The final coverage of Obama's climate change plan covers his approach to climate change in an international standing. After Bush and the republican era, Obama provides a refreshing change as a President openly accepting the problem of climate change and this is showing on the international front.
Obama as effectively the most powerful man on the planet is keen to lead international efforts in combating climate change. Some of the progress Obama has made is summarised in the following bullet points...
Obama has put forward an initiative in the attempt to stop the financing of new coal fired power plants overseas (except in exceptional circumstances). Following the world leader, other countries including the UK have also signed this initiative.
As previously blogged about Obama is working with other major carbon emitting countries such as China and India to attempt to team up and combat the issue starting with changes in vehicle emissions and clean energy.
The USA leads the Climate and Clean Air coalition that now includes 39 countries - it is working to introduce policy in a ten step program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The US, UK and Norway have joined together to support forests in developing countries with the aim of supporting sustainable agriculture and reducing emissions from deforestation.
The plan to reduce tariffs on a variety of products protected under the World Trade Organisation was proposed in 2014 by a group of countries representative of 86% of environmental goods in global trade - America was a large part of this.
2015 is set to bring a new climate agreement and we can hope Obama plays in integral role in this
Thus concludes the points that the Whitehouse have highlighted on their blog as major changes, only time will tell how many of these initiatives and decisions will be successful. It's the attitudes of the american people that need to change. The one in four americans that still don't believe global warming is because of human influence needs to be changed and hopefully the support from the president that the issue has will help this. (Gallup, 2014) It's a start at least, Obama is pushing for change and the environment does seem to be something he cares about - which is promising for the future!
In part of the plan to tackle climate change, Obama has rightfully noted that some change is irreversible and therefore as part of his strategy has prepared for the impacts of climate change. His plan as featured on The White House website is seven-fold.
1. Assess the Impacts of Climate Change
Firstly before action is made it is crucial to assess where efforts should be put in place by successfully being able to assess the impacts of climate change. The US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) have a legal obligation to carry out a National Climate Assessment (NCA) every four years, the most recent of these was carried out in May 2014. A team of 300 experts under the guidance of a 60 member Federal Advisory Committee worked together to create the report. The following bullet points provide an overview of some of the key changes in each of the twelve sections...
Changing climate: sea ice is melting faster than climate models have predicted, US average temperature has increased by 1.3F to 1.9F in just over a century but the majority of this increase has been from 1970, increased green period of plants
Extreme Weather: number of heat waves is increasing each year, most recent heatwaves in Texas (2011) and Midwest (2012) set records for highest average monthly temperatures, heaviest rainfalls on record are becoming heavier and more frequent, increasing flooding as a result, substantial increases have been seen in the majority of hurricane activity measures since 1980s, winter storms have also increased in frequency and intensity
Future Climate: sea levels predicted to rise by 1 to 4 feet by 2100, increases in temperature, precipitation and changes in consecutive dry days
Widespread Impacts: impacts severe when multiple systems fail for example Hurricane Katrina and it's devastating impacts on New Orleans or the loss of electrical power during heat waves, coral reef collapse due to effects of ocean acidification and rising temperatures
Human Health: respiratory stress from poorer air quality, extreme weather leading to fatalities, heat stress, reemergence of diseases uncommon in america such a dengue fever
Infrastructure: compromised by extreme weather and rising sea levels, an example was NYC's subway system saw the worst damage in 108 years from the Superstorm Sandy, extreme weather disruptions on transportation projected to increase, net electricity use projected to increase as hotter summers will increase electricity use
NYC Subway Source: NCA, 2014
Water Supply: heavy precipitation events projected to increase, droughts projected to intensify, increased risk of flooding in many parts of the US
Agriculture: climate disruptions are expected to increase over the next 25 years as they have done for the past 40 years, declines in crop and livestock production due to stress from weeds, diseases and pests, heat and drought damage will have increasing negative implications of crops
Indigenous Peoples: impacts of climate change threaten Native peoples lifestyles including their access to crops and traditional foods that serve more than for sustenance (medical, economical uses etc)
Ecosystems and Biodiversity: timing of biological events changing for example bud burst, increased species extinction risk, emission of CO2 continues to exceed ecosystem sink uptake by up to three times
Oceans: rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification severely altering marine ecosystems, increasing disease in marine life and humans due to rising sea temperatures
Responses: adaption needs to be specific for each case, vulnerability to climate change is affected by factors such as pollution and poverty (NCA, 2014)
The full report is very long winded and the most detailed report of it's kind and can be found here if you wish to take a more in depth look than the whirlwind summary above.
2. Support Climate-Resilient Investments
Obama's goals here include the establishment of a task force to advise the federal government on action that needs to be taken on a local scale to prepare for climate change, this helps specify changes on a local scale and will make investments into climate change protections more effective. The executive order for this task force was signed by Obama in November, 2013. The members of the task force include governors, county officials and tribal leaders from across the US. the recommendations that the task force have provided include the modernisation of current programs and removal of barriers to community resilience. (CEQ, 2014)
Hurricane Sandy struck the US in 2012 with winds reaching 74mph and caused $62 billion worth of damage in the US and a further $315 million worth of damage in the Caribbean. At it's peak 7.5 million people were without power. (DoSomething, 2012) In the affected areas, pilot schemes funded by the government were put in place in order to strengthen communities against the effects of future extreme weather. As of August last year the aforementioned task team submitted a rebuilding strategy that is being used as a model for communities across the United States.
4. Launch an Effort to Create Sustainable and Resilient Hospitals
5. Maintain Agricultural Productivity
6. Provide Tools for Climate Resilience
In 2014 the White House released a new Climate Data Initiative, allowing access to local data relating to coastal flooding, ecosystem vulnerability and the like. The aim was to bring together government data and make it accessible and to create resilience tools for the communities.
7. Reduce Risk of Droughts and Wildfires
One of Obama's aims is to create a greater deal of help and support for communities having to adapt to drier conditions. Current progress includes the launch of the Nation Drought Resilience Partnership - which aims to provide a greater wealth of web-based information to help communities be more aware of their current conditions and to host more frequent regional drought outlook forums.
That concludes the 7 main points of Obama's master plan on preparing for climate change - good job Obama!
We'll start with looking at power plants. The first proposal the EPA put through in 2012 to change the performance standards for new source emissions of carbon dioxide was withdrawn a year later thanks to the power of the people. Over 2.5 million comments were made on the proposal and ultimately were the reason the proposal had to be withdrawn. The proposal was withdrawn to accommodate for the changes suggested amongst the multitude of comments, in addition to the EPA receiving new information that made them reconsider and alter their original proposal themselves.
The new proposal for change was submitted in September, 2014. It proposed new standards of performance for both "fossil-fuel fired electric utility stream generation units" and "integrated gasification combined cycle units" the latter burn coal and petroleum coke in addition to other fossil fuels. The changing standards of performance will be due to the partial implementation of carbon capture and storage, these have been regarded as the best method of reducing emissions. The action also implements "natural gas combined cycle technology" for improved standards of gas-fired stationary combustion turbines. (EPA, 2014)
Yeah, that was quite a lot of long words for me as well and as a non-geographer i'm just going to pull out some key terms and explain them for myself and you. From what I gather from the 2014 proposal, emissions of CO2 will be reduced using two main systems...
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
This is a technique that can capture up to 90% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. CCS captures CO2 from the power generartion stations and other sources such as steel manufacture, cement manufacture and other industrial activities. The CO2 can be captured in three phases; post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxyfuel combustion. It then compresses the gas and transports it either by pipeline or ships to be stored underground safely and permanently- it is usually stored in depleted oil and gas fields or in deep saline fomations. This reduces CO2 emissions at it physcially stops the CO2 from being released into the atmosphere, thus reducing the greenhouse effect should the CO2 have been released. (CCSA, 2014)
and
Natural Gas Combined Cycle Technology
Natural gas as a fossil fuel has a lower carbon content than oil, as a result simply by switching to the use of natural gas from oil (even though this is not ideal as it still involves fossil fuels) this can result in up to a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions per kWh. (ClimateTechWiki, 2014) The best explanation for a natural gas combined cycle technology can be explained in this video...
But should you not have time to watch that there is a breif definition below:
"NGCC is an advanced power generation technology which allows to improve the fuel efficiency of natural gas. Most new gas power plants in North America and Europe are of this type. A gas turbine generator generates electricity and the waste heat is used to make steam to generate additional electricity via a steam turbine" - GreenFacts, 2014
In addition to changes to power plants Obama has also made a big push for "Clean Energy" (renewable energy). During the first term that Obama was in office the power generation from wind and solar energy was doubled. One of the major pushes Obama made towards clean energy was of the utility-scale renewable energy projects and as of this year, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the permitting of the 50th project to be launched in California.
“When President Obama first took office in 2009, there were no solar projects
approved on public lands, and no process in place to move forward the hundreds
of applications pending from businesses that wanted to harness renewable energy
to help power our nation, with
today’s milestone of 50 utility-scale renewable energy projects approved on
public lands since our standing start in 2009, and with a number of those
already producing energy for the nation’s electric grid, our clean energy future
is bright.” - Sally Jewel, Secritary of DOI
In addition to the Clean Energy push and the changes made to power plants there are several other notable aspects of Obama's Carbon Emission Reduction Plan, I'll summarise these breifly below as I'm aware this post is getting dangerously long!
Februaury 2014: Obama directs the EPA and Department Of Transport (DOT) to develop and issue the next segment of the "heavy-duty vehicle fuel efficiency" and greenhouse gas standards. This focused on geeting more miles per gallon from every tank of gas and thus improving fuel efficiency. This should be developed by March 2016. The project aims to set the strictest and toughest fuel regulation standards yet. (Utech, 2014)
Obama does not just focus on reducing CO2 emissions, since taking office methane emissions have been reduced by 11%. In 2014 there was a report released furthur detailing the need for reductions in methane emissions and how to do so (this included the DOT's plans and the Department of Energy issuing energy conservation standards for appliances and eqiupment) (Utech, 2014)
Weirdly, the White House website for Climate Change, which has tended to be full of snippets of information with links to reports backing it up, but includes this...
"Emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — which are potent greehouse gases — are expected to double by 2020 and nearly triple by 2030 in the U.S."
... without any following information or plans to stop or reduce this, very strange?!
Overall I hope this post has been useful at providing an insight into Obama's current strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, next time we will look at Obama's plan when it comes to preparing for the climate change that's currently underway.
Over the next few post's we will be looking at the environmental policy in the USA as it currently stands and to do this we will need to look to this guy...
Barack is the 44th president of the United States of America and as was most notable about his election, he was the first African-American to hold office. To firstly assess Obama's attitude to the environment, we will be taking a quick look the White House homepage more specifically theclimate change section. This will help first establish the message The White House are putting out about climate change and we will delve into some of the finer details through the assessment of official reports from the Environmental Protection Agency on the issue.
The webpage is divided into five key sections. The first explaining why action is necessary, for example rising temperatures, increases in extreme weather conditions and increased spending on damage as a result. The second is about carbon pollution specifically, and starts with the heading "We're still contributing to the problem.." (I feel like the website would do well here to mention how much they're still contributing to the problem, but oh well!) and includes some nice graphs about CO2 concentrations rising. The next three sections will be be discussed as the feature of the next three blog posts, as they are
-Barack's plan to cut carbon concentrations
-Barack's plan for the impacts of climate change
and finally
-Barack's International Plan
So enjoy as we step forward into the master plan of Obama and away from the climate change oppression movement from Bush.
A quick quote of the day from Obama:
"Someday, our children, and our children's children, will look at us in the eye and they'll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them in a cleaner, safe, more stable world?"Barack Obama, 2013
In terms of cost, the average annual amount spent following the impacts of natural disasters have been as follows...
1950s: $4B per year
1970s: $13B per year
1990s: $65B per year
... and these costs have been mainly attributed to weather-related hazards. (McBean, 2004) Most of the time the weather doesn't try and kill us. Global warming? Hey, we're having a few warmer summers over in England and that's great! But sometimes the weather can kill us and these are the events of which this blog post is about. We're talking about extreme, high impact weather - hurricanes, tornadoes and the other forms that manifest as droughts, floods, snow slides and the like! Back to the rising cost, McBean (2004) identifies three main reasons for the increasing cost...
Social and demographic characteristics - increasing population, increased exposure to hazards
Changes to built and commercial environment - ageing infrastructure and commercial activities becoming more independent and vulnerable
The IPCC (2001) report notably identified the irrefutable increase in CO2 and methane gases but for the sake of this blog post we can skim over that and focus on what it said about extreme weather conditions. It agrees with McBean (2004) and does attribute increases in 'historical disaster losses' to socioeconomic factors in addition to climatic changes and states that "Many of the observed upward trends in weather-related losses are consistent with what would be expected under human-induced climate change". Thus attributing the increases in extreme weather events to climate change in the report.
McBean 2004 - Original Table taken from IPCC (2001a)
The above table originally taken from the 2001 IPCC report shows estimates for increases in extreme weather, it shows a summary of predictions based on modelling and statistics. The predictions show that an increase in cyclones and drought are likely (90-99%) to increase over the coming century and more intense precipitation events are likely (66-90%) to increase. The prediction clearly shows change in these events is predicted to happen with the projected. Several severe weather conditions are not included in the table such as tornadoes or hail, simply because these are not resolved in climate models.
As a general prediction the future climate can be said to be warmer and contain more moisture. This tends to be of most concern in mid-latitude's (US) as these wetter and warmer conditions tend to be more energetic - tornadoes and thunderstorms are much more likely to occur on these warmer and wetter days. Rising sea-levels increase the likely hood of damage to coastal areas through storm surges and the additional melting of sea ice will leave more exposed water for moisture and heat sources in storm generation. (McBean, 2004)
It's not always the frequency of these events that are changing. To take the example of cyclones, Zwiers (2002) used modelling to predict cyclone frequency between two separate time periods - 1900-1910 and 2091-2100. He found that between the first time interval and the predicted second time interval the number of cyclones decreased by around 10%. However the severity of the cyclones did increase; the number of severe cyclones per year increased from 11 to 15 over the same time gap. (Zwiers, 2002)
The McBean (2004) paper concludes with strategies to deal with this information regarding investments into preventative strategies and calculating the cost of investment against the cost of damage that would be caused if things were just left how they are. The increased cases of severe weather events does pose a threat to society and it is important we try to limit the changes in climate so we limit the chances of being killed by the weather!
I have learnt that, beyond death and taxes, there is at least one absolutely indisputable fact: Not only does human-caused global warming exist, but it is also growing more and more dangerous, and at a pace that has now made it a planetary emergency. -Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Al Gore in 'An Inconvenient Truth' talks about the two vows he has made to himself, the first was to always put his family first and the second was to ensure he put trying to tackle climate change and the top of his professional career. What alarmed Gore throughout his professional career in politics was the resistance to the changes he was trying to put in place with regards to the environment - a resistance he feels was strengthened with the take over in 1994 of the Republican party. As an environmental activist Gore had to watch George W. Bush reverse a pledge to reduce CO2 emissions that had helped him win office, in his very first week of presidency. Then further watch as he weakened existing laws and regulations with regards to emissions. (Gore, 2006)
The relatability of 'An Inconvenient Truth' is what makes it so genius, in my opinion. As research for this blog and to understand more what Al Gore was about I got the book out of the library. Expecting it to be a serious of research papers as is usual for university reading nowadays I was more than excited to find a book of large text, quotes and pictures! This is exactly the kind of book people need to understand the severity of the problem of climate change. Al Gore is able to use simple understandable anecdotes to explain the problem, for example...
"My friend, the late Carl Sagan, used to say, "If you had a globe covered with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish would be about the same as the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere compared to the Earth itself"." (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006)
...A simple image created for the reader about the fragility and the instability of the atmosphere. The images used in 'An Inconvenient Truth' are carefully chosen and vivid and bold, the use of graphs and charts are colourful and simple and clear. You don't have to be a scientist to understand this book, you don't even really need to read it. (obviously you do, but what I mean is a child could flick through it's pages and see some of the pictures, especially the comparison pictures of areas and hopefully it'll trigger their questions and inquisitive minds).
If you ever get the chance in a book shop or a library to flick through it's pages I advise you to have a look, Gore has spot on hit his target audience - the average American - in an attempt to educate anybody about climate change and has done an excellent job. This isn't just my opinion either, the book topped the New York Times best seller list.
Box Office Success
'An Inconvenient Truth' was turned into a Academy Award winning documentary with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 93%. (Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire got 88% and Frozen only got 89% as reference points). As with any form of success there is always criticism from somewhere and this came in thick and fast for 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Gore was accused of using the film to generate attention for a suspected upcoming presidential run against Bush, obviously this was quashed when Gore did not run for presidency again. The genuine commitment of Gore to the education of his public to the problems of climate change through the endeavors of 'An Inconvenient Truth' helped him win a Nobel Peace prize in 2007. (Besel, 2011)
Occupation: Politician – 45th Vice President of
the United States, serving under President Bill Clinton
Interests & Hobbies: The Environment – Gore is an
extremely influential environmental activist and author, his most popular
publication is “An Inconvenient Truth” (to be discussed in a future post). He has
set up a several organisations for climate change including the Alliance for Climate Protection. In addition to several other ventures, including roles
within Apple and Google, Gore plays the role as head of the Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byres climate change solutions group.
Awards: Nobel Peace Prize – this was awarded to Gore based
on his work in activism for climate change
Environmentalism
For the purpose of this blog post we will only be looking briefly
at the work of Gore in Environmentalism in Politics. It can be seen that Gore was
one of the first politicians to really appreciate the severity of climate
change and sought to change things big time for the US. As a Senator, he over
ran a three day long conference with 42 nations to create a “Global Marshall
Plan” to see the continued development of developing nations while focusing on
protecting the environment in the process. (Shabecoff, 1993) As Vice President,
Gore was able to up his game. He launched the first world Earth Day in 1994 and
was the leading American politician to push for the Kyoto Protocol in the
1990s.
Since the end of his time at the senate, Gore has focused on
several projects, including the following…
·Generation Investment Management – Chairman of
the company that works to set up environmentally friendly portfolios
·We Can Solve It – a company dedicated to the
publication and increasing awareness of climate change through the internet and
petitions for the national press to put more focus on environmental issues
·Lectures and Conferences – where Gore himself
has gone to speak publically about the importance of climate change
·The open encouragement of civil disobedience to
stop coal plants being built
·The Climate Reality Project – Gore joined
together his two main climate change endeavours (The Alliance for Climate
Change Protection and The Climate Project) to form this project in 2011.
It’s rewarding to see an American politician so dedicated to
the environment and maybe the world would be in a bit of a better state should
the whole of the Senate follow Al Gore’s lead. Over the next few posts I will
be exploring some of the publications and work of Al Gore in more detail but
hope this provided a nice introduction to the man himself!
