The Climate in Copenhagen
December 8th, 2009
The United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark is underway. Joining host Mike Tidwell to discuss what’s occurring during the official meeting is author and climate activist Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org. And from the floor of the Copenhagen talks themselves is Jennifer Morgan, the director of the World Resources Institute’s Climate and Energy Program.
Peter Barnes joins us to discuss his views of the current status of climate action. Peter is is with the social justice group On the Commons based in San Francisco. He’s also the author of the book Who Owns the Sky? and a supporter of a cap and dividend way of combating climate change.
Then, we get a view of what’s occurring outside the official U.N. Climate meeting from George Marshall, the founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network from Wales, UK and from the Copenhagen meeting itself is Jihan Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Image from © Greenpeace / Christian Åslund all rights reserved
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December 11th, 2009 at 11:45 am
You said on this show that Hansen’s widely heard view is that Copenhagen should fail rather than create an agreement that doesn’t get us heading toward 350 ppm. It isn’t.
Hansen, as published in his NYTimes op-ed, and in interviews such as the one he gave to The Guardian, is saying something else. He isn’t mentioning his view that the present target assumed by most at Copenhagen to be what civilization should be aiming for, i.e. 450 ppm, is a “recipe for global disaster”. What he is doing is pushing carbon tax and dividend, saying if the Copenhagen negotiators choose cap and trade it will be better if there is no agreement.
Its preposterous. The guy who has more stature to argue that 350 ppm is what we should aim for, when he steps up to the plate in the biggest spotlight there has ever been for the climate issue, has something better to do than take this opportunity to so much as mention that the target all these other people call the borderline between safe and “dangerous” climate change is actually not supported by the science.
Krugman cut up Hansen’s arguments about cap and trade in a few sentences. That’s what a liberal Nobel winning economist thinks of our best climatologist’s understanding of economics.
Hansen’s case is so weak he is pissing away his voice. As he makes weak arguments about his choice of policy, more people will be led to question how strong his arguments can be on climate science.
Its one thing to advocate policy you believe in or prefer, and quite another to go so far as to call for destroying the best chance likely to come up for years to get domestic and international commitment to do something, because you don’t like the method others support to get it done.
Nothing is better than something?
That’s what Hansen wants us to believe. He’d rather have nothing, than binding international action which includes the US for the first time, aimed at a target which can be strengthened at any time, because he doesn’t like cap and trade.
Read “Saving Kyoto” by Chilchinisky. She wrote the cap and trade section of the Kyoto agreement, during the last two days, after Gore and Clinton prevailed against the EU and got them to drop their preferred idea of carbon taxes. You may prefer the idea of carbon taxes, but at least understand that there are reasons that people supporting cap and trade have that aren’t touched by the arguments Hansen, and you, are making.
February 12th, 2010 at 4:13 am
I digged this for more news from you. thanks, Caroline