Climate-related risks and greening the supply-chain are common features of most presentations about sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Sometimes they are presented as “trends” or future threats. But they are not something that will happen in the future. They are already part of the daily affairs of most companies. And they are inseparable from each other.

Climate-related risks are a matter of present concern to every major insurance company (here, here and here) and to an increasing number of institutional investors. Green procurement is a key competitive factor today (here). Not a trend for tomorrow. Companies are looking deep into their supply chains not because of their view of the future, but because of present dangers to their business. They know they have to reduce their carbon footprint. WallMart Nike and Timberland banned beef and leather produced in the Amazon because of present consumers reaction to evidence that their procurement behavior was contributing to deforestation. Every company will have to account for GHG emissions caused by their demand for products and services as well as for the impact of what they sell on consumers’ carbon footprint. The time of the company that is clean and green indoors, but pays no attention to what it buys and to what happens to the goods it sells is over.

Going green is not easy. This is now a stock phrase. But, no matter whether easy or hard, going green has become a necessary and urgent step to every industry. To some industries, how to go green has a straightforward answer. It may be hard, but the knowledge base already exists. It will require leadership from the top; getting the right response from the corporate citizenry; better integration between procurement and finance; finding qualified people to lead changes; develop capabilities along the supply-chain.

Some industries still find greening their services a difficult and elusive task (here). On a recent roundtable at Cornell’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration, participants found that green standards for the industry are unclear and consumer’s views inconsistent. Hotels are reluctant to implement sustainable systems although they recognize the need to green their operations. It is a bit surprising to read that. From the standpoint of hotels’ supply-chains there are plenty of visible points where greening is possible and straightforward.

To anyone having a long view on what is happening now and of probable future trends, climate change-related risks are no longer a matter of doubt or probabilities. Probabilities are so high, that one can’t simply design a plausible “no climate change scenario”.  The long view tells us that the economy is already reshaping itself responding both to structural crises and risk-driven change. Greening the supply-chain is part of the present drivers of competition and innovative behavior. It is no longer a feature of future scenarios. Future scenarios are about things that go beyond a green supply-chain.

The ongoing process of corporate greening is at its beginning, but it is already visible. It is very likely one of the paramount factors that may lead to a new long-cycle of investment and economic growth, within less than a decade. Just think for a moment about the enormous dynamic push of leading companies at the top of the productive and commercial sectors greening their supply-chain. This movement forces all suppliers of major companies to also green their own supply-chains, if they want to stay in the economy’s major clusters. And their suppliers will have to follow suit for the same reason, and so on. The demand for green or low-carbon supplies where there are none, becomes an irresistible incentive to innovative startups. This movement goes from the global economic clusters, to the national ones, and to the sub-national ones.

There are already systemic movements visible in the global economy. They point to emerging processes and behaviors that will effectively reshape the corporate environment. Present production and consumption patterns that still appear to be dominant will inexorably be replaced. We are already riding the giant waves of a scientific, technological and behavioral revolution in every field of human activity. Overlooking these movements is accepting a present danger, not disregarding a possible future threat.

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.

My computer screen showed climate militants marching and facing police blockades over the streets of Copenhagen and in the neighborhood of Bella Center. On the TV screens spread all over the crowded Media Center journalists could watch a plenary session of COP15, where government delegates discussed the most pressing global threat of the 21^st Century.

I pushed my chair back and looked at the numerous long tables, each seating around 40 journalists of all parts of the world, of all possible kinds of media. One glimpse revealed it all: government delegates debating their differences, the NGOs marching, peacefully trying to make their way into the negotiations, and the media watching, reporting, commenting.

And, yes, tweeting. About 7 out of 10 computers had Twitter opened on a window. With the right hashtag one could follow what journalists were reporting on Twitter in their languages. Several would tweet in their native languages and in English or French.

This was only one of several dramatic days. While in the plenary sessions delegates defended principled points, in the negotiation rooms intense, tense, and extensive negotiations were in progress. Or, sometimes, in regress. Militants marched protesting for access to the Conference and demanding that negotiators take meaningful action to respond to climate challenges.

Journalists jumped from one press conference to another; looked for exclusive info or insight talking to delegates.

This momentary view of the three international critical players of current climate politics simultaneously in action, like in a movie, made me start taking notes in a frenzy. They were gathered around the same agenda, but to play very distinct and relevant roles: governments, NGOs and the Press. They address climate issues from very different angles. Differences are central not only among these three sets of players, but also within each one. Individuals in each think in different languages. Groupings within and among them reflect diverse social, economic and political backgrounds. They display widely varied degrees of concern, knowledge and engagement regarding climate change.

To a professional political analyst and a journalist this was a very rich situation, a brain-storming event.

Arriving early in the morning every day at the Bella Center, I would immediately start to tweet many ideas about what was happening. Over the twelve days I was there, I posted several pieces to my blogs Ecopolitica and Ecopolity. I also made daily commentaries for the Brazilian radio network CBN. And I took notes all the time, to later help me think and write about the Copenhagen meeting, its aftermath and what’s to be done.

Back home, after some rest, I started reading my notes and browsing some books in order to design an analytical framework to organize my observations. But those intense 12 days of COP15 kept bringing back fragments of memory, snapshots of meaningful moments.

There was a sharp and annoying contrast between the aloofness of my academic readings and the liveliness of these fragments. The first book I picked was about the new transnational activism. For more than 40 pages all I could read was an endless conceptual argument. Academic minutiae seemed to obliterate a sense of relevance. I can’t see how it really matters whether an NGO such as Greenpeace should be called an NGO or something else; whether it is an international, transnational or global organization.

Form has replaced meaning. Formality is mistaken by precision. To be more formal doesn’t mean to be more accurate.

I am too fond of books to abandon reading them, though. I browsed, selected, dropped the useless, and kept reading what seemed relevant to me.

Like Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Browsing it, I stopped at the paragraph below, on chapter 7, “Cosmopolitan Contamination: Global Villages”.

People who complain about the homogeneity produced by globalization often fail to notice that globalization is, equally, a threat to homogeneity. (…) (H)omogeneity, though, is the local kind. (…) In the era of globalization – in Asante as in New Jersey – people make pockets of homogeneity. (…) And whatever loss of difference there has been, they are constantly inventing new forms of difference: new hairstyles, new slang, even, from times to times, new religions. No one could say that the world’s villages are  – or are about to become – anything like the same.

To anyone who spent about 16 hours a day in the Bella Center, for 12 days, as an “embedded journalist”, covering every aspect of the Climate Summit and interacting with all the different tribes that crowded the conference site, Appiah’s contention is crystal clear and couldn’t be more accurate.

It describes and explains the contradictions of globalization, the encounters, exchanges and diversity that it entails. The Bella Center had become a “global site” gathering very different tribes, some with antagonistic interests, to deal with a major global issue.

We could see an NGO militant on a crash-demonstration in the passageways of Bella Center, marching over the streets of Copenhagen, debating technical issues with delegates and lobbyists, or passing the results of intelligence work to journalists.

This role differentiation develops while these organizations grow, become stronger, wealthier, and more influential. They diversify their political roles as they get more expertise, more organizational capabilities and enlist people with different skills, aptitudes and backgrounds. Through this process, these new actors of global politics are creating a global civil society even before the first pieces of what will become a system for global governance are put in place. Formal international politics, having governments as the main actors, is far behind, particularly as far as global climate politics is concerned. And we saw plenty of evidence supporting this hypothesis there.

Although the different tribes interacting at the Bella Center theater had the same agenda, it was their different approaches to this common agenda that mattered most. Differences were paramount. They allowed critical actors to play very different roles: as militants, negotiators, reporters, analysts, commentators, doing intelligence or sharing information. Differences were a source of diversity as well as a fuel to contentious politics. Diverse actors expressed distinctive perceptions of climate change as a threat, an opportunity, a hindrance or a hoax.

At the end, diverging interests were stronger than commonalities and the deal was watered down. This end to the summit has by no means diminished its historic dimension. Formal politics has stayed behind, but made a few steps forward. Civil society got out of there stronger and more enlightened about what to do next.

My own perception is that interests, conflicts, and different views became more visible and recognizable in Copenhagen. Like when the small and threatened Tuvalu confronted the giant and threatened China.

I can’t say whether other global meetings on other issues have gained the same political magnitude as COP15 did. What I know is that the Copenhagen Summit was unprecedented in all counts, when compared to the other COPs: the number of NGOs, the size of national delegations, the scale of media presence and coverage, or the number of chiefs of states and governments present to the last 2 of the 12 days of the Conference. This was beyond any doubt the larger and more cosmopolitan climate meeting ever.

It was, by far, the major display of strength, technical expertise and political capability by the global environmental movement in recent history. Large and small NGOs became critical actors in the negotiations. They had expert people doing serious policy advocacy. They fiercely confronted lobbyists and greenwashers. They aptly transmitted to the media technical information and intelligence on what was being negotiated within closed doors.

As far as climate meetings go it was the first time ever that the components of a future cosmopolity were assembled in full. What we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the first full scale emergence of a cosmopolitics that will very likely become a dominant feature of 21^st Century global life.

Cosmopolitanism was clearly visible as the main element of climate politics at the Bella Center meeting. One could see Timothy Brennan’s “polychromatic culture” live at the atrium, passageways and rooms of the Center. Brennan is right when he says this multiverse culture is “a new singularity born out of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents.” The quote is from the essay “Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism”, published in Daniele Archibugi (editor) – Debating Cosmopolitics.

And it was possible to discern the seeds of cosmopolitanism as global governance in the dramatic exchange of visions, demands, interests and principles. The strength of global civil society, in situ and all over the world directly connected with their counterparts in Copenhagen, is clearly building momentum for the emergence of this sort of cosmopolitanism.

The unprecedented presence of world media and the width of media coverage, will certainly help to broaden the scope of cosmopolitan politics.

Finally, the unprecedented attendance of more than 100 heads of states and governments, among them the leaders of the major mature and emerging powers has contributed to give this first experiment of climate cosmopolitics strong political significance.

The citizenship of this future system of global governance is emerging before any new element of effective global governance is in place. Building such a governance regime will be a daunting endeavor. Its complexity should not be underestimated. It is not about building a world state, or a global government. There is too much risk for freedom and human rights in such a notion. It is about global governance without global government. It requires a considerable amount of institutional innovation and experimentation.

Ben Block from the World Watch Institute, pointed correctly that despite disappointment, the Climate Summit marks a high point for the activist movement. This part of global civil society has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

The two-week U.N. conference may have ended in disappointment for most climate activists, who travelled from nearly every continent, but the gathering marked a historic high point for a movement that has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

An estimated 45,000 people attended the climate negotiations. This included greater participation from government delegations, business groups, and academics, in addition to larger turnout from campaigners. The “youth” delegation, representatives of the below-30 age group, increased its presence at forums that were once attended only by bureaucrats and scientists. Youth organizers said that their volunteers registered some 1,000 attendants, twice the participation compared to a year ago.

The activist crowds were relentless: they raised their voices during negotiation sessions, press briefings, and lunch breaks; they scattered in the corners of conference rooms and gathered in mobs to block passageways; and they screamed loudly for adaptation aid, among other demands. Activists also made subtle suggestions about the ineffectiveness of carbon offsets, for example by using tricks to show airplanes vanishing magically in the same way that carbon offsets make emissions “disappear,” they said.

Negotiation leaders acknowledged that the demonstrations captured their attention.

This history in the making gives full support and deep meaning to Jonathan Watts’s opinion that

Copenhagen will shape our lives for years to come.

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.

Sergio Abranches

The major contribution to this deviation from a BAU trajectory of GHG emissions will come from reduction of deforestation and degradation, around 25 percentage points. The remaining will come mainly from agriculture, and a ban on the use of charcoal from native forest logging by pig iron mills. Contributions from the manufacturing and transport sectors will be very modest.

Real emissions reductions will depend on the baseline adopted and on the assumptions used to project the future trajectory of emissions. Part of the conflict between the so-called “developmentalists” led by Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef and the “environmentalists” with Environment minister Carlos Minc at the front was over the rate of future growth used for the estimates.

Original projections from the Secretary for Climate Change of the Environment Ministry used a yearly 4 percent average GDP growth as reference, already higher than the average economic growth of the last decade. The projections were then rerun using 5 percent and 6 percent growth averages, that seem highly unlikely to obtain in the near future. Higher growth figures tend to overestimate both the physical values and the pace of increase of emissions associated to the percentages.

Another important issue the government has yet to clear regards the emissions data used in the projections. The only official figures publicly available for emissions date from 1994. An explanation is still due for how government experts have calculated the future trajectory of emissions, without a series of actual emissions for the last 14 years.

Structural change since currency stabilization, commercial opening, and privatization have totally reconfigured the Brazilian industrial, agricultural and transport sectors. The auto industry has more than doubled output from 1994 to 2008. Commodity exports have increased dramatically. The manufacturing, transport, agribusiness, and energy industries are totally different today compared to their condition in 1994. All this structural change has deeply affected the distribution of GHG emissions among the different areas of activity.

The current coefficients for all sectors ought to be very different from those of 1994. Deforestation, for instance, averaged 20,700 sq. km for the period 1994-1996. The average for the last 3 years came down to 14,800 sq. km. The government has used an average of 19,500 sq. km to set the target of 80% reduction to 2020. This means that to meet the target, actual decline in logging will have to be far less steeply than if the government chose more recent figures as a baseline. This lower figure will, however, also contribute to lower the five-year average for the next period. The target is defined by periods using a five-year moving average.

This week the government has announced the smallest estimate for annual deforestation since measurement began: 7,000 sq. km. If this number is confirmed, and can be sustained after recession is gone, it means that half the target set for 2020 would have already been met, due to the high starting point chosen to define the goal.

Contribution of deforestation to GHG emissions was much higher in 1994, than it is today. The contribution of the transport and energy industries has increased significantly. Over the last 8 years most of the new electricity added to the Brazilian grid came from fossil fuel fired power plants.

How seriously this target will be taken by the government remains to be seen. It could well be no more than an act of electoral marketing. One of the reasons to suspect that much is that the center stage was occupied by president Lula’s appointee to run for president next year, Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef. She was clearly not at easy defending the same environmental issues she has opposed during all her tenure at the government.

To gain credibility the government has to publish, the sooner the better, the model and the data base used to project future emissions, the scenario assumptions, and the coefficients for the contribution of each sector to the reduction of emissions. Transparency and independent review of the data and projections used to set these goals will be a necessary condition for a credible commitment.

Depending on the data used for the projections, the announced policy could represent a reduction between 10% and 20% of 2005 emissions.

The final GHG emissions cut resulting from the policy notwithstanding, the fact remains it is a major political shift. After years denying any responsibility to mitigation and rejecting the idea of committing to a quantified goal, the government has finally decided to present a quantifiable and verifiable mitigation action at COP15.

Once the diplomats officially announce the target, Brazil will become accountable for it. The country will have crossed a point of no return. Whether it is legally binding or not is just a formality. Politically it will make the government accountable.

From this point onwards it will be a matter of refining and enlarging the country’s commitment. The next step will likely be for the new administration to take office in 2011 to substitute this deviation from a projection of future emissions with a target based on real emissions for a base-year, probably 2005.

The state of São Paulo, whose governor, José Serra, from PSDB, the main opposition party, is a likely presidential candidate, has already written into law a reduction of 20 percent of 2005 GHG emissions, by 2020. A far more concrete and incontrovertible goal.

This move from Brazil, together with the likely cooperative attitude from China, and depending on what the US will do could well change for the better the prospects of a meaningful political deal in Copenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

Even the most unyielding European leaders now admit that a new comprehensive and legally binding treaty is unlikely to be attained in Copenhagen.

All are now converging towards the  conclusion that the nations should cut a political deal at COP15. A high level political commitment to set the parameters, rules, and the procedural terms for a new treaty to be detailed over 2010.

Is this such a bad outcome as to conclude that Copenhagen is likely to flop? Isn’t there a way to cope with the signs of failure and flip the cards the right side?

The US will be the pivotal actor among the great powers in Copenhagen to this effect. If Obama does get a climate law, he can still make a substantial difference. Even a political agreement would be more credible, deeper and encompassing with a firm commitment from the US, especially if Obama does make it to Copenhagen.

There is an enormous difference between a political agreement negotiated and signed by heads of governments, and one made by diplomats. Diplomats can negotiate treaties. Political commitments are an affair for chief political officers.

I’ve heard questions in Barcelona about whether this political accord would have numbers on it.  I’ve also watched delegates in Barcelona being asked whether what the US Congress is discussing wouldn’t fall too short of what should be demanded from the US. Many doubt Obama could really to take a leading role in the negotiations with such dismal numbers.

They would amount to something between what the House has already approved -17 percent below 2005; 4 percent below 1990;  and what the Kerry-Boxer bill proposed in the Senate – 20 percent below 2005; 6 percent below 1990. Greens and the G77 will probably say it is not enough.

But are these first figures really as important as getting the US in the playing field? I think not.

Obama will be more at easy to discuss financing figures and technological terms, than emissions figures. After years of denial and vetoes at global summits, it is only natural that the politics of a first bill be that hard to tackle. Let us remember that EU’s numbers are relatively new. The first European figures were nothing very impressive either. The US is late. It really is. Blame it on George W. Bush.

More important than the US numbers in themselves would be the breadth of the legislation. If it is able to alter the structure of incentives in the economy, it may trigger investments that will make the R&D pipelines for clean technologies and renewable energy to move faster. It could also stimulate companies to move ahead and go deeper with their sustainability and low carbon strategies, to gain a competitive edge given this new set of incentives.

There is also the demonstration effect to take into account.

It is hard for politicians, under the crossfire of lobbyists, to discuss cost and benefits at an abstract level, or looking at simulations that vary from one set of assumptions to the other. Green lobbyists would show simulations pointing to smaller costs and higher benefits, while the lobbyists for the high-carbon industries would show simulations pointing to high costs and low benefits.

Once the bill becomes law, and companies start acting within the new framework of inducements and constraints it sets, actual costs and real benefits start to show. The correlation of forces among organized interests starts to shift in the direction pointed by the new gains and benefits generated by the new rules of the game. Politicians start to see more clearly what really is feasible, and how to proceed.

This process tends to be fast, depending on how dynamic the economy is. I’d say that in the US it could take from 2 to 5 years. More to the lower end, because of the competitive structure of the economy, the progress already achieved in several states and large cities, and the unique role venture capital has in accelerating R&D in the US.

With the economy already moving in the right direction, these initial targets can be easily overcome and the bar can be set higher at a much lower political cost.

Another important point is that not all the difficulties are related to the US standing. The G77 said in Barcelona it will not support any agreement unless industrialized countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That won’t happen. And that is not a necessary and sufficient condition for a global climate treaty to be effective.

Some of the G77 demands are more workable. One of its spokesperson said that “an equitable agreement can be reached in Copenhagen” provided that the industrialized countries make “a firm commitment of reduction of emissions; a firm commitment on finance; and a firm commitment on technology”. Quite right, and fair enough. To set 40 percent over 1990 as a sine qua non is to deny any possibility of agreement. Several countries, the US first among them, will not arrive at that in the short run.

Obama will not commit to what he cannot get approved by Congress. Midterm elections are nearing and if he looses the majority, or it narrows downs, it will become even harder to deal with Congress. He is only too realistic to promise only what he can agree with Congress.

The US needs time for experimentation with the first Federal climate change bill ever, before it moves ahead. This is not a dreamworld, it is the real world we’ve got to cope with.

The conditions spelled out by G77 in Barcelona also included that the agreement “remain within Kyoto.” This is a good example of mixing opportunism and ideology.

Why Kyoto? Because it has the Annex-1 and nothing else. Such a demand generates immediate polarization. Representatives from Japan and the EU immediately answered they do not see why “non-Annex-I” countries should not commit to binding emissions cut themselves. Kyoto is not a relevant issue any longer.

The statements and demands of the G77 mix some fair points (criticisms of the uncertainty about industrialized countries’ commitments) to opportunism and ideological prose in unequal proportions.

The real fact is that it is too heterogeneous to legitimately speak with only one voice for all its members. First of all they are 130 members. Secondly, countries like China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Qatar and Bahrain – to name a few – should admit they do not belong together with Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, and so many other poorer nations. Even more so when discussing high carbon emissions. They are using the poor opportunistically, as shields to elude their own responsibilities.

They belong to an “Annex-II” with binding though differentiated commitments. They would still be eligible to financial and technological assistance, but at different conditions when compared to the poor countries.

The poor developing world is entitled to a greater financial assistance for adaptation, and all help in developing low-carbon development plans.

Emerging powers should be asked to present mid and long-term plans to cut emissions and build a low carbon economy. To do that they would be entitled to special financing mechanisms for mitigation and technological partnerships to develop low-carbon alternatives.

Another major obstacle to a new ambitious treaty lies on the the rules of the Climate Convention. They turn every player – rich or poor, relevant emitter or not, oil producing or oil consuming, large or small – into a veto player: one who is decisive to whether or not a decision will be made. All have the same power, because decisions are by unanimity.

This is only apparently a fair rule. In fact it treats very unequal actors very equally, feeding opportunism, and leading to a deadlocked situation that inevitably gives room only to muddling through, incremental policies as outcomes. It leads to a typical opportunistic situation in which a player maneuvers to shift the burden of deadlock to other players and to appear as the most righteous among the players.

Copenhagen is not flopping. It couldn’t deliver what it has been expected to deliver. But Copenhagen could successfully cope with the major obstacles preventing us to make real progress. Coping the right way with divergence and asynchronous national situations among the industrialized and the emerging powers we could still make progress towards the scientific requirements to prevent the worst case scenarios. Coping might be the only way to scape the BAU syndrome: the business as usual straightjacket were in.

First, it is in our powers to converge toward short and mid term objectives, and on accelerating rates dynamically adjusting the outcomes to the scientific requirements.

Second, we can try to solve once for all the financial hurdle that keeps several developing countries from playing the cooperative game. We have the expertise, and the resources to do it.

Third, we could do the same thing with the difficulties to get a firm technological commitment. The US technological partnerships with China and India are a good starting point that could lead us into a general model for technological cooperation in critical areas for mitigation of carbon emissions.

Fourth, countries need to be better, and positively, discriminated. The industrialized countries are correctly under one set of commitments proportional to their historical contribution, and their present level of nominal and per capita emissions.

Large emerging powers should agree to a different set of commitments proportional to their present nominal and per capita emissions and the trajectory of their emissions under BAU for the next decade.

Poor countries should be asked no emission cuts, but assisted in designing low-carbon development programs, to lead them to the new pattern without sacrifice, and at the same time enabling them to eradicate misery along the way.

This could be written into firm a political agreement, with the necessary elements for a new treaty to be negotiated and detailed over 2010. Meanwhile the large emitters – industrialized and emerging – could cut a deal of their own, sometime between next year and 2012, to establish national policies in line with their commitments written into the political agreement.

This is in our power to do, and Copenhagen could yet deliver such an outcome. So let’s hope we can have a COPEnhagen, not a FLOPenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

The decision was postponed to November 14. Meanwhile government officials will try to agree on a set of actions and figures that go beyond the commitment 80% reduction  of deforestation by 2020.

The new commitment would include the agricultural sector (land use change), by means of a program of quality and productivity gains to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The program could include new production practices, increasing non-tillage farming, and direct seeding; changing use of fertilizers; fighting agricultural wildfire, especially on sugar cane plantations; and recovery of spoiled land to move the agricultural frontier without forcing deforestation.

Another action considered almost fully approved is to ban wood from deforestation in the production of charcoal for steel mills. Government officials are labeling it “green steel”. President Lula has recently criticized private giant iron ore mining company Vale, for not producing steel for export. He and his Chief of Staff (also his presidential candidate to be) Dilma Roussef are staunch supporters of steel production.

Some sources have told me there wasn’t too much conflict over goals or over the idea of an enlarged commitment to be taken to Copenhagen. Most of the divergence centered on figures and procedures. The meeting was adjourned so that the different ministries could get together and agree on both.

The major source of opposition to an extended commitment continues to come from the Foreign Ministry. They argue that the Kyoto Protocol does not impose such obligations on Brazil. President Lula’s political advisors, however, are reported to have said that there is great expectation in the Brazilian society about a new attitude in Copenhagen. The president was apparently sensitive to the argument, because he is very fond of his domestic popularity, and also because he is already looking at the 2010 presidential elections.

Brazil would present a new and more ambitious set of NAMAs – Nationally Appropriated Actions, that, although not considered technically as legally binding commitments, are “quantifiable, reportable and verifiable commitments.”

Although there are those who say the government has already decided to commit only with the 80% reduction of deforestation in the Amazon, I heard from more than one official source that the president wishes to go beyond that.

The expectation is that actions and corresponding quantitative figures, consensually supported by all ministers involved, should be finally evaluated with the president next November 14.

President Lula’s last words were “let’s move ahead, but bring me a consensual policy with figures all of you agree with.”

Sergio Abranches

At the opening press conference in Barcelona, UN top climate change official Yvo de Boer said China is now the world leader on actions to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The representative of the European Union has also commended China for its endeavors at reducing carbon emissions. Jonathan Pershing considered China’s attitude towards curbing emissions a “terrific” example.

A recent report by the World Resources Institute says China is getting ready to meet the climate change challenge, and will likely meet its targets to reduce GHG emissions. According to WRI, China’s national program has clear targets and goes beyond mitigation.

Reducing the energy intensity of GDP by 20 percent over the five years 2006 through the end of 2010.

Increasing alternative energy in the fuel mix to 15 percent by 2020.

Increasing forest cover to 20 percent of China’s land mass by the end of 2010.

The national program is more than a mitigation program. It also contains support for climate science and for preparedness and adaptation. China’s scientists have been active in the global effort to understand climate change and are increasingly involved in developing technical approaches to both mitigation and adaptation.

Professor Wei Liang, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies has told me that when president Hu Jintao spoke about the new Chinese National Program in New York, although he did not announce any operational detail, he was talking about real change. China will set the details on the negotiation table, and ask for a commensurate response from industrialized countries, especially the US.

The Brazilian proposal to reduce 80% of deforestation in the Amazon by 2020 has also been praised worldwide by commentators and government officials. But the Brazilian proposal lacks substance on operational grounds, and still has very fragile political foundations. Differently from the Chinese program, it is the result of neither considered government planning, nor a government policy consensus. The government is deeply divided.

Carlos Minc, minister for the Environment, has drawn a more careful proposal to deviate Brazil’s carbon emissions between 30% and 40% from the business as usual trajectory by 2020 – but it yet lacks effective operationalization. This proposal, adequately operationalized and implemented, could amount to a reduction of about 20% of total carbon emissions by 2020. That would require stopping deforestation not only in the Amazon, but also in the rich savannah (Cerrado), the Wetlands (Pantanal), and the Atlantic Rainforest; abandoning all fossil fuel fired thermal power plants the government has approved for the coming years; adopting new regulation for automotive emissions, fuel efficiency, and quality of fuel; among other measures.

President Lula is holding a cabinet meeting, with the ministers that will be in Copenhagen, to decide whether to adopt Minc’s proposal. On a prior meeting, Chief of Staff – and presidential candidate appointee – Dilma Roussef has been very critical, saying the plan would jeopardize Brazil’s growth prospects. Minister of Science and Technology, Sérgio Resende, was also unyielding. Celso Amorim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, opposed the plan, because it would be offering far more than what is expected from Brazil in Copenhagen.

Carlos Minc has called on the Climate Network, a coalition of several Brazilian reputed scientific institutions, to help him draw different growth scenarios for his proposal and to better detail the actions required to meet the target. (See an interview of the president of the Brazilian Agency for Space Research explaining the network – in Portuguese). This new version will be discussed today with president Lula, in the cabinet meeting. There the Brazilian president will choose whether or not Brazil will join China as a pivotal player in Copenhagen, returning to the leading role it had at the Rio ’92 meeting.

Sergio Abranches

We are still far from a global climate agreement. There is consensus about what should be agreed upon for the deal not to fail: 1. binding targets for all industrialized countries on line with scientific requirements; 2. a clear commitment from major developing countries along the same lines; 3. a firm financial commitment by the developed world to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world.

What to do about the Kyoto Protocol has also become an issue to be solved before a Copenhagen deal takes its final shape. Diplomatic discourse sometimes seem to be saying the same thing, when it is really saying different things. There is extensive disagreement between de Boer’s, the EU and the US positions on the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the opening press conference in Barcelona, today, UN top climate official, Yvo de Boer said that only the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is going to end by 2012. He expects a second period to be agreed upon.

This should be a task for the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP5), to take place at the same time COP15 will convene. For this second term to be effective, new commitments will have to be defined, and the US Congress would have to ratify Kyoto.

Asked whether Kyoto should be retained, de Boer argued that we should not “throw away the old shoes before getting a new pair.” However, de Boer asks for far more than an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, as a successful outcome for the Copenhagen Climate Summit. According to his statements, the Copenhagen deal should bring clarity of commitments, by defining clear targets and timetables for emissions reductions by the industrialized countries, and for major developing countries to reduce their emissions. These commitments would also require a managing mechanism, to be spelled out at the deal.

The European Union representative said that the Copenhagen deal should build on the Kyoto Protocol to set a 30% global target for emissions reductions. The deal should also include all sectors of the economy, set binding short-term targets for the industrialized countries, and mid-term targets for major developing countries.

Although there is a convergence between what the EU considers the necessary elements of a successful global climate deal, and Mr. de Boer’s own views, it seems the UN official is far more supportive of maintaining the Kyoto Protocol as a central part of the deal. Yvo de Boer’s new pair of shoes would be a more comprehensive global deal, that should definitely include the major developing countries. But he does think Kyoto should run parallel to this more encompassing treaty, because it has all the mechanisms necessary to enforce commitments by industrialized countries. Referring to the fact that the US was not a party to the Protocol he said that the US did sign the Protocol, although it did not ratify it. He stressed that one should not forget that at the time ratification failed relations between Congress and the US Presidency were under severe stress. Now he sees an intense constructive relationship between Congress and the Executive.

The European Union is not defending the persistence of the Kyoto Protocol along a second phase, but that it be used as a building block upon which a new treaty could be established. The new rules should retain Kyoto’s achievements but definitely go beyond it. That’s why the EU delegates say they “expect a second commitment period [of the Kyoto Protocol] to happen.” But they are clearly also expecting another set of binding commitments to engage emerging economies and to manage risks such as Russia’s oversupply of carbon credits. The best way to manage this risk would be to significantly raise Russia’s own emissions reductions figures. The EU also rejects the fairness argument major emerging countries have been using not to accept biding targets. The EU is far from being a homogeneous entity, they argued, and have countries as poor as Bulgaria, poorer than several major developing countries. Nevertheless they’ll have to comply with he EU targets. Spain is doing greater effort than more developed EU countries to meet its Kyoto targets, and is not saying this additional effort is unfair, one exemplified.

To governments like the Brazilian, rewriting Kyoto to create a new Annex for major developing countries such as Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and Mexico, would amount to abandoning it altogether. The Annex-I, non-Annex-I countries distinction, separating those having binding commitments, from those asked to voluntarily act, at their own pace, to reduce emissions is an issue of principle for diplomacies like the Brazilian.

The US government has been saying that Copenhagen to succeed has to move beyond the Kyoto Protocol. Although the US representative, Jonathan Pershing, did not mention Kyoto, he has stated that the US is committed to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen. One that sets robust absolute reductions targets for industrialized countries, and mid-term significant reductions from major developing countries. They are proposing no commitments from least developed countries. They should only be asked to develop low carbon policies with financial and technical assistance of industrialized nations.

The US delegate to Barcelona has also said that the US is proposing a “text-based” agreement, dealing with operational issues. The US will not present a set of commitments different from what Congress is about to vote, he clarified. “We’re taking the opposite route”, he explained, the US will commit internationally with what will become effective domestic policy, with Congressional approval. It is obvious by now that the US will only take effective steps in Copenhagen if Congress votes the climate bill before. Pershing thinks this is still likely to happen, because the Senate is working faster now than some weeks ago, and an internal agreement is quite near.

Sergio Abranches

On October, 27^th IPCC lead writer, economist Graciela Chichilnisky wrote on The Ecologist, that she reads “the smoke signals [about a Copenhagen deal] positively”.

“My prediction for Copenhagen is that nothing will happen until the 11½ hour. This is because the stakes are so high – involving the use of energy and the economic growth of nations – that no nation wants to move first. At the end, reaching a deal will focus everybody’s attention.”

On her view there will be “an agreement in principle – the details worked out over a year or so and a process agreed for this.”

Earlier, on May, Climate Policy, a blog project of the American Meteorological Society, published a post by economist Scott Barrett, of the  Johns Hopkins University International Policy Program, on “How to Prevent Climate Change Summit from Failure”, where he argues that:

“It is more realistic to aim to negotiate a skeleton agreement in time for Copenhagen, to save face, with the details being finished later—a Copenhagen bis agreement (bis is Latin for “a second time”). Though many people emphasize the need to act quickly, it is much more important that the US develop an institution that will work, a foundation for making incremental improvements over time.”

He contends that “there is a feedback between domestic negotiations in Washington, and the negotiations in Copenhagen and beyond.” Hence his focus on what the US negotiators should do to save the climate summit.

“My recommendation for the US would be to negotiate a skeleton agreement in time for Copenhagen, and follow up with supporting agreements focusing on individual gases, sectors, and R&D efforts. Success in Copenhagen should not be defined by setting goals that lack domestic support and that cannot be enforced but by laying a foundation for making incremental improvements over time.”

A recommendation that does not differ too much from Chichilnisky’s. But this coincidence of views is only partial, if not superficial. On her article, she also defends the maintenance of the Kyoto Protocol. She is co-author of the book Saving Kyoto. Her argument on why we should keep the Kyoto Protocol is a practical one:

“Why keep the Kyoto Protocol? We must bound global emissions and decrease carbon in the atmosphere – no matter what. Most people agree on this. But this is the first thing the Protocol does. So if we scrap the Kyoto Protocol we will have to start in the same place and do more of the same – so at the end we would have a Kyoto Protocol by another name. It took 13 years to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. Why spend precious time reordering the chairs in the Titanic?”

I have written a piece defending the opposite position. That we should abandon the failed Protocol and work towards a new treaty. Graciela Chichilnisky doesn’t think Kyoto is a failed experience.

“The Kyoto treaty was faulted because greenhouse gas emissions rose under its auspices. But the rising emissions of the last 13 years came mostly from nations that never ratified the Protocol. The Protocol is not at fault for those who refused to obey its limits.”

She does, concede, however, that “Kyoto is only a start and requires improvements”. She also comments the difficulties, political, and geopolitical, the US faces to ratify Kyoto, she thinks could be overcome.

Scott Barrett holds a different view on Kyoto. He considers Kyoto be be both a failure and a risk.

“It is easier to define failure. Most climate watchers would define failure to mean lack of an agreement by states to “commit” to limiting their emissions dramatically. I would define failure to mean repeating the mistakes made in Kyoto in 1997. The worst outcome would be for the United States to “commit” to meet quantitative targets and timetables of emission reduction without being sure that these obligations will be approved by Congress.”

He doesn’t even think that targets and timetables are workable pieces of a viable treaty.

“Targets and timetables are also difficult to enforce. We know this because Kyoto established economy-wide targets and timetables and has been ineffective. This is the mistake we must not repeat.”

Scott Barrett prefers a mechanism more similar to the Montreal Protocol, that was far more effective in reducing CFC’s emissions.

“Montreal has several important features that are not shared by Kyoto. First, it not only limits production (like Kyoto); it also limits consumption (defined as production plus imports minus exports). Second, it not only requires industrialized countries to limit their emissions (like Kyoto), it requires developing countries to reduce their emissions, too. Third, while Kyoto’s limits apply for just five years, Montreal’s cuts are permanent. Fourth, under Montreal, industrialized countries finance compliance by developing countries.”

That’s why he prefers a series of ex-post supporting agreements focusing on individual gases, sectors, and R&D efforts.

“An alternative approach is to address these sectors at the global, rather than at the national, level. New technical standards should be negotiated, creating a new “level playing field.” These can then be implemented in the same way as the Montreal restrictions.”

Although disagreeing on what to do about Kyoto, and even on what did Kyoto really mean to the global endeavor towards and effective climate policy, they both point to a practical way to prevent failure in Copenhagen. To negotiate a political framework, leaving the operationalization and technical detailing for subsequent negotiations after Copenhagen. Some countries are already proposing a “Copenhagen 15.5”, an additional Copenhagen meeting in early 2010.

They may both be right about what appears to be possible to achieve in Copenhagen. Their very disagreement shows how far we are from solving what I called the Asimov Paradox. The Paradox tells us that to change a planet full of people either we get as broad a consensus as necessary, involving as many people, or if consensus fails, far more time for change must be allowed.

I’d like to see those who advocate piecemeal, incremental changes to be more explicit about the risks involved. I am not persuaded that we have the time necessary for policies gradual enough to elude the lack of consensus.

Yet, it doesn’t seem likely, even at the 11½ hour, that world leaders will be able to reach consensus on an ambitious, far-reaching new Protocol to replace Kyoto.

If a bold agreement becomes impossible, an even worse outcome would be to let Copenhagen fail outrightly as some are advocating. We can’t afford to begin again from the scratch. That would only consume time we don’t have. If it comes to a solution like Scott Barrett and Graciela Chichilnisky’s we should, at least, work towards two partial outcomes.

First, that the agreement includes some warranty that we’re not deciding only to muddle-through (Kyoto amounted to a muddling-through compromise). It should contain the terms necessary to achieve significant progress on the details on how to reduce GHG emissions and concentration on the atmosphere.

Second, that brainpower and money are invested in assessing the risks we are taking with an incremental solution, and how to best manage those risks.