On the eve of a G8 summit focused on climate change, Nick Davies reveals major flaws in the global system designed to reduce emissions

The Guardian, Nick Davies, June 2

In autumn 2005, three journalists working for the environmental group the Centre for Science and Environment decided to investigate some of the Indian projects which were trying to break into the lucrative new business of carbon trading.

They started looking at four schemes in Andhra Pradesh which were trying to convert biomass - dead plants, animal dung - into fuel. They studied the formal reports which the schemes had commissioned from a UK company, Ernst and Young, to satisfy the demanding requirements of the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. And they noticed a very odd thing.

Each of the four Ernst and Young reports had had to consult people near the proposed schemes to ensure that there was no risk to the local economy or environment. One report quoted three different community leaders, each expressing enthusiastic approval for the project and concluded: "Poor farmers are getting reasonable monitory gains for harvesting the available biomass and supplying it to project activity."

What was odd that with two of the other schemes, each many miles from the other, Ernst and Young quoted three sources who had the same job descriptions, the same opinions, summarised in precisely the same words which even included the same spelling mistakes (Secretry, monitory). In the fourth case, the wording was slightly different, but the opinions were the same, and it too concluded that "poor farmers are getting reasonable monitory gains etc."

The three journalists wrote up their conclusions in the group's magazine, Down to Earth, and made it clear that they were accusing Ernst and Young of simply cutting and pasting the same material into four supposedly separate and independent reports. Ernst and Young said there was nothing wrong: the local people in all four places happened to have said very similar things in response to a standard set of questions. But the environmental journalists were concerned enough to write to the executive board of the Clean Development Mechanism, offering further information. The CDM board never even acknowledged their letter.

[...]

The carbon market's leading analysts, Point Carbon, recently calculated that this scheme handed out 170m too many EUAs. In the early days, nobody realised quite how badly the commission had miscalculated, and so the price of the EUAs was quite high, at up to €30 a tonne. But individual companies, particularly energy companies, rapidly saw they had millions of tonnes of EUAs that they didn't need, and so they sold their surplus, making huge profits. A 2005 report by IPA Energy Consulting found that the six UK electricity generators stood to earn some £800m in each of the three years of the scheme.

A separate report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that UK oil companies were also poised to make a lot of free money: £10.2m for Esso; £17.9m for BP; and £20.7m for Shell. And behind this profiteering, the environmental reality was that these major producers of carbon emissions were under no pressure from the scheme to cut emissions.

A change in the moral climate?

Interview by James Randerson, The Guardian, June 2

Sir David Attenborough said yesterday that he detected signs of a "moral change" in the public's attitude to global warming. He accepted that some people may find his views "optimistic" or "naive", but he said that historical examples like the change in attitudes to slavery 200 years ago showed that society could undergo rapid and profound moral shifts.

"When you started it was perfectly acceptable that you should own slaves and treat human beings in that way, and within a quarter of a century it was intolerable," he said.

The environmentalist and veteran broadcaster said: "I am perfectly persuaded that the issue about global warming is a real one and we are headed for a great worsening of the conditions on this planet for life of all kinds. I have no doubt whatsoever of the cause, which is the byproducts of humanity's activities, and therefore we should be curbing them."

But it would be very difficult to impose limits on people's actions, such as their freedom to fly. "It is pie in the sky to say that everybody has got to stop doing everything. That's why the emphasis is on waste," he said, "Me of all people. I have spent my life swanning around the world on aeroplanes. How could I suddenly turn around and say it is wrong? What I'm saying is that we shouldn't be doing it for no good reason."

A rise of 1 degree Celsius could be enough to trigger 'dangerous' warming, scientists warn.

The Christian Science Monitor, By Peter N. Spotts, June 2

Dangerous climate change has not yet arrived, but the tipping point may not be far off. And it may be reached with a smaller temperature rise than recent studies suggest.

Those are among the conclusions from an international team of climate scientists in a study this month, which they say bolsters the case for an alternative strategy to combat climate change. The main idea: focus intensely on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions other than carbon dioxide in the short term, giving the world a little leeway in dealing with the trickier issue of CO2.

Most climate scientists point to rising carbon-dioxide levels from burning coal, oil, and gas as the main driver behind global warming. But the international team says that fighting ozone, soot, and other pollutants, which also can warm the atmosphere, could allow CO2 levels to rise a little higher without reaching the tipping point.

"This is good news," notes Gavin Schmidt, a member of the research team and a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), in an e-mail. "There is scope for effective action, even though it will fall short of stopping human-caused climate change completely."

Yet this more comprehensive approach to curbing emissions is unlikely to remain an option for too long, according to James Hansen, a climate scientist also at GISS and lead author of the study. If global CO2 emissions continue on their current "business as usual" path for another 10 years, he notes, "it becomes impractical to achieve the alternative scenario." The business-as-usual approach allows too many fossil-fuel intensive power plants and factories to be built – investments designed to last for decades, he adds.

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The notion of "dangerous" climate change is somewhat subjective, the team acknowledges. But looking back at climate patterns since the last warm spell – between ice ages more than 75,000 years ago – the researchers say patterns in the climate's actual behavior suggest that a change in global average temperatures higher than 1 degree Celsius above the level in 2000 would begin to push the climate into the "dangerous" category. That category involves changes, such as sea-level rise, that are outside the local range of experience, the study says.

From the Press Release cited above

The authors use the model for climate simulations of the 21st century using both "business-as-usual" growth of greenhouse gas emissions and an "alternative scenario" in which emissions decrease slowly in the next few decades and then rapidly to achieve stabilization of atmospheric CO2 amount by the end of the century. Climate changes are so large with "business-as-usual", with additional global warming of 2-3°C (3.6-5.4°F) that Hansen concludes "'business-as-usual' would be a guarantee of global and regional disasters."

However, the study finds much less severe climate change — one-quarter to one-third that of the "business-as-usual" scenario — when greenhouse gas emissions follow the alternative scenario. "Climate effects may still be substantial in the 'alternative scenario', but there is a better chance to adapt to the changes and find other ways to further reduce the climate change," said Sato.

While the researchers say it is still possible to achieve the "alternative scenario", they note that significant actions will be required to do so. Emissions must begin to slow soon. "With another decade of 'business-as-usual' it becomes impractical to achieve the 'alternative scenario' because of the energy infrastructure that would be in place," says Hansen.

Abstract.

Full PDF (6 MB).