Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

Today in New York, Secretary Hillary Clinton announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves at the Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by her husband Bill Clinton.  As well as the launch being an interesting bit of Clinton family cross branding, it could be an important new initiative that could improve the health of many poor people in the developing world - and help to reduce the threats of climate change in South Asia.  As well as providing $50 million in US Government money for the project, the project boast support from across the public and private sectors.

A Cookstove in Mali

Cookstoves are the target for this project because of their danger and their ubiquity.  The alliance estimates that 3 billion people rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires for their daily cooking.  These cookstoves are harmful to the health of the people doing the cooking, because of the 'black carbon' that they emit.  Black carbon can be defined as  fuel that has not been completely combusted.  It is a common byproduct from burning wood, as well as dirtier fuels like kerosene or low-quality diesel.  You can literally see black carbon: it is the black smoke that comes out of dirty stoves or dirty vehicles.  The project aims to replace dirty stoves with clean efficient cookstoves (like the one pictured below) in 100 million households by 2020.

Reducing black carbon is essential for human health.  Then that black smoke gets in your lungs it can cause asthma, lung damage, and premature death.  The Alliance says that it causes 1.9 million deaths annually, and women and young children are often the most affected.  

Clean-burning Stove

Reducing black carbon is also a key tool for mitigating climate change.  Though black carbon does not contribute to the traditional greenhouse effect - unlike Carbon Dioxide it does not go in the upper atmosphere -- it is extremely important for local and regional warming.  Essentially, the black color of the soot can increase the heat level.  When it lands on snow or ice, the darker color will absorb more heat and reduce the amount of glaciers or snowpack.  This is very important in the Himalayas, because one of the biggest areas of cookstove usage is in the Indian Subcontinent.  More detail can be found in this testimony to Congress by VS Ramanathan, a leading scholar on its effects.

One of the great things about reducing black carbon is that it has immediate effects: when it rains, the carbon is literally washed out of the sky, so this program can have big effects on climate in the short term.

Take a look at their website here: http://cleancookstoves.org/.  It looks like it just went live today.

Copenhagen - First assesment

The meeting has concluded in Copenhagen.  On first glance at the 'accord' that summit 'took note of' it looks to be an agreement that is actually workable. 

It sounds as though the deal was unacceptable to the G-77, the UN group of least developed countries which was being led at the negotiations by Sudan. For that reason, the UN was not in full agreement.  The G77 revolt was being pushed forward by leaders like Chavez from Venezuela and Mugabe from Zimbabwe

It seems to me that having an agreement that all the developed countries, plus the major developing countires can come together on is far more important than having agreement that every nation in the UN.  Honestly, it is not that important to have the entire world on board.  If an agreement includes all of th G20, then 80% of the world's emissions are covered.  Why should we bow to pressure from Mugabe and Chavez?  They were only orchestrating a shakedown of the US and Europe anyway, and their nation's emissions are not significant enough to warrent their ability to block. 

There seems to be little agreement on when to come back to Copenhagen for a meeting that would seal a deal.  The Copenhagen Accord will the end of the flawed UN process. But, it may also mark the beginning of a process that will actually work to reduce emissions and prevent dangerous global warming. 

Opinions about Climate

The Op-Eds are coming fast and furious now that the Copenhagen conference has begun.  I wanted to quickly post links to a couple of important and noteworthy ones.

Tom Friedman - "Going Cheney on Climate"
Tom Friedman gives his usual clear-eyed perspective on why its in our national interest to act on climate change.  He uses the risk-aversion argument of the 'precautionary principle' (which I've said as a reason to act on climate change), as the best argument.  He then uses Dick Cheney's arguments about weapons of mass destruction to make the case that conservatives should also feel that way.  Here, I think Friedman is dead right: if the skeptics are anything less than 100% sure that climate change is not a danger and is not man made, then we still have a duty to act.  Even a 5% chance that abrupt and disruptive climate change was coming should be enough reason to act. 

Mikhail Gorbachev - "We Have a Real Emergency"
Gorbachev gives his view in the Herald Tribune that fixing climate change will go a long way towards fixing many of the problems the world faces today.  We focus too much on the short-term costs, without thinking at all about the long term threats of inaction.  Gorbachev is one of the last real statesmen of our times, and its good to see him involved. 

Sarah Palin - "Copenhagen's Political Science"
Sarah Palin decries the politicization of science by taking a political view of the science.  I'm not going to go into this very much, plenty of other people have already had a go. The number of comments (2310 when I last checked) shows that the Washington Post knows who drives controversy and internet views.  One thing to say, Ms. Palin should sit down with Senator Murkowski to talk about climate change: I think she would learn a great deal from the Ranking Member of the Senate Energy Committee. 

Will Obama Attend Copenhagen?

One of the big contentions going into December's Copenhagen meeting is how many heads of state will attend. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to attend, in keeping with the priority level that his government has given to the issue.

Now, the Times of London is reporting that Lord Stern, who wrote the Stern Report in 2006, is saying that Obama must attend the meeting in Copenhagen. This article is the latest in a series of 'will he - won't he' articles that seems to have obsessed the Times and other British Papers.

The papers have probably taken their lead from British politicians: earlier this month, Ed Miliband, the British Energy and Climate Change Secretary, called on Obama to "save" the summit.

Examples of this trend include an October 20 article reporting that Obama "'may not attend" the summit, according to Todd Stern, the State Departments special envoy on climate change. This was followed by a report on October 24, also in the Times that Obama would "almost certainly" not go to Copenhagen, citing 'an official close to the Administration'. Today, the Times is reporting that an Administration spokesman insisted that “no decision has been made” about the trip. I'm quite sure that no American newspaper has been following this so closely.

Obama will be in Oslo on December 10 to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Personally, I think it would be a big snub to be so close, and skip Copenhagen. However, one man cannot bridge the unbridgable divides at the UN negotiations. Instead of focusing entirely on Copenhagen, the British press should be looking to the bilateral arrangements that the Obama administration is quietly lining up. If the upcoming meetings with Chinese Premier Hu Jintao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh end with robust climate agreements, then we can begin to talk about success in Copenhagen.

Link for UN's Webcast

The UN webcast of the assembly's consideration of the resolution regarding climate change's security implications can be found here. It started at 10:15 AM, eastern time.

The General Assembly's consideration of this resolution is important because it recognizes that

Because it was brought by the Pacific Small Islands Development States, specifically the island of Nauru, this debate will focus on questions of soveriegnty and refugees from states that could lose their territory to rising seas. The resolution that will be passed is a compromise that will request a report from the UN Secretary General, not request that the issue be reported to the UN Security Council.

UPDATE: The Representative of Nauru, in introducing the resolution said that her nation is "In danger of ceasing to be a state." Because of climate change, she said, "The survival of whole populations and their lands" is at risk. Although its not contained in the resolution, she said that the Security Council has the responsibility to consider the security effects of climate change.

UN General Assembly to Consider Resolution on Climate Change and Security

Tomorrow (June 3), the UN General Assembly will take up a resolution on the security implications of climate change, titled "Climate change and its possible security implications". This resolution notes the UN Security Council debate in 2007, led by Great Britain, about the security implications of a warming climate. It goes on to say that the Assembly is "deeply concerned" that climate change, particularly sea level rise, could have security implictions. The resolution -- as most things debated in the UN -- offers non-binding responses, but it does request a report from the Secretary-General about the security implications of climate change.

About the resolution, an article in last week's New York Times says:

The hard-fought resolution, brought by 12 Pacific island states, says that climate change warrants greater attention from the United Nations as a possible source of upheaval worldwide and calls for more intense efforts to combat it.

The resolution was originally brought by small island states, in order to ask the UN Security Council to address the issues of soveriegnty and migration if their land is lost to rising seas. The issue of bringing it to the Security Council was too controversial for some members, and drew opposition. Now that it only asks for a report, it is likely to be accepted by the full Assembly tomorrow.

Even though its a non-binding resolution, actions like this are extremely important in the debate about climate change. Sometimes, government leaders get stuck in thinking about cliamte change in purely cost-benefit terms. Instead, we should look at the potential long-term security effects of a warming climate, then determine the best course of action.