Tag Archives: protocol

World Leaders Have Failed to Seriously Confront Climate Change. Could That Change Next Week?

by MuhammaMarler Posted on September 16, 2014

Mother Jones

Break out your protest sign materials and take your polar bear costume to the dry cleaner, boys and girls: This coming weekend marks the kickoff of Climate Week NYC 2014, a flurry of meetings and protests about climate action. It all starts with the People’s Climate March in Columbus Circle on Sunday. Organizers are already calling it the biggest climate march in history, with over 100,000 folks expected to turn up.

But the week’s main event is on Tuesday at the United Nations, where Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will preside over a confab of heads of state (including President Obama), diplomats, CEOs, and policy wonks who will all be talking about how to prevent global warming from reaching catastrophic levels.

The UN conference is meant as a preparation for the major international climate negotiations scheduled for next winter in Paris, a summit that is theoretically intended to produce an aggressive carbon-cutting treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, in classic UN fashion, it’s a meeting about a meeting, or as Mashable’s Andrew Freedman more eloquently put it, “the cocktail party ahead of a formal dinner.” So it’s probably safe to assume that next week we’ll be served appetizers and amuse-bouches rather than a substantive meal, climate action-wise.

Still, New York is a city on the front lines of climate change: Just yesterday the last subway line damaged two years ago by Hurricane Sandy finally came back online. So the excitement is building. Here are a few things to look for:

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World Leaders Have Failed to Seriously Confront Climate Change. Could That Change Next Week?

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Arizona Executioners Had To Use 15 Doses of Lethal Drugs Before Inmate Finally Died

by BrittanM91 Posted on August 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Documents released Friday afternoon in the case of Arizona’s botched execution of Joseph Wood—who gasped for air and struggled, according to witnesses, repeatedly during the two-hour process—show that executioners used 15 separate doses of a new drug cocktail before Wood finally died. Lawyers had warned that the combination of 50 milligrams hydromorphone (a pain killer) and 50 milligrams of midazolam (a sedative) was rife with potential problems. (The state also has a long history of failing to follow its own protocol.) The documents suggest they were right.

“Instead of the one dose as required under the protocol, ADC injected 15 separate doses of the drug combination, resulting in the most prolonged execution in recent memory,” said Dale Baich, Wood’s lawyer. “This is why an independent investigation by a non-governmental authority is necessary.”

Ohio used a similar drug cocktail in January to execute Dennis McGuire, who gasped and snorted for 25 minutes before finally succumbing, the longest execution in Ohio history. Arizona apparently increased the dosage of midazolam from what Ohio had used, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten any better results.

When officials in Ohio and elsewhere first expressed their intent to experiment with the midazolam/hydromorphone combination, experts predicted, as Mother Jones‘ Molly Redden reported, that little was known about how the new drug combinations would work in executions. She wrote:

Jonathan Groner, a professor of clinical surgery at the Ohio State University College of Medicine who has written extensively on the death penalty, says effects of a hydromorphone overdose include an extreme burning sensation, seizures, hallucination, panic attacks, vomiting, and muscle pain or spasms. David Waisel, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, who has testified extensively on capital-punishment methods, adds that a hydromorphone overdose could result in soft tissue collapse—the same phenomenon that causes sleep apnea patients to jerk awake—that an inmate who had been paralyzed would be unable to clear by jerking or coughing. Instead, he could feel as though he were choking to death.

Because hydromorphone is not designed to kill a person, Groner says, there are no clinical guidelines for how to give a lethal overdose. “You’re basically relying on the toxic side effects to kill people while guessing at what levels that occurs,” he explains.

The new Arizona documents suggest that these assessments were dead on.

State officials are using new drug combinations because pharmaceutical companies have been refusing to sell or export the drugs traditionally used in executions. The US has seen a shortage of those drugs for several years now, and death penalty states have gone to increasingly desperate measures to kill their condemned, everything from illegally importing the old drugs to buying them from dubious compounding pharmacies. Arizona illustrated the latest gambit—using new combinations of other available drugs, something critics have called an unethical human experiment.

States have also gone to great lengths to hide information about the drugs they’re using in executions and how they’re getting them. In Arizona, Wood was just the latest of many death row inmates who have tried and failed to force states to be more transparent. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Wood in late July and agreed that he had a right to know how he was going to die. But the US Supreme Court overruled that decision and allowed the execution to go forward.

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Arizona Executioners Had To Use 15 Doses of Lethal Drugs Before Inmate Finally Died

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U.S. wants poor and rich countries alike to cut emissions under next climate treaty

by MalenMajure469 Posted on February 13, 2014

U.S. wants poor and rich countries alike to cut emissions under next climate treaty

By

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If the U.S. gets its way, developing countries will need to roll up their sleeves and do more to slow down global warming.

The Obama administration is taking the position that poor and rich countries alike should be legally obligated to reduce the amount of climate-changing pollution that they produce after 2020, when a new climate treaty is expected to take effect. The Kytoto Protocol approach, which saw rich countries but not poor ones compelled to rein in greenhouse gas pollution, is “clearly not rational or workable” any more, U.S. officials argue in a new submission to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The next big U.N. climate meeting will be held in Lima, Peru, this December, and then Paris will host a bigger one in December 2015, at which world leaders hope to finalize the new climate treaty.

“[T]he United States supports a Paris agreement that reflects the seriousness and magnitude of what science demands,” Obama administration officials wrote in their 11-page U.N. submission, which was published on Wednesday. “As such, it should be designed to promote ambitious efforts by a broad range of Parties.”

America’s evolving expectations for a world-encompassing climate treaty were alluded to in a recent Washington Post op-ed signed by Barack Obama and French President François Hollande:

Even as our two nations reduce our own carbon emissions, we can expand the clean energy partnerships that create jobs and move us toward low-carbon growth. We can do more to help developing countries shift to low-carbon energy as well, and deal with rising seas and more intense storms. As we work toward next year’s climate conference in Paris, we continue to urge all nations to join us in pursuit of an ambitious and inclusive global agreement that reduces greenhouse gas emissions through concrete actions.

America’s desire for all countries to tackle climate change is shared by a growing number of low-lying and impoverished states that are increasingly worried about the effects of India’s and China’s ballooning emissions. During previous climate talks, countries agreed that the new treaty will include funding commitments from developed countries to help developing countries adapt to climate change and deploy clean sources of power.

The push for universal action on climate change comes as the White House mulls committing to a steep reduction in greenhouse gases during the upcoming talks. ClimateWire reports:

In at least three interagency meetings at the White House since September, administration sources said, officials have debated whether [the U.S.’s new climate] goals should extend to 2025 or 2030. They also have laid out the scientific and economic modeling that must be done in the coming months and discussed whether a new target should assume Congress will eventually enact climate legislation or whether the White House must continue to use existing authority under the Clean Air Act to squeeze out more emissions reductions. President Obama’s new special adviser, John Podesta, is expected to have an overarching role in the process. …

Several GOP lawmakers contacted by ClimateWire blasted the work on new targets as another example of the Obama administration’s “go it alone” approach that, like the current U.S. EPA effort to rein in emissions from coal-fired power plants, will face fierce opposition from Congress.

Actually, the international action that Obama is calling for is pretty much the opposite of a “go it alone” approach. Here’s hoping that the idea takes root — and that wealthy countries open their purses to help poor ones meet new climate obligations.


Source
U.S. Submission on Elements ofthe 2015 Agreement, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Obama and Hollande: France and the U.S. enjoy a renewed alliance, The Washington Post
Obama admin quietly preparing pledge of deeper GHG emissions targets for U.N. talks, ClimateWire

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.S. wants poor and rich countries alike to cut emissions under next climate treaty

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The Canadian government doesn’t want you to get the mistaken impression that it takes climate change seriously

by Leon Russell Posted on January 2, 2014

The Canadian government doesn’t want you to get the mistaken impression that it takes climate change seriously

By

Paul McKinnon / Shutterstock

“The government of Canada takes climate change seriously, and recognizes the scientific findings that conclude that human activities are mostly responsible for this change.”

Canada’s environment minister came close to uttering that fairly ho-hum sentence in September — part of the government’s brief public response to the latest alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But, in the end, the sentence was never said.

Postmedia News used open-government laws to obtain the statement that had been drafted for the minister, Leona Aglukkaq, by her department. She ultimately omitted that sentence, opting instead to attack opposition parties.

“Unlike the previous Liberal government, under whose watch greenhouse gas emissions rose by almost 30 per cent, or the NDP, who want a $21 billion carbon tax, our Government is actually reducing greenhouse gases and standing up for Canadian jobs,” Aglukkaq said in her Sept. 27 statement.

Postmedia News asked the department why the minister dropped the sentence from her statement. Here was the department’s response:

“Our government absolutely takes climate change seriously and our actions and results demonstrate this,” wrote Aglukkaq’s spokeswoman Amanda Gordon in an email. “Since we have formed government, Canada’s projected carbon emissions have gone down by close to 130 megatons over what they would have been under the previous government. The statement highlights the important actions of our government so all Canadians can be aware of the work we have undertaken to protect the environment.” …

Green Party leader Elizabeth May said she found [the omission] “shocking” since she believed the recommended messages from Environment Canada were “banal” and not even as strong as the language from the IPCC report.

“It was watered down politically, and it’s further indication that [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper and his cabinet simply don’t understand that the climate crisis is a huge threat to Canada, to our kids, to our economy and we’re running out of time,” said May. “Stephen Harper doesn’t want to actually do anything that by his (opinion) impedes the oil and gas industry.”

Indeed, Harper has been doing all he can to help his country’s tar-sands oil industry, including dropping out of the Kyoto Protocol. Now Canada’s response to climate change is considered to be among the worst in the world.


Source
Stephen Harper’s government edited message about taking climate change seriously, Postmedia News

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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Iowa Wants Its Poor to Give Up Smoking and Drinking to Qualify for Medicaid

by Adalberto7975 Posted on December 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration gave Iowa a waiver today to expand Medicaid along lines similar to what Arkansas did earlier this year, in which Medicaid dollars will be used to buy insurance in the private marketplace. I’m OK with this as an experiment, and curious to see how it turns out. But there was another wrinkle to Iowa’s waiver application:

Iowa wanted to do something different. Gov. Terry Branstad (R) wanted to charge a small premium for Medicaid enrollees who earn between 50 percent and 133 percent of the poverty line. In the Arkansas plan, there were no premiums at all.

Health and Human Services essentially split the difference with the state here: They’re allowing premiums for those who earn between 100 percent and 133 percent of the federal poverty line, but not for those who earn below that. The premiums are limited at 2 percent of income (for someone at the poverty line, this is about $19 a month), and enrollees have the chance to reduce their payment by participating in a wellness program.

Hmmm. Iowa’s waiver application doesn’t describe this wellness program (a draft protocol will be submitted next March), but it does provide a hint about its goals:

The state shall submit for approval a draft section of the protocol related to year 1 Healthy Behavior Incentives including, at a minimum….the health risk assessment used to identify unhealthy behaviors such as alcohol abuse, substance use disorders, tobacco use, obesity, and deficiencies in immunization status.

A single person at 50 percent of the poverty line makes less than $500 per month. That’s obviously not someone who can afford even a nickel in extra expenses. But that was the income level in Iowa’s initial application, which means that for all practical purposes the original goal of this program was to (a) deny government benefits to poor people who are smokers, drinkers, drug users, or overweight, but (b) provide the benefits if these poor people agree to fairly intrusive government monitoring that ensures they improve these behaviors.

So here’s a question: what’s the liberal party line on this kind of thing? Are we opposed because conservatives are once again trying to deny benefits to the “undeserving” poor? Or are we in favor of this because using incentives to improve destructive lifestyles among the most vulnerable is a worthy effort? Does it matter whether the motivation for these incentives is something we approve of? If a lefty foundation launched a program that helped out poor families via a tough-love style approach that insisted on modifying destructive behavior, would it be OK? How much difference does it make that one is a public program and the other is private?

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Blame Canada: Greedy for oil money, the country is turning into a rogue petrostate

by Gwenda Bischof Posted on June 24, 2013

Blame Canada: Greedy for oil money, the country is turning into a rogue petrostate

By Claire Thompson

Forest Ethics

When I recently interviewed Canadian artist Franke James, whose outspoken appeals to her government for climate action landed her on Ottawa’s shit list, I was taken aback to hear her casually refer to her country as a “petrostate.” I knew Canada’s been spending gobs of federal money to promote its tar-sands agenda, but I didn’t realize our mild-mannered northern neighbor was approaching the ranks of Saudi Arabia and Nigeria in its single-minded embrace of oil as the nation’s lifeblood.

An unforgiving article in the latest Foreign Policy magazine lays out how conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been aggressively pursuing development of the Alberta oil sands and remaking the country in the political image of the George W. Bush-era United States:

Over the last decade, as oil prices increased fivefold, oil companies invested approximately $160 billion to develop bitumen in Alberta, and it has finally turned profitable. Canada is now cranking out 1.7 million barrels a day of the stuff, and scheduled production stands to fill provincial and federal government coffers with about $120 billion in rent and royalties by 2020. More than 40 percent of that haul goes directly to the federal government largely in the form of corporate taxes. And the government wants even more; it’s pushing for production to hit 5 million barrels a day by 2030. …

Unsurprisingly, Ottawa has become a master at the cynical art of greenwashing. When Harper’s ministers aren’t attacking former NASA scientist and climate change canary James Hansen in the pages of the New York Times or lobbying against Europe’s Fuel Quality Directive (which regards bitumen as much dirtier than conventional oil), his government has spent $100 million since 2009 on ads to convince Canadians that exporting this oil is “responsible resource development.” Meanwhile, Canada has bent over backward to entice Beijing. Three state-owned Chinese oil companies (all with dismal records of corporate transparency and environmental sensitivity) have already spent more than $20 billion purchasing rights to oil sands in Alberta.

Harper, elected in 2006, is risking his country’s political and ecological security by exploiting what Foreign Policy calls “the world’s most volatile resource.” Mining operations in Alberta have already generated 6 billion barrels of toxic sludge, enough to flood Washington, D.C., and an area of forest six times the size of New York City could be excavated if approved projects proceed. Meanwhile, a secret document leaked to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last fall reveals a sinister foreign-policy strategy: “To succeed [in becoming an energy superpower] we will need to pursue political relationships in tandem with economic interests even where political interests or values may not align.”

For all of this to pay off, Canada is counting on a global market for its oil. Exports to the U.S., its biggest customer, have declined, and fighting over the Keystone XL pipeline doesn’t help. So, per that leaked memo, Canada is setting aside human-rights concerns in favor of trade deals with China. (Most bizarre detail in the article: “And, perhaps to warm Canadians’ hearts to the Chinese, the government recently lobbied to rent two traveling pandas at a cost of $10 million over the next 10 years.”)

This reckless pursuit of oil wealth requires a heavy dose of climate denial. The Harper government has eliminated or drastically reduced funding for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the national park system, the CBC, and the Health Council of Canada; it disbanded Environment Canada’s Adaptation to Climate Change Research Group, eliminated the position of chief science advisor, and gutted the Fisheries Act. Reporters must have questions approved before they can speak with any federal scientists. Oh, and Harper called the Kyoto Protocol a “socialist scheme” — before pulling his country out of the accord altogether.

So if Keystone XL is approved and built and ends up leaking dirty oil into the Ogallala aquifer, if the climate becomes fucked even faster thanks to all that tar-sands oil being burned, we can blame Canada.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Blame Canada: Greedy for oil money, the country is turning into a rogue petrostate

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Here’s how the world can get on track with climate goals

by epxxatlw Posted on June 11, 2013

Here’s how the world can get on track with climate goals

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Take the off-ramp, please!

The world is driving itself into a future of climate hell, but experts say it’s not too late to take the off-ramp.

Despite declining greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and other developed nations, global emissions broke a new record last year. They were pushed 1.4 percent higher than the year before by rapid growth in China and India, and by Japan turning to fossil fuels instead of nuclear power.

During U.N. climate negotiations held in Copenhagen in 2009, most of the world agreed to aim for a post-Industrial Revolution temperature rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius. But if the world keeps traveling along its current path, the International Energy Agency warns in a new report that long-term average temperature increases of between 3.6 and 5.3 degrees C are more likely.

Climate negotiations are underway to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which could help stem the tide of rising emissions. But no new agreement is expected to come into force until 2020 — and who knows if it would even be strong enough to make a difference.

So it would be easy to conclude that we’re royally fucked.

But in its new report, the IEA outlines four strategies that countries could pursue during the next seven years to help spare us the “royally fucked” scenario of skyrocketing temperatures — all at zero net economic cost.

“Despite the insufficiency of global action to date, limiting the global temperature rise to 2 °C remains still technically feasible, though it is extremely challenging,” states the report, titled “Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map.”

The most fruitful of the four suggested strategies would be the adoption of straightforward energy-efficiency measures, mostly in buildings but also in vehicles. The other strategies: shutting down the worst of coal power plants, cutting back on the accidental release of natural gas by frackers and other energy companies, and more quickly phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.

“[T]hese policies would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 3.1 [gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or equivalent] in 2020 — 80% of the emissions reductions required under a 2°C trajectory,” the report says. “This would buy precious time while international climate negotiations continue.”

Here are those four suggestions in graph form from a related IEA presentation [PDF] given in London on Monday. The percentage figures indicate each strategy’s potential contribution to the 3.1 Gt reduction:

IEAClick to embiggen.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is coordinating climate negotiations, said governments and companies should seize on the report’s recommendations.

“Once again we are reminded that there is a gap between current efforts and the engagement necessary to keep the world below a two degrees Celsius temperature rise,” Figueres said in a statement [PDF]. “Once again we are reminded that the gap can be closed this decade, using proven technologies and known policies, and without harming economic growth in any region of the world.”

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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Kyoto’s first phase expires as greenhouse gas emissions and dirty energy use spike

by anjunonstennyao Posted on January 2, 2013

Kyoto’s first phase expires as greenhouse gas emissions and dirty energy use spike

By Philip Bump

In 1997, most of the world’s nations signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty intended to fight climate change. The goal was to gradually cut greenhouse gas emissions through the end of 2012, the first commitment period. How’d we do? From the CBC:

The controversial and ineffective Kyoto Protocol’s first stage comes to an end today, leaving the world with 58 per cent more greenhouse gases than in 1990, as opposed to the five per cent reduction its signatories sought.

Ah, well. Worth a shot!

If there is anything good that came out of the Kyoto experience, it is that the issue it tried and failed to tackle is now top of mind, says [Steven Guilbeault of Equiterre, a Montreal-based environmental group].

“That’s probably one of the biggest accomplishments of the Kyoto Protocol, is making climate change something that’s part of our everyday life.”

You know what else is making climate change something that’s part of our everyday life? Climate change.

One reason Kyoto has been such a failure is its unenforceability. As our David Roberts put it on Twitter:

For example, in the United States. President George W. Bush refused to support the protocol out of fear it would hurt the American economy. Our carbon emissions plummeted anyway — thanks largely to the economic slowdown.

Another reason Kyoto failed is that it exempted China, India, and other “developing” countries from emissions cuts during its first phase. By the end of 2011, coal use globally reached a new high, spurred by China and India.

From the Worldwatch Institute:

Coal use increased by 5.4 percent to 3,724.3 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) from the end of 2010 to the end of 2011. Demand for natural gas grew by 2.2 percent in 2011, reaching 2,905.6 mtoe. …

Spurred mainly by demand growth in China and India, coal’s share in the global primary energy mix reached 28 percent in 2011 — its highest point since the International Energy Agency began keeping statistics in 1971. While the United States remained one of the world’s largest coal users, consumption growth in 2011 was concentrated among countries that are not part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including China and India. Consumption in non-OECD countries grew by 8.4 percent to 2,625.7 mtoe. These countries accounted for 70.5 percent of global coal consumption in 2011.

We can expect to see that pattern continue as other nations increase energy use. Africa, for example, is seeing a boom in energy production and consumption. From The Christian Science Monitor:

Africa, home to 15 percent of the world’s population, consumes just 3 percent of the world’s energy output, and 587 million people, including close to three-quarters of those living in Sub-Saharan Africa, still have no access to electricity via national grids.

But the situation is changing, and swiftly. At 4.1 percent growth, Africa’s per capita energy consumption is growing faster than anywhere else, driven by improved infrastructure, inward investment, and efforts to tackle corruption.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, there have been 64 major discoveries of potential new fuel supplies — mostly oil and gas deposits. Of those, 13 were found in the first eight months of 2012 alone.

Overall, international growth in energy consumption is far outpacing interational efforts to reduce emissions.

Later this year, Poland will host the 19th annual U.N. climate summit. At worst, it can only tie last year’s summit for ineffectiveness. At best, an agreement will be reached to again try and curb global greenhouse gas emissions.

And in an ideal world choked with optimism, it might actually work.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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