With a new President in the White House there’s a fresh approach to climate change and energy policy in the US. But the Energy bill currently going through Congress is based on the widely-criticised "Cap & Trade" system and has been weakened further by a massive corporate lobbying campaign. How does this feed into the UN talks in Bonn in June which prepare the way for the critical meeting in Copenhagen in December? We get an informed critique of the Bill from Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch and ask him what to look out for in Bonn.
Some key points
• A huge lobbying effort has watered down US “Cap & Trade” Bill
• Key Democrats financed by vested interests
• “Cap & Trade" itself is a flawed model
• The Breakthrough Institute has calculated that there are so many international offsets in the Bill that it is possible that the US might not reduce emissions domestically until 2030
• Obama has reneged on his election platform pledge that 100% of carbon permits would be auctioned – 85% are now being given away free to polluting industries in an effective windfall
• There is an upper cap on the carbon price in the Bill of $28/TC. This is insufficient to incentivise the transition to clean energy
• Some of the same architects of the sub-prime crisis (in terms of deregulation and opaque financial derivatives) are involved in designing today’s carbon markets
• The overall ambition of the “Cap & Trade” Bill is a theoretical cut of 17% in C02 by 2020 relative to a baseline year of 2000. But the UN baseline year is 1990. Compared to 1990 levels the US ambition could equate to just a 4-5% cut. China is suggesting that industrialised nations need to make a 40% cut by 2020
• Reuters has estimated that the cuts so far proposed by industrialised countries amount to between 9 and 16% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels (and this is presumably before you factor in fake reductions from offsets…)
• Climate scientist Bill Hare has recently noted that nothing on the table for Copenhagen is currently anywhere near sufficient to keep us below 2C of global warming, let alone the safer threshold of 1.5 degrees demanded by the coalition of 100 countries (representing 1bn people) that are most immediately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Oscar’s tips on what to look for in Bonn:
• G77+China (developing country bloc) has a proposal on the table that World Bank Climate Investment Funds go through the more democratic UN process instead
• The push for the inclusion of forestry (aka REDD – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) into the carbon markets continues and must be resisted. The emphasis must turn instead to managing the drivers of deforestation
• China & India are pushing for a relaxation on intellectual property rules to help enable the roll-out of clean energy technologies in the South. The US is resisting
• Bolivia has made a very interesting and wide-ranging proposal
For a full set of links & references go to:
http://www.climateradio.org
---
Follow the talks at Bonn
Deal or No Deal – A great introduction to the Copenhagen talks!
http://www.very.org.uk/dealornodeal/dond.pdf
Draft negotiating texts, live video and on-demand video coverage
http://unfccc.int/meetings/sb30/items/4842.php
Earth Negotiations Bulletin – daily detailed summary
http://www.iisd.ca/climate/sb30/
Third World Network – Southern civil society perspectives
http://www.twnside.org.sg
CAN’s daily ECO Bulletin
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting/eco
Climate Justice Now! network
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/cjn
• A huge lobbying effort has watered down US “Cap & Trade” Bill
• Key Democrats financed by vested interests
• “Cap & Trade" itself is a flawed model
• The Breakthrough Institute has calculated that there are so many international offsets in the Bill that it is possible that the US might not reduce emissions domestically until 2030
• Obama has reneged on his election platform pledge that 100% of carbon permits would be auctioned – 85% are now being given away free to polluting industries in an effective windfall
• There is an upper cap on the carbon price in the Bill of $28/TC. This is insufficient to incentivise the transition to clean energy
• Some of the same architects of the sub-prime crisis (in terms of deregulation and opaque financial derivatives) are involved in designing today’s carbon markets
• The overall ambition of the “Cap & Trade” Bill is a theoretical cut of 17% in C02 by 2020 relative to a baseline year of 2000. But the UN baseline year is 1990. Compared to 1990 levels the US ambition could equate to just a 4-5% cut. China is suggesting that industrialised nations need to make a 40% cut by 2020
• Reuters has estimated that the cuts so far proposed by industrialised countries amount to between 9 and 16% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels (and this is presumably before you factor in fake reductions from offsets…)
• Climate scientist Bill Hare has recently noted that nothing on the table for Copenhagen is currently anywhere near sufficient to keep us below 2C of global warming, let alone the safer threshold of 1.5 degrees demanded by the coalition of 100 countries (representing 1bn people) that are most immediately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Oscar’s tips on what to look for in Bonn:
• G77+China (developing country bloc) has a proposal on the table that World Bank Climate Investment Funds go through the more democratic UN process instead
• The push for the inclusion of forestry (aka REDD – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) into the carbon markets continues and must be resisted. The emphasis must turn instead to managing the drivers of deforestation
• China & India are pushing for a relaxation on intellectual property rules to help enable the roll-out of clean energy technologies in the South. The US is resisting
• Bolivia has made a very interesting and wide-ranging proposal
For a full set of links & references go to:
http://www.climateradio.org ---
Follow the talks at Bonn
Deal or No Deal – A great introduction to the Copenhagen talks!
http://www.very.org.uk/dealornodeal/dond.pdf Draft negotiating texts, live video and on-demand video coverage
http://unfccc.int/meetings/sb30/items/4842.php Earth Negotiations Bulletin – daily detailed summary
http://www.iisd.ca/climate/sb30/ Third World Network – Southern civil society perspectives
http://www.twnside.org.sg CAN’s daily ECO Bulletin
http://climatenetwork.org/climate-change-basics/by-meeting/eco Climate Justice Now! network
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/cjn 
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