It’s bad enough when politicians and true believers distort scientific findings for their own purposes. But when scientists do it, we’ve reached a dangerous point in intellectual discourse.

Such is the case with the widespread belief that evidence of global warming is incontrovertible. Thankfully, some scientists courageously have decided to publicly challenge this numbing, politically correct dogma.

Among them isNobel Prize-winningphysicist Ivar Giaever, who recently resigned from the American Physical Society because he couldn’t accept the group’s policy statement that the “evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring …” and mitigating action must be taken immediately to avert certain ruination. He asked, “In the APS, it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multiuniverse behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

He might as well have added, “Give me a break.” Basically that’s what an international group of 16 eminent scientists said Friday in The Wall Street Journal (“No need to panic about global warming.”).

“In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the ‘pollutant’ carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Giaever. And the number of scientific ‘heretics’ is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.”

Among them is the absence of global warming for more than 10 years, acknowledged in private emails by climate alarmist Kevin Trenberth. That absence is troubling because the model on which global warming is based predicted otherwise.

These scientists observed that “although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted, or worse.” When scientists are cowed by media-fueled public opinion, you know that we’re in trouble.

Another example of dangerous groupthink were warnings that the BP oil spill was the worst environmental disaster ever, one that would permanently damage the ecosystems and economies of the Gulf Coast. Ocean currents, it was predicted, would sweep “plumes” of noxious and toxic pollutants around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast and my God, who knows where else! The rest would hang around and haunt the Gulf Coast for years and years.

Except that it didn’t happen. More than 4 million barrels of petroleum and 200,000 tons of methane … vanished, as early as September 2010, just months after the spill. A federally funded study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that naturally occurring and gluttonous bacteria devoured the nasty stuff. Swirling currents, it turns out, kept the mess bottled up in the Gulf until it disappeared.

Not all scientists agree; they’ll test the evidence, keeping an open mind, which is more than one can say about the climate alarmists.

Politically and ideologically inspired minds are not so objective about the evidence concerning the role that induced abortions may play in breast cancer. Some scientific and professional organizations have circled the wagons to fend off any evidence and possible conclusion that could dent the dogmatic belief that induced abortions are perfectly safe, safer than childbirth.

The Hoffman Estates-based Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer has for years carried on a courageous effort to educate the public about the possible relation between abortion and breast cancer. The group recently pointed to a study co-authored by researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing that reported a nearly tripled breast cancer risk for post-abortive women.

By simply mentioning this study, eyes will spiral and heads will spin, accusing me of anti-choice fascism, or something. To that, I will admit to not being a scientist or capable of launching a detailed defense of or attack on such complex studies.

But, that’s why science should be kept free of political and ideological groupthink, the kind that is muddying such important issues as climate change, environmental “disasters” and breast cancer. As laymen, we don’t get to vote on what is scientifically accurate and credible. Nor should scientists, not if we want to get to the root of our problems.

Recently I had jury duty, and during jury selection something remarkable occurred. Early in the proceedings, the judge posed a hypothetical question to the 60 or so potential jurors in the room: “If I were to send you out now and ask you to render a verdict, what would it be? How many of you would vote not guilty?” A few raised their hands. “How many would vote guilty?” A few more raised their hands. “And how many would say you didn’t know enough to decide?” Every remaining hand — about 50 people — went up immediately.

That, of course, was the wrong answer, and the judge proceeded to explain why. In the American system of justice, there is a presumption of innocence. Because no evidence had been presented, the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we would have to render a verdict of not guilty. After her explanation, she posed the question again, and (except for a few who clung to guilty and were sent home) we all raised our hands for not guilty.

Jury duty was in some ways difficult, but in one respect, it was easy: We were given clear instructions by a recognized authority and we followed them. No one argued about who had the burden of proof. No one suggested that the judge was not an appropriate authority, or that we should reject her instructions. On the contrary, when the time came to deliberate, we referred on more than one occasion to her instructions, and when the time came to vote, we had little trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. Driving home, I found myself contrasting this with the issue on which I work in my professional life: climate change.

I study the history of climate science, and my research has shown that the think tanks and institutes that deny the reality or severity of climate change, or promote distrust of climate science, do so out of self-interest, ideological conviction or both. Some groups, like the fossil fuel industry, have an obvious self-interest in the continued use of fossil fuels. Others fear that if we accept the reality of climate change, we will be forced to acknowledge the failures of free-market capitalism. Still others worry that if we allow the government to intervene in the marketplace to stop climate change, it will lead to further expansion of government power that will threaten our broader freedoms.

But most Americans do not work for the fossil fuel industry, and most Americans accept that there is an appropriate role for government to protect human and environmental health. So why has the denial of climate change achieved so much traction?

In my travels, I have met many, many people who have told me that they are not in denial about climate change; they simply don’t know enough to decide. It strikes me that these people aren’t unlike my fellow jurors at the start of jury selection. They are trying to keep an open mind, something that we are routinely enjoined to do in many other aspects of daily life.

But just as open-mindedness can be the wrong answer in jurisprudence, it can also be the wrong answer in science and public policy. Since the mid-1990s, there has been clear-cut evidence that the climate is changing because of human activities: burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. For the last decade or so it has been increasingly clear that these changes are accelerating, and worrisome.

Yet many Americans cling to the idea that it is reasonable to maintain an open mind. It isn’t, at least not to scientists who study the matter. They have been saying for some time that the case for the reality and gravity of climate change has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But there’s the rub. The public seems to view scientists as the equivalent of the prosecuting attorney trying to prove a case. The think tanks, institutes and fossil fuel corporations take on the mantle of the defense.

We have to get over that flawed notion. Scientists don’t play the role of prosecutor trying to prove a case. Rather, they are the jury trying to evaluate the evidence. And they have rendered their verdict. The problem is not that scientists have become advocates, as some have claimed. The problem is that there is no judge, no recognized authority giving us instructions we accept, and no recognized authority to accept the scientists’ verdict and declare it final.

Consider for a moment the case against tobacco. There too scientists were nearly unanimous in their conclusion, based on research, that tobacco use had serious health consequences. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry tried to play the role of defense attorney, offering up denials and dodges and pseudo-scientific studies denying a link between smoking and lung cancer. So how did Americans decide whom to believe?

In that case, there was a judge whose instructions had a large effect on public consciousness: the U.S. surgeon general. Without a scientist general to instruct us on climate change, we as a nation have been adrift, looking for leadership and not finding it.

But there is one notable exception: California. In the absence of federal leadership, in the absence of a scientist general, our state has acted on the scientific verdict. Both our current Democratic and our previous Republican governor understood the need for brisk action on climate change to prevent costly damage, and they have also seen economic opportunities available to those offering solutions. This bipartisan effort has made a difference.

As we enter 2012, California is the only state in the nation to be implementing controls on greenhouse gas emissions. As of Jan. 1, California has adopted a legal framework to reduce such emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and ultimately achieve an 80% reduction by 2050.

It is possible to move forward, even without a judge in black robes telling us what to do.

Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.

Climate negotiations have been in virtual limbo ever since the catastrophic and humiliating Copenhagen summit in 2009, where vertiginous expectations collided with hard political reality. So as negotiators – and a handful of government ministers – arrived in Durban, expectations could not have been lower.

Yet, by the end of the talks, the European Union’s climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, was being applauded in the media for achieving a “breakthrough” that had “salvaged Durban,” and, most significantly, for achieving the holy grail of climate negotiations, a “legally binding treaty.” According to British climate minister Chris Huhne, the results showed that the United Nations climate-change negotiation system “really works and can produce results.”

Sure, the agreement would come into effect only in 2020 – which sounds oddly complacent when environmentalists and political leaders warned ahead of the Copenhagen conference that we had just six months or 50 days to solve the climate problem. But, as the British newspaper The Guardian assured readers, this was a breakthrough, because developing countries, including India and China, were, for the first time, “agreeing to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases.” And, just as importantly, the US was making the same promise.

Let’s take a look at the actual agreement reached in Durban that generated all that congratulatory back-slapping. It won’t take long: the document runs to two pages, contains no commitments to cut emissions, and outlines no policies to implement the undefined cuts. There is simply a promise “to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.”

An agreement to launch a legal process. That is what everyone got so worked up about? And, again, the negotiators merely promised to set themselves a deadline of 2015 to finish setting up this legal process, which would enter into force five years hence.

Just a few days later, the Indian environment minister, Shrimati Jayanthi Natarajan, stressed that there was no legally binding treaty: “India cannot agree to a legally binding agreement for emissions reduction at this stage of our development.…I must clarify that [Durban] does not imply that India has to take binding commitments to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.”

India was not alone. The day after the Durban conference, Canada officially withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which Russia and Japan have already declined to extend, leaving only the EU’s member states and a few other countries committed to further reductions.

Hollow victories have been central to climate negotiations since they began. The Durban agreement uncannily echoes the agreement reached in Bali in 2007 “to launch a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective, and sustained implementation of the [UN Climate] Convention through long-term cooperative action.” According to that deal – which was, of course, much celebrated at the time – a legal treaty was supposed to be ready for the 2009 Copenhagen meeting.

In Kyoto in 1997, the treaty was acclaimed as “a milestone in the history of climate protection,” and President Bill Clinton declared that “the United States has reached an historic agreement with other nations of the world to take unprecedented action to address global warming.”

Of course, the treaty had already been rejected in the US Senate by a 95-0 vote, and thus was dead on arrival. This, and lax interpretations of emissions in the years following Kyoto, meant that more emissions occurred under the protocol than had been expected to occur in its absence according to research undertaken by the economists Christoph Böhringer and Carsten Vogt.

Even at the start of global climate-change negotiations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the aim of putting the planet “on a course to address the critical issue of global warming” soon went awry. Rich countries fell 12% short of their promise to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

For 20 years, climate negotiators have repeatedly celebrated deals that haven’t panned out. Worse, for all practical purposes, the promises that have been made have had no impact on global CO2 emissions. They have only provided false hope that we have addressed climate change and allowed us to push it to the back burner for another few years. So, before we get too excited celebrating the “breakthrough” of Durban, we would do well to reflect on a two-decade history of flogging a dead horse.

We will never reduce emissions significantly until we manage to make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels. We must focus sharply on research and development to drive down alternative energy prices over coming decades.

The first step toward doing that is to end our collective suspension of disbelief when it comes to climate-change negotiations. We need to see through the hype and self-serving political spin. We owe it to the future to do better.

The United Nations’ recent 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa succeeded in renewing the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. But the meeting also highlighted the two major problems that plague international environmental negotiations. The first, unscientific skepticism, has an impact on the second, collective-action failure. Ultimately, only legislative bodies have the power to overcome this failure.

Skepticism regarding the need for environmental action arises from the relationship between environmental degradation and per capita income. According to the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), degradation and pollution increase enormously at the early stages of economic growth. But, above a certain per capita income threshold, that trend reverses itself: at high income levels, economic growth correlates with environmental improvement, leading to the dubious conclusion that it might be possible to achieve sustainable growth without deviating from “business as usual” (maintaining current emissions levels).

This theory informs some countries’ reluctance to commit to the Kyoto Protocol’s second term. But it is clearly wrong. The United States continues to have the world’s highest per capita emissions levels, at 19 tons of CO2 per person annually, even though average US annual income, at $42,385 per capita, is also among the highest in the world. Clearly, wealth in itself is no guarantee of reduced CO2 emissions.

Likewise, China’s annual per capita income is $5,450, but it emits only 4.7 tons of CO2 per person (though, overall, it is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases). South Africans earn an average income of $8,857 per capita, but they emit a disproportionate 9.4 tons of CO2 per person.

Moreover, the EKC perpetuates an erroneous assumption – that environmental damage will not curtail economic growth. In fact, research by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change strongly suggests that a business-as-usual approach would lead to an era of irreversible environmental destruction that would preclude economic growth. We cannot afford such a strategy, especially as the poor would bear the brunt of the resulting climate change.

The educated consensus is that the global climate’s current trajectory must be reversed much more rapidly than business as usual would allow. Here, however, a second set of problems  – divergent interests and the complexity of international negotiations – presents itself.

When countries believe that high emissions levels are necessary to economic growth, they naturally become reluctant to agree to any binding protocol that would curtail emissions and thus stifle growth. This leads to a situation in which one participant can prevent the resolution of the larger group’s dilemma.

In 1988, Harvard University’s Robert Putnam wrote a ground-breaking paper called “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” According to Putnam,  international diplomacy and domestic politics represent a liberal democracy’s two negotiating levels. A “win-set” occurs when a country’s domestic and international interests harmoniously overlap. This overlap thus represents the room for compromise that countries’ international negotiators have.

If a country’s domestic politics are weak – no executive accountability, no genuine legislative oversight, and a poor relationship between citizen and state – its negotiator has a large win-set. For example, South Africa’s international negotiators – executive ministers and senior civil servants – can compromise on just about anything, because they are not truly accountable to their population through the parliament.

Logically, one would expect this to strengthen South Africa’s diplomatic negotiating position. In fact, the diplomat who arrives at the international negotiating table with a smaller win-set – with less room for compromise – almost always secures a better deal for her country. Generally, a strong legislature results in a smaller win-set.

But current COP negotiations make a mockery of most legislatures. Government ministers use international meetings to mouth platitudes, while ordinary citizens’ voices are muted. There is, quite simply, an excessive focus on executive power at many negotiating forums.

Of course, a strong domestic legislature by itself is not enough to address the global collective-action problem: legislatures in countries like the US are overexposed to special interests that want to continue polluting. But if Americans were serious about securing a Kyoto commitment from their government, they would almost certainly get it. South Africans would not, because their parliament is hamstrung by the conflation of the state with the country’s governing political party, the African National Congress.

Strong legislatures, while not a sufficient condition for securing binding global agreements, are certainly necessary for that purpose. A country’s legislature is the single most important institution for protecting its citizenry from the excesses of the elite and the costly demands of narrow interests.

The irony of most internationally binding agreements is that they are not actually binding. There is no supra-national body that will enforce the Kyoto Protocol; hence Canada’s disappointing decision to leave the process. And who would police emissions from China and America, even if they did commit to an international agreement?

In the absence of a global Leviathan, stronger domestic legislatures are the key to resolving the world’s collective environmental problems. The less accountable a government is to its people, the less it will do for the world.

Christmas is tied to the magical north and to the reindeer — creatures of mythical power that fly through the night across the world, helping to distribute happiness and good will. But reindeer do exist — we call them caribou in North America — and these animals and their home in the boreal woodlands and on the barren-ground tundra are in trouble.

For the past decade, I have been conducting aerial surveys of caribou herds. As I sit strapped in small planes in minus-20-degree temperatures, it amazes me that that they survive against the challenges of their environment — particularly the females. These animals spend most of the year on the move and live in places that seem intolerably harsh. They undertake long journeys of hundreds or thousands of miles and return to give birth in the same traditional areas. Such large-scale migrations are an ecological phenomenon that, sadly, is fast disappearing across the planet.

Much of the far north is commonly thought to be wilderness. But this situation has been changing rapidly over the last decade. Caribou require a great deal of space to survive, but the clearing of land for one development project after another, combined with the building of roads and other means of access for resource exploration, are bringing about profound changes to their habitat and making it easier for hunters to reach them.

A changing climate is adding additional stress. More winter rain and ice make it difficult for them to dig for the food that lies under the snow. The timing between caribou arrivals on calving grounds and spring plant growth, calibrated over thousands of years, are more and more mismatched, threatening calf survival. Unpredictable weather patterns are increasing mortality as well, and the escalating intensity and frequency of fires in forests and on the tundra present an additional threat.

During the past century, caribou have vanished from at least 40 percent of their southern range. They are no longer found in Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick. Many populations are currently in decline, some by as much as 85 percent over the past 10 years alone. Nevertheless, caribou migrations continue to represent one of the last great wildlife spectacles on earth.

Sadly, the wild lands that support caribou are up for grabs. The epicenter of their range is in the vast hydrocarbon-rich reaches of western Canada and Alaska, where millions of barrels of oil await extraction for markets in North America and Asia. We can’t get the oil out fast enough, and as a result, almost every caribou population in the boreal forests of northeastern British Columbia and Alberta is rapidly losing ground.

In the barren lands of the far north, where caribou numbers have undergone natural fluctuations over decades, the question is whether the declining populations will have the chance and the space to rebound as their ranges, particularly their calving areas, face mineral exploration, mine, oil and gas development, and a changing climate. In these regions, caribou hold tremendous cultural importance to northern people. Stresses on this species reverberate in the daily lives of those who share their range.

Scientists who study caribou are gaining a better understanding of what these animals need to survive, and how they respond to changes in their landscape. That knowledge suggests we move with considerably more restraint in the development of wild places that support this great animal. With comprehensive planning, we can maintain landscapes to safeguard caribou populations before all that remains of this Yuletide symbol of the natural world is a wintry dream from our childhood.

En los cuatro últimos años, el Banco Europeo de Inversiones, el banco institucional de la Unión Europea, ha prestado 48.000 millones de euros (62.000 millones de dólares) para proyectos energéticos en todo el mundo. De hecho, el BEI presta más al sector de la energía que a ningún otro, exceptuado el del transporte (y con sus 72.000 millones de euros de cartera total de préstamos en 2010 fue un mayor prestador que el Banco Mundial).

Unas inversiones en esa escala pueden ayudar a países de todo el mundo a lograr avances decisivos en la reducción de las emisiones de gases que producen el efecto de invernadero en un momento en el que las soluciones políticas basadas en el acuerdo internacional siguen siendo esquivas. Lamentablemente, las prioridades del BEI en materia de préstamos y de cartera de inversiones están agravando el problema.

En 2007, el BEI adoptó su primera política energética: “Energía limpia para Europa. Una contribución reforzada del BEI”. Desde entonces, el Banco ha aumentado en gran medida sus préstamos para proyectos de energía renovable, cuyo total ascendió a 13.000 millones de euros en el período 2007-2010.

Sin embargo, en el mismo período el banco comprometió esa actuación al prestar 16.000 millones de euros (21.000 millones de dólares) para proyectos relativos a combustibles fósiles, una tercera parte del total de préstamos de la institución relativos a la energía. De hecho, los préstamos del BEI para proyectos relativos a combustibles fósiles aumentaron de 2.800 millones de euros en 2007 a 5.000 millones de euros en 2010, incluidas nuevas centrales de carbón en Alemania y Eslovenia.

En los nuevos Estados miembros de la UE, el BEI ha apoyado más que nada la energía que entraña grandes emisiones de carbono, lo que mantiene atrapados a esos países en sistemas energéticos insostenibles. El BEI prestó también a África del Norte y a Siria 1.600 millones de euros para proyectos relativos a combustibles fósiles entre 2007 y 2010, lo que constituyó el 30 por ciento del total de préstamos para esa región.

Debe quedar claro que se trata de inversiones a largo plazo. La infraestructura energética construida en la actualidad será utilizada durante al menos 40 años, con lo que mantendrá a esos países en vías dependientes del carbono. En Eslovenia, por ejemplo, si el Gobierno aplica las metas relativas al clima fijadas a escala de la UE, la nueva central de lignito de Sostanj financiada por el BEI consumirá la mayor parte del cupo de emisiones de CO2 correspondiente a ese país antes de 2050. Entretanto, el BEI invierte sólo el cinco por ciento de su cartera de proyectos energéticos en programas de eficiencia energética.

El BEI sostiene que los préstamos para proyectos de combustibles fósiles apoyan proyectos estratégicos que salvaguardan la seguridad energética europea. Eso es cierto en parte: los intereses políticos de los miembros de la UE impulsan, en efecto, algunos de esos préstamos, en particular inversiones en infraestructura para la importación de petróleo y gas. Así, pues, los objetivos de la UE entrañan una contradicción inherente –la seguridad energética frente a la prevención del cambio climático– y que dificulta la tarea del BEI encaminada a limpiar ecológicamente su cartera de proyectos energéticos.

Sin embargo, una observación más detenida muestra que 6.700 millones de los 16.000 millones de euros que el BEI prestó para proyectos relativos a combustibles fósiles fueron para instalaciones de carbón, gas y aceite pesado, tanto dentro de la UE como fuera de ella, no para proyectos relativos a la seguridad energética de la UE. Esas cifras indican que al BEI pueden resultarle sencillamente más familiares, de acceso más fácil y más rentables los proyectos relativos a energía sucia.

Pero el BEI, que es a un tiempo un banco de inversión y el banco público de la UE, está en condiciones excepcionales para influir en los mercados y no debería limitarse simplemente a seguirlos. Como banco público, sus operaciones financieras están garantizadas por el dinero de los contribuyentes europeos y su capital es inmenso. Además, se beneficia de la información y los conocimientos técnicos de las instituciones de la UE.

Si el BEI ejerciera su influencia en pro de la energía renovable y la eficiencia energética, podría contribuir a conciliar la seguridad energética y la lucha contra el cambio climático y, si Europa explotara plenamente su potencial en materia de energía renovable y eficiencia energética, podría encabezar dicha lucha. Entonces la UE apenas tendría por qué depender de las importaciones de energía sucia procedentes de zonas del mundo políticamente inestables.

El BEI debe actuar más valerosamente a fin de limpiar su cartera de préstamos para proyectos energéticos. Se deberían interrumpir inmediatamente las inversiones relativas al carbón y se debería preparar y aplicar lo antes posible un plan para abandonar progresivamente todos los préstamos relativos a combustibles fósiles. Así se podría reorientar el capital correspondiente a las inversiones relativas a combustibles fósiles hacia proyectos ecológicos.

En el caso de regiones como, por ejemplo, la Europa central y oriental, donde, según sostiene el BEI, es más difícil encontrar oportunidades de inversión, el banco debe crear instrumentos y asistencia técnica específicos que apoyen proyectos de energía renovable en pequeña escala. También debería alentar a los gobiernos a construir redes eléctricas flexibles.

Quitar a Europa su adicción a los combustibles fósiles no será fácil, pero, si el banco de la UE no acepta ese imperativo, resulta difícil imaginar quién lo hará.

Muchas veces se dice que el tiempo extremo es una de las principales razones para tomar medidas firmes respecto del calentamiento global. Hoy en día, ningún huracán ni ola de calor pasa sin que un político o activista lo presente como evidencia de la necesidad de un acuerdo sobre el clima global, como el que se acaba de posponer hasta fines de la década en Durban, Sudáfrica.

Estas afirmaciones merecen un escrutinio minucioso. En 2007, el Panel Intergubernamental sobre Cambio Climático de las Naciones Unidas (IPCC por su sigla en inglés) dio a conocer un informe sobre los extremos climáticos que recibió considerable atención por parte de los medios. Pero, dos años más tarde, se descubrió que algunas de las afirmaciones fundamentales del informe del IPCC -por ejemplo, que el calentamiento global causaría que los inmensos glaciares del Himalaya desaparecieran para 2035, o reduciría a la mitad los rendimientos de los cultivos africanos para 2020- se basaban en declaraciones hechas en llamamientos de organizaciones ambientalistas, y estaban respaldadas por escasa evidencia, o directamente ninguna.

A pesar de este error, el IPCC desde hace mucho tiempo es una fuente bastante confiable de estimaciones sensatas y responsables en un debate por lo demás histriónico. Desafortunadamente, las estimaciones sensatas no son primicia. Por ejemplo, de acuerdo con el IPCC, los niveles del mar aumentarán un volumen relativamente manejable de 18-59 centímetros (7-23 pulgadas) para fines del siglo, mientras que los medios y los activistas suelen decir que deberíamos estar preparados para que el incremento de los niveles del mar se mida en metros.

De la misma manera, los medios tergiversaron los resultados del informe de 2010 del IPCC sobre los extremos climáticos. El diario más prestigioso de Suecia, Svenske Dagbladet, llenó casi toda una primera página del diario del domingo con un cuerpo eviscerado que mostraba arterias expuestas, adornado con la advertencia: “El clima cada vez más cálido amenaza con más muerte”. En una doble página completa en el interior del periódico, se mostraba un gráfico de muertes estacionales en la pasada década, y se indicaba con alarmantes puntos rojos cómo las olas de calor estivales han matado a decenas de suecos. Sin embargo, hasta una lectura rápida del gráfico demostraba claramente que muere mucha más gente de frío que de calor.

El informe del IPCC decía efectivamente que el calentamiento global implicaría temperaturas cálidas más extremas, pero también señalaba que habría menos temperaturas frías extremas. Como cada vez muere más gente casi en todos los rincones del planeta por las temperaturas frías que por las temperaturas cálidas, el impacto general en el calentamiento global serán menos muertes por temperaturas extremas. De hecho, según una estimación, para mediados de siglo, aproximadamente 400.000 personas más morirán por el calor de las que habrían muerto con las temperaturas actuales, pero morirán 1,8 millones menos de personas por el frío. Desafortunadamente, las no muertes son una no noticia.

En noviembre, The Christian Science Monitor se centró en los hallazgos del IPCC sobre los huracanes, cuya fuerza y frecuencia se han asociado al calentamiento global desde que el filme Una verdad incómoda del ex vicepresidente de Estados Unidos Al Gore ganó preponderancia en los medios gracias al huracán Katrina. El titular del Monitor decía con estridencia: “Advertencia sobre el calentamiento climático: prepárense para olas de calor más calientes, tormentas más fuertes”. Sin embargo, mientras que el IPCC sugiere que las velocidades máximas de los vientos de los huracanes muy probablemente aumenten, también predice que la cantidad total de huracanes tropicales decaerá, y que la frecuencia de los huracanes extra tropicales muy probablemente también merme.

El IPCC claramente sostiene que los costos por los daños producidos por los huracanes han aumentado sostenidamente porque hay más gente, con propiedades más costosas, que hoy vive donde azotan los huracanes. La población, la exposición y la vulnerabilidad, no los gases de tipo invernadero, son los principales factores detrás del futuro daño también.

Por cierto, el IPCC observa que los mayores costos ocasionados por los huracanes “no han sido atribuidos al cambio climático”. En consecuencia, si queremos evitar futuros daños causados por huracanes, tenemos que invertir en adaptación. Eso implica mejor gestión del riesgo, lo que conlleva códigos de edificación más estrictos y humedales mejorados para mitigar el aumento de las tormentas.

Existe evidencia considerable que sí sugiere que el calentamiento global causa incrementos de las lluvias, especialmente de las lluvias torrenciales. Eso ha llevado a muchos observadores a culpar al calentamiento global por las inundaciones devastadoras en Pakistán, Australia y Tailandia en los últimos años. Pero el IPCC cuenta una historia diferente: la evidencia no puede ni siquiera indicar de manera confiable si la mayor cantidad de precipitaciones, en efecto, ha afectado la magnitud y la frecuencia de las inundaciones (en terminología de las Naciones Unidas, “baja confianza a escala global respecto inclusive del signo de estos cambios”).

Eso puede sonar contrario a la intuición. Pero se produjeron cambios mucho más importantes: en particular, la construcción de represas y los grandes asentamientos en planicies aluviales hicieron que los ríos no pudieran fluir naturalmente. Si queremos ayudar a las potenciales víctimas de las inundaciones, la evidencia claramente demuestra que deberíamos recuperar las planicies aluviales.

Una mayor precipitación también tiene consecuencias positivas -sobre todo, más agua dulce para un mundo que tiene sed-. Hoy, aproximadamente 2.000 millones de personas sufren escasez de agua, lo que significa que se las arreglan con menos de 1.700 metros cúbicos (60.035 pies cúbicos) por año. El crecimiento de la población por sí solo sugiere que este número podría aumentar a alrededor de 3.000 millones hacia fines del siglo. Pero más precipitaciones como consecuencia del calentamiento global muy probablemente reduzcan la cifra a unos 1.700 millones.

Las historias tenebrosas sobre el clima se basan en una narrativa simple: más CO2  significa más daño ambiental y muerte -y la única manera de resolverlo es reduciendo las emisiones de carbono-. Si bien esto sirve para un mensaje político pegadizo, tiene la clara desventaja de ser erróneo.

El calentamiento global hará que ciertos fenómenos, como las olas de calor y las velocidades de los vientos huracanados, se vuelvan más extremas, mientras que otros, como las olas de frío y la frecuencia de los huracanes, se mitiguen. Y, en algunos casos, como las mayores precipitaciones, el calentamiento global tendrá efectos positivos y negativos.

Por supuesto, nada de esto significa que no deberíamos ocuparnos del cambio climático y concentrarnos en la innovación para generar energía ecológica menos costosa. El último informe del IPCC es importante precisamente porque ilustra los verdaderos problemas ambientales planteados por el calentamiento global, sin exagerarlos para conseguir un buen titular. Ofrece información confiable sobre el clima y hace hincapié en que la adaptación es esencial para mejorar la calidad de vida de las generaciones futuras.

También demuestra por qué el último fracaso a la hora de concluir un acuerdo integral sobre el clima no son todas malas noticias. Pero, cuando se trata del cambio climático, a los medios evidentemente no les gusta que sea de otra manera.

UN climate change conferences don’t of themselves cut greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiations about targets and texts cannot do that; only government policies that incentivise and require business investment in low carbon technologies and other emission-reducing activities can.

So the standard by which UN talks should be judged is whether or not they make such policy and investment more likely or less. And from that perspective the conference that has ended in Durban, South Africa, amid considerable drama, should be regarded as very much a success.

First, it has forced countries to admit that their current climate policies are inadequate. The Durban agreement explicitly refers to the “emissions gap” – the difference between the aggregate impact of commitments that countries have made, and the upper limit of emissions required to have a chance of meeting the globally agreed goal of no more than two degrees of global warming. That gap is large, and countries have now agreed that their targets will need to be strengthened to try to close it. In doing so Durban has snatched the 2C goal from the jaws of impossibility. It still looks very difficult to achieve, but if more concerted action is now taken early enough, it yet could be.

Second, Durban has re-established the principle that climate change should be tackled through a framework of international law. Since the failure of the Copenhagen talks two years ago, it seemed that the world had abandoned this ideal in favour of so-called “pledge and review”, in which countries made purely voluntary national commitments. The legal approach has the great advantage of ensuring that national commitments outlast individual governments, making them much more certain for business and for other countries seeking confidence that their own low carbon policies will not be undermined by free riders elsewhere.

At the heart of the Durban deal is the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the legally binding treaty signed in 1997. Although only the EU and a few other countries are likely to maintain their commitment to it, this is vital to preserve its legal rules and mechanisms, which have done much to enable climate policy in the last decade.

At the same time, Durban has set up a roadmap towards a new treaty to succeed Kyoto in 2020, which for the first time will require the big emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil, to make legally binding commitments too. This is a vital recognition of the key role these countries must now play (and in many cases are playing) in tackling climate change, given the rate at which their economies and emissions are growing. It is a very significant breakthrough.

Third, the conference has established a new Green Climate Fund which, if properly financed (still an “if” not a “when”), will provide vital support to the poorest countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to the climate change they are already experiencing.

So in all these ways Durban has given a major boost to climate policy and low carbon investment. Before the conference started, few people believed such a deal could be achieved. That it was is due to an unprecedented alliance of the European Union with the large group of poor and island countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Effectively defeating those countries, including the US, which did not want either to raise their ambition levels or pursue a legally binding framework, this alliance has provided a heartening example of how UN processes can empower small countries and progressive political goals. For the EU, it has demonstrated in otherwise uncertain times that common purpose can achieve both global good and national interest. David Cameron, take note.

So does Durban save us from global warming? No. In itself, as green NGOs have rightly pointed out, it does not divert the world from the dangerous path towards a four degree temperature rise on which we are now walking. But it will help strengthen the fight against it.

Scientists interested in drawing attention to the human transformation of planet Earth have begun calling the current geological epoch the Anthropocene — the age of man. Naming an epoch is serious business — and in this case the new name is well deserved, given humanity’s enormous alteration of the Earth.

We have acidified the oceans and changed global climate with our use of fossil fuels. We have bent more than 75 percent of the ice-free land on Earth to our will. We have built so many dams that half of the world’s river flow is regulated, stored or impeded by human-made structures. We have transported plants and animals hither and yon as crops and livestock and as accidental stowaways.

Some environmentalists see the Anthropocene as a disaster by definition, since they see all human changes as degradation of a pristine Eden. If your definition demands that nature be completely untouched by humans, there is indeed no nature left.

But in fact, humans have been changing ecosystems for millenniums. We have learned that ecosystems are not — and have never been — static entities. The notion of a virgin, pristine wilderness was understandable in the days of Captain Cook — but since the emergence of modern ecology and archaeology, it has been systematically dismantled by empirical evidence.

Yet even scientists are still misled by the idea of an untouched, natural paradise. A paper published in October by a group of scientists at the University of California, Davis, in the journal Conservation Biology criticizes the idea of the Anthropocene because it leaves “the impression that nowhere on earth is natural” and because “the concept of pervasive human-caused change may cultivate hopelessness in those dedicated to conservation and may even be an impetus for accelerated changes in land use motivated by profit.”

We defend the term “Anthropocene,” and we do not accept the argument that the concept opens the floodgates of unrestricted development. To assert that without the ideal of pristine wilderness, humanity will inevitably go on ruining our best-loved landscapes is analogous to Dostoyevsky’s dictum that without God, everything is permitted.

Yes, we live in the Anthropocene — but that does not mean we inhabit an ecological hell. Our management and care of natural places and the millions of other species with which we share the planet could and should be improved. But we must do far more than just hold back the tide of change and build higher and stronger fences around the Arctic, the Himalayas and the other “relatively intact ecosystems,” as the scientists put it in their article.

We can accept the reality of humanity’s reshaping of the environment without giving up in despair. We can, and we should, consider actively moving species at risk of extinction from climate change. We can design ecosystems to maintain wildlife, filter water and sequester carbon. We can restore once magnificent ecosystems like Yellowstone and the Gulf of Mexico to new glories — but glories that still contain a heavy hand of man. We can fight sprawl and mindless development even as we cherish the exuberant nature that can increasingly be found in our own cities, from native gardens to green roofs. And we can do this even as we continue to fight for international agreements on limiting the greenhouses gases that are warming the planet.

The Anthropocene does not represent the failure of environmentalism. It is the stage on which a new, more positive and forward-looking environmentalism can be built. This is the Earth we have created, and we have a duty, as a species, to protect it and manage it with love and intelligence. It is not ruined. It is beautiful still, and can be even more beautiful, if we work together and care for it.

Global leaders are meeting in Durban, South Africa, in an attempt to figure out how to continue their fight against “climate change” when the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period ends in 2012. Since I’m sitting here in the dark with the heat off, perhaps they’d grant me the temporary moral authority to offer a few suggestions for their agenda.

•Don’t waste any time fiddling with the planet’s thermostat. So the big achievement of the previous summit in Cancun, Mexico, was agreeing that the Earth’s temperature must not be permitted to increase by 2 degrees Celsius? Look, I’ve been in European gyms with air conditioning that can’t even be controlled within the space of a few thousand square feet, despite regular intervention by head-scratching specialists. Usually the excuse is that the “ceiling is too high.” Well, guess what? The Earth’s ceiling is really, really high. Give it up already and move on to something you can realistically control.

•Nuclear energy is the future. Nuclear energy: good. Nuclear bomb: bad. It’s that simple. Now can we move on to a less silly debate? Oh, you say you’re worried about a nuclear energy facility going all Chernobyl on you? While you’re at it, why don’t you also avoid getting your hair cut for fear the hairdresser will stab you in the eye with the scissors while trimming your bangs? The odds are about the same for both. Great Britain has already found out what happens when nuclear is replaced by much dirtier coal: The prices go up, and no one is any happier. Speaking of which …

•Imposing green alternatives almost always results in dirtier ones. When I go to the supermarket and am told the plastic bags cost money, it isn’t ever going to force me to carry around loose groceries. I’ll always pay the extra money and tolerate the cashier’s dirty looks in exchange for the Earth-murdering plastic bags, which I will then recycle as garbage bags at home before throwing them in the trash, where they will hopefully be recycled by a seagull who will recoup them from the landfill and use them in a nest or maybe even as a stylish necklace that would make Charles Darwin proud. When enviro-fascists succeed in removing those bags from stores and I’m expected to carry loose groceries, I will then rely on grocery delivery — meaning a gas-guzzling truck will deliver my groceries and someone will carry them to my door in bags or boxes.

•Likewise, what do people do when heating their home gets too expensive? They throw wood on the fire. And that’s pollution we can actually see –— not just “faith-based” pollution.

•Oil is the future. At least it’s your future and that of your kids. Beyond that, come on — do you really care anyway? It won’t be running out anytime soon, so how about embracing it so we don’t lose an economic advantage to those who already accept this fact?

•Excessive tree-hugging is suffocating the foliage. Plants need carbon dioxide to live and produce oxygen. Humans need oxygen and need to eat plants. One of the biggest issues facing humanity now and increasingly in the future is food security, particularly in Africa and the Arab world, where we’re already seeing uprisings. Why would anyone want to risk further stoking food shortages and political instability in the interest of stopping an abstraction like “climate change”? Let’s get our priorities straight.

•Innovation can’t be forced; it needs to emerge organically. Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein weren’t successful as inventors because some world governing body held a gun to their heads — or to their wallets. Encourage “green” invention by promoting scientific education and critical thinking rather than indulging the ongoing epidemic of ensconcing kids in liberal arts programs to educate them far beyond their intelligence. A focus on technological education will lead to the emergence of “green alternatives” that don’t need tons of government cash to get an inch off the ground.

Before the Copenhagen climate-change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to five African farmers from different countries, four of whom were women, tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods. Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are shared by subsistence farmers and indigenous people worldwide – the people bearing the brunt of climate shocks, though they played no part in causing them.

Now, two years later, we are in Durban, where South Africa is hosting this year’s climate-change conference, COP17, and the situation for poor people in Africa and elsewhere has deteriorated even further. In its latest report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it is virtually certain that, in global terms, hot days have become hotter and occur more often; indeed, they have increased in frequency by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world.

Moreover, the brutal paradox of climate change is that heavy precipitation is occurring more often as well, increasing the risk of flooding. Since 2003, East Africa has had the eight warmest years on record, which is no doubt contributing to the severe famine that now afflicts 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.

These are the consequences that a mere one degree of warming above pre-industrial levels has wrought. The UN Environment Program’s just published report Bridging the Emissions Gap shows that over the course of this century, warming will likely rise to four degrees unless we take stronger action to cut emissions. Yet the latest evidence demonstrates that we are not acting – the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Report 2011 reveals that CO2 emissions have rebounded to a record high.

We are alarmed that expectations for COP17 are so low. Where is the global leadership that must respond urgently? We desperately need a global deal.

At the heart of this deal is the preservation of the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol is not a perfect instrument. It does too little to cut global emissions, and it requires too few countries to cut their emissions growth. But it is part of international law, and that is vital.

Climate change is a global problem: if countries are not confident that others are addressing it, they will not feel an imperative to act themselves. So, having a legal framework with clear and common rules to which all countries are committed is critically important – and the only assurance we have that action will be taken to protect the most vulnerable.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. So the European Union and the other Kyoto parties (the United States never ratified the agreement, and the Protocol’s terms asked little of China, India, and other emerging powers) must commit to a second commitment period, in order to ensure that this legal framework is maintained.

At the same time, all countries must acknowledge that extending the lifespan of the Kyoto Protocol will not solve the problem of climate change, and that a new or additional legal framework that covers all countries is needed. The Durban meeting must agree to initiate negotiations towards this end – with a view to concluding a new legal instrument by 2015 at the latest.

All of this is not only possible, but also necessary, because the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy makes economic, social, and environmental sense. The problem is that making it happen requires political will, which, unfortunately, seems in short supply.

Climate change is a matter of justice. The richest countries caused the problem, but it is the world’s poorest who are already suffering from its effects. In Durban, the international community must commit to righting that wrong.

Political leaders must think inter-generationally. They need to imagine the world of 2050, with its nine billion people, and take the right decisions now to ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit a liveable world.

The 17th conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP-17, is taking place in Durban, South Africa, at a critical moment, as the historic 1997 Kyoto Protocol is set to expire next year. But, like the climate-change conferences in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Cancún in 2010, COP-17 can be expected to spend much and produce little.

Indeed, the extravagance of these conferences seems to grow, rather than shrink, as their dismal results become more apparent. COP-15 in Copenhagen lasted 12 days, and is estimated to have attracted 15,000 delegates and 5,000 journalists. The carbon emissions created by so many people flying to Denmark was real, while the emissions targets that the conference sought remained beyond reach. That will be true in Durban as well – and on an even greater scale.

The real problem is that the expectations concerning meaningful action on climate change, as opposed to gimmicks such as US President Barack Obama’s last-minute arrival and minuscule gestures in Copenhagen, are now lower than ever. There are two problems that cannot be wished away.

First, the United States under Obama’s ineffective leadership has drifted yet further into a “What’s in it for me?” attitude on key issues requiring international action. In place of what the economist Charles Kindleberger once called an “altruistic hegemon,” the America that the world now faces is what I call a “selfish hegemon.”

Thus, the US has virtually pulled out of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, with Obama acquiescing to greedy business lobbies that will not settle unless more of their demands are met. But not only has Obama abandoned Doha; he has also seriously endangered the multilateral trading system by diverting US efforts and resources to discriminatory bilateral trade deals and, most recently, to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will principally aid countries that are worried about an aggressive China and seek political security rather than increased trade. The same is true of environmental action: after Australia’s belated ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2007, the US remains the only country that has not ratified the agreement.

The second problem is that the sheer weight of the US in international affairs, though diminished nowadays, has nonetheless led to a corruption of the principles that should underpin a new climate-change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

For example, unlike the World Trade Organization, whose dispute-settlement mechanism imposes penalties for abandoning negotiated reductions of trade barriers, the targets for emission reductions are not binding and enforceable commitments. The US has not agreed to accept such sanctions for failing to meet emissions targets; but, without penalties, the exercise is largely futile and only encourages cynicism about the effort to combat climate change.

Moreover, abandoning the Kyoto Protocol’s exemption of developing countries from obligations for current emissions, the US has insisted on obligations from China and India that reflect a common form of “taxation” of emissions. But there are persuasive reasons why these countries insist that the obligations must instead reflect per capita emissions, a criterion that would require far greater emission cuts by the US than its leaders now contemplate.

Besides, these countries correctly argue that the tradeoff between action on climate change and poverty reduction is more compelling for them at their level of per capita income, unless they can access newly emerging technologies at low cost. This demand suggests that the US should subsidize the flow of technology to India and China from US firms holding patents, which is highly impractical.

That is where the $100 billion Global Climate Change Fund, promised at the Cancún COP-16 conference, comes in. Unfortunately, even environmental icons like Al Gore in the US are so heavily invested in new green technology that their self-interest is tied up in this fund being spent on developing privately owned new technologies that are protected by patents.

The new “Green Revolution” seeds that the Nobel laureate agronomist Norman Borlaug developed with public money were freely available to all users anywhere. The technology developed by the money spent from the Global Climate Change Fund also should be equally available to all, including India and China, which would then enable them to agree to more emissions cuts.

Indeed, even the contributions to the Fund should have reflected the past damage by the developed countries over the course of a century of carbon emissions – an obligation based on the well-established tort principle that the US has accepted for domestic pollution. But here, too, the US has rejected the idea outright.

Several such sensible ways to design the Kyoto Protocol’s successor treaty have been undermined by efforts to accommodate inappropriate US-led demands and objections, resulting in the impasse that became evident at the COP conferences in Copenhagen and Cancún. Those who do not believe in magic know better than to hope that it will somehow disappear in Durban.

It’s that time of year again. Another holiday season and another United Nations climate conference is getting under way in some remote corner of the world.

The good news for those of us skeptical of global warming fear-mongering is that the chance of U.N. delegates now gathered in Durban, South Africa, agreeing to a revamped global warming treaty is slim. The bad news is that much remains at stake.

Global warming has become the ultimate means for anyone lacking a beneficial product or service to cash in and realize their dreams of wealth through government subsidies and mandates. With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012, carbon speculators are not about to let their billions (and hoped-for trillions) slip away without a fight.

Pity the poor carbon traders who could end up having to search for productive employment in the middle of a recession they helped worsen. Pity also the alternative-energy speculators. The public, which wants the lights to stay on, is beginning to realize that energy generation has to be about power, not freebies. Certainly don’t forget the researchers, climate campaigners and Third World bureaucrats, all of whom have developed an unhealthy sense of entitlement to the productive-world’s tax dollars.

The climate powers that be may wish for a treaty, but they aim to keep the cash flowing by any means necessary. They now seek smaller agreements, which are especially helpful to bypass the U.S. Senate. For instance, the U.N.’s REDD program has Western speculators buying land in developing nations in the name of forestry but, in reality, these are schemes that cash in on huge subsidy payments – eco-imperialism at its worst. U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretary Christiana Figueres recently expressed hope to expand the U.N. “Green Climate Fund” from $100 billion to $400 billion. At a recent conference in Bonn, one developing-world delegate, upon learning an attendee was an American, wanted only to know, “When are you going to send us our money?”

Not convenient for those hoping to hustle through a new treaty, a huge, new batch of 5,000 emails recently has been disclosed in what has been dubbed “Climategate 2.0.” These emails are giving the public a shockingly candid look at the machinations of the high priests of global warming – revealing an insular cadre of climate scientists coordinating efforts to place advocacy ahead of science, stifle dissent and conceal any information that detracts from a preconceived, ideologically driven, global-warming narrative.

With the science sullied and unsettled and warming policies ineffective, economically devastating and subject to the worst kind of looting of tax dollars, it’s time the United Nations call an immediate halt to climate propagandizing, throw the profiteers out of the tent and enter into a new era of balance, fairness and good sense. In the meantime, there is absolutely no reason to adopt any new climate treaties or agreements in Durban.

As crucial climate talks begin in Durban, attention is focused on the likely role of the major country groupings. The outcome of the UN climate conference will be largely decided by the interplay of forces between the Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group formed two years ago, the EU, and the umbrella group of developed countries, led by the US and comprising Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia and others who oppose legally binding climate commitments.

For the first of these groups three issues are critical: the pressure on members to undertake binding obligations in the near future (which it opposes because of its developing world status); the fate of the Kyoto protocol, the world’s only effective legal agreement on climate; and the performance of the developed states of the global north regarding their pledges to finance the south’s climate actions.

All the Basic countries’ greenhouse emissions are growing much faster than the world’s – in fact about five times faster in China and India. But China is far more industrialised than the others, and in a different economic league. Its per-capita carbon emissions are close to western Europe, and South Africa’s are even higher. But India’s and Brazil’s emissions are low, and comparable to those of the world’s poorest countries.

Brazil and South Africa say they could accept binding obligations in return for finance. South Africa as conference host is expected to work for Durban’s success, even if that means eroding the group’s solidarity. Pressure is growing for the group to accept obligations identical to those imposed on the north. China and India responded to such pressure in 2009 by voluntarily pledging to reduce the emissions intensity of their GDP by respectively 40-45% and 20-25% by 2020. The emissions savings would be higher than the emissions reductions promised by most northern countries.

But the global north, responsible for 75% of accumulated CO2 emissions, has made far less substantial pledges than the south, which is least responsible for climate change but whose people are the most at risk. It’s unlikely that India will agree to binding commitments. The issue is a potential deal-breaker.

The EU has linked it to another hypersensitive issue on which Durban could founder, the Kyoto protocol. This imposed a modest 5% emissions cut on the north. Despite some flaws, including an over-reliance on markets, Kyoto differentiates between the north and south’s responsibility for climate change and mandates that the north repay its climate debt.

But Kyoto’s effective, early phase, called “first commitment period”, ends next year. A second period must be negotiated if Kyoto is to survive. Russia, Japan and Canada are vehemently opposed to such an extension, and the US seems to be working quietly to kill Kyoto, which it never ratified.

The EU initially played a positive role in the climate talks but has since turned conservative. It says it will support a second commitment only if the Durban summit agrees binding cuts for the emerging economies. But this risks obliterating the north’s historical responsibility for climate change and jeopardising poverty eradication programmes in those countries. The developing countries, annoyed that the north hasn’t fulfilled its Kyoto obligations, have made a second period a precondition for Durban’s success.

Japan, Canada, France, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands will probably miss their Kyoto targets, some by as much as 30%. Others claim Kyoto compliance by buying carbon credits. Carbon trading, based on dubious economics, has become a massive scandal, replete with overgenerous emissions allowances, misreporting and fictitious projects.

The Basic countries probably can be persuaded to accept binding emissions- intensity cuts, and later emissions cuts – once their people have fulfilled their need for food, healthcare, education and electricity. Immediate cuts would be iniquitous and punish their poor. The EU can play a valuable role if it neutralises the US and brings other ditherers on board while starting talks on future obligations for the emerging economies.

The alternative would be a collapse at Durban – or worse, a “greenwash” outcome similar to Copenhagen, where the US and Basic countries colluded to write an atrocious deal that forced a transition from emissions reductions based on science and equity to arbitrary, unambitious, paltry, voluntary national pledges. Such an outcome would guarantee a climate catastrophe.

This article was written by Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai in September, shortly before her death. It addresses some of the main issues she and the Green Belt Movement were intending to raise at the UN climate summit, which starts in Durban, South Africa, on Monday

In 2011 the worst drought in 60 years engulfed the east of Africa, forcing millions into a desperate struggle to survive. Poor governance intensified the consequences: a drought, not unusual for this part of Africa, became a famine, in which untold human suffering was guaranteed.

Governments could have planned for the drought (after all, some regions haven’t seen good rains for four years) and helped their people adapt to the realities of global warming. They didn’t.

This is the International Year of Forests. What we know is that intact forests are essential to stabilising local climates and securing the livelihoods of Africa’s farmers, herders and entrepreneurs. However, some governments, institutions and organisations are aggressively promoting the planting of exotic species of trees at the expense of indigenous ones as a solution to both drought and climate change. It is not.

One of the most important environmental benefits indigenous forests provide is regulating climate and rainfall patterns; through harvesting and retaining rain, these forests release water slowly to springs, streams, and rivers; this reduces the speed of water runoff and with it, soil erosion. Indigenous forests and trees also play an important role in spiritual and cultural life.

Exotic trees, like pine and eucalyptus, cannot offer these environmental benefits. They eliminate most other local plants and animals. Like invasive species, they create “silent forests” that are devoid of wildlife, undergrowth and water. Tragically, exotic tree plantations in the tropics have taken the place of indigenous forests, often through “slash and burn” practices that destroy biodiversity and turn what used to be forest into agricultural or grazing land.

Through the Redd+ initiative (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the international community has committed itself to protecting and rehabilitating indigenous forests. Redd+ is intended to save the world’s remaining indigenous forests, whose destruction is responsible for about 17% of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) pumped into the atmosphere each year. It also seeks to bolster the capacity of communities to mitigate and adapt to the negative effects of climate change (including drought and floods).

For governments and private enterprise to support Redd+, and at the same time welcome the planting of exotic trees at the expense of indigenous forests, is a contradiction. This is especially true for countries like Kenya, where indigenous forest cover is less than 2% and mainly remains in watershed areas. Establishing plantations of exotic trees in watershed areas and on private farms is bad environmental, economic, and social policy. In the long run, communities will be without reliable rainfall, rivers, productive soils, and food.

In Kenya and other tropical countries more than 60% of the population still live in rural or forested areas. These communities will become poorer and more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – and the nation will experience more severe and regular droughts that in turn will challenge livelihoods, food security and industry – since Kenya (like Brazil and, increasingly, China and India) relies on hydropower.

The benefits provided by indigenous forests and trees are worth trillions of US dollars each year. No market value is given to clean drinking water, clean air and food that sustains life, unlike the dollars that can be assigned to timber sales. The lure of money obscures the real value of essential environmental services and livelihoods of local communities as they are sacrificed for short-term economic gains.

Environmental damage can take a long time to take root. Some years back Kenya imported a eucalyptus clone from South Africa. In South Africa now the government’s Working for Water programme has as its main objective the removal of eucalyptus and other invasive species from sources of water. Today we are seeing that many rivers in Kenya have less water than they used to, or have dried up altogether.

Governments must demonstrate a commitment to standing forests and the rehabilitation of degraded forests. This can be done only if national laws that encourage continued deforestation and forest degradation are reformed; and if communities are supported to plant appropriate trees. If none of this happens, considerable financial resources will be invested without achieving reductions in poverty and other development gains. As the world can see in the east of Africa, there is no time to waste.

In 1997, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Kyoto Protocol – an agreement among signatory states to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. In 2012, however, the Clean Development Mechanism, a system of carbon credits in which each credit represents a country’s right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), is set to expire. While policymakers struggle to extend it, carbon-finance specialists are seeking market-driven alternatives. Progress on the issue has stalled: at the last two UNFCCC conferences in Copenhagen and Cancún, members failed to arrive at an agreement on emission cuts.

Reduction, or mitigation, of CO2 emissions is not easy. It is also expensive. The typical measures – carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), energy conservation, and greater reliance on renewable energy sources like solar and wind – are all costly enterprises, often out of reach for poorer countries, where air pollution can be a serious problem.

But recent climate science may offer hope. Research indicates that black carbon (the soot from inefficient combustion in stoves, fires, engines, etc.) belongs to a class of substances that have an extremely high global warming potential. In particular, black carbon absorbs sunlight and radiates heat, thereby melting ice and snow.

Black carbon in the atmosphere also causes respiratory ailments, as Asian cities such as Shanghai, Bangkok, and Manila have shown. Fine soot particles can penetrate the upper defenses of the respiratory tract and settle deep in the lungs. Children, the elderly, and people with heart and lung diseases are at highest risk.

These substances exacerbate climate change, but they linger in the air only for short periods and are easy to remove. Black-carbon reduction thus offers developing countries an opportunity to mitigate climate change at a fraction of the cost of full CO2 reduction, while providing cleaner air for their people, simply by avoiding soot formation in engines, stoves, and other combustion devices.

Moreover, Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) credits are a potential new answer to the CO2 problem. VER credits are like carbon credits, but, rather than receiving funding from Kyoto Protocol sources, the private sector provides the financing. Driven by corporations and individuals tired of UN gridlock,VER credits offer an alternative way to pay for emission-reduction projects.

Consider, for example, a Thai auto rickshaw or a Philippine jeepney, forms of public transportation used widely in those countries. Typically, these vehicles’ owners simply do not have the money to fix them. With VER credits, however, it is possible to fund the repair or replacement of defective engines as long as the emission reductions can be measured accurately.

Several issues must be resolved to ensure the success of VER credits and the emission-reduction projects that they fund. First, procedures must be established that make these financial instruments acceptable in all countries. Second, there must be internationally verifiable measurement systems in each country that hosts a VER project. Finally, a technical standard on black carbon’s global-warming potential is essential. Without internationally verifiable accurate measurements, the credits will be worthless.

Everyone wants cleaner air, but the costs of reducing air pollution are prohibitive in many parts of the world. By providing a financial as well as an environmental incentive, VER projects make CO2 reduction more accessible to the world’s poorer citizens. Private individuals and corporations will have to initiate such projects; we can no longer afford to wait for the UNFCCC to do the job.

The lesson the world is learning the hard way from the financial crisis is that there is only one boat and we are all in it. To stay afloat, we need rules tough enough to stop systemic risks becoming systemic collapses. This lesson is as true for the environment as it is for the economy.

A key battle in the campaign to build an effective system of global rules will shortly take place in Durban, where the UN climate negotiations reopen at the end of this month. The International Energy Agency has set the scene, with the timely warning in its new World Energy Outlook that we are way off track to avoid dangerous climate change, and that the window for effective action is closing fast.

It is fashionable to argue that a new climate treaty, based on the Kyoto architecture of legally binding carbon caps, is dead. We should, on this view, give Kyoto a decent burial and switch to plan B. This turns out to be a looser arrangement in which governments make voluntary pledges to each other. Its advocates often call themselves “realists”.

The case for voluntarism was first put by those who want to try less hard to deal with climate change. It has subsequently attracted support from academics and other commentators whose concern – indeed alarm – about the climate is unquestionable. They may be desperate rather than cynical, but they tend to know more about the climate than they do about diplomacy. The problem is in the politics not the architecture.

The choice between what needs to be done but looks impossible, and what can be done but is clearly not enough, is as old as history. It lay behind the struggle between Churchill and Halifax as Britain faced Hitler’s tanks on the Channel coast. Nato’s success in Libya was conducted against a barrage of predictions that it would lead to years of stalemate. When there is no alternative, realism lies in expanding the limits of the possible, not in nourishing the delusion that something else might help.

There really is no plan B for the climate. A voluntary framework will not be enough to keep us within the 2C limit of manageable climate change. Unmanageable climate change will precipitate systemic collapses, including of our food and water security. Success or failure will depend on governments convincing investors that they are determined to enact the policies necessary to drive private capital towards a low-carbon future. In the boardroom a voluntary pledge from a government sounds rather like “maybe”. That’s why in the UK we have set legally binding carbon budgets through the Climate Change Act.

If a legally binding approach, including a round of post-2012 Kyoto commitments, falls off the table at Durban, most would see this as giving up on climate change. They would be right. The Kyoto protocol is arguably the EU’s greatest diplomatic achievement. It inspired the world’s largest single market to take big steps towards a carbon neutral energy system, making our economies stronger and more resilient on the way. Europeans should be proud of this approach, not embarrassed by it, even if some of our global partners are not yet ready to embrace it.

It is true that the current cycle of Kyoto commitments only covers industrialised countries, and that some of those outside the EU are reluctant to take on new commitments. Many rightly argue that an effective regime must bind all major economies, not only the EU and those in its orbit. But we do not need this all at once any more than we needed to include everyone from the start to make the GATT work.

Durban needs to send a clear signal that the world is moving rapidly in this direction and that as soon as countries become sufficiently prosperous they will accept binding caps. The deal that is both available and essential must include a second phase of Kyoto commitments for those willing to accept them, plus an unambiguous “commitment to commit” by 2020 from the other major players. This would at last unblock the path to a binding regime with full participation.

Voluntary pledges alone will not keep the global economy open, drive trade and investment, maintain financial stability, or protect peoples against food, water and energy insecurity. If we cannot summon the will to make hard promises on climate change – the first challenge we have ever faced that will affect literally everyone – it will become much harder to do so on everything else.

It’s no surprise that such a complex enterprise is taking time to accomplish. The great achievements in the continuing effort to secure our mutual interests by agreeing global rules – the multilateral trade system, the regimes for arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, the European single market, the international criminal court – all took time and many steps to bring to maturity. True, on this occasion we can’t afford to take as long as some of these projects did, and we cannot wait for conflict to concentrate our minds. But there is no fundamental obstacle. The technology and capital are available. The framework we need is not only compatible with the economic needs of the major economies but essential to securing them.

Arnold Toynbee warned that technology was giving us the power to destroy ourselves. If we could see through the fog of current events, we might discern a fork ahead. One path points towards chronic insecurity and conflict; the other offers a prospect of co-operation and mutual prosperity. The choice between these two paths that will be foreshadowed at Durban.

Lo que relata la basura es verdad. Y entre otras muchas cosas nos cuenta que somos lo que desechamos. Sí, así. Porque si bien prácticamente todo individuo, y por extensión toda sociedad, es una multiplicidad de propósitos -y sólo algunos logros-, lo que mejor nos define es lo que producimos en mayor cantidad. Obviedad tan olvidada como en absoluto deseable.

Claro está que todos quisiéramos ser nuestro mejor deseo y no el resultado final de un bulímico modo de devorar al planeta. Que la búsqueda de la opulencia, tan destartalada ella en estos momentos, haya pasado por el apabullante culatazo de nuestra generación de residuos, superior en tonelaje a todas las otras producciones de un país industrializado, pero también agrario, ganadero, forestal y muy de servicios, debería haber movido mucho antes a la coherencia de una rotunda rectificación. Conviene recordar que la nueva ley de residuos por fin reconoce que estos resultan insaciables consumidores de presupuestos, tiempo, espacio, estabilidad ambiental, belleza paisajística y energía. Es decir, de todo lo que no nos sobra. Pero al menos ya estamos más cerca, casi al lado, de la directiva europea, que como siempre en materia ambiental es seria y tan ambiciosa como deseable.

Que las bolsas de plástico tengan fecha de caducidad absoluta, con un proceso de extinción gradual, resulta de una sensatez encomiable. En 2018 empezarán a quedar fuera del alcance de todos los españoles y turistas esos peligrosos y masivos contaminantes. Erradicación que se acompañará de sustitutos mucho más razonables como las bolsas de papel, que no permanecerán ni siglos ni decenios en el ambiente envenenándolo y afeándolo. Cuestión nada baladí desde el momento en que nuestra primera industria vende paisaje, que será tanto o más demandado cuanta más salud y limpieza conserve. Es decir, que potenciará la imagen de España en el más completo sentido del término. La implicación de las empresas tiene, por su parte, una alta carga pedagógica para sus directivos y empleados, al tiempo que resulta muy solidaria para con los no llegados todavía. Es más, cuando generemos la mitad de los residuos que hoy en día podremos afirmar que somos por fin lo que hacemos, no lo que tiramos a la basura.

De todavía mayor calado y mejores consecuencias para el medio ambiente y, por tanto, para todos sin excepción, es que el uso del plástico será restringido también en envases y embalajes. Aunque estamos más sensibilizados con las bolsas por la frecuencia con que las manejamos, son muy importantes también las cajas en las que todos los productos que llegan a nosotros son transportados desde que se producen hasta su aparición en tiendas, oficinas, restaurantes o nuestros propios hogares. Importan, porque no sólo son millones y millones las cajas de transporte que se usan a diario, sino porque cada una pesa 200 o 300 veces lo que una bolsa. En este campo, el plástico será sustituido por materiales biodegradables, reciclables y renovables. Lo que equivale principalmente a una generalización del empleo de las cajas de papel y cartón, a las que la ley define como embalajes sostenibles. Con la ventaja añadida de que en España se recicla el 100% del papel y cartón que se recupera, algo extraordinario de lo que podemos sentirnos muy orgullosos.

Exigencia no sólo más limpia y barata, sino también capaz de generar bastantes más puestos de trabajo que cualquiera de las relacionadas con los derivados del petróleo. Algo que conviene insertar entre los antídotos contra el progresivo envenenamiento de la atmósfera y el cambio climático. No es poco que algo tienda a ser más sano y por tanto seguro, a la par que menos costoso y socialmente equitativo. Gracias a la nueva ley de residuos, estos beneficios colaterales podrán ser corroborados y disfrutados por todos.

Tema: En este ARI se estudian las principales consecuencias del cambio climático para algunos países clave de Latinoamérica. Se presentan además las políticas de mitigación, adaptación y las posiciones asumidas en las negociaciones internacionales sobre cambio climático. Derivados de los resultados alcanzados en COP16 –los Acuerdos de Cancún– se presentan también los avances más reseñables en las negociaciones internacionales rumbo a COP17, que se celebrará en Durban, Sudáfrica.

Resumen: América Latina no se presenta a las negociaciones sobre cambio climático como un bloque. Los impactos en la región son muy variados, lo cual no sorprende por la extensión de la región, pero generalizando son problemas relacionados con el agua: sequía, inundaciones y lluvias torrenciales. El cambio climático por tanto afecta más a aquellos países cuyos sectores económicos dependen o usan intensivamente el agua, como pudieran ser la ganadería, la agricultura y el turismo.

Las propuestas que han avanzados algunos países carecen de coordinación y obedecen más a los intereses particulares de cada país. Así, por ejemplo, Brasil impulsa el uso de biocombustibles como una forma de mitigación dada la evolución que ha tenido su programa de etanol, que se desarrolló por causas ajenas a las preocupaciones sobre cambio climático. México por su parte, ha tomado la eficiencia energética como bandera en las negociaciones. Esta es una propuesta que parece viable dado que logra beneficios que de cualquier forma los países persiguen individualmente. Estos beneficios incluyen la seguridad energética y la eficiencia en los mercados, así como el ahorro de energía. También fue uno de los promotores del Fondo Verde aprobado en Cancún. Ecuador, por su parte hace una propuesta sui generis: el pago por emisiones evitadas que implica para ellos el pago por no desarrollar sus yacimientos de hidrocarburos. Esta propuesta sería bien vista por otras regiones, como los países petroleros de Oriente Medio que reclaman una compensación por potenciales pérdidas de ingresos derivados del petróleo debido a la potencial transición hacia otros combustibles.

Análisis: El objetivo de este artículo es presentar una visión estructurada sobre lo que representa el problema del cambio climático en Latinoamérica y cuáles son las principales acciones emprendidas por los principales países latinoamericanos para afrontarlo. En el primer apartado se presentan los impactos y cómo éstos pueden afectar a sus intereses estratégicos. Posteriormente se introducen las acciones que los diferentes países han llevado a cabo, o piensan poner en marcha en un futuro próximo, en cuanto a mitigación, adaptación, financiación y colaboración internacional. Estas acciones las enmarcamos en el contexto de la negociación de un tratado global sobre cambio climático. Las acciones de mitigación son las más abundantes, pero también es el tema para el cual hay menos posibilidades de lograr un acuerdo vinculante.

Impactos

El impacto más significativo del cambio climático en Latinoamérica se deriva de las variaciones esperadas en los ciclos hídricos. En México, por ejemplo, se estima que habrá una disminución de lluvia en el norte del país aunque en otras regiones las tormentas serán más intensas y estarán precedidas por períodos de sequía. En regiones costeras es posible que incremente la intensidad y frecuencia de huracanes lo cual podría afectar al turismo que es una importante fuente de divisas (contribuye con el 8% del PIB y con más del 5% del total del empleo en el país).[1] El caso de Brasil es muy parecido: sequía en la región nordeste, inundaciones en ciudades importantes como Río de Janeiro y algunas heladas que podrían afectar la producción agrícola del café y la naranja. También podría afectar al resto de su sector energético ya que la energía hidroeléctrica supone el alrededor del 70% de la capacidad instalada.[2] El caso de Argentina es diferente ya que un desplazamiento de las lluvias hacia el norte de su territorio les permitiría incrementar el área de producción agropecuaria. Otros países, como Colombia albergan una gran biodiversidad, por lo que el coste del cambio climático podría definirse en estos mismos términos. La Tabla 1 muestra algunos detalles de los impactos de una muestra de países en Latinoamérica.

Tabla 1. Principales consecuencias del cambio climático

Fuentes: Recopilación de las Comunicaciones Nacionales ante la convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático por país.

Políticas sobre Cambio Climático en Latinoamérica

En este apartado se presentan los que pueden considerarse los puntos conflictivos de los diferentes temas de las negociaciones globales sobre cambio climático así como las diferentes políticas que algunos países latinoamericanos están implementando o piensan implementar unilateralmente a efectos de mitigación, adaptación y financiación.

(1) Mitigación

De acuerdo con el IPCC, para estabilizar las concentraciones de GEI en 450ppm los países desarrollados deben de reducir entre el 25% y el 40% de sus emisiones y los países en desarrollo deben reducir sus emisiones de GEI de manera significativa en relación a sus escenarios tendenciales en 2020 en relación a 1990.

Hay al menos tres temas a tratar en la agenda internacional en el tema de mitigación. El primer tema, y que supone un nudo gordiano que ha generado grandes discrepancias, es el papel que deben adoptar aquellos países menos desarrollados, pero que están experimentando un crecimiento económico vertiginoso y que serán los responsables de un buen porcentaje de las emisiones del futuro. El segundo tema en la agenda de mitigación está relacionado con las políticas de deforestación. El tercer tema es el relacionado con el rol que deben desempeñar los mecanismos de mercado para lograr que las reducciones de emisiones se realicen de forma eficiente.

El primer tema está relacionado con argumentos de justicia y equidad por un lado y por otro de pragmatismo. De justicia porque los países en vías de desarrollo argumentan que los causantes del problema de calentamiento climático son los países desarrollados actuales, quienes ocasionaron este problema durante su etapa de desarrollo, y que tuvieron la oportunidad de desarrollarse sin restricciones. Por lo tanto, los países en desarrollo deberían tener derecho a crecer sin este tipo de restricciones. Sin embargo, desde una perspectiva pragmática, los países desarrollados argumentan que en el futuro, la principal fuente de emisiones de GEI serán aquellos “países en vías de desarrollo ricos”, incluyendo Brasil, Rusia, la India, China y quizá otros como México y Sudáfrica.

En este sentido, México y otros países de Latinoamérica argumentan que los países desarrollados deben adoptar compromisos de reducción de emisiones ambiciosos en el corto y en el largo plazo. Los países en vías de desarrollo a su vez deben fortalecer las acciones nacionales de mitigación, en el contexto de desarrollo sostenible y de la erradicación de la pobreza. Para alcanzar este objetivo deben contar con apoyo financiero y tecnológico. Las acciones nacionales no podrán ser vinculantes y deben reflejar las capacidades de cada país.

El segundo tema en la agenda de mitigación es el de las emisiones causadas por la deforestación a través de la iniciativa REDD (Reducing Emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). En Cancún se acordó un acuerdo para la Reducción de las Emisiones causadas por la Deforestación y la Degradación de los Bosques y la valorización de las reservas de carbono en los países en desarrollo. El acuerdo reconoce la centralidad de una buena gobernanza y el papel de las mujeres, los pueblos indígenas y las comunidades locales en el éxito de este programa. Se espera que el acuerdo de la COP16 revitalice y aumente el flujo de fondos que apoyan la preparación para REDD+, al igual que estimule las donaciones que en estos momentos llegan a casi 5.000 millones de dólares para los primeros pasos hasta el 2012. En la COP17 se tendrá que definir las opciones de financiación de este programa. Aunque existen varias opciones que van desde los pagos por servicios a ecosistemas, hasta la modificación de productos y procesos para hacerlos más respetuosos con el entorno, la discusión se centra en dos herramientas: los mecanismos de mercado y las transferencias de fondos.

Ecuador propone una iniciativa similar a REDD pero que funcionaría para la industria de los hidrocarburos: pagar por reservas de petróleo no explotadas, lo cual equivaldría a un pago por emisiones netas evitadas.[6] Los países productores de petróleo de Oriente Medio simpatizan con este tipo de propuestas y demandan reparaciones por pérdidas en los ingresos de estos países.

La Tabla 2 muestra las acciones nacionales de mitigación que han emprendido los países de Latinoamérica.

(2) Adaptación

Las medidas de adaptación son menos abundantes que las de mitigación y también tienen menor grado de detalle. Es sabido que el tratamiento de este tema no ha tenido hasta la fecha la misma importancia que el de la mitigación –a menos que el mantra de ciertos negociadores sea verdadero: la estrategia de adaptación es “mitigar, mitigar, mitigar”–. En general, las medidas de adaptación en Latinoamérica se basan en la planificación y pronóstico de los potenciales efectos adversos del cambio climático. En los planes nacionales prácticamente están ausentes las estrategias de adaptación en lo relativo a infraestructuras, alimentación y migraciones.

Hay dos temas controvertidos en materia de adaptación. El primero es la definición de vulnerabilidad. Inicialmente esta definición estaba encaminada a identificar a aquellas regiones del planeta donde los impactos del cambio climático pudieran ser más devastadores. Sin embargo, al estar ligada esta definición a la financiación, más países han querido ser identificados como vulnerables. La financiación causa controversia porque existe la posibilidad de un riesgo moral por parte de los países vulnerables ya que las transferencias tienen una relación directa con el tamaño de las potenciales catástrofes. Por lo tanto, estos países pudieran no tener los incentivos alineados, o ser laxos, en la preparación de planes de protección. Una diferencia importante con la mitigación es que la adaptación es local, por lo que los países tienen incentivos reales para tomar medidas. Lo contrario ocurre con la mitigación donde existe el riesgo de free-riding, es decir que unos países se beneficien de las reducciones de emisiones de otros sin aportar nada al esfuerzo de mitigación conjunto.

La Tabla 3 presenta una muestra de las políticas de adaptación en Latinoamérica.

(3) Financiación

Las posturas de los países son conocidas, y han sido discutidas ampliamente. Una de las posturas principales de México es la creación del “Fondo Verde”, como un tipo de financiación de ayuda. La arquitectura financiera de este Fondo Verde es uno de los logros alcanzados en los Acuerdos de Cancún, en donde los países desarrollados se comprometieron a aportar 100.000 millones de dólares anuales a partir de 2020, para financiar principalmente proyectos de adaptación que será gestionado por un consejo formado por el Banco Mundial y 24 miembros de países desarrollados y en desarrollo.

La Tabla 4 muestra algunas propuestas de algunos países latinoamericanos clave.

Tabla 4. Principales propuestas y políticas de financiación

Fuentes: Recopilación de las Comunicaciones Nacionales ante la convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático por país.

Posición negociadora

Latinoamérica no se presenta a negociar en bloque o de manera coordinada. Las iniciativas de los países obedecen más a los intereses individuales, ya sea por estrategia comercial o política de cada país. México, como anfitrión de la COP16 promovió principalmente la formación del Fondo Verde y enarboló como bandera la eficiencia energética. Brasil alberga en su territorio la selva del Amazonas, lo cual le otorga una posición negociadora privilegiada. Además, Brasil promueve el uso de biocombustibles como el etanol. Esta es una industria madura en Brasil que se desarrolló inicialmente como respuesta a los shocks petroleros de los años 70 más que como respuesta al cambio climático. Ecuador, como ya se ha mencionado, propone un pago por emisiones netas evitadas por la no explotación de sus yacimientos de hidrocarburos. El grupo de países liderados por Venezuela que incluye a Bolivia, Ecuador y Nicaragua piden la creación de un tribunal internacional que castigue a aquellos que dañen la naturaleza de manera reiterada. Bolivia está en contra del esquema de REDD a pesar de que podría ser uno de los beneficiarios.

La Tabla 6 presenta la matriz de negociación de Latinoamérica.

Tabla 6. Matriz de negociación

Fuentes: Recopilación de las Comunicaciones Nacionales ante la convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático por país. Varias fuentes periodísticas.

El largo camino hacia Durban

Quizá lo más significativo de los Acuerdos de Cancún fuese más cualitativo que cuantitativo. Por un lado, la manera en la que se llevaron a cabo las negociaciones, con la participación consensuada de la inmensa mayoría de los países, fue una victoria para el multilateralismo. Se rompió con el mito que dice que para negociar un acuerdo relativo al cambio climático basta con que el cártel de países más contaminantes, o para ser más específicos que EEUU y China, se sentaran a dialogar. Otro avance cualitativo es la definición del criterio de consenso. Al no haber una definición precisa del concepto, se asumía que consenso implicaba la unanimidad con lo que en teoría un solo país podía ejercer el derecho de veto, como quiso hacer la representación de Bolivia en la COP16. Finalmente, la gran lección de Cancún es que es muy difícil lograr en una sola reunión, un acuerdo amplio, vinculante, y con metas cuantitativas. Un futuro acuerdo para limitar el cambio climático, será el producto de la consecución de acuerdos intermedios sobre los cuales se construya y tendrá como consecuencia (siendo optimistas) la reducción de emisiones de carbono recomendada por el IPCC.

Los Acuerdos de Cancún demostraron que el país anfitrión, México, puede jugar un papel clave en la construcción de compromisos para que las negociaciones avancen. El sector empresarial también valoró el esfuerzo que realizó el gobierno mexicano en la organización de los diálogos público-privados que trataron temas comunes como los instrumentos de flexibilidad, tecnología y financiación. México, que preside la conferencia hasta COP17, y Sudáfrica, el próximo anfitrión, están planeando involucrar a los jefes de Estado y de gobierno en el marco de la Asamblea General de la ONU, en septiembre de este año, para así consolidar el apoyo político cara a la conferencia al más alto nivel con el objetivo de lograr que se tomen decisiones relevantes en la COP17.

Para la reunión de Durban, el tema pendiente más importante, no resuelto en Cancún, es el futuro del Protocolo de Kioto. De la ratificación de un sucesor depende también el futuro de los mecanismos de mercado –los Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio– como herramientas para la estrategia de mitigación. De no lograr avances en la reunión de Durban, es posible que los mercados no tengan tiempo para reaccionar a las señales de este mecanismo y por tanto estos mecanismos carecerían de valor para incentivar el comportamiento de empresas, individuos y gobiernos.

También deberá resolverse el tema de la financiación de la mitigación ocasionada por la deforestación de los bosques. En la COP17 se deberá además: (1) aumentar los compromisos en materia de limitación de las emisiones para alcanzar las reducciones de los países desarrollados de entre un 25% y un 40% para 2020; (2) ahondar en las fuentes de financiación a largo plazo; y (3) determinar la vulnerabilidad de distintos países para determinar la recepción de fondos, entre otros (Lázaro-Touza, 2011).

En la primera reunión preparatoria rumbo a Durban que se realizó en Bangkok,[9] el dilema al que se enfrentaron los negociadores fue si la agenda de este año se debía limitar exclusivamente a implementar los Acuerdos de Cancún, o si se debían incluir otros temas políticos que no fueron resueltos en México. Los países en desarrollo apoyaban esta última moción, mientras que los países del grupo paraguas (EEUU, Australia, Nueza Zelanda y Japón) consideraban que la implementación de los Acuerdos debería ser prioritaria. La agenda concebida da prioridad, en el corto plazo, a las tareas inmediatas de implementación, y deja para el medio plazo las cuestiones políticas que continúan sin resolver (MARM 20011a).

La segunda reunión preparatoria (la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas para el Cambio Climático que se realizó en Junio pasado en Bonn) se centró en las agendas de los cuerpos subsidiarios de la CMNUCC así como en la agenda de los Grupos de Trabajo Ad-Hoc. En esta conferencia se incluyó la sesión 34 del Órgano Subsidiario de Implementación (SBI, por sus siglas en inglés, y el Órgano de Asesoramiento Científico y Técnico (SBSTA). También incluyó la segunda parte de la sesión 16 del Grupo de Trabajo Ad-Hoc sobre futuros compromisos de los miembros del Anexo I del Protocolo de Kioto (AWG-KP), y la segunda parte de la sesión 14 del Grupo de Trabajo Ad Hoc sobre las Acciones de Cooperación en el largo plazo dentro de la convención (AWG-LCA).

En el Grupo del Protocolo la discusión se centró en las políticas transversales que vinculan el progreso hacia la adopción de un segundo periodo de compromiso; mientras que en el Órgano Subsidiario de Implementación se inició el proceso que permitirá a los países menos desarrollados formular e implementar planes nacionales de adaptación; en el Órgano de Asesoramiento Científico y Técnico se avanzó en aspectos metodológicos relacionados con la reducción de emisiones por deforestación, degradación de bosques y el papel de la conservación y la gestión sostenible de los mismos.

Conclusión: Los impactos del cambio climático para los principales países de Latinoamérica son muy variados ya que la región es muy extensa, pero, sin embargo, se puede concluir que los principales riesgos tienen que ver con las variaciones hídricas: inundaciones, lluvias torrenciales, ciclones, o sequías. Las acciones de mitigación son las más avanzadas pero, en el plano global, este es el apartado en el que se tienen menos esperanzas de lograr un acuerdo que sea único y legalmente vinculante. Como región, los países no se presentan de forma coordinada, sino con prioridades y agendas muy diferentes.

En la COP16 se desbloquearon las negociaciones internacionales para lograr un acuerdo en materia de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático. Sin embargo, la implementación de los Acuerdos de Cancún requerirá de la buena voluntad de los diferentes grupos de países. No se espera que América Latina persiga una representación común hacia COP17 y, de hecho, dentro de este bloque geográfico, la posición negociadora de dos de sus miembros –México y Bolivia– han sido en extremo divergentes.

Rolando Fuentes-Bracamontes

Director general de Verde Economista, empresa de consultoría dedicada a temas de Energía y Medio Ambiente en México

Referencias

CEPAL (2009), “Cambio climático y desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe: una reseña”, Santiago de Chile.

CEPAL, BID y Gobierno de Chile (2009), “Economía del cambio climático en Chile”, Síntesis.

Comisión Intersecretarial de Cambio Climático (2007), “México: Estrategia Nacional de Cambio Climático”.

Costa Posada, Carlos (2007), “La adaptación al Cambio Climático en Colombia”, http://www.cebem.org/cmsfiles/publicaciones/adaptacionalcccolombia.pdf.

Gobierno de la República Argentina (2007), “Segunda Comunicación Nacional de la República Argentina a la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático”.

INE-SEMARNAT (2006), “México: tercera comunicación Nacional ante la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático”.

Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales (2001), “Colombia: Primera Comunicación Nacional ante la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático”.

Lázaro Touza, L. (2011), “Cancún: anclando Copenhague y salvando el proceso para salvar el clima… quizá mañana”, ARI nº 12/2011, Real Instituto Elcano.

Ministerio del Ambiente (2001), “Comunicación Nacional República del Ecuador ante la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático”.

Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (2004), “Comunicación Inicial de Brasil a la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático”.

Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino (2011a), “Nota sobre la situación de las negociaciones internacionales tras la celebración de la decimocuarta sesión del Grupo Ad-Hoc para la Cooperación a Largo Plazo y la decimosexta del Grupo Ad-Hoc para la Consideración de Futuros Compromisos de las Partes”, Anexo I.

Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino (2011b), “Nota de resultados reunión 16 AWG-KP, 14 AWG-LCA y 34 OO SS”, http://www.marm.es/imagenes/es/110621%20Nota%20de%20Resultados_Bonn_tcm7-164224.pdf

Morgan, Jennifer (2011), “Keys to Success at the Bonn Climate Talks”, World Resources Institute, 2/VI/2011.

Páginas de Internet consultadas:

http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/bonn-talks-focus-on-agendas-of-the-subsidiary-bodies/

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/12/18/bolivia.html

http://www.globalcanopy.org/updates/blogs/policy-brief-sbsta-makes-incremental-progress-redd-bonn

http://www.wri.org/stories/2011/04/bangkok-meetings-deliver-agenda-moving-climate-talks-forward

http://www.undp.org.mx/spip.php?page=article_sp&id_article=1663 .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/10/bonn-climate-talks-negotiations-2011_n_874828.html .

http://web.ing.puc.cl/~power/alumno06/Brasil/Informe_final.pdf .

[1] R. Fuentes y R. Lozano. (2006), De populistas, neoliberales y otros demonios, Editorial Mexicana.

[2] http://web.ing.puc.cl/~power/alumno06/Brasil/Informe_final.pdf.

[3] www.croplifela.org/pages_html/presentaciones/Agricultura_brasil.pps.

[4] Cifras de OLADE al 2009.

[5] CEPAL/BID/Gobierno de Chile (2009), Economía del cambio climático en Chile, Síntesis.

[6] Véase http://yasuni-itt.gob.ec/.

[7] Comunicación de la Embajada Brasileña en Alemania a la UNFCCC, 29 de Enero 2010.

[8] Comunicación de la Misión Permanente de Colombia ante las Naciones Unidas del 2 de agosto de 2010

[9] Se celebraron la 14 sesión del Grupo Ad-Hoc para la Cooperación a Largo Plazo (AWG-LCA) y la 16 sesión del Grupo Ad-Hoc para la Consideración de Futuros Compromisos de las Partes Anexo I (AWG-KP).

You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.

Good.

Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow makes a difference, and then carry your takeout meal back to your car for a carbon-emitting trip home.

Say you’re willing to make real sacrifices. Sell your car. Forsake your air-conditioner in the summer, turn down the heat in the winter. Try to become no-impact man. You would, in fact, have no impact on the planet. Americans would continue to emit an average of 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year; Europeans, about 10 tons.

What about going bigger? You are the pope with a billion followers, and let’s say all of them take your advice to heart. If all Catholics decreased their emissions to zero overnight, the planet would surely notice, but pollution would still be rising. Of course, a billion people, whether they’re Catholic or adherents of any other religion or creed, will do no such thing. Two weeks of silence in a Buddhist yoga retreat in the Himalayas with your BlackBerry checked at the door? Sure. An entire life voluntarily lived off the grid? No thanks.

And that focuses only on those who can decrease their emissions. When your average is 20 tons per year, going down to 18 tons is as easy as taking a staycation. But if you are among the four billion on the planet who each emit one ton a year, you have nowhere to go but up.

Leading scientific groups and most climate scientists say we need to decrease global annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least half of current levels by 2050 and much further by the end of the century. And that will still mean rising temperatures and sea levels for generations.

So why bother recycling or riding your bike to the store? Because we all want to do something, anything. Call it “action bias.” But, sadly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing for the planet.

Every ton of carbon dioxide pollution causes around $20 of damage to economies, ecosystems and human health. That sum times 20 implies $400 worth of damage per American per year. That’s not damage you’re going to do in the distant future; that’s damage each of us is doing right now. Who pays for it?

We pay as a society. My cross-country flight adds fractions of a penny to everyone else’s cost. That knowledge leads some of us to voluntarily chip in a few bucks to “offset” our emissions. But none of these payments motivate anyone to fly less. It doesn’t lead airlines to switch to more fuel-efficient planes or routes. If anything, airlines by now use voluntary offsets as a marketing ploy to make green-conscious passengers feel better. The result is planetary socialism at its worst: we all pay the price because individuals don’t.

It won’t change until a regulatory system compels us to pay our fair share to limit pollution accordingly. Limit, of course, is code for “cap and trade,” the system that helped phase out lead in gasoline in the 1980s, slashed acid rain pollution in the 1990s and is now bringing entire fisheries back from the brink. “Cap and trade” for carbon is beginning to decrease carbon pollution in Europe, and similar models are slated to do the same from California to China.

Alas, this approach has been declared dead in Washington, ironically by self-styled free-marketers. Another solution, a carbon tax, is also off the table because, well, it’s a tax.

Never mind that markets are truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or her actions. Anything else is socialism. The reality is that we cannot overcome the global threats posed by greenhouse gases without speaking the ultimate inconvenient truth: getting people excited about making individual environmental sacrifices is doomed to fail.

High school science tells us that global warming is real. And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend.

Don’t stop recycling. Don’t stop buying local. But add mastering some basic economics to your to-do list. Our future will be largely determined by our ability to admit the need to end planetary socialism. That’s the most fundamental of economics lessons and one any serious environmentalist ought to heed.

About 55,000 gallons of oil have escaped into the North Sea since last week from a leaky pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell, about 100 miles off Scotland.

Last year, Americans watched in mounting fury as the oil industry and the federal government struggled for five disastrous months to contain the much larger BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now imagine the increased danger and difficulty of trying to cope with a similar debacle off Alaska’s northern coast, where waters are sealed by pack ice for eight months of each year, gales roil fog-shrouded seas with waves up to 20 feet high and the temperature, combined with the wind chill, feels like 10 degrees below zero by late September.

That’s the nightmare the Obama administration is inviting with its preliminary approval of a plan by Shell to drill four exploratory wells beginning next summer in the harsh and remote frontier of the Beaufort Sea, off the North Slope of Alaska.

The green light to drill now awaits Shell’s receiving the necessary permits from various federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The administration should put on the brakes. This is a reckless gamble we cannot afford. We can’t prevent an Arctic blowout any more than we can avert disaster in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea. We don’t have the infrastructure, the knowledge or the experience to cope with one if it occurs. It’s irresponsible to drill in these waters unless we have those capabilities.

When the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, appointed by President Obama in May 2010, reported our findings and recommendations earlier this year, we specifically cited the need to address these shortcomings before exposing Arctic waters to this kind of risk.

We need comprehensive research on the vibrant yet little understood Arctic ecosystems, which are home to rich fisheries of salmon, cod and char, and habitat for beluga whales, golden eagles and spotted seals.

We need containment and response plans tailored to the demands of marine operations under some of the most unforgiving conditions anywhere on earth.

And we must be realistic about the kind of backup available in a place 1,000 miles from the nearest United States Coast Guard station.

Shell’s latest spill, in the North Sea, reminds us of the peril we court by ignoring these urgent needs.

When BP’s Macondo well blew out last year, killing 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon, Americans believed the damage would be quickly contained.

The Gulf of Mexico, after all, is the epicenter of the global offshore oil industry, home to hundreds of companies that specialize in drilling wells beneath the sea. There were plenty of ships in the region, from the shrimping fleet to the Coast Guard, available to help the efforts to cap the well and contain the spill.

And yet, in the five months it took to kill the runaway well, 170 million gallons of toxic crude oil poured into the gulf.

The systems that we were promised would avert catastrophe by preventing or containing a blowout all failed one by one.

And cleanup operations couldn’t save the marine life and birds that died, the 650 miles of coastline that was oiled or the deep water habitat now carpeted in crude, despite the efforts of nearly 50,000 workers using nearly 7,000 ships and boats.

Now comes Shell, claiming in its drilling application that its blowout preventers will work. If not, Shell asserts, it can quickly seal the well. And, should oil escape, the company insists, it will have booms, skimmers and helicopters at the ready.

Upon those thin hopes the newly constituted Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement recently gave Shell preliminary approval to attempt this high-wire act in the Arctic.

We have yet to embrace the lessons of the BP blowout, the worst oil spill in our history. While the bureau, formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, has improved drilling rules in helpful ways, Congress has yet to pass legislation to protect our waters, workers and wildlife from the dangers of offshore drilling.

Those dangers are only greater in the harsh and remote Arctic waters. Before we go to the ends of the earth in pursuit of oil, we need deeper knowledge, better technology to prevent blowouts and to clean up after accidents, and greater expertise to protect Alaska’s Arctic waters, one of our oceans’ last frontiers, from grave and needless risk.

Al Gore, the world’s foremost pseudo- scientist, is blasting skeptical scientists for their adherence to the centuries-old scientific method. Having tested the man-made global warming hypothesis with empirical observations, many scientists have come to different conclusions, causing Mr. Gore to become the Lenny Bruce of the environmental extremist gang. Speaking at the Aspen Institute on Aug. 4, Mr. Gore blasted alternative climate-change theories, publicly labeling them “bulls-t” – his words, not mine.

Having already “invented the Internet,” Mr. Gore has moved on to more important things like inventing a new scientific method. Mr. Gore’s pseudo-scientific method must mean politically correct agendas always trump independent peer testing. If your scientific results contradict the politically correct consensus, you are a denier of a higher truth and your proof that his theories are false is bull (to use a more polite version).

Before Mr. Gore’s reliance on make-believe catastrophic climate model results, we were stuck with the good old scientific method, which says if the hypothesis cannot stand up to comparison with real, empirical observations, the hypothesis is false. Albert Einstein championed that test. Mr. Gore is abandoning it now because the test proves his “man-made CO2 is causing global climate change” hypothesis to be false.

Mr. Gore laments the fact that empirical observations are contradicting the “shared reality” he covets on his carefully chosen cocktail circuit. According to him, “It is no longer acceptable in mixed company – meaning bipartisan company – to use the goddamn word climate.” Pity.

For Mr. Gore, any notion that our world is one of constant change is bull. Well, Mr. Gore, with 18 or 20 natural climate drivers constantly at work, there is no way Earth can have a stable climate. There have been no flat lines on any temperature curve in the reconstructions of 500 million years of climate-CO2 relationships. How about the sun or major ocean currents that experience changing cycles? Well, is that just bull, too? Is anything that conflicts with the belief that man is the primary cause of climate change just more bull? My, what a dirty mouth our former veep has.

With all of Mr. Gore’s voiced confidence in his hypothesis, why won’t he debate the issue if he is certain that “the science is settled”? Here’s why: Fifteen of his major points in his 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have been shown to be false, misleading or gross exaggerations. As long as many blindly follow him despite all of this, his best strategy is to remain off the debate circuit.

The problem with Mr. Gore’s new pseudo-scientific dogma is, of course, what’s at stake. Lenny Bruce was a comedian. Mr. Gore isn’t a comedian, as funny as he may appear. For some odd reason people still listen to him and he commands influence over national and global public policy. If he has his way, his man-made global warming agenda will melt our economy, our standard of living and even our national security.

Right now, the only thing global warming is melting is Al Gore’s brain.

Ten years ago, it seemed as if the nation was living a real-life version of “Jaws,” in which every beach harbored a potential threat. It started on July 6, when 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast had his arm bitten off by a bull shark off Pensacola, Fla. The incident was both horrifying and dramatic: Arbogast’s uncle pulled the shark to shore, allowing emergency medical personnel to get the boy’s arm out of the animal’s throat so it could later be reattached. Less than a month later, 36-year-old Krishna Thompson, a New Yorker, lost a leg to a shark in the Bahamas.

Labor Day weekend was particularly lethal. Ten-year-old David Peltier died on Sept. 2 when a shark claimed him off Virginia Beach. The next day, 28-year-old Sergei Zaloukaev was killed by a shark while swimming off Cape Hatteras, N.C.; his 23-year-old girlfriend, Natalia Slobodskaya, lost a foot in the same incident. As the human toll rose, the news media quickly dubbed 2001 the “Summer of the Shark.”

Television correspondents rushed to the scenes of the attacks, where they chronicled the most minute developments, announcing even the non-news that emergency responders doing routine sweeps of the ocean had failed to find any signs of sharks.

Pundits weighed in. As some emphasized that sharks pose a minimal threat to humans, Slate’s Will Saletan questioned their analogies.

“Let’s get a few things straight. Gentle creatures don’t devour human limbs. The bogeyman doesn’t bleed children to death,” Saletan wrote on Sept. 7, 2001.

Less than a week later, we forgot all about sharks. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 took the lives of 2,753 people, a tragedy that dwarfed the impact of shark accidents not just that year, but in the half-century that preceded it. There were 76 unprovoked shark attacks globally in 2001, down from 85 the year before. Fatalities, meanwhile, dropped from 12 to five between 2000 and 2001.

Sharks still terrify people. Just consider the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” which wrapped up Friday: It is cable’s longest-running programming event and attracted 30.8 million viewers last year. And sharks remain the ocean’s top predators, with extraordinary senses that allow them to target weaker species. On occasion, they mistake humans for the animals they want to eat, with disastrous consequences.

But the era of hysteria could, mercifully, have finally sputtered out. In fact, we’ve entered a new kind of Year of the Shark.

The science is hard to ignore: Roughly a third of all shark species face some threat of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The growing demand for shark’s fin soup, a Chinese delicacy, kills between 26 and 73 million sharks a year. Vessels fishing for tuna, swordfish and other species accidentally catch millions more annually. Recreational anglers help deplete shark populations as well, taking 200,000 annually off U.S. coasts, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Summer of the Shark in ’01 didn’t send scientists scurrying to figure out why these animals strike people. But the past decade has witnessed a number of research breakthroughs about how sharks travel, mate and feed — research in the service of protecting them more than protecting us.

“The major driver of shark research during the past 10 years is growing evidence that many shark populations are in trouble,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, who has studied sharks for years and serves as executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.

People fishing in developing countries have seen depleted shark populations as well. Scott Henderson, who heads Conservation International’s Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape program and has worked in Latin America for two decades, said fishermen there are well aware of what’s happening. “They know sharks are being caught in lower numbers, they know they have to go further out and spend more effort catching them. They know what that means.”

And now, political leaders are beginning to act. In 2009, Palau became the first country to ban shark fishing in its waters. Maldives followed in 2010, and this summer, Honduras and the Bahamasdid the same. Late last month, a group of governments in Micronesia — including Palau — agreed to create the world’s largest shark sanctuary in the western Pacific Ocean, spanning more than 2 million square miles. That’s equivalent to two-thirds of the land mass of the continental United States.

Closer to home, several states have moved to ban shark’s fin imports to help cut the demand for shark fishing worldwide. Hawaii was the first to do so, and now Washington and Oregon have enacted similar laws. A shark fin ban passed the California state Assembly in May and could come up for a vote in the state Senate this month. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is considering banning the catch of tiger sharks and three species of hammerhead sharks, and it will vote on the issue next month. Neil Hammerschlag, who directs the marine conservation program at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, noted that these restrictions can make a significant difference. He said recent studies show that when it comes to recreational shark fishing, killing just a few large sharks in a local area can drastically reduce population levels.

Matt Rand, who directs the Global Shark Conservation program at the Pew Environment Group, said that conservation activity overseas as well as in the United States indicates that for sharks, “their time has come.” Pikitch said concern for sharks has “reached a tipping point,” which means, “in essence, 2011 is a very different Year of the Shark.”

Interestingly, this new tolerance comes even as human-shark interactions may be on the rise. Last month a great white leapt onto a research vessel in South Africa, and reported shark strikes in U.S. waters are slightly up this summer, with seven each in May and June, and three in July.

Are we ready to embrace sharks? Not yet. The Discovery Channel is still dangling the promise of “a new brand of rogue,” even as it debunks the myth that sharks intentionally target humans.

But people can now put these threats into perspective. Sharks have killed an average of four to five people annually worldwide over the past decade. But this summer’s heat wave has already killed more than 30 people across the United States. Now that’s scary.

Enjoying the heat wave?

The answer is probably no if you live in Abilene, Tex., where temperatures have been at or above 100 degrees for 40 days this summer. It’s been a little cooler in Savannah, Ga., where the mercury hit 90 or more for 56 days in a row. Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma are coping with their driest nine-month stretch since 1895.

Yes, it has been a very hot summer after one of the most extreme-weather springs on record. It’s time to face the fact that the weather isn’t what it used to be.

Every 10 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recalculates what it calls climate “normals,” 30-year averages of temperature and precipitation for about 7,500 locations across the United States. The latest numbers, released earlier this month, show that the climate of the last 10 years was about 1.5 degrees warmer than the climate of the 1970s, and the warmest since the first decade of the last century. Temperatures were, on average, 0.5 degrees warmer from 1981 to 2010 than they were from 1971 to 2000, and the average annual temperatures for all of the lower 48 states have gone up.

For climate geeks like me, the new normals offer a fascinating and disturbing snapshot of a restless climate. The numbers don’t take sides or point fingers. They acknowledge both powerful natural climate fluctuations as well as the steady drumbeat of warming caused by roughly seven billion people trying to live and prosper on a small planet, emitting heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the process.

Even this seemingly modest shift in climate can mean a big change in weather. Shifting weather patterns influence energy demand, affect crop productivity and lead to weather-related disasters. In the United States, in any given year, routine weather events like a hot day or a heavy downpour can cost the economy as much as $485 billion in crop losses, construction delays and travel disruptions, a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research found. In other words, that extra 1.5 degrees might be more than we can afford.

And while the new normals don’t point to a cause, climate science does. Drawing from methods used in epidemiology, a field of climate research called “detection and attribution” tests how human actions like burning fossil fuels affect climate and increase the odds of extreme weather events.

Heat-trapping pollution at least doubled the likelihood of the infamous European heat wave that killed more than 30,000 people during the summer of 2003, according to a study in the journal Nature in 2004. And if we don’t ease our grip on the climate, summers like that one will likely happen every other year by 2040, the study warned. Human actions have warmed the climate on all seven continents, and as a result all weather is now occurring in an environment that bears humanity’s signature, with warmer air and seas and more moisture than there was just a few decades ago, resulting in more extreme weather.

The snapshots of climate history from NOAA can also provide a glimpse of what’s in store locally in the future. Using climate models, we can project what future Julys might look like. For example, by 2050, assuming we continue to pump heat-trapping pollution into our atmosphere at a rate similar to today’s, New Yorkers can expect the number of July days exceeding 90 degrees to double, and those exceeding 95 degrees to roughly triple. Sweltering days in excess of 100 degrees, rare now, will become a regular feature of the Big Apple’s climate in the 2050s.

The next time NOAA calculates its new temperature normals will be in 2021 — when there will be about another billion people on the planet. Lady Gaga may no longer be hot. But the climate almost surely will be.

As the United Nations wrapped up its recent climate conference in Bonn, talks organizer Christiana Figueres proclaimed that climate change is the “the most important negotiation the world has ever faced.” Faced with real problems – financial meltdowns, unemployment, war and genuine human suffering – the world no longer agrees.

It’s a good thing human productivity doesn’t threaten the global thermostat the way the U.N. would have us believe. If it did, we’d be cooked. Countries rich and poor are backing away from commitments they made years ago during rosier economic times, before the public became aware of Climategate, renewable energy costs and genuine debate.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding international agreement signed since the global warming scare began, expires after 2012. Canada, Russia and Japan have declared they will not renew; China and the United States never signed it, and the U.S. has made it plain it is not about to. And poor countries are becoming less enamored about signing on, as they realize hard economic times mean there will be little climate “mitigation” and “restitution” money coming their way from (formerly) rich countries.

Even die-hard warmists increasingly recognize that bureaucratic solutions hatched at these conferences are rife with waste, fraud and abuse. They may enrich a few, but they are powerless to control Earth’s climate.

In March, German investigators reported that 850 million euros disappeared when shady companies swarmed into carbon trading, emissions and energy businesses.Criminal enterprises raked in tens of millions, fended off regulators with delaying tactics and then announced bankruptcy or vanished. An Italian sting operation resulted in arrests of wind-farm developers who billed the country for subsidies but never produced a kilowatt of electricity.

London’s liberal Guardian newspaper was aghast to learn that the World Bank’s Biocarbon Fund had arranged to pay European “entrepreneurs” $1 million to establish a system under which 60,000 Kenyans would restrict themselves to farming under rigidly controlled, inefficient, “sustainable” techniques. For that they will receive $1.4 million over 20 years.

That’s right, the beneficent World Bank will enrich more Europeans so 60,000 Kenyans can receive $23.83 apiece for 20 years of drudgery, poverty and misery – a princely $1.19 a year.

Even the European Union finally understands how little bureaucracy and energy deprivation dictates the climate. “It is not enough for the EU to simply sign up for another commitment period,” EU climate representative Jurgen Lefevere admitted. “We only represent 11 percent of global emissions.”

Burning fossil fuels contributes only a fraction of total annual atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup, and the EU contributes just 11 percent of that. The EU’s commitment to slashing CO2 emissions by 20 percent invites corruption, has no control over Chinese or Indian emissions and has no effect on the climate.

The biggest divide evident in Bonn was between the United States and large emerging economies. Even Obama administration officials who are thoroughly committed to man-made global warming catastrophe claims finally recognize the fraud problem. In Bonn, the U.S. insisted that all countries subject their emission reduction claims to verification.

However, China will accept only an agreement that lacks verification – and guarantees the right to cheat. Meanwhile, the Chinese are happy to be “the world’s leader” in manufacturing wind turbines – 95 percent – which they gladly sell to guilt-ridden Western countries.

China and other nations support the notion that prosperous countries owe the world restitution for the “sin” of engaging in the Industrial Revolution and becoming prosperous. We can only hope some nation’s representative will have the courage to remind China and its fellow climate travelers that the West never forced them to spend 50 years mired in communism, bureaucracy and stagnation.

While it is encouraging that the global warming camp no longer has things entirely its own way, celebration would be premature. For all the gnashing of teeth and complaining about corporate influence we hear from global warming bureaucrats and campaigners, the truth is that, today, the warmists are the establishment.

Billions are being redistributed to researchers, developing nations, carbon speculators, alternative energy investors and other carbon profiteers – who would like to turn billions into trillions. Pity the poor carbon traders whose markets expire with Kyoto. Not all have their villa in the sun yet.

But rest assured, they will do whatever is necessary to get theirs. Big Warming will not surrender its hold on Western taxpayers without a fight.

The warmist camp plans to retake the initiative at the December U.N. conference in Durban, South Africa. It intends to turn back the clock to the time when the media would attribute any weather or nature event to global warming, without question or critical examination. Al Gore’s recent RollingStone diatribe essentially calls on the media to censure climate disaster skeptics and adopt a one-sided man-made warming narrative.

The NewYorkTimes may go along, but the huge and growing alternative media will not. This week’s Heartland Institute international conference of climate-alarm skeptics in Washington will only reinforce the lack of evidence for man-made Armageddon, and the disastrous consequences of staying the current U.N. course.

Many believe the last-minute appearance by dozens of world leaders crippled the Copenhagen climate conference. But with the big names absent from Cancun, Mexico, and now Bonn, the U.N. wants them back.

Ms. Figueres capped the Bonn conference with a call for “high-level political attention.” If she succeeds, just imagine the mischief a gathering of heads of state, foreign ministers, bureaucrats, researchers, green campaigners and carbon profiteers can do at an African beach resort.

Then imagine how nearly impossible it will be to repair the harm they inflict. Action must be taken to avert such a result.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are pushing 400 parts per million (p.p.m.) — up from the natural pre-industrial level of 280 p.p.m. Emissions for last year were the highest ever. Rather than drift along until a calamity galvanizes the world, and especially the United States, into precipitous action, the time to act is now.

The biology of the planet indicates we are already in a danger zone. The goal of limiting temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, as discussed at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits, is actually disastrous.

As we push the planet’s average temperature increase beyond 0.75°C, coral reefs (upon which 5 percent of humanity depends) are in increasing trouble. The balance of the coniferous forests of western North America has been tipped in favor of wood-boring bark beetles; in many places 70 percent of the trees are dead. The Amazon — which suffered the two greatest droughts in recorded history in 2005 and 2010 — teeters close to tipping into dieback, in which the southern and eastern parts of the forest die and turn into savannah vegetation. Estimates of sea-level rise continue to climb.

Even more disturbing, scientists have determined that, if we want to stop at a 2°C increase, global emissions have to peak in 2016. That seems impossible given current trends. Yet most people seem oblivious to the danger because of the lag time between reaching a greenhouse gas concentration level and the heat increase it will cause.

So what to do? One possibility is “geo-engineering” that essentially takes an engineering approach to the planet’s climate system. An example would be to release sulfates in large quantity into the atmosphere or do other things that would reflect back some of the incoming solar radiation.

There are serious flaws with most geo-engineering solutions because they treat the symptom (temperature) rather than the cause (elevated levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases). That means the moment the solution falters or stops, the planet goes right back into the ever-warmer thermal envelope. Such “solutions” also neglect the oceans because elevated CO2 makes them more acidic. Further, any unintended consequences of global scale geo-engineering by definition will be planetary in scale.

It’s far better to address the cause of climate change by lowering concentrations of greenhouse gases to an acceptable level. That means going beyond reduction and elimination of emissions to things that can pull out some of the excess CO2. Fortunately, because living things are built of carbon, the biology of the planet is capable of just that.

At the moment, roughly half the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from destruction and degradation of ecosystems over the past three centuries. A significant amount of CO2 can be withdrawn by ecosystem restoration on a planetary scale. That means reforestation, restoring degraded grasslands and pasturelands and practicing agriculture in ways that restore carbon to the soil. There are additional benefits: forests benefit watersheds, better grasslands provide better grazing and agricultural soils become more fertile. This must integrate with competing uses for land as the population grows, but fortunately it comes at a time of greater urbanization.

The power of ecosystem restoration to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and avoid disruptive climate change is great but insufficient. We also need to use non-biological means to reduce atmospheric carbon. The barrier to the latter is simply cost, so a sensible move would be to initiate a crash program to find more economical ways. Some methods can build on natural processes that consume CO2, such as the weathering of rock and soil formation. Other methods could simply convert CO2 into an inert substance. For example, Vinod Khosla’s Calera experiment has demonstrated how to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by mixing it with seawater to produce cement.

All of this must take place as we strive for a future with low carbon energy sources and lower carbon transportation. It is in our own self-interest to manage ourselves, the planet and its climate system in an integrated fashion. We can do so, and there are abundant economic possibilities in doing so, but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly.

La energía renovable desencadena opiniones profundamente polarizadas. Para algunos, es un trasto inútil y costoso; para otros, es la salvadora de la Humanidad, que promete liberarnos a nosotros (y nuestro medio ambiente) de la “locura” de los combustibles fósiles. Por eso, hace mucho que se necesita un análisis realista, creíble y, sobre todo, imparcial, que aporte una muy necesaria dosis de pragmatismo y realismo al debate.

El nuevo informe del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) de las Naciones Unidas, compuesto por más de 120 científicos, economistas y especialistas en tecnología, aporta esa tan esperada evaluación. Adopta una perspectiva mundial y concilia los intereses de los países en desarrollo y los desarrollados, al tiempo que examina las amplias cuestiones económicas, medioambientales y sociales que están en juego.

Según sus conclusiones, firmadas por representantes de los más de 190 países que se reúnen esta semana en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, la energía renovable es una prometedora opción cada vez más práctica y sumamente prometedora. Los costos están reduciéndose y es probable que sigan haciéndolo aún más a medida que se acelere la innovación y siga aumentando la demanda mundial de energía.

Los investigadores han repasado minuciosamente más de 160 hipótesis, incluidos exámenes a fondo de cuatro de ellas. Según las más optimistas de ellas, las renovables podrían atender casi el 80 por ciento del suministro total de energía a mediados de este siglo, con lo que reducirían en una tercera parte las emisiones de los gases que provocan el efecto de invernadero.

Naturalmente, sólo el tiempo dirá si se alcanzará esa cifra o no. Algunas de las seis tecnologías de energía renovable evaluadas, como, por ejemplo, las que generan electricidad a partir de los océanos, requerirán más investigaciones, desarrollo e incubación antes de alcanzar la madurez comercial, pero otras, como, por ejemplo, la solar, la eólica y la geotérmica, son ya en algunos casos competitivas –o casi– en costos con  los combustibles fósiles.

El informe del IPCC subraya también lo que algunos expertos en desarrollo y economistas llevan años diciendo: las opciones energéticas deben tener en cuenta los beneficios en el sentido más amplio. Las renovables reducen la contaminación atmosférica, que está costando a la economía mundial miles de millones de dólares al año tan sólo en gastos de atención de salud. Se pueden desplegar rápidamente la fotovoltaicas en zonas rurales sin necesidad de instalar una costosa red eléctrica: Bangladesh ha sido el primer país en adoptar una iniciativa al respecto. Y ahora estamos empezando a comprender los costos del enfriamiento de las centrales eléctricas térmicas en materia de recursos hídricos finitos, por no hablar del precio futuro de un cambio climático desbocado.

La pelota está ahora claramente en el tejado de los políticos. La evaluación del IPCC señala que ya está aumentando la utilización de las renovables. En 2009, la capacidad eólica y fotovoltaica instalada aumentó en más del 30 por ciento y del 50 por ciento, respectivamente, pero no es probable que se alcancen las cifras de verdad grandes sin los tipos de políticas públicas de apoyo que han catalizado la expansión de las renovables en países, como, por ejemplo, China y Alemania.

Son urgentemente necesarias políticas idóneas y con visión de futuro. La nueva tarifa para proveedores de energías renovables de Kenya ha desencadenado un rápido aumento de la capacidad geotérmica y el mayor proyecto de central eólica –de 300MW– en el África subsahariana.

Pero los logros de las diversas políticas nacionales tienen un límite. Las políticas nacionales, incluidas las decisiones sobre préstamos del Banco Mundial y de los bancos de desarrollo regional, deben desarrollarse, como también las estrategias de las Naciones Unidas y de los donantes bilaterales.

No se puede subestimar la importancia de avanzar hacia un nuevo acuerdo mundial sobre el clima en Durban (Sudáfrica) este año. Un acuerdo amplio infundiría certidumbre a los mercados de emisiones de dióxido de carbono y fortalecería los diversos mecanismos que ya están fomentando las renovables en las economías en ascenso y aportando financiación estatal a las inversiones del sector privado. La reunión de Río+20, que se celebrará en el Brasil el año que viene es otra oportunidad para propiciar la transición a una economía verde mundial.

Siguen existiendo dificultades técnicas: la gestión sin fisuras de una panoplia de fuentes energéticas muy diferentes requerirá inversiones en unas mejores redes eléctricas nacionales y regionales. Sin embargo, las oportunidades –mantener el aumento de la temperatura mundial en este siglo por debajo de los dos grados centígrados y crear empleos decentes en las industrias de tecnologías limpias para millones de personas– compensan con mucha diferencia las dificultades. La energía limpia y renovable será un componente indispensable de la lucha contra la pobreza a escala mundial.

El IPCC calcula que los costos de desencadenar una revolución en materia de energías renovables podría oscilar entre tres billones de dólares y más de doce billones de dólares de aquí a 2030. Parece bastante caro y lo es, pero también lo son las subvenciones a los combustibles fósiles, que, con apenas un murmullo de protesta, ascienden actualmente a más de 600.000 millones de dólares al año.

El informe del IPCC ha aportado un sólido fundamento científico para un futuro con escasas emisiones de dióxido de carbono y con recursos eficientes. Ahora los gobiernos tienen una perspectiva más clara sobre cómo reforzar las vidas y los medios de vida de los 7.000 millones de habitantes del mundo (entre 9.000 y 10.000 en 2050), sin por ello dejar de mantener la huella de la Humanidad, incluido el cambio climático, dentro de los limites de sostenibilidad medioambiental del planeta.

As the world’s factory floor, China is not an obvious environmental leader. It is beleaguered by severe pollution and generates more carbon emissions than any other nation. Yet many have trumpeted it as an emerging “green giant” for its non-carbon-based energy production and its aggressive promises to cut carbon emissions. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman described China’s “green leap forward” as “the most important thing to happen” at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

But the facts do not support this “green” success story.

China indeed invests more than any other nation in environmentally friendly energy production: $34 billion in 2009, or twice as much as the United States. Almost all of its investment, however, is spent producing green energy for Western nations that pay heavy subsidies for consumers to use solar panels and wind turbines.

China was responsible for half of the world’s production of solar panels in 2010, but only 1 percent was installed there. Just as China produces everything from trinkets to supertankers, it is exporting green technology — which makes it a giant of manufacturing, not of environmental friendliness.

In wind power, China both produces and consumes. In 2009, it put up about a third of the world’s new wind turbines. But much of this has been for show. A 2008 Citigroup analysis found that about one-third of China’s wind power assets were not in use. Many turbines are not connected to the transmission grid. Chinese power companies built wind turbines that they didn’t use as the cheapest way of satisfying — on paper — government requirements to boost renewable energy capacity.

Consider the bigger picture: 87 percent of the energy produced in China comes from fossil fuels, the vast majority of it from coal, the International Energy Agency found in 2010.

The explosive recent growth in Chinese solar and wind generation equates to going from zilch to a small fraction: Wind today generates just 0.05 percent of China’s energy, and solar is responsible for one-half of one-thousandth of 1 percent.

The avoided carbon emissions from all of China’s solar and wind generation — even maintained over the entire century — would lower temperatures in 2100 by 0.00002 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the equivalent, based on mainstream climate models, of delaying temperature rises at the end of the century by around five hours.

Of course, proponents argue that China has promised to do much more: It vowed to cut carbon intensity (the amount of emissions produced per dollar of gross domestic product) 40 to 45 percent by 2020. But this is essentially promising to do nothing new: IEA projections, using expected growth and development and absent any new policies, show carbon intensity already on track to fall 40 percent. Even with this reduction, by 2020 China will have quadrupled its emissions from 1990.

China also aims for non-fossil-fuel energy sources to account for 11.4 percent of primary energy consumption by 2015. At best, this is a promise to slide backward merely slowly. Today, China gets 13 percent of its energy from non-fossil fuels, particularly biomass and hydropower, with a little nuclear energy and a minuscule amount of solar and wind power.

The reason China does not use more wind and solar power is simple: Even when mass-produced with cheap labor, solar panels and wind turbines are not cost-effective replacements for fossil fuels. They appear so in the West only where politicians create generous subsidies for their implementation.

There is, however, a mostly untold story from China that shows an area where the promise of a “green future” is not without foundation. China leads the world in the production of solar heaters. This industry doesn’t receive subsidies because it doesn’t need them: Solar heating is cost-effective.

Heat constitutes almost half of global energy demand, much of it from households wanting to cook, heat water or warm their environments. Solar heaters can heat water cheaply — at about one-quarter the price of an electric water heater. In China, solar heaters provide four times more energy than wind turbines. Exports of this product bring in more than $6 billion a year.

Because solar heaters are cheaper than fossil fuel heating, consumers don’t need to be paid large subsidies to use them.

This is the green lesson China holds: A green future will result not from subsidizing immature technology today but from developing competitive green technology that is effective and cheap. Wind and solar power are not yet competitive. Research would be a much better investment for Western countries than subsidizing imports of today’s green technology from China. Until we can make alternative energy technology effective and affordable for everybody, there will be no happy ending to the “green” success story.

Tema: Las ciudades emiten entre el 60% y el 80% de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) a nivel mundial, y consumen aproximadamente esos mismos porcentajes de la energía mundial. Además, tienen un gran potencial de mitigación. Estas características hacen que la ciudad sea un espacio clave en la consecución de futuros compromisos climáticos.

Resumen: Este ARI estudia las características clave de las ciudades como principales emisores de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) y consumidores de energía. Además, hace un repaso de las fuentes y sectores que contribuyen de manera significativa a dicho consumo energético (y emisiones asociadas). Hecho esto, el documento pasa a presentar las principales consecuencias del cambio climático que son de especial relevancia a nivel local, como por ejemplo el Efecto Isla de Calor (Urban Heat Island, UHI en sus siglas en inglés). Una vez analizadas las consecuencias del cambio climático en las ciudades se hará una breve reflexión sobre algunas de las políticas de cambio climático que se están llevando a cabo en distintas ciudades del mundo. El análisis de dichas experiencias ayudará a presentar recomendaciones para la acción en materia de reducción de emisiones de GEI en ciudades que no han desarrollado aún una estrategia de lucha contra el cambio climático, o que tienen previsto revisar la que ya tienen.

Análisis: Las políticas de cambio climático a nivel local se han desarrollado de manera más o menos global desde la década de los 90 del siglo XX, especialmente en países desarrollados. El conocimiento de las políticas de cambio climático en las ciudades sigue siendo, sin embargo, limitado, por lo que análisis recientes como los de la OECD (2009, 2010) y de autores como Bestill y Bulkeley (2007) y Hallegatte et al. (2008, 2010) son de interés a la hora de afrontar futuras decisiones sobre reducción de GEI y adaptación a las consecuencias del cambio climático. Además, dado el potencial de ahorro energético de las ciudades, cifrado en dos tercios del ahorro energético potencial total (OCDE, 2008), es esencial que se incluya el nivel local en los cálculos nacionales e internacionales de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático. En futuras conferencias de las partes, como en Durban a finales de 2010, el papel de las ciudades podría ayudar a seguir avanzando en la limitación de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de manera decisiva. Asimismo, la adaptación a las consecuencias esperadas del cambio climático se dará a nivel local, por lo que la política climática en las ciudades tendrá que prestar atención no sólo a la reducción de GEI sino también a la adaptación planificada. Dado el gap entre los compromisos existentes y las acciones necesarias para lograr limitar los efectos del cambio climático, este es un área que es importante explorar.

Las ciudades y las principales fuentes de GEI

Las ciudades se definen como constructos artificiales en los que se sacrifica el entorno natural en favor de la urbe (Camagni, Capello y Nijkamp, 1998) que aglutina un número variable de personas, desde las ciudades de unos miles de habitantes hasta la grandes metrópolis de varios millones. Las ciudades ocupan alrededor del 2% de la superficie terrestre y más del 50% de la población mundial vive actualmente en ellas (Kennedy et al., 2009). En 2030 se estima que este porcentaje llegará al 60% de la población mundial y para mediados del siglo XXI el 70% de la población mundial y el 86% de la población de los países de la OCDE vivirá en ciudades (OCDE, 2010).

En la Figura 1 se recogen las tendencias en el crecimiento de la población entre 1950 y 2050, usando datos de Naciones Unidas.

Además de albergar en la actualidad a más de la mitad de la población mundial en las ciudades, en ellas se concentra una proporción significativa del crecimiento económico, del potencial innovador, del consumo energético y de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de cada país. En los países de la OCDE, por ejemplo, el 40% del PIB nacional proviene de las zonas con mayor concentración de población y en muchos de estos países una sola región metropolitana produce entre un tercio y la mitad del PIB nacional (por ejemplo, Londres, París, Bruselas, Seúl, Dublín, Oslo y Estocolmo, entre otras). La OCDE estima que entre el 60% y el 80% de la energía consumida y de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero provienen de las ciudades. A medida que los procesos de urbanización se consolidan, el consumo energético y las consiguientes emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero van en aumento. Esta tendencia es especialmente acusada en ciudades de Asia y África, donde además del proceso urbanizador se está experimentando un cambio en el mix energético de las ciudades que están pasando a ser grandes consumidores de combustibles fósiles (OCDE, 2010).

Según Kennedy et al. (2009) los factores que determinan las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de las ciudades incluyen elementos geofísicos como el clima y los recursos naturales a los que tiene acceso la ciudad y elementos técnicos como la generación de energía, el diseño de la ciudad[1] y de sus edificios, el sistema de gestión de residuos y su sistema de transporte. A dichos factores habría que añadir variables socioeconómicas como el nivel de renta y el estilo de vida de los habitantes de la ciudad. Finalmente, la política ambiental y de cambio climático también influye de manera significativa en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en las ciudades.

En general, las variables que favorecerán menores emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero incluyen: climas más templados en los que se necesita menos calefacción o aire acondicionado, mayor acceso a fuentes energéticas renovables, mayor densidad de las ciudades, la disponibilidad de avances tecnológicos y la existencia de políticas climáticas avanzadas.

A modo de ilustración de las principales fuentes de emisiones de GEI, la Figura 2 compara las emisiones directas de gases de efecto invernadero medidos en toneladas de CO2 equivalente per capita y divididos por sectores de 10 grandes ciudades.

Como se ilustra en la Figura 2, el peso de los sectores más intensivos en emisiones de GEI varía en función de la ciudad analizada, siendo no obstante la generación de electricidad, el transporte terrestre y las calefacciones (junto con los combustibles industriales) los sectores más emisores de GEI en las ciudades analizadas.

Consecuencias del cambio climático en las ciudades

Los estudios disponibles indican que las consecuencias del cambio climático se harán sentir de manera especialmente severa en algunas de las grandes ciudades del mundo, en especial en las costeras y en países en desarrollo. Los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos, como olas de calor o inundaciones, pueden causar en las ciudades que no se adapten a tiempo daños mayores en comparación con entornos rurales. La razón de estos mayores daños esperados es que las ciudades dependen en mayor medida que las zonas no urbanas de las infraestructuras y de los servicios básicos a la ciudadanía, como el transporte público, los servicios sanitarios y la gestión de residuos. Además, tal y como se recoge en Hallegatte et al. (2010), dichas infraestructuras tienden a estar insuficientemente preparadas para resistir acontecimientos meteorológicos extremos. En este sentido, la Agencia Europea del Medio Ambiente nos recordaba en su informe de 2009 que acontecimientos como las inundaciones de ciudades alemanas a principios de la década, la ola de calor que dejó más de 50.000 muertos en Europa en 2003[2] (y que afectó a las ciudades en mayor medida en países como Francia) o la necesidad de suministrar agua por buques a la ciudad de Barcelona en 2008, pueden volverse más frecuentes a causa del cambio climático (EEA, 2009).

Las experiencias de fenómenos meteorológicos extremos junto con las predicciones climáticas disponibles indican la necesidad de planificar una respuesta proactiva que tenga en cuenta tanto el coste de oportunidad de las medidas de acción temprana en un contexto económico adverso como el hecho de que las medidas de adecuación y adaptación a dichos fenómenos meteorológicos extremos tardarán años en materializarse. Así, la regionalización de los modelos climáticos y los análisis de los riesgos, los costes y los beneficios de distintas medidas de adaptación serán de ayuda a la hora de formular políticas eficientes, equitativas y viables a nivel político.

Adicionalmente, el entramado urbano de las ciudades produce el “Efecto Isla de Calor” o Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI). Según la agencia de protección del medio ambiente de EEUU (EPA en sus siglas en ingles) este término hace referencia al fenómeno que tiene lugar en ambientes urbanizados que tiene como consecuencia mayores temperaturas observadas (entre 3,5ºC y 4,5ºC) en comparación con ambientes rurales. Como consecuencia del cambio climático se espera, además, que estas diferencias térmicas entre ambientes urbanos y rurales aumenten hasta 1ºC por década, llegando a alcanzar diferencias de hasta 10ºC en grandes metrópolis (OCDE, 2010).

A modo de ilustración, la Figura 3 refleja el posible efecto del cambio climático en las temperaturas de diversas ciudades europeas a finales del siglo XXI.

Como ocurre en otros ámbitos, las consecuencias esperadas para las ciudades del sur de Europa serán más acusadas, pudiendo afectar, entre otros, al confort térmico de turistas y ciudadanos durante los meses de verano, alterando los patrones y las estaciones en la que se viaje a ciudades como Madrid o Roma. Para España, en la que más del 10% del PIB viene del turismo, las consecuencias podrían ser significativas, aunque el efecto de menor turismo en verano podría verse parcialmente compensado por un aumento del turismo en otras épocas del año.

Políticas climáticas en las ciudades

Las respuestas de las ciudades ante el cambio climático se han dado tanto de manera individual como de manera concertada a través de redes de ciudades. Ejemplos de estas redes incluyen: la Red Española de Ciudades por el Clima, el Consejo Internacional para las Iniciativas Ambientales Locales (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, ICLEI), la Alianza por el Clima (Climate Alliance, con más de 1.000 miembros en 17 ciudades europeas que se han comprometido a reducir a la mitad sus emisiones de GEI en 2030 en relación a 1990) y el C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (más centrado en el papel de las compras públicas y en la promoción de tecnologías limpias para influir en el mercado), entre otros.

Uno de los elementos que hacen difícil la articulación de una respuesta adecuada a los efectos potenciales del cambio climático es el hecho de que modificar las infraestructuras de las ciudades (carreteras, suministro de agua y planificación del territorio) suponen costes ciertos a corto plazo, plazos de ejecución de planes y obras dilatados y beneficios a largo plazo con cierto grado de incertidumbre. Esta incertidumbre es inherente a las predicciones climáticas a largo plazo, lo cual no implica que la mejor opción sea la inacción. De hecho, las ciudades llevan respondiendo al reto de reducir sus emisiones de GEI y adaptarse a las consecuencias del cambio climático desde finales del siglo pasado.

Otro de los elementos que dificultan el desarrollo de las políticas de cambio climático es el hecho de que las políticas ambientales se han visto tradicionalmente como enemigas de un mayor crecimiento económico, especialmente en tiempos de crisis. Para evaluar esta hipótesis es necesario contar con datos, muchas veces inexistentes, sobre los costes y los beneficios de las acciones de mitigación y de adaptación, además de tener en cuenta los efectos indirectos que dichos costes y beneficios generan. Ejemplos de los beneficios adicionales que pueden suponer las políticas locales contra cambio climático incluyen (ibid.):

• Mejora de la calidad del aire de nuestras ciudades al establecer políticas que limiten el tráfico por ejemplo.
• Mejoras en la salud de los ciudadanos.
• Ahorro energético derivado de las medidas de eficiencia energética.
• Reducción de la dependencia energética exterior.
• Reducción de las probabilidades de derrames de petróleo (al reducir la demanda de combustibles fósiles).
• Aumento del atractivo de ciudades menos contaminadas para turistas y ciudadanos.

A nivel institucional, son los decisores locales, y en especial los alcaldes y sus departamentos de sostenibilidad, política energética y planificación del territorio, entre otros, los que pueden fomentar de manera decisiva las acciones en los sectores más intensivos en emisiones de GEI de las ciudades. La cooperación con otros agentes sociales como empresas y ciudadanos y la coordinación con otros niveles de toma de decisiones (regional, nacional e internacional) serán además clave en la exitosa consecución de las políticas locales.

Los gobiernos locales pueden influir en las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de las ciudades a través de la limitación de sus propios consumos. Además pueden influir en la provisión de servicios públicos más “verdes”, como por ejemplo a través de la sustitución de la flota de vehículos de transporte público por vehículos menos contaminantes. Los ayuntamientos tienen también a su disposición tanto medidas coercitivas (limitación de la velocidad del tráfico, restricciones de tráfico en ciertas zonas o códigos técnicos de edificación, entre otros) como instrumentos de mercado (tasas ambientales sobre los residuos, por ejemplo). Además, los decisores locales pueden influir en el comportamiento de ciudadanos y empresas a través de campañas de información (en España, por ejemplo, las campañas de separación de residuos para su posterior reciclaje o las campañas de ahorro de agua).

Las políticas de mitigación y de adaptación que se analizarán brevemente a continuación incluyen la planificación territorial y de edificación, el transporte, el uso de recursos naturales, las políticas hídricas y la gestión de residuos. Dichas políticas se suelen instrumentar a través de planes y estrategias en las que las ciudades se comprometen a reducir sus emisiones de GEI. Ejemplos de dichos compromisos son los adquiridos por la ciudad de Nueva York, que se ha comprometido a reducir sus emisiones en un 30% entre 2005 y 2030, y Tokio, cuyo compromiso consiste en una reducción del 25% entre 2000 y 2020, entre otros. En Madrid, por ejemplo, el compromiso existente implica una reducción de las emisiones de GEI del 8% en 2020 en relación a los niveles de 1990, además de reducir en un 20% la demanda de combustibles fósiles para 2020 en relación a los niveles de 2004 (Ayuntamiento de Madrid, 2008).

Con relación a la planificación del territorio, es importante recordar que las zonas multi-funcionales en las que hay servicios, zonas residenciales, oficinas, etc., pueden ayudar a reducir el número de desplazamientos por carretera (uno de los factores más relevantes de las emisiones de GEI en las ciudades). Además, las políticas de fomento de las ciudades más compactas son menos intensivas en términos de emisiones de GEI en media (Kennedy et al., 2009). Como expresión más avanzada del uso de la planificación territorial y de la política ambiental a nivel local han surgido también las llamadas eco-ciudades (Tabernero Duque, 2010) cuyas políticas de uso de recursos y generación de residuos tienden a ser más restrictivas que en sus homólogas no “eco”.

Relacionadas con las políticas de planificación del territorio se encuentran también las políticas y códigos de edificación de las ciudades que, al igual que las anteriores, deberán cumplir el doble objetivo de ayudar en la reducción en las emisiones de GEI y de adecuarse a los impactos esperados del cambio climático. El hecho de que en su mayoría las infraestructuras y los edificios tengan una vida útil de más de 50 años hace que sea especialmente importante tener en cuenta las necesidades de la ciudadanía a largo plazo a la hora de regular y construir edificios tanto industriales como comerciales y residenciales. Así, las acciones básicas en materia de edificaciones incluyen (OCDE, 2010; Ayuntamiento de Madrid, com. Pers.): mejoras en la eficiencia energética derivadas de medidas como el aislamiento térmico del parque residencial existente, la localización adecuada de los edificios para optimizar la luz y la temperatura, la selección de materiales de construcción menos intensivos en CO2, la inclusión de auditorías energéticas durante las obras de construcción y el aprovechamiento de techos y cubiertas para fomentar el uso de energías renovables, entre otros. En edificios públicos es cada vez más común ver medidas de ahorro y eficiencia energética como la sustitución de bombillas tradicionales por bombillas de bajo consumo o la moderación de las temperaturas mínimas y máximas, entre otros. Un ejemplo de este tipo de iniciativas se puede ver en la ciudad china de Shenzhen, cuyas autoridades se han comprometido a reducir en un 50% la energía consumida en edificios de nueva construcción y en un 20% en edificios antiguos.

Las recomendaciones básicas a la hora de regular las emisiones de GEI procedentes del transporte rodado en las ciudades incluyen: mejorar los servicios de transporte público (dotación, infraestructuras y conexiones entre poblaciones o fomentando planes de transporte público para empleados), aumentar la eficiencia de los vehículos en circulación (a través de planes de renovación de las flotas de vehículos particulares, por ejemplo), desincentivar el uso individual del vehículo privado (creando, por ejemplo, carriles de alta ocupación, invirtiendo en carril bici, fomentando el tele-trabajo y empleando una tasa de congestión (congestion charge) en el centro de las ciudades, entre otros).

En lo referente a la gestión de los recursos naturales, es importante destacar que iniciativas como plantar árboles en las calles de las ciudades o la creación de espacios verdes, entre otros, suponen aunar las políticas de mitigación y las de adaptación. Esta alineación de las políticas de mitigación y adaptación se debe a que iniciativas como plantar árboles aumentan el potencial de captura de CO2 de las ciudades y, a su vez, ayudan a limitar futuros aumentos de las temperaturas derivados, por ejemplo, del efecto Isla de Calor. Un ejemplo de este tipo de iniciativas lo proporciona la ciudad coreana de Sejong, en la que la mitad de su superficie se dedicará a la creación de zonas verde, parques y muelles (OECD, 2010).

Las políticas hídricas de las ciudades están relacionadas con la política energética y por ende con las emisiones de GEI. En California, por ejemplo, el 20% del consumo energético se deriva de la provisión, el bombeo, la presurización, el proceso de calentado del agua y usos finales. Las políticas de ahorro y uso eficiente de agua pueden ayudar a reducir las emisiones de GEI. Las principales acciones en relación a la política local de agua y cambio climático incluyen: reducción del consumo de agua mediante campañas de concienciación, reparación de fugas, evitar la contaminación de las aguas por inundaciones e instalación de sistemas de riego por goteo, entre otros. Tanto las señales del mercado vía mayores precios, como la limitación de ciertos usos o las campañas informativas, son instrumentos útiles en la limitación en el uso del agua. A pesar de que hay ciudades que ya incluyen las políticas de adaptación planificada o proactiva a sus planes futuros de gestión de agua, esto no es la norma y ciudades como, por ejemplo, Madrid están siguiendo un proceso de adaptación espontáneo o reactivo a las consecuencias del cambio climático en materia hídrica.

La gestión de residuos es otro de los ámbitos de actuación clave en la minimización de emisiones de GEI de las ciudades. Los residuos urbanos tienden a aumentar con el crecimiento económico, por lo que es importante seguir avanzando en políticas que ayuden a desacoplar el crecimiento económico de la generación de residuos. Las políticas de reducción de residuos –como, por ejemplo, el fomento de los procesos de compostaje de comida, aumentar los impuestos de materiales no reciclables, la reducción de envases y embalajes y la mejora en los procesos de incineración,[3] entre otros– son clave a la hora de reducir las emisiones de GEI de los residuos generados. Un ejemplo de éxito en esta materia lo encontramos en la política de gestión de residuos de la ciudad de San Francisco, que ha logrado reducir los residuos que acaban en los vertederos en un 70% a través de fomentar el reciclaje y el compostaje (OECD, 2008).

Recomendaciones

Tras el breve análisis de las causas, consecuencias y acciones que se están llevando a cabo en diversas ciudades del mundo en relación a la mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático, a continuación se pasan a enumerar algunas de las recomendaciones que podrían ser de utilidad para el desarrollo y mejora de las políticas climáticas de las ciudades.

La literatura disponible dice que no hay, hoy por hoy, un criterio universalmente aceptado para contabilizar las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de las ciudades. Este criterio común serviría para poder conocer y comparar los esfuerzos, ayudando a mejorar las medidas de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático.

En general, los modelos climáticos existentes no tienen la definición adecuada para hacer predicciones con certeza en las ciudades. Invertir esfuerzos y recursos en el diseño y adecuación de modelos climáticos a escala de las ciudades podría ayudar a aumentar la información sobre los efectos del cambio climático como guía para el desarrollo de políticas climáticas de largo plazo en las ciudades.

Estudios como los de Kennedy et al. (2009) indican que las políticas de planificación del territorio encaminadas a fomentar ciudades compactas, en las que se minimicen los desplazamientos en vehículos privados, pueden reducir de manera significativa las emisiones de GEI. Estudiar la posibilidad de aumentar la densidad de las ciudades a la vez que se reservan espaciosverdes siguiendo los ejemplos de ciudades pioneras en este ámbito, puede resultar en mejoras en las cifras de GEI y de beneficios asociados expuestos anteriormente.

En materia de recursos hídricos, se ha argumentado que el consumo de agua puede ser muy intensivo en términos de gasto energético. Esta tendencia puede verse exacerbada con el cambio climático. Conocer los patrones de precipitaciones, riesgos de sequías e inundaciones y planificar las acciones necesarias para minimizar el consumo energético a la vez que se asegura el suministro de agua es esencial en ciudades tradicionalmente castigadas por periodos de sequías intensas.

Finalmente, el reto de la adaptación al cambio climático sigue pendiente en un buen número de ciudades. Si bien es cierto que la adaptación espontánea ocurrirá y será especialmente efectiva en zonas más desarrolladas económicamente, hay actuaciones en materia de adaptación que necesitan planificación e inversiones a largo plazo (por ejemplo, la construcción de diques de contención en ciudades como Rotterdam). Incluir la adaptación en las medidas de mitigación puede ayudar a alinear ambas acciones minimizando las posibles consecuencias del cambio climático.

Conclusiones: Cumplir con el mandato científico de limitar el aumento medio de las temperaturas en relación a la era preindustrial a 2ºC (en un escenario optimista) requerirá aumentar el grado de compromiso de reducción de emisiones de GEI. Dado que las ciudades consumen la mayor parte de la energía, emiten la mayor parte de los GEI de origen antropocéntrico y que, además, las acciones en materia de ahorro y eficiencia energética en el ámbito urbano pueden proporcionar dos terceras partes del ahorro energético potencial, parece claro que es inevitable involucrar de manera cada vez más proactiva a las ciudades en las políticas de mitigación y adaptación.

Dentro de las ciudades, la producción de electricidad, el transporte por carretera y los usos residenciales son los ámbitos en los que se generan la mayor parte de las emisiones de GEI. Para reducir las emisiones y adaptar las ciudades a los efectos del cambio climático se han repasado diversos enfoques y medidas, entre las que destacan la importancia de fomentar ciudades más compactas y multi-funcionales, aumentar en la medida de lo posible y sujeto a criterios de eficiencia el uso de las energías renovables y fomentar el uso del transporte público y de modos alternativos de transporte.

En relación a los retos pendientes, la lista es variada y compleja, pero cabe destacar que es necesario atajar la falta de conocimiento de los efectos del cambio climático a escala sub-nacional. También es necesario desarrollar guías de medición de GEI homogéneas y universalmente aceptadas para las ciudades. Por último, y no menos importante, es esencial empezar a integrar las medidas de adaptación a la planificación de las acciones de mitigación y aumentar la presencia de las ciudades en futuras negociaciones internacionales.

Bibliografía

Ayuntamiento de Madrid (2008), Plan de Uso Sostenible de la Energía y Prevención del Cambio Climático de la Cuidad de Madrid 2008-2012.

Betsill, M., y H. Bulkeley (2007), “Looking Back and Thinking Ahead: A Decade of Cities and Climate Change Research”, Local Environment, nº 12, pp. 447-456.

Camagni, R., R. Capello y P. Nijkamp (1998), “Towards Sustainable City Policy: An Economy-environment Technology Nexus”, Ecological Economics, nº 24, pp. 103-118.

EEA (2009), “Ensuring Quality of Life in Europe’s Cities and Towns”, EEA Report 5/2009, 28 de mayo de 2009.

Hallegatte, S., F. Henriet y J. Corfee-Morlot (2008), “The Economics of Climate Change Impacts and Policy Benefits at City Scale: A Conceptual Framework”, OECD Environment Working Papers, nº 4, OECD Publishing, DOI 10.1787/230232725661.

Hallegatte, S., N. Ranger, O. Mestre, P. Dumas, J. Corfee-Morlot, C. Herweijer y R. Muir-Wood (2010), “Assessing Climate Change Impacts, Sea Level Rise and Storm Surge Risk in Port Cities: A Case Study on Copenhagen”, Climatic Change: Special Issue on Cities and Climate Change, Springer, http://www.epa.gov/heatisld/.

Kennedy, C. et al. (2009), “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities”, Environmental Science Technology, nº 43, pp. 7297-7302.

OECD (2008), Competitive Cities and Climate Change, 2nd Annual Meeting of the OECD Roundtable Strategy for Urban Development,OECD, Milán.

OECD (2009), Cities, Towns and Renewable Energy. Yes in My Front Yard, OECD, París.

OECD (2010), Cities and Climate Change, OECD Publishing, París.

Robine, J.M., S.L. Cheung, S. Le Roy et al. (2008), “Death Toll Exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the Summer of 2003”, C.R. Biologies, nº 331, febrero, pp. 171-178.

Tabernero Duque, F.M. (2010), “La arquitectura bioclimática y el cambio climático”, ARI nº 70/2010, Real Instituto Elcano.

Notas:

[1] Más o menos densa en términos de habitantes por km2.

[2] 70.000 según Robine et al. (2008).

[3] En materia de eficiencia energética, así como en la seguridad y minimización de tóxicos, como dioxinas y furanos.

Cuba and its foreign partners will begin exploring for oil this year in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling will take place as close as 50 miles from Florida and in sites deeper than BP’s Macondo well, the source of last year’s disaster. About 5 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath the gulf in land belonging to Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

If Cuba finds oil in commercially viable amounts, this would be transformative. Revenue from natural resources has the potential to provide long-sought stability for its economy and is likely to significantly alter Cuba’s relations with Venezuela, Asia and other leading energy-producing and consuming nations. Discoveries of commercially viable resources would also have an enormous effect on the gulf environment shared by Cuba and the United States.

Thanks to the U.S. embargo against Cuba — a remnant of the Cold War — the risks to the United States begin the moment the first drill bit pierces the seabed. And we are utterly unprepared.

Not only does the embargo prohibit U.S. firms from joining Cuba in any efforts to extract its offshore resources, thus giving the competitive advantage to foreign firms, but it also denies Cuba access to U.S. equipment for drilling and environmental protection — an especially troubling policy considering the potential for a spill. The embargo also compels Cuba’s foreign partners to go through contortions, such as ordering a drilling rig built in China and shipping it nearly 10,000 miles to Cuban waters, to avoid violating U.S. law.

Most important, the failed policy of isolating Cuba has the U.S. paralyzed: It stops us from engaging Cuba in meaningful environmental cooperation and prevents us from addressing in advance the threat of potential spills caused by hurricanes or technological failures, which could put our waters, fisheries and beaches at peril.

As Cuba gets ready to drill, the Obama administration has limited options. It could do nothing. It could try to stop Cuba from developing its oil and natural gas, an alternative most likely to fail in an energy-hungry world. Or it could use its executive authority to cooperate with Cuba, despite the embargo, to ensure that drilling in the gulf protects our mutual interests.

Since the 1990s, Cuba has showed a serious commitment to the environment, building an array of environmental policies, many based on U.S. and Spanish law. But it has no experience responding to major spills. And, like the U.S., Cuba has to balance its economic and environmental interests, and the environmental side will not always prevail.

Against this backdrop, cooperation and engagement is the right approach, and there is already precedent for it.

During the BP spill, Cuba permitted a vessel from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to look for damage in Cuban waters. The Obama administration declared its willingness to provide limited licenses for U.S. firms to respond to the BP spill, and to others in the future that threaten Cuba. It also provided visas for Cuban scientists to attend an important environmental conference in Florida. But these modest measures are not sufficient.

Members of Congress from Florida have introduced bills to impose sanctions on foreign oil companies and U.S. firms that help Cuba drill for oil, and to punish those foreign firms by denying them the right to drill in U.S. waters. These proposals will not stop Cuba from drilling; if enacted, Cuba’s partners will disregard them, and they will make cooperation to protect our mutual coastal environment even more difficult.

Energy policy and environmental protection are classic examples of how the embargo is an abiding threat to U.S. interests. It should no longer be acceptable to base U.S. foreign policy on the illusion that sanctions will cause Cuba’s government to collapse — or stop Cuba from developing its oil resources. Nor should this policy or the political dynamic that sustains it prevent the U.S. from addressing both the challenges and benefits of Cuba finding meaningful amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Obama administration should use its executive authority to guarantee that firms with the best equipment and greatest expertise are licensed in advance to fight the effects of any oil spills. The Treasury Department, which enforces Cuba sanctions, should make clear to the private sector that efforts to protect drilling safety will not be met with adverse regulatory actions. The U.S. government should commit to vigorous information-sharing with Cuba, and open direct negotiations with the Cuban government for environmental agreements modeled on cooperation that exists with our Canadian and Mexican neighbors.

Most of all, it should replace a policy predicated on Cuba failing with a diplomatic approach that recognizes Cuba’s sovereignty. Only then will our nation be able to respond effectively to what could become a new chapter in Cuba’s history, and ours.

If per capita carbon emissions in China and India rose to car-happy U.S. levels, global emissions would increase by 127%, according to the International Energy Agency. If their emissions stopped at the levels found in hyper-dense Hong Kong, world emissions would go up less than 24%. As the Asian economies prosper, the United States should hope that they embrace the skyscraper more than the car, and we should reform our own policies that subsidize sprawl.

China, a manufacturing powerhouse, is already the world’s biggest carbon emitter, but ordinary Chinese remain remarkably parsimonious in their energy use. Matthew Kahn, Rui Weng, Siqi Zeng and I, in a study published in 2010, estimated carbon emissions for urban households in China, measuring only household emissions and personal transportation. In our sample, the average Chinese household emitted less than 2.2 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is less than 1/17th of the levels that Kahn and I found in an earlier study of U.S. cities. Even the greenest U.S. metro areas, such as San Jose and San Francisco, emitted almost 12 times as much as carbon as the Chinese metropolitan areas.

Our American households typically used more than 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year driving; the Chinese used about 1/100th as much gasoline. In many American cities, carbon emissions from household electricity use can top 10 tons annually, but in China, the norm was slightly more than 1 ton per year. Poor countries heat before they cool, and China heats with particularly dirty energy sources, but even there, we found that the coldest Chinese cities were emitting about as much carbon in their home heating as Los Angeles, and far less than in the parts of America with real winters.

The low carbon figures among Chinese households today mean that there is frighteningly large room for growth in Chinese energy use. The Chinese bought more than 18 million cars last year alone. India’s hot climate suggests that its household emissions may eventually be even higher, once a billion air conditioners come into operation.

Massive Asian energy use raises fears of climate change, but even die-hard eco-skeptics should be anxious that soaring global energy demand will push up fuel costs.

But no one should hope that China, India and Asian nations just stay poor. Fortunately, the same cities that are providing Asia with a path from poverty to prosperity also provide an urban approach to reduced energy use.

Hong Kong is one of the richest places on the planet, with incomes roughly comparable to the U.S. and higher than much of Europe. Yet, its per-capita emissions are one-third of those in the U.S. and barely higher than China’s today. Singapore is even wealthier, and its emissions are half the levels in the U.S.

As urbanists Jane Jacobs and David Owen have argued, dense urban cityscapes are not just highly productive, they are green.

Kahn and I, in our previous study of the United States, compared emissions inside and outside major cities, and found significantly lower emissions in urban cores, even holding income and family size constant. This was because dense urban areas have smaller homes and require less driving. Households in areas with more than 10,000 people per square mile use an average of 687 gallons of gasoline a year; households in areas with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile use 1,164 gallons of gas a year. The average detached home consumes 88% more electricity than the average apartment in a large building.

America’s interest in promoting a hyper-urban Asia, so different from our sprawling nation, puts us in a slightly awkward position. How can a country of McMansions and Ford Expeditions preach the virtues of low-carbon urban living?

Freedom is America’s greatest treasure. This includes the freedom to choose where we live — city or suburb. But we should eliminate the mistaken policies that artificially subsidize sprawl. The federal government subsidizes transportation significantly more in low-density areas than in high-density areas, and that pulls people away from cities. Economist Nathaniel Baum-Snow found in 2007 that each new postwar highway that cut into a city reduced that city’s population by 18%. The home mortgage interest deduction induces people to leave urban apartments, which are overwhelmingly rented, and move to suburban homes. Because the deduction scales up with the size of the mortgage, it essentially pays people to buy bigger, more energy-intensive homes.

Reducing such policies, which push Americans away from our green cities, will enable us to make a stronger case for higher-density dwelling in India and China.

En los dos últimos años ha habido muchos altibajos respecto de la consecución de un nuevo tratado para luchar contra el cambio climático. Algunos incluso se desesperan, en el sentido de que está desapareciendo rápidamente la posibilidad de adoptar medidas.

Pero la de abandonar no es una opción aceptable. La última ronda de negociaciones sobre el clima, celebrada el mes pasado en Cancún (México), volvió a colocar el cambio climático por el camino adecuado, aunque a un ritmo y una escala que indudablemente dejarán frustrados a muchos observadores.

El gobierno del Presidente de México, Felipe Calderón, y el Secretario Ejecutivo de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas merecen un reconocimiento por los logros conseguidos en varios sectores importantes, incluida la silvicultura, un nuevo Fondo Verde para ayudar a las naciones en desarrollo y la confirmación de las promesas de reducción de emisiones formuladas en la conferencia sobre el cambio climático celebrada en Copenhague en diciembre de 2009.

Pero, como expusieron con claridad los autores de los modelos climáticos del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente en el período anterior a la reunión de Cancún, existe un importante desfase en materia de misiones entre lo prometido por los países y lo que se necesita para mantener el aumento de la temperatura mundial por debajo de dos grados centígrados, por no hablar de conseguir la meta de 1,5 grados que requiere la protección de los Estados insulares de baja altitud.

Pese a algunos logros, el desfase, que, conforme a las hipótesis más optimistas, equivale a las emisiones de carbono de todos los automóviles, autobuses y camiones del mundo, sigue firmemente en pie después de la reunión de Cancún. De hecho, nadie debe subestimar la magnitud de la dificultad que afronta Sudáfrica, anfitriona de las negociaciones del año próximo, para mediar con miras a la consecución de un nuevo acuerdo jurídicamente vinculante para colmar ese  desfase y conseguir la financiación necesaria a fin de poner en funcionamiento el Fondo Verde.

No obstante, mientras la cumbre oficial se esforzaba en Cancón para lograr una conclusión, también concluyó otra no oficial que se celebraba a poca distancia de allí. En dicha cumbre paralela se reunieron Jefes de Estado, representantes de gobiernos regionales y locales y de la sociedad civil y empresarios, todos ellos progresistas, y subrayaron en qué medida y a qué velocidad algunos sectores de la sociedad harán la transición a un futuro con pocas emisiones de carbono e irán creando las economías verdes y con tecnologías limpias del siglo XXI.

Las políticas de Calderón reflejan ese impulso: según algunos cálculos, está transformando su país en el mercado de energía eólica que crece más rápidamente del mundo. Además, México abandonará progresivamente las antiguas bombillas eléctricas ineficientes de aquí a 2014 y acaba de retirar 850.000 refrigeradores domésticos ineficientes para substituirlos por modernos modelos energéticamente eficientes y millones más les seguirán en los próximos años. Los hogares mexicanos que instalan servicios de ahorro de energía, como, por ejemplo, calentadores solares de agua tienen derecho a “hipotecas verdes” con tipos de interés menores.

México no está solo en la adopción de una estrategia nacional para la transición a una economía verde con pocas emisiones de carbono y eficiente en materia de recursos. Uruguay, por ejemplo, ha anunciado una estrategia para generar la mitad de su electricidad a partir de energías renovables de aquí a 2015.

Sesenta gobiernos regionales y locales, a los que corresponde el 15 por ciento de las emisiones mundiales que causan el efecto de invernadero, están también adoptando medidas. Québec y Sao Paolo, por citar sólo dos ejemplos, se proponen reducir en un 20 por ciento los niveles de 1990 de aquí a 2020.

Grandes empresas, desde bancos hasta compañías aéreas, están contribuyendo también. El minorista de los EE.UU. Wal-Mart, por ejemplo, se propone reducir emisiones equivalentes a 3,8 millones de automóviles, en parte mediante la aplicación de medidas energéticamente eficientes en sus almacenes de China.

De hecho, el mundo está presenciando una extraordinaria movilización de proyectos y políticas en el nivel nacional que están cambiando las economías por la vía de la reducción de las emisiones de carbono. En Kenya, una nueva tarifa para proveedores de energías renovables está propiciando un aumento de la energía eólica y geotérmica. Indonesia no sólo está abordando la desforestación, sino que, además, el mes próximo comenzará a abandonar progresivamente las subvenciones a los combustibles fósiles para los automóviles privados. Muchos países y empresas están avanzando a pasos agigantados e indicando su determinación de no ser rehenes del más lento calendario de las negociaciones oficiales.

Todo ello puede mover a algunos a preguntarse por qué se necesitan siquiera las negociaciones internacionales y las cumbres climáticas de las NN.UU., que requieren tanto tiempo, pero es que ese mar de fondo ha resultado catalizado en gran medida por las metas, los calendarios y los mecanismos innovadores ya vigentes de los tratados de las NN.UU. sobre el clima y, muy en particular, por el impulso creado en torno a la con frecuencia criticada cumbre celebrada en Copenhague en 2009.

Dicho impulso seguiría aumentando con un nuevo tratado mundial que no sólo aportara certidumbre a los mercados de carbono y desencadenase inversiones aceleradas en las industrias de tecnologías limpias, sino que, además, garantizara que los países más vulnerables no quedarán marginados. El imperativo actual es el de aunar esos objetivos de forma que se refuercen mutuamente.

Sólo entonces tendrá el mundo una oportunidad para esforzarse por mantener el aumento de la temperatura en este siglo por debajo de dos grados, intensificar la capacidad de resistencia a un clima que haya cambiado y transformar de verdad las estructuras energéticas del pasado y, con ello, las perspectivas de desarrollo para seis mil millones de personas en el futuro.

In a mostly dismal year for US and international climate policy, China’s coal imports are skyrocketing to record levels. The environmental community and policy pundits have rushed to decry this new development, arguing that China’s expanding imports undermine global climate efforts, and even that countries should block coal exports to China.

But the conventional wisdom has it backwards. In reality, record Chinese coal imports are better for global CO2 emissions than any climate policy to come out of Washington or the United Nations this year – because they strengthen incentives for the rest of the world to switch to less polluting fuels.

Burning coal is the largest single source of global CO2 emissions, and at over 3bn tons annually, China’s coal consumption dwarfs that of all other countries. But in 2009, something counterintuitive happened: the world’s largest coal producer became one of the world’s largest coal importers. As a result, the entire globe is now rushing to figure out how to sell more coal to China. Environmentalists have balked, suggesting that coal sales to China should be blocked and that China’s imports are evidence that it isn’t taking real steps to fight global warming.

But the reality is that the climate is directly benefitting from China’s coal buying spree. When China imports coal, its own coal consumption and emissions stay constant, while the rest of the world’s emissions should decrease. The logic works as follows: China isn’t importing coal because it doesn’t have enough to burn. It has plenty, and imports only replace domestic coal that would have been burned otherwise. (Despite the fact that “peak coal” theorists are the latest fashion, as the IEA has recently highlighted, vast regions of Chinese coal reserves still sit largely untapped.) China’s domestic coal prices are now the highest in the world, which allows Chinese companies to save money by purchasing coal from overseas.

Quite simply, China is optimising the economics of its coal supply by arbitraging prices in its domestic markets against those in the international market. (We issued a study on that subject at Stanford earlier this year.) This buying behaviour matters because it shows that China’s increased imports have almost no impact on how much coal China uses (and thus its emissions from coal) – only on where it comes from.

China’s coal imports don’t impact the country’s own total coal use, but they do directly impact how much coal the rest of the world uses. Unlike China, major coal consuming regions like the US and Europe have near term alternatives to burning coal. While nearly 80% of China’s electricity is produced from coal and less than 4% from natural gas, the United States produces roughly a quarter of its electricity from natural gas and approximately half from coal. For Europe, these numbers are around 35% and 50%, respectively. Because burning natural gas emits roughly half the CO2 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity compared to coal, the possibility of switching to natural gas generation when coal becomes expensive is one of the most significant opportunities to reduce emissions globally.

China is giving the rest of the world a huge push to use cleaner energy by bidding up the global price of coal and making it less competitive with greener alternatives. Last year, China’s imports accounted for nearly 15% of all globally traded coal. This year, rapidly increasing imports are set to account for an even larger share of the entire global coal market. China’s substantial purchases on the global coal market have driven the world price of coal up relative to natural gas. Real natural prices in the US and Europe are near record lows because of low levels of economic activity in these regions and increased gas supplies from unconventional sources. The global coal price increase caused by China’s actions means that major coal-consuming regions with the ability to run more natural gas-fired generation capacity and less coal-fired capacity will do so.

To get a rough idea of the scale of these CO2 reductions, note that the European Union and the US consume roughly 7bn MWh of electricity annually. Approximately 1 ton of CO2 emission is produced per MWh of electricity from a typical coal-fired generation unit, while burning natural gas emits only half as much. If 5% of these MWhs were produced using natural gas instead of coal due to China raising the international coal price, a 175m ton drop in CO2 emissions is the result. This is equivalent to taking 32 million cars off the road in the US and Europe.

The more expensive China makes global coal supplies, the more competitive cleaner energy becomes in the developed world and the lower will be CO2 emissions. In a world without a price on carbon, we can only hope that China takes all of the rest of the world’s coal it can get.

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

For a more detailed explanation, we must turn our attention to the snow in Siberia.

Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

But one phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase even as other frozen areas are shrinking. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Tien Shan and the Altai.

The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia’s mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a rock or boulder. The energy from these atmospheric waves, like the energy from a sound wave, propagates both horizontally and vertically.

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into East Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia.

Last week, the British government asked its chief science adviser for an explanation. My advice to him is to look to the east.

It’s all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

El pasado 11 de diciembre la última cumbre sobre el cambio climático celebrada en Cancún concluyó con una serie de consensos relevantes para seguir haciendo frente a esa amenaza medioambiental. Así, el multilateralismo, casi siempre necesario ante un problema global, se ha visto reforzado porque los más de 190 países participantes, con la única excepción de Bolivia, han pactado continuar protegiendo el clima. En Cancún se han formalizado las propuestas voluntarias de mitigación de emisiones adelantadas en Copenhague tanto de países desarrollados como en vías de hacerlo. Algunos científicos opinan que la incidencia sobre el clima de esos objetivos voluntarios de reducción de emisiones podrían suponer una barrera para limitar el aumento de la temperatura global media del planeta en no más de 2 grados centígrados por encima de la época pre-industrial, objetivo también asumido formalmente en la ciudad mexicana. Por lo tanto, habrá que realizar más esfuerzos en el ámbito de la mitigación ya que las metas avanzadas en Cancún podrían suponer un aumento de más de 3 grados centígrados de la temperatura media del planeta durante este siglo. No obstante, el propio hecho de haber fijado un límite a la temperatura del planeta resulta esencial para establecer el marco de actuación a medio y largo plazo del calentamiento global, determinar sus riesgos potenciales y los costes necesarios para evitarlos.

A pesar de llevar ya cuatro años negociando, no se ha logrado renovar el Protocolo de Kioto, cuyo primer periodo de compromiso acaba con el año 2012, y habrá que esperar casi doce meses para conocer su futuro. No obstante, si ha habido cierto progreso que invita al optimismo ya que los acuerdos de Cancún establecen que los países industrializados (Anexo I) deben reducir sus emisiones en un rango entre el 15 y 40% por debajo de los niveles de 1990 en el año 2020. Además, incita a los países en vías de desarrollo a aumentar su nivel de ambición para reducir sus emisiones. Confiemos en que estos tímidos avances contribuyan a cerrar un nuevo acuerdo internacional, un Kioto II, que convierta en legalmente vinculantes los compromisos de reducción de los países más contaminantes, incluyendo a Estados Unidos y los países BRIC.

En Cancún también se ha acordado actuaciones e incentivos, que aún habrá que pormenorizar, para frenar la deforestación. Aproximadamente el 20% de las emisiones mundiales anuales de CO2 están causadas por la perdida y degradación de bosques y selvas. Por lo tanto, se ha realizado un avance trascendental que con toda seguridad contribuirá a modular la mudanza del clima. Sin duda, una de las mejores noticias llegadas de Cancún para los paises más vulnerables a los efectos del cambio climático es el impulso dado a la adaptación, a las iniciativas y medidas para reducir la vulnerabilidad de los sistemas humanos y naturales ante los impactos potenciales del cambio climático. Se trata de ser solidarios con aquellos que podrían sufrir de manera más acuciante un problema que ellos mismos no han creado y al que no pueden hacer frente. En este sentido, en Cancún también se ha aprobado la creación de un fondo que en buena parte estará destinado a medidas para que los países más débiles no sufran las consecuencias potenciales del calentamiento global.

La Convención Marco sobre Cambio Climático se aprobó hace ya casi 20 años y las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero no se han reducido, más bien todo lo contrario. Fuera de Europa son muy pocos los países que han aceptado compromisos de reducción de emisiones debido a su elevado impacto económico. Las economías emergentes defienden su derecho a sacar a sus ciudadanos de la pobreza lo que se traduce en un mayor consumo global de energía y más CO2 en la atmósfera. Por lo tanto, al dia de hoy resulta todavía difícil que las emisiones totales disminuyan de manera determinante. Por otro lado, aunque consigamos reducir a corto plazo y de manera drástica las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero es poco probable que consigamos evitar todos y cada uno de los impactos del calentamiento global. Podría ser positivo ir implantando paulatinamente medidas para adaptarse a un escenario climático incierto y probablemente distinto al que hoy conocemos. En este sentido, la adaptación va a permitir gestionar las posibles consecuencias del cambio climático, explotar sus oportunidades (que obviamente también las hay) y minimizar sus posibles impactos perniciosos, especialmente en los países en vías de desarrollo que cuentan con escasos recursos para afrontar con éxito estos nuevos desafíos.

En definitiva, la cumbre de Cancún ha conseguido importantes avances para combatir el cambio climático al reforzar el multilateralismo para hacer frente a una amenaza global, fijar un limite claro al aumento de temperatura del planeta que nos podemos permitir, seguir apostando por la decisiva mitigación de emisiones, impulsar la lucha contra la deforestación y comenzar a implantar medidas de adaptación en los países más vulnerables.

Il est désormais admis que le sommet de Cancun s’est soldé par un échec, le second après celui de Copenhague. Des années de négociations intenses ont abouti en des instruments de mise en œuvre très faibles. Une part importante des négociations s’est embourbée dans des discussions sémantiques et des maquignonnages.

Une des explications les plus répandues à ces échecs est l’absence de volonté politique. Les dirigeants mondiaux, en particulier américains et chinois, n’ont pas voulu faire les efforts nécessaires et n’ont donc pas pu se mettre d’accord.

C’est l’une des explications. Nous en proposons une autre : selon nous, même s’il y avait une volonté politique, les institutions existantes resteraient inappropriées. Selon les standards internationaux actuels, les organisations internationales impliquées dans le processus de négociation sont extrêment faibles. Au secrétariat de la Convention-cadre des Nations unies sur le changements climatiques  (CCNUCC), seulement 300 personnes assistent les négociateurs, alors qu’environ 2 400 personnes travaillent pour le FMI, 10 000 pour la Banque mondiale et 620 pour l’OMC. Le GIEC, chargé d’apporter des preuves scientifiques à la CCNUCC, est composé d’environ 2 000 experts non-salariés. Ils sont parmi les meilleurs experts mondiaux sur le climat et les questions environnementales, mais nous estimons que seuls 30 d’entre eux sont des spécialistes de la création d’instruments pour la réduction des émissions tels que les bourses du carbone, les taxes carbone ou le droit international. Le Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat (GIEC) est donc, par essence, expert dans la définition des problèmes mais très insuffisant pour proposer des solutions.

Les théories de l’économie et des relations internationales nous apprennent que la solidité des institutions est essentielle à la création de richesses et à la coopération. La particularité des institutions fortes est qu’elles sont dotées de mécanismes de contrôle et d’auto-régulation crédibles. Elles déterminent des normes autour d’objectifs à long terme qu’il est difficile de contourner car cela a un coût fort en terme d’image (et parfois en terme financier) et a des conséquences sur d’autres domaines de coopération. En outre, lorsqu’elles sont soutenues par des organisations professionnelles, elles recueillent également un corpus de connaissances et d’expertises.

La question du climat est particulièrement épineuse quand on en vient à parler accords et d’institutions internationaux. C’est un exemple de cas à la fois extrême et global de “dilemme du prisonnier”. En effet, si toutes les nations voient les bénéfices qu’elles peuvent tirer de la réduction des émissions, elles savent qu’elles en tireront tout autant si les réductions sont faites en partie ou totalement par les autres nations. Ainsi, en l’absence d’accord, aucune nation réduisant ses émissions ne peut être certaine que cette réduction n’est pas annulée par une augmentation des émissions d’une autre nation. Ce problème rend le besoin d’un accord crédible et pérenne encore plus important.

Des institutions fortes, focalisées sur la recherche de solutions à ce problème particulier, auront beaucoup plus de chances d’accompagner le processus avec succès et d’alimenter le débat de manière rationnelle que ne le ferait d’incessantes négociations diplomatiques.

UN NOUVEAU CADRE INSTITUTIONNEL

Il est nécessaire de mettre en place un nouveau cadre institutionnel adapté au problème qu’il doit résoudre, une véritable organisation mondiale du climat. De plus, pour sortir de l’impasse dans laquelle se trouve le CCNUCC, un forum des plus gros émetteurs (MEF) pourrait être créé par les douze pays les plus gros émetteurs ainsi que l’Union européenne qui, ensemble, émettent trois quarts des gaz à effet de serre.

Cette stratégie de “minilatéralisme” menant au multilatéralisme est d’ailleurs souvent pratiquée au sein des Nations unies (où, par exemple, le Conseil de sécurité s’est vu délégué la responsabilité d’imposer des résolutions légalement contraignantes sur les questions relevant de la paix et de la sécurité internationale. Sur certaines questions sensibles, telles que le programme nucléaire iranien, les nations les plus concernées se réunissent en un groupe plus restreint afin de traiter le sujet plus efficacement et de s’assurer de la présence des acteurs les plus importants en son sein : à mon avis cette partie entre parenthèse n’a pas tout à fait sa place dans un article de débat mais plus dans une présentation).

Du fait d’un nombre restreint de participant, le MEF pourrait simplifier l’appréhension du problème et contenir les trouble-fêtes, dont le rôle est trop important, non du fait des causes qu’ils défendent mais de leur capacité à entraver les négociations en détournant ces dernières à des fins de propagande et en poursuivant des objectifs autres que les questions climatiques.

La raison d’être du forum est de placer les plus gros émetteurs face à leurs responsabilités et de les inciter à agir. Un accord entre eux serait presque aussi important qu’un accord global. L’accord du MEF pourrait plus tard être adopté par un groupe plus large au sein de la CCNUCC.

La composition de l’organe décisionnel du MEF devrait refléter le poids économique respectif de chacun de ses membres et leur responsabilité dans la réduction des émissions. Nous ne sommes en faveur ni d’un système de véto de type onusien ni d’un système “une nation, un vote” mais privilégions un système de quotas donnant à chaque membre un vote proportionnel, suivant la pratique du FMI.

Les deux principales tâches du MEF seront la définition d’un accord central sur le partage des réductions d’émissions et la création d’institutions internationales permanentes pour le climat. Le MEF décidera des moyens de financement de ces institutions et sera l’autorité finale pour initier des procédures de sanctions contre les fraudeurs.

En 1944, à Bretton Woods, les créations du FMI, de la Banque mondiale et du GATT/OMC ont posé les bases de la coopération économique et financière internationale. Malgré toutes leurs limites, les institutions de Bretton Woods ont participé à la reconstruction du système économique international et sont devenues des références durables en matière de questions économiques et financières internationales. Après l’échec de Cancun, il est nécessaire de faire de même pour le climat.

Il est devenu un rituel, presque de bon ton, de critiquer la manière dont les négociations internationales sur le changement climatique sont conduites, de même que tout éventuel résultat auquel elles pourraient parvenir.

En lisant dimanche dernier les décisions adoptées par la 16e conférence des parties de la Convention sur le changement climatique (COP-16), laquelle agit également en tant que sixième réunion des parties du Protocole de Kyoto (CMP-6), puis les commentaires hâtifs parus dans divers médias, j’ai eu l’impression que l’on voudrait faire croire au lecteur qu’on est désormais dans une situation de tout ou rien. Soit on conclut un accord ambitieux prévoyant, en sus d’un fonds généreux alimenté par des contributions des pays développés, des engagements quantifiés de réduction des émissions non seulement pour ces derniers (en particulier les Etats-Unis) mais aussi pour les pays dits émergents (en particulier la Chine, l’Inde, le Brésil et l’Afrique du Sud), soit la négociation aura été un échec. Cette vision manichéenne est beaucoup trop simpliste, et ceci pour plusieurs raisons. Je voudrais en évoquer trois qui me semblent importantes.

Premièrement, la conclusion d’un traité international, même ambitieux, ne serait de loin pas suffisante pour résoudre la question du changement climatique. L’illustration la plus claire de ce point nous est donnée par le Protocole de Kyoto. Relativement ambitieux à l’origine, comportant des engagements quantifiés de réduction des émissions pour des pays développés et en transition, cet instrument n’a pas eu, loin s’en faut, l’effet escompté. Et, en affirmant ceci, je ne me réfère pas seulement au refus des Etats-Unis de le ratifier ou à l’absence des pays émergents de la liste des pays ayant de véritables obligations en matière d’émissions, mais aussi au fait que même des Etats qui sont liés par le Protocole de Kyoto, tels le Canada, le Japon ou la Suisse, auront une grande difficulté à s’acquitter de leurs obligations. En toute hypothèse, ils ne pourront pas le faire de la manière dont ils étaient censés le faire, à savoir principalement par l’adoption des mesures nationales de réduction des émissions (par opposition à l’emploi des «mécanismes de flexibilité», comme l’achat de droits d’émission ou la «fabrication» de tels droits par voie de projets dans d’autres pays). L’apport de Kyoto, comme de tout éventuel traité international en cette matière, doit donc être recherché ailleurs, dans son influence sur le comportement des gouvernements et des opérateurs privés, ce qui m’amène à la deuxième raison pour laquelle la vision manichéenne évoquée plus haut est trop réductrice.

En effet, une bonne partie des 26 décisions adoptées à Cancun donnent une idée assez claire de l’univers réglementaire où devront évoluer les principaux opérateurs économiques dans le futur. Pour comprendre cet apport, il faut se souvenir de la structure des négociations climatiques, qui ont suivi deux volets ou «tracks» différents. S’agissant du premier volet, qui porte sur «l’action coopérative à long terme», les négociateurs ont adopté un texte qui entérine indirectement les principaux éléments du tant décrié Accord de Copenhague. La COP-16 a ainsi endossé l’objectif de limiter l’augmentation de température à deux degrés Celsius et formalisé: 1. le système selon lequel les pays en voie de développement (et donc les pays émergents) communiqueront des objectifs nationaux de réduction des émissions; 2. le principe selon lequel les mesures soutenues par une aide internationale seront susceptibles de vérification internationale; 3. la création d’un fonds, le «Green Climate Fund», accompagnée d’objectifs chiffrés de financement à court terme (30 milliards de dollars américains pour 2010-2012) et à long terme (100 milliards de dollars américains par an); 4. la création d’un mécanisme de transfert de technologie, comprenant un réseau de diffusion de technologie visant à encourager des collaborations entre des acteurs publics et privés; 5. l’adoption de lignes directrices sur la manière de conduire des projets visant à réduire la déforestation (REDD-plus), fondées sur des principes, tels que la non-transformation des forêts (en plantations), qui laissait jusqu’à maintenant planer d’importantes incertitudes. Il s’agit donc d’un Accord de Copenhague étendu et détaillé, et cette fois-ci, il a été adopté par la conférence des parties. Il est intéressant de souligner que cette adoption s’est effectuée malgré la tentative de blocage de la Bolivie, qui soutenait, à tort, que la pratique du consensus suivie généralement dans ce cadre équivalait à un droit de veto. Cette clarification procédurale, qui est passée inaperçue de la plupart des médias, est un élément important pour la suite des négociations, dans la mesure où elle limite les tentatives de blocage dans le futur.

Quant au deuxième volet des négociations, même si l’objectif d’assortir le Protocole de Kyoto d’une nouvelle période d’engagement (la présente période d’engagement expirant en 2012) n’a pas été atteint, un certain nombre de questions ont été réglées. En particulier, le mécanisme pour un développement propre de l’article 12 du protocole, qui avait été très critiqué ces dernières années, devra être amélioré et simplifié, et pourra désormais accueillir des projets relatifs à la capture et au stockage du carbone («CCS»). Ces divers éléments fournissent d’importants signaux aux opérateurs privés, qui ont besoin de se faire une idée aussi précise que possible du cadre réglementaire dans lequel ils devront évoluer dans l’horizon de la future «économie verte».

Cependant, l’élément le plus important de ces négociations (comme de celles qui les ont précédées et qui les suivront) est à chercher, il me semble, dans la dynamique sociale qu’elles contribuent à maintenir, voire à raviver. La gestion du problème du changement climatique passera nécessairement par un changement des pratiques sociales. Même si les politiques climatiques (internationales et/ou nationales) devaient prendre plus de temps qu’on ne le souhaite pour se consolider, il n’y a pas de doute qu’elles joueront un rôle majeur dans l’environnement juridique et politique des années à venir. Dans cette optique, l’importance principale du processus de négociation est de maintenir la question du changement climatique dans l’agenda politique et dans l’esprit des citoyennes et citoyens, des consommateurs, des décideurs politiques et privés et, surtout, des jeunes générations.

En d’autres termes, ces négociations font partie d’un processus beaucoup plus vaste visant à faire changer, certes lentement, les pratiques sociales. Et il faut beaucoup plus qu’une déception modérée, voire même qu’un échec retentissant, pour arrêter un processus d’une telle ampleur.

Reaction to the conclusion of the United Nations climate change conference in Cancún at the weekend has been almost universally downbeat. “A slap in the face,” said Friends of the Earth International. The Guardian’s own leader column described it as “Another opportunity lost”..

But there’s a different way of looking at the deal – on emissions reduction, deforestation, and financial help for developing countries – that 193 nations reached on Saturday. It’s to see the very fact of agreement as a crucial advance.

Climate change presents what economists call a “collective action problem”. It can be tackled only if everyone acts together: no one country’s efforts will be enough. So if governments, businesses and individuals believe that others are not taking action, a rational response is not to do so oneself. It’s a version of the prisoner’s dilemma – it pays to co-operate, but not if others are not doing so. But of course, if we don’t act, we will definitely face catastrophe.

That’s what happened after the debacle of the Copenhagen conference last year. Governments and businesses looked at the failure to come to a meaningful agreement and began to withdraw their own commitments. The US, the EU and Australia started rowing back on their pledges. Businesses put clean energy investment plans on hold. Those with a vested interest in not taking action, and the climate sceptics, became emboldened, assiduously spreading further doubt.

Cancún reverses that negative momentum. Now countries have put domestic emissions reduction commitments into a formal UN agreement, further action can be justified. The really convincing political and economic case for investing in low-carbon energy is not just tackling future climate change but generating “green growth” now. It’s the jobs and the new clean industries that will be stimulated by a low-carbon world that countries and businesses are eyeing up eagerly. But investing in these requires confidence that others are also cutting emissions – that there will be new low-carbon markets, and that high performance will not be undercut by competition from lower-cost polluters.

After Cancún, the global race to produce clean technologies is back on. Business and investor confidence has a chance of being restored. Europe has justification for moving to its higher 30% emissions reduction target by 2020. The really significant shift is the willingness of emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, South Korea and others – to cut emissions growth, and their refusal to allow the world to be dragged backwards by the dysfunctional domestic politics of the US. The view now is that America will simply have to catch up later when the economic costs of its high-carbon economy become painfully apparent.

Cancún’s critics are of course absolutely right to say that what was achieved is not enough. As the agreements themselves insist, all countries’ commitments will have to be revisited in the light of a scientific review in three years. But at the same time don’t let’s miss the significance of what has been done. If the Cancún commitments are fully implemented, global emissions should peak around 2020, and that is the essential first step towards a subsequent decline.

And it isn’t correct that Cancún’s 2020 targets mean the global temperature will inevitably breach the tolerable 2C threshold. The level at which it will eventually stabilise will be determined as much by what happens after 2020: countries will have to make much greater – and more expensive – efforts, but it is not out of the range of the possible.

Climate change is a frightening phenomenon: it often feels too large and difficult, requiring too much political will, to deal with. For many, fear induces paralysis and feelings of hopelessness. But the world is now beginning to combat global warming. And there is now a chance that this knowledge will encourage further effort. There is no room for complacency; but the real danger is that pessimism becomes self-fulfilling.

So the question about Cancún is not “Did it do enough?” – we knew the answer to that already – but “Does it make further action more or less likely?” On that there’s no doubt.

In climate change, fatalism will prove fatal. Optimism that we can combat climate change is therefore not just an essential psychological condition; it’s a vital political posture. Cancún gives optimism a boost: it should therefore be a reason not for continuing despair, but for hope and renewed determination to do more.

Le communiqué officiel de la conférence de Cancun sur le changement climatique ne peut masquer le fait qu’il n’y aura pas de successeur au protocole de Kyoto à son expiration fin 2012. Le Japon, entre autres, s’est soustrait des efforts visant à reconduire le traité de Kyoto.

Cela pourrait sembler une mauvaise nouvelle, car cela signifie qu’un prix international du carbone ne sera pas fixé, et, sans un prix du marché, il sera difficile d’organiser efficacement la réduction des émissions de carbone. Mais les apparences sont parfois trompeuses.

L’approche globale pour s’attaquer au changement climatique est brisée mais semble laisser place à une nouvelle approche ascendante, porteuse de meilleures perspectives de succès que les pesantes négociations onusiennes.

Plutôt qu’un prix unique du carbone, cette approche ascendante devrait probablement entrainer une multiplicité de prix pour les émissions de carbone. Cette multiplicité de prix est plus appropriée à la réduction des émissions de carbone qu’un prix unique parce qu’il y a une multiplicité de secteurs et de méthodes qui produisent des courbes de coûts différentes.

Le prix du marché de quoi que se soit est toujours égal au coût marginal. Lorsqu’il y a un prix unique, les différentes courbes de coûts fusionnent en une et les projets à bas coûts ont une meilleure rentabilité. Cela rend le coût de la réduction des émissions de carbone bien plus élevé que nécessaire.

Ceci fut amplement démontré par le fonctionnement du protocole de Kyoto dans la pratique. Le système de marché du carbone qu’il a établi a généré de nombreux abus. Les anciens pays communistes, par exemple, ont gagné leurs crédits d’émissions à zéro coût pour les industries lourdes qu’ils ont du fermer et dont la vente leur a permis de récolter une moisson de bénéfices. La disparition du protocole de Kyoto ne sera donc pas une grande perte.

La même chose s’applique aux négociations prolongées entre les pays développés et ceux en développement. Les pays développés avaient promis de payer réparation pour leurs péchés passés lors du sommet de Rio en 1992 mais n’ont cessé de reporter leurs obligations en faisant durer les négociations. Les conditions cependant ont changé avec le temps : après des décennies de croissance explosive, la Chine est devenue le plus grand émetteur de carbone devant les Etats-Unis.

Les négociations prennent un ton de plus en plus irréel. Actuellement, les interrogations sur la façon dont les 100 milliards de dollars annuels seront mobilisés d’ici à 2020 par les gouvernements pour aider les pays en développement à s’attaquer au changement climatique concentrent les débats ; surtout lorsque l’on sait que même 10 milliards de dollars de fonds d’urgence ne peuvent être réunis à la hâte sans recourir à des artifices. En ne parvenant pas à progresser au delà du simple maintien du dialogue, le sommet de Cancun semble avoir laissé une impression d’inertie teintée d’une note de désespoir.

Ce n’est pas le cas. Certains pays et de manière individuelle, comme l’Allemagne, sont en train de formuler des engagements contraignants qui ne sont pas conditionnés à ce que les autres pays font, et des « coalitions de volontaires » se forment pour s’attaquer à certains secteurs spécifiques. Le partenariat REDD+ (Réduction des émissions liées la déforestation et à la dégradation des forêts), une tentative pour donner une valeur financière au carbone stocké dans les forêts, est exemplaire en la matière. Les progrès les plus importants sont maintenant réalisés là où le problème est le plus urgent : il est plus facile de préserver les forêts que de les reconstituer.

Le cas de l’Indonésie mérite une attention particulière. L’Indonésie est devenue le troisième plus important pollueur du monde, après la Chine et les Etats-Unis, parce qu’une grande part de sa forêt pousse sur des tourbières. Lorsque les arbres sont coupés et que les tourbières sont drainées, le carbone accumulé depuis des millénaires est exposé et oxydé – souvent sous la forme de feux qui enveloppent Singapour et la Malaisie dans les fumées.

Aujourd’hui, la moitié des tourbières indonésiennes sont encore intactes ; leur exposition doublerait les émissions. Le président Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono est déterminé à éviter cela et a reçu un soutien financier pour ses efforts de la part de la Norvège. L’Australie a déjà rejoint leur partenariat et d’autres devraient rapidement suivre.

Ce partenariat est révolutionnaire à plus d’un titre. Yudhoyono a mis en place un moratoire sur l’exploitation des tourbières et des forêts vierges. Une agence REDD+ sera chargée de traiter les forêts tropicales comme une ressource naturelle qui doit être préservée et reconstituée plutôt qu’exploitée et détruite. La gouvernance et la remise de l’Assistance Officielle pour le Développement (AOD) devraient aussi s’en trouver transformées.

L’agence REDD+ aura un conseil administratif national qui coordonnera les activités de toutes les unités gouvernementales concernées par les forêts tropicales, et un bureau international en charge d’autoriser et de superviser les dépenses des fonds AOD. Cela signifie que l’AOD soutiendra les institutions locales plutôt que d’administrer des projets apportés de l’extérieur.

Ces efforts peuvent servir de prototype pour assister d’autres pays comme le Guyana, où les projets de préservation forestière ne fonctionnent pas très bien. A terme, cela mènera à l’établissement d’un fonds global pour les forêts tropicales et l’aménagement agricole parce que les bénéfices de la lutte contre les émissions de carbone profitent à l’humanité dans son ensemble, pas aux pays individuellement. Ce fonds global établirait deux prix : l’un pour les économies de carbone obtenues par la reforestation et l’un pour les émissions évitées par la préservation des forêts.

Cela constituera un exemple pour les autres secteurs. De cette manière, le prix du carbone sera déterminé et la coopération internationale établie du bas vers le haut, sur une base sectorielle fondée sur des résultats démontrés.

Donc, malgré l’idée répandue à propos de l’agenda du changement climatique qui serait à l’arrêt, il subsiste encore un espoir. Mais réaliser cet espoir nécessite de garder le rythme avec le réchauffement de la planète, et cela signifie d’agir plus rapidement pour établir ce prix – ou ces prix – pou les émissions de carbone.

La profesora Naomi Oreskes, de la Universidad de California, encabezó en 2004 un trabajo de investigación para evaluar el grado de consenso sobre el cambio climático en la comunidad científica internacional. Para ello, tomó una muestra aleatoria estadísticamente significativa, el 10%, de todos los artículos científicos que se habían publicado en los últimos 10 años sobre el cambio climático. Su estudio, publicado en la revista Science, concluía que entre los 928 artículos de la muestra solamente uno cuestionaba el consenso.

Tras analizarlo en detalle, se comprobó que, en realidad, más que un trabajo científico era un artículo de opinión publicado en el Boletín de la Asociación Estadounidense de Geólogos del Petróleo por personas vinculadas al sector.

Sin embargo, alrededor del 50% de las noticias y artículos que se publican en la prensa, radio y televisión de ese país recogen opiniones que cuestionan las conclusiones de la ciencia. Transmiten erróneamente la impresión de que todavía hay un debate científico sobre las premisas básicas del cambio climático. Esta posición de los medios de comunicación se encuentra sesgada por la presión de los grupos de interés vinculados al sector de la energía convencional, con Exxon Mobil a la cabeza, y ha tenido un impacto muy negativo en la opinión pública. Así, en una reciente encuesta de opinión realizada por el PEW Center, la mitad de la población norteamericana manifiesta que no cree que exista un problema con el clima, o bien, que no cree que esté causado por el ser humano. En ese caldo de cultivo, el resultado de la política climática norteamericana de las dos últimas décadas ha sido muy decepcionante. Ni siquiera la tímida ley aprobada por el Congreso bajo la Administración de Obama ha salido adelante debido al rechazo del Senado.

Lo que la ciencia más avanzada del clima nos dice, sin embargo -ver Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 de las Naciones Unidas- es que la alteración del clima de la Tierra debido a la acción antropogénica plantea un desafío sin precedentes en la historia de la humanidad. Los impactos derivados de la acumulación de emisiones han alterado ya la geografía física y ecológica del planeta en un proceso de deterioro y degradación que no ha hecho sino comenzar. La progresiva acidificación de los océanos y su negativo impacto en los ecosistemas coralinos, cuna de una enorme biodiversidad marina. El incremento en el nivel del mar, que, incluso con una eliminación total de las emisiones, continuará durante siglos debido a la inercia del calor acumulado. La paulatina pero imparable desaparición de los glaciares de montaña situados en las regiones tropicales y templadas del planeta (los Himalayas, por ejemplo), con su incidencia en los sistemas de vida y cultura de centenares de millones de personas. Los cambios en los ciclos hidrológicos con su impacto en los climas regionales y en susecosistemas asociados, con incidencia especialmente dramática en el caso del África subsahariana. La desaparición de los hielos en el Ártico en la época estival…

Esos procesos ya están ocurriendo y no tienen marcha atrás. La velocidad a la que se están manifestando es superior incluso a la del escenario más pesimista de los contemplados por el Panel Intergubernamental de Expertos en Cambio Climático (IPCC) en la década de los noventa. Podemos, no obstante, evitar que se agraven y aceleren, impidiendo que se traspasen aquellos umbrales que podrían activar serios efectos de retroalimentación positiva, como el colapso de la Amazonía y la descongelación del permafrost siberiano, y que probablemente llevarían al sistema clima a una situación fuera de control.

La línea roja identificada por la comunidad científica internacional son los dos grados centígrados de incremento sobre la temperatura media de la atmósfera respecto a la época preindustrial, objetivo refrendado en la Cumbre de Copenhague. Ahora bien, la temperatura ya se ha incrementado un 0,7ºC y las emisiones emitidas en el pasado hacen inevitable un mayor incremento en el futuro. El margen de maniobra es pues reducido. Se precisa que para 2020 se alcance el techo de emisiones globales y, a partir de ahí, disminuyan progresivamente hasta reducirse aproximadamente a la mitad en 2050. Sin embargo, informes recientes de la Agencia Ambiental de Holanda (NEAA por sus siglas en inglés) concluyen que las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero no solo no se contienen, sino que se están acelerando.

En ese contexto se celebra en estos días la cumbre del clima de Cancún. La comunidad internacional trata de avanzar, arrastrando los pies, hacia un tratado que sustituya al Protocolo de Kioto, cuya vigencia expira en 2012. La probabilidad de llegar a esa fecha sin un acuerdo vinculante que implique a los principales países emisores del mundo es desgraciadamente muy alta.

Europa es la única región que en los últimos 20 años ha hecho un esfuerzo honesto por descarbonizar progresivamente su economía, reduciendo sus emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero más allá de lo comprometido en el Protocolo de Kioto -un 14% en lugar del 8% contemplado en el acuerdo internacional-. Vista la evolución de las emisiones, el actual objetivo de reducción del 20% para 2020 carece de fuerza y ambición. Hacer oficial en Cancún el objetivo de mitigación del 30% renovaría el liderazgo y el compromiso de la Unión Europea y ayudaría a poner decididamente la proa de su economía hacia una sociedad baja en carbono.

The year of belated global oil awareness, 2010, reminded me that I have been in the oil business for quite a while. It all began in the years before Nigerian independence, when I happened on a small news item revealing that oil had been found in some hitherto obscure village with the appropriate name of Oloibiri.

I was a student in Britain — that is, living in a country that was exploring the natural resources of other places, especially its former colonies. This did not mean I had the slightest inkling of the search for energy resources by rich industrialized nations. What that would mean for the poor developing countries bequeathed the gift of oil, commencing the race to control such treasures, was not on my radar.

The news affected me in a thoroughly non-industrial, non-commercial way. I mused on what sort of transformation could follow as the basic trading commodity changed from palm oil to crude oil.

I had never been to the Niger Delta, certainly not before my sojourn abroad to college in 1954. I knew of it only from my secondary-school geography lessons: a place of dense mangrove swamps and the folkloric Mami Wata — the half-human, half-fish seductress, our local mermaid! My imagination swept to the reinsertion of an alien presence in the ancient rhythms of life there: first, missionaries, traders and colonial powers, now oil exploration.

My play “The Swamp Dwellers” had little to do with what had triggered the idea. My compulsive dialogue with nature took over. The economic consequences, the impact of a global scramble for our wealth, hovered only dimly in the background.

Those consequences would require a few more decades to be felt. It would take longer to demonstrate that the corporate irresponsibility of bounty hunters in one obscure corner of the world has a way of spreading, like an oil slick, to the very shores of the originating, industrialized nations.

On my return to Nigeria, I began to traverse the country, researching traditional drama. The extraction phase — drilling — was under way, and its flickering signature across the skies was the oil flare. I had the fortune of flying across the southeast, courtesy of a road-construction company. These flares signaled at the time nothing more than the mission of the company — to open the land to industrialization. Oil was only the facilitator.

Slowly, however, the news seeped and then began to gush out as the other face of oil. The earth of the swamp dwellers was under siege.

Eviction; land takeovers; home demolitions; environmental degradation; lost livelihoods: The oil flares were no longer harmless sky-writings but the fires of improvidence and indifference.

In 1975, long before the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, another tanker, the Pacific Colocotronis, fractured its hull off the Dutch coast. Now the resulting spill could be regarded as a warning. For me, the name Colocotronis echoed, in an eerie way, Oloibiri.

When the environmental devastation in the Delta began to be known, I obtained a copy of the Colocotronis court proceedings — the verdict had come down against the shipping company. The attention to detail was staggering; it was the first time I’d seen the value of a bird, an insect or a square foot of arable land assessed in dollars-and-cents. The itemization of flora and fauna killed was routine record-keeping in the case of oil spills, I realized — except, it seemed, if the event affected Africa or other Third World countries.

When a feisty friend and fellow writer knocked on my door, arriving from the region of the swamp dwellers, I was more than primed. His name was Ken Saro-wiwa, and he came armed with an agenda of reforms addressed to the government and the oil companies. There, on behalf of his people, the Ogoni, his crusade would lead to his martyrdom. Before that devastating end, however, he succeeded in arousing the conscience of the world.

In return for being the pot of plenty into which every part of the nation dipped its ladle, the Delta locals’ ancient ways of generating their livelihood had been destroyed. Through Ken, the cause of the environment became the cause of indigenous peoples and minorities all over the world; they wanted their lives back and their voices heard.

I assured Ken he could take my support for granted.

Fast-forward to April 20, 2010, and news of a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. This prompted the fury of U.S. lawmakers and catapulted their short-sleeved president to the scene. A Congressional hearing gathered oil executives to mumble excuses. News of all this dominated the media worldwide.

When I read a confirmation of the obvious — that the oil lost into the Gulf of Mexico was but a fraction of the quantity that had drenched the land of the swamp dwellers for more than half a century — when I listened to expressions of remorse from BP’s chief executive, my mind reverted to Saro-wiwa, that stumpy man with an unlit pipe between his teeth.

His mind had always been fixed on the land of the swamp dwellers, the fragile ecosystem. He had long experience with the collaboration of oil companies and past Nigerian governments, which eventually aroused people to resistance, having first made sacrificial lambs of nine human beings — the Ogoni Nine. Would he, I wondered, have expe-rienced — as I dared to on his behalf — a sense of vindication? Or, per-haps, something akin to closure?

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen the devastation that unchecked climate change could bring – floods in Pakistan, forest fires in Russia, mudslides in China. And yet over the same 12 months we’ve seen a growing despondency about international efforts to protect our planet. Copenhagen was a disappointment for everyone who cares about climate change.

Though some important steps were taken, simply not enough progress was made. But today, as the world looks to Cancún, I want to argue that everyone who cares about climate change should take heart – because I believe there are three clear reasons to have hope for the future.

The first is that multilateral action is far from dead. British ministers are going to Mexico this week with an approach that is both realistic and optimistic. Realistic, because we don’t expect a global deal to be struck in Cancún, but optimistic too, because we are viewing this as a stepping stone to future agreement. The momentum for action is with us. Last year, all the major economies, including the US and China, put forward together, for the first time, the actions they would take to limit emissions.

This year is about building on that and bringing a global deal closer, maintaining momentum through to next year’s summit in South Africa and beyond. It is vital that we demonstrate that progress is being made and the responsibility rests with all of us to put our shoulder to the wheel and push things forward. Moving step by step might be frustrating, but the consolation is that we are clearly going in the right direction.

The second reason to take heart is that there is a compelling economic case to be made for fighting climate change that is barely out of the blocks yet. The green effort should not be downgraded or swept under the carpet because of spending cuts and austerity. On the contrary, both developed and developing countries have the potential to make massive gains from a green economy; the low carbon market is already worth up to £3.2 trillion and is forecast to grow by around 4% a year over the next five years.

I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact. That’s why this government has set up the Capital Markets Climate Initiative – to help trigger a new wave of green investment in emerging economies and make the City of London the global capital of the fast-growing green investment sector.

That brings me to the third cause for hope – Britain’s ability to make change directly, even outside the progress made on multilateral decision-making. Yes, climate change is a global threat and yes, the UK accounts for less than 2% of the world’s emissions, but that doesn’t mean we have to wait around for a global deal in order to make a difference. For a start, there’s a lot we can do bilaterally, both through government and through business. Earlier this month, Britain and China agreed to work together to pilot low-carbon initiatives. The UK-India Business Leaders Climate Group has published its first report, full of ideas on joint research programmes and skills exchanges. We are providing technical assistance to Indonesia to tackle deforestation. And within the EU we are driving work to promote investment in low-carbon infrastructure. In so many ways, we are already working directly with our friends to good effect.

We can also lead change with unilateral action – setting a shining example domestically for other countries to follow. When this coalition was formed, I set out our ambition to be the greenest government ever and we are wasting no time in trying to achieve that. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be taking forward some major commitments including a new Green Deal that will insulate millions of homes, a Green Investment Bank to drive low-carbon growth and £850m funding for a renewable heat initiative. This initiative alone is going to make a massive difference to our environment and to our economy. It will drive by more than tenfold the increase of renewable heat over the coming decade, radically reducing carbon emissions and creating thousands of jobs.

Another major way the UK can make a difference is through our aid programmes – and our commitment to ring-fencing aid means we’re able to help the poorest countries cope with a changing climate and get access to clean energy.

So these are real causes for hope. The opportunity to make progress towards a global climate change deal. A compelling case to be made for countries the world over to move to low-carbon economies. A chance for Britain to make a difference both at home and in direct partnership with major economies. For all these reasons I believe we can be optimistic about the future. In the past decade, we have seen a move in public attitudes to climate change and a hardening of political will to deal with it; over the next decade, I am convinced we can make a real difference.

The conference on climate change that begins tomorrow in Cancún, Mexico, will be the 13th such annual meeting since 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol, the first and only international agreement to place a cap on emissions of greenhouse gases, was written. This year there will be no such treaty. Why not? Excuses will abound, but finger-pointing misses the crux of the matter, which is that climate change is the most complicated and challenging problem mankind has ever faced.

Climate change is global, as emissions from one country enter the atmosphere and affect every other country. It is created by every form of economic activity, but its effects will not become critical for another generation. Today, it is practically impossible for more than 190 countries to negotiate — and ultimately ratify — an agreement that would affect all facets of their economies in order to deal with a problem so far in the future.

But there is an alternative to this top-down approach to climate change: a bottom-up strategy that stands a much better chance of working. Rather than count on international negotiations to produce an effective strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the United States should build upon the innovative clean-energy developments already under way in individual states. (Disclosure: I invest in clean energy in America and abroad.)

Texas alone produces more electricity through wind power than all but five countries. In California and Arizona, solar energy will soon provide electricity for three million homes. Geothermal energy plants are being built in Nevada. Michigan is making electric cars. And these are only the leaders. Iowa, Oregon and Illinois are also building wind power generators; New Jersey and Florida are investing in solar, and Maine in biomass.

These state-level efforts are already having national impact. Last year, renewable energy accounted for more than half of all the new power generation plants nationwide. Another 40 percent was from natural gas, which emits only half as much carbon dioxide as coal.

Clean energy has strong bipartisan support in the states. Of the 31 that already have laws requiring increased production of renewable energy, 11 are states that vote largely Republican, including Arizona, Kansas, Montana and Texas.

The United States still has a very long way to go to curtail emissions, but the states are heading in the right direction, and national energy policy must build on their efforts. Congress should extend federal financing, tax credits and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and for upgrading transmission lines. It should also develop clear environmental standards for extracting natural gas from shale. The American desire for energy security and for new jobs creates an opportunity to pass an energy bill in the next Congressional session.

With such a national energy plan in place, the United States could negotiate a bilateral climate agreement with China. Together these two countries account for 42 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. By focusing on our shared interests — innovation in clean energy technology, for example, and the need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal-burning utilities — our two countries could agree to mutually reduce emissions.

Then, with a strong renewable energy industry at home and a climate agreement with China in hand, the United States would be in a good position to re-engage with the broader international community to negotiate a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions. And given such a sturdy foundation, any agreement coming out of those talks would have a good chance of ratification by Congress.

After more than a decade of international negotiations, it might seem as if working our way through these steps from the bottom up would be like starting over. But it makes no sense to pin all our hopes for averting climate change on a diplomatic process that is difficult to negotiate and impossible to ratify. An approach that begins with changes in domestic policy is far more realistic.

The United Nations would still have a critical role to play, because 65 percent of the needed reductions in emissions will have to be made in the developing world. The United Nations must help developing countries institute the policies that will enable them to finance and deploy low-carbon technologies.

During the two weeks of climate talks in Cancún, more than one billion tons of carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere worldwide, adding to the nearly 30 billion tons emitted since last year’s failed meeting in Copenhagen. This top-down approach is not effective. A plan that works from the bottom up could achieve the goal of capping global emissions. Before more time runs out, let’s start building on the local American success stories already in progress.

As the curtain rises tomorrow in Cancún, Mexico, on the next round of international talks on climate change, expectations are low that the delegates will agree on a new treaty to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. They were unable to do so last year in Copenhagen, and since then the negotiating positions of the biggest countries have grown even further apart.

Yet it is still possible to make significant progress. To give these talks their best chance for success, the delegates in Cancún should move beyond their focus on long-term efforts to stop warming and take a few immediate, practical actions that could have a tangible effect on the climate in the coming decades.

The opportunity to make progress arises from the fact that global warming is caused by two separate types of pollution. One is the long-term buildup of carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries. Diplomacy has understandably focused on this problem because, without deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, there can be no permanent solution to warming.

The carbon dioxide problem is hard to fix, however, because it comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which is so essential to modern life and commerce. It will take decades and trillions of dollars to convert all the world’s fossil-fuel-based energy systems to cleaner systems like nuclear, solar and wind power. In the meantime, a fast-action plan is needed.

But carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that contributes to global warming. Other potent warming agents include three short-lived gases — methane, some hydrofluorocarbons and lower atmospheric ozone — and dark soot particles. The warming effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several days to about a decade, is already about 80 percent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes. The world could easily and quickly reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems needed to do so are already in place.

Take methane, for example, which is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing warming. It is emitted by coal mines, landfills, rice paddies and livestock. And because it is the main ingredient in natural gas, it leaks from many older natural-gas pipelines. With relatively minor changes — for example, replacing old gas pipelines, better managing the water used in rice cultivation (so that less of the rice rots) and collecting the methane emitted by landfills — it would be possible to lower methane emissions by 40 percent. Since saved methane is a valuable fuel, some of this effort could pay for itself.

Unfortunately, the accounting systems used in climate diplomacy are cumbersome and offer relatively few incentives for countries to make much effort to control methane.

Big cuts are also possible in hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, many of which are used as refrigerants in air-conditioners and other cooling systems. The most troubling of the short-lived HFCs were invented to replace chlorofluorocarbons, refrigerants that were thinning the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, and were also a major warming agent. Chlorofluorocarbons were regulated under the Montreal Protocol starting in 1987.

The warming effect of these HFCs is at least 1,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Unless they are regulated as chlorofluorocarbons have been, their warming effect will increase substantially in the coming decades.

Shifting from HFCs to substitutes that are 100 times less potent as climate warmers could offset nearly a decade’s increase in warming that is expected from rising emissions of carbon dioxide. The delegates in Cancún would need only to ask that the Montreal Protocol take on the further authority to regulate HFCs.

From a political point of view, the most appealing greenhouse emissions to reduce are ozone and soot, because they contribute so much to local air pollution. After all, people everywhere care about the quality of the air they breathe and see — even if most of them are not yet very worried about global warming. A desire to clean up the air is a rare point of commonality between developing and industrialized nations.

Ozone, which is formed in the lower atmosphere from carbon monoxide, methane and other gases emitted by human activity, is a particularly hazardous component of urban smog. And every year it causes tens of billions of dollars in damage to crops worldwide. So pollution restrictions that reduce ozone levels, especially in the rapidly growing polluted cities of Asia, could both clear the air and slow warming.

Soot likewise offers an opportunity to marry local interests with the global good. A leading cause of respiratory diseases, soot is responsible for some 1.9 million deaths a year. It also melts ice and snow packs. Thus, sooty emissions from Asia, Europe and North America are helping to thin the Arctic ice. And soot from India, China and a few other countries threatens water supplies fed by the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers.

New air pollution regulations could help reduce soot. Such laws in California have cut diesel-soot emissions in that state by half. In China and India, a program to improve power generation, filter soot from diesel engines, reduce emissions from brick-making kilns and provide more efficient cookstoves could cut the levels of soot in those regions by about two-thirds — and benefit countries downwind as well.

Reducing soot and the other short-lived pollutants would not stop global warming, but it would buy time, perhaps a few decades, for the world to put in place more costly efforts to regulate carbon dioxide. And it would help the major economies demonstrate credibility on climate change, which has been in short supply in the diplomatic talks so far.

The impasse that was evident in Copenhagen last year and is likely to reappear in Cancún arises in part from the inability of China, India, Europe and the United States to show that they are adopting practical measures to slow climate change. Agreeing on a shared strategy to curtail short-lived pollutants would be a good way for all of them to start.

Credibility is especially important for the United States. It can already offer the world much of the technology and regulatory expertise that will be needed to reduce short-lived pollutants, particularly ozone and soot. Some American efforts are under way to share these technologies, including a program to help provide better cookstoves for people in developing countries. By making such programs more visible and demonstrating that they deliver tangible results, and by establishing a realistic plan for cutting its own emissions at home, the United States could show that it is serious about addressing climate change.

For too long, overly ambitious global climate talks have focused on the aspects of global warming that are hardest to solve. A few more modest steps, with quick and measurable effects, are a better way to proceed.

Twelve months ago I stood up in front of heads of state at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen and told them that they could not negotiate with the climate; they would have to negotiate with each other. And as leaders prepare to meet again in Cancún next week, I repeat my plea.

I have been attending UN conferences since 1976 and am now part of the millennium development goals advocacy group. In the past 30 years I have seen much to be proud of, and much for us to hang our heads at. At times when action has been needed, the world has responded. Other times we have not.

Negotiating an issue that has such a vast effect on our world is not easy, and governments know that negotiations are as much about how countries interact as they are about what they agree. There is a history of accidental and deliberate misunderstanding in climate negotiations that has left deep scars, but leaders must overcome this legacy of mistrust by building on common ground in a genuine, fair and trusting way that is based on mutual responsibility – to ourselves and to billions around the world.

I believe in the ability of humanity to come together in the face of seemingly impossible difficulties. Finding a way to rise to the challenge of climate change is not easy. But it is possible. We have the knowledge to deliver – the cost of low-carbon technology is falling, our understanding of how climate change will affect our lives is improving. The UN advisory group on climate finance has shown that we can generate the $100bn (£64bn) a year promised to tackle climate change. Now we must work together to make these possibilities a reality.

It is true that no delegate leaves a conference with a perfect document, but last year in Copenhagen we caught a glimpse of the potential we have if we tackle this global crisis together. For the first time, 115 countries recognised the scientific case for restricting the rise in global temperatures to 2C. For the first time ever, all the major emitters of the world accepted their moral responsibility to reduce their emissions and committed to build trust and transparency. And for the first time ever, we set out our interconnectedness, with developed countries offering to help the poorest countries to protect their people from climate change and to find a path to low-carbon sustainable development.

We appreciate the fact that an international agreement alone will not deliver the answer – words and promises mean nothing without action. Trust is a two-way road and outside of Cancún, governments must do what they have promised: take concrete action to reduce their emissions; deliver finance and work together to make low-carbon development a reality; and protect those least able to cope with the impact of climate change.

If we are to help steer the world through this uncertainty, we must be clear that climate change, though important, is only one part of the puzzle. If we truly want to tackle climate change, poverty and conflict we need to think holistically. We need to, as Ban Ki-moon said at the launch of the UN global sustainability panel, “think big, connecting the dots between poverty, energy, food, water, environmental pressure and climate change”.

Focusing on only one dot means that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Water is a timeless example. We know that the impact of climate change will be felt through water – too much, too little or the wrong type. And improving basic services such as water sanitation and hygiene is vital to development, reducing child deaths and improving education. There are 884 million people who don’t have safe drinking water and 2.6 billion who don’t have somewhere to go to the toilet. The floods in Pakistan are a dramatic example of how destructive water can be, yet how essential it is to life. Reducing disaster risk, and providing the most vulnerable with safe water and sanitation is as much about building their resilience to climate change as it is about justice, equality and development.

And we saw in 2008 just what can happen when we fail to connect those dots – climate change, oil prices, protectionism and global economics collided to push food prices up and hang a cloud of starvation over the heads of millions of people.

So these negotiations are about more than climate change – we need to find reason to trust each other so that we can find a new way of working together to tackle the connected global challenges we face. Our failure to link these issues affects us all. In Cancún and beyond, the governments of the world have to learn to work together for our common future. Our planet is finite, our fates are intertwined, our choice is clear – stand together or fall divided.

One of the scarier predictions about global warming is the suggestion that melting glaciers and ice caps could cause sea levels to rise as much as 15 to 20 feet over the next century. Set aside the fact that the best research we have – from the United Nations climate panel – says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100. Rather, let’s imagine that over the next 80 or 90 years, a giant port city – say, Tokyo – found itself engulfed by a sea-level rise of about 15 feet. Millions of inhabitants would be imperiled, along with trillions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure. Without a vast global effort, could we cope with such a terrifying catastrophe?

Well, we already have. In fact, we’re doing it right now.

Since 1930, excessive groundwater withdrawal has caused Tokyo to subside by as much as 15 feet. Similar subsidence has occurred over the past century in numerous cities, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Osaka, Bangkok and Jakarta. And in each case, the city has managed to protect itself from such large relative sea-level rises without much difficulty.

The process is called adaptation, and it’s something we humans are very good at. That isn’t surprising, since we’ve been doing it for millennia. As climate economist Richard Tol notes, our ability to adapt to widely varying climates explains how people live happily at both the equator and the poles. In the debate over global warming, in which some have argued that civilization as we know it is at stake, this is an important point. Humankind is not completely at the mercy of nature. To the contrary, when it comes to dealing with the impact of climate change, we’ve compiled a pretty impressive track record. While this doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore climate change, it provides a powerful reason not to panic about it either.

There is no better example of how human ingenuity can literally keep our heads above water than the Netherlands. Although a fifth of their country lies below sea level – and fully half is less than three feet above it – the Dutch maintain an enormously productive economy and enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living. The secret is a centuries-old system of dikes, supplemented in recent decades by an elaborate network of floodgates and other barriers. All this adaptation is not only effective but also amazingly inexpensive. Keeping Holland protected from any future sea-level rises for the next century will cost only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Coping with rising sea levels is hardly the only place where low-cost, high-impact adaptation strategies can make a huge difference. One of the most pernicious impacts of global warming is the extent to which it exacerbates the phenomenon known as the urban “heat island effect” – the fact that because they lack greenery and are chockablock with heat-absorbing black surfaces such as tar roofs and asphalt roads, urban areas tend to be much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Ultimately, we’re not going to solve any of these problems until we figure out a way to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But in the meantime, there are simple adaptive measures we can employ to cool down our cities: We can paint them. Hashem Akbari, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in cost-effective methods of combating the effects of climate change in urban areas, has shown that by painting roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces and planting shade trees, local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Akbari and colleagues reported in the journal Climatic Change last year that for every 100 square feet of black rooftop converted to white surface, the effects of roughly one ton of carbon dioxide would be offset.

Painting streets and rooftops white may sound impractical, if not silly, but it’s a realistic strategy – which is to say, it’s effective and affordable. Indeed, for an initial expenditure of $1 billion, we could lighten enough Los Angeles streets and rooftops to reduce temperatures in the L.A. Basin more than global warming would increase them over the next 90 years.

Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it’s worth noting that coping with climate change is something we know how to do.

In the global-warming debate, scientists are, admirably, still trying to save the day. Last week, the American Geophysical Union announced plans to mobilize about 700 climate scientists in an effort to improve the accuracy of media coverage and public understanding of their field. Separately, a smaller group of scientists organized by John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota said it was putting together a “rapid response team” to bring accurate climate science to public debates.

On the face of it, such efforts certainly make sense. The scientists hope, not unreasonably, to bring more attention to the climate-change crisis. More crucially, they seek to halt the slide in public opinion on the issue, with recent polls finding Americans’ belief in the evidence for global warming on the decline, along with their view of the need for immediate action to slow climate change. And it’s true that science education, when done well, may help accomplish these goals.

But will it lead to meaningful policy? Or will this latest round of efforts instead result in another spate of news stories about scary end-of-the-world scenarios, another series of debates over whether global-warming science is a hoax and more wasted time – time we don’t have?

There is good reason to think that those who are worried about climate change would make greater progress – especially among Republicans, who profess increasing skepticism about warming – if they focused less on arguing the scientific reality and more on building support for specific solutions that all sides can agree on.

The first problem with focusing on the science debate is that the spectacle of dueling scientists confuses people. We have already seen this story unfold in the media: Two opposing sides, given similar exposure, argue about complexities that most Americans feel they have little ability to assess. Instead of focusing on the causes of climate change in simple terms that people can grasp and act upon, it is all too easy for scientists to get trapped in a debate with skeptics about whether they can prove that warming is real and how they can show definitively that its effects are imminent. Faced with this sparring, it becomes fairly easy for the average person to dismiss climate change as an open question and cross it off the list of things they need to worry about.

Which brings us to a related problem: People are already overwhelmed with worries about unemployment, economic insecurity, federal debt and even terrorism. We should not expect them to start worrying about whether the Earth is warmer, glaciers are melting, or floods and droughts will become more common. A global warming crisis simply can’t compete with the long list of crises average Americans already face.

Finally, the global warming debate increasingly turns more on political belief than on scientific fact. Until relatively recently, environmental issues were largely nonpartisan. Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon have historically achieved significant environmental gains, and voters across party lines used to express fairly equal levels of support for environmental protections.

But while some environmental priorities continue to be shared across the political spectrum, global warming is not one of them. Surveys show a sharp and increasing political divide on a range of beliefs involving climate change, with tea party conservatives voicing the greatest skepticism. Mention “global warming” in a room full of average Americans, as I have done on several occasions, and you will find that they quickly align with one camp or the other. The idea that global warming is a hoax is no longer a fringe perception but a part of the Republican Party brand.

Even if climate scientists manage to convince some conservative skeptics that global warming poses an urgent threat, Republican leaders have backed themselves into a corner. The issue has become so politically polarizing that it would be nearly impossible for them to retreat from their stance and to get behind legislation that is thought to concern global warming.

I’m not suggesting that we halt efforts to educate the public about warming. For all sorts of reasons, such initiatives are critical. But we must stop thinking that these efforts are a necessary precondition for getting anything done on this issue.

So what’s a conservative politician who secretly cares about climate change to do? How can Republicans, in Congress or in legislatures around the country, make the case to their colleagues – and how can they bring conservative voters along?

They must start by focusing on climate-friendly policies and stop assuming that we must first achieve unanimity on global warming science. People can support the transition to a carbon-free energy future without believing, or even knowing, that it might influence glaciers, coral reefs or Arctic ice.

There is a long list of carbon-reduction measures that strong majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents firmly support, including mandating better fuel efficiency, increasing federal funding for clean-energy research, spending more for mass transit, raising efficiency standards for homes and other buildings, and requiring utilities to produce more energy from renewable sources. They even support limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – just as long as they are seen as anti-pollution measures, not “caps.”

For instance, an October poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 73 percent of Republicans favor requiring better fuel efficiency for cars, trucks and SUVs; 64 percent want more federal funding for research on wind, solar and hydrogen technology; and 55 percent favor spending more on public transportation. Pew polls over the summer, meanwhile, found that 74 percent of Republicans favor requiring utilities to produce more energy from renewable sources, while 57 percent back limits on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.

Even as avowed a climate-change denier as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is open to considering action on black carbon (more commonly known as soot), thought to be the second-largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. As he told the Guardian last year, his interest in black carbon stems from concern about poor families in Africa who suffer lung disease as a result of cooking with wood stoves. “I am surprised that anyone would be at all surprised that I would be trying to find out about black carbon while I don’t buy the idea that anthropogenic gases are causing global warming,” he said.

In focus groups conducted by my firm on behalf of numerous environmental organizations over the years, climate skeptics almost always tell us that such steps are good things to support, even if global warming isn’t real. New energy approaches are good for the planet, for human health, for energy independence and for our economy, they say.

The current political and economic terrain isn’t fertile ground for cap-and-trade or for other comprehensive legislation to address global warming, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress on the many solutions that people agree on across party lines. So let’s set a bold target for the clean-energy production we will need in 10 or 20 years and start demanding a plan that will achieve it.

The wary, the unconvinced and the downright skeptical don’t have to be a barrier to change. They might even join in.

I spent the entire month of August in Moscow. Those who were in the Russian capital then will never forget the heavy smog from wildfires in nearby regions that choked the city for weeks. The city seemed immersed in an alternate reality. People, plants, animals — all bore the imprint of suffering, frustration and fear.

Until quite recently, many in Russia, including members of the ruling elite, spoke skeptically about global warming, with a disdain for scientific data. Today their numbers have shrunk.

Of course, this weather-related anomaly was just one among many this year. Mudslides in China, unprecedented droughts in Australia and India, floods in Pakistan and Central Europe; the list goes on. The year 2010 is well on its way to becoming the warmest on record. News of a huge chunk of ice, about twice the size of Paris, breaking away from a Greenland glacier in August came as a menacing symbol of global warming.

Yet, paradoxically, despite the increasingly clear and growing danger of climate change, the pace of negotiations and actions to counteract it has slowed. The public, meanwhile, is frustrated about the ability of governments to effectively address the problem. This could bring us perilously close to public disengagement and apathy.

What has happened? Why all this backsliding in the year that followed the much anticipated United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen?

The reasons lie in the failure of political leadership and lack of will among those who have bowed to vested interests, as well as in governments’ inability to strike compromises that meet the often diverging interests of economic and political players.

The Copenhagen conference did not live up to expectations. The considerable divide between developed and developing nations stood in the way of the main, ambitious goal of a global climate deal.

Instead of analyzing the reasons behind this disappointment in all their complexity, and encouraging a search for realistic, constructive solutions, the media rushed to label the conference an abject failure.

“Climategate,” a carefully engineered scandal that took quotations from climate scientists’ e-mails out of context, and a campaign to discredit the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also did much to mislead people.

The corporate lobbies that organize climate-change-denial campaigns are lavishly financed, outspending those supporting urgent action by 7 to 1. One result is the $550 billion a year in subsidies that the International Energy Agency estimates go to the fossil fuel sector of the energy industry. True, the Group of 20 economic powers recently announced a phasing out of such subsidies — but “in the medium term.”

Everyone seems to understand that the climate problem cannot be wished away. Negotiations on how to fight climate change continue. After the latest round of talks in China, the U.N. process will resume in Cancún, Mexico, in a few weeks. Participants, however, seem more anxious about “lowering expectations” than about achieving the first tangible results. Diplomats and experts are stuck on technical issues, and voices are already being heard in favor of settling for the lowest common denominator or even reformatting the process, with the hope that the business community might come up with purely technocratic solutions to climate change.

This is not the way to go forward. Although business — with its ability to adapt new technologies and make a profit by doing so — could of course play a major role in the transition to a low carbon economy, it would be naïve to expect it to be the primary driver of this process.

The business community will always look out for its own interests and short-term profits. As for the theory that “the free market” will solve every problem, few find that idea convincing after its proponents brought the world economy to the brink of disaster.

Equally unacceptable are suggestions that the fight against climate chaos should be left largely to the most “advanced” nations. This would not only infringe on the role of the U.N., but it risks widening the gap between developed and developing countries.

Clearly, as countries like China increase their economic power they must assume greater responsibility for the environment. We need to persuade them that it is in their own best interests to do so. Furthermore, we need a strong and meaningful effort to create incentives for them to adopt energy-efficient and alternative fuel technologies, as well as to stimulate those who are ready to transfer such technologies to emerging countries. Agreements on all these issues can only be hammered out within the framework of a multilateral process under U.N. auspices. Cancún offers another chance to re-energize the process.

So, despite the fact that 2010 has been a mostly disappointing year for those who advocate urgent action to save our planet, we cannot afford presumptions of failure or pessimism. There are enough people in civil society who have not succumbed to defeatism and are ready to act to make governments listen. The global self-preservation instinct must finally force world leaders to resume serious negotiations with ambitious goals.

El próximo lunes se inaugura la cumbre de Nagoya sobre la biodiversidad y los gobiernos del mundo tienen que plantearse una cuestión importante. ¿Cómo será recordada? ¿Como otra promesa incumplida, como lo fue la de Copenhague, o como un punto de inflexión, cuando el mundo comenzó realmente a cambiar de orientación?

La pérdida de la biodiversidad, y la consiguiente disminución de la capacidad que tiene la naturaleza de abastecernos de servicios como agua limpia, aire fresco, regulación climática y suelos sanos, es un problema al que todavía se presta muy poca atención. Las cifras asustan: el número de especies de vertebrados disminuyó en casi un tercio entre 1970 y 2006, y de los últimos informes de la ONU se desprende que casi un cuarto de todas las especies vegetales están amenazadas de extinción.

Hace una década, 192 países alcanzaron un compromiso para frenar la pérdida de la biodiversidad en el mundo antes de 2010. Ese compromiso no se ha hecho realidad, y el problema sigue siendo un punto ciego colectivo en la conciencia mundial. Antes que nada, en Nagoya debe garantizarse que el mundo finalmente reconozca la importancia de la cuestión, y deben sentarse las bases de una futura acción real.

Hace una década, Europa se fijó un objetivo incluso más firme, con el compromiso ambicioso de detener completamente la pérdida de la biodiversidad. Nuestro objetivo tampoco se hizo realidad, pero hemos aprendido mucho por el camino.

Esa es la experiencia que llevaremos a la negociación en Nagoya, porque se han hecho muchos progresos: cerca de 18% del territorio de la Unión Europea está cubierto ahora por nuestra red Natura 2000 de zonas de protección de la naturaleza, que sigue creciendo. Nuestra legislación medioambiental es de las más fuertes, y protegemos la biodiversidad con normas muy rigurosas en materia de agua, aire, suelo y mares.

A medida que se acerca la conferencia, casi todas las partes están de acuerdo en lo que debe lograrse. El éxito dependerá de tres factores.

En primer lugar, por supuesto, un objetivo que el mundo realmente necesita. Todos sabemos que los índices de pérdida de la biodiversidad son insostenibles: la lógica nos dicta que hemos de aspirar a detener esta pérdida. Pero no bastará con un objetivo global ambicioso; también necesitamos un plan estratégico creíble sobre cómo alcanzarlo.

En este punto, la UE intenta predicar con el ejemplo. Al fijarse una meta en materia de biodiversidad para el 2020, la Unión Europea intensifica su acción para preservar la biodiversidad y garantizar su uso sostenible. Ahora no solo estamos comprometidos con detener la pérdida de la biodiversidad en la UE, sino también con restaurar los ecosistemas donde sea posible.

En segundo lugar, la biodiversidad se beneficiará de un régimen internacional efectivo que asegure el acceso equitativo a los beneficios de los recursos genéticos. Un acuerdo de tal envergadura solo será efectivo si ofrece claridad, transparencia y seguridad jurídica para todas las partes, las que proporcionan y las que utilizan recursos genéticos y demás información. Si se encuentra una solución justa que genere más financiación para conservar la biodiversidad y utilizarla de modo sostenible, y que al mismo tiempo ofrezca a los investigadores en todo el mundo la seguridad que necesitan para proseguir su trabajo que, en definitiva, beneficiará a todos los pueblos.

Y en tercer lugar, todas las partes han de llegar con un planteamiento realista y constructivo. Hemos de mirar al futuro sabiendo que dispondremos de suficientes recursos científicos, humanos y financieros para aplicar los compromisos que se alcancen.

También en este terreno hacemos lo que podemos. Los fondos que la UE destina a la biodiversidad en el mundo son muy considerables: entre el 2002 y el 2008 proporcionamos cada año más de 1.000 millones de dólares. Los estados miembros de la UE acaban de hacer una contribución significativa al Fondo Mundial para el Medio Ambiente.

Espero que Nagoya tenga éxito en estas tres vertientes, y puedo garantizar que la UE hará todo lo que pueda para favorecerlo.

No olvidemos el contexto. Está claro que los ecosistemas, que nos son vitales, están disminuyendo. Nuestra tarea consiste en aumentar la conciencia sobre lo que sucederá si esa disminución se hace irreversible. El estudio pionero The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) (Aspectos económicos de los ecosistemas y la biodiversidad), que hemos cofinanciado junto con Alemania y otros socios, ha demostrado la importancia de poner un precio a los servicios que ofrece la naturaleza. Pero si estos servicios siguen disminuyendo, ¿quién calculará el coste definitivo de perderlos para siempre? ¿Quién querría tener que contar el coste de una disminución, no solo de los propios servicios, sino también de la calidad de vida que una vez entrañaron?

Last year the nations of the world gathered in Copenhagen in hopes of advancing the global agenda for climate change. Similarly — with much less fanfare yet no less importance — they are now gathered in Nagoya, Japan, to improve the prospects for the living planet and its biodiversity.

Many people live under the illusion that the Earth’s biology is largely irrelevant to us. That was manifest in the way the Millenium Development Goals were discussed at the recent United Nations General Assembly completely independent from the discussions related to the International Year of Biodiversity.

Ironically, almost everyone present during the General Assembly talks probably was unaware that the water they were drinking was purified by the biodiversity of the nearby Catskill watershed. Back in the 1990s the quality of New York water — once rated as some of the best of any city — had declined so badly that the Environmental Protection Agency was about to require the city to build an $8 billion water treatment plant. Instead, for a fraction of that cost, the city restored the watershed’s ecosystems and biodiversity so that they once again could provide high quality drinking water. In doing so, one of the wealthiest cities in the world was recognizing explicitly the value of an ecosystem service.

A major reason the biology of the planet is largely ignored in human affairs, is that its critical contributions to human wellbeing are not taken into account in the formal economy. The world’s poor, for example, derive 40 to 89 percent of their annual “income” from nature, both directly through the goods it provides (e.g., food and fiber) and indirectly through its services.

A project initiated by the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, or TEEB, being released in Nagoya makes the case for bringing these factors into the economic calculus as much as possible.

For example, conventional economics would always support the removal of mangrove ecosystems to make way for shrimp aquaculture. However, if economic subsidies are subtracted, the choice to develop rather than leave untouched becomes pretty marginal.

Furthermore, if the service function of mangroves as nurseries for local fisheries is added to the value of the intact ecosystems, the numbers very clearly argue for maintenance of the mangrove ecosystem.

A classic study in Costa Rica shows that coffee plantations close to forest areas have 20 percent greater yield because of pollination services from wild pollinators. That translates to an additional $60,000 in income for a farmer with an adjacent forest. Costa Rica has a pioneering ecosystem services law that, among other things, rewards landholders financially for maintaining forests and thus reliable water flow for downstream hydroelectric generation.

On a larger scale, the TEEB project reckons the annual value contributed by global wetlands at $3.4 billion. On land the project calculates the annual loss of natural capital from natural ecosystems like forests at $2 trillion to $4.5 trillion.

All these benefits are in jeopardy. Disturbing trends documented in the Third Biodiversity Outlook tell us this is not a normal time on the planet. Despite many laudatory efforts, the Earth’s vital signs are very disturbing and its biological infrastructure is degrading rapidly. Almost all indicators are negative and many are in decline exponentially. Fifteen tipping points, like dieback of the southern and southeastern Amazon forest, loom.

We can see plainly in Haiti what happens when the biology of a nation is largely destroyed; indeed it is clear that for the country to have any hope in its future Haiti needs substantial ecosystem restoration and reforestation.

It is simply not acceptable for us to bequeath a world like this to future generations — one riddled with inequity for humanity, with the poor buffered least and suffering most.

We need to move from thinking of nature as just something set aside in a protected area in the midst of a human dominated landscape, to a vision of humanity and its aspirations embedded in the planet’s natural infrastructure.

There is much on the agenda in Nagoya. One item is to create an intergovernmental science structure for ecosystems and biodiversity. Another is to make progress on access and sharing of the benefits we derive from the biology of the living planet.

Above all what is needed is greater recognition of the value of biodiversity and conservation efforts commensurate with the scale of the problem.