Welcome to Road to Copenhagen
Follow along with 3p as we track the news and developments leading up to, and during, the COP15 Climate Conference taking place in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Follow along with 3p as we track the news and developments leading up to, and during, the COP15 Climate Conference taking place in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Copenhagen: A Week Is an Eternity and I’ve Been Here Forever
Posted by Tom Schueneman December 14th, 2009 
4 Comments
So you think you’re burned out on COP15…
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m tired. I’m tired of the posturing, of the chanting, of the myriad ways the same issues can be endlessly bandied about. Rich vs. poor, north vs. south, 1.5 degrees vs. 2 degrees, who pays, who’s responsible, talk of “real deals,” evasive answers from Yvo, and the gauntlet of NGOs pushing the same piece of paper in my face they did yesterday (as of several days ago, if an organization doesn’t have information I can read online, they’ve lost me).
We’re all fired up. We’re all full of passion. We all want to change the world (well not everyone). But at the end of the day I wonder what all this will mean when we look back in ten years time, or twenty.
Bright Green Comes to Copenhagen
Posted by 3p Guest Author December 14th, 2009 1 Comment
By Lee Barken, IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP
A royal panel (left to right): Royal Prince Haakon of Norway, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark
Up the road from the COP15 Climate Conference and just outside of downtown Copenhagen, 170 exhibitors gathered this weekend for the 2-day Bright Green conference, to demonstrate that climate change is both a dangerous peril and a pathway to profits. Bright Green, a showcase organized by the Confederation of Danish Industry, aims to show that the emission reductions currently being negotiated at COP15 will require a myriad of new industry solutions.
Judging by the turnout, it would appear that industry is more then ready to step up to the challenge and that the 10,000 attendees were not deterred by silent protest messages, such as “our climate is not your business” and “greenwashing,”, etched in chalk on adjacent sidewalks and walls leading to the Copenhagen Forum Center.
Inside the building, a maze of trade show booths greeted the curious and energetic crowd. The eclectic mix of exhibitors included alternative energy companies, consultants, solution providers, product manufacturers and trade delegations from countries such as Canada, Finland, Denmark, France and the United States.
If You’re Feeling the COP15 Burnout, This Is the Satire for You
Posted by Jen Boynton December 13th, 2009 2 Comments
COP15 Activists at Work
Don’t get me wrong, I am watching as eagerly as the rest of you. I’m thrilled that COP15 has garnered as much media attention as it has. It’s amazing. I don’t think that the consciousness of the world has ever been so fixated on a single environmental issue in my lifetime. It’s everything that I could hope for. But, I’ve been known to skim and article or two.
Who can blame me? There’s a ton of coverage, and not really much happening. David Roberts over at Grist put it best when discussing the non issue of the leaked Danish text:
Consider: Copenhagen maxed out on journalist registrations, at 5,000. (Supposedly there were more than 10,000 waiting in line after that.) The place is choked with journalists, not to mention folks from think tanks and NGOs who are supposed to be blogging. There are thousands of people crammed in a small area, all under instructions to update frequently with fresh news, all exhausted and stressed out, all hungry for something to write about.
On the flip side, virtually nothing of significance to an international agreement will be decided before the final days, perhaps the final hours, of the talks.
What are all those journalists going to write about?…. Most of all, they’ll report the hell out of it every time any representative of any government says anything about anything. Every bit of pre-positioning gossip and bluster will be blown up to billboard size. There is, in short, immense incentive to exaggerate the significance of every piece of “news.”
If you’re feeling the burn, this 2 minute bit of satire from NPR will be music to your ears.
“Leaked Text” Shows Movement in Climate Talks – Heavy Lifting Remains
Posted by Tom Schueneman December 11th, 2009 1 Comment
The talk in the halls of the Bella Center this afternoon revolved around the so-called “leaked text” of papers presented in plenary sessions by the chairs of both working groups (AWG-KP and AWG-LCA) that broadly outline the current “state of play” in COP15 negotiations, as UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer characterized it at today’s press briefing.
The specific text of the document was, at last check, still not “cleared for the press,” but the “word on the street” is for a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2050 (no surprise there), and an aggregate emissions reduction of 25 percent from developed countries by 2020 (all targets referenced to 1990 levels). The 2020 mid-term target implies steeper cuts from developed nations than what has thus far been offered. (Update: draft texts are now available for the AWG-LCA andAWG-KP)
News Brief: Is “Legally Binding” Back on the Table?
Posted by Tom Schueneman December 11th, 2009 1 Comment
I am just now at a daily press briefing by Climate Action Network International at the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen. Tove Ryding of Greenpeace has suggested that, in large part due to the actions this week of small island nations, especially Tuvalu, and other of the more vulnerable states that have demanded action aggressive action from the international community in the coming days in Copenhagen, that “legally binding” is now back on the table.
In a few minutes there will be the daily briefing from Yvo de Boer. It will be interesting to see what the official word from the UNFCCC will be.
Ministers begin arriving tomorrow for informal talks, and heads of state on Wednesday.
International Chamber of Commerce: ‘We’re not with stupid’
Posted by 3p Guest Author December 10th, 2009 0 Comments
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is posted with permission.
By Jonathan Hiskes
There is numbingly little news coming out of most of the 20 or so daily press briefings at the Copenhagen climate talks. Officials from national delegations and research, policy, and trade groups seem to use them to restate their already-known positions, wrapping them in as much jargon as possible just to be safe.
That held true for Thursday’s briefing by the International Chamber of Commerce, where several American reporters came to learn how the ICC felt about the U.S. Chamber’s antics this year. The U.S. Chamber, for a refresher, fought the clean energy bill that passed the U.S. House this summer, called for a 21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial to question the science of climate change, and was deserted by several prominent members—Apple, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Exelon, and PNM Resources—who trashed the Chamber’s climate policy on their way out.
New Poll: U.S. Supports Cap & Trade, Would Pay Extra to Reduce CO2
Posted by Dev Crews December 9th, 2009 5 Comments
A new poll released today (PDF) demonstrates that over 60 percent of Americans recognize that the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels. The poll, conducted by The McClatchy Company, the third-largest newspaper company in the United States, and Ipsos Public Affairs, found that a slight majority of the U.S. population also supports cap-and-trade legislation.
A substantial majority of American adults would be willing to pay a surprising additional $25 per month on their electrical bill to support limiting the amount of greenhouse gases companies can put out – as long as the programs created a significant number of green jobs in the United States.
The budget Obama submitted to Congress earlier this year included revenue from a national cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions, which would come from auctioning off emissions permits to industries. The climate program is expected to generate $645 billion between 2012 and 2019. Initial funds would be invested in clean energy. According to the Center for American Progress, a think-tank that has done considerable research on the economic effects of such legislation, this would create 16.7 jobs for every $1 million invested. A $100 billion green investment program would create 2 million new jobs nationwide over two years, most of which would be non-exportable, clean, well-paying jobs.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said climate change legislation would cost the average household $175 a year by 2020, far below what Americans are apparently ready to pay.
Don’t Flannery Yourself: Exxon’s Man in Copenhagen
Posted by 3p Guest Author December 9th, 2009 0 Comments
Brian Flannery. Photo Credit: Grist
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Grist, and is posted with permission.
By Jonathan Hiskes
I tracked down Brian Flannery today. He’s the top climate advisor for ExxonMobil, a veteran of international climate talks, and a bona fide villain in the eyes of environmental groups. That’s largely due to Exxon’s funding of front groups that sow misinformation about the urgency of climate change.
Today Flannery was wearing another hat: he led a panel on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce‘s Environment and Energy Commission, of which he’s vice chair. He would seem to be something of an odd choice for leadership at the International Chamber, which has embraced the opportunities of a low-carbon economy far more than the step-boldly-into-the-past U.S. Chamber.
UN Climate Chief Comments on EPA Endangerment Finding
Posted by Tom Schueneman December 9th, 2009 6 Comments
In concert with the opening of the COP15 climate talks here in Copenhagen, the EPA finalized their endangerment finding on Monday that specifies carbon emissions as a threat to human health and well being (see Bill DiBenedetto’s detailed post from yesterday).
At yesterday’s press briefing UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer was asked what influence the decision would have on the outcome of the conference:
“If I were a businessman,” de Boer replied, “I would say please, please, please do a deal in Copenhagen – and please, please, make it market-based. Because if we fail to get a market-based agreement here, and if the US Senate fails to agree cap-and-trade, then the regulatory agency will be obliged to regulate. Every business knows that taxes and regulation will be a lot less efficient and a lot more expensive than a market-based approach.”
Endgame: Understanding a Global Climate Imperative
Posted by Ashwin Seshagiri December 7th, 2009 2 Comments
Photo Credit: Philip Blenkinsop / NOOR
More than 20 years ago, David Wirth, at the time a senior attorney at the NRDC, wrote about the imperative of climate protection in global politics. “The international community cannot afford to delay elevating the greenhouse effect to the top of the foreign-policy agenda,” Wirth wrote in Foreign Policy.
The editor’s note of Endgame, the latest installment of Dispatches, a quarterly focused on issues ranging from the environment to the economy to the war in Iraq, opens with this historical claim of the importance of environment in the world’s socio-economic discourse. Two decades ago, people were saying practically the exact same thing as we are now. Though the lexicon of Wirth and James Hansen and several other notable environmental commentators from the time has slightly shifted—now the lingo is climate change or global warming—the underlying notion is still very much intact: The way we live our lives is unsustainable.
COP15 Begins: Here Are the Solutions We Need Now
Posted by Paul Smith December 7th, 2009 6 Comments
Today marks the start of UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, or COP15 as it’s widely known. A culmination of years of planning, months of lobbying by pressure groups such as those coordinated by TckTckTck. There’s a lot of anticipation and speculation as to what’s going to happen. Not all of it optimistic.
While the outcome of these meetings isn’t clear, one group is doing its best to offer hope, knowledge, and actions for us mere mortals. Ode Magazine has created The Solutions We Need Now, a publication it will be distributing 50,000 copies of to delegates and participants in Copenhagen. A free digital version of it is available to everybody else for a limited time here.
It pragmatically addresses these solutions in three sections: What needs to be done; how to do it; and what you can do.
Sustainability heavyweights such as Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Al Gore and Lester Brown weigh in here with encouraging words and big ideas, but it’s the real world examples happening globally that are intriguing:
Why “ClimateGate” Is Irrelevant to Business
Posted by Nick Aster December 6th, 2009 79 Comments
In case you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve no doubt been aware of a fiasco which emerged in the last few weeks from the University of East Anglia in the UK concerning unprofessional bickering between climate scientists exposed by an apparent email hacker. The FOXNews crowd is calling it proof that climate change (at least the human induced kind) is a hoax perpetrated by a grand conspiracy among corrupt scientists bent on installing a global uber-government and so on and so forth… It’s therefore not the least bit coincidental that the conspiracy has emerged immediately before the COP15 talks in Copenhagen.
First things first, some of this is a really big screw up, and some of these scientists should be disciplined or fired (as well as whoever was behind the illegal hacking). But at the end of the day, the controversy only proves that some scientists, like some people, can be petty chumps who bicker and cheat. Not cool, but hardly proof that global warming is a hoax. And more importantly, hardly an argument against reducing our burning of fossil fuels and many of the other sustainability efforts 3p argues for. “ClimateGate” is 95% engineered distraction by an unfortunate part of the business community who prefer kicking and screaming to evolution.
So let me get to the point…
See You in Copenhagen: Better Place’s Shai Agassi on Role of Cleantech
Posted by Ashwin Seshagiri December 4th, 2009 6 Comments
If the Copenhagen climate conference has managed to do anything (even before it begins), it has managed to divide. It has facilitated the formation of two neatly antithetical groups of people: those who think nothing will result, and those who are hopeful as to what could happen.
“See You in Copenhagen” is a campaign of short films and ads produced by Found Object Films, in cooperation with the UN Foundation and TckTckTck, to raise public awareness leading up to COP15. It would fit firmly in the latter camp, featuring a certain cautious optimism. We may be sliding down a slippery slope, and Copenhagen may be just a time for political power plays, meaningless gesturing, and the biggest green networking event ever to take place. But it could also be a turning point.
In this video, Better Place innovator, Shai Agassi, talks about cleantech’s role in building the new clean economy, and those implications at COP15.
The Importance of Being Earnest at COP 15
Posted by Bill DiBenedetto December 3rd, 2009 5 Comments
If it’s all about the money, and it usually is, then the future financial landscape for cleantech development hinges on the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference as essentially as the meeting’s long-term impacts on environmental policy.
There will be impacts whether or not binding and comprehensive agreements on emission reductions are cobbled in Copenhagen, and that’s especially true for green investors.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the United Kingdom research and consulting firm, future investments in clean technology are heavily dependent on the outcome of the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Private sector money interests are waiting to see what targets world leaders will commit to, along with what mitigation actions developing countries will take.
Copenhagen: Why Bother?
Posted by Tom Schueneman November 27th, 2009 4 Comments
With little more than a week to go before the start of the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “Road to Copenhagen” starts to sound a little tired, even as participants prepare for actually heading to Copenhagen.
With the roller-coaster-like ride of pre-COP15 news, reeling from despair to faint glimmers of hope* that something positive and substantial will emerge from Copenhagen in mid-December, the question for many concerned about climate change, or who are considering going to COP15, is:
If Copenhagen is just another step in the long process from Kyoto to Bali to Copenhagen to… why bother?
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Running an Effective Corporate Volunteer Program with AngelPoints: Key clients discuss how they put the AngelPoints Volunteering solution to work for them. Attend this webinar to learn best practices, tips & tricks - and how to get an effective volunteer program off the ground at your organization.
Seattle: June 11-12GRI Certified Training: Demand for sustainability experts is growing rapidly as companies look for proven professionals. For companies, GRI trained employees mean faster implementations and better use of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. Join our partner ISOS group for this two day session. Early bird discounts apply!
Portland & Seattle: June 13 & 14
Sustainable Industries Economic Forum:Join keynote speaker Van Jones and sustainable business leaders from dozens of innovative companies for an interactive presentation and conversation on The Access Economy and how it affects you and your business, as well as high-impact networking. Register now for Portland on June 13 & Seattle on June 14.
NYC: June 27-28Responsible Business Summit USA: Discover how to fully embed and integrate CSR in your organization. Learn how to collaborate with key stakeholders and establish competitive edge using proven CSR strategies. Hear best practices from GAP Inc, Timberland, Lockheed Martin, Life Technologies, Campbell Soup and many more.
Minneapolis: July 19-20GRI Certified Training: Demand for sustainability experts is growing rapidly as companies look for proven professionals. For companies, GRI trained employees mean faster implementations and better use of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. Join our partner ISOS group for this two day session. Early bird discounts apply!
Boston: Sep 13-14GRI Certified Training: Demand for sustainability experts is growing rapidly as companies look for proven professionals. For companies, GRI trained employees mean faster implementations and better use of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. Join our partner ISOS group for this two day session. Early bird discounts apply!
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