Obama's envoy for climate change casts doubt on Kyoto protocol

[CHIMO]

President Barack Obama's chief climate change negotiator has issued a warning over the future of the Kyoto protocol, casting doubt on a key plank of international climate talks this December in South Africa.

Todd Stern, the US president's envoy for climate change, said the European Union was the only remaining "major player" that would potentially support a continuation of the protocol after its provisions expire in 2012. The lack of support from other countries bodes ill for the forthcoming talks at Durban.

The Kyoto protocol is an international agreement that imposes limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from some signee countries that was negotiated in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997.

Kyoto is the only treaty which binds nearly all of the world's industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions but Stern cast doubt on its future.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/19/us-envoy-climate-change-emissions

[tblue]

1. Oh for crying out loud!!!

[kristopher]

2. There are two fundamental approaches to solve the problem of climate change.

One is the political and the other is economic. In practice they are a weave of opportunities and obstacles from both areas that interact in a tableau of entities exercising power to promote the things each entity values most.

It has been obvious for some time that the power amassed by entrenched energy interests can obstruct most meaningful action on the purely political front. The sad fact is that their amassed power controls enough political influence to derail cooperative action on a grand scale.

That leaves the realm of economic conflict. And the players for the renewable side of that must be created through nurturing of a new class of economic winners that will, at some point, amass more political power than those they seek to displace will have. That is the clear path being followed by Obama both here at home and one the world stage.

The ones at home are being realized by spending as much of the stimulus funds as possible actually deploying renewable energy technologies and their enabling infrastructure. The world stage is diplomatic encouragement for direct global economic action instead of just hectoring the developing nations about their emissions while encouraging them on the economic front to use coal and nuclear.

Obama's approach is going to be far more effective, far more quickly, than any possible effort that relies primarily on global political consensus.

IMO, the pace we are currently going on will have the economic interests benefiting from renewable power reaching critical mass far sooner than most envision. We are right now at a point where there is a new defacto energy landscape emerging whether the traditional economic/political forces want it to or not. The present system is a bottleneck that leaves vast numbers of the world's people underserved. That is pent-up demand that high quality, distributed renewable energy is set to tap into on a scale; the ramifications of which are not fully appreciated by most.

Once the third of the world's population represented by China and India are rolling, the time will be more than ripe for coordinated political action on a large scale.

[cprise]

3. If it happens here, it will be because global political will

trumped the economics setup by entrenched N.A. energy interests. For example, those feed-in tariffs making solar PV more attractive elsewhere are also driving economies of scale that make PV somewhat more attractive here.

Renewables are advancing in other parts of the world via political opinion that values science, and a desire to restructure economic activity accordingly.

If most of the low-hanging fruit for solar cost reduction has already been picked, and if our culture continues to turn away from scientific / environmental concerns, then we may very well end up with a mostly coal future (with a much smaller share of wind power thrown in). However, the environment will not make itself felt in the economic world according to Smithian laws of supply and demand; the effect is very likely to be like avoiding food poisoning where determined ignoramuses are already among the walking dead just at the point when they notice a foul aftertaste (but hey, the food seemed economical).

IOW, the potential for climate catastrophe looks more like a cliff (for falling off) than a bell curve with a neat slope which allows markets time to react. NOTHING which economics has to offer can help us in avoiding that cliff until we first internalize something like the Precautionary Principle which occupies the crossroads of politics and science.

Widespread scientific literacy and a confidence in government are the hallmarks of those countries that have pursued renewable energy. But the US (the English-speaking world, actually) are becoming the antithesis of those qualities.

To me, the work to be done seems primarily cultural, then the politics and economics can follow.

[Kolesar]

4. +1 eom

[kristopher]

5. Politics and economics are both considered fundamental aspects of culture.

The driver for political change in places where there already exists an entrenched energy infrastructure that stands to suffer great loss of value is going to be economics. The "low hanging fruit" you speak of is, at this point in time, nothing more than growth in manufacturing capacity and its associated supply chain. As that supply chain matures and expands by serving the developing world where it is not in competition with forces that already own the market it will create a new group of economic "winners" - including a general public free of the need to purchase fuel every day.

The more of these new winners there are, the greater their political power will be and the more the power of the entrenched interests will be eroded.

There is evidence to support your view of how the effects of climate change will manifest themselves and it is pretty strong. However whether your characterization is accurate or not isn't really relevant as it isn't going to drive the process. After all, even in the countries marked by what you term "widespread scientific literacy and a confidence in government" it hasn't been particularly successful. While the pace of change might be better than the US, it is not even close to being rapid enough to address the problems we facing. Let me give you some concrete evidence of the difference these two approaches yield.

In 2003, this is way renewable deployment under the influence of policies like Kyoto was envisioned by DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab:

Solar electricity will eventually contribute a significant part of our electricity supply, but the industry required to produce these systems must grow more than tenfold over the next 10 years. In 2001, about 400 megawatts of solar electric modules were produced worldwide. According to an industry-planning document, in order to supply just 10% of U.S. generation capacity by 2030, the U.S. solar electricity industry must supply more than 3,200 megawatts per year. Most experts agree that with continued research, solar electric systems will become more efficient, even more reliable, and less expensive.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03osti/32529.pdf

They said we need 3200MWp to produce 10% of US electricity by 2030 (MWp denotes manufacturing capacity to produce the panels)

China built 17000MWp of solar between 2007 and 2010 and they are doubling that this year.

As a direct result of the economically motivated actions in China we have this economic response in the US:

25.9 GW US solar either installed, being installed or in their development phase since 1/1/2010.
U.S. Solar PV Pipeline Up to 24 GW
September 12, 2011

...According to a recent report by SolarBuzz, the 17 gigawatts (GW) of non-residential PV under development have now grown to 24 GW, largely because of the continued drop in module prices throughout the summer.

The September 2011 edition of the United States Deal Tracker database released by Solarbuzz this week identifies 1,865 non-residential projects totaling 25.9 GW either installed, being installed or in their development phase since January 1, 2010.

According to the report:
-California, which currently accounts for 61 percent of the total U.S. project pipeline, has benefited from the state’s aggressive 33 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard target and the recent trend of solar projects switching from concentrated solar power technology to PV. The top six state pipelines measured in megawatts are California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey and New Mexico. In total, 44 states now contribute to the pipeline.
-Utility-driven project activity is identified across 35 states, while other non-residential projects below 1 MW account for 771 projects being monitored.
-The fast-developing ...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/09/u-s-solar-pv-pipeline-up-to-24-gw?cmpid=SolarNL-Tuesday-September13-2011

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x310838#310838

See also:
With DoE, DoD Backing SolarStrong to Double US Home Solar Power
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x310451

DOE Supports Project to Cut Silicon Solar PV Wafer Costs 50%
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x310454

wind industry installed equivalent of 1.2 nuclear power plants/mo over the past 2 years
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kristopher/683

Renewables Investment Breaks Records (2010 up 32% over 2009)
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kristopher/738

Some revealing numbers (Italy)
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kristopher/744

U.N. Secretary-General: Renewables Can End Energy Poverty
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kristopher/763