Tag Archives: european

The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

by MollieUrquhart Posted on March 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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I post here periodically about declining European inflation and rising European unemployment, and today Paul Krugman draws our attention to an IMF blog post about the threat of actual deflation in Europe. The bottom line is that there’s no actual deflation—yet—in most of Europe, but there is in three countries, and there’s persistently low inflation across the continent:

Although inflation—headline and core—has fallen and stayed well below the ECB’s 2% price stability mandate, so far there is no sign of classic deflation, i.e., of widespread, self-feeding, price declines.
But even ultra low inflation—let us call it “lowflation”—can be problematic for the euro area as a whole and for financially stressed countries, where it implies higher real debt stocks and real interest rates, less relative price adjustment, and greater unemployment.
Along with Japan’s experience, which saw deflation worm itself into the system, this argues for a more pre-emptive approach by the ECB.

The chart on the right illustrates one of the big problems with “lowflation,” even if it doesn’t turn into outright deflation: the countries with the lowest inflation are also the ones with the highest debt levels and the biggest growth problems. They need to reduce wages relative to other countries, but with low inflation that’s very hard to do. It requires actual pay cuts, something that’s historically difficult, rather than simply freezing wages and allowing them to erode via inflation. As a result, it’s hard for their economies to recover, and that in turn makes it all but impossible to fix their debt problem. It’s a vicious spiral.

Krugman warns that without more aggressive policy from the European Central Bank, the EU risks following Japan into economic stagnation: “When people warn about Europe’s potential Japanification, they’re way behind the curve. Europe is already experiencing all the woes one associates with deflation, even though it’s only low inflation so far; and the human and social costs are, of course, far worse than Japan ever experienced.”

In related news, I’ll also draw your attention to China’s latest woes: “China’s leaders kept the growth target for their giant economy unchanged but signaled that they are more concerned than ever about reaching it, giving themselves the option of letting credit flow freely to keep from falling short.” In the long run, China’s slowdown was inevitable as wages rose and demographic realities intruded. But it’s bad news in the short term. With the economy still flat in the US; European recovery threatened by debt and deflation; Chinese growth getting harder to come by; and the developing world seemingly running out of steam—with all that happening at once, there aren’t very many bright spots in the global economic picture. At best, it looks like we have fairly gray times ahead of us. At worst—well, it might be worse.

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The Global Economy Is Not Looking Too Great Right Now

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Rice is the new cocaine for European drug dealers

by RositaRCOdtxyl Posted on February 26, 2014

Rice is the new cocaine for European drug dealers

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It’s hard out here for a food eater! Between the rapid desiccation of some of the United States’ most productive farmland, cannibalism and disease on meat farms, and organized criminals in Europe selling long-grain rice as fraudulent basmati, the struggle is real. That last one is not a euphemism.

Departments of Interpol and Europol are beginning to crack down on gangs profiting off of a fairly new form of illegal activity: food fraud. Former drug dealers have hung up their dime bags and moved into the food counterfeiting game because, as it’s still in its nascent stages, legal consequences are almost negligible. The payoff for substituting cheap, low-quality, and often dangerous ingredients for certain in-demand foods and beverages far outweighs the risk — because that makes sense! Welcome to the modern food system; you must be new here.

So there’s now a black market to create additional profits on food that’s already dirt-cheap, thanks to well-oiled industrial food production. Drug runners don’t need to have MBAs to realize that the risks of their old ventures (jail time, turf wars, dead customers) far outweigh those of the new (angry foodies).

As reported by The Independent, some of these substitutions seem fairly benign: Spanish olive oil passed off as extra-virgin Italian; lower-proof alcohol masquerading as vodka; impostor tuna. But consider that the Spanish olives were washed in deodorant, the lower-proof alcohol was mixed with industrial solvent, and the tuna was mislabeled because its mystery-fish source couldn’t be traced … you can see where we’re going here.

The issue has gained some traction in the European press following a study that came out just this month, which found that 40 percent of 900 grocery store samples in the United Kingdom were counterfeit versions of the advertised product.

Who will be affected by this? Well, anyone in Europe who eats food, to start with — and also possibly heroin addicts whose dealers have abandoned the drug trade for greener pastures.

Here in America, ever the land of opportunity and unsustainably cheap food, the counterfeit food market has a lot of potential. But we also love Doritos Locos Tacos, so it’s possible our sky-high tolerance for engineered chemical substances means we might even enjoy a little Old Spice on our olives.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Stop Calling Office Parks "Nondescript"

by elvys303 Posted on January 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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The wars of the future will be fought over clichés.

Last week, WonkBlog‘s Brad Plumer took aim at one of the soundbite industry’s most pernicious crutches—describing a good-but-not-gamechanging thing as “not a panacea.” Plumer was right to criticize “not a panacea,” but “nondescript office park” and “nondescript office building,” are just as common—and just as bad. Office buildings and office parks are as a rule architecturally bland, so there’s no reason to point it out. Moreover, there’s nothing counterintuitive about an interesting project that’s housed in a boring building. If news reports are any guide, interesting projects are often housed in boring buildings.

In the interest of killing this cliché, here is a comprehensive list of all the things the New York Times has reported are housed in a “nondescript” office space:

Expecting Models, a modeling agency for pregnant women.

Y Combinator, “an organization that can be likened to a sleep-away camp for start-up companies.”

Public, a Brisbane restaurant whose “menu of sharing plates draws inspiration from around the globe.”

Bar High Five, owned by “master bartender” Hidetsugu Ueno.

High Tide, a Jacksonville eatery that specializes in a pita-wrapped cold cut sandwich called the “camel rider.” Hess Brewing, a San Diego-based “nano-brewery.”
The Brooklyn Table Tennis Club on Coney Island Avenue.
A meeting of the Asian-American Writers’ Workshop.

Frederick Taylor University, an unaccredited state-approved online institution.

Indus Entrepreneurs, a South-Asian professional network that invests in Silicon Valley start-ups.
The studio at MacGuffin Films, which serves as a set for Olive Garden commercials.
The current site of a planned New Jersey development that residents agree “will change the personality of West Windsor for better or worse.”

Atlantic Philanthropies, a once secretive charity that has “decidedly hung its shingle out in the open.”
A prototype of a new Russian A.T.M. that comes with a built-in lie-detector.
The Duluth headquarters of Lake Superior Brewing.
The corporate headquarters of Deutsche Börse, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
The Central Yiddish Cultural Organization, “the only secular Yiddish bookstore in New York.”
The Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse, a Paris culinary workshop located “in a stolid bourgeois neighborhood in the outlying 16th arrondissement.”
The Perpignan branch of the Algerian Circle, a historical society devoted to the nation’s colonial age.
The glass-walled room in which Treasury officials auctions bonds to Chinese investors while wearing helmets.
The Republican National Committee’s Denver war room.
“A casino larger than the blackjack, dice and roulette pits at many Las Vegas gambling halls,” where card dealers learn their trade.

Rush Limbaugh’s new studio, “on a boulevard lined with tall palms.”
A stop on the Latin American Consular Fair in Harrison, New Jersey.
The Manhattan offices of The Smoking Gun.
A food pantry that caters to foreclosed homeowners.
The second-biggest gold depository in New York.
The “windowless studio” of WABC-TV and WPLJ-FM traffic reporter Joe Nolan.

Maus Hábitos, a vegetarian restaurant in Oporto that also offers massages.
A shareholder meeting for the London-based advertising-buying firm Aegis Group.
The “Spartan lodgings” of Realogy, the nation’s largest real estate company.
A training school for competitive barbecue judges.

Digital Chocolate, a start-up that develops apps for mobile phones.

Private Capital Management, “a little-known money management firm that discreetly handles the investments of wealthy families.”
An “unmarked building” in Irvine where video game designers add new features to World of Warcraft.
The company that wants to reinvent troll dolls.
President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign headquarters.

Community Prep, “New York City’s first public high school for students who have been recently released from juvenile prisons and jails.”
A casting agency for television commercials.
The Business Software Alliance, an anti-piracy organization.
Nafka House, stone-and-cement structure in the Eritrean capital that is also “towering at nine stories above all surrounding structures.”
A Washington television studio appropriated by Sacha Baron Cohen.
The Air Transportation Stabilization Board.

Django, a Manhattan restaurant with “glittery, crystalline room dividers and a whimsical wall-papered rear.”
The former New York City digs of the Internal Revenue Service.
The Midtown offices of soft-core magazine empire Crescent Publishing Group.
The administrative offices of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

A movie theater “at the end of a placid, palm-lined street in Marina del Rey.”

Princeton eCom, an electronic billing service.
The Brazilian IT security firm Módulo.
Three Star Leather, a tailor on the Upper East Side that specializes in skintight pants.
The practice studio for the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Association.
California Independent System Operator’s Folsom offices, the non-profit power grid-manager that is “ground zero for the energy crisis in California.”
The offices of Macintosh splinter Eazel Inc., “filled with Silicon Valley-style cubicles and adorned with the ubiquitous penguin mascot of the Linux free software movement.”
A New York City mosque.
Esaki, a trendy Tokyo restaurant in “a part of town known for its trendy shops and boutiques.”
“A modest little company called Audible Inc., which just happens to have outsize ambitions.”
The Harrisburg law office of former Democratic Rep. Don Bailey.
Monica Lewinsky’s legal team.
The London headquarters of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, marked by “starkly empty corridors.”
The New York Times‘ archives.
GM’s European headquarters.
Adcom Inc.-Psychic Fairs, which organizes festivals for astrologists at suburban malls.
The Manhattan office of LBJ biographer Robert Caro.
The suburban Atlanta space where Mickey Hall is building the perfect pitching machine.
New York’s Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (next to the “equally undistinguished” Daniel Newburg Gallery).
Geneva’s European Free Trade Association building, where the Vatican reached an historic agreement to pay creditors of a defunct Italian bank.
The suburban Virginia Soviet department of the C.I.A., “directed by Robert M. Gates, the Deputy Director for Intelligence who is a Soviet authority himself.”

International Business Government Counsellors Inc., a DC political intelligence firm.
A Connecticut electronic shopping service where “the future of American retailing is taking shape.”
Ronald Reagan’s presidential transition offices.
The offices of the Fortune Society, which helps convicted felons get jobs.
Conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Vigeurie’s Falls Church, Va. war room.
The New York Neighborhood Dry Cleaner’s Association.
The former Empire Theater.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s only ombudsman.
The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange.

Ban clichés.

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Stop Calling Office Parks "Nondescript"

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NOAA: November was “record warm”

by EllaBlocker Posted on December 18, 2013

NOAA: November was “record warm”

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It may be difficult to grasp as holiday chills and snowy weather set in across North America, but last month was the globe’s hottest November on record. It was the 37th consecutive November of above-average temperatures.

Which is remarkable, not only because records date back to 1880, but because previous record-breaking Novembers came during El Niño years, when the Pacific Ocean heats up. There currently is no El Niño.

Earth’s combined average land and ocean temperature in November was 1.4 degrees warmer than the 20th century average of 55.2 degrees.

“Most of the world’s land areas experienced warmer-than-average monthly temperatures, including much of Eurasia, coastal Africa, Central America, and central South America,” NOAA reported on its website. “Much of southern Russia, north west Kazakhstan, south India, and southern Madagascar were record warm. Meanwhile, northern Australia, parts of North America, south west Greenland, and parts of the Southern Ocean near South America were cooler than average.”

Things were really crazy in Moldova, a small Eastern European country where temperatures last month were between 7 and 9 degrees above average. In case you were wondering, most Moldovans speak the same language as their neighbors in Romania, where the expression for “global warming” is ”încălzirea globală.”

Al naibii de!

(And that means “damn.”)

NOAA

Click to embiggen.


Source
Global Analysis – November 2013, NOAA National Climate Data Center

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Now There’s A Zombie Drone That Hunts, Controls, and Kills Other Drones

by NevilleSainthil Posted on December 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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When 27-year-old Samy Kamkar—a security researcher who famously made one million Myspace friends in a single day—heard the announcement on Sunday that Amazon was planning to start delivering packages via drone in 2015, he had an idea. He knew that whenever new technology, like drones, becomes popular quickly, there are bound to be security flaws. And he claims that he found one within 24 hours and promptly exploited it: America, meet the zombie drone that Kamkar says hunts, hacks, and takes over nearby drones. With enough hacks, a user can allegedly control an entire zombie drone army capable of flying in any direction, taking video of your house, or committing mass drone-suicide.

“I’ve been playing with drones for a few years,” Kamkar, who is based in Los Angeles, tells Mother Jones. “I’m sure that with most of the drones out there, if you scrutinize the security, you’ll find some kind of vulnerability.” Kamkar says that the Amazon announcement was an opportunity to point out that drone security has room for improvement.

Kamkar’s hack, also known as “Skyjack,” was performed on a Parrot AR Drone 2 (More than 500,000 Parrot drones have been sold since 2010, and it’s been used to help collected flight data for the European Space Agency.) It’s unknown what kind of drone Amazon will end up using, but these drones have high-definition photo and video, a flying range of about 165 feet, and can be controlled using an iPhone or an iPad. Kamkar equipped his drone with a battery, a wireless transmitter, and a Raspberry Pi computer—the total of which costs about $400, including the drone. Then, he wrote software (which he made available on the open-source website GitHub, for anyone to use) that he says allows his drone to find wireless signals of other Parrot drones in the area and disconnect the wireless connection of another drone’s original user, giving Kamkar—or any user with the software—control over both drones. The drones can even be forced to self-deactivate and drop out of the sky. “How fun would it be to take over drones carrying Amazon packages…or take over any other drones, and make them my little zombie drones. Awesome,” writes Kamkar.

Parrot did not respond to request for comment, but the BBC notes that, “experts said Parrot appeared to have ignored well-known guidelines” to prevent this kind of hack. Christopher Budd, a threat communications manager for Trend Micro, a data security company, tells Mother Jones that “reading what he’s got, on the face of it, it certainly sounds like a plausible proof-of-concept” but says Parrot still needs to validate it.

Here’s a video:

So does this mean that your Amazon blender will be attacked by a hoard of hungry zombie drones? Not necessarily: “Amazon would be able to make drones that are immune to this,” Kamkar tells Mother Jones, claiming that the Parrot Drone’s wi-fi system is not fully encrypted, which is a security measure that Amazon would be likely to take. (Amazon did not respond to Mother Jones request for comment.) “I just want people to be concerned enough that it forces these drone makers to take an additional look at them. When you have enough people scrutinizing technology, you’re going to have added security and added attention, and that’s the benefit.”

That’s certainly how companies have responded to Kamkar’s hacks before: After he crippled Myspace in 2005 using what some called the fastest spreading virus up to that point—(he was arrested and convicted under California penal code, and Kamkar says, “community service was a blast!”)—Myspace revamped its security procedures. Still, even if Amazon manages to fend off the zombie drones, it faces other obstacles—including states that have banned drones, potential collisions in urban areas, and major privacy concerns.

“Drones are an impressive piece of technology and part of me is super excited whenever I get it outside and fly it around,” Kamkar says. “But part of me is a little fearful.”

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

by bibw6a Posted on December 5, 2013

Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

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When a promising cap-and-trade bill failed in the Senate in 2010, oil and coal companies everywhere must have breathed a sigh of relief, then probably wiped the sheen from their collective brow with a spare Benjamin and got back to work.

It now looks like some of that work involved planning for a time when they would actually lose the battle over their climate sins.

In a report [PDF] released by the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), 29 companies — including the five biggest oil-producers, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, and Shell (not that we’re keeping track) — report that they are using carbon pricing estimates to plan for hypothetical future regulation in the U.S. This generally means that an estimated carbon price is applied to a corporation’s big-investment projects — new drilling rigs, for example — which will likely be subject to some kind of emissions tax in ten or twenty years.

For climate hawks and economists disappointed by the failure of carbon tax schemes in the real world, this may sound hopeful: At least SOMEONE believes that carbon-pricing stands a chance, and soon, too. But it’s also just good business: With California’s fledgling cap-and trade market getting under way, and public opinion on climate change swinging back toward sanity, carbon tax is looking less and less utopian and more like a plausible business expense.

The CDP claims that the usage of internal carbon prices demonstrates the “assumption that addressing climate change will be both a business cost and a possible business opportunity.” Basically, if companies start planning now, maybe our global economy won’t go into a tailspin when we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Plus, lots of international companies, especially ones operating in regulated Europe or Australia, are already dealing with carbon taxes in some form. Australia prices all consumer fossil fuels at about $21 per ton of carbon; for European countries it falls somewhere between $5 and $80.

ExxonMobil, king of the big five, is no stranger to the carbon debate. Despite a sordid history of funding huge anti-climate-science campaigns to widen the consensus gap between scientists and the general public, the company publicly supported a carbon tax in 2009 (while lobbying against the actual bill in Congress). In the CDP’s report, ExxonMobil had the highest reported cost — $60 per ton of carbon, by 2030 — while BP and Shell were more tentative with $40 a ton. (The U.S. government, by comparison, has set a tentative “social cost” price between $37 and $57 for 2015 [PDF].)

Even companies like Google and Disney got in on the carbon-pricing action, using auction prices from California’s cap-and-trade scheme to help set the bar. Not everyone is as committed: Walmart claimed only that their estimated price is set “flexibly,” whatever that means.

One conspicuous absence (drumroll, please): everyone’s favorite climate-denying multinational conglomerate, Koch Industries! The multibillion dollar corporation, with its history of campaigning against all things climate-science-y, has not joined the herd of oil companies in budgeting for carbon tax. The Koch-funded American Energy Alliance has spent $1.2 billion this year alone in attacking candidates who allegedly support a carbon price.

Of course, no one can guarantee that any of the companies reporting internal carbon prices aren’t engaging in other forms of shenanigans, hanky-panky, or mustache-twirling in this and other environmental areas. Xcel Energy, one of the 29 companies, was recently embroiled in an attempt to restrict access to local, renewable energy in Boulder, Colo. ExxonMobil, with all its pinkie-promises to be more sustainable, has started investing in natural gas — which is a smart move if carbon starts being taxed, but still lets them get away with plenty of other environmental shenanigans. And planning for a future carbon tax is a long way from actually supporting one. Color us cynical, but we have a hard time believing any energy company is that gung ho to undermine its business model.

“It’s climate change as a line item,” Tom Rivett-Carnac, the CDP’s North American director, told the New York Times. “They’re looking at it from a rational perspective, making a profit. It drives internal decision-making.”

I guess it’s good that someone is looking at it from a rational perspective. Maybe U.S. lawmakers will follow suit.

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

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Super Euros: Top 10 climate-change-fighting countries are all in Europe

by grycjanekg Posted on November 20, 2013

Super Euros: Top 10 climate-change-fighting countries are all in Europe

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Europe, as viewed from a greenhouse gas.

There isn’t a country in the world that’s on track to reduce emissions to the extent needed to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius (3.7 Fahrenheit). But for a glimpse of something resembling climate leadership, peer across the pond.

The Climate Change Performance Index [PDF], produced by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, ranks countries based on their greenhouse gas emissions, emissions-reduction efforts, energy efficiency, renewable energy portfolios, and policies aimed at slowing climate change. Here’s the top-10 list from this year. Every country is in Europe:

  1. Denmark
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Portugal
  4. Sweden
  5. Switzerland
  6. Malta
  7. France
  8. Hungary
  9. Ireland
  10. Iceland

Eight of those 10 countries are part of the European Union, which is also taking action — and even committing real money — to fight climate change. The European Parliament just adopted a seven-year budget that includes an unprecedented $243 billion for climate projects. Most of that will be spent within the E.U.’s 28 states, but some of it is earmarked as climate aid for developing countries.

E.U. climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard discussed the budget during a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, where U.N. climate negotiations are underway. She said that for the world to successfully tackle climate change, “one of the things we need … to change is the whole economic paradigm, including the way we construct our budgets.”

Beyond Europe, it’s not looking so good. The U.S. ranked 40th out the 58 countries on the Climate Change Performance Index, just three spots above China. The report notes that the U.S. did reduce greenhouse gas emissions 8 percent over the last five years, thanks in part to Obama administration regulations covering transportation and coal.

At the bottom of the list are Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Iran. Those are the only three countries that rank worse than Australia and Canada — two of the four countries behaving badly that we told you about on Monday.

Australia’s delegates have been accused of particularly boorish behavior during the Warsaw talks. “They wore T-shirts and gorged on snacks throughout the negotiation,” a Climate Action Network spokesperson complained to The Guardian. Worse, Australia has blocked progress toward a treaty. Along with the U.S. and E.U., Australia refused to discuss developing countries’ demands for climate-change compensation, leading to 132 countries walking out of negotiations. 

“There is a sense that Australia was being horrible and the U.S. wasn’t moving toward accepting the creation of a new body to address loss and damage,” Jake Schmidt, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international climate policy director, told Grist from Warsaw. “It was also 4:00 in the morning.”


Source
Climate Change Performance Index, Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Leaked Treaty Puts US Hard Line on Patents and Copyrights on Public Display

by IvyUDD Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago, WikiLeaks leaked a copy of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. This is interesting in its own right, of course, but it’s especially interesting because the draft copy specifies exactly which provisions the United States is fighting for and what positions other countries are taking. This means that if the US wins agreement for its demands, it will be a very public cave-in by most of the other negotiators. Needless to say, that makes caving in harder.

That said, what’s actually in the draft? Today, Henry Farrell talks to George Washington University professor Susan Sell about the chapter dealing with intellectual property (trademarks, copyrights, patents, etc.). Here’s an excerpt:

After Thursday’s leak of the intellectual property chapter it is obvious why the USTR and the Obama administration have insisted on secrecy. From this text it appears that the U.S. administration is negotiating for intellectual property provisions that it knows it could not achieve through an open democratic process. For example, it includes provisions similar to those of the failed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that the European Parliament ultimately rejected….

People call it a Hollywood wish list — why?

Some provisions of the text resurrect pieces of SOPA and PIPA and ACTA that many found to be objectionable. The entertainment industries (movies and music) championed these agreements and sought stronger protections in the digital realm. These industries were stunned when SOPA and PIPA got killed. Only the United States and New Zealand oppose a provision that would require compensation for parties wrongfully accused of infringement (QQ.H.4). The United States is alone in proposing criminal procedures and penalties “even absent willful trademark, counterfeiting or copyright or related rights piracy”.

Only the United States and Australia oppose a provision limiting Internet Service Provider liability (QQ.I.1); U.S. copyright holders would like ISPs to be held liable for hosting infringing content. The United States also proposes extending copyright to life plus 95 years for corporate-owned copyrights. Hollywood consistently presses for longer copyright terms and it is doing so here.

Read the whole thing for more. It’s no surprise that the United States is pushing the hardest line on IP protections, but it is a little surprising that its line is so hard and that it’s apparently getting strong pushback from virtually every negotiating partner.

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Leaked Treaty Puts US Hard Line on Patents and Copyrights on Public Display

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U.N. climate talks will be all about the Benjamins

by Mstyslava7ju Posted on November 8, 2013

U.N. climate talks will be all about the Benjamins

By

PaulPaladin

To slow climate change and protect the world’s vulnerable poor from the effects of global warming, the West is going to have to give developing nations a hand. And that hand will need to come in the form of cold, hard cash.

Unfortunately, not a lot of that is on offer right now. That fact will take center stage during international climate talks in Poland over the next two weeks.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s next Conference of the Parties, commonly known as a COP, begins Monday in Warsaw. Officials representing nearly 200 countries will bicker and beg as they try to move forward in the quest for a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. That deal was struck way back in 1997. The U.S. never ratified it, Canada ultimately walked away from it, and the agreement expired last year. It’s been sticky-taped together through amendments to extend its life until a new agreement can be reached.

During COP talks in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, delegates struck a deal to strike a deal: They agreed to finalize an agreement by 2015 to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The new agreement would cap warming at 2 degrees Celsius (3.7 Fahrenheit) and begin to take force in 2020 — and that’s under a best-case scenario. Which is also a horrible-case scenario, given that the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise every year.

The issue of equity is always one of the biggest sticking points in U.N. climate talks. How much should rich countries sacrifice and how much should developing countries sacrifice as they try to curb emissions together? It was during the talks in Durban that a solution to this conundrum was concocted: Rich countries would provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to the warming world.

Guess how that’s going.

So far, the Green Climate Fund is nearly as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard: It has received $7.5 million to spread around to the entire developing world. Not only that, but some developed countries are starting to hem and haw about whether they should even contribute to the fund. At a conference held ahead of the Warsaw talks, a British representative suggested that businesses could be more involved and that the agreement could be more of a private-public-partnership type thing, as Responding to Climate Change reports: 

“I believe we need a new business partnership to tackle climate change, that does so with its eyes wide open, mindful of the costs and careful to catch the opportunities,” [said Greg Barker, minister of state for energy and climate change in the U.K.].

“We can only decarbonise the economy if business comes with us, as an active participant, and at least cost for consumers.”

But others expressed doubt that this system was an adequate response to the urgency of climate change, and urged the UN to push for a more top-down approach in order to mobilise the level of action needed.

The Green Climate Fund is a really big deal for the developing world. If it slumps, so too could hopes of worldwide cooperation on climate change.

($100 billion a year sounds like a lot of money, but compare that with the $500 billion a year that the world’s richest countries are spending on fossil fuel subsidies every year.)

India is a developing country that recently overtook Russia to become the world’s fourth-largest climate polluter — after China, the U.S., and the European Union. Just ask that country how cooperative it will be in curbing emissions from its fast-growing economy if the climate fund remains unfunded. Of course, you can’t ask an entire nation a question — let alone one that is home to 1.2 billion people speaking a cacophony of languages. But The Hindu newspaper found the right Indian to ask. Here’s what the country’s environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, hopes to see at the Warsaw meetings:

The most important milestone would be climate finance and capitalisation of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has not happened at all. Developed countries that made a commitment earlier have now started talking of alternative sources of funding. Whereas in our view these are commitments of the parties to the COP. While others and alternate sources need not be excluded, I think the fundamental commitment is the provision of finance.

In other words, “show us the money.” It’s a call that many developing countries are making as we head into next week’s talks.

Thomson Reuters Foundation reports on another financial issue that will be front and center at the conference:

Developing countries and climate experts are calling for U.N. climate talks, which begin in Warsaw on Monday, to set up an international mechanism to deal with losses and damage linked to climate change, which a new report says are already harming vulnerable people.

The question of whether to establish a new global body was controversial at last year’s negotiations in Doha, with richer nations fearing it could be used to make them pay compensation for the consequences of their planet-warming emissions to poorer countries suffering the worst impacts of more extreme weather and rising seas.

After fierce last-minute wrangling, it was agreed the upcoming 2013 climate conference in Poland would “establish … institutional arrangements, such as an international mechanism … to address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”.

Quamrul Chowdhury, a lead negotiator for the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), told Thomson Reuters Foundation creating a mechanism is of “paramount importance” at the Nov. 11-22 Warsaw talks.

The world’s poor countries couldn’t be more clear: Rich countries started this problem, they say, and rich countries can best afford to fix it. It’s time to cough up the money. The next two weeks should provide a hint as to whether that is ever likely to happen.


Source
Warsaw climate talks expected to deliver loss and damage mechanism, Thomson Reuters Foundation
‘India is not a nay-sayer on climate change’, The Hindu
UN climate chief underlines Green Climate Fund concerns, Responding to Climate Change

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.N. climate talks will be all about the Benjamins

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Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

by Katherined5a Posted on October 31, 2013

Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

By

Shutterstock/Leena Robinson

The world keeps making climate change worse, pumping out more greenhouse gases every year than the year before. But in an encouraging sign, the rate at which emissions are growing appears to be slowing down.

Global emissions hit 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year — up 1.1 percent from 2011. That’s bleak, but the glimmer of hope here is that emissions increased during the last decade by much more than that — by an average of 2.9 percent every year.

The slowdown is attributed to the worldwide growth of the renewables sector; to America’s fracking boom (which produces cheap natural gas that’s reducing coal use but also hobbling the growth of renewables); to new hydropower projects that are offsetting the use of coal in China; and to falling energy consumption and transportation in Europe triggered in part by a bad economy.

The latest annual estimate by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre says this “may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase in global CO2 emissions, and ultimately of declining global emissions.”

That “may be” is a big caveat. It depends largely on continued improvements by the world’s three biggest greenhouse gas polluters — China, the U.S., and the European Union, which together accounted for 55 percent of global emissions last year.

Of course, positive though this development might be, nobody is suggesting that these improvements alone will be enough to curb the climate disaster engulfing the globe.

“It is good news but nowhere near good enough,” Grist board member Bill McKibben told BBC News. “The solution we need here is dictated by physics, and at the moment the physics is busy melting the Arctic and acidifying the ocean. We can’t just plateau or go up less, we have to very quickly try and get the planet off fossil fuels.”

Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research CentreClick to embiggen.


Source
Report suggests slowdown in CO2 emissions rise, BBC
Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2013 report, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission Joint Research Centre

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Have we hit a “permanent slowdown” in the growth of global CO2 emissions?

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