Doha wins 'damage aid' for poor countries

For the first time, developing countries have won recognition of the danger they face from climate change, securing a promise from developing countries that they will receive funding to repair the "loss and damage" incurred.

US negotiators fought hard against this proposal and made sure no term implying legal liability was used, to avoid the possibility of litigation; the money will instead be described as aid. It is already being called 'damage aid'.

But “climate finance is not charity or foreign aid,” said Brandon Wu, Senior Policy Advisor, ActionAid. "The Doha outcome completely fails to provide clarity. Lacking concrete numbers and dates, it lets rich countries off the hook. Developing countries have no idea whether climate finance will go up or down, or even whether it will reliably flow."

Ronald Jumeau, the Seychelles negotiator, told his American counterpart: "If we had had more ambition [on emissions cuts from rich countries], we would not have to ask for so much [money] for adaptation. If there had been more money for adaptation [to climate change], we would not be looking for money for loss and damage. What's next? Loss of our islands?"

Observers now expect armies of consultancies to spring up, which will debate from both sides the scientific basis of attributing specific extreme events and weather effects to climate change

The Doha Gateway Package

“What we have on the table is extremely weak. I think it worse than people expected,” concluded Hoda Baraka, Arab World Project, Greenpeace at the end of the final 36-hour session of the fortnight-long UN climate change talks among 195 nations in Qatar.

The other headline results from what is called the Doha Gateway Package, are:

negotiators resolved the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol by adopting amendments;

concluded the long-term cooperative action (LCA) track, including rules around finance, accounting and review;

and agreed to move forward with the Durban Agreement, with a workplan for 2013. This will begin negotiating the global legally binding agreement, which is scheduled to be signed in 2015 and will come into force five years later.

The final Doha Gateway text was rushed through the last plenary by the Qatari host over objections. "Saving the process; killing the planet", as the Sierra Student Coalition's International Committee put it.

Two activists, Libyan Raied Gheblawi, 22, and Algerian Mohamed Anis Amirouche, 19, were deported from Qatar on Thursday after holding up a banner in the central meeting point reading "Qatar, why host not lead?"

Kyoto Protocol

The Doha outcome confirmed the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol starting on 1 January 2013. Its participants, however, account only for around 14% of world emissions.

It will run for eight years, up to the entry into force of a promised new global legal agreement in 2020.

The adopted target by the EU and Croatia and Iceland, of cutting emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2020, is open to being increased to 30%. The targets of all participating countries will be revisited by 2014 with a view to considering raising ambitions.

The EU and other countries taking on targets will have a limit on the number of purchases they can make of surplus emission allowances ('AAUs') left over from the first commitment period.

The EU Member States, and all other potential buyers (Australia, Japan, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland) have declared anyway that they will not purchase AAUs carried over from the first period.

EU finance

The agreement leaves the EU as the world's leading provider of official development assistance and climate finance to developing countries.

The bloc had pledged €7.2 billion in 'fast start' finance for the period 2010-12 and has assured its developing country partners that climate finance will continue after this year.

Several EU Member States and other developed countries such as the UK announced specific finance pledges for 2013, and in some cases up to 2015.

The decisions also extend a work programme on long-term finance for a year, with the aim of helping developed countries identify pathways for scaling up climate finance to $100 billion per year by 2020 from public, private and alternative sources.

Greg Barker, UK Energy and Climate Change Minister, and Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of UAE’s renewable energy company Masdar, announced they will launch a new roundtable for the world’s largest public and private sector investors in low carbon industries during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, in January. This aims to scale up investment to combat climate change in developing economies.

Barker said: “Alongside the formal negotiations taking place here in Doha, there’s a formidable amount of informal discussion around how to mobilise at scale the private finance needed to tackle climate change".

The winners at Doha

“Any government walking out here saying it is a success is suffering from a terrible case of cognitive dissonance,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director, Greenpeace, articulating the feelings of most leaving the conference.

"They have to align the political reality of these conversations with what the science says. This failure is a betrayal of the people in the Philippines and all the other people who face climate impacts now."

Who was to blame for this failure? “It was only a handful of countries, such as Poland, Russia, Canada, the US and Japan, who held the negotiations to ransom,” thought Samantha Smith, leader of WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth International spokesperson in Qatar, added: "most notably the US”. Sophia McNab, UK Youth Climate Coalition delegate, went even further: “This text is a win for the USA, developed countries and fossil fuel interests. It’s a betrayal of all vulnerable nations, and our future.”

“The coal industry won here, the oil industry won here,” agreed Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy, Union of Concerned Scientists. "You saw on display the power of these industries and their short term profit to influence the governments of the world."

Wael Hmaidan, director of Climate Action Network International, said: “The path forward is actually quite clear: we have the technology and know-how. But we also need people in all regions of the world to demand leadership from their governments”.

Why Doha failed, and what to do about it

The blame for the failure at Doha to deliver a significant breakthrough to save the future world from devastating consequences of climate change once again lies with the lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry and the failure of politicians to act responsibly, in line with the scientific evidence.

In America in particular, but also in Britain, this industry is allowed to lobby and fund politicians and political parties, and in return they are expected to deliver political decisions in their favour. This is a far cry from responsible, participative democracy that citizens expect and need.

The website opensecrets.org documents the amount of money spent by oil and gas companies lobbying American politicians and financing their election campaigns. The top five companies spent the huge total of $42,470,000 on lobbying in 2012. They are: Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Chevron and BP.

20 oil companies donated a massive $25,429,233 in political contributions during the last American election. The majority of it went to the Republicans, but enough went to the Democrats to secure the required response, given the make-up of Congress.

The result in Doha reveals what they got in exchange for this cash. For them, it represents a bargain.

For Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy, Union of Concerned Scientists, COP18 wasn't an environmental conference. It was "a trade fair" on behalf of the oil and gas industry which was there to protect its short-term profits.

Hence, the local paper's headline at the weekend: "Qatar is victory for the climate". This is sheer Orwellian spin, as in 1984's Ministry of Peace being actually responsible for war.

Qatar was widely criticised during the talks for failing to set clear targets for reducing its own emissions. Instead it argues that its liquefied natural gas exports mean it is helping other nations move away from using more polluting coal. This is like saying heroin dealing is okay because it's not as addictive as crack cocaine.

The fact that coal-dependent Poland is to host next year's talks means the takeover of the UN negotiation process by the fossil fuel industry is complete.

So if we can expect nothing of these talks, what can we do? Environmentalists and activists must realise that instead change has to come at a local and regional level.

I am just reading an excellent book, The Leaderless Revolution, by Carne Ross, a former diplomat who was Britain's Foreign Office representative at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war.

His analysis of these types of international negotiations is spot on, and it comes from real life experience.

Entrenched positions and irresponsible decisions are the direct result of decision-makers being both far removed from the impact of their actions and being completely unaccountable for their decisions.

He quotes research showing that even when people with dramatically opposed opinions in a given community come together to make a decision affecting all of them, they will reach a reasonable and appropriate solution only if they know that they have genuine responsibility for the result.

That is to say, if the consequences of their decision affects them or others close to them directly.

Time and again, Ross cites examples where his own reports to ministers resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians in countries that he had never visited, and he himself was completely unaccountable for these deaths, just as they were.

He talks of his undying shame that he took such decisions so lightly. It took him a long time to come to his senses and realise that none of his reports for Whitehall, or the policies adopted by politicians based on his and many similar reports, went anywhere near to solving the problems that they were intended to address, such as making the world a safer place.

In fact, they had the exact opposite effect.

Politicians, he says, are incapable of doing the right thing because they cannot comprehend and arbitrate the forces that we assume, and which they persuade us, they are able to deal with.

Reality is too complex, they are preoccupied with many other concerns, including whether they will win the next election, and their hands are often tied.

An argument in a community today in Britain, over whether a windfarm should be sited nearby, frequently results in acrimonious and polarised debate, because the members of the community are not themselves responsible for the windfarm, or indeed for any form of energy supply to their community.

If they had to decide how to provide all the heat and power their community needed, if they had secured the finance themselves, if they had decided or been given a set of conditions, such as that whatever generation plant they chose should be as low carbon as possible, and if they could manage the plant afterwards, and received the rewards of their investment themselves, then the likelihood is that they would reach a reasonable solution.

In the debate, they would be prepared to listen to each other's point of view and take them into account in the process.

But communities are rarely given that responsibility.

Ross says that as a result we ourselves must take such responsibility, as, for example, citizens are doing with the Isle of Wight's Ecoisland project.

We give political power away at our peril, and when we do there is no guarantee it will result in a better situation than the one we can make on our own.

This would be true Localism, but far from what David Cameron intended when he made it a plank of his election manifesto.

His form of localism was a hollow promise. No politician will ever, in reality, give power away to the people. Why on earth would they ask you to vote for them if so?

Instead, they make promises that they know we want to believe, like “Yes we can” and ‘the greenest government ever”, and we do vote for them.

We are always let down.

Ross decries internet activism also, saying that the technology it uses is too easily appropriated by commerce and politicians.

Instead, he proposes, simply, talking to others in your community, and moving on from there.

It’s where the power revolution has to start. After Doha, it’s the only place to start.

Why Doha failed, and what to do about it

The blame for the failure at Doha to deliver a significant breakthrough to save the future world from devastating consequences of climate change once again lies with the lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry and the failure of politicians to act responsibly, in line with the scientific evidence.

In America in particular, but also in Britain, this industry is allowed to lobby and fund politicians and political parties, and in return they are expected to deliver political decisions in their favour. This is a far cry from responsible, participative democracy that citizens expect and need.

The website opensecrets.org documents the amount of money spent by oil and gas companies lobbying American politicians and financing their election campaigns. The top five companies spent the huge total of $42,470,000 on lobbying in 2012. They are: Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Chevron and BP.

20 oil companies donated a massive $25,429,233 in political contributions during the last American election. The majority of it went to the Republicans, but enough went to the Democrats to secure the required response, given the make-up of Congress.

The result in Doha reveals what they got in exchange for this cash. For them, it represents a bargain.

For Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy, Union of Concerned Scientists, COP18 wasn't an environmental conference. It was "a trade fair" on behalf of the oil and gas industry which was there to protect its short-term profits.

Hence, the local paper's headline at the weekend: "Qatar is victory for the climate". This is sheer Orwellian spin, as in 1984's Ministry of Peace being actually responsible for war.

Qatar was widely criticised during the talks for failing to set clear targets for reducing its own emissions. Instead it argues that its liquefied natural gas exports mean it is helping other nations move away from using more polluting coal. This is like saying heroin dealing is okay because it's not as addictive as crack cocaine.

The fact that coal-dependent Poland is to host next year's talks means the takeover of the UN negotiation process by the fossil fuel industry is complete.

So if we can expect nothing of these talks, what can we do? Environmentalists and activists must realise that instead change has to come at a local and regional level.

I am just reading an excellent book, The Leaderless Revolution, by Carne Ross, a former diplomat who was Britain's Foreign Office representative at the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war.

His analysis of these types of international negotiations is spot on, and it comes from real life experience.

Entrenched positions and irresponsible decisions are the direct result of decision-makers being both far removed from the impact of their actions and being completely unaccountable for their decisions.

He quotes research showing that even when people with dramatically opposed opinions in a given community come together to make a decision affecting all of them, they will reach a reasonable and appropriate solution only if they know that they have genuine responsibility for the result.

That is to say, if the consequences of their decision affects them or others close to them directly.

Time and again, Ross cites examples where his own reports to ministers resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians in countries that he had never visited, and he himself was completely unaccountable for these deaths just as they were.

He talks of his undying shame that he took such decisions so lightly. It took him a long time to come to his senses and realise that none of his reports for Whitehall, or the policies adopted by politicians based on his and many similar reports, went anywhere near to solving the problems that they were intended to address, such as making the world a safer place.

In fact, they had the exact opposite effect.

Politicians, he says, are incapable of doing the right thing because they cannot comprehend and arbitrate the forces that we assume, and which they persuade us, they are able to deal with.

Reality is too complex, they are preoccupied with many other concerns, including whether they will win the next election, and their hands are often tied.

An argument in a community today in Britain, over whether a windfarm should be sited nearby, frequently results in acrimonious and polarised debate, because the members of the community are not themselves responsible for the windfarm, or indeed for any form of energy supply to their community.

If they had to decide how to provide all the heat and power their community needed, if they had secured the finance themselves, if they had decided or been given a set of conditions, such as that whatever generation plant they chose should be as a low carbon as possible, and if they could manage the plant afterwards, and received the rewards of their investment themselves, then the likelihood is that they would reach a reasonable solution.

In the debate, they would be prepared to listen to each other's point of view and take them into account in the process.

But communities are rarely given that responsibility.

Ross says that as a result we ourselves must take such responsibility, as, for example, citizens are doing with the Isle of Wight's Ecoisland project.

We give political power away at our peril, and when we do there is no guarantee it will result in a better situation than the one we can make on our own.

This would be true Localism, but far from what David Cameron intended when he made it a plank of his election manifesto.

His form of localism was a hollow promise. No politician will ever, in reality, give power away to the people. Why on earth would they ask you to vote for them if so?

Instead, they make promises that they know we want to believe, like “Yes we can” and ‘the greenest government ever”, and we do vote for them.

We are always let down.

Ross decries internet activism also, saying that the technology it uses is too easily appropriated by commerce and politicians.

Instead, he proposes, simply, talking to others in your community, and moving on from there.

It’s where the power revolution has to start. After Doha, it’s the only place to start.

Doha: Climate negotiators fail to meet the scientific challenge

Young UNICEF UK campaigners asking Ed Davey to speak up for children before he left for the UN climate change talks in Doha. Photo: Rosie Reed Gold/UNICEF.

On the last day, talks at Doha aimed at securing a global agreement to tackle climate change are providing scant hope, although individual announcements from nations on the sidelines provide some progress.

The central issue, as always, is fairness over who pays.

US lead negotiator, Todd Stern, told the plenary assembly that he wanted to see “the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" provide the basis of agreement, but that "unless we can find common ground on that principle and the way in which it should apply in the world of the 2020s, we won’t succeed in producing a new Durban Platform agreement”.

The U.S. has a target of reducing emissions by 17% by 2020 compared to 2005 emissions (equal to just 4% below 1990 levels). Its negotiators said that this is unlikely to change. They say they cannot see a way of getting a global agreement for seven years; until 2020.

Like 85% of nations, the U.S. has spurned extending the Kyoto Protocol, leaving a group led by the European Union and Australia to take this forward. They believe Kyoto is no longer relevant because emerging nations led by China and India will have no targets to curb their soaring emissions from 2013.

Delegates have been repeatedly told how dire prospects are. "If anything, the science is telling us it's now getting warmer quicker than we had previously expected," said UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey, who is in Doha. "Our actions as a world are going slower than we had previously hoped."

"The question of climate management is extremely serious," Laurent Fabius, France's foreign minister, agreed. "It appears we have already exceeded the 2-degree limit. If that is the case, there are absolutely catastrophic consequences. We must react." Tackling climate change is "the new challenge in world diplomacy".

But so far, too few countries are making the kind of commitments to cut emissions that scientists agree would keep global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius limit that is estimated to prevent the most devastating effects of climate change.

Many attending the Doha talks are saying that 4 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100 looks almost inevitable.

Meanwhile, countries debate who will pay to save the planet.

Qatar has offered no money. National pledges by Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and the EU Commission in Doha total over 6.85 billion euros for the next two years, more than in 2011-12.

The UK will be allocating around £1.8 billion aid money to climate finance up to 2015. Ed Davey, speaking at Doha, reiterated the UK’s support for contributing to the $100 billion a year by 2020 commitment of new and additional funds.

Germany and Britain this week launched the NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigating Actions) Facility, to support countries to implement action against climate change. Ed Davey, pledging £25 million from the International Climate Fund (ICF), said it will “help support those developing countries that are taking ambitious action to close the gap to 2°C". Countries will compete for the funding to support their own projects. One in Mexico will go towards sustainable new housing by establishing the necessary framework conditions.

Hosts Qatar did say they will develop a 1,800 megawatt (MW) solar energy plant in 2014 costing up to $20 billion, mainly to power its desalination plants. The country has no naturally-occurring pure water. It will increase the proportion of its renewable electricity generation to 16% from zero. "We need to diversify our energy mix," said Fahad Bin Mohammed al-Attiya, chairman of the Qatari organizers of climate talks in Doha. Qatar supplies Britain with much of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and is the world's top exporter. But it has not set any targets for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

A senior Saudi Arabia official said his country was taking the climate change issue "seriously. It is implementing carbon capture storage in the world's biggest oilfield, Ghawar, where injecting carbon dioxide back into the field helps to raise pressure and increase oil output, as well as trapping planet-warming gas".

Indonesia announced it has approved a U.N.-led rainforest conservation scheme under Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), that sets aside nearly 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres), much of it carbon-rich peat swamp forest at risk of being felled for palm oil plantations, and rewards its investors, Russian energy giant Gazprom and German insurance firm Allianz, with 104 million tradable carbon offset credits. Each credit represents a metric ton of carbon, worth almost 500 million euros based on current market rates. It is the first scheme of its kind to win formal backing in the country, and the world's first on protecting 'deep peat'.

Back in the U.S., the Obama administration said it is to invest $120 million in developing cheaper batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage. The five year project will establish a research hub with Dow Chemical Co, Applied Materials Inc, Johnson Controls Inc and the Clean Energy Trust.

Still in the U.S., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported that from January to October, 46.2% of new electricity-generating capacity installed was renewable. Wind accounted for 77% of this.

But the reality is that all of these announcements are nothing like what is required; they are like using a bucket to bale out the rising oceans.

"Some sort of agreement will be achieved – it always is," writes observer Giles Parkinson. However, he concludes, "the more that the UN talks fall short of expectations, the more that domestic politics plays into the hands of vested interests".

Next year, coal-dependent Poland will host the talks. Environmentalists expect little progress there either. They are now looking to Paris, which will host the 2015 talks, for realistic progress.

The view from Doha is uninspiring

What we need from our leaders is: inspiration. In Doha, it seems sadly lacking.

If you fly to Doha in Qatar on he Gulf, you pass 35,000 feet over the oilfields of Iran and Iraq.

In the oily blackness of night, hundreds of orange gas flares outshine city lights by a factor of fifty, visible from space.

Kuwait is sparkly island, as is Doha itself, yet another reminder of the power fossil fuel reserves have over the Middle East.

The tiny desert isthmus of Qatar holds not a drop of natural potable water. It makes £106 billion a year from selling oil and gas that hapnes to be under its barren sands. Its residents have the highest per capita income on earth.

They get all their electricity for free. It is used profligately. The urinals in Doha airport are constantly flushed with hot water. All of the country's water has to be desalinated using oil-fired electricity.

It is here, in the Qatar National Conference Centre, where the representatives of most countries in the world have gathered for yet another round of painfully slow, and apparently almost inconsequential, negotiations to curb global levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The grandfathers of the oil rich elite that runs this state were bedoin, wandering the desert with their tents and camels. Now they own fleets of Lexus 4x4s and Porsches.

I met a senior account manager for a Fortune 400 listed company that supplies process machinery to the oil industry in Kuwait. He held a Jordanian passport and said he believes in climate change. "But what can I do? It's not up to people like me to change the system. Our machinery will work just as well on renewable energy. But here is where the market is".

A wealthy manager of a pipeline maintenance company, in his spotless white schumagg and thoub, told me that he was aware of the talks going on in the conference centre down the road, but for him it was "just another conference". He won't be going.

Next week is one to promote trade, held by the World Chambers Federation, where 12,000 chambers will be represented. He will attend that. Good for business. The following week is a film festival, peddling dreams and escape stories.

All of this is part of the wish of Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, Qatar's ruler, to be a big player on the world stage, to convince the world that Qatar is not just about oil, but culture.

Maybe he does think, like Masdar's leaders, that the game will one day be up for oil. The country is currently spending £20 million, with Chevron and GreenGulf, on a Solar Test Facility, to investigate what technology can best convert the copious amount of solar radiation that falls on this desert land to electricity. It includes a solar desalination plant.

By hosting COP-18, the Emir is hedging his bets. COP-18 means that these annual horse-trading, long-grass-kicking stand-offs have been doing the rounds of nations for eighteen years.

Knowledge of the threat of climate change is not new.

Twenty three years ago, I was asked by Greenpeace Book's John May to write a comic book explaining global warming to young people.

Three years before that, Margaret Thatcher, in the only act for which I unreservedly admire her, alerted world leaders, especially Ronald Reagan, to it.

If only today's world leaders had Maggie's conviction.

At the heart of the story I wrote for John was a conflict between a greedy industrialist and his brother, an enlightened environmentalist. It was based on the Goldsmith brothers, James, the financier and corporate raider, and Ed, the Ecologist magazine's former publisher.

James' son, Zac, is now Conservative MP for Richmond Park, and as good an example of a Green Tory as you will find.

I suppose what I'm saying is, that at the Doha talks, being held in the context of the most dire warnings yet about global temperature rises, it is political leadership that is needed more than ever.

The talks give the impression of being complicated, and they are, but the principles are simple: the developed nations need to cough up and everyone needs to commit.

Politicians need to talk with conviction, echoing President Kennedy with "ask not what the planet can do for you but what you can do for the planet".

Or echoing Churchill, with "We will fight climate change in the factories, in the fields and in the streets. We will never surrender!"

In a word, what we need from our leaders is: inspiration.

In Doha, it seems sadly lacking.

Europe must adopt a 30% emissions reduction target

With any luck we are about to see a shift in action on curbing carbon emissions.

It's not just that the annual United Nations climate change talks, COP-18, begin at the end of this month at Doha in Qatar. Nor is it that with the re-election of Barack Obama there will be a renewed impetus in the American Senate to get a climate change bill passed.

Over on the other side of the world, Australia's Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has said his country will sign up to a second round of the Kyoto Protocol, joining the European Union and just a handful of other major greenhouse gas emitters in recommitting to the world's only climate treaty.

The Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, required wealthy nations to limit their emission of greenhouse gases by 5.2% on average for the period 2008-2012 from 1990 levels. It is due to expire at the end of this year.

Through the UN climate change negotiations, countries are attempting to thrash out a replacement treaty. If successful, it would be agreed by 2015 and take effect in 2020, and it would include emissions targets for developing nations such as China and India as well as developed countries.

To date, only the European Union and a handful of other small developed nations have signed up to Kyoto 2, which is intended to start in 2013 and continue until such time as when a new agreement comes into effect.

Japan, Russia, Canada and, currently, the US are among the countries refusing to sign up to Kyoto 2. They want a non-binding agreement.

New Zealand has already said it will not follow Australia.

But Kyoto 1 and 2 has been widely criticised. The main candidates for alternative action are a carbon tax activated at national levels, and a network of regional emission trading schemes.

Already, a carbon tax is back on the agenda in the US and the UK.

Republicans are not expected to be enthusiastic; they dislike taxes. The main American proponent of a carbon tax is prominent NASA climate scientist James Hansen. His proposal is to tax carbon at source, whether oil, gas or coal, with a 100% dividend returned to citizens in equal shares, under the principle of the “commons", that every citizen has an equal right to a portion of the sky.

It is estimated that citizens would each get $3,000 to spend as compensation for the tax.

A similar tax has been in place in Canada's British Columbia for four years and is currently under review. The income from the tax is spent on public works.

But how high would a carbon tax need to be to make a significant difference in the consumption of fossil fuels? Consider the amount of tax (60%) already on a litre of petrol. Does it deter us from driving?

Would it make a difference if the price of a barrel of oil was doubled with a $100 tax? That would put up the cost of a litre of petrol to almost £2.

You can imagine the public reaction, even with a cash dividend. The thing is, it’s a blunt instrument. It affects some people more than others.

British Columbia's tax has been introduced gradually and reaches about 5% of the price of fuel. The review will tell us whether or not it has made any difference at all to consumption levels. The jury is yet out.

Hansen distrusts "cap and trade" agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, and says why in chapter 9 of his book Storms of My Grandchildren.

But that isn't stopping Korea and China from going ahead with their own local schemes emissions trading schemes. On November 15 a presidential decree in Korea will see a mandatory ETS introduced from 2015 for 60% of South Korea’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

The purpose of an ETS is to minimise the cost of meeting a set emissions target. The Korean ETS and most of the Chinese pilot schemes have watched the European Union's ETS become swamped with excess credits and the price of carbon bomb to an ineffectual level.

To prevent this happening in their schemes, they plan to include the use of market stabilising checks and balances to enable them to adjust to external factors such as significant and sustained changes in gross domestic product. These are said to include: a strategic reserve, limitations on banking and borrowing and a ceiling and/or floor price.

Japan has its own scheme, as do Switzerland, New Zealand, California and a number of other American and Canadian states linked together in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Western Climate Initiative.

If such schemes become more common and the European scheme can overcome its current problems, international trading in permits is an attractive way of achieving reductions at the lowest possible cost. This is because it is cheaper to abate or eliminate a ton of carbon dioxide in some countries than in others, and the market automatically gravitates towards the cheapest solution.

In other words, is not such a blunt instrument. On the other hand, a huge amount of money gets wasted and goes into the wrong pockets.

The question is, whether any of these proposals will get us where we want to be fast enough. The answer depends upon the level of political ambition for the level at which an overall target for, or cap on carbon emissions is set, which in turn depends on the amount of public concern.

European environment ministers met at the end of October to discuss the European Union negotiating position at Doha, and what to do about the EU ETS' glut of allowances.

It emerged from their talks that Europe has already beaten its target of 20% emission reductions by 2020 with eight years to spare.

A leaked draft of the Commission's report on the EU ETS says that there will be a surplus of at least two billion allowances next year, rising in the following years. Removing just 1.4 billion of these would be sufficient to let Europe reach a 30% target by 2020.

This would align the scheme with Europe's 2050 climate goal of reducing emissions up to 95% below 1990 levels.

It's this kind of ambition, at least, which is necessary.

The British government supports a 30% target. It should do, it is already ahead of the game. Officials have been arguing for it for some time.

Europe should immediately adopt such a position and, in three weeks time, take it to Doha and challenge the world to follow suit.

Obama must win for the world to have a chance of beating climate change

Here's the logic of this post:

1. The latest science says we're heading for over 6 degrees C warming.
2.  Romney will do nothing but make this worse
3.  Obama must win
4. Then go to Doha and help broker a global pact on limiting emissions.

Following Hurricane Sandy, and more bad news on climate change today , there has never been so much at stake in an American election for the rest of the world.

If this is not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.

Hurricane Sandy was the worst storm to hit the eastern seaboard of the United States in living memory.

In one dramatic moment, that will end up costing American taxpayers billions of dollars, it has succeeded in doing something by powerful demonstration that no other amount of evidence or eloquence has succeeded in doing: it has brought climate change, at the last moment, into the presidential election agenda.

In its wake, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has thrown his support behind Barack Obama. The latest issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek carries on its cover the slogan: “It's climate change, stupid!"

In an editorial, it says: "Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all. Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater."

The latest scientific climate change research, arriving with chilling timing in my e-mail box today, points to disaster for the planet unless something drastic is done. Current rates of decarbonisation mean that global average temperatures are heading to a disastrous 6oC of warming. This would render much of the planet uninhabitable.

The news comes from fresh analysis by financial consultants PwC. Their Low Carbon Economy Index measures the progress of developed and emerging economies towards reducing emissions linked to economic output. Its latest issue says "To limit global warming to 2oC would now mean reducing global carbon intensity by an average of 5.1% a year – a performance never achieved since 1950, when these records began". [For a copy of the report contact Rowena Mearley, Tel: +44 207 213 4247 or e-mail rowena.mearley@uk.pwc.com.]

It adds that any investments in long term assets or infrastructure, particularly in coastal or low-lying regions need to address far more pessimistic scenarios.

This message seems almost pointedly directed at the East Coast of the United States this week.

On October 31, the New York Times published an article which explicitly linked Hurricane Sandy to climate change.

It said “the storm surge along the Atlantic coast was almost certainly intensified by decades of sea-level rise linked to human emissions of greenhouse gases. And [scientists have] emphasized that Hurricane Sandy, whatever its causes, should be seen as a foretaste of trouble to come as the seas rise faster, the risks of climate change accumulate and the political system fails to respond". It quotes in support Thomas R. Knutson, a research meteorologist with the government’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

Hurricane Sandy came hot on the heels of the intense summer drought, which also powerfully affected much of the United States.

Americans now know first-hand some of the effects of climate chaos. It's not happening in some remote atoll of the Pacific Ocean, or in the estuarine delta of a poor, developing country. It's happening right in their homes. It is affecting their power supply, the price of their food, their livelihoods. It's costing lives. It's going to put up insurance premiums.

Most Europeans have not been subject to the same ideologically-driven debate over climate change as Americans have in the last decade. They have not been deprived of the true facts of the situation, or misled by compromised politicians.

Facts have a great way of cutting through ideology. During the Cultural Revolution in China, millions died as a result of ideologically-driven policies on agriculture. The authorities responded with denial and cover-up, because the alternative was to admit that their leaders were wrong. But now we know the truth, sadly too late for those peasants who suffered death by starvation.

Americans need to know that their leaders have been wrong, before it is too late.

There is no doubt that Obama's policies on climate change are better than Romney's, who said in his acceptance speech for the GOP nomination: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise ... is to help you and your family”. That phrase should return to haunt him now.

But for Obama to have spoken out loudly on climate change before now would have, paradoxically, worked against his best interests. Instead, he has during his campaign repeatedly shown support for oil, natural gas, shale gas and coal as well as renewables.

That has not been an obstacle for Bill Clinton, who is on the campaign trail himself. On Tuesday he said: “All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors, many of them Republicans, who are being told, ‘You’ve got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You’ve got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.’ In the real world, Barack Obama’s policies work better”.

The president of the World Resources Institute, a former special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, who also happens to be British, has commented on the fact that both presidential candidates have largely avoided mention of climate change by saying: “Political discourse here is massively out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the citizens of this country. Polls show very clearly that two-thirds of Americans think this is a real problem and needs to be addressed.”

We have to hope that Obama wins the poll this week. Romney has opposed Democratic initiatives to regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles. He has promised to reverse Obama’s air quality regulations. He has said he will renegotiate the auto efficiency standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 that automakers agreed to this year.

Obama, speaking last week in Iowa, has promised to continue support for wind power projects and federal tax breaks for them, which Romney wants to end. “My plan will keep these investments, and we’ll keep reducing the carbon pollution that’s also heating the planet, because climate change isn’t a hoax. The droughts we’ve seen, the floods, the wildfires, those aren’t a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And we can do something about it.”

He is right. Romney is wrong. It's as simple as that.

Obama must not just win a second term. He must then lead the world in the COP 18 climate change negotiations this December in Doha to a proper, legally binding agreement.

America, the world's greatest polluter, has avoided this responsibility for over a decade, and the PwC report reveals the consequence of this.

There has never been so much at stake for the rest of the world in an American election.

The world is heading for a ”carbon cliff” - PwC

PwC's Jonathan Grant says "we are heading for a carbon cliff" unless habits are changed.

PwC is warning today that the world is heading for 6°C warming unless emissions of greenhouse gases go into reverse.

The annual rate of reduction of carbon emissions per unit of GDP needed to limit global warming to 2°C has passed a critical threshold according to new analysis in the PwC Low Carbon Economy Index, published today. This measures developed and emerging economies' progress towards reducing emissions linked to economic output.

It demonstrates that at current rates of emissions growth, at least 6°C degrees of warming could be possible by the end of the century, which would result in large parts of the world becoming uninhabitable.

While last month, Britain topped a European league table for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, it is by no means clear that this reversal will continue, as Government policy is to maximise oil, gas and coal extraction, and to build a new generation of gas-fired power plants.

The PwC report

The PwC report shows that to limit global warming to 2oC would now mean reducing global carbon intensity by an average of 5.1% a year, a performance never achieved since 1950, when these records began.

PwC's director of sustainability and climate change, Jonathan Grant, says that "we are heading for a carbon cliff" unless habits are changed. "Even doubling our current annual rates of decarbonisation globally every year to 2050, would still lead to 6oC, making governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2oC appear highly unrealistic.”

Andrew Sentance, PwC's senior economic advisor, says that "Government policies must radically change", and that for business this "represents an opportunity as well as a risk".

“The challenge now is to implement gigatonne scale reductions across the economy, in power generation, energy efficiency, transport and industry, as well as REDD+ in forested nations,” added Grant.

With less than four weeks to the UN Climate Summit in Doha, the analysis illustrates the scale of the challenge facing negotiations. The issue is further complicated by a slow market recovery in developed nations, but sustained growth in E7 economies which could lock economic growth into high carbon assets.

Emerging markets’ previous trends on carbon emissions reductions linked to growth and productivity have stalled, and their total emissions grew by 7.4%.

By contrast, the UK, France and Germany achieved record levels of annual carbon emissions intensity reductions, but were helped on by milder winters.

Examining the role of shale gas, PwC’s report suggests that at current rates of consumption, replacing 10% of global oil and coal consumption with gas could deliver emissions savings of around 3% a year (1gt C02e per annum).

However the report warns that while it may “buy some time”, it reduces the incentive for investment in lower carbon technologies such as nuclear and renewables, and could lock in emerging economies with high energy demand to a dependence on fossil fuels.

America has been exporting the coal it would have burnt had shale gas not displaced its domestic use, so, globally, a shift to shale gas in one country alone makes little difference to overall emissions.

This underlines the importance of reaching a global deal at Doha, PwC says.

UK oil, gas and coal extraction

At home, British policy on reducing carbon emissions no longer appears as consistent as it did until recently.

On 25 October, Energy Minister John Hayes announced 167 new North Sea oil and gas licences, saying that every last economic drop of oil and gas from the North Sea will be extracted.

In answer to a question from Green MP Caroline Lucas last Friday, about whether the effect of this on achievement of the UK's domestic carbon budgets had been calculated, he gave no indication that it had, instead repeating that the Government “aims to secure over time the maximum economic recovery" of the "20 billion barrels of oil equivalent left on the Continental Shelf".

If all this were to be burnt, it would lead to the emission of 872 trillion kgCO2.

Meanwhile, despite a decline in the demand for coal caused by six British power stations having to close by 2016, the coal industry, through CoalPro, their producer’s association, hopes that the industry will be able to maintain a total of approximately 36 working surface mines across the UK, according to the Loose Anti Opencast Network (LAON).

LAON’s latest review of the stage at which 22 current and possible opencast planning applications across the UK have reached, has just come out.

LAON is calling on the Government to align its planning policy with its energy policy. Steve Leary, its coordinator, says: “It is the Government's intention to phase out the use of coal for power generation purposes, leading to a 75% decline in the use of coal for such a purpose over the next 10 years, whilst at the same time, through provisions in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, it is possibly making it easier to dig the coal out".

He says this coal would probably be exported if not burnt at home.

This morning, activists from the No Dash for Gas campaign who have been protesting at the Government's policy to build a new generation of 20 gas-fired power stations, are ending a seven day occupation of the 300 foot high chimneys of EDF's West Burton 1,300MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plant, currently under construction in Nottinghamshire.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, has guaranteed that if built, these stations will be exempted from emissions regulations and can continue emitting CO2 unabated until 2045.

Call to decarbonise
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In a timely move, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, the Nuclear Industry Association and RenewableUK have today issued a joint call to Energy Secretary Ed Davey to largely decarbonise the power sector by 2030.

The three associations, representing over 1,000 corporate members, make the request  in a letter  copied to the Chancellor, Prime Minister, Business Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State at the Cabinet Office.

The letter states that including a reference to the objective to largely decarbonise the power sector by 2030 in the Bill would reassure potential investors by lowering political risk and bring the cost of capital down for lower carbon generation.

The organisations stress, however, that any target set in legislation should serve a specific and necessary purpose and not contribute to so-called "target fatigue" in the energy sector; and it