinton.

Here's the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton with respect to the environment (especially global warming) in her own words:

The tragedy of the last six years is that the Bush administration has squandered the respect, trust, and confidence of even our closest allies and friends. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the United States enjoyed a unique position. Our world leadership was widely accepted and respected, as we strengthened old alliances and built new ones, worked for peace across the globe, advanced nonproliferation, and modernized our military....At the same time, we embarked on an unprecedented course of unilateralism:..Our withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and refusal to participate in any international effort to deal with the tremendous challenges of climate change further damaged our international standing....At a moment in history when the world's most pressing problems require unprecedented cooperation, this administration has unilaterally pursued policies that are widely disliked and distrusted....

We need more than vision, however, to achieve the world we want. We must face up to an unprecedented array of challenges in the twenty-first century, threats from states, nonstate actors, and nature itself...Finally, the next president will have to address the looming long-term threats of climate change and a new wave of global health epidemics....

But China's rise is also creating new challenges. The Chinese have finally begun to realize that their rapid economic growth is coming at a tremendous environmental price. The United States should undertake a joint program with China and Japan to develop new clean-energy sources, promote greater energy efficiency, and combat climate change. This program would be part of an overall energy policy that would require a dramatic reduction in U.S. dependence on foreign oil....

We must find additional ways for Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to cooperate on issues of mutual concern, including combating terrorism, cooperating on global climate control, protecting global energy supplies, and deepening global economic development...

As president, I will make the fight against global warming a priority. We cannot solve the climate crisis alone, and the rest of the world cannot solve it without us. The United States must reengage in international climate change negotiations and provide the leadership needed to reach a binding global climate agreement. But we must first restore our own credibility on the issue. Rapidly emerging countries, such as China, will not curb their own carbon emissions until the United States has demonstrated a serious commitment to reducing its own through a market-based cap-and-trade approach.

We must also help developing nations build efficient and environmentally sustainable domestic energy infrastructures. Two-thirds of the growth in energy demand over the next 25 years will come from countries with little existing infrastructure. Many opportunities exist here as well: Mali is electrifying rural communities with solar power, Malawi is developing a biomass energy strategy, and all of Africa can provide carbon credits to the West.

Finally, we must create formal links between the International Energy Agency and China and India and create an "E-8" international forum modeled on the G-8. This group would be comprised of the world's major carbon-emitting nations and hold an annual summit devoted to international ecological and resource issues.

ExxonMobil Deliberately Misled Blogosphere About Funding Global Warming Denialists

Yesterday's post on ExxonMobil (2/17/08)  highlighted that it had funded the Frontiers of Freedom and its Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP link ) during 2006, contrary to its claim that it was not funding global warming denialists.  You may wonder about the context in which ExxonMobil made this claim.

Remember last year when the IPCC 4th Assessment report came out – the Guardian wrote a story about American Enterprise Institute soliciting result-oriented denialist analyses of the IPCC report and that report included information about ExxonMobil’s funding of AEI. Guardian 2/2/07 Report.  During conversations in late January and early February, 2007 with me and other bloggers, Maria Surma Manka from Green Options [Giant Part I Post; Giant Part II Post], Jesse Jenkins from Watthead [ExxonMobil Posts], Tom Yulsman from Prometheus [Post on earlier conversations -- I can't recall whether Tom participated in the February call, but I believe he did], Stuart Staniford from The Oil Drum [ExxonMobil AEI Post], Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil’s Vice President for Public Affairs had assured us that ExxonMobil was no longer funding controversial denialist groups like Competitive Enterprise Institute and it did not fund AEI with the intent that they engage in denialist analyses.  The first conference call occurred in late January and the second on the same day that the Guardian story and the IPCC report came out.

 

Cohen spent considerable time before the IPCC report came out in January 2007 trying to convince us that ExxonMobil was changing its Neanderthal stripes, truly accepted that anthropogenic global warming was a serious problem, and was ready to take a responsible role in the future discussions of how to reduce GHG emissions. Admittedly Cohen did that in the truly diplomatic way of saying that ExxonMobil had not effectively communicated its position that anthropogenic global warming is real and that GHG emissions need to be reduced.

 

During the February call, Cohen knew that the Guardian’s report about ExxonMobil’s funding of AEI and AEI’s alleged solicitation of result-oriented denialist analyses threatened to undercut public perception of ExxonMobil as a responsible actor. Indeed, those reports ended up on CNN. So, Cohen went out of his way to schedule this call about the Guardian’s allegations.

 

As Maria recounted that discussion:

“We had no knowledge that this was going on,” insisted Cohen. He explained that Exxon funds a lot of different groups, and “when we fund them, we want good analysis." Exxon does not condone what AEI did, but Cohen confirmed that it does continues to fund AEI, although other groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute are not funded by them anymore.

Cohen assured us that Exxon is “trying to be a constructive player in the policy discussion and not associate [themselves] with those that are marginalized and are not welcome in that discussion.” The IPCC report “is what it is,” and Exxon does not believe in engaging in scientific research that preordains an answer. Cohen:

…that's the issue with AEI: Are they preordaining an answer?…I can understand taking a market approach or a government interventionist approach, but this is not a question of trying to find who’s right or who’s wrong. Let’s let the process work.

But, I asked, how can you grant AEI nearly two million dollars (n.b. slsmith -over the entirety of AEI operations, not annually) and not know what they’re doing with the money? Turns out that Exxon conveniently funds the “general operations” of AEI, not specific programs that would allow them to track how the money is being used. Perhaps Exxon needs to think hard next time before it funds an organization so clearly disinterested in constructive solutions.

Cohen was consistently explicit in Exxon's position that global warming is happening and mainly caused by human activities. If that is true, then how will Exxon fight the huge misperception that it’s still the planet's largest naysayer? Cohen conceded that the company needed to do a better job of communicating its position on global warming, rather than allowing a fact sheet or news release on their website to do the work.

 

Cohen kept telling us that the 2006 contribution report was coming out, but declined to give us any specifics about ExxonMobil’s contributions to AEI or other groups, but he said Competitive Enterprise Institute was no longer funded.  Cohen continued to defend AEI as a responsible, albeit very conservative, think tank doing legitimate policy research. And frankly, I supported him on that score during the calls because at least some of the work done by AEI is just that. And I was not nearly as skeptical as others about ExxonMobil's protestations of innocence.  See my post on the AEI matter ELP Blog Post on AEI

 

Here’s why yesterday I called ExxonMobil’s behavior in early 2007 deliberately misleading. Initial Post on 2006 Funding Report  

 

As the quoted material above indicates, Cohen in early February 2007 led us to believe that ExxonMobil was no longer in the denialist camp and did not condone AEI soliciting denialist analysis (if indeed that’s what they had done). He claimed that ExxonMobil no longer associated with marginalized denialist groups. He suggested that the 2006 report would indicate that ExxonMobily had disassociated itself from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which brought us the classic, sadly humorous “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life!” TV commercials. You tube link to CEI Energy commercial.

 

From this discussion, it seems clear that Cohen knew precisely which “public information and policy research” organizations that were funded by ExxonMobil during 2006. Yet, while he perhaps sat with the 2006 report in front of him and refused to release its contents, the 2006 contribution report later showed that in 2006 ExxonMobil provided $ 180,000 to Frontiers of Freedom and the CSPP, the policy center it created with ExxonMobil's funding several years ago. P.S. Cohen denied funding CSPP in an e-mail today, but unless my sight is failing: CSPP is reported as the Science and Policy Center under Frontiers of Freedom Download 2006 ExxonMobil's "public information and policy research" contributions If that’s not supporting denialists and associating with marginalized denialist groups, I don’t know what is!

Take a good look at the high quality analysis of global warming that CSPP provides:

 

(1) the amicus curiae brief filed in Mass. v. EPA by lawyers from the Competitive Enterprise Institute

(2) Dr. Ball's The Science Isn't Settled powerpoint presentation - Dr. Ball is the Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project which describes its first project on understanding climate change as "a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas reduction schemes." NRSP describes Dr. Ball as the "lead participant in a number of recent made-for-TV climate change videos, The Great Global Warming Swindle."

(3) Joe Daleo's Congressional Seminar on global warming in March 2007 devoted to disputing the IPCC's report and arguing that anthropogenic global warming from greenhouse gas emissions are not a real problem.

(4) CSPP's May 2007 rebuttal of Al Gore's testimony, which suggests there is no scientific consensus that CO2 emissions are causing global warming

(5) a nonsensical piece on "Gore's Guru," positing that because Dr. Revelle, who died in 1991, had cautioned in 1988 and 1991 against drawing rash conclusions about global warming might still take that position.  I call it nonsensical because Dr. Revelle suggested that we wait 10-20 years to see if the trends continued.  We've waited and now we've answered that question: between 1998 and 2008 we witnessed incredibly dramatic global warming and the scientific community has spent the last 10-20 years studying whether indeed human-caused GHG emissions are responsible for much of that warming.  We and ExxonMobil know its answer to that question.

Obviously, the blogosphere is not the only group worried about ExxonMobil's funding choices.  Britain's national academy of scientists, The Royal Society,  in September 2006 took ExxonMobil to task about its funding of denialist groups.  Royal Society letter

Well, maybe ExxonMobil finally pulled the plug on FF and its “Science and Policy” center in 2007 (and so Cohen was just tap-dancing around the embarrassing, but not on-going, reality of funding denialists). Although, FF's CSPP might survive: it apparently does have funding from two major tobacco companies!

Maybe ExxonMobil has rethought its policy on funding organizations whose primary contribution to the climate change discussion is to distribute continued attacks on those who conclude that the current state of climate science supports an effective policy to reduce GHG emissions.  I’d like to think so – but we won’t know until ExxonMobil releases its 2007 contributions report. I requested that Cohen release it to me; he declined.

However, even if it had defunded FF and CSPP (and other denialist groups), I’m not sure I’d believe that ExxonMobil hadn’t found new denialist outlets to fund.

 

If the Guardian and other media or the blogosphere produce a big enough stir on this story, perhaps it will. But I am astonished that, just as it was selling itself as a responsible player on global warming, ExxonMobil would act so irresponsibly and so deceptively. And I am deeply embarrassed at my naievete in believing what Ken Cohen and ExxonMobil were selling about ExxonMobil’s born again conversion to a responsible position on anthropogenic global warming.

 

Watch out, though, ExxonMobil knows that the question is no longer whether global warming is real, but what to do about it. You can bet it is smart enough and devious enough to fund a lot of “public information and policy research” that will muddle policy discussions about global warming legislation and may assure that not much is done to regulate GHG emissions from oil and gas and that what is done doesn’t cut hardly at all into ExxonMobil’s astounding profits: $41 billion for 2007 and almost $ 12 billion in the 4th quarter of 2007 alone. ExxonMobil profits post

I have a modest suggestion for ExxonMobil: do not fund organizations whose published information, analysis, and research on global warming or climate change has primarily sought to undercut the conclusions reached by the joint statement published in 2005 by 11 national academies of science, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, India, Brazil and China .  That statement is linked here:   Joint Science Academies' Statement: Global Response to Climate Change

Unless and until ExxonMobil stops funding the sort of stuff that Center for Science and Public Policy is peddling, I hope that the new President and Congress will not believe a single word that is said about global warming policy by ExxonMobil or any of denialist and anti-regulatory "public information and policy research" organizations it funds.

 

 

 

Foreign Affairs - The Candidates in Their Own Words --

During the last year, Foreign Affairs published a series of pieces on the 2008 presidential election, allowing candidates to frame their foreign policy in their own words. Foreign Affairs Election 2008  I am reviewing those pieces for discussions of global environmental issues, including climate change.  I find this a particularly useful approach because it allows candidates to move beyond sound bites and into the substance of what they believe. 

I expect to look at all of the current candidates: Democratic and Republican. The first candidate I am reviewing is Barack Obama.  I chose Obama first in part because I am torn between Clinton and Obama.  Although I respect John McCain's leadership on climate change, I could not vote for a Republican after the 1994 - 2006 Republican congressional legacy and the debacle of Bush's presidency for virtually every freedom and human need.  I also disagree with McCain's position on Iraq.

In his own words, Barack Obama primarily addresses climate change as a matter of global policy.  He ties the US response to global warming to his overall foreign policy in this way:

Strengthened institutions and invigorated alliances and partnerships are especially crucial if we are to defeat the epochal, man-made threat to the planet: climate change. Without dramatic changes, rising sea levels will flood coastal regions around the world, including much of the eastern seaboard. Warmer temperatures and declining rainfall will reduce crop yields, increasing conflict, famine, disease, and poverty. By 2050, famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means increased instability in some of the most volatile parts of the world.

As the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, America has the responsibility to lead. While many of our industrial partners are working hard to reduce their emissions, we are increasing ours at a steady clip -- by more than ten percent per decade. As president, I intend to enact a cap-and-trade system that will dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. And I will work to finally free America of its dependence on foreign oil -- by using energy more efficiently in our cars, factories, and homes, relying more on renewable sources of electricity, and harnessing the potential of biofuels.

Getting our own house in order is only a first step. China will soon replace America as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Clean energy development must be a central focus in our relationships with major countries in Europe and Asia. I will invest in efficient and clean technologies at home while using our assistance policies and export promotions to help developing countries leapfrog the carbon-energy-intensive stage of development. We need a global response to climate change that includes binding and enforceable commitments to reducing emissions, especially for those that pollute the most: the United States, China, India, the European Union, and Russia. This challenge is massive, but rising to it will also bring new benefits to America. By 2050, global demand for low-carbon energy could create an annual market worth $500 billion. Meeting that demand would open new frontiers for American entrepreneurs and workers.

Candidates Compete for Green Title

After the Bush administration legacy, it is refreshing to see both Democratic and some Republican candidates competing for the title of Mr. or Ms. Green. See the comparison in Grist.

Ninth Circuit snuffs U.S. Forest Service's "Healthy Forest Initiative" rule

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Sierra Club v. Bosworth that the U.S. Forest Service erred by engaging in certain fuel reduction and prescribed burn projects without analyzing the resulting environmental impacts as required by federal law.

The Sierra Club challenged a Forest Service rule (the "fuels exclusion") that exempted fuel reduction projects of limited acreage from environmental analysis. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), federal agencies are required to analyze the environmental impacts of "major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment." 42 U.S.C.A. § 4332(2)(C).

In response to the Bush Administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative" announced in 2002, the Forest Service promulgated the fuels exclusion to exempt certain projects designed to reduce hazardous fuel conditions from NEPA procedures. The stated purpose of the Healthy Forests Initiative was to streamline the environmental analysis process for projects necessary to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and "restore forest health." Under limited circumstances, a federal agency may avoid NEPA compliance by establishing a "categorical exclusion" for "actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment..." 40 C.F.R. § 1508.4. 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Forest Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously by enacting the fuels exclusion, and remanded the case the district court with instructions that the court issue an appropriate injunction. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit held that the Forest Service failed to comply with NEPA and improperly relied on post-hoc reasoning to justify the fuels exclusion. The appellate court further held that the Forest Service failed to consider the cumulative impacts and the highly controversial and uncertain risks posed by the fuels reduction projects.

Ruth Norton Smith (Nov 27, 1921 - Oct 14, 2007)

Ruth Norton Smith died peacefully in Boulder, Colorado  on Sunday, October 14, 2007 after enjoying her full measure of life. 

Ruth was born in Oklahoma on November 27, 1921 in a tent in Oklahoma.  She was raised during the Depression years, moving frequently as her family farmed and followed the tunneling, mining, and other work available to her father.  Ultimately, her family settled in southern California.  There Ruth met the love of her life, Herbert Frank Smith, a carpenter and union organizer, whom she married on June 4, 1941. 

In WW II, while her husband served in the Navy in the South Pacific, Ruth became a Rosie the Riveter, building bombers, and then joined the Women’s Army Corps, serving as a nurse.  After the war, they settled in the Los Angeles area, where she became a real estate broker and the mom of two children, Greg in 1948 and Susan in 1953.

In 1955, her family moved to Colorado where she worked side by side with her husband to build two of the largest home-building companies in Colorado, Happy Homes and Fireside Homes, and a prominent real estate firm.  When she left real estate and home-building in the late 1960s, Ruth became a political and market researcher for Research Services, Inc. and later became a researcher for the U.S. Census Bureau, from which she retired in 1989.

Ruth was a life-long Democratic political activist with a passion for peace, civil rights, and all aspects of social justice.  She served in every capacity: running political campaigns, serving as a precinct committee woman, county, congressional district, and state delegate, pollwatcher, and election judge.  She worked with Metro Denver Fair Housing center as a realtor, helping the first African-American families in Jefferson County to find housing.  She volunteered with youth mentoring programs in Four Points and with Metro Denver Urban Coalition, Another Mother for Peace, Meals on Wheels, and countless other organizations. 

Ruth was too busy with her family, volunteer work and career for many hobbies.  She thrived on the stimulating conversations born by inviting friends and guests from all over the world and from every walk of life to dinner.  She also found great pleasure in reading, traveling and attending theatre and opera performances.

Ruth was a warm, intelligent, extroverted vibrant woman who loved and was loved by virtually everyone she met.   Her loss will be sorely missed by the many friends and family she has left behind, including her sister Lorene, her brother Fred, her son Greg, her daughter Susan, and her grandchildren Clint Smith, Brent Smith, Nathanial Smith-Tripp and Sarah Smith-Tripp.  Her family and friends will gather at Mt. Vernon Country Club on Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 10:30 am for a celebration of her life.  The family requests that no flowers be sent and suggests donations to Meals on Wheel or a charity of your choice.

Thank you to Read/Write Web

Read/Write Web has listed Environmental Law Prof Blog prominently in its list of the 35 best environmental blogs. [35 best environmental blogs]  Thanks!

Who Owns the Arctic?

With the Russian flag planting last monthn and Canada promising to build military bases, the race for the Arctic has begun in earnest.  Some of the better news articles can be found below.  A most intriguing suggestion by my Energy Law students is that the Arctic Circle indigenous peoples, who currently have six non-voting participants in the Arctic Council, could seek recognition as a sovereign nation -- and assert claims against all of the current claimants.  That would certainly change the terms of debate!

       

Chicago Tribute link

Arctic claims are poles apart
Russian flag-planting a signal of global race for vast oil, gas deposits                                                                    <>

By Tom Hundley
Tribune foreign correspondent

August 24, 2007                   

TROMSO, Norway

           

       

       

       

Not since 1925, when local hero Roald Amundsen set off from here on his first attempt to fly over the North Pole, has there been so much excitement in Tromso, a picturesque port that has long been used as a staging area for Arctic exploration.

The buzz began early this month when an expedition led by Russian lawmakers used a miniature submarine to plant a Russian flag on the seabed 2 miles under the North Pole, symbolically staking a claim to the vast mineral and energy wealth that lies under the ice cap.

That ruffled feathers in Canada, another country with Arctic ambitions.

"This isn't the 15th Century," scoffed Foreign Minister Peter McKay, referring to a time when explorers claimed whole continents for God and king.

But a week later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Canada's far north and announced plans to build two military bases in its polar regions. And now two more claimants to the Arctic seas, the U.S. and Denmark, have launched their own polar mapping expeditions. The Danish team set sail from Tromso Aug. 12, while the American icebreaker Healy departed from Barrow, Alaska, last week.

The flurry of activity recalls the heyday of polar expeditions a century ago when Robert Peary, Richard Byrd, Robert Scott, Amundsen and others raced to be the first to the Arctic and then the Antarctic.

But as the latter-day scramble for strategic resources beneath the ice begins to heat up, Norway, a country with deep Arctic roots both physical and psychological, takes the long view. The Norwegian government has emphasized the need to structure a long-term system of international governance for the polar regions; its scientists and researchers are calling for cooperation rather than competition.

Here in Tromso, 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Russia's  flag-planting produced wry smiles.

'A kind of showbiz act'

"Most people here saw it as a kind of showbiz act, more for internal political purposes than for international science or research," said Geir Gotaas head of administration at Tromso University's Roald Amundsen Center for Arctic Research.

"It doesn't mean a thing," said university President Jarle Aarbakke. "All it does is confirm what we knew in advance -- that the Russians are very interested in the polar region."

The reason is no secret. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas lies beneath the Arctic's waters.

Until recently, these deposits were thought inaccessible. But as the polar ice cap succumbs to global warming more quickly than expected and with new subsurface pumping technologies coming online, some experts believe the Arctic could go into production in a generation.

While there is some uncertainty about the causes of climate change, the fact that it is occurring is not in dispute, especially in the polar regions, where temperatures are rising at double the rate of those in more temperate latitudes, and the ice cap is melting three times faster than anticipated.

What this means, according to a UN climate survey published earlier this year, is that the polar ice cap will no longer be a year-round phenomenon, and the world is likely to have a new navigable ocean in about 2030-2050.

Going "over the top" would shorten the sea route between the Far East and Western Europe by a third. A major realignment of the world's shipping lanes would result. Fish stocks also would migrate north, bringing fishing fleets.

All of this would bring profound change to Norway, a small nation of 4.5 million people that tends to think of itself as an isolated country on the northern periphery of Europe. Suddenly, it would find itself thrust into the thick of things.

For Norwegians, the Arctic has always been an important part of their  national identity and patrimony.

"We don't have a culture of heroes in Norway, but Amundsen is a hero," said Gunn Sissel Jaklin, communications director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, a research organization in Tromso.

"Exploring the Arctic is part of Norwegian history; it was part of establishing ourselves as a nation and forming a national identity," she said.

On his recent tour of Canada's Arctic region, Prime Minister Harper declared that "Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: Use it or lose it." Canada's claims include sovereignty over the Northwest Passage sea lanes, a potential source of disagreement with the United States.

The "use it or lose it" philosophy is something Norwegian governments have  always understood.

"Norway's strategy to protect its claim is, No. 1, to be present. Presence is used to research, develop and harvest the Arctic," said Tromso University's Aarbakke.

"You have to be there on the sea, with the coast guard. You have to take pirate fishing very seriously. And when it comes to oil and gas, you have to be there at the negotiating table, with the scientific proofs," he said.

For Norway, the elephant in the room is actually a bear. Norway shares a 120-mile Arctic border with Russia, and the Norwegians learned long ago that you don't poke the Russian bear in the eye.

Which explains, in part, Norway's studied non-reaction to Russia's  underwater flag-waving.

"The Russians are doing what the UN asked them to do -- they are substantiating their claim. It's in compliance with international law ... and the commission will decide if they are right or wrong," said Liv Monica Stubholt, Norway's deputy minister for foreign affairs, referring to the UN's Commission on the Limitations of the Continental Shelf, a body of scientists that reviews claims to territory beneath the sea.

In the Arctic, the key dispute is whether the Lomonosov Ridge, a vast underwater mountain range stretching across the North Pole, is an extension of Russia's continental shelf, or a part of Greenland, which belongs to Denmark.

Rather than point fingers at Russia, Stubholt said Norway would prefer to see the U.S. Senate ratify the 13-year-old UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which would give the U.S. a seat on the commission and a stake in a non-belligerent resolution of the competing claims.

Ratification has been blocked by a line of conservative lawmakers going back to former Sen. Jesse Helms, (R.-N.C.) and today led Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.). They fear that signing the treaty would cede too much control to the UN.

Administration backs treaty

But the Bush administration now favors signing the treaty, and Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, will try to muster support for its ratification when Congress reconvenes.

"If the U.S. doesn't sign the treaty soon, they will be put aside when the decisions are taken," said Johan Petter Barlindhaug, a Tromso businessman who specializes in Arctic construction projects.

Toronto Star  Link
The Arctic Cold War                  TheStar.com - Ideas - The Arctic Cold War             

                               

                       Expectations are that rule of international law will prevail in coming battles over Arctic sovereignty. Okay — but what about that other law, with something about nine-tenths in it?
               

                                                   

                 August 12, 2007     

                                    

            Andrew Chung
                                                                                                                                                                                                             

                                         With precious little ability to enforce its claims in the Arctic, Canada may be falling behind in asserting itself not in law, but in real life.Others think cases where conflicts are already apparent – Canada and Denmark have claims to the same continental shelf as Russia, even if we don't precisely know where those claims lie – render the commission irrelevant. "The commission can't deal with information presented where there is a conflict," explains University of Victoria's Ted McDorman, an expert in the Law of the Sea. "It has no power to decide ... so like other ocean boundary disputes, it will ultimately come down to some level of negotiation. Political negotiation."In these cases, power may, in the end, trump international law in determining who gets what in the Arctic, he says. "Power means the ability to keep other people out."He doesn't think there would be war, but the concern is "Russia has a head start," Posner argues. "It's got a lot of ships that can operate in the Arctic. Canada has very few."Byers has said Canada needs heavy-duty icebreakers, not the smaller vessels the government has promised to the navy, to properly assert its sovereignty in the Passage, but also to properly research its claim to the Arctic seabed.<>

  Foreign minister Peter MacKay was indeed correct when he said of Russia’s provocative flag planting in the North Pole’s sea bed that, “This isn’t the 15th Century.”  He was suggesting that in our modern, more civilized world, codified international law, and not antediluvian games of finders-keepers, will decide claims of geographic ownership. And Russia, a sophisticated player in global diplomacy, has made statements in the past that it couldn’t agree more.  But then MacKay's Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said he was amazed by Canada's response. "We're not throwing flags around," he told the Russian media. "We just do what other discoverers did."

<>

Most experts believe that international law, in the form of the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea, will play an integral role in figuring out the unfolding conflict in the Arctic. But don't count out the intrepid explorers of yesteryear and the kind of de facto international law they practised. In spite of the convention, some believe it's possible for countries to operate in a manner predating international law – or to ignore whatever decisions may flow from it.

The story of the Arctic is still one of the future. Currently, it's a frozen hinterland, but with the polar ice caps melting, some predictions have it opening up to serious exploration and economic exploitation within 30 years. And the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas remains locked up deep beneath the frigid waters.

"It's striking that the confluence of high energy prices and melting has created a vast new area that countries are going to have to fight over," says international law specialist Eric Posner. "Not necessarily in a military sense, but they will struggle over this area, and we haven't had a situation like this for quite a long time."

<>

One of the main struggles will be over the 1,800-kilometre-long Lomonosov Ridge between Siberia and Canada's Ellesmere Island. Russia believes the ridge belongs to it, and therefore so does the North Pole. Its dramatic submarine dive in the Arctic this month, the first to reach the polar sea bottom and carried out by Russian scientists, was to "prove" that fact. The next step is for Russia to submit its scientific findings to a UN commission of geological experts struck to review any country's claim to the sea bed far beyond its borders – a "continental shelf." These procedures were set out in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, regarded as one of the most important pieces of international law, governing the use of our vast oceans and their rich resources.

For many centuries, the seas belonged to no one. Except for a narrow band around a nation's coastline, the high seas were a free-for- all. But growing concerns over foreign fishing vessels and pollution, and knowledge of the rich mineral and oil wealth under the sea floor, changed everything.

In 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman unilaterally tossed aside the freedom-of-the-seas doctrine and proclaimed exclusive ownership of its huge continental shelf. Other countries, including Canada, soon followed, asserting control over waters sometimes hundreds of kilometres beyond their borders. By the 1950s, oil drilling on the ocean floor was rapidly expanding.

The Law of the Sea eventually gave legal status to navigational rights, resources, marine protection and territorial sea limits, as well as a way to settle disputes. It established a generous "exclusive economic zone" for coastal states, extending 320 kilometres from their shorelines. But potential riches, from gas and oil to diamonds and gold, didn't always stop there. States realized continental shelves would need to be accounted for.

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A process to submit claims to these extensions and a commission to evaluate them and make recommendations was set up. Russia made the first claim, in 2001, followed by Brazil and six other countries. The most recent was France earlier this year. Canada has yet to make its claim. How that process will play out remains anyone's guess, because no claim has yet been resolved.

For this country, says Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in global politics and international law at UBC, the Law of the Sea is "a good news story in terms of the rule of law and of multilateral cooperation in a situation where one of the alternatives is a military contest over resources, which is the last thing any sane person from a less powerful country would want. International law is what protects our interests most of the time."

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Byers says the conflict over the Arctic involves only those areas where nations' continental shelves may "overlap," perhaps less than 10 per cent of any claims made or yet to come. He maintains that the fact the treaty is steeped in science, along with the expertise of the commission, will lend the whole process legitimacy and compel countries to accept the commission's recommendations. But even if it's all about science, this won't be an exact science. Countries will, for instance, try to justify ownership over the same seabed. "The Russians are going to make the most extensive claim possible," Byers predicts. "It will be based on an interpretation of the scientific evidence that is as favourable to them as possible."

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International law allows for disputes to be adjudicated through a special Law of the Sea Tribunal. But Canada and Russia, in ratifying the treaty, both declared they would opt out of being compelled to send a dispute over maritime boundaries to the tribunal. It could be years before nations reach that stage. Canada is still gathering details for its submissions to the UN. Countries have just 10 years after ratifying the Law of the Sea to submit claims. For Canada, this means 2013.

Meanwhile, Russia isn't wasting a moment. It has capitalized on its stable of useful vessels, nuclear-powered icebreakers for instance, to show that it's serious about the north. "The Arctic always was Russian, and it will remain Russian," expedition leader Artur Chilingarov said last week.

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"Why drop their flag" at the North Pole? asks Posner of the University of Chicago. "I take it as a signal they're going to claim this regardless of what the UN commission is going to say sometime in the future." In other words, states could ignore the UN commission or simply not comply with their international legal obligations. "Usually they make a legalistic argument, which may be implausible, but they make it anyway and go ahead and do whatever they want to do." 

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Posner considers Russia's flag caper less benign than most, reflective of a more "aggressive" Russia, seeking to reclaim through energy dominance the global stature once held by the Soviet Union.
He has a hunch that, if the ice cap continues to melt and energy prices keep rising, Russia will send more and more ships into the Arctic. Eventually, "they'll define an area, maybe what they've claimed already, maybe less, and say, `This is our water,' and come up with an excuse, such as the Eurasian continent extends below this, `and we'd be happy to sell licences to extract oil and gas,' and so on." 

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Planting a flag could be more important than we think, says Robert Miller, an expert in the "Doctrine of Discovery," which started with Pope Nicholas V in 1455 and was used by New World explorers to lay divine right over land for European Christian societies.

"There are definitions in the treaty, and Russia is trying to prove that the ridge runs to the North Pole. That's outside the parameters of the Doctrine of Discovery," says Miller, who teaches at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. "But look at how Russia is dotting its i's and crossing its t's by planting a flag. If they can't win this, they're doing what lawyers do all the time: try to prove it in a different way. They could say, `We were the first to have planted a flag on the seabed.'

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"The treaty supplemented the Doctrine of Discovery," Miller argues. "It didn't replace it."  The idea of planting flags and showing up every now and then – say at a deserted island – to show you exert control is called "effective occupation." Byers says Canada has done this with Hans Island in the Arctic, whose ownership it disputes with Denmark.

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Some experts suggest that while control of an area used to occur before sovereignty was established, today sovereignty over an area must be established by international law before taking control. Law may be supreme on paper, but there's something to be said for the old behaviours. That's why there are growing calls for the government to do more to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.

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Aside from continental-shelf claims, the Northwest Passage, which links the Atlantic and Pacific, is of primary importance for this country. As the climate warms, the ice pack preventing shipping could open up a much quicker route from Europe to China.  Canada considers the Passage to be inland waters. Other nations, including the U.S., say it's part of the high seas, and want free access.

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Byers has said Canada needs heavy-duty icebreakers, not the smaller vessels the government has promised to the navy, to properly assert its sovereignty in the Passage, but also to properly research its claim to the Arctic seabed.

One solution, Posner says, may be for Canada and the U.S. to work together to counterbalance Russian designs on the area – Canada with its knowledge, the U.S. with its money and military power.

"The only question for Canada and the U.S. is, how much effort (do they) want to start making in order to limit what Russia can get away with?"

  link

  Russia ahead in Arctic 'gold rush'

                                                                                                                           

By Paul Reynolds                                                                                   World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

                  

 

                             

              

                   The Russians are leading a new "gold rush" in the high north, with a bold attempt to assert a claim to oil, gas and mineral rights over large parts of the Arctic Ocean up to the North Pole.                   

 

                               

              

Russia's most famous explorer, Artur Chilingarov, complete with nautical beard, led the expedition to plant the Russian flag in a capsule on the ocean seabed under the pole itself.

 

                   "The Arctic is Russian," Chilingarov said earlier. "We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian coastal shelf."                   

                   Russia is claiming that an underwater mountain known as the Lomonosov Ridge is actually an extension of the Russian landmass.                   

This, it argues, justifies its claim to a triangular area up to the pole, giving it rights under the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention.

Under Article 76 of the convention, a state can claim a 200 nautical mile exclusive zone and beyond that up to 150 nautical miles of rights on the seabed. The baseline from which these distances are measured depends on where the continental shelf ends.

 

                            

                                             

                                 

Russia lodged a formal claim in 2001 but the UN's Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf told it to resubmit the claim. The flag-planting can be seen as a symbolic gesture in support.

 

 

At the same time, other states are acting to protect their interests in the Arctic. Canada is planning to build up to eight new patrol ships and the US Congress is considering a proposal to build two new heavy polar ships.

 

The rush for the Arctic has become more frenzied because of the melting of parts of the polar ice cap, which will allow easier exploration, and by the urgent need for new sources of oil and gas. A new sense of nationalism is also evident in Russia.

 

                               

              

 

The ice thaw is predicted by a team of international researchers whose Arctic Climate Impact Assessment suggested in 2004 that the summer ice cap could melt completely before the end of this century because of global warming.

                   If the ice retreats, it could open up new shipping routes and new areas where natural resources could be exploited.                   

 

                   The US Geological Survey estimates that a quarter of the world's undiscovered energy resources lies in Arctic areas.                   

At the moment, nobody's shelf extends up to the North Pole so there is an international area around the Pole administered by the International Seabed Authority from Kingston, Jamaica.

                   But quite apart from the Russian claim there are multiple other disputes.                   

The US and Canada argue over rights in the North-west Passage, Norway and Russia differ over the Barents Sea, Canada and Denmark are competing over a small island off Greenland, the Russian parliament is refusing to ratify an agreement with the US over the Bering Sea and Denmark is claiming the North Pole itself.

 

 

                                     North Pole solutions                                      

 

The five countries involved are considering two other potential ways of sharing the region, in which all the sea would be divided between them.

The "median line method", supported by Canada and Denmark, would divide the Arctic waters between countries according to their length of nearest coastline. This would give Denmark the Pole itself but Canada would gain as well.

The "sector method" would take the North Pole as the centre and draw lines south along longitudes. This would penalise Canada but Norway and, to a lesser extent, Russia, would gain.

One major problem is that the United States has not ratified the 1982 UN convention, largely because senators did not want to have international restrictions placed on American actions.

However, in May 2007, Senator Richard Lugar, a senior Republican, pleaded for ratification in the light of the Russian moves, saying that an American voice was needed at the negotiating table.

                                                        
                                           

       

              

 

 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/6925853.stm

9th Circuit Requires Preliminary Injunction of Restoration Logging

The Ninth Circuit reversed denial of a preliminary injunction to halt the Mission Brush project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, in which the Forest Service planned to allow selective logging to restore the forest to historic conditions. The court held that plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of both their NFMA and NEPA claims. The Forest Service decision relied on unverified assumptions that the logging would improve habitat for sensitive old-growth dependent species used to measure diversity and failed to discuss scientific uncertainty about its impact assessment.  Land_institute.pdf 

Vote for Children's Safe Drinking Water

Welcome, SusanSmithDrinkWaterforLife

My Current Vote
Children's Safe Drinking Water Votes this round: 512  |

Project ID: 01250
Date Posted: 7/02

US Fund for UNICEF

Project Description:
For Two Cents We Can Change the World. Four thousand children die needlessly every day from drinking contaminated water. It's a tragedy that hundreds of millions of people obtain their drinking water from polluted sources such as muddy rivers, ponds, and streams. This public health crisis can be addressed today through an innovative and low-cost technology that effectively purifies and cleans water while removing bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Right now millions of people in Africa, Asia, and the Americas are being reached by a not-for-profit project, but millions more are in need. Help us reach a goal of providing 2 billion liters of safe drinking water. For only two pennies a day a child can have safe drinking water. We'd love to hear your thoughts. In fact, Give Us Your Two Cents Worth. Thank you.

Member: gsallgood

About Me:
My mission is to prevent the sickness and death that occur in the developing world from drinking unsafe water. I'm lucky to spend much of my life building partnerships to provide a low-cost technology to purify water. I never get tired of seeing filthy and highly contaminated water miraculously turn into clear and safe water. And, what's most satisfying is to provide children with their first drink of truly clean and purified water. Now we've developed a way for everyone to get involved. We can make, transport, and deliver the technology on a sustainable basis for only pennies per person. In fact, for just two cents we can provide purified drinking water for a person for a day. Two Cents to Change a Life. Please consider joining our project: "Give Your Two Cents Worth.

1.1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water. As a result, 5,000 children die needlessly every day. In poor, rural communities, the only source of water is often miles away and the grueling task of collecting it often falls to young girls.

In the mountain village of La Horca, Nicaragua, Rosibel Gonzalez, 12, traveled 7.5 miles each day to fetch water for her parents and five siblings. Waking up before dawn, she walked to the creek before school and carried back a bucket of water on her head. She repeated the task after school and again before bed. But because the water she fetched came from the same source used by village livestock, it was dangerous to drink. When Rosibel's little brother, Wilber, was only eight months old, he and other villagers contracted cholera. That's where UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, came in. UNICEF provided a new solar-powered water pump and filtration system to bring clean water directly into La Horca's 35 homes. Now, Rosibel and her entire village have safe water to drink and Rosibel is left with plenty of time to study and play with her little brother.

With a presence in 156 countries, UNICEF is striving to duplicate this success worldwide. By voting for this project, you can help UNICEF save millions of children's lives. We know what needs to be done, we just need your help to do it. Only 2 cents will purchase one water purification tablet to clean 5 liters of water, $48 can purchase a portable latrine and $5,000 can buy a solar water pump, like the one installed in Rosibel's village. UNICEF partners with communities to provide these and other innovative, low-cost and life-saving solutions for the world's most vulnerable children and their families.

Zoellick becomes World Bank president

The Executive Directors of the World Bank yesterday unanimously selected Robert Zoellick as the 11th President of the bank for a five-year term.

The President of the bank is ex-officio President of the International Development Association (IDA) and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the Administrative Council of the International Centre of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

This announcement affects every aspect of environmental, energy, and resources law, of course, due to the Bank's pivotal role in financing development -- and thereby setting development policy throughout the world.  So, who is this masked man?

Here's the Bank's bio:

Professional History of Mr. Robert B. Zoellick

Mr. Zoellick, a U.S. national, is currently Vice Chairman, International, of Goldman Sachs Group, and a Managing Director and Chairman of Goldman Sach’s Board of International Advisors. He has served in a number of senior positions in successive US administrations, including as Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of State, and as U.S. Trade Representative (2001-05). He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy, US Department of Treasury, and Undersecretary for Economic and Agricultural Affairs and Counselor in the U.S. State Department. He was Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae (1993-1997), the large U.S. mortgage finance corporation, as well as Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman and CEO. In addition, he served as Olin Visiting Professor, U.S. Naval Academy, as Senior Advisor, Goldman Sachs, as Research Scholar, Belfer Center, Harvard University, and previously on three corporate boards, as well as numerous research and non-profit boards.

Mr. Zoellick has a J.D., magna cum laude, Harvard Law School, and a M.P.P. (in public management and international issues) from the Kennedy School of Government. In addition, Mr. Zoellick has received numerous distinguished service awards.

Read between the lines: Zoellick is a Bush loyalist and true believer in globalization for the benefit of corporate interests and the wealthy.  Wouldn't it be refreshing sometime for the World Bank to be led by someone who is committed to reducing international poverty and who has on the ground development experience -- rather than ideological theorizing and strategizing experience.

Unfortunately, and I say this as an alumna of both, Zoellick's Kennedy School and HLS credentials just mean he's smart, not moral or committed to the public he is supposed to serve.

Supreme Court Declines Cert re: preliminary injunction detour around administrative record

On Friday, the Supreme Court denied cert in Earth Island Institute v. U.S. Forest Service, 442 F.3d 1147 (9th Cir. 2006).  The Forest Service had sought to eliminate plaintiff's dodge of record review in NEPA cases by filing a preliminary injunction based on non-record evidence.  This, of course, has always been a favorite approach for plaintiffs who secure the necessary experts only after losing before the agency.  Even though it was the 9th Cir., the Supreme Court doesn't seem concerned about stopping the practice.

Westlaw's note:

The United States Supreme Court has denied certiorari in a case in which the Ninth Circuit held that environmental groups were entitled to a preliminary injunction barring the United States Forest Service from proceeding with logging projects in fire-damaged portions of the Eldorado National Forest. In approving the restoration projects, the Forest Service abused its discretion in its estimates of the likely tree mortality from the forest fires, the Ninth Circuit held. The Court also found that the Forest Service did not take the requisite "hard look" at the effects of the projects on the California spotted owl, or conduct population surveys for the hairy woodpecker and Williamson's sapsucker. The Forest Service charged in its petition for certiorari that the Court of Appeals erred by relying on declarations filed by the environmental groups in the district court, rather than confining its review to the administrative record, in determining that the groups had shown a likelihood of success on the merits. The Forest Service also claimed that the Ninth Circuit found that the groups could satisfy the "irreparable injury" prong of the test for obtaining a preliminary injunction by showing only a "possibility" of such injury. Finally, the Forest Service claimed that the Ninth Circuit had erroneously discounted competing interests in the use of forest lands under multiple use principles and the Forest Service's balance of those competing uses, in weighing the balance of harms and the public interest.

Forest Service LRMPs Do Not Require ESA Consultation

Forest Guardians v. Forsgren, (C.A.10 (N.M.)) March 1, 2007: Endangered Species - Forest Service had no duty under Endangered Species Act to consult with Fish and Wildlife Service regarding Land and Resource Management Plan.

The Forest Service had no duty under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the question of whether the Land and Resource Management Plans (LRMPs) for national forests could jeopardize the continued existence of Canada Lynx, which had been listed as a "distinct population segment" under the ESA. The environmental groups, which sought to compel consultation, did not allege any activity, project, or program authorized, funded, or carried out by the Forest Service that might constitute "action" within meaning of the ESA.

Spirit of the Eagle

This blog is devoted principally to the professional or academic aspects of environmental law, policy, science, and ethics.  But like any blogger, I do have a life.  Anyone interested in the slightly less academic side of me is welcome to visit Spirit of the Eagle, my personal blog.

No Comfort Here: We Can't Confidently Predict Ice Sheet Behavior

Climate change policymakers are struggling with how to deal with scientific uncertainty.  We're sure now that we have to pursue both GHG reduction efforts as well as adaptation.  The latter depends particularly upon having a relatively narrow range of estimated impacts.  But, with the IPCC 4th reports reluctance to guess about ice sheet behavior and include those estimates in its analysis of sea level changes, policymakers end up with a very broad range of sea level change estimates....from 1-2 feet by 2100 to  several meters.  We may adapt adequately to the former with moderate efforts (though seemingly herculean to some) and be satisfied with limiting GHG reductions to those necessary to hold SST change to 2 degrees.  Changes of the latter magnitude, however, would likely be catastrophic and thus require immediate, massive global efforts to reduce GHG emissions as quickly as feasible.

The significance of ice sheet behavior to policy has resulted in substantial research efforts that have been bearing fruit in the last year or two.  But recent studies suggest that the IPCC's uncertainty about ice sheet behavior is justified -- and may not be resolved quickly enough to allow us to make policy based on a narrow range of estimated sea level change.  So what are we to do?  It's the traditional problem of scientific uncertainty rearing its ugly head -- just at the time when we are convinced that something needs to be done, but now we have to decide what to do and how quickly it must be done.

The temptation is to say as much as feasible.  But that begs the cost question, which defines our sense of what is feasible.  So, we need to set "technology-forcing" or what I'd prefer to call "technology-facilitating" goals and let the genius of the market find ways to meet them.  And the goals need to be set not based on what we guess is the central tendency of estimated climate impacts, but based on the higher end of estimated climate impacts --not based on a worst case scenario, but based on a moderately worse case scenario.  To me, this is James Hansen's recommendation to hold SST increase to 1 degree by the end of the century.    Now, what does that require?  I don't know....but I'd like the answer to that question.

Here's the latest from the AAAS meeting: 

Clues to Sea Rise May Lie Beneath Antarctic Glaciers

Images courtesy of NASA

A network of rapidly filling and emptying lakes lies beneath at least two of West Antarctica’s ice streams, according to new research published online today by the journal Science, at the Science Express website.

More than 100 subglacial lakes have already been discovered, but the new ones are particularly interesting because they occur below fast-moving ice. Though it’s too early to say exactly how this liquid water is affecting the rates of ice flow above, understanding the behavior of these fast-moving ice streams is essential for predicting how Antarctica may contribute to sea level rise.

Helen Fricker of the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and colleagues analyzed elevation data recorded by NASA’s Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) collected over the lower parts of the Whillans and Mercer Ice Streams. These are two of the major, fast-moving glaciers that are carrying ice from the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the floating Ross Ice Shelf.

“We’ve found that there are substantial subglacial lakes under ice that’s moving a couple of meters per day. It’s really ripping along. It’s the fast-moving ice that determines how the ice sheet responds to climate change on a short timescale,” said Robert Bindschadler of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, one of the study’s coauthors.

“We aren’t yet able to predict what these ice streams are going to do. We’re still learning about the controlling processes. Water is critical, because it’s essentially the grease on the wheel. But we don’t know the details yet,” he said.

Bindschadler presented the findings at a news briefing for reporters on Thursday, 15 February, at the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. In coordination with the briefing, NASA released satellite images of West Antarctica.

Glaciologists have known that water exists under ice streams, but the observation of a system of water storage reservoirs is unprecedented. The surprising thing about this discovery is the amount of water involved, and the pace at which it moves from one reservoir to another, according to Fricker, the lead author.

“We didn’t realize that the water under these ice streams was moving in such large quantities, and on such short time scales,” Fricker said. “We thought these changes took place over years and decades, but we are seeing large changes over months.”

The authors identified numerous spots that either rose or deflated from 2003 to 2006, likely because water flowed into or out of them. Water would be capable of this because it is highly pressurized under the weight of the overlying ice.

The three largest regions are between approximately 120 and 500 square kilometers, while the others are widely scattered and smaller. One of the large regions, referred to as Subglacial Lake Engelhardt, drained during the first 2.7 years of the ICESat mission, while another, Subglacial Lake Conway, steadily filled during the same period.

“I’m quite astonished that with this combination of satellite sensors we could sense the movement of large amounts of water like this. From 600 kilometers up in space, we were able to see small portions of the ice sheet rise and sink,” Bindschadler said.

Studies of the subglacial environment are rare, being expensive, risky and labor-intensive. Bindschadler explained that before the ICESat mission, researchers would typically have to drill holes in the ice streams in order to study what was occurring beneath them. These holes, generally just about 4 inches in diameter, provided a much more limited view of the entire ice stream than the satellite images do.

“Until now, we’ve had just a few glimpses into what’s going on down there. This is the most complete picture to date what’s going on beneath fast flowing ice,” Bindschadler said.

Added Fricker: “The approach used for this work provides glaciologists with a new tool to survey and monitor the nature of the subglacial water system and to link these observations to the motion of the ice sheet. We still don’t know how the subglacial water system varies on longer time-scales from decades to centuries. To do this, we need to continue monitoring the ice streams with ICESat and future follow-on missions.”

Kathy Wren        

15 February 2007 3:24 pm

On ice sheets, U.W. reports:

Two of Greenland's largest glaciers shrank dramatically and dumped twice as much ice into the sea during a period of less than a year between 2004 and 2005. And then, less than two years later, they returned to near their previous rates of discharge.

The variability over such a short time, reported online Feb. 9 on Science magazine's Science Express, underlines the problem in assuming that glacial melting and sea level rise will necessarily occur at a steady upward trajectory, according to lead author Ian Howat, a post-doctoral researcher with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center. The paper comes a year after a study in the journal Science revealed that discharge from Greenland's glaciers had doubled between 2000 and 2005, leading some scientists to speculate such changes were on a steady, upward climb.

"While the rates of shrinking of these two glaciers have stabilized, we don't know whether they will remain stable, grow or continue to collapse in the near future," Howat says. That's because the glaciers' shape changed greatly, becoming stretched and thinned.

"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can't assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he says. "Future warming may lead to rapid pulses of retreat and increased discharge rather than a long, steady drawdown."

The findings come on the heels of the widely publicized Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's report issued Feb. 2. Some scientists criticized the report for disregarding the surprisingly high discharges of ice from Greenland's glaciers since 2000 when the panel estimated the amount of future sea level rise that will be caused by melting glaciers.

In the summary for policy makers (http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explained its position saying, "Dynamical processes related to ice flow and not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude."

"I think the IPCC authors made a responsible decision in producing their estimates while noting the recent discharges are a real concern that we do not yet understand well enough to make accurate predictions," says Ian Joughin, a glaciologist with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory and co-author on the Science Express article.

Getting accurate computer models of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers is important because 99 percent of the Earth's glacial ice is found in those two places. Glacial ice is second only to the oceans as the largest reservoir of water on the planet.

Previous findings published a year ago showed that Greenland's glaciers had doubled their discharge between 2000 and 2005, but these results were based on "snapshots" of discharge taken five years apart, Howat says.

"Did an equal amount of discharge occur every year? Did it happen all in one year? Is there a steady upward trajectory? We didn't know," he says.

Last week's Science Express article adds details from Greenland's second and third largest glaciers, Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim, in the southwest part of Greenland. The two are known as "outlet" glaciers because their front edges reach all the way to the sea, unlike other glaciers that are landlocked. Together the two glaciers represent 35 percent of East Greenland's total discharge. The scientists examined the glaciers' speed, geometry and discharge between 2000 and 2006.

At Kangerdlugssuaq, roughly 80 percent of the total increase in discharge occurred in less than one year in 2005, followed by a 25 percent drop the following years, the authors say. At Helheim, discharge increased between 2000 and 2003, and then by an even greater amount between 2004 and 2005. It then dropped in 2006 to its near 2000 value.

The scientists say what they've learned is that the shape of these two glaciers changed as they surged toward the sea, changes that put the brakes on. The glaciers lost ice as their front edges began calving, became lighter and floated off the bottom, which led to more ice breaking off as the ice was buoyed up by water. The fronts stablized once the ice had retreated to shallower parts of the fjords and again rested on the bottom.

They also found the pace toward the sea was faster at the front edge of the glaciers than farther up the mountain. For example Kangerdlugssuaq's front edge increased in speed by 80 in 2005 percent while 19 miles inland the speed increased 20 percent. This caused the glaciers to thin, stretch and weigh less overall, which also slowed them down.

"All this in a matter of a few short years for these two glaciers is not the way glaciologists are used to thinking," Howat says. "We're used to thinking of the ice sheets in terms of millennia or centuries."

Predicting Fate of Glaciers Proves Slippery Task

By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 February 2007

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declined to extrapolate the recent accelerated loss of glacial ice far into the future (ScienceNOW, 2 February). Too poorly understood, the IPCC authors said. Overly cautious, some scientists responded in very public complaints (Science, 9 February, p. 754). The accelerated ice loss--apparently driven by global warming--could raise sea level much faster than the IPCC was predicting, they said. Yet almost immediately, new findings have emerged to support the IPCC's conservative stance.

             In a surprise development, glaciologists reported online last week in Science (10.1126/science.1138478) that two major outlet glaciers draining the Greenland ice sheet--Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim--did a lively two-step in the first part of the decade. By gauging the elevation and flow speed of the glaciers using satellite data, Ian Howat of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle and his colleagues found that Kangerdlugssuaq sped up abruptly in 2005, no doubt accelerating sea level rise just a bit. But then it fell back to near its earlier flow speed by the next year. Helheim gradually accelerated over several years, also sped up sharply in 2005, and then slowed abruptly to its original flow speed. Apparently, these glaciers were temporarily responding to the loss of some restraining ice at their lower ends, much as a river's flow would temporarily increase with the lowering of a dam.

Helen Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and her colleagues report another glaciological surprise in a paper published online today in Science. Fricker also presented the study this morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW) in San Francisco, California. Using a new satellite-based laser technique, the team discovered an unexpectedly active network of linked lakes beneath two ice streams--Whillans and Mercer--draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Researchers knew of pools of meltwater at the base of Antarctic ice, but Fricker and her colleagues recorded the rising and falling of the surface by up to 9 meters over 14 patches of ice, the largest three spanning 120 to 500 square kilometers. Water that could lubricate the base of the ice and perhaps accelerate its flow was seeping from one subglacial lake to another in a matter of months, and in one case escaping to the sea. "We didn't know as much about the Antarctic ice sheet as we thought we did," says Fricker.

Glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College agrees. "Lots of people were saying we [IPCC authors] should extrapolate into the future," he says, but "we dug our heels in at the IPCC and said we don't know enough to give an answer." Researchers will have to understand how and why glacier speeds can vary so much, he adds, before they can trust their models to forecast the fate of the ice sheets, much less sea level.

Biodiversity conservation

A couple of articles caught my eye recently.  One in Nature argues that phylogenetic diversity (a measure of how distantly species are related) should be considered in addition to using number of species to identify  "hotspots" that deserve priority in conservation efforts. [see Science news report  below].  Another Nature article described rapid biodiversity assessments, conflicting ideas on how to set biodiversity conservation priorities, and the utility of these assessments in priority setting [see excerpt below].

Saving Species With Potential [edited by ELP]
By Robert Koenig
ScienceNOW Daily News
14 February 2007

When seeking to preserve biodiversity, simply trying to count and protect every species may not be enough. A new study suggests that conservationists should also consider the extent to which the mix of species in an area has the genetic potential to adapt to change. In the past, many scientists assumed that the number of species in a region reflects that area's potential for evolutionary change. That potential is expressed in terms of "phylogenetic diversity"--a measure of how distantly related those species are. The higher the species number, the prevailing theory went, the higher the phylogenetic diversity, and the easier it would be for the area as a whole to adapt to global change.  However, in examining plant life in two biodiversity hot spots in South Africa's Cape region, researchers found that species number and phylogenetic diversity don't always go hand in hand.  The researchers found that the western Cape had more plant species and the eastern Cape's flora had higher phylogenetic diversity. That diversity, in turn, had produced more plants with traits useful for food or medicine.  [The results] may help conservationists better decide which areas to protect: "A planner might ask, 'Where do I place my next reserve to capture the most evolutionary potential?' It is precisely in these circumstances that one would expect phylogenetic diversity to really come into its own."  Another evolutionary genomics researcher agrees that phylogenetics should be used by conservationists, but he cautions that predicting evolutionary change is tricky, as some lineages take millions of years to evolve significantly, while others evolve in much faster.

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Rapid biodiversity assessments and conservation priority setting:

The idea is simple. With funds, expertise and time too limited to conduct thorough species surveys of every unknown region, experts instead target the most promising areas and quickly assess whether they are worthy of conservation. Proponents admit that the resulting data are incomplete, but say the compromise is justified because rough estimates of biodiversity can help inform preservation decisions. And even a quick survey by scientists with decades of broad experience in the field and in museum collections can lead to qualitative estimates of an area's relative conservation value. "We would all love to spend more time," says Debra Moskovits, a tropical biologist at the museum and founder of its RBI initiative. "But the time pressure is intense. If we can protect some of these areas, then maybe people will be able to do the more extensive studies the areas deserve."

The protected areas on a list maintained by the United Nations have grown to some 11.5% of the planet's land surface in recent years1, but 'gap analysis' studies show that large numbers of species are not represented in the existing network2. Conservationists have argued for decades about how best to prioritize areas for future conservation: whether by geographical location and political expediency, or through some measure of species numbers, degrees of species interconnectedness, or the presence of rare, threatened or keystone organisms.

The Field Museum team has focused its attention on the high-biodiversity upper Amazon and Andean foothills regions of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Working with local, regional and international scientists and conservation groups, members of the core group of five museum biologists have conducted 12 rapid inventories in these regions since 1999, representing 9.2 million hectares of surveyed land - an area about the size of the US state of Maine. Preliminary results are shared immediately with local communities, organizations and political leaders; formal reports are usually published in a matter of months. "People are making land-use decisions all the time, and they can't protect places if they don't know anything about them," says Corine Vriesendorp, a conservation ecologist and the Field Museum's director for rapid inventories. "If you bring in a crack team of biologists, you can very quickly tell decision makers whether a place is special or not." And it can be done relatively inexpensively - a typical, foundation-funded RBI costs about US$300,000 from initial planning through to the final published report.

Six new protected areas have already been established, comprising about half of the territory the team has surveyed. Most of the remaining land is also on the road to legal protection.

Preservation order

The survey information can also help local communities and governments prioritize specific zones within a surveyed area, identifying those that most urgently need full protection, and those that might be allocated for uses such as tourism and sustainable harvesting. "People overlook the impact that these kinds of survey can have on building local capacity for conservation," notes tropical land use specialist Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa of the University of Alberta in Canada, who is not involved in the programme. "You can get local participation and a broader perspective, and that really helps build expertise and interest in the local communities."

For the Field Museum team, that means working with local scientists and graduate students to compile the inventories, and forming links with indigenous groups, regional and national governments, and local conservation organizations. The biological work is paralleled by 'social inventories' - surveys of the organizational structure and natural resource use of local villages. That social aspect, says Vriesendorp, sets RBIs apart from other rapid conservation assessments and is crucial to their success. "The dream is to protect these areas indefinitely," she says, "and that can only happen if the local people and their leaders are fully engaged."

The core of the RBI approach is the rapid inventory itself. The surveys have their roots in a 1987 birding trip, when physicist and avid birder Murray Gell-Mann and ornithologist Ted Parker first started talking about using quick-time biological surveys to spur conservation. By 1990, environmental group Conservation International, based in Washington DC, had put their ideas into practise; Moskovits and other Field Museum team members, including botanist Robin Foster and ornithologists Doug Stotz and Tom Schulenberg, were all early participants. The idea caught on with other groups, and by 1995 the Field Museum had initiated its own rapid inventory programme, spearheaded by Moskovits.

Each inventory starts with satellite images, geological maps and, if possible, video footage taken from the air. Experience has taught that the taxonomists' time is better spent walking trails than wielding machetes to create them. The RBI scientists identify areas they think will give them a broad cross-section of the available habitats, and advance teams of local workers prepare bush camps and cut trails to their specifications.

We're looking at what's common, what's rare, what's dominant and what's really weird.

Corine Vriesendorp

In Sierra del Divisor, that means three separate campsites: two at higher elevations, one along a lowland riverbank, and each with a network of trails stretching for dozens of kilometres along streams, through swamps and up mountains. The museum biologists are joined by nine scientists and students from Peru and Brazil. "We try to balance the teams to get broad experience across the region, as well as local expertise," Vriesendorp says. The inventory focuses on limited taxa - trees, shrubs, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians - to keep the workload manageable, and seeks to determine "what's common, what's rare, what's dominant and what's really weird", says Vriesendorp. The scientists tabulate individual species of plant and animal, and draw on experience to gauge the relative health, uniqueness and diversity of each ecosystem. The social inventory team, meanwhile, conducts its own surveys to map out the location and structure of local human populations, including the potential for and threats to long-term conservation.

Effects of Global Warming on Wildlife

Here's the CRS report.  Climate change.pdf

Follow the Bouncing Global Warming Legislation Ball

Here's a copy of the CRS report on current global warming legislation:

Climate Change: Greenhouse Gas Reduction Bills in the 110th Congress

Introduction

Climate change is generally viewed as a global issue, but proposed responses generally require action at the national level. In 1992, the United States ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which called on industrialized countries to take the lead in reducing the six primary greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000.  For more than a decade, a variety of voluntary and regulatory actions have been proposed or undertaken in the United States, including monitoring of power plant carbon dioxide emissions, improved appliance efficiency, and incentives for developing renewable energy sources. However, carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase.  In 2001, President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which called for legally binding commitments by developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.  He also rejected the concept of mandatory emissions reductions. Since then, the Administration has focused U.S. climate change policy on voluntary initiatives to reduce the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, in 2005, the Senate passed a Sense of the Senate resolution on climate change declaring that a mandatory, market-based program to slow, stop, and reverse the growth of greenhouse gases should be enacted at a rate and in a manner that "will not significantly harm the United States economy and will encourage comparable action by other nations. A number of congressional proposals to advance programs designed to reduce greenhouse gases have been introduced in the 110th Congress. These have generally followed one of three tracks. The first is to improve the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions to provide a basis for research and development and for any potential future reduction scheme. The second is to enact a market-oriented greenhouse gas reduction program along the lines of the trading provisions of the current acid rain reduction program established by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The third is to enact energy and related programs that would have the added effect of reducing greenhouse gases; an example would be a requirement that electricity producers generate a portion of their electricity from renewable resources (a renewable portfolio standard). This report focuses on the second category of bills. Proposed Legislation in 110th Congress In the 110th Congress, four bills have been introduced that would impose controls on emissions of greenhouse gases. A comparison of major provisions is provided in Appendix 1 S. 280, introduced by Senator Lieberman, would cap emissions of the six greenhouse gases specified in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at reduced levels, from the electric generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial sectors -- sectors that account for about 85% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The reductions would be implemented in four phases, with an emissions cap in 2012 based on the affected facilities' 2004 emissions (for an entity that has a single unit that emits more than 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent); the cap steadily declines until it is equal to one-third of the facilities' 2004 levels. The program would be implemented through an expansive allowance trading program to maximize opportunities for cost-effective reductions, and credits obtained from increases in carbon sequestration, reductions from non-covered sources, and acquisition of allowances from foreign sources could be used to comply with 30% of reduction requirements. The bill also contains an extensive new infrastructure to encourage innovation and new technologies. S. 309, introduced by Senator Sanders, would cap greenhouse gas emissions on an economy-wide basis beginning in 2010. Beginning in 2020, the country's emissions would be capped at their 1990 levels, and then proceed to decline steadily until they were reduced to 20% of their 1990 levels in the year 2050. The EPA has the discretion to employ a market-based allowance trading program or any combination of cost-effective emission reduction strategies. The bill also includes new mandatory greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles and new powerplants, along with a new energy efficiency performance standard. The bill would establish a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and a new low-carbon generation requirement and trading program. S. 317, introduced by Senator Feinstein, would cap greenhouse gas emissions from electric generators over 25 megawatts. Beginning in 2011, affected generators would be capped at their 2006 levels, declining to 2001 levels by 2015. After that, the emission cap would decline 1% annually until 2020, when the rate of decline would increase to 1.5%. The allowance trading program includes an allocation scheme that provides for an increasing percentage of all allowances to be auctioned, with 100% auctioning in 2036 and thereafter. The cap-and-trade program allows some of an entity's reduction requirement to be meet with credits obtained from foreign sources and a variety of other activities specified in the bill. H.R. 620, introduced by Representative Olver, is a substantially modified version of S. 280. Using the same basic structure as S. 280, the emission caps under H.R. 620 are more stringent. Reductions from affected sectors (electric generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial) would be set at 2004 levels in 2012 and then steadily decline until the cap is equal to about one-fourth of facilities' 2004 levels. Although H.R. 620 permits affected entities to comply with the reduction requirements with credits from foreign sources, sequestration, and reductions from non-covered entities, these sources are limited to 15% of the source's reduction requirement.

Appendix 1.

Comparison of Key Provisions of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Bills

Topic	S. 280 (Lieberman)	S. 309 (Sanders)	S. 317 (Feinstein)	H.R. 620 (Olver)
Emission reduction/ limitation scheme	Absolute cap on total emissions from all covered entities in the electric power, transportation, industry, and commercial sectors.	Absolute cap on total emissions economy-wide.	Absolute cap on total emissions from covered electric generators.	Absolute cap on total emissions from all covered entities in the electric power, transportation, industry, and commercial sectors.
Specific emissions limits	Beginning in 2012, emissions from covered entities are capped at 6.13 billion metric tons, minus 2012 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2020, emission cap declines to 5.239 billion metric tons, minus 2020 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2030, emission cap declines to 4.1billion metric tons, minus 2030 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2050, emission cap further declines to 2.096 billion metric tons, minus annual emissions from non-covered entities.	Beginning in 2010, emissions economy-wide to be reduced 2% annually. Beginning in 2020, emission cap on economy-wide basis set at 1990 level, with declining emission caps of 26.7% below 1990 levels in 2030 and 53.3% in 2040. Beginning in 2050, emission cap set at 80% below 1990 levels.	Beginning in 2011, emissions from affected electric generators capped at 2006 levels. Beginning in 2015, emissions from affected electric generators capped at their 2001 levels, declining 1% annually until 2020. Beginning in 2020, emission cap declines 1.5% annually.	Beginning in 2012, emissions from covered entities are capped at 6.15 billion metric tons, minus 2012 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2020, emission cap declines to 5.232 billion metric tons, minus 2020 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2030, emission cap declines to 3.858 billion metric tons, minus 2030 emissions from non-covered entities. Beginning in 2050, emission cap further declines to 1.504 billion metric tons, minus annual emissions from non-covered entities.
Greenhouse gases defined	Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).	Same six gases as S. 280.	Same six gases as S. 280.	Same six gases as S. 280.
Covered entities	In metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents: any electric power, industrial, or commercial entity that emits over 10,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent annually from any single facility owned by the entity; any refiner or importer of petroleum products for transportation use that, when combusted, will emit over 10,000 metric tons annually; and any importer or producer of HFCs, PFCs, or SF6 that, when used, will emit over 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.	EPA promulgates rule within two years of enactment that applies the most cost-effective reduction options on sources or sectors to achieve reduction goals.	Any fossil fuel-fired electric generating facility that has a capacity of greater than 25 megawatts and generates electricity for sale, including cogeneration and government-owned facilities.	In metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents: any electric power, industrial, or commercial entity that emits over 10,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent annually from any single facility owned by the entity; any refiner or importer of petroleum products for transportation use that, when combusted, will emit over 10,000 metric tons annually; and any importer or producer of HFCs, PFCs, or SF6 that, when used, will emit over 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Responsible agency	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
General allocating and implementing strategy	A tradeable allowance system is established: EPA shall determine allocations based on several economic, equity, and sector-specific criteria, including economic efficiency, competitive effects, and impact on consumers. Allowances are to be allocated upstream to refiners and importers of transportation fuel, along with producers of HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, and downstream to electric generation, industrial, and commercial entities. Allocations to covered entities are provided at no cost.	Tradeable allowance system permitted. In implementing reduction program, EPA shall select the most cost-effective emission reduction strategies. EPA shall allocate to various sectors and interests any allowances that are not allocated to affected entities, including households, dislocated workers, energy efficiency and renewable energy activities, sequestration activities, and ecosystem protection activities.	Tradeable allowance system is established. Allocations to existing sources based on historic electricity output, and includes allowance allocations for incremental nuclear capacity and renewable energy, along with sequestration and early action provisions. From 2011 on, an increasing percentage of all allowances are to be auctioned, with 100% of allowances auctioned in 2036 and thereafter.	A tradeable allowance system is established: EPA shall determine allocations based on several economic, equity, and sector-specific criteria, including economic efficiency, competitive effects, and impact on consumers. Allowances are to be allocated upstream to refiners and importers of transportation fuel, along with producers of HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, and downstream to electric generation, industrial, and commercial entities. Allocations to covered entities are provided at no cost.
Public sale/auction of allowances	EPA shall determine the number of allowances allocated to the Climate Change Credit Corporation (CCCC) (established by the bill). EPA shall allocate to the CCCC allowances before 2012 to auction to raise revenue for technology deployment and dissemination. The CCCC may buy and sell allowances, and use the proceeds to reduce costs borne by consumers and other purposes. (See “Revenue recycling” below.)	EPA may choose to provide for trustees to sell allowances for the benefit of entities eligible to receive assistance under the proposal (see above).	From 2011 on, an increasing percentage of all allowances are to be auctioned, with 100% of allowances auctioned in 2036 and thereafter. Revenues from the auction are to be deposited in the Climate Action Trust Fund created by the Department of the Treasury.	EPA shall determine the number of allowances allocated to the Climate Change Credit Corporation (CCCC) (established by the bill). The CCCC may buy and sell allowances, and use the proceeds to reduce costs borne by consumers and other purposes. (See “Revenue recycling” below.)
Cost-limiting safety valve	No explicit provision.	No explicit provision. However, if the President determines a national security emergency exists, the President may temporarily adjust, suspend, or waive any regulation promulgated under this program (subject to judicial review).	No explicit provision. However, limited borrowing against future reductions is permitted if EPA determines allowance prices have reached and sustained a level that is or will cause significant harm to the U.S. economy. Also, EPA may increase to 50% the share of international credits that can be used in such cases.	No explicit provision.
Other market trading system features	Up to 30% of required reductions may be achieved through credits obtained through pre-certified international emissions trading programs, approved reduction projects in developing countries, domestic carbon sequestration, and reductions from non-covered entities. Borrowing against future reductions is permitted.	Market trading systems incorporated into Renewable Portfolio Standard and new low-carbon generation requirement.	Up to 25% (50% for new affected units) of required reductions may be achieved with credits obtained through EPA-approved foreign government programs developed under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) protocols. Limited borrowing against future reductions is permitted if EPA determines allowance prices have reached and sustained a level that is causing or will cause significant harm to the U.S. economy. Also, EPA may increase to 50% the share of international credits that can be used in such cases.	Up to 15% of required reductions may be achieved through credits obtained through pre-certified international emissions trading programs, approved reduction projects in developing countries, domestic carbon sequestration, and reductions from non-covered entities. Borrowing against future reductions is permitted.
Banking	Banking of allowances is permitted; allowances may be saved for use in future years.	No specific prohibition on banking.	Banking of allowances is permitted; allowances may be saved for use in future years.	Banking of allowances is permitted; allowances may be saved for use in future years.
Early reduction credits and bonus credits	Entities with registered emission reductions achieved before 2012 may receive allowances for them, including reductions achieved under more stringent mandatory state programs. For the time period 2012-2017, entities that have entered into an agreement with EPA to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 are entitled to additional allowances to cover their additional reductions and are allowed to achieve 40% of their reduction requirement (as opposed to 30%; see above) through international emissions trading and projects, sequestration, or reductions by non-covered entities.	Reductions previously achieved under state programs that are at least as stringent as a federal trading program may be recognized by the federal program. Entities that demonstrate reductions achieved early (but not before 1992) that are as verifiable as reductions under a federal trading program may be recognized by the federal program.	Entities with reductions achieved from 2000 through 2010 shall receive credits under specific criteria, including EPA rules that ensure reductions are real, additional, verifiable, enforceable, and permanent, and that they were reported under either 1605(b) of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, or according to a state or regional registry. Quantity of credits given is limited to 10% of the 2011 allowance allocation.	Entities with registered emission reductions achieved before 2012 may receive allowances for them. For the time period 2012-2017, entities that have entered into an agreement with EPA to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2012 are entitled to additional allowances to cover their additional reductions and are allowed to achieve 35% of their reduction requirement (as opposed to 15%; see above) through international emissions trading and projects, sequestration, or reductions by non-covered entities.
Revenue recycling	Revenues generated by allowance auctions and trading proceeds are received by a new Climate Change Credit Corporation (CCCC). Activities to be funded include mechanisms to reduce consumer costs and to assist dislocated workers, low-income persons, and affected communities, along with programs to encourage deployment of new technology and wildlife restoration. Allocations to the CCCC are to be determined by EPA based on the funding needs of the advanced technologies demonstration and deployment programs. Further, at least 50% of revenue received must be used for technology deployment.	Allowances may be allocated by EPA to households, dislocated workers, energy efficiency and renewable energy activities, sequestration activities, and ecosystem protection activities.	Revenues generated from the auction are to be deposited in the Climate Action Trust Fund created by the Department of the Treasury. Activities to be funded include an Innovative Low-and Zero-emitting Carbon Technologies Program, a Clean Coal Technologies Program, and an Energy Efficiency Technology Program, along with research and development. Adaption and mitigation activities to be funded include affected workers and communities, and fish and wildlife habitat.	Revenues generated by allowance auctions and trading proceeds are received by a new Climate Change Credit Corporation (CCCC). Activities to be funded include mechanisms to reduce consumer costs and to assist dislocated workers and affected communities, along with programs to encourage deployment of new technology and wildlife restoration.
Penalty for non-compliance	Excess emission penalties are equal to three times the market price for allowances on the last day of the year at issue.	Existing enforcement provisions of Section 113 of the Clean Air Act are extended to program.	$100 per excess ton indexed to inflation plus a 1.3 to 1 offset from future emissions allowances. If the market price for an allowance exceeds $60, the penalty is $200 per excess ton, adjusted for inflation.	Excess emission penalties are equal to three times the market price for allowances on the last day of the year at issue.
Other key provisions	Provisions include studies of research on abrupt climate change and impact of climate change on the world's poor, among others, and creation of a national greenhouse gas database. A new Innovation Infrastructure is created, along with program initiatives to promote less carbon-intensive technology, adaption, sequestration, and related activities. Requires periodic review of target adequacy by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.	Provisions include mandatory greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles by 2010, for new electric powerplants that begin operation after December 31, 2011, and a new energy efficiency performance standard. Establishes a Renewable Portfolio Standard and credit program. Establishes a new low-carbon generation requirement and trading program. Requires periodic review of target adequacy by the National Academy of Sciences.	Establishes program to encourage offsets from the agricultural sector. Offset credits available for agricultural, forestry, grazing, and wetlands management, sequestration projects, or practices that meet specific criteria in the proposal. Offset credits also available for approved emission reduction offset projects from a variety of activities listed in the proposal. Requires periodic review of target adequacy by EPA taking into account the recommendations of a newly established Climate Science Advisory Panel.	Provisions include studies of the impact of climate change on coastal ecosystems and communities, and the world's poor, among others; assessment of adaptation technologies; and creation of a national greenhouse gas database. Requires periodic review of target adequacy by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.

Appendix 2. Common Terms

Allocation schemes (upstream and downstream). Regulatory approaches to allocating allowances (as opposed to auction schemes) can choose different points and participants along the production process to assign allowances and the resulting compliance responsibility. Upstream allocation schemes establish emission caps and assign allowances at a production, importation, or distribution point of products that will eventually produce greenhouse emissions further down the production process. For example, in the natural gas sector, emission caps could be established and allowances assigned at processing facilities where facilities and participants shrink from about 400,000 wells and 8,000 companies to 500 plants and 200 companies. In contrast, downstream allocation schemes establish emission caps and assign allowances at the point in the process where the emissions are emitted. In the case of the natural gas industry, to achieve the same coverage as the upstream scheme, this would involve assigning allowances to natural gas-fired electric generators, industry, and even residential users. Thus, some downstream proposals choose either to exempt certain sectors (such as residential use) from a cap-and-trade program or to employ a hybrid allocation scheme where some of the allowances are allocated upstream and others downstream (such as the electric generators).  

Allowance. An allowance is generally defined as a limited authorization by the government to emit 1 ton of pollutant. In the case of greenhouse gases, an allowance generally refers to a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent. Although used generically, an allowance is technically different from a credit. A credit represents a ton of pollutant that an entity has reduced in excess of its legal requirement. However, the terms tend to be used interchangeably, along with others, such as permits.  

Auctions. Auctions can be used in market-based pollution control schemes in several different ways. For example, Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments uses an annual auction to ensure the liquidity of the credit trading program. For this purpose, a small percentage of the credits permitted under the program are auctioned annually, with the proceeds returned to the entities that would have otherwise received them. Private parties are also allowed to participate. A second possibility is to use an auction to raise revenues for a related (or unrelated) program. For example, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is exploring an auction to implement its public benefit program to assist consumers or pursue strategic energy purposes. A third possibility is to use auctions as a means of allocating some, or all, of the credits mandated under a GHG control program. Obviously, the impact that an auction would have on cost would depend on how extensively it was used in any GHG control program, and to what purpose the revenues were expended.  

Banking. Although allowances are generally allocated on an annual basis, most cap-and-trade programs do not require participants to either use the allowance that year or else lose it. Under many proposals, allowances can be banked by the receiving participant (or traded to another participant who can use or bank it) to be used or traded in a future year. Banking reduces the absolute cost of compliance by making annual emission caps flexible over time. The limited ability to shift the reduction requirement across time allows affected entities to better accommodate corporate planning for capital turnover, allow for technological progress, control equipment construction schedules, and respond to transient events such as weather and economic shocks.  

Bubble. A bubble is a regulatory device that permits two or more sources of pollutants to be treated as one for the purposes of emission compliance.  

Cap-and-trade program. A cap-and-trade program is based on two premises. First, a set amount of pollutant emitted by human activities can be assimilated by the ecological system without undue harm. Thus, the goal of the cap-and-trade program is to impose a ceiling (i.e., an emissions cap) on the total emissions of that pollutant at a level below the assimilative capacity. Second, a market in pollution licenses (i.e., allowances) between polluters is the most cost-effective means of reducing emissions to the level of the cap. This market in allowances is designed so that owners of allowances can trade those allowances with other emitters who need them or retain (bank) them for future use or sale. In the case of the sulfur dioxide program contained in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, most allowances were allocated free by the federal government to utilities according to statutory formulas related to a given facility's historic fuel use and emissions; other allowances have been reserved by the government for periodic auctions to ensure market liquidity.  

Carbon tax. A carbon tax is generally conceived as a levy on natural gas, petroleum, and coal according to their carbon content, in the approximate ratio of 0.6 to 0.8 to 1, respectively. However, proposals have been made to impose the tax downstream of the production process when the carbon dioxide is actually released to the atmosphere. In contrast to a cap-and-trade program, in which the quantity of emissions is limited and the price is determined by an allowance marketplace, with a carbon tax, the price is limited and the quantity of emissions is determined by the participants based on the cost of control versus the cost of the tax.  

Coverage. Coverage is the breadth of economic sectors covered by a particular greenhouse gas reduction program.  

Emissions cap. A mandated limit on how much pollutant (or greenhouse gases) an affected entity can release to the atmosphere. Caps can be either an absolute cap, where the amount is specified in terms of tons of emissions on an annual basis, or a rate-based cap, where the amount of emissions produced per unit of output (such as electricity) is specified but not the absolute amount released. Caps may be imposed on an entity, sector, or economy-wide basis.  

Generation performance standard (GPS). Also called an output-based allocation, allowances are allocated gratis to entities in proportion to their relative share of total electricity generation in a recent year.  

Grandfathering. Grandfathering generally refers an allocation scheme in which allowances are distributed to affected entities on the basis of historic emissions. These allowances are generally distributed free-of-charge by the government to the affected entities. Grandfathering can also refer to entities that because of age or because they have met an earlier standard, or other factors, are exempted from a new regulatory requirement.  

Greenhouse gases. The six gases recognized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) nitrous oxide (N₂O), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), and perfluorocarbons (PFC).  

"No regrets" policy. A "no regrets" policy is one of establishing programs for other purposes that would have concomitant greenhouse gas reductions. Therefore, only those policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions at no cost are considered.  

Offsets. Offsets generally refer to emission credits achieved by activities not directly related to the emissions of an affected source. Examples of offsets would include forestry and agricultural activities that absorb carbon dioxide, and reduction achieved by entities that are not regulated by a greenhouse gas reduction program.  

Revenue recycling. Some greenhouse gas reduction programs create revenues through auctions, compliance penalties, or imposition of a carbon tax. Revenue recycling refers to how a program disposes of those revenues. How a program handles revenues received can have a significant effect on the overall cost of the program to the economy.  

Safety valve. Devices designed to prevent or to respond to unacceptably high compliance costs for greenhouse gas reductions. Generally triggered by prices in the allowance markets, safety valve approaches can include (1) a set price alternative to making reductions or buying allowances at the market price, (2) a slowdown in tightening the emissions cap, and (3) lengthening of the time allowed for compliance. Depending on the interplay between the emissions cap and safety valve and actual compliance costs, a safety valve can affect the integrity of the emissions cap.  

Sequestration. Sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide from emission streams or from the atmosphere and then storing it in such a way as to prevent its release to the atmosphere.

________________________________________

¹ Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), those gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). Some greenhouse gases are controlled under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and are not covered under UNFCCC. 

² For further information, see CRS Report RL30692, Global Climate Change: The Kyoto Protocol, by Susan R. Fletcher. 

³ S.Amdt. 866, passed by voice vote after a motion to table failed 43-54, June 22, 2005.

 

Ecological Restoration

Trying to keep on top of developments in ecological restoration.
Consider:

2nd National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration
April 23-27, 2007
Kansas City, Missouri

NCER features more than 250 speakers and 200 poster presentations covering the latest in ecosystem restoration issues we're facing across the country. The conference also entails several special sessions, including Restoration Coffee Houses to promote dialogue amongst attendees, as well as plenary presentations on the 2007 Farm Bill as a Potential Tool for Ecosystem Restoration, Mississippi River Basin Restoration, Partnering for Sustainable Success, and Priorities and Measures for Restoration plus sessions on ecosystem design & implementation, restorations efforts in San Francisco area, and a panel session on balancing economic development & environmental quality
Conference Registration and Information

Drink Water for Life Challenge

As readers know, the royalties of this blog are now devoted to international NGOs providing safe, clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene education.

The 7th Millennium Development Goal seeks to cut in half the number of people without those essentials by 2015. Current estimates are that it will cost about $16 billion additional per year until 2015 to accomplish that goal.  I find it unbelievable that we cannot globally achieve that goal, especially when unnecessary deaths from water-borne diseases exceed 2 million, mostly children, each year.  That's one child every 15 seconds.

For those of you who are members of faith-based communities, I suggest that you sponsor a DRINK WATER FOR LIFE challenge associated with your congregation.  Drink water instead of lattes (sodas, bottled water, coffee, alcohol).  Do it for Lent (or your appropriate analogous spiritual break).  Get your friends, your synagogue or church, school or workplace to do the same.  Collect the money you save, gather it together on  Easter (or whatever date makes sense in your faith tradition), put it in a Water Fund, and send it to one of the organizations that do this work.  With just $5000, an entire village of 200 - 500 people can be supplied with safe, clean, sustainable drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene education. 

If you need addresses of faith-based organization who do this work, or secular charitable organizations who do this work, let me know.  If you need flyers explaining the problem, let me know.  Together we can make a difference.