IR/Climate blogging

You can find some of my other recent blogging at these websites:

On e-IR, my Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "Is the US a Climate Outlaw?" on October 20. This is part one, which argues that the U.S. can be viewed as an outlaw.

At the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I blogged "War and the Eurozone" on October 28. The post notes some recent striking rhetoric by European conservatives in power.

Also at the Duck, I blogged "Graduation Rates" on October 26. What can we make of the apparent disparity in graduation rates between athletes and the regular student population?


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Light my fire

Here's the US-European climate split in a nutshell.

The US perspective, from the US Representative to the European Union:

Boyden Gray told AFP that Washington and Brussels were "exchanging papers for the next EU-US summit and our differences are not that great."

"We were criticised for being much more interested in energy security than in climate change, but both sides of the Atlantic now agree it's the same and it's a constructive change... I don't see that much difference," he said in a phone interview.

Really? Not much difference.

Keep in mind that the EU just mandated 20% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020. That's on top of Kyoto, which the US abandoned.

The EU view:

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas...tartly compared these [European] plans with the US voluntary approach.

"(The US) approach doesn't help in reaching international agreement and doesn't reduce (US) emissions, because they are right now 60 percent above the 1990 level," Dimas said, noting that in 2005, emissions by the 27-member EU were 7.4 percent below the 1990 benchmark.

It may not quite fit Robert Kagan's worldview, but I think we know which one is "awake and alert" and which one is sleeping.


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Climate news

Recently, I wrote a couple of manuscripts about the politics of climate change. Most of the analysis for both pieces centered upon post-Kyoto developments.

Here's an example of one interesting development, from the BBC, February 20, 2007:

EU environment ministers have agreed in principle to cut greenhouse emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.

The ministers, meeting in Brussels, also agreed to seek a 30% cut worldwide if matched by other developed nations.

That means at least 27 affluent countries, with a combined GNP larger than the US economy, are moving forward.

Germany is prepared to reduce by 40%.

Over at the Duck of Minerva, I recently blogged about the unique problem of China and greenhouse gas emissions growth.


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Global warming roundup

The parties to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are meeting in Montreal, Canada this week. Unsurprisingly, there is lots of disturbing news about global warming.

First, the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is clearly higher than normal. This is from an AP story November 28:

A team of European researchers analyzed tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia and determined there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any point during the last 650,000 years.

The study by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, published Friday in the journal Science, promises to spur "dramatically improved understanding" of climate change, said geosciences specialist Edward Brook of Oregon State University.

Think about that again: highest level in 650,000 years.

2. Global warming isn't merely an hypothetical future problem. The effects may already be quite dramatic: Reuters, November 16

Whether it is an increase in poor health from diseases such as malaria or shrinking water supplies, nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America are vulnerable to the consequences of changes in global temperatures.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that climate change leads to more than 150,000 deaths every year and at least 5 million cases of illness.

150,000 deaths per year, now, according to the WHO!

3. Global warming isn't merely a problem faced by the developing world. Europe may, in fact, feel a "big chill" from melting polar ice caps and changed flow of the warming Gulf Stream. LA Times, December 1:

In the new study, published today in the journal Nature, a group of British oceanographers surveyed a section of the Atlantic Ocean stretching from Africa to the Bahamas that has been studied periodically since 1957. They found the overall movement of water had slowed 30% in the past five decades, particularly in the flow of cold water back to the south.

The findings are the first evidence of such a slowdown.

"The result is alarming," Detlef Quadfasel, a climate expert at the University of Hamburg, wrote in a commentary accompanying the research. The findings provide "worrying support for computer models" predicting that global warming could disrupt the way the planet regulates heat, he said.

Computer models have long predicted that warming of the oceans and "freshening" of the seas with water from melting glaciers and increased precipitation — all linked to warming of the Earth by greenhouse gases — could slow down the currents. But scientists did not expect to see such changes so soon.

Scientists differ on the potential effect. Some say weaker currents would cool Europe by several degrees, causing problems for agriculture and ecosystems and ushering in far more severe winters. Others say the cooling would probably balance out the effect of global warming in Europe, which is expected to raise temperatures globally by several degrees over the next century.

"My personal guess is there would be no overall cooling, just a slowdown of the warming," Quadfasel said in an interview.

It's a "large scale geophysical experiment" on the planet earth, as oceanographer Roger Revelle remarked in 1957.

4. China, surprisingly, has declared that it is reducing its production of greenhouse gases -- and criticized the American withdrawal from the Kyoto process. Japanese Mainichi Daily News, December 1:

The Chinese government said Wednesday that despite being one of the world's worst polluters, it was already cutting greenhouse gases and called on the United States to join the global community under the Kyoto Protocol to protect the earth's atmosphere....

"We really feel pity that the U.S. has not yet, and is not going to join the Kyoto Protocol, not only because of the size of its total emissions, but also because of its higher per capita emissions," said Sun [Guoshun, director of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs].

...He noted that China's annual production of carbon dioxide was 2.6 tons per 1,000 people, while the average was 19 tons per capita in the United States.

China has been exempt from Kyoto because it is a developing country, which means that per capita emissions are historically low.

Too busy to notice, but...

OK, there are a lot of blog-worthy topics today. Sorry, I have no real time to comment:

Russia has agreed to the Kyoto Protocol and the agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions will go into effect February 16, 2005. Without the US, of course.

Lame duck Secretary of State Colin Powell says he thinks Iran is trying to develop missiles that are nuclear capable. The story I read said nothing about range of those missiles.

The Republicans met in secret today and voted to change their rules. Now, a member can continue to serve as Speaker of the House even if he or she is under indictment. Tom DeLay, the current Speaker, may soon be under indictment. For those who remember Republicans going crazy in 1993 over the Dan Rostenkowski ethics investigation, this may seem hypocritical. Apparently, Tom DeLay was one of the loudest voices complaining at the time. Surprised?

A Sociology Professor at University of California Berkeley, Michael Hout, who is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, released a co-authored study today implying that there were likely some serious voting shenanigans in certain Florida counties in 2004, resulting in George Bush receiving an "excess" 130,000 to 260,000 votes.


Correction: DeLay is Majority Leader, not Speaker. Dennis Hastert still has the main job, which he obtained thanks in great part to DeLay's maneuvering. The rules change, in any case, applies broadly to leadership positions. And it was instigated for DeLay, who faces all sorts of judicial scrutiny for alleged wrongdoing.

Kyoto Update: Russia to Ratify

Reuters just posted this story a few hours ago:

Russia Friday secured a deal with the European Union on terms for its entry into the World Trade Organization and immediately rewarded the bloc by promising to back a worldwide environmental pact.

This is essentially what I predicted would happen back in October, though Anders Åslund did better. He even had the details of the swap correct in mid-April. Åslund said then that the deal would occur either April 22 or May 21 -- and he noted that gas prices would figure into the specific pact:

An EU statement after the signature of the deal said Russia had agreed to gradually raise domestic gas prices for industrial users to pave the way for WTO membership -- rising by a third or even a half by 2006 and doubling by 2010.

Bingo!

Putin, of course, gave himself some wiggle room on Kyoto, in case there's a delay in Russia's entry to the WTO:

"This cannot but have a positive effect on our position on the Kyoto protocol. We will speed up Russia's moves toward ratifying the protocol. ... We clearly set out our position on Kyoto long ago. We are for the Kyoto process and we support it."

"I cannot say how things will be 100 percent, because ratification is not an issue for the president but for parliament, but we will speed up this process," said Putin, who toughly controls the Russian legislature.

Still, it looks like this is a done deal and this means Kyoto will soon be international law -- and the US will be a notable outlier.

Hopefully, Kerry will find some time to talk about energy and climate change this summer. Bush is vulnerable on the environment.

Steal this post

Dammit. Blogger just ate my post. I have a lot to do today (and this week), so this will have to be the condensed version:

Kevin Drum agrees with my post from yesterday.

John Kerry is having trouble wounding George Bush on foreign policy because their positions are starting to sound alike. Drum refers to:

an article by Farah Stockman in the Boston Globe today that highlights a key Kerry problem: as Kerry moves rightward after the primaries, and as Bush becomes more receptive to ideas that Kerry has long championed — giving the United Nations a far greater role in Iraq, emphasizing the importance of welcoming NATO to Iraq, and beefing up the number of US troops in Iraq — Kerry loses any chance of distinguishing himself from Bush over foreign policy.

This strikes me as a serious problem. National security is almost certain to be the defining issue of the campaign, and there's just no way for Kerry to get any traction there if his positions aren't clearly distinguishable from Bush's. And despite the pro-war partisans' continuing fantasy that George Bush is dedicated to the same kind of vast war of civilizations they are, the fact is that Bush has adopted an awful lot of Democratic positions in the past year. Aside from rhetorical tone, it's getting harder and harder for Kerry to find points of disagreement that are more than just nitpicking.

So what can Kerry do?

Drum says that "if John Kerry wants to win, he has to figure out some genuinely bold and popular foreign policy initiative."

I'd recommend Kerry look into "borrowing" from the so-called "Blair Doctrine."

The UK Prime Minister has often spoken of a "doctrine of international community" that emphasizes genuinely multilateral approaches to shared global problems. This includes not only fairly traditional security threats like WMD and terror, but "human security" problems like global warming and humanitarian emergencies.

Kerry is a strong environmentalist and multilateralist. He's neither a hawk nor a dove. While owls may be wise, they can nonetheless have a hard time explaining their positions in short TV commercials.

Who knows, maybe Kerry could even arrange a meeting with Blair sometime during the hottest part of the summer to call for action on Kyoto.

Of course, calling attention to multilateral processes and climate change is going to be difficult if the US starts losing 100 troops per month in Iraq on a regular basis.

Under those circumstances, however, Kerry could credibly (and boldly) turn further away from Bush's war. If the US loses 3 to 400 soldiers between now and the convention, even as it fails to find WMD, the Democrats can more prominently challenge the wisdom of the entire enterprise.

Kerry will need help from people like Wesley Clark (potential Secretary of State or Defense?) to craft the message carefully for the national stage.

Think bold.

Update: See also Pandagon, Priorities & Frivolities, and Speedkill.

Update: Russia and Kyoto

In December, Russia seemed to flip-flop on the question of Kyoto ratification. One official reported that Russia was unlikely ever to ratify the global warming pact, another claimed that Russia was "moving toward ratification."

This is important because the Bush administration's rejection of Kyoto puts Russia in the driver's seat. Canada, the EU, and Japan have all joined, but the treaty cannot go into effect without either the US or Russia.

Russia easily meets the treaty's terms because factories from the cold war era have been closed and its greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced from the 1990 treaty base year. Thus, Russia has little reason to oppose the accord. Indeed, Russia could earn billions of dollars by selling emission quotas.

In October, I guessed that the EU might offer something valuable to Russia in return for its ratification.

Last week, Anders Åslund provided specificity to my claim. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Åslund suggested that Russian and EU officials could strike a deal as soon as their next meeting in Moscow April 22, or perhaps at the EU-Russia summit scheduled for May 21.

Basically, the EU could agree to support Russia's entry into the WTO in exchange for President Vladimir Putin's support of Kyoto. Åslund does not offer evidence that this deal is likely to be concluded, but it seems logical -- and EU concerns over Russian natural gas export prices are a key remaining barrier to Russian entry into the WTO.

If Russia and the EU strike this deal, the Kerry campaign might be able to leverage Kyoto as an environmental issue against Bush this summer. Of course, high gasoline prices might mitigate this somewhat, but really hot weather and drought could make the topic quite newsworthy.

Human Security Update

I'm about to go to a conference on Human Security in the New Millennium at the University of Missouri. Note: I've been working hard to finish my paper, which partially explains the light blogging over the past few days (plus it was a beautiful weekend and I rode my new bike a couple of times).

My paper focuses on the apparent US antipathy towards human security -- and the potential implications for the "western security community." Does it matter that long-time friends and allies disagree so fundamentally about threats and solutions to those threats? How does it affect the international normative structure?

Finding: Do a google search for "human security" on the White House webpage. I got ZERO hits. For "national security," I got more than 20,000! Canada, by contrast, has all kinds of human security material on their DFAIT webpage.

A major topic at the conference is likely to be the global movement against land mines. Canada and other states interested in human security point to the Mine Ban Treaty as one of their major successes. Ken Rutherford, a genuine expert on that topic, will be there talking about the movement to ban mines.

While researching for updates on the Mine Ban treaty, I found a recent Washington Post story on the latest Bush administration policy on mines. That link is gone, but the Boston Globe had the same story. The US has now moved ever further away from the world, in some ways, but is trying to frame its position consistent with their concerns:

The new policy, to be announced today, represents a departure from the previous US goal of banning all land mines designed to kill troops. That plan, established by President Bill Clinton, set a target of 2006 for giving up antipersonnel mines, depending on the success of Pentagon efforts to develop alternatives.

Bush, however, has decided to impose no limits on the use of "smart" land mines, which have timing devices to automatically defuse the explosives within hours or days, officials said.

The US plans to use dumb bombs only in South Korea and hasn't used any in war since the first Persian Gulf war in 1991.

A senior State Department official, who disclosed Bush's decision on condition he not be named, said the new policy aims at striking a balance between the Pentagon's desire to retain effective weapons and humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties caused by unexploded bombs, which can remain hidden long after combat ends and battlefields return to peaceful use.

The safety problem stems from dumb bombs, which kill as many as 10,000 civilians a year, the official said. Smart bombs, he added, "are not contributors to this humanitarian crisis."

NGOs, who are also hot on this idea, are not happy about the Bush move:

Bush's decision drew expressions of outrage and surprise from representatives of humanitarian organizations that have pressed for a more comprehensive US ban on land mines. They say the danger to civilians and allied soldiers during and after a war outweighs the benefits of such weapons. They also dispute the contention that unexploded smart mines are safe, saying there isn't enough evidence.

"We expected we wouldn't be pleased by the president's decision, but we hadn't expected a complete rejection of what has been US policy for the past 10 years," said Steve Goose, who heads the arms division of Human Rights Watch.

"It looks like a victory for those in the Pentagon who want to cling to outmoded weapons, and a failure of political leadership on the part of the White House. And it is stunningly at odds with what's happening in the rest of the world, where governments and armies are giving up these weapons."

The US funds more de-mining activing than any other state and the Bush budget calls for a 50% increase in support for it.

Bottom line: the US explicitly rejects the international normative standard (the Mine Ban Treaty), arguing that it needs mines to protect South Korea. But, it embraces the humanitarian claim and funds lots of de-mining.

There are similar human security-related disputes over the ICC, the CTBT, even Kyoto. That's what I'm exploring in my paper.

Tragic metaphor

Imagine an art movie that includes this scene:

A woman (known to the audience as a former Miss America), driving a sports utility vehicle, accidentally collides with and kills a German bicyclist at an intersection of two city streets.

Would you think that the writer/director was a little over the top?

Well, I probably would, even though I really dislike SUVs.

Americans, as the world knows, have access to very cheap gas and drive huge gas-guzzling SUVs (even in cities and suburbs).

Germans, by contrast, pay high gas taxes on the fuel for their cars and generally do not drive SUVs.

In global terms, as I've noted before, George W. Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto process, even as Germany has taken a lead role in fighting global warming.

In any case, this past weekend, the accident I described as hypothetical actually happened in Louisville, Kentucky. Former Miss America Heather French Henry (she's married to the state's Lt. Governor) said that the sun was in her eyes and so she did not see the German biker.

I might point out that Heather French Henry is 5 feet, 6 inches tall and may have had trouble seeing while driving her huge SUV -- sun in her eyes or not. The news stories point out that the biker was not wearing a helmut and apparently was crossing the street against the light, while Henry was making a turn with a protected arrow.

Thus, no charges are going to be filed. It was simply a terrible accident.

If gas cost between $3-4 per gallon, Americans would drive many fewer SUVs and could think about committing to Kyoto. There was an interesting article last week in the Christian Science Monitor explaining how a bunch of states are moving forward on this issue without Washington.

I hope they succeed.

Kyoto politics

Today, let's talk about Kyoto. With many Americans focused on security issues since 9/11 and US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's often forgotten that the rest of the world has security priorities too.

Much of Europe, for example, worries almost as much about the threat from global warming as they do about the threat from terrorists and WMD proliferation. As the 2002 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations opinion survey (conducted with the German Marshall Fund) found, 90% of Americans consider terrorism a "critical threat," while only 65% of Europeans (from 6 countries) do. 50% of Europeans consider global warming a "critical threat," versus around 45% of Americans.

This week, Russia has been hosting a major conference on global warming. Russia is an important country to environmentalists right now because it basically has the power to make or break the Kyoto Protocol, which would require states to make real reductions in greenhouse gases (ghg) over the next 5 to 10 years.

For the treaty to go into effect, states emitting 55% of the world's emissions have to agree. The US emits about 25%, though for the purposes of this agreement the US emits 36% because developing countries are exempt from the requirements. That exemption relates to the fact that people living in affluent countries emit many, many times as much carbon dioxide as people in poor states. The average American, for example, emits nearly 20 times as much ghg as the average Chinese. Americans love SUVs and air conditioning, a couple of luxuries most Chinese do not have.

The US, of course, is not a member of the Kyoto agreement since Bill Clinton didn't send the treaty to an unwelcoming US Senate -- and the Bush administration has withdrawn the US from the negotiation process.

The EU, Japan and Canada ratified Kyoto in 2002, so the treaty now has commitments from states emitting 44%. It needs another 11% of the world's ghgs.

Russia emits 17%. Thus, Russia's embrace of Kyoto would activate the treaty. Absent Russian or US assent, the treaty cannot become international law. It's as simple as that.

The Russians, as it turns out, already easily meet Kyoto reduction requirements because they closed down a bunch of old and dirty industries at the end of the cold war.

So why don't they simply ratify now?

Well, President Putin, as was widely reported, said this week: "an increase of two or three degrees wouldn't be so bad for a northern country like Russia. We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would go up".

Delegates apparently took this as a joke because most of them view global warming very seriously. For instance, scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine "estimate that climate change may already be causing in the region of 160,000 deaths...a year." They also reported that could double by the year 2020 -- even taking into accounts improvements in health care. The main problem seems to be new disease outbreaks for malaria -- and from malnutrition.

Actually, Putin was not embracing global warming. Russia is playing hard to get because it wants to assure very high rewards for its past reductions in ghg emissions. As it stands, Russia could earn about $1 billion selling its emissions reductions to other states under the "permit trading" system agreed by the parties to the convention.

I'm guessing Putin is holding out for even more. If the EU states want this badly enough, they can either hope that green-friendly Democrats swamp the Republicans in the 2004 elections (reclaiming the Senate by a wide margin, as well as the White House)...or they can pay the Russians to join.

I'm guessing Germany, the UK, maybe Japan and some other states are already studying their balance sheets to see what they can afford to spare.