Waiting for Obama

Copenhagen -- In theory, the Bella Center should seem like the epicenter of history. In reality, it's more like being in a big room full of people playing the game of telephone by circulating bits of information, misinformation, and gossip. There were huge protests outside today, as a result of which access to the building was shut down for an extended period, but I only knew this from emails I got from people out in the streets. The UN revoked the credentials of Friends of the Earth and Avaaz, apparently because some members of those delegations were known to be planning civil disobedience inside the conference once the heads of state arrived.

Some new and intriguing proposals have been put on the table, though. One, from France and Ethiopia, includes some interesting ideas for solving the long-term problem of financing climate-change costs in poor countries.  The two countries, an unlikely duo,

believe that various innovative financing mechanisms are key to ensure the predictability and sustainability of international public efforts. They call, in particular, for the creation of a tax on international financial transactions and consider other sources such as taxes on sea freight or air transport. Those mechanisms will mainly be dedicated to actions in poor and vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa, least developed countries, small island states and other developing countries with a low per-capita income ....

Meanwhile George Soros has come forward with his own proposal, which would rely heavily on the International Monetary Fund:

"I propose that the developed countries -- in addition to establishing a fast start fund of $10 billion a year -- should band together and lend $100 billion dollars worth of these SDRs for 25 years to a special green fund serving the developing world. The fund would jump-start forestry, land-use, and agricultural projects. These are the areas that offer the greatest scope for reducing carbon emissions and could produce substantial returns from carbon markets. The returns such projects can generate go beyond reducing carbon; there will be non-carbon related returns from land use projects, the potential to create more sustainable rural livelihoods, enable higher and more resilient agriculture yields and create rural employment."

So, yes,  there are ideas on the table.

What's missing is any comparable financing proposal from the U.S. -- and having such a concept emerge is probably the key to making it sufficiently attractive to the Third World for any deal to emerge from this maelstrom. (Yes, I know the original maelstrom was off Norway, not Denmark, but you can only do so much with Hamlet's castle and Tivoli Gardens.) Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has already arrived here and will probably get an earful tomorrow when she meets with various other governments about their unhappiness that the U.S. has not been more forthcoming about how it proposes to solve the long-term financing problem.

It appears that the barrier is a deadlock within the Obama administration about which mechanisms might be acceptable -- and breaking such deadlocks is precisely why it's so important that President Obama come here and change the ground rules of a process that currently seems mired in distrust and a lack of generosity. So although the negotiations continue, there is a strong sense that the real opportunity will open when the American president arrives.

The Tivoli Rollercoaster

Copenhagen -- My equilibrium's shaky, and it's not from Denmark's most famous rollercoaster. I go from cheerful-looking billboards at the airport (the best are Oceana's on ocean acidification; the least-plausible are Coca-Cola's "Hopenhagen" series) to the reality of a climate summit that's poorly framed, inadequately ambitious, and riven by distrust. Even so, I continue to be reasonably certain that the U.S. and India, among the major players, are going to do far more to save the climate than they are willing to commit to. And over the course of the past several days, it's become evident that China might be in the same camp.

But two enormous issues continue to plague this effort -- and neither has to do with climate. The first is the Third World's demand that the rich nations finally admit that they haven't earned all of their economic advantage -- that  part of it is the result of theft from the global commons -- and the stiff-necked unwillingness of the industrial world to make that concession. This is at the heart of the inability of the conference, thus far, to agree on how to monitor and measure commitments made by various nations. The Chinese, and perhaps others, feel that to agree to global monitoring of equal integrity between themselves and, say, the U.S., is to concede moral parity -- and that they will not do.

The second issue is how to finance (at what is actually a very modest sub-AIG level) a clean energy and climate response in the Third World. The finance ministries of the rich nations are having a hard time accepting that they can't have it both ways. If they cannot get their congresses and parliaments to agree to tax their own citizens to compensate for their extravagant use of the common carbon sinks, then some kind of global-finance system to which everyone contributes, but which the rich do not control, is the only alternative. "He who pays the piper calls the tune" has a certain rough realism to it. But "he who used to pay the piper" cannot expect to call the tune for very long.

This all deserves more thought than my somewhat jet-lagged brain can give it. But these two issues -- transparency and finance -- are the biggest whitewater holes on the fast-moving river running out of Copenhagen tonight.

How Different Is Global Warming?

Frankfurt -- In a few hours I'll arrive at the UN Conference in Copenhagen -- surely the biggest environmental gathering I've ever attended and, arguably, the most consequential ever to meet. The sheer scale of the threats posed by climate disruption (and of the actions needed to protect us against it) does make global warming seem different from other environmental challenges we've faced. But in a number of important respects, it's not different at all. I think it might even help us understand what we're up against if we look at some of the lessons we've learned from those other challenges.

Lesson 1: Safety First -- It's Cheaper

If you listen to the so-called "climate skeptics," you might start to think that the history of environmental policy is one of expensive false alarms and unnecessary panic. But in reality, it 's almost always turned out that interventions taken to protect people from environmental risks were inadequate and too late -- and that prevention would have been much cheaper than cleaning up the mess. And history also shows that scientists, more often than not, underestimate the risks -- they are not nervous Nellie alarmists.

Take formaldehyde. We've known that for decades that it's toxic. It's also ubiquitous and consumer exposure to it is widespread: permanent press clothing, particle board, and some kinds of plywood. Yet for decades federal regulators failed to establish safety standards for formaldehyde exposure in consumer use and, as a result, manufacturers kept churning out mobile homes that had formaldehyde concentrations higher than those permitted in chemical plants for workers -- much higher. Only when FEMA loaned hundreds of these toxic trailers to Katrina victims -- a population that was concentrated and easily monitored -- did the Sierra Club uncover just how bad the situation was. And even then FEMA stonewalled, resisted, and argued that the trailers were not the problem -- until Congress stepped in and finally forced them to get people out of the trailers. (They also had to force FEMA to abandon plans to simply sell these trailers to other victims.)

The California Air Resources Board, in the wake of the scandal, passed consumer formaldehyde standards. And this month the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported out legislation that would make the California standards nationwide -- an important step forward. Will this end the formaldehyde risk? Probably not, although it will reduce it. New scientific studies expected from the EPA next month will show that formaldehyde is toxic at even lower levels of exposure than previously believed -- so the new standards, while an improvement, will still leave millions of Americans still at risk.

The science of climate change is similar. Over the last decade it's become clear that global warming is happening faster than anticipated, that CO2 disrupts  the climate at lower-than-expected concentrations, and that the addressing the problem will cost more than we previously thought.

So taking early action to avoid risk is the prudent, cheap, economic course of action. One question I have often wanted to ask the climate skeptics is "What do you think the chances are that you're mistaken and we are disrupting the climate? And at what point are the odds of a global castastrophe high enough that you would favor preventive action? One in four? One in ten? One in a hundred? And do you have fire insurance on your home?  What are the odds on its burning down next year?

Lesson 2: Higher Standards Don't Hurt Economies -- If Applied Uniformly

Chesapeake Bay, the economic linchpin of the economies of Maryland, Delaware, and eastern Virginia, is in serious ecological distress. After more than a decade of federal action,  the loss of fisheries and biological productivity hasn't stopped -- largely because agriculture has been permitted to handle its manure improperly, which has led to huge quantities of toxic water pollutants in the streams that drain into the Bay.

Existing regulations have only 50 percent of the impact on pollution run-off that's needed. So the Obama administration has proposed to require livestock and poultry growers to obtain permits and adopt best practices. Legislation in the House and Senate would set binding pollution limits for runoff into the bay.

Agricultural interests in the watershed are protesting vigorously -- not because the rules can't be met, but because farmers in other areas (who would be held to  less-effective pollution-control standards) would gain an advantage. At a hearing before the House Agriculture Committee, Steve Schwalb, vice-president for Perdue Farms, headquartered in the watershed, claimed that the EPA's plans "would put our operations and our growers at a significant competitive disadvantage and would threaten the very existence of the poultry industry." Schwalb is no doubt exaggerating -- but to the extent that he has a point, it signals that the EPA ought to make the pollution rules more stringent for all livestock producers -- not just those in the Chesapeake watershed.

We're hearing the same argument in Copenhagen from opponents of ambitious targets and timetables -- other countries will get an advantage. Again, many of these claims don't stand up -- but to the extent they do, what we need is a virtuous race to the top, in which all parties agree to do more, rather than a vicious race to the bottom, where each party acts based on its distrust of the others.

Lesson 3: There Are Almost Always Better Solutions -- For Innovators

The difficulty with most environmental problems is that even when obviously better solutions are available, the incumbent big players stay wedded to and invested in the old, dangerous and dirty ways of doing things. Take the battle over mountain-removal mining -- there's simply no question that there exist much less environmentally destructive ways to mine coal, and that those better techniques can meet our nation's needs. But a series of coal companies that don't have any interest in or capacity to mine coal responsibly continue to fight change bitterly. Even West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd says coal needs to listen and change -- but the mountain-removal specialists like Arch Coal will fight to keep their dangerous, outmoded practices going as long as they can.

Climate change is very similar -- there's a huge new advertising campaign from the American oil industry about the jobs crisis. Even though every available study shows that reducing our reliance on oil -- most of it imported -- would dramatically increase employment, the oil industry's campaign suggests just the opposite.

We can't listen to these kinds of misleading arguments. If we want to protect ourselves from special interests, we need to recognize their spin for exactly what it is -- an effort to line their own pockets at our expense.