World Wide Views on Global Warming

 

This is a picture of the WWViews Project Managers from around the world on the steps of Danish Parliament.

In December of this year, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The aim of the Conference is to negotiate a new international framework for responding to climate change, to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Decisions made by negotiators in Copenhagen will influence the everyday lives of people right across the world. To date, there have been few opportunities for ordinary citizens to directly influence these negotiations.

In March, I travelled to Copenhagen for the launch of the World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) project. This ambitious project seeks to give ordinary citizens around the world a voice in international negotiations on how to respond to climate change. WWViews is the first ever global attempt at participatory democracy and the first opportunity for citizens to directly communicate their views to climate change negotiators.

The Danish Board of Technology and Danish Cultural Institute initiated the WWViews project and so far 67 partners in 46 nations have joined the global WWViews Alliance. Nations represented in WWViews include all the major players in climate change politics and many of the world’s most populous nations. It was an amazing experience to spend time in Copenhagen with representatives from the many countries that are participating in the project and get a sense of their different perspectives on climate change and participatory democracy.

On Saturday 26^th September 2009, WWViews events will be held in all participating countries. The Institute for Sustainable Futures is the Australian WWViews Partner and we will deliver the Australian event. The event will bring together 100 ordinary citizens chosen to represent Australia’s demographic diversity. They will discuss and vote on their views on critical climate change issues and develop recommendations for the climate change negotiators. Results will be reported online as they become available around the world and will be delivered to climate change negotiators from each participating country.

The launch of WWViews in Copenhagen brought together representatives from most of the participating countries for a program of events, including a formal launch at Danish Parliament, a reception at Copenhagen City Hall and a training seminar for WWViews project managers.

WWViews is a unique process empowering members of the public in many different countries to give a clear indication to climate negotiators of their preferred options for policy action on climate change. It will demonstrate the importance of public participation in policy-making processes in Australia and nations around the world. The Institute is currently seeking partners that can provide financial or in-kind support for the Australian WWViews event so get in touch with me if you’re interested. You can also find more about the project at www.wwviews.org. 

Copenhagen is a beautiful city, if a little cold at that time of year! Some of my favourite photos from the trip are below.

more about “Copenhagen, March 2009“, posted with vodpod

The Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

In its current form, the Rudd Government’s CPRS removes all incentive for households, most businesses and even State and local governments to voluntarily reduce their emissions. Under the Scheme, a household that buys Green Power, installs solar hot water or invests in energy-efficient appliances does nothing to reduce Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Any emissions saved by households allow polluting industries to do less to meet their obligations. And those obligations are already far too weak – an emission reduction of 5 to 15% by 2020 falls well short of what climate scientists are demanding.

Ordinary Australians are entitled to feel angry and confused by this situation. For many years, governments of all persuasions have asked people to take responsibility for their own carbon footprint and do whatever they can to save energy and reduce emissions. Now, the Rudd Government is saying that individual action is worth nothing. This is a slap in the face to those who have done the right thing, like the 850,000 Green Power customers in Australia.

The CPRS can be fixed. First, it needs a target of at least a 25% emission reduction by 2020. Second, it needs a mechanism to separately account for voluntary emission abatement so that the actions of households and organisations can truly make a difference to climate change.

This piece originally appeared on the Green Pages Australia blog, here.

Seizing the opportunity of climate change

For decades now, our politicans, business leaders and economists have argued that responding to climate change will hurt our economy. They tell us that limiting greenhouse gas emissions will slow economic growth and harm our industries. In troubled economic times, some argue that we cannot afford the luxury of deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and must lower the scale of our ambition. 

This year, as we move towards Copenhagen, we need to jettison this old way of thinking. In 2006, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change demonstrated that “the benefits of strong early action on climate change outweigh the costs”.  Inaction, overly cautious targets and fear of doing more than competing nations will ultimately cost far more than a strong, comprehensive and early response. Failure to agree on deep global emission cuts in Copenhagen would be economically irresponsible. 

Perhaps more importantly, it would be a failure of ethics. By continuing our reckless exploitation of fossil fuels, we would condemn many millions of people to death or to lives of misery as the impacts of climate change – drought, floods, famine, fire and disease – worsen. We would bequeath a wrecked and impoverished planet to future generations. There would be blood on our hands. 

As we approach Copenhagen, it is time to think of the transition to a low-carbon civilisation not as a burden but as an opportunity. The changes we will need to make to our energy infrastructure, our transport networks, our industrial processes and our systems of food production offer many benefits beyond reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A cleaner, more distributed energy infrastructure, based on efficient use of renewable energy, will reduce air pollution in our cities and deliver more employment than centralised, fossil fuel-based infrastructure. It will be more reliable, more flexible and more resilient. Investments in energy efficiency will reduce waste and deliver cost savings. In a time of financial uncertainty, these are secure investments, often with an excellent rate of return. Greater use of active transport – walking and cycling – will bring health benefits. Many of these changes make sense even without the urgent imperative of climate change response. 

Businesses that start to recognise climate change response as an opportunity and to develop innovative solutions will thrive as a low-carbon civilisation emerges. Climate change can act as a stimulus for creativity and innovation and those who can bring solutions to the marketplace will be richly rewarded. The creative effort devoted to climate change response may deliver other benefits that we cannot yet imagine – new technologies and new ways of thinking. 

An effective response to climate change must be truly global and it is hard to imagine a global response that does not, in some way, address the extreme imbalance in wealth between rich and poor nations. The rich nations are responsible for most of the climate change to date and must take the lead in developing solutions. They must reduce their high per-capita emissions while leaving space for poorer nations to grow and prosper, using clean technologies. Climate change, then, is an unprecedented opportunity to move towards a more equitable world, where all people have equal rights to the atmosphere. 

A global response will need to be supported by an effective global governance system that includes mechanisms for citizens to participate in decisions that will affect their lives. At present, national governments have the primary voice in international climate negotiations and there is no guarantee that the positions they take are representative of their citizenry. Global climate change response offers an opportunity to experiment with new ways of involving people in international decisions. One such experiment, the World Wide Views on Global Warming project, is already planned for Copenhagen (see www.wwviews.org ). On 26th September 2009, this ambitious project will bring together 100 representative citizens in as many as 30 countries around the world to deliberate on international climate change response. Their recommendations will be collated and delivered to decision makers in advance of Copenhagen. This will be a unique resource for the delegates – a sense of what ordinary people around the world want to see emerging from Copenhagen. It will be a model for citizen participation in global governance on which we can build in the future. 

Finally, climate change can be the trigger for a broader shift towards a civilisation that is sustainable. The momentum developed in responding to climate change may help humanity respond to other pressing challenges, such as loss of biodiversity, food and water shortages, and resource depletion. Perhaps the challenge of solving a truly global problem, of thinking globally, will help more of us to see humanity as one global family and to understand the Earth as a fragile home that needs to be cherished. 

Of course, all of this seems optimistic, even naive, as we stumble towards Copenhagen in the midst of economic crisis and with no hint of an effective global agreement. Yet there is little doubt that if we waver in the face of climate change we will see the current economic crisis followed by a continuing wave of crises as humanity overshoots the supportive capacity of the planet and ecological systems begin to collapse. We simply must embrace the alternative, which is to seize climate change response as an opportunity and to move forward optimistically.

This piece was originally posted on the COP15 Climate Thinkers Blog, here.

Carbon Offset Watch

On Tuesday night, the Institute for Sustainable Futures, the Total Environment Centre and CHOICE launched Carbon Offset Watch, an assessment of 20 carbon offset retailers operating in Australia. I’ve been working on this project on and off for over a year, so it was great to finally get our assessment out into the public domain. You can see all the results, read our report and download my presentation from the launch at the Carbon Offset Watch website.

Hopefully, Carbon Offset Watch will make it easier for consumers to identify a reliable and credible product when they want to offset their emissions. The voluntary carbon market is really complex and potentially quite daunting for people who want to put their money where their mouth is and do the right thing. Carbon offsetting should be a last option, after you’ve done everything you can to reduce your emissions directly, but at least now there is a guide for those who do want to buy carbon offsets.

A live blog on climate change

I participated in a live blog on climate change today, along with Jennifer Marohasy from the Institute for Public Affairs. You can see a replay here.

It was a strange experience. Jennifer and I were panellists and people could log in and post questions live, which we then had to try and answer. We only had half an hour for the whole thing and we were overwhelmed by the number of comments that came in. It felt a bit like being in a room full of people shouting and having to try and somehow make sense of it all. I found it impossible to respond to everyone in the time available, despite there being many great questions. Personally, I’m not sure that live blogging is such a great idea unless you can slow down the pace by moderating the questions more thoroughly. It was all a bit too frantic to constitute useful debate.

The people who wrote in with questions seemed to be fairly evenly split on whether climate change is real or not, which is disappointing. Of course, Jennifer Marohasy is a proud climate change denier so would have attracted that kind of audience but it is still worrying that so many people remain unconvinced of the threat posed by climate change. Of course, it was hardly a representative audience. More representative polling by the Climate Institute (Climate of the Nation) found that nine out of ten Australians are concerned about climate change.

I doubt that many people changed their mind about climate change after this live blog – there was just too little time for true deliberation. I hope that this is not a taste of the future of online media – frantic, uninformed and superficial discussion.

Climate Leaders Training

I gave a couple of brief presentations at a Climate Leaders Training session on the weekend. One was an update on recent climate science and the other was on climate solutions. The audience were students that were training to become climate leaders – people who will go out and encourage others to take action to respond to climate change. The presentations are available on my Speaking page.

Futures thinking and education for sustainability

I presented some thoughts on futures thinking and education for sustainability to the Department of Education on Monday. It was interesting to think through the kinds of things that we need to be doing through school education to support the transition to sustainable futures. My presentation is here.

The Carbon Challenge Part 2: The more you know, the worse it gets

So in my last post, I wrote that the carbon footprint for my household was about 12 tonnes based on the data I’d managed to collect at that point. Since then, we’ve had another electricity bill and it was a whopper! Our house is positioned so that it receives no direct sunlight from anywhere in winter – there’s a little bit in the backyard sometimes, but that’s it. So keeping the place warm is a challenge. We’ve got a portable gas heater for the main living area, which is great, but we’re forced to rely on electric heaters for the bedrooms and bathroom, which chew up the power. We’ve also been cursed with about 15 of those energy hungry downlights in the main living area and with no sunlight, we need them on to see. Plus, since Nina was born 12 weeks ago, we’ve all been home a lot. As a result, my best estimate of our carbon footprint increases from 12 to 13.6 tonnes. Ouch!

Then I went and had a look at the fuel efficiency data in our car, rather than relying on what’s available from the Australian Government’s Green Vehicle Guide and things got even worse. It looks like we’re getting 9.6 litres per 100km instead of the 7.4 that the Green Vehicle Guide suggests. This is probably because we use the car mainly in city traffic and very rarely in open highway driving. That’s another 0.5 tonnes and we’re over 14 tonnes!

The lesson: the deeper you dig into the data, the worse it gets!

The Carbon Challenge, Part 1

I’ve spent a lot of my working life pushing for political action to achieve a stronger response to climate change. I think that we need really big structural changes if we’re going to reduce emissions as much as we need to – maybe 80 or 90% by 2050.

But while I’ve been focused on achieving political change, I’ve tended to neglect my own carbon footprint a bit. I’ve done some of the easy things, like buying energy saving light bulbs and installing water efficient showerheads. And I regularly cycle to work. But I haven’t switched to Green Power, changed my consumption habits much or purchased offsets for my flights.

So, it’s time for the Carbon Challenge. Over the next year or so I’m going to track my carbon footprint, try various things to get it down and report on the results here. It won’t be very systematic – I’m just going to pursue opportunities as they arise.

For the first installment, I need to calculate my carbon footprint. I’ve done this using the Australian Government’s Climate Clever Emissions Calculator, which you can find here. I’ve used the Complete version of the Household calculator, because it’s the most detailed. I have to say, this is not a simple calculator to use. You need all sorts of information on how much you have spent on different things during the past year. So my initial estimate of carbon emissions is probably going to be a bit off. I’ll work to make it more accurate over time by keeping records of things I buy.

As of today, my best estimate of my annual carbon footprint is 12 tonnes. This is for my whole household – me, my wife Danielle and my two kids Euan and Nina. 6 tonnes is from direct emissions (e.g. from the electricity, gas and fuel we use) and 6 tonnes is from indirect emissions (e.g. the food we eat and the products and services we purchase).

That’s not a bad start. The average for a NSW household is 20 tonnes, so we’re doing pretty well already. We’ve got efficient appliances (high star rating), we use gas for hot water, cooking and a lot of our heating and we drive much less than the average because we tend to walk, cycle or use public transport.

I think this estimate will end up being low though, because its based on average energy consumption that doesn’t cover winter, when our electricity and gas bill will be much higher because we live in a very cold house. I also found it hard to estimate what we’ve spent on household goods over the last year, so I’ll have to keep track of that going forward to improve the accuracy.

That’s it for this instalment. Next time I’ll be looking at my attempts to buy low carbon clothing!

Updates to site

I’ve updated the site with new photographs of Nina, information about my book The Eye of the Storm and other bits and pieces. Will try and update more regularly from now on.