Did Obama Deserve the Nobel for Climate Change?
October 13th, 2009
US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in a surprise move by the Norwegian prize committee. In part they say they gave Mr. Obama the prize for his work on climate change. Host Mike Tidwell discusses the promise and the actions of the president with Joe Romm, the editor of the blog ClimateProgress.
Copenhagen, Denmark is the greenest city in the world, even though a large portion of its electricity comes from coal. We talk about how to green American cities with Peter Garforth. He advises major American cities on how to be more competitive and reduce their energy use.
Then, an encore of our interview with Professor Jessica Hellmann of the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indianan on her work studying forced migration – when conservation biologists move plants and animals to new locations to protect them from extinction due to climate change.
Image used with permission by Manlio K via Flickr.
If you’d like to hear this edition of Earthbeat – please send us an e-mail
Music in this edition of Earthbeat is El Zaffa from the album Planet Passion by Ancient Future. Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.
Earthbeat is now airing on over 60 public radio stations and expanding to TV with our partner 
October 17th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
If you read the Nobel Committee’s citation for President Obama
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html
you can see what they awarded it for.
The first sentence states, the award is for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The second sentence emphasizes what must be taken as their greatest concern: “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
When I first learned about climate change in 1988 at the Toronto Changing Atmosphere conference, I noted that delegates signed off saying climate change was a threat that could only be exceeded by global nuclear war. Things haven’t changed.
Next, they state they like Obama’s support for multilateral diplomacy as opposed to unilateral US action. Next its they like Obama’s preference for dialog, rather than war. Then they reemphasize they love his vision of a world free from nuclear weapons.
Only then do they note that “thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”
Maybe if you play committee’s words backwards while standing upside down in a wind tunnel the real meaning would come out….. and we’d all agree with Romm that the Committee actually gave the award based on Obama’s stance on climate change.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Re: avoiding catastrophe….
Quoting from the show:
Tidwell: (referring to what Romm has written in the past) “you’ve written… the Waxman-Markey bill as passed might have like a 15 or 20% chance of avoiding climate catastrophe. Which obviously means, this bill as it is is really dangerous. We need to improve it in the future….
Romm: “Let me clarify… I actually think its more like 1 in 3….”
Can we drop the BS?
I went back to a previous Earthbeat show featuring a Romm interview, i.e. Wax On Wax Off, and fished out another view of the bill, this time from the same guy, Romm, only before he snorted whatever it was that got him believing that whatever could come out of the US Congress in the current political environment could have any odds at all of avoiding “climate catastrophe”:
Romm: “Those of us who are climate activists, climate science activists, understand that this bill is not going to solve the problem by itself. A, we’ve got to get other countries on board, and B, over time, this bill is going to have to be strengthened…. (long discussion)
(Hansen’s name comes up.)
Look, Hansen…. [my note: mention Hansen, and what you are talking about in this context is what the level of CO2 at stabilization should be] this bill’s not going to solve the global warming problem. Its not going to get us to stabilizing at 2 degrees C.
[my note: Hansen testified last year in Congress saying
"the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation".
So Romm is clearly stating that the bill is not aimed even at achieving the no longer accepted goal of 2 degrees C, i.e. unless the other nations of the world agree to give the US a free pass, it can't reduce US emissions consistent with a goal of the US achieving an international agreement that will keep CO2 levels below 450 ppm, or 2 degrees C. Never mind the increasingly awareness that 45o never should have been adopted, that 350 ppm or less is required. ]
More from Romm: “people should understand: there is no other game in town. I think the 2030, and the 2050 targets are a very big deal. Its 42% reduction, and then an 83% reduction. And that essentially means we’re going carbon free, over the next four decades. We’re going to – this bill commits the United States to transform the entire energy system of the country, in three or four decades. For those of us who think that isn’t enough to save the climate, oh, we curse the bill.
Tidwell: “But its true. Its not enough to save the climate”
Romm: “…and I’ve said so on my blog…”
So why come up with this there is a “1 in 3″ chance of avoiding climate catastrophe with this bill, therefore I support it, line? What is this “essentially carbon free”?
Why not just stay with the this is a step, it is so far from being enough our descendants will conclude we were suicidal, but it is the best that the current political makeup of Washington and the US will allow and leave it at that? Why switch on the overblowers and add to the confusion, when as Copenhagen looms the entire world is paying more attention?
I did a quick and rough calculation on what an 83% reduction from today’s US levels of CO2 emissions means. Just to be clear.
There are roughly 18.7 GT of CO2 emitted in the US today due to energy use. 83% reductions applied to that 18.7 GT gives 3.74 GT by 2050.
There will be 420 million Americans in 2050, the Census Bureau tells us. You take the 3.74 GT and divide by that population, i.e. 420 million. It means each American will be emitting 2.2 tonnes of CO2, if this bill succeeds, in 2050.
There will be 9.1 billion people on Earth at that point, according to the U.N. Multiply that 9.1 billion by 2.2 tonnes. This may be a hard point to grasp. India keeps bringing it up, and US commentators keep on not hearing it. The people of the rest of the world are going to insist on their per capita right to a portion of whatever capacity the planet has to absorb wastes of all types.
The result: 20 GT of global emissions in 2050.
What does 20 GT of global emissions in 2050 mean? There are 28.4 GT of emissions now. The what passes for “scientific advice” in some circles, such as those where they say the limit beyond which is catastrophe is 2 degrees or 450 ppm, states that what must be aimed for, globally, by 2050 is a 50% reduction in the emissions of today. So if you only achieve a 30% global reduction by then, you haven’t made it. You haven’t avoided “climate catastrophe”.
The bill isn’t even aiming to for a level that the relevant experts believe will commit the planet to a global disaster, let alone a level that could possibly have any chance at all of avoiding a climate catastrophe.
October 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
His courage and comitment on greenhouse reduction and his techinical of bringing people together is the only source of giving him this award.America no is more safe than one year ago.The muslim slowly loves american now.No more kidnapping for us citizens.But people they do not realize that.Obama has accomplish ana invisible issue between US and muslim world.It is hard to to do that.But he did and continue to do that.Thanks obama for making this world more saver.