After a fast-track approval of the climate change bill, its enabling legislation is deadlocked at the Civil Household. The bill was rushed through Congress for president Lula to arrive in Copenhagen with the law already signed. But without the enabling legislation it is useless, and emission reduction targets cannot be enforced.

The Civil Household filters and process all government proposals before they are taken to the President. While Chief of Civil Household, Presidential candidate Dilma Roussef commanded all aspects of government policy but foreign affairs with a very strong hand and an outstretched arm. She has never been very enthusiastic about climate change policies.

Sources who have been involved in the decision-making process told me that conflict among government representatives responding to different sectoral interests have become almost intractable. A majority among them resists mandating any carbon curbing action other than reducing deforestation. There is strong resistance to any emission reduction targeting for the industrial, energy, and transportation sectors.

There are several sources of veto to sectoral actions on climate change. The officials in charge of climate policy at the Ministry of Science and Technology are against any carbon reduction policy other than curbing deforestation. They claim Brazil already has a low carbon economy. Scientists who work at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), under the Ministry of Science and Technology umbrella, strongly disagree. They are among the most active advocates for fast and encompassing climate change regulation. The Development, Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture ministries also oppose adopting targeted sectoral actions. To them any delay on regulation would be welcome, especially in the pre-electoral and campaign seasons. It is obvious to anyone with a minimum knowledge of the Brazilian economy that it belongs to the high carbon family. It will move faster towards higher levels of carbon intensity, if nothing is done.

Since Dilma Roussef’s times the Civil Household has resisted climate change-oriented policies. The two first Environment ministers, Marina Silva and Carlos Minc, have always had to fight for their policies, often clashing with other ministers, and frequently failing to get them approved by the President.

In one of the fiercest confrontations around policies for the Amazon region, Marina Silva, now an opposition presidential bidder, has resigned. She was replaced by Carlos Minc who, through confrontation and concession, was able to get Lula’s approval to the policy now filed under the Copenhagen Accord.  Minc left the Ministry to run for the state of Rio de Janeiro’s House of Representatives.

The incumbent minister, Izabella Teixeira, does not have the leadership nor the experience required to break this deadlock. The present Chief of Civil Household also lacks expertise and leadership. Without President Lula’s direct intervention it is unlikely regulation would be adopted anytime before this year’s elections.

This places Brazil far behind its two major partners in the BASIC group, China and India. After the BASIC and President Obama brokered the Copenhagen Accord, both China and India have been very active in adopting new policies that would enable them to meet the targets they’ve registered on the Accord’s Annex.

Connectivity as a driver of change and a tool to promote sustainability.I spent the last two days on a conference about innovative logistics: Future.log, International Forum for Innovation in Logistics. I did the keynote speech for the first session on “Sustainability in the Supply Chain”. The second session was about “Demand-led Supply Chain Management”. My keynote was about 21^st Century megatrends, and sustainability as a resulting imperative for business, societies, and governments. But I would like to share what I’ve learned, rather than what I’ve talked about.

One of the most interesting trends that emerged from the presentations on demand-led supply chain management was the importance of mobile shopping and mobile data sourcing as main factors of change in both contemporary and future logistics. And it was really striking to see that the iPhone was on every sentence about mobile resources. David Sanders, VP for Sales and Strategic Markets – Americas, of Sterling Commerce AT&T, said that the iPhone is becoming a major resource for obtaining data from demand patterns through consumers’ online shopping choices. And it begins to be more widely used to get managerial information down the supply chain. Steve Steuterman, research director at AMR Research, has also emphasized the use of iPhone as a critical trend that is deeply changing supply chain management. Sanders is even more thrilled with the possibilities of iPad: “the size of the screen allows a greater amount of real time online data to be displayed at the same time.”

What impressed me was the potential that connectivity through iPhone and iPad have as a tool to promote sustainable consumption and greening the supply chain. Data sourcing and feedback systems could be used to monitor the supply chain, improve traceability, control carbon emissions. Consumers can get comparative data on the carbon intensity of goods from different supply chains, and make their decisions, online, based on the results.

I argued that we are already surfing a tsunami of change that will eventually wipe out most of the professional, economic and business paradigms in use today. It will clear the way for the establishment of whole new paradigms. Change will, at the end, be more thorough and revolutionary than the transformation that led from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment marked a long wave of knowledge-creating change through differentiation, segmentation, and specialization of branches of the same trees. The great transformation we are starting to witness is marked by the convergence of different sciences, technologies, media. This convergence is making information and communication technologies ever more ubiquitous as enablers of change and tools for novel processes and practices.

Sergio Abranches

It is an extensive and complex law with many stakeholders. During the legislative process a few amendments have improved it to some extent. One of them, for instance, has included the emissions reduction targets as a “voluntary contribution” from Brazil to the global fight against climate change.  There were also a few important setbacks, however. President Lula has vetoed three articles. One on constitutional grounds, the other two conceding to pressure from his Minister of Energy.

Lula vetoed the provision that the country should gradually abandon fossil fuels. As there was no time frame, nor any description of actions that should be taken to that end, it amounted to no more than a future policy indication. But the Minister feared that by maintaining it, an enabling decree could make provisions that would do harm to the fossil energy industry. He only accepted that priority should be given to renewable energy sources.

The Minister of Energy has also persuaded President Lula to veto article 10, that restricted government incentives to small hydropower plants, wind, solar, biomass and other alternative sources. He argued that it would impede incentives to large hydropower plants.

The veto damaged the economics of the new law, by removing the structure of incentives to promote non-fossil energy.

There is some room, however, for improvement and correction through carefully drafting the enabling decree. The law can only be enacted after this enabling legislation is published. It can de done through a series of presidential decrees. Presidential decrees are not reviewed by Congress and can be enforced immediately.

The battle around the enabling decree is about to begin. An official source has told me today that they will not try to write all enabling rules at once. They’ll selectively pick the issues and areas they deem to be the most important and try to set the rules to allow their prompt enforcement. Some issues are almost certain to be in this first batch, because they are instrumental to the implementation of the emissions reduction targets that will be offered as the Brazilian contribution to the Copenhagen Accord.

This strategy of partial enablement aims at reducing the scope of conflict of interest and infighting to prevent a decision-making paralysis.

Another source told me they’ll also work on other parts of the enabling legislation with a longer-term perspective, leaving the groundwork done for the next Administration, to take office on January 1^st ,2011.

People at the Environment and Science and Technology ministries want to expedite the approval of the enabling decree, because ministers and higher officials who will run for elective office on October elections will have to leave the government within the next two months. They want the same people who negotiated the Law of Climate Change to lead the deal on the enabling legislation. It is very likely that Lula will replace his political ministers by technical and managerial people who lack the political savvy to tackle the complex and contentious issues the decree will have to address.

A source told me the ideal timing would be to have the enabling legislation approved by right after Carnival.

Sergio Abranches

If 2009 was the Year  of Twitter, it was also the year Twitter has become a solid journalistic tool to cover climate change, and a widely used resource for climate change advocacy and militancy, pro and con.

As Alfred Hermida observes (@Hermida)

there has been a rapid uptake of Twitter by journalists, provoking somewhat of a Twitter frenzy in some quarters of the media.

He also notes that

Twitter has been quickly adopted in newsrooms as a mechanism to distribute breaking news quickly and concisely or as a tool to solicit story ideas, sources and facts.

I saw that happen in the Media Center. Tweets were used to break news everyone knew would become updated in a matter of hours, if not minutes; to socialize sites and Twitter accounts that were good sources of info; to opine about events; to comment on the experience and ambience of COP15 coverage. It as like a TwitterBabel, a multi-language ongoing dialogue and information sharing experience.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy spread his own impressions, infos, and ideas through a Twitter account specifically setup for COP15: @ElyseeCop15. UK Prime minister Gordon Brown used the regular @10DowningStreet account to tell about his impressions. They both became very useful sources.

A typical tweet representing Sarkozy’s views would be

PR : “les difficultés de cette conférence, c’est la preuve d’un système onusien à bout de souffle”, about 13 hours ago from Seesmic. (“The difficulties of this Conference are proof that the UN system is exhausted”.)

A typical tweet reflecting Gordon Browns’s views would be

PM: Negotiations fraught, but determined to get this done. Leaders must put cards on table. 8:12 AM Dec 17th from web

When I look back at the hectic days in the Media Center, during COP15, one of the sharpest images I get is of thousands of journalists frantically looking for information, checking and verifying what they get by all means possible, a large number compelled to report real time.

The intermediation of Twitter turned this rather common situation, into one which best expresses the new emerging forms of what Hermida has called ambient journalism.

(A)mbient journalism – an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, serving diverse purposes. The system is always-on but also works on different levels of engagement in terms of awareness.

COP15 was the first COP in which Twitter was an integral part of media coverage. I guess it was also the height of blog climate journalism. I can’t show any evidence of that, but I can tell about my own experience: I got info from more blogs than online conventional news sites, except for Reuters and The Guardian. Sure, I’m counting blogs hosted by newspapers sites, such as @Revkin’s Dot Earth, or The Guardian’s Environment Blog .

Twitter was also a crucial resource for climate policy advocates, militants, and NGO’s. They served advocacy or militant purposes, but they were also good sources of information. I found Adopt a Negotiator’s use of blogging, facebooking and tweeting particularly interesting. It was probably educational to the participants, and was also a source for journos.

Twitter is today the single most important source for information about climate militants still detained by the Danish police.

And Twitter has become an unavoidable tool for research and journalism.

In fact, Twitter can be a serious aid in reporting. It can be a living, breathing tip sheet for facts, new sources and story ideas. It can provide instantaneous access to hard-to-reach newsmakers, given that there’s no PR person standing between a reporter and a tweet to a government official or corporate executive. It can also be a blunt instrument for crowdsourcing. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Hashtags were widely used, but the dominant ones became #COP15, #Copenhagen, and #climate.

Hashtags are just one of the tools that bring coherence to what can seem like Twitter’s tower of Babel. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

The flow of tweets under #COP15 continues unabated and remains as a good source for journos, policy advocates and militants. The number of silly tweets has increased, it is true, but the meaningful and interesting outnumber the useless. My guess is that #COP15 will continue full of life and content until it transforms itself seamlessly into #COP16.

There are several interfaces between journalists, climate policy advocates and green militants. One of them is certainly Twitter. While policy advocates and militants can be sources for journalists, they are also among the most frequent visitors of news site and news blogs, looking for aggregate information and analytical opinion.

All of which means that Twitter attracts the sort of people that media people should love — those who are interested in, and engaged with, the news. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Those who are still debating whether Twitter will replace blogs or other social networking resources, even some news sites, are missing the point. What we are looking at is a closer integration among them all. Each performing the function it is best suited to perform.

The change that made me see real value in Twitter came about a year ago, when the people I had learnt to know and appreciate from their writings in blogs started to have conversations on Twitter. At that time, I had been a frequent blogger for a couple of years and had been conversating with other bloggers via my own blog and via the comments on their blogs. Gradually I noticed that the conversations which previously were held on blogs and blog comments were moving to Twitter. So I started following the people whose blogs I subscribed to on Twitter. I hadn’t search for them before on Twitter, but now most of them exposed their Twitter name on their blogs. (Oscar Berg – “Why 2009 was the Year of Twitter”, The Content Economy)

For some purposes, Twitter works better than RSS Feeds. As blogger Oscar Berg says, blogs are personal, while Twitter is  collective platform, a sort of commons. Twitter, blogs, and social networking will be central to the continuation of the processes of aggregation, segmentation and specialization in the Websphere as well as in the media world.

Where no other resource still competes with Twitter is on what Cloud9Media has aptly called Realtime Magic. Be it real time search, or breaking real time news, or getting real time reactions or fulfilling any other real time info or social communication need one can imagine, Twitter works better and more economically than any other available tool.

Twitter is amazing as its the most efficient mechanism I have ever seen to allow me to peruse the thoughtstreams of others who live all over the world. (Vivek Wadhwa – “Twitter and Me! Why It’s The Only Social Media Tool I Use”, TechCrunch)

Sergio Abranches

The world will have to manage an altered human health environment resulting from climate change, says an important report on the health effects of climate change issued by the medical journal The Lancet, and the University College of London Institute for Global Health Commission.

Effects of climate change on health will affect most populations in the next decades and put the lives and well-being of billions of people at increased risk.

Management of the health effects of climate change will require inputs from all sectors of government and civil society, collaboration between many academic disciplines, and new ways of international cooperation that have hitherto eluded us. Involvement of local communities in monitoring, discussing, advocating, and assisting with the process of adaptation will be crucial. An integrated and multidisciplinary approach to reduce the adverse health effects of climate change requires at least three levels of action. First, policies must be adopted to reduce carbon emissions and to increase carbon biosequestration, and thereby slow down global warming and eventually stabilize temperatures. Second, action should be taken on the events linking climate change to disease. Third, appropriate public health systems should be put into place to deal with adverse outcomes.

Many situations of high risk to human society also entail significant benefits from the endeavors to manage and prevent probable hazards. This is the case of health risks associated to climate change. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), tells how and why on her article for The Lancet commenting the results from the report “Managing the health effects of climate change”. Environmental events such as climate change are not quirks of nature, she argues.

Instead they are markers of massive failure in international systems that govern the way nations and their populations interact. The contagion of our mistakes shows no mercy and makes no exceptions on the basis of fair play. For example, countries that have contributed least to greenhouse-gas emissions will be the first and hardest hit by climate change.

Health consequences of climate change are no longer a matter of scientific uncertainty. They have been identified and their projections are anything but uncertain.

Several health consequences of a changing climate have been identified with a high degree of certainty. Malnutrition, and its devastating effects on child health, will increase. Worsening floods, droughts, and storms will cause more deaths and injuries. Heat waves will cause more deaths, largely among people who are elderly. Finally, climate change could alter the geographical distribution of disease vectors, including the insects that spread malaria and dengue. All these health problems are already huge, largely concentrated in the developing world, and difficult to control.

This correlation between climate change and collective health hazards calls for linking climate and health security goals globally.

Most of the mitigation measures for climate change investigated (including cleaner household-energy sources, less dependence on automobile transport, and reduced consumption of animal products in developed countries) would bring public health benefits. In many cases, these benefits are substantial, and would help to address some of the largest and fastest growing global health challenges and the greatest drains on health-sector resources, such as acute respiratory infections, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, and diabetes. While the climatic effects of mitigation measures are long term and dispersed throughout the world, the health benefits are immediate and local, making them more attractive to politicians and the public.

Mitigation and its side benefits

As a political agreement on global climate policy seems now more likely to be reached in Copenhagen than it was a few weeks ago, we should start looking at the benefits of taking immediate action, and what to do to make it happen.

The issue now is not whether climate change is occurring, but how we can respond most effectively. The first steps are clear. In the short term, strengthening health systems, and widening coverage of proven and cheap public health interventions to control climate-sensitive diseases, would accelerate progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals and save millions of lives. In the long term, the same actions would also reduce vulnerability to climate change. Responding to climate change is not a distraction from the business of protecting health: it is part of the same agenda.

The Lancet has also published a series of articles dealing with the relationship between climate change and human health.

A group of academic and government health and energy specialists led by Paul Wilkinson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine developed an interesting model to examine the possible health gains from reducing green-house gases emissions of household energy use. The model shows that mitigation strategies bring benefits to health for both high-income and low-income households.

The broad conclusion is clear—that in both high-income and low-income settings there is a set of abatement actions with appreciable potential overall benefits to health. In the contrasting examples we investigated, the health benefits seem especially great for the populations of India that rely on inefficient combustion of biomass fuels for household energy. Evidence from many studies shows that women, children, and men in such settings are exposed to very high concentrations of particles, gases, and other noxious pollutants that are often at least an order of magnitude higher than the health-protection values set by national and international agencies. Further, these populations might be especially vulnerable to the health consequences of breathing such pollution because of poor nutrition, poor access to health care, and other risk factors.

Climate change and urban transport

Health and transportation professionals used comparative risk assessment methods to estimate the health effects of alternative urban land transport scenarios for two settings—London, UK, and Delhi, India.

We developed separate models that linked transport scenarios with physical activity, air pollution, and risk of road traffic injury. In both cities, we noted that reduction in carbon dioxide emissions through an increase in active travel and less use of motor vehicles had larger health benefits per million population (7332 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] in London, and 12 516 in Delhi in 1 year) than from the increased use of lower-emission motor vehicles (160 DALYs in London, and 1696 in Delhi). However, combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give the largest benefits (7439 DALYs in London, 12 995 in Delhi), notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from ischaemic heart disease (10—19% in London, 11—25% in Delhi). Although uncertainties remain, climate change mitigation in transport should benefit public health substantially. Policies to increase the acceptability, appeal, and safety of active urban travel, and discourage travel in private motor vehicles would provide larger health benefits than would policies that focus solely on lower-emission motor vehicles.

Their conclusions are both far-reaching and clear. There are concrete advantages from linking policies addressing urban transportation hurdles to the reduction of GHG emissions. A climate change perspective enriches and strengthens urban policies. At the end of the day it yields direct health benefits to citizens and financial gains to households’ budgets and taxpayers.

Important health gains and reductions in CO2 emissions can be achieved through replacement of urban trips in private motor vehicles with active travel in high-income and middle-income countries. Technological measures to reduce vehicle pollutants might reduce emissions, but the health effect would be smaller. The combination of reduced reliance on motorized travel and substantial increases in active travel with vigorous implementation of low-emission technology offers the best outcomes in terms of climate change mitigation and public health. In many cities, the increase in use of cars, motorcycles, and HGVs, with the resulting increase in road danger has meant that many individuals who can afford to are changing to private motorized transport. An increase in the safety, convenience, and comfort of walking and cycling, and a reduction in the attractiveness of private motor vehicle use (speed, convenience, and cost) are essential to achieve the modal shifts envisaged here.

Low-carbon power

A study on low-carbon electricity and public health concludes that reduction of particle air pollution emissions from coal-fired power plants have highly positive effects on health in developed regions like the European Union, or emerging countries, such as China and India.

Changes in modes of production of electricity to reduce CO2 emissions would, in all regions, reduce PM2·5 and deaths caused by it, with the greatest effect in India and the smallest in the EU. Health benefits greatly offset costs of greenhouse-gas mitigation, especially in India where pollution is high and costs of mitigation are low. Our estimates are approximations but suggest clear health gains (co-benefits) through decarbonizing electricity production, and provide additional information about the extent of such gains.

The gains are greater, the more coal-intensive electricity generation is. But even “cleaner” fossil energy would have an incrementally positive effect on health.

This study indicates that some health benefits will result from changes in the means of electricity generation in response to a 50% CO2 reduction target by 2050. Estimates indicate savings in years of life that will be greatest in India, followed by China. If in 2030 changes were made that were consistent with the 2050 reduction targets, gains in India and China would be about 1500 and 500 life-years per million people, respectively. In the EU, the benefits are expected to be more modest, at around 100 life-years per million people in 2030. The modest improvement in Europe expected in a carbon-mitigated future compared with that in a business-as-usual future is mainly the result of the existence of already clean methods of electricity production from fossil fuels. These methods are projected to become cleaner in the business-as-usual setting. This is also the case, but to a lesser extent, in China.

The food system

What about land use change and agriculture? It is well known that the food system is a major contributor to global greenhouse-gas emissions, “from farming and its inputs through to food distribution, consumption, and the disposal of waste.” The major challenge would be to link improvements on agriculture with GHG emissions reductions and redirecting production to the provision of a balanced and healthier human diet.

We (…) used these data to model the potential benefits of reduced consumption of livestock products on the burden of ischaemic heart disease: disease burden would decrease by about 15% in the UK (equivalent to 2850 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] per million population in 1 year) and 16% in São Paulo city (equivalent to 2180 DALYs per million population in 1 year). Although likely to yield benefits to health, such a strategy will probably encounter cultural, political, and commercial resistance, and face technical challenges. Coordinated intersectoral action is needed across agricultural, nutritional, public health, and climate change communities worldwide to provide affordable, healthy, low-emission diets for all societies. (…)

Inadequate policies, social inequality and a distorted structure of market incentives and disincentives lead to a pattern of food production and consumption that is unfit to human health. Correcting these factors would lead to both a cleaner food production system and greater supply of a more balanced diet.

[A] strategy to reduce production and consumption of foods from animal sources would help to prevent dangerous climate change from greenhouse-gas emissions and benefit the health of adults in countries consuming high amounts of animal products. (…) An important challenge in public health is to balance the need for adequate population intake of animal-source protein and essential nutrients with reduced consumption of saturated fat. Almost a billion people have protein-energy undernutrition, most of whom are also undernourished in micronutrients, especially iron and zinc. Adequate protein, energy, iron, and zinc can be obtained from a plant-based diet. However, the consumption of a small amount of animal-source foods per day in low-consumption populations could help to alleviate the burden of undernutrition. At present, agricultural production is mismatched with the provision of a diet that is balanced in terms of foods from plant and animal sources. Globally, production per head of energy, fats, proteins, and micronutrients has increased and is sufficient to meet global population needs, but the benefits have not been distributed evenly across countries and regions. A wide range of factors affect the supply and demand for animal-source foods; some policy levers offer potential approaches to change consumption patterns in populations.

Pollution

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants emitted from fuel combustion account directly or indirectly for a large proportion of present global warming as well as for most of the direct damage to human health from energy use worldwide.

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants include gases such as the directly health-damaging carbon monoxide and non-methane volatile organic compounds, and others responsible for ozone creation in the lower atmosphere such as methane. Aerosols of short-lived greenhouse pollutants include sulphate, organic carbon, and black carbon particles, which have differing climate implications: the first two cooling, but the third strongly warming.

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants need to be controlled in addition to regulating carbon dioxide emissions because they collectively create a substantial proportion of all human-contributed global warming and directly damage health. Importantly, control of some short-lived greenhouse pollutants may lead to quick reductions in global warming.

An agenda for human advancement

This collection of papers together with the full report offer us a wealth of reasons to see cuts of carbon emissions as a developmental issue and not as a limiting factor to human well-being.

The finding of generally positive health effects of mitigation shows that strategies promoting a low greenhouse-gas emission economy can also have potential to improve public health. It also provides a rationale to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that is not wholly confined to the achievement of climate change mitigation. Some commentators suggest that many features of climate change are now irreversible and that the most important objective is to try to adapt to it and other global environmental threats. However, the case for mitigation is greatly strengthened if it has direct collateral benefits in addition to restriction of climate change.

Mitigation strategies can be designed as development strategies. Investment in emissions reduction can also result in less expending in health and nutrition. Changing energy and transportation strategies should not be viewed as limits to growth, but rather as a contribution to better urban living, lower overall costs, and new opportunities for investment and employment.

If societies change their energy systems in ways that improve outdoor and indoor air quality, change their methods of transport in ways that encourage physical activity and social contact, and modify intensive food production practices and consumer choices in ways that reduce dietary risks to health, then many positive health consequences will result. Despite uncertainties about the magnitude and timescale, health co-benefits from mitigation can be anticipated. Therefore, commitment to mitigation actions producing many such benefits becomes very appealing, especially if (as is likely) the health gains entail substantial national cost savings as an offset to the costs of the mitigation actions. The strategic significance of this issue is potentially great. If the health co-benefits from mitigation activities in lower-income countries were sufficiently large, it would strengthen the rationale for achieving convergence of mitigation schedules between low-income and high-income countries.

These studies add strength to an argument I use to guide most of my writings on global warming: the climate change agenda is an agenda for real human progress. It should be, from now on, the guiding principle of every public and private policy-making agenda.

The Royal Geographic Society has hosted , last September, a panel discussion on “The World in 2050”, with scientific experts from the 21st Century School.

The event was a joint endeavor of the James Martin 21^st Century School and Intelligence². Panelists were Ian Goldin, director of the the 21st Century School at the University of Oxford; Malcolm MacCulloch, director of the School’s Institute for Carbon and Energy Reduction in Transport; Sara Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing; and Julian Savulescu, director of the School’s Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences.

In many places, academic institutions, corporations, NGOs, think tanks, numerous people study, research, and discuss future trends. In daily social life, however, in the media in general, and in the governments of almost all countries, the long-term, envisioning the future, is a lateral, peripheral section of the agenda. Is is not a priority. We’re tied to the short-term, to the joys and tribulations of our daily life; to the immediate  policy agenda. However, disregarding the future, failing to look ahead and to focus the uncertainties and possibilities beyond the horizon of our daily obligations is riskier than one can imagine. To be the able to take our destiny in our hands, we’ve got to have a vision for the future, a long view.

Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the Long Now Foundation, reminds us in his book “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, that

“time is asymmetrical to us. We can see the past but not influence it. We can influence the future, but we cannot see it. Both the invisibility and potential malleability of the future draw us to lean into it, alert to threat or opportunity, empowered by the blankness of its page (if the future is not determined, we might do anything).”

He also teaches us that “rigorous long-view thinking makes responsibility taking inevitable because it responds to the slower, deeper feedback loops of the whole society and the natural world.” Ultimately, it is clear that “in the long run, saving yourself means saving the whole world.”

Perhaps the best introduction to this panel is the concluding remark by Ian Goldin, on his presentation:

“It is in our power to eradicate poverty by 2050; it is in our power to eradicate disease by 2050; but it is also in our power to destroy ourselves by 2050.”

I hope this is justification enough to persuade those who visit this page to watch the video.

Sergio Abranches

Dropping or lowering the 2050 targets will make it easier to seal a deal in Copenhagen. That much is clear. Maybe a mid-term deal is the only viable way, only 47 days before the COP-15 opens in Denmark. Political realism would support the view that a good partial deal is better than a loose global longterm deal. Yet, the global warming phenomenon has a very different, unique nature to be directly compared to other issues to which political realism was successfully applied. We are dealing with two demanding deadlines: the 47-day Copenhagen deadline, and the one – unpredictable – posed by the risk of tipping points accelerating global warming to a point of no return. It is clear that we’re already late: some warming and the ensuing climate change are already unavoidable. We are also short on adaptation measures. Perhaps the only hope for Earth would be an ambitious long-term deal, with binding targets to major emerging powers as well. A solution that does not seem to be on the horizon of our possibilities.

Yvo de Boer, top UN Climate Change official, said he doesn’t believe a “fully fledged new international treaty under the [UN Framework] Convention [on Climate Change]” is going to happen in Copenhagen next December, reports Fiona Harvey, for the Financial Times. He thinks governments could agree on the structure of a deal, the technical details of which would be filled in later. In other words, no new Protocol to replace the anemic Kyoto Protocol.

That’s what US chief negotiator Todd Stern hinted at in his public statement during the MEF meeting, in London. “Our view at the G8 in July was that there ought to be both a developed country number and a worldwide number – 80 per cent for developed countries, 50 per cent worldwide. We still think that,” he said, adding he didn’t know “whether that is going to be included or not.”

Ed Miliband, UK’s Energy and Climate Change secretary, sees the climate deal in Copenhagen “hanging in the balance”. He thinks “there is a universal view that we need to get an agreement, but not at any price. It is not a done deal and remains in the balance in my view.”

In spite of host prime-minister Gordon Brown’s strong alert at the opening of MEF, and although some still thinking an agreement looks more “do-able” after the London talks, as Ed Miliband has argued, we seem to be heading to Yvo de Boer’s scenario. A general charter of principles, perhaps with some binding intermediate targets clearly set, and a new roadmap for the 2010 and 2011 climate summits to agree on the technical details and give some flesh and bone to this charter. The deadlock persists: we are still in “an ‘I will if you will’ situation,” as Ed Miliband has defined it at the end of the day.

Sergio Abranches

Now this movement towards sustainable corporate behavior is becoming political. It is spreading all over the US and has already reached Washington. One could only hope it got there on time to push a Senate vote on the Kerry-Boxer bill before December.

A realignment of business interests regarding climate change issues is provoking shifting alliances in Washington, the growth of pro-climate change lobbying, and defections of important corporations from traditional – and conservative – trade organizations. It is likely also to affect some of GOP’s traditional corporate ties.

Two good stories report these shifting alignments due to divergence over cutting GHG emissions. WSJ’s Political Alliances Shift in Fight Over Climate Bill, and NYT’s Divisions in U.S. Over Emissions. Both recommended reading.

Sérgio Abranches

What we take from Earth and what we deposit on the planet environment has been called our footprint. And we know that our footprint has ceased to be sustainable a long time ago.

We have created several imbalances, and they have become increasingly more acute, through an intricate feedback system. Now, Gaia is taking its revenge, James Lovelock has said. Its air is clogging us, water is becoming scarce, soil eroded, dust choking large populations in Asia and Africa, and covering whole villages. And the planet is warming faster than ever.

We know all that. Some don’t want to believe it. Some don’t care. The majority of us are deeply concerned.

A fresh view of this process has just been forwarded by a group of outstanding scientists, including Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, plus Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Will Steffen, Katherine Richardson, Jonathan Foley, and the lead author of the paper, Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

This new approach, the Journal Nature tells us on a splendid feature article, has been proposed to define preconditions for human development. “Crossing certain biophysical thresholds could have disastrous consequences for humanity”, Nature explains. The authors concluded that “three of nine interlinked [identified and quantified] planetary boundaries have already been overstepped.”

How did they come to their conclusion? An article from the Stockholm Resilience Center, “Tipping towards the unknown”, tells us how. “The scientists first identified the Earth System processes and potential biophysical thresholds, which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change for humanity”. The thresholds allowed them to identify the “boundaries” that should be respected in order to reduce the risk of crossing them.

Nine planetary boundaries were identified, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution.

The authors “estimate that humanity has already transgressed three planetary boundaries: for climate change, biodiversity loss and changes to the global nitrogen cycle.” Moreover, “planetary boundaries are interdependent, because transgressing one may both shift the position of, or result in transgressing, other boundaries.” The study contends that “social impacts of transgressing boundaries will be a function of the social-ecological resilience of the affected societies.”

As they say, in the summary of the research paper, “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity”, the “concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, towards the estimation of the safe space for human development.” These planetary boundaries define, the ‘planetary playing field’ for humanity, “if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.”

The authors conclude saying that: “There is little doubt, that the complexities of interconnected slow and fast processes and feedbacks in the Earth System provide humanity with a challenging paradox. On the one hand these dynamics underpin the resilience that enables planet Earth to stay within a state conducive to human development. On the other hand they lull us into a false sense of security, because incremental change can lead to the unexpected crossing of thresholds that drive the Earth System (…) abruptly into states deleterious or even catastrophic to human well-being. The concept of planetary boundaries provides a framework for humanity to operate within this paradox.”

Extraordinary innovative, ground-breaking study. A recommended read.

Sergio Abranches

President Barack Obama was the first head of state to speak, and it was his first UN speech. He made a forceful motivational speech, addressing no specifics, and making no binding commitments. He also did not advance guidelines for breaking the deadlock.

Chinese President, Hu Jintao, made a rare appearance at a UN Summit, and his speech, although falling short of expectations, signaled some progress on China’s position.

But, frankly, one shouldn’t expect too much from an opening public speech at a UN summit. Such occasions serve motivational, advertising, and political objectives, on that order.

President Obama stayed at the motivational goals most of the time. He did advertise a few initiatives his Administration has already taken, and sent a discrete message to Congress. He spoke to the global audience as well as to his audience at home. It was an opening political, and diplomatic speech, not a closing statement.

President Hu Jintao’s intention was to signal China’s propensities towards sealing a meaningful deal in Copenhagen.

He sketched China’s new plan to curb carbon emissions that includes “national targets”, and announced measures to cut emissions per unit of GDP “by a notable margin by 2020, from the 2005 level”. He failed to give specific figures regarding both national targets and carbon intensity reductions. He said that China would substantially increase its forest cover, invest in climate-friendly technologies and renewable energy sources. He also set some limits: “We need to combine our efforts to combat climate change with efforts at growth in developing nations.”

At the diplomatic level, Hu’s appearance should not be underestimated. It was a gesture that marks the day when climate change has become a top issue on the Chinese agenda, both at the domestic and diplomatic levels.

Neither President Obama’s presence should be underplayed. One of the most significant moments of this summit will be when he and Hu Jintao get together to discuss a common ground for their action on the next steps of the climate negotiation.

Another first was the speech of the new Japanese Prime-minister, Yukio Hatoyama. He showed a clear intention of leading Japan towards a more prominent role in global politics. He stated the goal of reducing his country’s emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020. He also said the developed countries should lead the endeavor to tackle the climate change challenge.

President Sarkozy proposed a new summit, in November, before Copenhagen, as one more opportunity to work out impasses, and gradually break the deadlock. If accepted, the second half of this year will be entirely taken by climate change diplomacy, another sign that the issue is gaining momentum. From New York, the most relevant players will move to Pittsburgh to discuss the next steps of economic recovery, and climate change. In November, they could meet again, if Sarkozy’s suggestion is accepted. And get together one last time, in Copenhagen, the following December, as Prime-minister Gordon Brown has  already proposed, to work out the last knots and seal the deal.

This is how diplomatic deadlocks are resolved. By occupying center stage on the agenda of the great powers, and major stakeholders, both developed and emerging, and by engaging their leaders on a continuing, tirelessly negotiation.

Realistically speaking, I’d say that the New York Climate Summit will not be a breakthrough. But it will probably lead to some progress in the understanding of major players’ common objective, distinct interests, and political propensities. It will also help to set the limits of each, and clarify how different contributions can add up to a deal strictly within the required scientific parameters.

Nobody with an understanding of the limits and possibilities of real politics has really considered the possibility of a deal with equal obligations from all. There will be an inevitable unequal sharing of the global burden.

The deal will have to make room for these differentiated responsibilities, while keeping the bar at the level determined by the scientific parameters for emissions reductions. Sharing the burden in different proportions doesn’t mean doing less than the maximum within each country’s capacity, nor shifting the burden to others.

Commitments and burden-sharing won’t be frozen in time. The deal should provide mechanisms to redefine responsibilities and targets as the domestic and global circumstances evolve, and taking into account actual achievements at pre-defined time intervals.