‘Green News Report’ – December 22, 2009

IN TODAY’S AUDIO REPORT: Copenhagen Wrap-up: After high stakes diplomacy and high comedy, the U.N. conference ends with something resembling an agreement — but is the glass half-full, or half-empty? … PLUS: Was she lying then, or is she lying now? Sarah Palin was for action on climate change before she was against it … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: In Industrial Thailand, Health and Business Concerns Collide; NASA satellites show California’s water problems worse than previously thought; Toxic legacy: public schools built on contaminated land; NASA, Google offer more precise emissions tracking; Acid oceans: the ‘evil twin’ of climate change; Climate activist youth groups: ‘There will be no decisions about us, without us’ …. PLUS: CBO Stunner: Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act cuts the deficit …

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today’s episode follow below…

• COP15: COPENHAGEN WRAP-UP:
• U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S. (NY Times)
• Copenhagen Decoded: What Obama’s eleventh-hour climate accord really means. (Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones)
• Climate deal falls short of key goals: Obama helps broker a climate deal with a group of leading nations that provides for monitoring emission cuts by each country but sets no global target for cutting greenhouse gases, and no deadline for reaching a formal international climate treaty. The deal falls far short of many countries’ expectations for the summit and
  leaves a comprehensive battle plan for climate change potentially years away. (Washington Post)
• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: An essential beginning: UN climate chief Yvo de Boer: “The challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable and verifiable.” (UNFCCC)
• Text of the Copenhagen Accord [.pdf] (NY Times)
• FACTBOX – Main points of the Copenhagen Accord (Reuters)
• Obama raced clock, chaos, comedy for climate deal (AP):
  It was almost unthinkable. The president of the United States walked into a meeting of fellow world leaders and there wasn’t a chair for him, a sure sign he was not expected, maybe not even wanted.

  Barack Obama didn’t pause, however. “I’m going to sit by my friend Lula,” he said, moving toward Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

• Scenes From a Climate Floor Fight (Dot Earth)
• Ed Miliband, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and Delegate to the UNFCCC:The road from Copenhagen: The talks were chaotic, at times farcical. But in the accord there were real gains we can build upon (Guardian UK)
• Interactive: The Politics of Global Warming (Google/NY Times)
• Climate scientists Warn Current Agreement Will Not Be Enough:
• A Copenhagen Prognosis: towards a safe climate future
  : This report presents a concise diagnosis of the state of the bioshpere and observed trends and offers a treatment plan that is consistent with a 2°C warming threshold, equity and economic development. (Stockholm Environment Institute)
• Heat Over a Leaked U.N. Warming Analysis
  (Dot Earth)
• Panel of Smarties, Take 6: What to make of second leaked U.N. doc and its sanctioned 3C rise in global temp? (Grist)
• American Geophysical Union Annual Conference Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth’s history (Serendipity blog)
• Analysis and Mixed Reactions to “The Copenhagen Accord”:
• Talk About a Climate Catastrophe: The deal Obama brought home from Copenhagen wasn’t just weak—it wasn’t even really a deal. David Roberts on what went wrong—and what Obama has to do next. (David Roberts, The Daily Beast):
  It achieved only the barest of Obama’s aims: one, to draw the major emitters among the developing nations—China, India, and Brazil—into a process that would yield concrete commitments on their part, and two, to get funding flowing from developed countries to developing countries to aid their efforts to deal with climate change.

  The idea was to pull big emitters into a political agreement that would, at next year’s COP16 in Mexico City, become a legally binding treaty. Obama adopted this two-step process after it became clear that a full treaty simply wasn’t in the offing this year; he wanted something that could be operational immediately and serve to build trust in the intervening months.

• Breakdown or Breakthrough?: The Copenhagen Accord (Grist)
• Copenhagen reaction: delegates speak: The “first steps towards a low-carbon future” or a “toothless declaration”? Politicians and campaigners give their response to the deal (Guardian UK)
• Climate deal not accepted by all, but Copenhagen conference makes it ‘operational’ (Grist)
• Was Copenhagen A Disaster Or Decent First Step? (The New Republic)
• Bill McKibben: Obama Guts Progressive Values (Mother Jones)
• Obama Hits the Reset Button on the Foundations of International Climate Agreements: A move away from developed vs. developing countries to major emitters and everyone else. But there is still a lot of work to be done and a question remains whether this is the right forum for a climate agreement. (Climate Progress)
• Did Obama Really Sidestep The U.N. At Copenhagen? (The New Republic)
• What Hath Copenhagen Wrought? A Preliminary Assessment of the Copenhagen Accord (Harvard Environmental Economics Blog)
• Why the newly inked Copenhagen Accord boosts the odds for Senate passage of bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs legislation (Climate Progress)
• OP-ED: Copenhagen, and Beyond (NY Times)
• Palin’s Flip-floppery on Climate Science:
• Palin’s Flip-Floppery on Global Warming: Was She Lying Then or Lying Now? (BRAD BLOG)
• Eugene Robinson: Palin’s own ‘Climate-gate’ (Washington Post)
• Palin contradicts herself with illegible climate tweets (Raw Story)
• Palin continues to blast climate change believers (CNN)

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: More green news not covered in today’s audio report…

• In Industrial Thailand, Health and Business Concerns Collide (NY Times)
• California’s Troubled Waters: Satellite-Based Findings Reveal Significant Groundwater Loss in Central Valley (Science Daily):
  New space observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for California’s primary agricultural region — the Central Valley — and its major mountain water source — the Sierra Nevada — have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir. The findings, based on satellite data, reflect California’s extended drought and increased pumping of groundwater for human uses such as irrigation.
• NASA, Google offer more precise emissions tracking (AP)
• Toxic legacy: Dreams dashed on contaminated land; Examining the old Parker Street dump (South Coast NJ
  Today)
• Acid oceans: the ‘evil twin’ of climate change (Washington Post)
• WV Senator Robert Byrd’s coal comments rock … West Virginia (Politico)
• Climate activist youth groups: ‘There will be no decisions about us, without us’ (Grist)
• CBO Stunner: Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act cuts the deficit (Climate Progress)