Tag: president

Interview: Pew Center President

  • Eileen Claussen is the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. (Photo courtesy of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change)

Beginning December 7,
world leaders – including President
Obama – will gather in Copenhagen,
Denmark to talk about cutting the
greenhouse gas emissions causing
climate change. Eileen Claussen is
the President of the non-profit Pew
Center on Global Climate Change.
Lester Graham talked with her about
what will be accomplished at Copenhagen:

Transcript

Beginning December 7,
world leaders – including President
Obama – will gather in Copenhagen,
Denmark to talk about cutting the
greenhouse gas emissions causing
climate change. Eileen Claussen is
the President of the non-profit Pew
Center on Global Climate Change.
Lester Graham talked with her about
what will be accomplished at Copenhagen:

Lester Graham: We’ve been hearing about this United Nations summit in Copenhagen in the news for months now, but it’s not really clear what the world’s nations will accomplish there. It’s been downgraded from a conference to hammer out a treaty to a conference to come up with some kind of a framework for a treaty. So what can we really expect from Copenhagen?

Eileen Claussen: I think there are three things that are likely to be agreed in Copenhagen. All the developed countries in the world will make political commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by significant amounts, I think, across the board. I also think the major emitting developing countries will pledge to reduce their emissions from where they would otherwise go. And I think we will see some amount of money – maybe 5 to 10 billion dollars – collected from the developed countries to help developing countries adapt to climate change and build up their capacity to actually reduce their emissions.

Graham: And perhaps preserve some of the forests that store CO2.

Claussen: Absolutely. I think forestry is something where you actually might see some real progress.

Graham: President Obama is expected to tell the gathering that the US intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions to about 17% below the levels we emitted in 2005. And cut them by 83% by the year 2050. But, as it stands right now, there’s no legislation to accomplish that. It’s not clear that there’s enough support in Congress to pass climate change legislation that would accomplish that. Is the president making offers not within his power to give?

Claussen: Well, I think there’s no question that absent action in the Senate and a conference that merges the bill that passed in the House this summer, he can’t deliver on the 17%. There are many things he can do. And, in fact, he’s actually tried to do many of them. To increase the efficiency of automobiles which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions; to put stimulus money into clean energy projects; to get the EPA geared up to start regulating under the Clean Air Act. But I think none of those add up to the 17%. So we will need legislation that establishes a cap on emissions.

Graham: This Copenhagen agreement is supposed to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. The US did not ratify that treaty. But, of the nations that did, many of them failed to meet their obligations to reduce emissions. So will a treaty really mean anything?

Claussen: Well, I’m not sure that I agree that most countries or many countries have failed to reduce their emissions sufficiently. There are some countries that are not on track at the moment to get to their objectives, but others are. And I think it is still possible that most of those countries – not all – but most of them will actually get to where they said they would go.

Graham: Well, we’ll cal l that the optimistic view. I think in Canada they’re probably not going to make it.

Claussen: Well, Canada is the clear example of a country that won’t make it.

Graham: So we won’t have a sort of Copenhagen Protocol, Copenhagen appears to be now just another stop along the way to drafting a treaty.

Claussen: It’s not everything that many were hoping for, and there’s a fair amount of disappointment about that. But, quite honestly, there are a lot of very difficult issues for different countries to face here. And there actually had not been any real negotiation over the two years since the negotiation started.

Graham: Eileen Claussen is the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Thanks very much for talking with us.

Claussen: Well, thank you.

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Interview: Bill McKibben

  • ill McKibben is an author and the founder of 350.org, a grassroots effort to increase awareness of the threats of climate change. (Photo by Nancie Battaglia, courtesy of Bill McKibben)

Bill McKibben has been writing about
climate change for 20 years. More
recently, he founded the grassroots
organization 350.org. It urges
governments to do something about
climate change. Lester Graham talked
to McKibben and asked him how his
group deals with the debate in Congress –
especially when it’s less about scientific
facts and more about your brand of politics:

Transcript

Bill McKibben has been writing about
climate change for 20 years. More
recently, he founded the grassroots
organization 350.org. It urges
governments to do something about
climate change. Lester Graham talked
to McKibben and asked him how his
group deals with the debate in Congress –
especially when it’s less about scientific
facts and more about your brand of politics:

Bill McKibben: Well, it’s hard to deal with it because, of course, we don’t a kind of separate physics and chemistry for Republicans and Democrats. You know, the laws of nature tend to operate the same way no matter whether you spend your life marinating in Rush Limbaugh or not, you know. So it’s difficult because we have to deal with those physical facts. The only good news is that the only place where this is a political issue in those ways is the United States. The rest of the world, everybody’s on-board, understanding that we need to go to work. We’ve still got serious problems in this country. It’s one of the reasons that we desperately need the President to finally make some serious noise about climate change, and say straightforwardly and out-front what the dangers are and do what he can to drive home the peril that we’re in.

Lester Graham: The Center for Public Integrity reports that there are more lobbyists in Washington than ever before, working on supporting or blocking or somehow reshaping climate change legislation. How does a grassroots effort, such as 350.org, compete with the big moneyed lobbyists at work?

McKibben: Well, we can’t compete with them in terms of money. There are, I think, 2800 lobbyists that industry has hired to go to – which gives you some idea of what a bad job being a Congressman is. Each Congressman has 7 people devoted to making sure that they toe the line on fossil fuel. We can’t compete! Exxon Mobile, last year, made more money than any company in the history of money, okay? So, in that currency, we’re sunk. The only currency we’ve got is bodies and commitment. And that’s why we’re finally trying to organize a real movement around climate change. It’s not enough to depend on the fact that the science is on your side, and that any rational system or person would be doing everything they can to try to deal with this biggest problem we’ve ever faced. Our system, in that sense, isn’t rational. It’s dependent on power and pressure. And we have to accept that, and we have to accept the challenge of building those kinds of movements.

Graham: What do you think of the legislation on greenhouse reductions, greenhouse gas reductions as it’s shaping up in Washington?

McKibben: It’s in grave danger, if it hasn’t already, of turning into a sort of piñata filled with goodies for each special interest. Each Senator now is saying, ‘yes, but in my state we need a lot of money or whatever to do this, or, ‘we have to exempt this industry,’ or whatever. These guys don’t get the degree of danger that we’re in. They’re still using it as just one more political game to play. It’s why Obama’s gotta step up to the plate. He can’t let happen what happened with healthcare – just Congress take all of this on its own, let it drift, come out with some mediocre thing, and call it a victory.

Graham: What would you like to hear President Obama say that would compel people to say, ‘oh my gosh, we’ve got to do something about this!’?

McKibben: I’d like him to do what leaders around the world now – partly at the behest of 350.org – have been doing over the last few weeks. Saying, ‘here, in my country, are the grave dangers that we face.’ That’s the kind of leadership that we’re not seeing out of Obama, unfortunately.

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Lobbyists Swarm the Climate Bill

  • The Center for Public Integrity finds there are at least five lobbyists on climate change legislation for every member of Congress. (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

According to new investigative reports,
lobbying efforts on climate change
policy are growing dramatically. Lester
Graham reports:

Transcript

According to new investigative reports,
lobbying efforts on climate change
policy are growing dramatically. Lester
Graham reports:

Washington, more than ever before, is crawling with lobbyists.

A journalistic project finds there are at least five lobbyists on climate change legislation for every member of Congress.

Maryanne Lavelle with the Center for Public Integrity heads up the project.

“It’s just astounding. If you just compare to six years ago when Congress first considered a really comprehensive climate bill, there has been a 40o% increase in lobbyists.”

Some are there to ensure greenhouse gases are reduced, some are there to shape climate change legislation to benefit their business interests, others are there to block it.

But the investigative journalists found big industry lobbyists and all the others out-gun lobbyists for environmental and alternative energy groups by an eight-to-one margin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Climate Bill Moving Along

  • A lot of compromises and some arm-twisting are persuading moderate Democrats to support limiting global warming emissions. (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

Work on the climate change bill
in the Senate is progressing
despite the controversy surrounding
the bill. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Work on the climate change bill
in the Senate is progressing
despite the controversy surrounding
the bill. Lester Graham reports:

A Republican boycott and bitter wrangling between Democrats and Republicans over provisions in the climate bill in the Senate and, still, supporters say it’s going okay.

A lot of compromises and some arm-twisting are persuading moderate Democrats to support limiting global warming emissions.

Even the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, is now saying Congress will approve legislation this session.

Josh Dorner is with a group backing a climate bill, called Clean Energy Works. Dorner says getting moderate Democrats like Baucus on board moves a climate bill closer to reality.

“That coupled with the bi-partisan agreement amongst other senators, Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman to move forward, I think shows that we’re closer to a bi-partisan agreement on getting a bill done now than we ever have been before.”

“Bi-partisan” meaning only a couple of Republicans joining a lot more Democrats in support of the bill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Senate Takes Up Climate Bill

  • The Senate held their first hearing on the climate change bill. (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

The Senate has started debate on
the climate bill. The Senate Committee
on Environment and Public Works heard
from cabinet members and others,
but Lester Graham reports it’s not
clear their testimony will matter:

Transcript

The Senate has started debate on
the climate bill. The Senate Committee
on Environment and Public Works heard
from cabinet members and others,
but Lester Graham reports it’s not
clear their testimony will matter:

It was the Senate’s the first hearing on the bill, but most of the Senators have already made up their minds.

For Republican Senator James Inhofe, the climate bill is a jobs killer and costs too much.

“We’re talking about somewhere between three and four-hundred billion dollars a year. That’s something the American people can’t tolerate and I don’t believe they will.”

That 300 to 400 billion is revenue from a cap-and-trade plan that would invest in renewable energy such as wind and solar and go to taxpayers to help with higher costs of fossil fuel.

One of the authors of the Senate climate bill, Democrat John Kerry, took issue with Senator Inhofe’s characterization of the bill.

“We need to move forward to deal with climate change and in doing so, Senator Inhofe, we will actually improve every sector of our energy economy.”

And Senator Kerry says that will mean energy independence and millions of new jobs.

The Senate climate bill makes a lot of compromises to win votes. But, it’s not clear they’ll actually sway any of the senators.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Recovery Through Retrofit

  • One of the main goals of the “Recovery through Retrofit” plan is to find ways to help people pay for energy efficient improvements. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

The White House has released a plan that
intends to get more people to make their
homes and apartments more energy
efficient. Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

The White House has released a plan that
intends to get more people to make their
homes and apartments more energy
efficient. Mark Brush reports:

One of the main goals of the “Recovery through Retrofit” plan is to find ways to help people pay for energy efficient improvements. Some of these improvements can cost a bundle.

But, the White House says, there are ways to help. Christine Glunz is a spokesperson for The White House Council on Environmental Quality:

“We want to provide American homeowners with the opportunity to get this energy efficiency done, and get the retrofit done, without having to bear a major financial burden immediately.”

Glunz says the Obama Administration is pushing for new financing options. One they support is a local government loan program that is paid back through property taxes.

In addition to financing, the plan calls for an energy label for homes and apartments. It’s sort of like an Energy Star label, so renters and home buyers can figure out how efficient a building is.

The plan also calls for more trained workers to perform energy retrofits.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Political Change on Climate Change

  • Al Gore's Vice-Presidential portrait from 1994. (Photo courtesy of the United States Government)

The man who won a Nobel Peace Prize for
his work on climate change is optimistic
about the politics around the issue. Lester
Graham reports Al Gore says he thinks the
political landscape is changing in favor of
a world-wide climate change treaty:

Transcript

The man who won a Nobel Peace Prize for
his work on climate change is optimistic
about the politics around the issue. Lester
Graham reports Al Gore says he thinks the
political landscape is changing in favor of
a world-wide climate change treaty:

The former U.S. Vice-President says he thinks world leaders will sign a meaningful climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December.

Al Gore says politicians and governments around the world seem just about ready to do something significant about climate change.

“The potential for much larger change has been building up and I think that Copenhagen is the moment when it may cross that political tipping point. Now, let me take the other side of it just for a brief moment. The consequences of a failure in Copenhagen would, in my opinion, be catastrophic.”

Gore says waiting any longer to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming could take the world past a point of no return.

That’s because tundra in the frozen north thaw and release the potent greenhouse gas, methane, creating a feedback loop that cannot be stopped.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Connectedness of Climate and Healthcare

  • Pundits say President Obama is putting all his political chips in the fight for health care. And, if he loses, he'll have almost nothing left to spend on climate change. (Photo by Bill Branson, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

The health care debate is sucking
up most of the energy in Washington.
So it makes sense that the world is
concerned the US might show up at
global climate talks in December empty
handed. Conrad Wilson explains how
the heath care debate is threatening
the chances of a global climate treaty:

Transcript

The health care debate is sucking
up most of the energy in Washington.
So it makes sense that the world is
concerned the US might show up at
global climate talks in December empty
handed. Conrad Wilson explains how
the heath care debate is threatening
the chances of a global climate treaty:

European countries, along with China and other big global polluters, are wrestling with
how to deal with global warming. But as the world gears up for the climate change
conference in Copenhagen, Washington is focusing on health care.

The timing of Washington’s health care debate has many countries scratching their heads.
And it has environmentalists and climate folks nervous. All agree health care is
important; but globally, they say, it’s out of step.

And when you ask Americans what the President is working on, few mention climate
change.

Person 1: “Probably health care and fixing the economy.”

Person 2: “On the economy. And fixing the economy. Actually, no, I’ll change that.
Actually, what I think he’s focusing on is the health care issue.”

Person 3: “This week, Afghanistan. Last week, health care. The week before, the
economy.”

Person 4: “He’s focusing on health care primarily, which is very important. But he also
needs to maintain his focus on the economy.”

What’s not being talked about is climate change and the global talks coming up in
Copenhagen.

Dan Esty is a professor of Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University. He also has
experience as a climate negotiator. Esty predicts the health care debate will continue
through the end of the year.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult, given the political effort that’s going to be required
to achieve success on health care, to imagine that climate change can be taken on during
the same time period.”

Esty says there’s only so much President Obama and members of Congress can take on at
once. Climate change and health care are two major issues that can’t be resolved
overnight.

As time wears on, the talks are shaping up for an outcome that looks more like the failed
Kyoto climate agreement from a decate ago. After Kyoto, Congress refused to join the
rest of th eworld in capping carbon emissions. Esty fears that could happen again.

“The health care debate, at the present moment, is occupying all the political oxygen in
Washington and that means there’s really nothing left with which to drive forward the
response to climate change. And, as a result, our negotiator will go to Copenhagen
without any real game plan in place for how the United States is going to step up and be a
constructive part of the response of the build up of green house gases in the atmosphere.”

A lot of people say the US needs to pass a climate change law before going to
Copenhagen. But others say maybe not. They argue it’s not a bad idea for the US to go
into global climate talks without a law because it could allow negotiators to be more
flexible.

Regardless of how it’s done, cutting greenhouse gases is now more pressing than ever
before. With Washington paralyzed by the health care debate, the timing is just bad for
climate change.

“If there were ever a time. You can say that about health care and about climate policy.”

That’s energy analyst Randy Udall. He says President Obama has a lot of his plate and
should be ready to compromise.

“Obama’s not going to get nearly as much as many of us had hoped for in terms of health
care reform. And he’s not going to get nearly as much as many of us had hoped for in
terms of energy policy. He will get something. But it not going to be a half a loaf, it’ll be
a quarter of a loaf.”

Pundits say President Obama is putting all his political chips in the fight for health care.
And, if he loses, he’ll have almost nothing left to spend on climate change.

For The Environment Report, I’m Conrad Wilson.

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Preliminary Climate Change Talks

  • World leaders are meeting in Bangkok for preliminary discussions on climate change. (Photo source: Alter at Wikimedia Commons)

In December, the world’s nations
meet in Copenhagen to try to come
up with a treaty to deal with climate
change. Right now, preliminary talks
are going on in Bangkok. Lester Graham
reports observers don’t think there’s
much progress:

Transcript

In December, the world’s nations
meet in Copenhagen to try to come
up with a treaty to deal with climate
change. Right now, preliminary talks
are going on in Bangkok. Lester Graham
reports observers don’t think there’s
much progress:

Warren Evans is the Director of the Environment Department at the World Bank. He’s just back from Bangkok where climate change negotiations are going slowly. Evans says that shows just how hard it will be to finalize a treaty in Copenhagen.

“Well, I think our assessment is that there will be considerable progress and that it should set the stage for moving forward, but is it the final agreement that actually put in motion all of the necessary steps and finance? That’s highly unlikely.”

The world will be watching in December to see whether U.S. will agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It refused to ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty in 1997. Critics are making some of the same arguments now.

They say a Copenhagen treaty could put the U.S. at an economic disadvantage to rapidly developing countries such as China and India.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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G20 Protests in Pittsburgh

  • The Group of 20 Summit is being held in Pittsburgh starting on September 24th (Photo source: HoboJones at Wikimedia Commons)

Leaders of the world’s richest
countries are in Pittsburgh for
the G-20 Summit. Thousands of
environmental and economic protesters
are there, too, and the dissenters
aren’t happy with how police are
treating them. Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports:

Transcript

Leaders of the world’s richest
countries are in Pittsburgh for
the G-20 Summit. Thousands of
environmental and economic protesters
are there, too, and the dissenters
aren’t happy with how police are
treating them. Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports:

Protesters claim Pittsburgh police are cracking down on them before the international economic gathering begins.

The 3 Rivers Climate Convergence says the police have illegally search and impounded a bus supplying food for protesters.

Lisa Stolarski of 3 Rivers Climate Convergence, says officers have sought out environmental groups to hassle.

“I feel like the police are cracking down on green voices. I feel that we are being especially mistreated in Pittsburgh.”

While police crackdowns are typical around international summits, protesters say they had hoped that the city’s signage stating “Pittsburgh Welcomes the World,” also applied to them.
For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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