Climate

An Unnatural Disaster

Without concerted action, Hurricane Matthew will be remembered in the annals of climate change as a precursor to an era of intensifying and increasingly ruinous, unnatural storm disasters. Time is short. Neither denial nor incrementalism is acceptable. Nothing less than the well-being of our children, and their children, is in the balance.

Critical Review of: ‘Making or breaking climate targets—the AMPERE study on staged accession scenarios for climate policy’

This critical review of the integrated assessment modeling (IAM) research underlying the AMPERE study is also relevant to many other IAM-based model comparison papers. One of the main symptoms of the serious methodological problems of these studies is that the results produced by different models for what are portrayed as the “same” scenarios differ quite substantially from each other. While the authors of the AMPERE study correctly raise the important question of whether these differences are due primarily to differences in model structures, or to differences in the sets of input assumptions for the “same” scenario used by different research teams, they never address this question in a logically systematic and credible way. In fact, they cannot and do not arrive at an answer, since each modeling team generally relies on a single but different set of most input assumptions for the same scenario. Finally, the research teams involved in the AMPERE project, and other similar projects, fail to understand the fundamental impossibility of forecasting net mitigation costs or benefits over the long run given both the practical and deep uncertainties implicit in both the equations comprising these IAMs, and the input assumptions on which they rely.

Climate Crossroads: Toward a Just Deal in Paris

Tom Athanasiou underscores the importance of a deep commitment to distributional justice on the domestic and global levels for success at the critical climate negotiations in Paris next year.

Metro Boston Regional Climate Change Adaptation Strategy Report

Given the magnitude of climate change impacts on the natural environment, development and infrastructure, economy, and public health in the region, it is imperative that climate change adaptation is adequately addressed at the Regional Level. The primary goal of this Strategy is to prepare recommendations for local, regional, and state action to reduce vulnerability to future hazards and impacts of climate change within Eastern Massachusetts. This Strategy builds upon findings of the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report, September 2011 and other pertinent publications developed to date.

Resilience Through Risk Prevention and Management and Environmental Sustainability

Prepared as input to the United Nations process to develop Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide the post-2015 global development agenda, this paper discusses the importance of building community resilience, including minimizing climate change impacts, and the challenges cities face while trying to effectively manage rapid population growth and alleviate poverty. It then moves on to identify potential urban resilience targets within an urban SDG. This paper is part of a set of issues papers developed for the Communitas Coalition to address the critical role of cities and regions in advancing sustainable development.

The Economics of Mitigating Climate Change: What Can We Know?

The economics of mitigating climate change in the long run has played a high profile role in the most important analyses of climate change in the last decade, namely the Stern Report and the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment. However, the various kinds of uncertainties that affect these economic results raise serious questions about whether or not the net costs and benefits of mitigating climate change over periods as long as 50 to 100 years can be known to such a level of accuracy that they should be reported to policymakers and the public. Because of these serious technical problems, policymakers should not base climate change mitigation policy on the estimated net economic impacts computed by integrated assessment models. Rather, mitigation policies must be forcefully implemented anyway given the actual physical climate change crisis.

Developmental Benefits from a Low-Carbon Pathway

The release of the Interim Report of the Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth in May 2011 gives us an occasion to place India’s climate stance in perspective. The Report, while useful in discussing opportunities for greenhouse gas emissions reductions in various sectors, does not make inclusivity its priority. Rather, with growth as its starting point, it gives us little or no sense of what “inclusive growth” amounts to or indeed what should motivate the country to embark on a low-carbon pathway. Although such a growth path is socially, financially, and politically the right way forward, it must be articulated in much more explicit terms.

Originally published in Economic & Political Weekly 36, no, 34 (August 2011): 15-18.

Blue Alert

This study shows that if global temperatures rise by about 4 to 5 degrees Celsius in the course of the century, as they are projected to under business-as-usual growth in greenhouse gas emissions, the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. It concludes that the resultant catastrophe may well be the greatest humanitarian and economic catastrophe that the developing world will face in the coming decades and demands and recommends policy steps to mitigate climate change and steer development in a sustainable direction.

The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent Global Climate Catastrophe

Climate Change Dilemma: Technology, Social Change or Both? An Examination of Long-Term Transport Policy Choices in the United States

This paper reviews the prospects for emissions reductions in the US passenger transport sector and the technical, economic, social, and political barriers to developing policies that focus solely on technology or pricing. Using scenarios, it shows that, in order to meet stringent emissions targets over the coming half century, technology and pricing policies may have to be supplemented by strategies to change lifestyles and land uses in ways that effectively reduce car dependence. In the medium to long term, bold initiatives that treat vehicle users as citizens capable of shifting their interests and behavior could form kernels of social change that, in turn, provide opportunities for removing many of the social and political constraints.

Climate Change: Redemption through Crisis

Sivan Kartha explores the complexity of the climate problem and ways to address it. He considers contrasting optimistic and pessimistic narratives of the future, and outlines a Great Transition society living in peace with its climatic constraints. He then discusses the pathway toward such a society.

Essay #13 in the GTI Paper Series: Frontiers of a Great Transition

Scoping and Designing an Adaptation Project

Using the Adaptation Policy Framework (APF), this technical paper seeks to assist project teams in designing projects to develop and implement adaptation strategies, policies, and measures that can ensure human development in the face of climate change. The APF provides a basis by which countries can evaluate and modify existing planning processes and practices to address climate change impacts. To do so, this paper walks the reader through a series of recommended tasks, preparing them for the hands-on work of project scoping and design.

Adaptation Policy Frameworks for Climate Change: Developing Strategies, Policies and Measures

The development of the Adaptation Policy Framework (APF) is intended to help provide the rapidly evolving process of adaptation policymaking with a much needed roadmap. The APF can be used by countries to both evaluate and complement existing planning processes to address climate change adaptation. As an assessment, planning, and implementation framework, it lays out an approach to climate change adaptation that supports sustainable development, rather than the other way around. The APF is about practice rather than theory; it starts with the information that developing countries already possess concerning vulnerable systems such as agriculture, water resources, public health, and disaster management, and aims to exploit existing synergies and intersecting themes in order to enable better informed policymaking.

Technical reports available here.

California Leadership Strategies to Reduce Global Warming Emissions

The state of California has been a historical leader on energy and environmental policy, and it is well-positioned to take a leadership role on climate. From August to November 2004, Tellus Institute worked closely with staff members of the California Energy Commission (CEC), the Air Resources Board (ARB), the California Environmental Protection Agency, and other state agencies to review existing forecasts, identify strategies, and compile estimates of potential emissions reductions that are likely to be compatible with strong, long-term economic growth. This report presents the methods, assumptions, and findings of this assessment and served as a basis for Governor Schwarzenegger’s climate target announcement on June 1, 2005.

Adaptation Policy Frameworks for Climate Change: Technical Reports

Provides nine technical research reports underlying the multi-year UNDP effort to formulate an adaptation policy. Examines issues of scoping, design, formulation, and continuing climate change response strategies, as well as engaging stake-holders.

South-North Dialogue: Equity in the Greenhouse

Regardless of when or whether the Kyoto Protocol enters into force, the challenge of future climate negotiations will be to embed the next steps in a long-term framework that aims at an adequate and equitable global climate agreement that takes into account the right to sustainable development of all countries. This proposal examines equitable approaches to mitigation—including both deep cuts in the North and differentiated mitigation commitments for developing countries. It also examines adaptation, as no agreement will be equitable or adequate if it fails to incorporate appropriate burden sharing mechanisms to address the needs of those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Turning the Corner on Global Warming Emissions: An Analysis of Ten Strategies for California, Oregon, and Washington

This report makes a compelling case that the West Coast states can significantly reduce their global warming emissions over the next fifteen years. By 2020, the ten strategies in this report would reduce global warming pollution by 200 million metric tons—26 percent below the emissions that would otherwise occur, and 1 percent below today’s levels. While these reductions are not nearly enough to stabilize the climate, the ten strategies would represent a significant down payment on deeper emissions reductions.

Cutting the Gordian Knot: Adequacy, Realism and Equity

Despite the almost impossible complexity of the climate deadlock, it is possible to map its most profound contours. They range, unsurprisingly, outside the traditional domains of climate politics, across lands defined by post-Cold War geopolitics, the struggle for development, the challenges of sustainability. For all this, however, they define a tangle—a Gordian Knot—in which three principle strands may be clearly discerned: adequacy, realism, and equity. To help map the way forward, this paper proposes the concept of an “equity reference framework”—a framework that allows us to ask, before we prejudge what is and isn’t realistic, what would actually be fair. There will be no adequate way forward that does not involve a radical redefinition of realism.

Carbon Abatement with Economic Growth: A National Strategy

This paper presents the results of a study showing that the United States could dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades while the economy continues to grow. It examines a set of policies to increase energy efficiency, accelerate adoption of renewable energy, reduce air pollution, and shift to less carbon-intensive fuels. The policies are targeted within and across sectors—residential and commercial buildings, industrial facilities, transportation, and power generation. They include incentives, standards, codes, market mechanisms, regulatory reform, research and development, public outreach, technical assistance, and infrastructure investment.

Texas’ Global Warming Solutions

The economic analyses of America’s Global Warming Solutions indicated that Texas would be the state with the highest net job creation from the national policies evaluated. This report presents a new detailed analysis of the benefits that Texas would derive from those national policies and measures to combat global warming. Many of these policies and measures could be pursued in the state, appropriately tailored to its conditions and institutions, with similar results and benefits for Texas citizens.

New England’s Global Warming Solutions

This report presents a new detailed analysis of the energy impacts, carbon and pollutant emissions reductions, and economic benefits in New England of the national policies and measures analyzed in America’s Global Warming Solutions. That study indicated that the region would reap about one sixth of the net national employment created. Now, achieving such benefits by 2010 would require an even more aggressive set and schedule of policies, or else the benefits would occur somewhat later in time. Nonetheless, these results show that a truly aggressive national policy commitment to the problem of climate change could achieve large near-term carbon emissions reductions along with environmental and economic gains.

Viewpoint: Economic Theory and Climate Change Policy

What is the appropriate role for economics in the development of climate change policy? Ideally, when formulating public policy, decision-makers should rely on expertise from a variety of disciplines, economics among them. Yet economics is often looked upon as the ultimate arbiter of policy choices, because it seems to offer something the other sciences do not: a theoretical framework capable of valuing the consequences of different policy choices with a single metric. This paper argues that this practice is not legitimate, and that most economic policy assessment models, in their current forms, are biased against non-marginal policy changes such as those required to meaningfully address the challenges of climate change.

America’s Global Warming Solutions

This study finds that the US could reduce its carbon emissions to its Kyoto target and, indeed, to significantly below that target. Moreover, this can be achieved with overall net savings in the costs of energy and energy-using equipment. These policies and measures yield many other benefits, such as for human and ecosystem health, technological innovation, and job growth. They would also demonstrate clearly to the rest of the world the seriousness with which the US is acting to meet its climate protection responsibilities and, thereby, to help advance the goals of the climate convention.

A Small Price to Pay: US Action to Curb Global Warming is Feasible and Affordable

This report debunks arguments about the difficulty and costs of compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Tellus Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists surveyed and compared a series of studies from the past ten years that examine the future prospects for energy-efficient and low-carbon fuel technologies. According to such studies, great technological potential exists for the United States to significantly reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. In many cases, the resulting savings on energy bills from the use of more efficient measures would outweigh the cost of implementing those measures. Moreover, the same measures that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions would also yield other significant environmental and public health benefits.

An Evaluation of Integrated Climate Protection Policies for the US

This paper presents and discusses an integrated set of policies designed to reduce US carbon emissions over the next four decades. This innovation path also aims to promote environmental quality, particularly by reducing emissions of criteria air pollutants, to reduce US dependence on imported oil, and to induce technological innovation and diffusion in energy production and consumption. In addition to such environmental benefits, such a path would lead to net savings and substantial job growth.

Originally published in Ecology and Society 2, no. 2 (1998): 1-17.

National Greenhouse Gas Accounts: Current Anthropogenic Sources and Sinks

This study provides spatially disaggregated estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from the major anthropogenic sources for 145 countries. The data compilation includes emissions from CO, CH4, N2O, and ten halocarbons, in addition to CO2. The sources include emissions from fossil fuel production and use, cement production, halocarbons, landfills, land use changes, biomass burning, rice and livestock production, and fertilizer consumption. The approach used to derive these estimates corresponds closely with the simple methodologies proposed by the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Task Force of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.