Climate Policy

Clash or Cooperation? The Chinese Climate Change Dilemma

Communications — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/26/2008 - 12:15pm

On June 26 The New America Foundation's American Strategy Program and the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted Reinhard Bütikofer, the leader of Germany's Green Party, for a discussion about possibilities of cooperation with China over the issue of climate change. Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Program, moderated the discussion. An MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below, while video is available at right.

Bütikofer began by detailing the importance for Europe of involving China in projects to control climate change; they are the world's biggest CO2 emitter, and he stated that the United States would be unlikely to support a climate change regime that did not also apply to Russia and rapidly developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil. At the same time, Bütikofer acknowledged that any plan for a climate regime would still need to protect economic growth, in order to get China to sign on to it. This would require a new developmental model that offsets carbon output.

He also detailed China's reasons for supporting a comprehensive move against climate change, listing the many environmental consequences of climate change for China. These included more powerful storms, rising sea levels, damage to important river systems, and a drop in food production.

In response to these challenges, Bütikofer suggested a number of things the west can do to help curb emissions in China. These include sharing research on climate change, transferring technology that can raise energy efficiency, and also transferring administrative experience, to allow the Chinese government to overcome the inefficiency and obstructiveness of regional and local leaders. He suggested that more democracy would also be helpful, because reversing climate change requires the unified effort of civil society to check corruption and make sure necessary change occurs.

-Andrew Lebovich, Research Intern, American Strategy Program.

This event was co-sponsored with The Heinrich Böll Foundation of North America.

Waste Not

Ron Tang — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:24:00 -0400

Forty years ago, the steel mills and factories south of Chicago were known for their sooty smokestacks, plumes of steam, and throngs of workers. Clean-air laws have since gotten rid of the smoke, and labor-productivity initiatives have eliminated most of the workers. What remains is the steam, billowing up into the sky day after day, just as it did a generation ago.

The U.S. economy wastes 55 percent of the energy it consumes, and while American companies have ruthlessly wrung out other forms of inefficiency, that figure hasn’t changed much in recent decades. The amount lost by electric utilities alone could… more

Terry Tamminen in The New Zealand Herald on Climate Change

Communications — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:19:00 -0500

New America in the News:

It is individual states and not Washington that will lead the United States response to climate change, says Terry Tamminen, friend and adviser to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I couldn't agree more that the U.S. has to step up. The good news -- it is already happening," Tamminen said.

The former head of California's Environmental Protection Agency was in Wellington to give the keynote speech to a Chapman Tripp symposium on climate change, and to extend to Prime Minister Helen Clark an invitation for New Zealand to take part in a process he is spearheading -- the creation of an emissions trading market centred in California.

"In June last year there were three states that had any kind of a comprehensive climate plan. Today there are 27 which have them or are developing them. Five have put them into law, which is extremely important because any politician can lay out a plan but if they are put into law you know what you are likely to get."

By 2009 when there was a new President in the White House and a Congress likely to take this issue seriously -- "which the current President and Congress will not" -- most Americans would live in a state with a world-class target for reducing greenhouse gases and a comprehensive and credible plan to achieve that, he said. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link. To see the Climate Policy Program's map of which states have Climate Action Plans completed or in the works, please click here.

Gingrich's Solutions Beat Gore's Doom Rhetoric

Articles — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:21:00 -0400

Al Gore and Newt Gingrich are very different figures, but they are both going through a similar process: They are becoming elder statesmen.

And how does one become an elder statesman, anyway? It’s an easy, two-step process: First, have something important to say and be tireless in saying it. Second, stop running for president, because then people will let their guard down; they will listen to the substance of your message, not worry about tracking your upward political mobility.

Oh, and a third thing: Optimism sells better than pessimism. So while the former Democratic vice president is getting most of the glory,… more

Terry Tamminen in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Green Initatives

Communications — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:02:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Energy experts with Glendale-based Johnson Controls Inc. are busy crafting their first proposal aimed at winning a piece of an ambitious $5 billion plan to reduce global warming by retrofitting energy-wasting buildings in 16 of the world's largest cities.

Step one: Houston, one of the country's most polluted cities, where more than 270 buildings could see upgrades.

Meeting in Milwaukee last week, managers and experts from Johnson Controls offices around the country scoured slides of aging boilers and control systems in buildings they had toured in Houston, including fire stations, libraries and the downtown convention center, where the city once housed 5,000 people who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Johnson Controls plans to show how energy use in the buildings can be cut 30% to 50%....

"The message to businesses about global warming is 'Jump in, the water's fine.' This is not something anyone has to be afraid of," said Terry Tamminen, former climate adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "When it comes to global warming, what we're asking people to do is to put money in their pockets - to pick $100 bills up off the ground."

Energy efficiency and renewable energy are creating jobs for entrepreneurs who have left other work to become home energy-efficiency consultants and solar panel installers...

Terry Tamminen is Director of New America's Climate Policy Program. For the complete article, please visit JSonline.com.

Start-Up U

Articles — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:59:00 -0400

Venture capitalists are not known to haunt Sproul Plaza, with its drummers and dreamers, but last spring Silicon Valley’s financiers showed up in force. On March 21 they filed across the flagstones and into the Student Union auditorium to hear such scintillating discussions as “Carbon Regulation and the Impact on Innovation,” and “Energy Storage: Hydrogen, Batteries, and Beyond.” The draw was not the topics, but rather the 400 people sitting in the folding chairs. They encompassed the entire energy universe of California -- researchers in architecture, chemistry, biology, engineering, and economics from Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; influential state… more

Wild is the Wind

Articles — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:29:00 -0400

The better science gets at describing climate change with computer models and probabilities, the harder it is for the rest of us to understand. Recently I’ve resorted to an admittedly lazy mixture of superstition and branding: every big hurricane, every freak April snowstorm, every early-blooming tulip is mentally tagged: "Brought to you by global warming." But of course, this is more "mediarology" than meteorology, to borrow a term from one of the scientists Chris Mooney interviews in his new book, Storm Warning: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.

After Hurricane Katrina thrashed his mother’s New Orleans house, Mooney began… more

Oil & Water, Hazard & Cure

Articles — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 12:11:00 -0400

Almost every American can tell you about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This spill is a national yardstick for environmental catastrophe and rightly so: oil covered so much of the Alaskan coast that, had it taken place further south, it would have covered every inch of beach between Oregon and Mexico. Although Exxon claims it spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound’s pristine waters, the true number is much larger.

But as big a disaster as the Valdez was, it is dwarfed by the world’s largest spills and the accumulation of the thousands of smaller oil… more

Advice on Warming: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

Articles — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:37:00 -0400

It was a legal knockout. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court told President Bush that he can no longer hide behind the federal Clean Air Act in pleading that he is powerless to fight global warming. The Court rebuked the President and sided with a dozen states that had sued the federal government for the right to slow the pollution that is warming the earth.

The lawyers may still be sorting through the historic case’s legal implications, but the political message on global warming is loud and clear: To steal a line from the great provocateur Thomas Paine, it… more