Cancun Breakthrough? By Kate Shepard, Mother Jones, 12/11/10. “It's not perfect, and it's not binding, but international climate negotiators have struck a deal. The final hours in Cancun were a world of difference from the closing night of the Copenhagen climate talks. Last year's summit closed with drama, confusion, and plenty of unhappy delegations, but the Mexico conference came to an end with multiple standing ovations for the host country and widespread agreement among countries to approve the text of an agreement. It was after 3 a.m. when the parties adopted the two agreements -- one that delays a decision on the future of the Kyoto Protocol and another laying out in more detail a new agreement on climate that includes major emitters like the US and China.

“Of the 194 countries represented in Cancun, 193 backed the text… Much of what is included in the Cancun Agreements [PDF, 32 pp] for a new climate agreement is based on the spare Copenhagen Accord, formalizing it within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change… The greatest success may have been that the Mexican organizers, particularly Espinosa, were able to restore faith in the process… Bolivia objected to the adoption of the agreements, saying it did not require enough of wealthy nations… Most delegations, however, were eager to walk away with something they could declare a win -- including the US and China, a signal that the language in the text bridged differences between the two countries about emissions targets and how they would be tracked by other countries.”

A Distraction from the Decisions that Have to Be Made. By Emily Cross, NYTimes Dot Earth, 12/13/10. “Quite frankly, the ‘point’ of these meetings is to distract. Everything I attended this week, except the last day and evening, was a distraction from the decisions that need to be made to achieve a substantive and legally binding agreement to eliminate the emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases… The so-called Cancun Agreements are not nothing: in other words, the diplomats did agree, and decisions were made. However, the decisions made were not the difficult ones that need to be made, and the agreements made were essentially those of the pre-Copenhagen era. In doing so, the participants, having been so distracted and eager for the climax of ending of COP16, agreed to agree, thus pushing the real work for the next distracted climax of COP17." Emily Cross, a student from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was one of many young people observing climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico.

Cancun Agreement: A Step in the Right Direction. Greenpeace International, 12/11/10. “Governments in Cancun, Mexico, have chosen hope over fear and put the building blocks back in place for a global deal to combat climate change. For the first time in years, governments put aside some major differences and compromised to reach a climate agreement. However, with large compromise also comes disappointment. The UN climate conference in Cancun may have saved the multilateral process after last year's abject failure in Copenhagen but we have not yet been saved from climate change. After years of walk outs, public booing, blocking and the collapse of talks, governments have shown that they can compromise and cooperate, key ingredients in moving forward to achieve a global deal…

“Here are the major points of work that will need to be followed in order to make this agreement a real one and a good one: 1) On the key issue of climate finance, Governments established a fund to deliver the billions needed for the developing world to deal with climate change and stop deforestation. But they didn’t establish any way of providing that money. 2) Another major decision on the table in Cancun deals with a mechanism that will protect tropical forests while safeguarding indigenous peoples' rights and biodiversity. The REDD agreement sidesteps some critical parts that must be defined and strengthened over the coming months. 3) Governments not only acknowledged the gap between their current weak pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and where they need to get to, they actually stated that cuts needed to be in line with the science -- 25 to 40% cuts by 2020 -- and that they need to keep global temperature rise below two degrees.”

Cancun Agreements Must Be Judged a Success. By Robert Stavins, Belfer Center, 12/13/10. “The international climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, have concluded, and despite the gloom-and-doom predictions that dominated the weeks and months leading up to Cancun, the Sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-16) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [PDF, 25 pp] must be judged a success. It represents a set of modest steps forward. Nothing more should be expected from this process…

The Cancun Agreements -- as the two key documents, Outcome of the AWG-LCA [PDF, 29 ppp] and Outcome of the AWG-KP [PDF, 2 pp] are called -- do just what was needed, namely build on the structure of the Copenhagen Accord with a balanced package that takes meaningful steps toward implementing the key elements of the Accord. The delegates in Cancun succeeded in writing and adopting an agreement that assembles pledges of greenhouse gas (GHG) cuts by all of the world’s major economies, launches a fund to help the most vulnerable countries, and avoids some political landmines that could have blown up the talks, namely decisions on the (highly uncertain) future of the Kyoto Protocol.” Robert N. Stavins is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, and Chairman of the Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Group.

Bureaucrats Swindle Greens in Cancun. By Walter Russell Mead, American Interest, 12/12/10. “The climate conference in Cancun was a turning point for the world’s greens. There were two possible outcomes. One was a total political meltdown in Cancun that would have been hideously embarrassing in the short run but that in the long term would have cleared the way for more hopeful approaches to carbon issues. The other was a cobbled together pseudo-deal of some kind that would have avoided short term embarrassment but over the long run would doom the greens to a future of frustration and futility… Guess who won?...

“For the bureaucrats and NGO staff it’s a clear and resounding win… The UN process has kept just enough diplomatic credibility to make several new rounds of vast, unfocused global gabfests of bureaucrats and NGO administrators inevitable. More pre-meeting meetings will be held; more secretariats will employ new staff; more non-papers will be circulated, marked up and revised. Paychecks will be mailed; travel vouchers issued. Life will be good. It’s probably a win for the Obama administration, too. For now, the President got the green monkey off his back. President Obama hasn’t delivered cap and trade or a carbon tax to his green backers, and the early signs are that the EPA is backing off from fights with the Republicans in Congress -- but Cancun didn’t collapse into complete and utter chaos, so the President can, just, argue that his administration is keeping green hopes alive…

“The ‘success’ of Cancun is a best case scenario from the skeptic’s point of view. The cost of funding endless UN gabfests in exotic tourist locations (next up: South Africa in 2012) is trivial compared to the cost of any serious efforts to deal with carbon emissions on the scale current scientific theory suggests would be needed. Bureaucrats will dance, journalists will spin and carbon will spew, and the greens will be unable to escape this dysfunctional UN process for years and maybe decades to come.”

Nissan Sees Electric Car Envy in Critics of the Leaf. By Hiroko Tabuchi, NYTimes, 12/3/10. “Overhyped. Fanciful. Simply not viable. Skeptics have been harsh in their appraisal of Nissan’s grand plans for electric cars -- which the automaker will begin putting into practice with its all-electric Leaf compact, introduced in Japan on Dec. 3. Critics scoff at everything from the car’s limited driving range to what they consider its inflated price tag. But Carlos Ghosn, chief executive at Nissan and its sister automaker, Renault, dismisses the scoffing as his rivals’ lack of imagination -- and their envy… The Leaf, a hatchback that the Environmental Protection agency says has a range of 73 miles on a fully charged battery, will start selling later this month for $33,600, including destination charges, in selected markets in the United States. It went on sale in Japan for about $45,120, and will be introduced to European markets next year.”

Turning Agriculture from Problem to Solution. By Mantoe Phakathi, IPS, 12/5/10. “Global agriculture contributes in the region of 17% to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, but according to the World Bank, climate smart agriculture techniques can both reduce emissions and meet the challenge of producing enough food for a growing world population. ‘As much as agriculture is part of the problem, it is also part of the solution,’ said Inger Anderson, the World Bank's vice president on sustainable development. Anderson was speaking to agriculture, food security and climate change experts at Agriculture and Rural Development Day, a side event at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico on Dec. 4. Agriculture experts are punting a scenario in which farming delivers a ‘triple win’, sequestering carbon in soil and biomass, gaining greater resilience to drought and higher temperatures, and improve food security and farmers' incomes. Achieving this miracle will require varying interventions in different areas, but examples can already be found.”

Amazon Deforestation Rate at Historic Low: Brazil. AFP, 12/1/10. “Deforestation of the Amazon forest has fallen to its lowest rate on record, dropping 14% compared to the previous survey period, Brazil's government said recently. Satellite imaging showed 6,451 square kilometers (2,491 square miles) of the jungle had been cut back between August 2009 and July 2010, an area equivalent to half the size of Lebanon or Jamaica. That was less than for the corresponding 12-month period a year earlier, but still more than than the 5,000-square-kilometer target the government was aiming for. Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira hailed the progress, saying it showed anti-deforestation measures started six years ago were still working…Cutting and burning of the Amazon forest is calculated to cause 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions, making Brazil the fourth-biggest greenhouse gas polluter. The government has pledged to cut Amazon deforestation by 80% over the next decade.”

Shrugging Off Criticism, Europe Will Keep Trawling. By David Jolly, NYTimes, 12/3/10. “European nations will keep trawling the deep sea bottom… confounding hopes that they would honor commitments made to the United Nations General Assembly to stop the destructive practice. The Council of Fisheries Ministers, made up of officials from the 27 member nations of the European Union, said on Nov. 29 that there would be little change [PDF, 22 pp] in deep-sea quotas for the next two years, despite strong objections from the conservationist camp. Officials agreed to end deep-sea shark fishing and to restrict fishing for a handful of species, but in a victory for the French and Spanish fleets, fishing will continue largely as before. Deep-seas fisheries are defined as those below 200 meters, or about 650 feet. Deep-sea trolling and long-lining can lead to overfishing a stock, and dragging heavy nets across the bottom destroys coral and vegetation, disrupting the fragile ecosystem of the ocean floor. Making matters worse, deep-sea species tend to reproduce more slowly than species higher in the water column, so severely depleted stocks can face a tough road back to health even if significant conservation measures are eventually enacted… For a few commercial target species, thousands of tons of coral are hauled up only to be thrown back dead or dying, along with huge quantities of unwanted bycatch. In a matter of a few weeks or months, bottom trawl fishing can destroy what took many thousands of years to create.”

India’s Environment Minister Called an ‘Eco-Crusader’ by Friends and Foes. By Katy Daigle, AP, 12/13/10. “India's environment minister has blocked the construction of mines, power plants and dams. He's held up a new airport and describes diesel cars as criminal. He's even taken Harry Potter to task for promoting threatened owls as pets. Just a year and a half into the job, Jairam Ramesh has turned a once-marginal Environment Ministry into a powerful gatekeeper on India's road to prosperity. He's been called an eco-crusader, a ‘Dr. No’ of development and even a buffoon, angering so many investors and politicians that there are constant rumors of his impending dismissal. But his tenacity has fuelled an environmental debate that many say is long overdue.”

Si, Se Puede!. By Margot Roosevelt, LATimes, 12/13/10. “The failure of global climate negotiations to slow greenhouse gas emissions is fueling protest movements in the U.S. and other countries, as the effects of sea level rise, longer droughts and stronger storms begin to take a toll… The negotiations were ‘shrouded in a fog of unreality,’ said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, a group that advocates drastic cuts in emissions to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from the current 387 ppm to 350 ppm. ‘The biggest and most powerful nations on Earth simply aren't paying attention to physics and chemistry.’ McKibben, whose group sent several San Francisco-based activists to Cancun, predicted that ‘the grassroots movement to demand real action will continue to mushroom. We're not big enough yet to beat the fossil fuel industry and its allies, but we're gaining.’

“In Cancun, if the delegates negotiated behind closed doors, environmental groups made up for it by vying to stage the most creative ‘photo ops’ to capture media attention… Mark Malijan, a freelance photographer whose trip to Cancun was sponsored by Earth Journalism Network, captured vivid images of a broad variety of protests. See his slide show above this post. Among them was the demonstration of La Via Campesina, a social justice group that included Mayans from the Yucatan province around Cancun, and activists from both developing and industrial countries. About 1,000 protesters-- men, women and children, many in colorful outfits--carried signs promoting indigenous rights and condemning efforts to sell carbon credits from forests. Music from a steel drum and chants of ‘Si, se puede!’ (Yes, we can!) punctuated the march.”

Future of U.N.’s Role in Combating Climate Change at Stake in Cancun. By Adam Morton and Tom Arup, Sydney Herald, 11/27/10. “Politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and activists have begun rolling in [to Cancun] for the first major U.N. meeting on climate change since the disastrous close last December to the Copenhagen conference. At stake, insiders say, is nothing less than the future of the UN's role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the climate change that scientists warn is already locked in. Eighteen years after their birth at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the UN climate negotiations that yielded the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are in need of redemption, in the form of methodical progress towards a treaty that can be completed within the next two years.

''‘The order of the day is pragmatism,’ said a UN assistant secretary-general, Robert Orr, this week of the Cancun meeting, suggesting negotiators should ‘make progress where we can on the issues we can.’ With the US and China at odds on key points, those issues are expected to include reducing emissions from destroying tropical rainforests, providing financial help to the world's most vulnerable countries and sharing clean energy technology with developing nations. Bigger stumbling blocks -- locking in emissions targets, China consenting to international verification of its emissions, and the legal design of a new climate treaty to start in 2013 -- are likely to have to wait. The most significant question going into the meeting is: can the talks rebuild the trust shattered at Copenhagen and lay a foundation for a climate pact to be signed next year in Durban, South Africa or, more likely, in Rio de Janeiro in December 2012?”

Mexico City Pact Requires Major World Cities to Climate Action Plans. By James Murray, Business Green, 11/22/10. “Officials from over 135 of the world's largest cities yesterday signed up to a wide-ranging climate change agreement at a summit in Mexico City, fuelling hopes that their national counterparts may be able to deliver similar progress at the UN's upcoming climate change talks in Cancun. The Mexico City Pact requires signatories to formally adopt climate action plans, develop mechanisms for recording greenhouse gas emissions, and adopt legislation that helps to curb emissions. Cities are also required to publically report on their progress each year to the carbon cities climate registry (CCCR) at the Bonn Centre for Local Climate Action and Reporting.

“Many of the world's largest cities signed up to the agreement, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Paris and Vancouver to name but a few. Marcelo Ebrard, Mayor of the Mexico City and chair of the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, who hosted the third conference of the United Cities and Local Governments, kicked off the agreement last week with a pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the badly polluted Mexican capital by around 14%.”

South Africa Unveils $29 Billion Plans for 'World's Biggest' Solar Power Plant. By David Smith, Guardian (UK), 10/25/10. “South Africa is to unveil plans this week for what it claims will be the world's biggest solar power plant -- a radical step in a coal-dependent country where one in six people still lacks electricity. The project, expected to cost up to 200bn rand ($29.15), would aim by the end of its first decade to achieve an annual output of five gigawatts (GW) of electricity - currently one-tenth of South Africa's energy needs. Giant mirrors and solar panels would be spread across the Northern Cape province, which the government says is among the sunniest 3% of regions in the world with minimal cloud or rain.

“The government hopes the solar park will help reduce carbon emissions from Africa's biggest economy, which is still more than 90% dependent on coal-fired power stations. In April, the World Bank came in for sharp criticism from environmentalists for approving a $3.75bn loan to build one of the world's largest coal-fired power plants in the country. Energy is already a high priority in South Africa where, at the end of racial apartheid, less than 40% of households had electricity. Over 16 years the governing African National Congress has undertaken a huge national expansion, with a recent survey showing that 83% are now connected, but power outages are still not uncommon in both townships and middle-class suburbs.”

World Leaders Tackle a Tall Order: How to Preserve Life on Earth. By Patrick White, Toronto Globe and Mail, 10/18/10. “193 national delegations have descended on Nagoya, Japan, in pursuit of a vexing goal befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth. At stake is the fate of the U.N. Conference on Biological Diversity, an international agreement signed amid great hope and fanfare in the early 1990s, the status of which has fizzled steadily ever since. The document bound countries to cut mass species loss ‘significantly’ and preserve 10% of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. But this year brought the sobering realization that not one country had met those targets. After 20 years of high-level talks and treaties, mass extinction continues apace at between 1,500 and 15,000 species a year, depending on the estimate, and leaders are running out of opportunities to turn it around.”

U.N. Talks on Preserving Biodiversity Plagued with Issues Similar to Those of Climate Talks. By Chisa Fujioka, Reuters, 10/22/10. “A U.N. meeting to set targets to fight rising animal and plant extinctions inched on Friday toward agreement, but rich and poor countries remained split over details of a new framework on genetic resources… The meeting hopes to push governments and businesses into taking more action to protect and restore ecosystems such as forests that clean the air, insects that pollinate crops and coral reefs that nurture valuable fisheries. But negotiations have been plagued by the same mistrust between developed and developing countries that has bogged down U.N. talks on combating climate change, such as how to share the effort and who should pay. Developing nations in Nagoya have refused to sign up to 2020 conservation targets without agreement on a new U.N. protocol that would give them a fairer share of profits made by companies, such as pharmaceutical firms, from their genetic resources.”

BP, Other European Companies Funding Tea Party Candidates. By Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian (UK), 10/24/10. “BP and several other big European companies are funding the midterm election campaigns of Tea Party favorites who deny the existence of global warming or oppose Barack Obama's energy agenda... An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network, Europe found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. The report [PDF, 12 pp], released Monday [10/25/10], used information on the Open Secrets.org database to track what it called a co-ordinated attempt by some of Europe's biggest polluters to influence the US midterms."

Entrepreneurs Bringing Clean Light to Poor Nations. By Lisa Friedman, ClimateWire, 10/20/10. “The poorest people on the planet together spent almost $40 billion last year on kerosene and other rudimentary and dangerous fuel-based lighting. Scientists say fuel-burning lanterns release 190 million tons of carbon dioxide each year: about the equivalent of 30 million cars. Now leaders in the field of solar portable lighting believe they can push kerosene lamps out of markets in much of the developing world and make a profit while they're at it… “Lighting Africa, based in Kenya, tries to help the private sector provide clean and affordable lighting on the electricity-starved continent. The organization -- like the Lumina Project, which is based out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- is part of a small but growing field of market-based initiatives targeting what economists call the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ consumers… The portable solar lighting company D.Light… has delivered solar lamps to about 1.7 million customers at an average price of $20 apiece. The company's goal is lighting the homes of 50 million people by 2015.”

Huge Alberta Hydro Project Scuttled. By Scott Haggett, Reuters, 10/19/10. “TransCanada Corp and Atco Ltd have abandoned plans to build a C$5 billion ($4.85 billion) dam on the Slave River in northern Alberta after a local native group refused to back the project. The planned dam was a run-of-river project that would have generated 1,200 to 1,300 megawatts of electricity from the Slave, an undeveloped river than carries more that two-thirds of Alberta's waterflow north to Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. The project, first proposed two years ago, was still being studied, but the partners could not win the support of regional aboriginal roups… TransCanada is the country's biggest pipeline company, and owns generating plants in Canada and the United States... Diversified energy and utilities company Atco owns generating plants in Canada, Britain and Australia.”

Climate Protesters Block U.K. Oil Refinery. The Ecologist, 10/19/10. “Last weekend [10/16-17/10] hundreds of protesters blockaded the road to the Coryton Oil Refinery in Essex, the UK's busiest oil depot. The demonstration was supported by a large number of activist groups including; Plane Stupid, UK Tar Sands Network, Earth First and Camp for Climate Action. Protesters said they had managed to stop around 375,000 gallons of fuel from leaving the depot, owned by Petroplus, during the blockage. Find out more at CrudeAwakening.org.uk.”