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Branson Pledges Billions to Fight Global Warming
Andrew C. Revkin, NY Times
Sir Richard Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, said today that all of his profits from his five airlines and train company, projected to be $3 billion through the next 10 years, would be invested in developing energy sources that do not contribute to global warming.
He announced the plan on the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, a three-day meeting in Manhattan that amounts to a competitive festival of philanthropy run by former President Bill Clinton.
The money, he said, would be invested in a host of enterprises, including existing businesses within his Virgin Group of 200 companies, that are seeking ways to save energy or produce fuels, including aviation fuel, not derived from coal and oil.
When burned, coal, oil and other fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping greenhouse gas linked by scientists to rising temperatures.
“Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents,” Mr. Branson said. “It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.”
Mr. Branson said the idea had grown out of a visit to his London home a few months ago by former Vice President Al Gore, who is on a prolonged worldwide speaking tour to promote “An Inconvenient Truth,” his documentary and book about global warming.
“You are in a position maybe to make a difference,” Mr. Branson said Mr. Gore had told him. “If you can make a giant step forward other people will follow.”
(21 Sep 2006)
At Gristmill, Kif Scheuer points out that “the Bush plan asks for $300 million for FY2007 – that’s the same amount that Branson is committing per year for 10 years.” (See next two stories.) -BA
White House Outlines Global Warming Fight
Technology and Voluntary Cutbacks Urged
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
The Bush administration yesterday laid out a long-term “strategic plan” for using technology to curb the impact of global warming, reiterating its position that basic scientific research and voluntary actions can curb greenhouse gases linked to climate change.
Addressing complaints by environmentalists and some scientists that Bush has not done enough to cut the nation’s emissions of such gases, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said the 244-page “Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan” promotes initiatives such as sequestering carbon dioxide before it enters the atmosphere and promoting hydrogen-powered cars.
…”It’s good as far as it goes, but it needs to go a lot further,” House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) said in an interview after the hearing. “It’s good to look ahead, but people expect something immediate, as well as futuristic.”
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who has scheduled a hearing today on climate change research, said the administration failed to spell out how future research will be funded.
“They address the need for research but give a very convoluted answer as to how that’s going to occur,” Davis said in an interview. “What we’re asking is, is this sufficient? You’ve got to have some teeth and focus.”
In the document, the administration said it spends $3 billion a year on the research.
But Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, said the country would have to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars a year” to move away from a carbon-dependent economy. He added that the government would have to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, either through a tax or cap-and-trade system, to create incentives to develop and implement cleaner technologies.
(21 Sep 2006)
DOE Releases Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
Plan Outlines Strategies for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Development and Deployment of Advanced Technologies
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WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released the Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) Strategic Plan, which details measures to accelerate the development and reduce the cost of new and advanced technologies that avoid, reduce, or capture and store greenhouse gas emissions. CCTP is the technology component of a comprehensive U.S. strategy introduced by President Bush in 2002 to combat climate change that include measures to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions through voluntary, incentive-based, and mandatory partnerships, advance climate change science, spur clean energy technology development and deployment, and promote international collaboration.
“This Plan was inspired by the President’s vision to harness America’s strengths in innovation and technology to transform energy production and use in ways that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long term,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. “This Strategic Plan is unprecedented in its scope and scale and breaks new ground with its visionary 100-year planning horizon, global perspective, multilateral research collaborations, and public private partnerships.”
(20 Sep 2006)
Hard to gauge the significance of Bush’s new plan – is it the vaunted U-Turn? Or just window dresssing? The complete report is online. -BA
PM won’t be moved by US climate policy
AAP, The Age
Australia will make its own path on climate change and would not automatically follow the US in a possible policy U-turn, Prime Minister John Howard says.
Mr Howard said he had seen reports that US President George W Bush was about to dramatically change his country’s position on global warming.
Asked if a US change of policy would affect him, Mr Howard said Australia made up its own mind.
(19 Sep 2006)
Hot issue in state race: global warming
Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian
Governor – Ted Kulongoski and Ron Saxton disagree over renewable energy and auto emission standards
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Oregon’s two major candidates for governor sound as if they are on opposite sides of the planet when they talk about global warming.
Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who joined in a teleconference on ocean health earlier this week with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, likes to boast that he and his fellow Pacific Coast governors are taking the lead in fighting global warming at the state level.
Republican challenger Ron Saxton says this is an issue best left to the federal government and to international negotiations.
“To be really blunt with you,” Saxton told a business group last week, “I’m not running for governor to deal with global warming.”
Four years ago, global warming was emerging as an issue nationally and certainly was not a topic among candidates for governor. But this year, global warming is becoming the most combustible environmental issue in the governor’s race — eclipsing the usual knock-down fights over wilderness, endangered species and timber policy.
(20 Sep 2006)
California: two new bills on warming
Mark Martin, SF Chronicle
Sacramento — After cutting a deal with Democrats on historic legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces decisions this month on two other bills that could dramatically reduce pollution from the auto and energy industries — the state’s two largest contributors to global warming.
With much less fanfare than for the global warming bill, which Schwarzenegger is expected to sign next Wednesday, Democratic majorities in the state Senate and Assembly approved legislation that would require half of the cars sold in the state to run on alternative fuels by 2020 and another bill that would prohibit California utilities from buying electricity generated by high-polluting power plants in other states.
Lawmakers describe the bills as mandating specific changes that will be needed to meet the governor’s overall goal of reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020. Opponents of the legislation say the bills are impractical, will cost Californians money and illustrate how profoundly the reductions could affect the economy.
(21 Sep 2006)
Global Warming Subject for Directors at Big Companies
Claudia H. Deutsch, NY Times
If corporate directors really understood the implications of global warming, would they steer their companies toward preventing it?
Ceres, a coalition of environmentalists and investors; Yale University; and Marsh, the risk and insurance services unit of Marsh & McLennan , insist the answer is yes. And this winter, they will hold what they call sustainable governance forums to give directors an overview of the financial, legal, business and investor implications of climate change.
“Climate change is no longer the purview of scientists only,’’ said James Gustave Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. “The widespread ramifications of unchecked climate change require that more leaders in our society understand its implications.’’
Actually, many corporate executives appear to be well aware of the link between greenhouse gases and climate change.
(21 Sep 2006)
The threat is from those who accept climate change, not those who deny it
George Monbiot, The Guardian
If the biosphere is ruined it will be done by people who know that emissions must be cut – but refuse to alter the way they live
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You have to pinch yourself. Until now the Sun has denounced environmentalists as “loonies” and “eco beards”. Last week it published “photographic proof that climate change is real”. In a page that could have come straight from a Greenpeace pamphlet, it laid down 10 “rules” for its readers to follow: “Use public transport when possible; use energy-saving lightbulbs; turn off electric gadgets at the wall; do not use a tumble dryer … “
Two weeks ago the Economist also recanted. In the past it has asserted that “Mr Bush was right to reject the prohibitively expensive Kyoto pact”. It co-published the Copenhagen Consensus papers, which put climate change at the bottom of the list of global priorities. Now, in a special issue devoted to scaring the living daylights out of its readers, it maintains that “the slice of global output that would have to be spent to control emissions is probably … below 1%”. It calls for carbon taxes and an ambitious programme of government spending.
Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial. But I’m not celebrating yet. The danger is not that we will stop talking about climate change, or recognising that it presents an existential threat to humankind. The danger is that we will talk ourselves to kingdom come.
If the biosphere is wrecked, it will not be done by those who couldn’t give a damn about it, as they now belong to a diminishing minority. It will be destroyed by nice, well-meaning, cosmopolitan people who accept the case for cutting emissions, but who won’t change by one iota the way they live.
(21 Sep 2006)
Journals feel pressure to adopt disclosure rules
Paul D. Thacker, Envrionmental Science and Technology
After an inquiry by ES&T, three leading science societies say they will now examine conflict-of-interest policies.
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As environmental journals publish more controversial papers on topics such as human health and global warming, they are beginning to face a serious issue that medical journals have long been dealing with-conflict of interest. Although disclosure policies are standard in the medical community, publishers of environmental research have been slow to adopt such guidelines.
…Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1995 found evidence for a “discernible human influence on global climate,” high-profile celebrity skeptics and think-tank activists have kept a decade-long debate spinning in the press. Numerous reports have revealed that these people and their institutions receive money from the oil and gas industry, but little evidence of their financial dealings is revealed in the peer-reviewed literature.
A case in point is Pat Michaels, a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and the resident climate-change expert at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank that receives money from ExxonMobil.
Last July, Michaels made headlines across the U.S. when ABC News and the Associated Press reported that Colorado-based Intermountain Rural Electric Assoc. (IREA) had paid Michaels more than $100,000. IREA is heavily invested in coal-burning power plants.
“We here at IREA believe that it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists and bring a balance to the discussion,” wrote Stanley Lewandowski, Jr., the group’s general manager, in a July letter to other utilities.
While taking money from special interests, Michaels was also criticizing studies that linked climate change to more intense hurricanes. In May, he published a study in Geophysical Research Letters. And in December, he published a comment [72KB PDF] in the Journal of Climate with Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center and Chip Knappenberger of New Hope Environmental Services. Neither article listed Michaels’ corporate sponsorship.
“There’s a financial conflict, and it should be disclosed,” says Don Kennedy, editor of the journal Science.
Penn State professor of meteorology Michael Mann says that journals outside the medical field fail to recognize the hazards of researchers compromised by corporate funding. “But the threat is just as real, and I believe that journals in other areas of science will become increasingly sensitive to the threats posed by conflicts of interest,” he says.
But some environmental scientists contacted by ES&T seemed less certain than their colleagues in the medical community about the importance of disclosure and whether corporate funding skews results.
(20 Sep 2006)
Yet another article that points out the dangers of research financed by special interests – especially if that financing is not disclosed. Energy issues in particular are bedeviled by this problem. -BA
