Nearly 200 Nations Adopt Climate Agreement At COP21 Talks In Paris : The Two-Way : NPR We have an agreement, and good news the US and china are part of it. Kyota was deeply flawed as the agreement violated the senates request, so it had no chance of being agreed to by the US. The request, China and India had to have restrictions also, and of course china is now the number one emitter of ghg. Still after looking at the non-binding pledges it seems sure if the IPCC's models are correct that the world will exceed 2 degrees C. I don't understand the countries pretending that this will curb ghg enough to avert that level. Still it does provide mechanisms to lower the fossil burn.
Haven't looked into this deeply, nor read the official Paris Agreement, but have you found a source that spells out pledges by country in detail? Just to mention a few burning questions regarding these news stories, such as in the linked NPR article: a) sets the goal of limiting the world's rise in average temperature to "well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius." -a good goal; but what countries are responsible for what, and by when, and by how much/what means? any countries pledge anything/specifics? b)the Obama administration says that for the first time, all countries will be required to report on "national inventories of emissions by source" and also to report on their mitigation efforts. -ok, collecting and reporting on good data is important, we have to know what we are measuring and accounting for, but where is the commitment of a given country? c)"To help developing countries switch from fossil fuels to greener sources of energy and adapt to the effects of climate change, the developed world will provide $100 billion a year." -what countries will give what and to whom? is this binding? Maybe these and other specific questions are answered somewhere, but they don't seem to be showing in the news stories. Freely admitting laziness on my part inasmuch as not reading the Paris Agreement and digging around more. Hopefully someone more motivated here has the answers.
It is a hodge podge, many countries made pledges before the summit, that includes the big emitters of the US and China. Some countries are still yet to do it. When I look at the pledges it is really hard to belive there is a good faith effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centegrade from pre-industrial levels, as it is already 0.9 C (+-0.1C depending on data source). Pledges ae here. CAIT Paris Contributions Map – Explore Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) I expect a good summary will be available at the beigning of 2016. Nothing is binding. The Kyoro agreement was binding on signers which included Canada and Japan, but countries decided not to live up to the agreement. There is no penalty for not meeting your plege.
A herd of cats comes to mind but better than the alternative. Regardless, some in Detroit have noticed: What Will Paris Climate Change Agreement Mean for Motorists? | TheDetroitBureau.com . . . With some of the worst air pollution problems in the world, those two nations (India, China, rjw) are already struggling to figure out how to take the automobile out of the environmental equation. After issuing a red alert this month, Beijing put severe restrictions on driving, and more than a dozen Chinese cities now have registration limits meant to slow the growth of sales. The exception is for qualified vehicles using alternative propulsion systems, primarily battery power. Significantly, China is expected to push past the U.S. this year to become the world’s largest market for electrified vehicles. Whether regulators now enact even tougher rules as a result of the Paris climate accord is uncertain, but with tough new federal mileage standards – and strict zero-emissions vehicle rules in California, the U.S. is expected to see more and more battery-based vehicles on the road in the years ahead. . . . This means is the growth market is not going to be found in crappy MPG cars. It also means Chinese and possibly Indian vehicles are going to be competing in the fuel efficient market. Perhaps not in the USA but there are a lot of folks living outside of North America. Only the foolish will think killing CARB will work in the global economy. Bob Wilson
Thanks for the link. Seems like the best effort and consensus to date. Still, too little on the commitment side and too much wiggle room and vague language. Even if that were not the case, surely we're not the only country where others in government (legislature or next executive) can derail these things.
As mentioned earlier - Japan and Canada signed onto kyoto and legislators decided to break it. Really with China increasing ghg so fast, it seemed no point in holding their ghg down. Germany after fukashima decided to accelerate closing of nuclear plants and increase coal. I don't think that will hurt their path for 2050, but it greatly increases ghg in germany in 2020. The US has been greatly reducing ghg, faster than most nations. The clean power plan and cafe standards through 2025 should ensure that rate in the US continues to fall. Legislation likely won't derail either. The US could be cleaning up faster with some fairly easy changes. 1) Remove grandfathering of power plants. Do it 7 years from now to allow new plants to be built. Number 1 cause of harmful air pollution is in these over 40 year old inefficient high ghg coal power plants. 2)Increase the oil tax in a revenue neutral way.. Currently fuel taxes fall short of road maintenance, pulling money from the general fund. Low oil prices encourage lower mpg cars that have other negative consequences.$40/bbl has been suggested. 3) Increase coal taxes in a revenue neutral way. $50/ton has been suggested. This will give a certainty on fuel prices and encourage swithing to natural gas and renewable. 2 and 3 could be replaced with a revenue neutral carbon tax, but this would either be too low to reduce oil consumption or so high it damaged electrical customers. That is the cost to the economy is higher per unit ghg reduced than higher taxes on oil and coal. China is the big elephant in the room. China has been increasing ghg faster than other countries like the US have been cutting it. Chinese ghg is very low per capita versus the EU or the US. They have promised to cap the increase but if it hurts their economy I don't think they will stick to it. Russia also may greatly increase ghg in the next decade. Still its good to have China agreeing to something and measuring it, as we likely are underestimating the amount of ghg china is producing today.
China now, and soon, perhaps India. However, China, like India, used to per low GHG per capita, but not any longer. In fact, EU is now lower. 2014 CO2 per capita (million tons): United States: 16.5 China: 7.6 EU-28: 6.7 Russian Federation: 12.4 Canada: 15.9 Australia: 17.3 India: 1.8 Saudi Arabia: 16.8 Table 2.4 PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2015 Report (2014 data) http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/jrc-2015-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2015-report-98184.pdf 2013 CO2 per capita (million tons): California: 9.2 Alaska: 49.0 Texas: 24.2 New York: 8.1 EIA State-Level Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2000-2012 A few thoughts: -there is a significant correlation between increased population density and decreased emissions between countries and states -the U.S. population is about 320M and the E.U. is about 510M -the U.S. emissions and EU continue to trend down, China’s continues to trend up
Keep in mind Maryland is historically 45% coal (via EPA Power Profiler), but among lowest CO2 per capita. How is this possible? Because the states with low per capita CO2 are importing a lot of power from other states (and Canada in the case of NY etc). Virginia is low per capita, I think we are about 30-35% imported power (mostly coal). Imported power counts as carbon-free (within our state boundaries) in the EPA Clean Power Plan.
Maryland and Virginia also rank 5th and 14th in population density, respectively. Your point is well taken and adds a further variable to the rankings. The analysis would look a bit different if emissions were assigned to where consumed instead of where produced. From the EPA article: This analysis assigns all emissions related to the primary energy consumed for the production of electricity to the state where that electricity is produced rather than where it is consumed. As a result, the states that produce electricity from fossil fuels (especially coal) and sell that electricity across state lines tend to have higher per capita CO2 emissions than states that consume more electricity than they produce (Table 9). If the emissions associated with the generation of electricity were allocated to the states where that electricity is consumed, in many cases, the emissions profiles of both the producing and consuming states would be different. Hard to say exactly what would happen in California. We import more coal electricity than we produce from that source, but still it's a small percent of the mix. Also, we imported 25-26 GWh from the Northwest last year that was listed as "unspecified". Most of this would probably be hydropower, so don't see a lot of fudging potential in our State.
Which EPA report had that paragraph above? Many states are somewhat like California in the sense of importing power, but we don't have the availability of PNW hydro power of course. Sometimes it seems like it does not mass balance: it feels like more states import power than export power (WV, PA to name a few). In the Northeast, imports from Canada might explain the apparent imbalance.
It's in the post #7 link: State-Level Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2000-2012 Despite the link indicating 2012 and prior data, it's updated to include 2013.
If it is non-binding, its' not worth the paper its' printed on, nor even worth discussing. A more appropriate name needs to be COPOUT 21. If nations were really, really, really serious about CO emissions start at the biggest culprit: human overpopulation! DBCassidy
Well maybe its better than hard deadlines that cannot be achieved. I could post Cato Inst. Patrick Michaels assessment, but dbcassidy nailed it in fewer words.
