Many Names Offered as Obama’s Possible ‘Climate Czar’

 

Jennifer Lawinski | Fox News

Rumors that President-elect Barack Obama may create an Energy Security Council similar to the National Security Council have spawned wide speculation about whom Obama would appoint to be a “climate czar” in charge of the new advisory group.

According to a report from Politico.com, the Obama transition team has been studying a white paper written by team leader and former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta on how an Energy Security Council would look and how it would work with other agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A climate czar would oversee the administration’s policies on energy and climate-change, and possibly monitor interactions on the issues among the other agencies and departments. 

Among the many names being bandied about for a “climate czar” are two heavy hitters: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who actively supports cutting greenhouse gas emissions and promotes renewable energy projects in his state; and former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, whose “An Inconvenient Truth” has become the bible of global warming activists.

Nancy Floyd, founder and managing director of Nth Power, a green-tech venture capital firm, has been mentioned as another candidate. Floyd spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August about renewable energy investments and is an adviser to the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Lab.
 
Dan Reicher, Google’s director of climate change and energy initiatives, has also been mentioned as a candidate for climate czar, as well as for energy secretary. Reicher, an advocate of plug-in electric vehicles, was assistant energy secretary during the Clinton administration. Obama has said he wants to put 1 million American-made plug-in hybrid cars on the road that can get up to 150 miles per gallon.

Also mentioned for the energy secretary position are Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who wants to create an $850 million Energy Independence Fund in his state, cut greenhouse gas emissions and invest in clean energy; and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

William Antholis, managing director of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said the time has come for a climate czar, but that person’s success will depend on several factors.

Read on here.

Obama to Act Quickly on Global Warming in 2009, Adviser Says

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama will act quickly on climate change upon taking office in January, his environment adviser said, and may also continue with some of the policies initiated by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama can borrow from policies and programs in place in Europe and some U.S. states that aim to control heat-trapping emissions blamed for global warming, Jason Grumet said today in Washington. Obama also may work further on a Bush initiative that brought major carbon-dioxide emitters such as China and India into talks on a global climate-change accord.

The worst banking crisis in almost a century has raised speculation Obama will delay environmental measures that increase energy costs until the economy improves. Grumet offered no such qualifications in his remarks at a climate change conference.

“We will have the opportunity to move quickly because there has been a profound amount of knowledge generated,” Grumet said. “My suggestion to all of you is to enjoy the holiday season, spend some time with your family and friends and rest up because I think it’s going to be a very, very busy 2009.”

Delegates from more than 190 nations will meet for UN- sponsored talks in Poznan, Poland, next month to continue negotiations on a global climate-protection deal. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, an international climate accord that expires in 2012.

Bush rejected Kyoto because it didn’t require developing nations such as China and India to take on mandatory emissions cuts from their coal-fired plants. An Obama administration raises “a good possibility” that large pollutors such as the U.S. and China can come to terms, said Janos Pasztor, director of UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon’s Climate Change Support Team.

Per Capita Emissions

“While it is also true of the new Obama administration that they will want some kind of concrete action by the key developing countries, there may be a possibility to find a formulation of these commitments or actions to be taken by developing countries that will satisfy both sides,” Pasztor said in an interview. “Their per capita emissions are way, way below those of this country in particular and also of the world average so it has to be understood that way.”

In an October interview, Grumet said the Kyoto process was flawed because it didn’t require binding commitments from countries such as China. It’s “not very likely” that Obama would push the U.S. Congress to ratify the agreement, Pasztor said.

Instead, Obama “has expressed an interest” in parallel negotiations initiated by Bush that target binding commitments from all large emitters, Grumet said in October. The process targets different levels of emission cuts from different countries.

`Engage’ China, India

“He strongly believes that China, India and Brazil are going to have to be engaged in the next round of global reductions and make mandatory commitments on their own, albeit differentiated from what we expect the developed world to make,” Grumet said. “The major emitters process is helpful there.”

The first international forum where Obama can offer “a different kind of leadership in global negotiations” is a July meeting of the G-8 group of nations, the adviser said.

“Obama has said that he believes that the United States has to lead but believes that China and India can’t be far behind,” Grumet said. “What we have supported to date is language that would have the United States take a step but that will basically provide incentives for developing countries to move forward.”

Read on here.

Nepal’s Himalayan glaciers at risk due to global warming

South Asia News

Kathmandu – The rise in global temperatures and climate change caused by greenhouse gases are posing risks for Nepal’s Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes, official media reported Wednesday.

Global warming has affected northern Nepal considerably, causing the melting of glaciers, the state-owned Gorkhapatra newspaper said, quoting government officials.

‘Global warming is causing the existing glacial lakes in Nepal’s Himalayan range to expand and the possibility of them bursting,’ the newspaper quoted Purusottam Ghimire, joint secretary at the Ministry of Science and Technology, as saying.

‘The global warming is also causing change in weather patterns across Nepal which has resulted in extreme weather conditions such as longer drought-like conditions and heavy rains causing flash floods as well as desertification,’ Ghimire said.

According to a report by the country’s meteorological department, Nepal recorded an annual temperature increase of 0.06 degrees Celsius between 1976 and 2005.

Also affected are the glaciers in the Himalayas which were shrinking at a considerable rate.

Research in western Nepal by the United Nations said glaciers were receding by as much as 10 metres per year.

Nepal has more than 3,000 glaciers and 2,323 glacier lakes.

Officials said if the glacial lakes were to burst, it would inundate or wash away several settlements lower down the mountains.

Nepalese experts were also worried over the possible consequences of temperature increases on agricultural production.

‘The agricultural sector is likely to face the brunt of the global warming,’ said Laxman Paudel, officer at the agriculture department. ‘Climate change is likely to cause less rainfall and drying up of water sources which will eventually hit production.’

Nepal largely depends of rivers fed by glaciers for irrigation and drinking water sources during dry winter months.

Read on here.

Ban calls on Washington economic summit to tackle global warming as well

 

UN News Centre

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for this weekend’s Washington summit on the global financial crisis to seize the opportunity to tackle global warming as well, stressing that such action would create jobs and boost the world’s economies.

“The global financial crisis is most immediate; the more existential is climate change. The urgency of the first is no excuse for neglecting the second. To the contrary, it is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone,” he wrote in a joint op-ed piece with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Indonesia was the site of last year’s conference on climate change in Bali, while Poland is hosting further negotiations in Poznan in December and Denmark will host talks next year to draw up a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases, which expires in 2012.

In the op-ed, first published in The International Herald Tribune yesterday, the four leaders stressed that a “green economy” is the answer to both the financial crisis and climate change, since the hottest growth industry in the world just now is renewable energy.

“That’s where jobs of the future are already being created, and where much of the technological innovation is taking place that will usher in our next era of economic transformation,” they wrote.

“The UN Environment Programme estimates that global investment in zero-greenhouse energy will reach $1.9 trillion by 2020 – a significant portion of global GDP. Worldwide, nearly 2 million people are employed in the new wind and solar power industries, half of them in China alone.

“Brazil’s biofuels programme has been creating nearly a million jobs annually. In Germany, investment in environmental technology is expected to quadruple over the coming years, reaching 16 per cent of manufacturing output by 2030 and employing more workers than the automobile industry.”

The four called for policies and financial incentives within a global framework to steer economic growth in a low-carbon direction, thus eliminating or greatly reducing the human-generated greenhouse gases that heat up the atmosphere and threaten the environment and biodiversity with disastrous consequences.

Read on here.

Memo to the President: Build a Secure Energy Future to Combat Climate Change

 

William J. Antholis, Managing Director, The Brookings Institution
Charles K. Ebinger, Director, Energy Security Initiative

The Brookings Institution

Both presidential candidates repeatedly listed energy security and climate change as a top priority—second only perhaps to addressing the economic crisis.

To: President-Elect Obama
From: William Antholis and Charles Ebinger
Date: November 11, 2008
Re: Build a Secure Energy Future

 

The Situation

Building a secure energy future—including heading off catastrophic climate change—was a top campaign priority, second only to meeting the ongoing global economic crisis. Successfully addressing both issues simultaneously will require determination, bipartisan leadership and political courage.

 

Despite competing priorities, we recommend that energy be a cornerstone of your first term, and that you push for domestic energy legislation before moving forward aggressively with global diplomacy. Your inaugural address can lay out this agenda, and introduce the “Energy Security and Climate Protection Act of 2009” to expand on your campaign proposals in low-cost, high-impact ways. This approach would address two separate but complementary challenges:

 

• First, in the medium term, the legislation will expand on your pledges to stimulate investment in alternative energy sources and energy infrastructure, by also emphasizing energy-efficient transportation systems, particularly through a federal-state partnership.
• Second, over time, it will expand on your proposals to slash greenhouse gas emissions, by also launching a global diplomatic energy security campaign and revamping our domestic energy policy institutions.

 

To accomplish all of this, you will need to invest significant political capital, but this surely is a battle worth fighting.  

Read on here.