Climate change update

To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air. Two professors argue that governments should take modest steps and prevent other greenhouse gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons and methane before attempting a global strategy at curbing carbon dioxide emissions:

The impasse that was evident in Copenhagen last year and is likely to reappear in Cancún arises in part from the inability of China, India, Europe and the United States to show that they are adopting practical measures to slow climate change. Agreeing on a shared strategy to curtail short-lived pollutants would be a good way for all of them to start.

Credibility is especially important for the United States. It can already offer the world much of the technology and regulatory expertise that will be needed to reduce short-lived pollutants, particularly ozone and soot. Some American efforts are under way to share these technologies, including a program to help provide better cookstoves for people in developing countries. By making such programs more visible and demonstrating that they deliver tangible results, and by establishing a realistic plan for cutting its own emissions at home, the United States could show that it is serious about addressing climate change.

For too long, overly ambitious global climate talks have focused on the aspects of global warming that are hardest to solve. A few more modest steps, with quick and measurable effects, are a better way to proceed.

On Global Warming, Start Small. Bruce Usher argues that a bottom-up strategy (rather than a top-down global approach) has a much better chance of succeeding in preventing climate change in the next few decades:

But there is an alternative to this top-down approach to climate change: a bottom-up strategy that stands a much better chance of working. Rather than count on international negotiations to produce an effective strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the United States should build upon the innovative clean-energy developments already under way in individual states. (Disclosure: I invest in clean energy in America and abroad.)

Texas alone produces more electricity through wind power than all but five countries. In California and Arizona, solar energy will soon provide electricity for three million homes. Geothermal energy plants are being built in Nevada. Michigan is making electric cars. And these are only the leaders. Iowa, Oregon and Illinois are also building wind power generators; New Jersey and Florida are investing in solar, and Maine in biomass.

These state-level efforts are already having national impact. Last year, renewable energy accounted for more than half of all the new power generation plants nationwide. Another 40 percent was from natural gas, which emits only half as much carbon dioxide as coal.

An Almanac of Extreme Weather. A farmer from Minnesota argues that he is experiencing the effects of climate change:

THE news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past four years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America’s grain belt. For some time computer models of climate change have been predicting just these kinds of weather patterns, but seeing them unfold on our farm has been harrowing nonetheless.

My family and I produce vegetables, hay and grain on 250 acres in one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. While our farm is not large by modern standards, its roots are deep in this region; my great-grandfather homesteaded about 80 miles from here in the late 1800s.

He passed on a keen sensitivity to climate. His memoirs, self-published in the wake of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, describe tornadoes, droughts and other extreme weather. But even he would be surprised by the erratic weather we have experienced in the last decade.

Indonesia’s Billion-Dollar Forest Deal Is at Risk:

The archipelago nation has been a key testing ground of U.N.-backed efforts to use international funding to pay developing countries to curb forest destruction, which accounts for nearly 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The approach, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, is widely seen as one the rare global environmental successes since the collapse of talks in Copenhagen last year.

But as a fresh round of climate negotiations begins in the Mexican resort of Cancún on Monday, some environmentalists say that Indonesia’s experiment with forest conservation is also under threat.

A report by Greenpeace last week accused Indonesian government ministries of planning for massive land clearance, despite signing a $1 billion REDD agreement with Norway earlier this year. The agreement, which includes a two-year moratorium on clearing natural forests and carbon-rich peatlands, is aimed at helping Indonesia, which by some counts is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, reach a target of cutting emissions by at least 26 percent by 2020.