CS3 In the News
The Global Young Academy (GYA) is an international group of two hundred young (up to ten years post PhD) scientists selected based on research excellence and commitment to impact. Through GYA, members are linked to the senior international academy network IAP, meet outstanding leaders of the international science community and may be nominated to contribute to international policy statements and working groups. Appointments are for a period of four years.
Selin's research focuses on using atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-â€making strategies on air pollution, climate change and toxic substances including mercury and persistent organic pollutants. She has also published articles and book chapters on the interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations, in particular focusing on global efforts to regulate hazardous chemicals and persistent organic pollutants.
Selin, who will be formally appointed at a GYA symposium on May 21st, says she is very much looking forward to leveraging her new appointment to expand the reach of her science-policy work and educational initiatives.
By Michael Craig, Amanda Giang, Colin Thackray 

What’s the difference between climate change, the Northern spotted owl, and acid rain?
That question is not the beginning of a bad joke. Rather, it was the type of question that lay at the heart of the class ‘Science, Politics, and Environmental Policy’ offered this past fall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the first time, the class was co-taught by Professors Susan Solomon of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Judy Layzer of Urban Studies and Planning – an interdisciplinary team that drew students from diverse backgrounds across MIT’s schools and departments. Through weekly case studies, the class aimed to better understand how the United States has dealt with environmental problems and the multifaceted role of science in that process.
Each week, students focused on a different environmental issue, ranging from historical examples like the use of lead in gasoline, to currently unfolding debates, like the environmental impacts of unconventional shale gas production. Through reading, writing, and discussion, students explored how and why these issues entered the policy agenda (or didn’t), evolving policy responses, and how science fit into the picture. While fast and hard conclusions were elusive, as the class drew to a close students reflected on several themes that emerged over the course of the semester: the complexity of the policy-making process, the convoluted path that science takes from its origin to its use in policy, and the importance of storytelling for communicating science effectively.
Opening the black box of policy-making
Many of us initially saw the policy process as a black box – we could see the inputs (mainly science) and outputs (environmental policy), but did not fully grasp how one led to the other. Over the course of the semester, we came to a far better understanding of what levers exist to influence the policy-making process.
Some of those levers are litigation, direct involvement in the political process, and communication to the public. Each can influence the conversion of inputs to outputs, but vary in effectiveness under different circumstances. In part, such circumstances emerge from existing economic and political institutions, which can constrain policymaking and create path dependency. Recognizing these realities through case studies demonstrated the importance of looking at policy issues from different angles and thinking carefully about the best strategy for effecting change.
The path from science to policy
As we peeled the lid off the black box of policymaking, we also began to recognize how convoluted the path science travels from generation to use in policymaking can be. Science does not pass directly from academics to policymakers, but rather is filtered and translated by many individuals. These individuals – and even scientists themselves – have differing values, biases, and goals that can lead them to different interpretations of, and conclusions from, science. What role, if any, should scientists play along science’s path from lab to policy? Do scientists who act as advocates harm the credibility of science as a whole, and if so, does this harm outweigh the potential benefits? For scientists who act as the ‘experts’ that communicate the scientific basis of environmental issues to non-scientists, how do their biases and values shape their actions and their interpretation of science? If science is being filtered and reinterpreted, how can we ensure the veracity of information we receive that is purportedly "based on science”?
Stories matter
Over the course of the semester, the importance of storytelling also emerged as a major theme. In many of the cases we studied, public engagement was a key driver for policy action, so effectively communicating with and reaching the public is crucial. Doing so requires the ability to tell a clear story – to communicate information (scientific or otherwise) clearly, concisely, and in a way that is relevant to the audience. Focusing on what you know can help in putting forth a clear narrative, and while uncertainties are important to convey, they do not need to be the focus of communication.
There is no easy formula for developing strong environmental policies, nor are there simple rules for how science should be involved. That said, 'Science, Politics, and Environmental Policy' helped us develop a more nuanced understanding of the complex policy-making process, and gave us tools to engage in it strategically, and with self-awareness. Rarely is there an opportunity to discuss the many-layered environmental policy system with students with such diverse expertise. The confluence of ideas and points of view from the varied backgrounds of both the students and professors resulted in a unique learning experience for this collection of young environmental scholars.
Colin Thackray is a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences working with Noelle Selin. Amanda Giang and Michael Craig are graduate students in MIT's Engineering Systems Division.
Channel News Asia interviews Michael Davidson on the Business Central show. Michael Davidson is Research Assistant for the China Energy and Climate Project and a doctoral student in the Engineering Systems Division.
In many public discussions of climate change, science takes a back seat to political agendas and rhetoric. But 12.340x (Global Warming Science), a new massive open online course from MITx now open for enrollment on the edX platform, aims to change that dynamic by providing a solid scientific view of what is really happening with global warming.
“We are trying to bring back some of the intellectual excitement that belongs to the field,” says Professor Kerry Emanuel, a co-teacher of the course whose research focuses on hurricanes. “This is a serious science course.”
The MITx course will use many of the lecture materials developed for the on-campus version of the course, along with new videos and visuals. The course will also include new exercises, problem sets, and a final exam, all tailored to the assessment tools available on the edX platform and developed with an eye on preserving the rigor of the course. “You have to have a background in mathematics up through differential equations, and a background in physics,” says Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science. “Our intent is that it will be as challenging as the classroom course.”
12.340x will also bring simulations used in the MIT residential course to a wider audience, including the single-column model simulation. Emanuel describes this unique tool as “a computer climate model that takes inputs such as solar radiation and atmospheric greenhouse gas content and calculates the temperatures of the surface and atmosphere, and the moisture and cloud distributions in the atmosphere. Students can change the intensity of sunlight, the time of year, the greenhouse gas concentrations, and other inputs to see how they affect climate change.”
Emanuel expects a wide range of people to take 12.340x. “You’re going to find a lot of students in climate and energy. They will want to know the physics, chemistry, and biology (of climate change).” He also expects professionals working in energy and public policy to be interested in the course. Even a politician has expressed interest in 12.340x, but Emanuel is keeping the individual’s name confidential.
Emanuel and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences also hope to change the dynamic around the study of climate change on the MIT campus. In part because the course is not a requirement, and in part because of the perception among students that climate-change study is mostly about politics and not hard science, the on-campus course has not seen the enrollment levels Emanuel would like to see. “Part of the problem is all the publicity of global warming has sent out a message that global warming is highly politicized, and has nothing to do with science,” he says. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Sergey Paltsev, assistant director for economic research at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, presented at the 2014 Gaidar Forum entitled "Russia and the World: Sustainable Development."
The expert discussion “Green growth” and sustainable development” was dedicated to such topics as energy efficiency and renewable energy as the drivers of economic growthas economic growth drivers. Besides it focused on the perspectives of “the third industrial revolution”, which is not a new idea, however it opens the prospects for efficient energy use.
Oleg Lugovoy, Research Advisor, Center for Economic Modeling of Energy and Environment, RANEPA, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Columbia University, Hillard Huntington, Executive Director of Energy Modeling Forum, Stanford University, Emmanuel Guérin, Associate Director of Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), Frederic Vidal, President of Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, Sergey Paltsev, Assistant Director for Economic Research of MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John Laitner, Resource Economist and Independent Consultant of Economic and Human Dimensions Research Associates and Glen Peters, Senior Research Fellow of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research of Norway, took part in the discussion.
In his opening remarks, the moderator Oleg Lugovoy defined the vector of the discussion: “It’s a discussion on how to achieve high growth rates and improve life quality without causing harm to the environment.” He also noted that the problem could not be solved by the efforts of business and public organizations alone, but depends on economic regulation.
John Laitner turned the participants’ attention to the task of increasing the quality of energy efficiency giving USA as an example, where 86% of all energy is spent to no purpose. Inefficient use of energy leads to huge costs and is a factor limiting, in Russia as well, the potential for economic development. The expert underlined that the idea of the third industrial revolution which consists of combination of interactive communications and new green technologies is getting more important.
Jeffrey Sachs reminded the participants of the discussion about the idea of a prominent Russian economist Nikolai Kondratyev on periodic economic cycles (waves) linking it to the concept of a shift in technological modes. Each of them had limited resources, but never before has the scale of economic activity been so impressive and the number of population so huge (7.2 billion people). “90 trillion dollars – this is the volume of the annual economic output,” Jeffrey Sachs noted, “and this figure tends to grow progressively. So do the CO2 emissions as well. Already today 38 billion tons of СО2 are annually emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere,” the expert noted.
However, changing the energy system profoundly and substantially over 40-50 years is quite a challenge. One of the possible solutions is to switch to alternative types of fuel or renewable energy sources. Nuclear energy, if it is safe, also has a high potential. But the most important thing, according to the expert, is to reduce coal consumption, in particular, “convince China, the country which consumes this fuel in huge volumes, to do so.”
The report by Hillard Huntington marked a turn in the discussion to the subject of shale gas. The expert noted numerous uncertainties pertaining to shale gas extraction. It is still difficult to evaluate the outlook for price policy in this field unambiguously, which is caused not only by the way it is extracted, but also the volumes of gas supply.
Sergey Paltsev agreed with his colleague. He immediately dotted the i’s noting the “platitude” of shale gas: “It does not differ from the common methane, the difference lies in the method of extraction which consists in subsurface fracture.” Answering the question “whether Gazprom has overslept shale gas revolution or not”, the expert agreed with the estimation given by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev who said that “this question is quite complicated.” “Gazprom has enough gas and it can go without shale gas, given proper investment and price policy,” Mr. Paltsev summarized. He also noted that the consequences of fraction are difficult to predict. Besides, the use of huge amount of water during extraction makes its benefits ambiguous, at the same time CO2 emissions from the use of natural gas are far from zero, therefore it is impossible to say that its production can address the problem of emissions globally.
By Laura Barron-Lopez
Global warming may be contributing to the "polar vortex" causing frigid temperatures across most of the nation on Monday, according to some climate change researchers.
While it seems counter-intuitive, the research argues that plunging temperatures could come from changes in the jet stream caused by climate change.
Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer A Francis has released a number of papers about changes in the jet stream brought about by warming Arctic temperatures.
Her conclusions suggest that warming Arctic air caused by greenhouse gas emissions has caused changing to the jet stream that is pushing colder Arctic air further south, causing temperatures to plunge from the High Plains to the Deep South.
The jet stream shift has sent frigid air across the central part of the country, and deeper into the south than normal.
Alaska, meanwhile, is being hit by unusually warm conditions and California is facing record-breaking drought, Francis said.
She said the strange weather is becoming more likely because of climate change.
"We can't say that these are extremes are because of climate change but we can say that this kind of pattern is becoming more likely because of climate change," Francis said.
NASA analysis has also drawn a link between the jet stream, climate change and colder temperatures.
A 2010 NASA analysis tied colder temperatures over the course of 2009 to an event similar to the wavy jet stream, called "Arctic oscillation" — a see-sawing pressure system over the North Pole. That oscillation pushed cold air to teh south.
The NASA analysis also said that despite cold snaps, and other weather changes being a part of naturally occurring patterns, they are still in line with a "globally warming world."
According to Francis, big fluctuations in the jet stream cause extreme weather conditions to hang around longer.
She argues greenhouse gas emissions are a key factor.
"The process of warming the Arctic is intensified due to greenhouse gas emissions," Francis said. "The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere."
MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel said long-term climate change can only be seen by looking at detailed statistics.
“It's certainly plausible, at lease for awhile that a changing jet stream, may cause colder winters,” Emanuel said.
But he added that it is difficult to tie a direct link between individual events like the cold snap occurring in the Midwest and East Coast to global warming.
Emanuel added that that doesn't mean you can disregard global warming.
“If you cherry pick you can always find an excuse to go against [global warming,” Emanuel said.
Image Credit: Satellite Image Shows Entry of the Polar Vortex into the Northern U.S.
Oceans cover 97 percent of the Earth’s surface, and act as an important carbon sink. However, each part of the ocean works in different ways to take up carbon from the atmosphere and store it. Two new studies shed light on the nuances how these processes work in the Arctic Ocean and coastal zones.
The findings about the Arctic Ocean were published recently in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, worked with colleagues to figure out how decreasing sea ice in the summer is affecting the carbon cycle in that ocean basin from 1997-2006.
That period is in the middle a timeframe when the Arctic has been warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, leading to major losses in sea ice, which hit a record low in 2012. Over that time, the Arctic Ocean has become a greater repository for carbon.
That’s because more open water provides more suitable habitat for phytoplankton, or algae, to grow and suck carbon dioxide out of the air. As days get shorter, the algae dies and sinks, sequestering the carbon at the bottom of the ocean.
With summer loss of sea ice and warming in the Arctic projected to continue, phytoplankton blooms are likely to be a more common occurance across the region. However, the warming trend encouraging algae growth could also have negative consequences on another ocean mechanism that removes carbon from the atmosphere.
Sunlight not only increases plant life but it also warms the surface waters of the Arctic. Dutkiewicz’s findings show that warming could eventually reduce the Arctic Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide because cold water dissolves it better than warm water.
Of course water is warming in a relative sense in the Arctic. Sea surface temperatures in the region have risen since 1965 but are still near freezing for most of the region during the summer. However, if the trend continues it could still reduce the region’s ability to take up carbon. Dutkiewicz also said the study’s findings have applications beyond the Arctic’s borders.
“The processes we’re looking at are happening everywhere,” Dutkiewicz said. “We need to be studying it (in the Arctic) and understanding the changes. That will help us understand what will happen in 20 or 50 years in other parts of other oceans.”
The other study, a review published in Nature, found that coastal oceans are also helping store carbon. Coastals oceans account for only 7 percent of the overall area of oceans, but the new study finds they play an outsize role when it comes to carbon storage.
Coastal zones weren’t always carbon sinks. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, oceans acted as net emitters of carbon. However, in the ensuing 50-100 years, a shift occurred and these areas now take up more carbon than they emit.
The new research estimates that in pre-industrial times, coastal areas emitted about 150 million metric tons of carbon a year. Presently they take up 250 million metric tons annually. That’s about equivalent to Turkey’s carbon emissions in 2008.
“Traditionally, most thinking has been that there’s a shift in biological production in recent decades, that the ocean has become more productive,” said Wei-Jun Cai, an oceanographer at the University of Delaware and author of the report. The reason, he said, is because increased runoff from agriculture finds it way down rivers and into the coastal zone, which in turn increases plant life.
However, Cai believes there’s another mechanism at play. Measurements in the open ocean of carbon dioxide in the water and the atmosphere tend to show the two stay pretty close to equilibrium. In other words, if there’s 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a similar ratio is likely to exist in the ocean waters.
That relationship doesn’t exist in coastal areas, though. Cai recalled a trip to measure carbon dioxide in the water off the Georgia coast in 2005.
“It was very similar to what someone else measured in 1995,” he said about his measurements. “I was shocked as there was very little increase. The reason is the water doesn’t stay there for a long enough time so it doesn’t really accumulate the anthropogenic signal.”
Instead, water in coastal zones is constantly on the move thanks to the conveyor belt of ocean currents. Those currents eventually dive to the depth of the ocean, and could be storing the carbon down there according to Cai’s theory.
Both studies point to the need for better monitoring in both those regions. They offer tantalizing results that suggest revisiting our understanding of the globe’s carbon budget, but more data is needed to reinforce their results.
That data would not only inform a better understanding of the planet’s carbon budget, but also paint a clearer picture of how regions that have great economic and environmental importance are changing.
The Arctic Ocean has has long been known as a carbon sink, but a new study suggests that while the frigid waters do store large quantities of carbon, parts of the ocean also emit atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Researchers from MIT constructed a model to simulate the effect of sea ice loss in the Arctic, finding that as the region loses its ice, it is becoming more of a carbon sink, taking on about one additional megaton of carbon each year between 1996 and 2007. But while the Arctic is taking on more carbon, the researchers found, paradoxically, the regions where the water is warmest are actually able to store less carbon and are instead emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
While the Arctic region as a whole remains a large carbon sink, the realization that parts of the Arctic are carbon emitters paints a more complex picture of how the region is responding to global warming.
"People have suggested that the Arctic is having higher productivity, and therefore higher uptake of carbon," said Stephanie Dutkiewicz, an MIT research scientist. "What's nice about this study is, it says that's not the whole story. We've begun to pull apart the actual bits and pieces that are going on."
Dutkiewicz and her colleagues, including Mick Follows and Christopher Hill of MIT, Manfredi Manizza of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Dimitris Menemenlis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, published their work in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
To model the Arctic's carbon cycle, the research team developed a model that traces the flow of carbon in the Arctic, looking for conditions that led to the ocean's storage or release of carbon. To accomplish this, the team incorporated three models, which MIT detailed in a news release:
"A physical model that integrates temperature and salinity data, along with the direction of currents in a region; a sea ice model that estimates ice growth and shrinkage from year to year; and a biogeochemistry model, which simulates the flow of nutrients and carbon, given the parameters of the other two models."
The model showed the Arctic taking on an average of 58 megatons of carbon each year, with an average increase of 1 megaton each year between 1996 and 2007. One megaton is 1 million tons.
The model confirms a long held theory: as sea ice melts, more organisms grow, leading to a larger carbon sink as the organisms store carbon.
But there was the anomaly of 2005-2007 where portions of the Arctic released more carbon than they stored. These years saw significant sea ice shrinkage, yet in certain regions, more carbon was emitted than stored. The researchers accounted for the anomaly by factoring in water temperature along with the levels of sea ice loss.
"The Arctic is special in that it's certainly a place where we see changes happening faster than anywhere else," Dutkiewicz said. "Because of that, there are bigger changes in the sea ice and biology, and therefore possibly to the carbon sink."
Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
For the past three decades, as the climate has warmed, the massive plates of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean have shrunk: In 2007, scientists observed nearly 50 percent less summer ice than had been seen in 1980.
Dramatic changes in ice cover have, in turn, altered the Arctic ecosystem — particularly in summer months, when ice recedes and sunlight penetrates surface waters, spurring life to grow. Satellite images have captured large blooms of phytoplankton in Arctic regions that were once relatively unproductive. When these organisms die, a small portion of their carbon sinks to the deep ocean, creating a sink, or reservoir, of carbon.
Now researchers at MIT have found that with the loss of sea ice, the Arctic Ocean is becoming more of a carbon sink. The team modeled changes in Arctic sea ice, temperatures, currents, and flow of carbon from 1996 to 2007, and found that the amount of carbon taken up by the Arctic increased by 1 megaton each year.
But the group also observed a somewhat paradoxical effect: A few Arctic regions where waters were warmest were actually less able to store carbon. Instead, these regions — such as the Barents Sea, near Greenland — were a carbon source, emitting carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
While the Arctic Ocean as a whole remains a carbon sink, MIT principal research scientist Stephanie Dutkiewicz says places like the Barents Sea paint a more complex picture of how the Arctic is changing with global warming.
“People have suggested that the Arctic is having higher productivity, and therefore higher uptake of carbon,” Dutkiewicz says. “What’s nice about this study is, it says that’s not the whole story. We’ve begun to pull apart the actual bits and pieces that are going on.”
A paper by Dutkiewicz and co-authors Mick Follows and Christopher Hill of MIT, Manfredi Manizza of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and Dimitris Menemenlis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
The ocean’s carbon cycle
The cycling of carbon in the oceans is relatively straightforward: As organisms like phytoplankton grow in surface waters, they absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, carbon dioxide builds cell walls and other structures; when organisms die, some portion of the plankton sink as organic carbon to the deep ocean. Over time, bacteria eat away at the detritus, converting it back into carbon dioxide that, when stirred up by ocean currents, can escape into the atmosphere.
The MIT group developed a model to trace the flow of carbon in the Arctic, looking at conditions in which carbon was either stored or released from the ocean. To do this, the researchers combined three models: a physical model that integrates temperature and salinity data, along with the direction of currents in a region; a sea ice model that estimates ice growth and shrinkage from year to year; and a biogeochemistry model, which simulates the flow of nutrients and carbon, given the parameters of the other two models.
The researchers modeled the changing Arctic between 1996 and 2007 and found that the ocean stored, on average, about 58 megatons of carbon each year — a figure that increased by an average of 1 megaton annually over this time period.
These numbers, Dutkiewicz says, are not surprising, as the Arctic has long been known to be a carbon sink. The group’s results confirm a widely held theory: With less sea ice, more organisms grow, eventually creating a bigger carbon sink.
A new counterbalance
However, one finding from the group muddies this seemingly linear relationship. Manizza found a discrepancy between 2005 and 2007, the most severe periods of sea ice shrinkage. While the Arctic lost more ice cover in 2007 than in 2005, less carbon was taken up by the ocean in 2007 — an unexpected finding, in light of the theory that less sea ice leads to more carbon stored.
Manizza traced the discrepancy to the Greenland and Barents seas, regions of the Arctic Ocean that take in warmer waters from the Atlantic. (In warmer environments, carbon is less soluble in seawater.) Manizza observed this scenario in the Barents Sea in 2007, when warmer temperatures caused more carbon dioxide to be released than stored.
The results point to a subtle balance: An ocean’s carbon flow depends on both water temperature and biological activity. In warmer waters, carbon is more likely to be expelled into the atmosphere; in waters with more biological growth — for example, due to less sea ice — carbon is more likely to be stored in ocean organisms.
In short, while the Arctic Ocean as a whole seems to be storing more carbon than in previous years, the increase in the carbon sink may not be as large as scientists had previously thought.
“The Arctic is special in that it’s certainly a place where we see changes happening faster than anywhere else,” Dutkiewicz says. “Because of that, there are bigger changes in the sea ice and biology, and therefore possibly to the carbon sink.”
Manizza adds that while the remoteness of the Arctic makes it difficult for scientists to obtain accurate measurements, more data from this region “can both inform us about the change 
in the polar area and make our models highly reliable
for policymaking decisions.”
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Update 7:30pm, Saturday, November 23
Decisions have been adopted on the three major elements of COP19: Durban Platform, Loss and Damage, and institutional mechanisms for finance.
Update 4:11pm, Saturday, November 23
The decision of the Durban Platform was adopted and the plenary to finalize other COP decisions on finance and loss and damage will commence soon.
Two weeks at the UN climate negotiations in Warsaw (COP19) have passed, and talks continued well into Saturday. As I wrote earlier this week, this conference was an important step on the way to Paris in 2015, when an international treaty for action on climate change post-2020 will be sought. Much reporting has focused on the acrimony between developed and developing countries, largely based on outstanding issues of development assistance and compensation for climate damages that were held by some as preconditions for success. Into the late hours, unmet expectations from some developing countries pushed discussion on the prospective structure and timeline for the 2015 agreement into Saturday afternoon.
More...
We are heading into the second week of UN climate negotiations in Warsaw (refered to as COP 19), where 194 countries are busy laying the groundwork for an international treaty hopefully to be concluded by 2015. Created under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), this would be a first-of-its-kind agreement to guide global action from 2020. A casual observer may recall similar rhetoric leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit that produced a three-page “accord” rather than the permanent treaty solution as promised. However, in Warsaw, several issues are on the table (and several others, crucially, off) that demonstrate the hardiness and progressive (though often glacial) march of multi-lateral environmental governance.
Detractors of the UN climate regime will question the effectiveness of a 20+ year process that functions (or not) on the consensus between 194 members who range from climate problems to climate victims. After all, the only legally-binding outcome to date – the Kyoto Protocol – did little to slow down emissions over its first commitment period (2008-2012) and even fewer have signed up for targets in the next period. Last week, Japan scaled back its 2020 targets, following on the heels of the Australian coalition government's announcement of intention to repeal their carbon tax, drawing the ire of virtually everyone.
At the same time, scholars have noted that outside the UNFCCC process there have been countless bi-lateral and multi-lateral initiatives such as between the US and China and the G20, and a proliferation of platforms collecting commitments from states/provinces, cities and corporations. These actors are arguably more important than many nation-states in terms of mitigation potential, yet do not have a seat at the table. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a climate summit for world leaders next year to push for greater commitments. Businesses, cities and others are expressly invited.
Nevertheless, I argue that one should watch carefully this treaty process, because despite the outward lack of progress, the UNFCCC will still help stimulate both pre-2020 and post-2020 actions on climate change. Further, it has significant implications for how the global community chooses to address other environmental issues and cross-cutting challenges such as poverty eradication.
First, the UN has exercised its convening power to leverage commitments from all major emitters, and can do this again. High expectations in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 led the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) to depart from tradition and announce significant 2020 targets. They were not obligated to do so by the Convention, which created a “firewall” between industrialized and developing countries, only the former having the requirement to mitigate. Despite the failure to achieve consensus at Copenhagen these commitments stuck, and were enshrined in the official outcome the following year. The US, not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, joined in committing to reductions.
Second, the legitimacy of the UNFCCC as the only forum dedicated to climate with official blessing from every country cannot be understated. Addressing climate change, whose costs are concentrated in a handful of industries in every country but whose benefits are diffuse and highly variable, is a classic free-rider problem, whereby one non-cooperative party enjoys the positive externalities of others’ sacrifices. A common front means greater international pressure on parties to fulfill their commitments.
Third, the UNFCCC has historically been a precedent-setting institution. Market mechanisms such as carbon offset trading were enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol, and as a result they have become a favored policy approach for domestic programs around the world. In the last several years, worries of feasibility of getting consensus have been pushing the talks toward a pledge-based system (perhaps like an iterative offer-and-review process), in lieu of the Kyoto-style top-down allocations of rights to the atmosphere. This had a defining influence on the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 and will likely only increase in influence.
At the center of the negotiations has been a moral and legal debate surrounding equity: how to balance historical responsibility against current and future emissions limits. Given limited resources, in order to achieve the goal of the convention of preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” there will be inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and equity. The repercussions of this decision could easily become the basis for approaches to other multi-lateral issues and, more broadly, alter the structure of development assistance aid.
So, where do the Warsaw negotiations stand? The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, the track responsible for crafting the treaty language and strengthening ambition, has released a draft decision text. It is the result of a week of tense negotiation that went late into the weekend, and is surprisingly concise. It acknowledges the tectonic shift mentioned above toward a diversity of actors and commitments and lays out basic elements of a treaty (though these will need to be filled out as the week progresses).
The state-run Chinese press have been explicit that long-term finance is the key to success at Warsaw (see, e.g., here and here). One of the commitments brought to Copenhagen was a pledge from industrialized countries to mobilize $100 billion / year by 2020 in aid to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. China wants more details on how that number is going to be achieved, including setting intermediate targets. This is particularly vexing issue since parties can’t agree on how much aid has already been distributed to meet a 2012 deadline (one analysis says the $30 billion target was reached, while developing countries claim it is mostly existing aid repurposed).
Following the disastrous Typhoon Bopha last year in the Philippines, countries and civil society rallied around a compensation scheme for “loss and damage” resulting from climate change. Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the same island chain just as the negotiations opened this year. Yeb Sano, lead negotiator for the Philippines, electrified the venue with his demand for an institutional fix (including a now worldwide fasting event and a 500k+ Avaaz petition), possibly raising the stakes for success at the conference.
Much work still remains to convince developing countries that the evolving approaches within the UN (“offer-and-review”, voluntary commitments from subnational actors, and the gradual eroding of the 1992 “firewall” between developed and developing countries) are in their best interests. Success at Warsaw will likely hinge on industrialized countries delivering on promises of finance, while generating trust with other parties that more ambitious pledges on mitigation will follow.
Watch video from the conference here: www.climatecolab.org/conference2013/virtually
As international climate negotiators meet this month for the 19th meeting of the UN Conference of Parties (COP19), there’s an increasing realization that top-down efforts to confront climate change aren’t working—or at least, they’re not working quickly enough. Are there ways that large groups of people—even a global community—could work together to take action now? That was the focus of an MIT climate conference last week, entitled “Crowds and Climate.”
“We know how to make real progress on climate change, what we must create is the political will to achieve it. Creating that will requires all of us to engage. It can’t be a top-down process,” said Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, the Wednesday keynote speaker at the event. “The arch of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but the line on the graph of global emissions won’t bend until we make it do so.”
To help bend that line downward and develop creative innovative ideas to take action on climate change, the conference explored the role new technology-enabled approaches—such as crowdsourcing, social media and big data—could play. It was sponsored by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence’s Climate CoLab, and co-sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and MIT Sloan Sustainability.
The conference underscored the aim of the Climate CoLab itself, which looks to shift public engagement on climate change from one of just science or ideology to a much broader and more inclusive participation. It does so by crowdsourcing, through contests, citizen-generated ideas on a range of topics relevant to climate change. The community has been doubling or tripling with each annual contest, and there are now more than 10,500 registered members. The community’s rapid growth shows that there are many smart and creative people around the globe ready to engage in these issues.
“By bringing together experts, policy makers, business people, and many others, we hope the Climate CoLab can help plan—and gain support for—better climate actions than anything we humans would otherwise have done,” said the Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and Principal Investigator for the Climate CoLab, Prof. Thomas Malone. “Even if we don’t achieve this, engaging crowds in the process will likely increase support for and awareness of the solutions.”
In addition to honoring the 28 winners of this year’s contests, and awarding a Grand Prize winner, the conference gathered a large group of smart and creative people to discuss these issues. The two-day event attracted more than 800 in-person and online attendees.
Organizing Crowds
Using a bottom-up approach to confront climate change first requires building a base, according to Marshall Ganz, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard University. “What drives movements is not branding, but relationships; …building constituencies at the base,” he said.
To build a base, the crowd needs to be able to relate, said Andrew Hoffman, Holcim (U.S.) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. “As long as it’s this idea in the ivory tower presented by a scientist using a language people don’t understand, they will still question whether they believe that theory or not,” Hoffman said.
Instead, climate change should be tied to things that resonate with people, for example, the rising cost of insurance, “Talk about the ski season to skiers, or about habitat changes to hunters,” said Kate Gordon, Vice President at Next Generation.
Inserting unexpected validators also helps. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina and the founder of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University, pointed out that business people can act as good validators, “When smart money starts moving that way, that has a real educational impact on people.”
Ganz and Hoffman both noted that outside factors—such as events—can shift the conversation toward a desired social change. Hoffman used Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy as examples.
“Sandy created a fundamental change in how we think about climate change, Katrina did not,” Hoffman said. “Katrina hit a minority population that was fundamentally disconnected and had no spokespeople. Sandy hit an affluent population that was politically connected and had Michael Bloomberg.”
Sergej Mahnovski, the director of New York City’s Long Term Planning and Sustainability, backed up this idea that one event can spur change. He noted that New York City’s sustainability planning was going slowly until Sandy hit and brought a sense of urgency amongst the people of New York, and thus, their leaders.
While it may take time to create a crowd, David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society, points out that there is a precedence of social movements creating environmental change. The first Earth Day was one of the largest grassroots demonstrations in the nation’s history, and it was followed by the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act.
“There is a precedence in the U.S. in terms of environmental and conservation action that demonstrate that when the American people decide that something is a priority, they’ll actually do it,” Yarnold said.
Tools for Change
In the age of Twitter and iPads, technological advances can be used to help create a community and expand their impact. This is as true in the context of climate change as it is in almost any global challenge today.
“In the past, changes had figureheads,” said Practically Green CEO Susan Hunt Stevens. “With Arab Spring, there were some players, but social media ended up being the figurehead… it can be used to bring visibility to the change and connect people.”
Other nontraditional forms of media have aided the climate cause as well.
Pace University Senior Fellow and New York Times Dot Earth Blogger Andrew Revkin gave many examples – including a high school science teacher who posts simple explanatory videos on YouTube for all to watch.
“Just building the capacity for the exchange of ideas across boundaries is really important and I think it can lead to some surprising results,” Revkin said.
Crowds can also help compile big data and turn it into useful information, said Bina Venkataraman, President Obama’s senior advisor on climate change innovation. In addition, she noted crowds play an important role in validating what data is useful and what is not.
But while crowds can validate data, we also need ways to validate crowds, according to MIT Sloan School of Management Professor John Sterman. “If you just have the crowd and you don’t have the ability to test the ideas, nothing’s going to work… learning’s much slower.”
Sterman directs Climate Interactive, an organization that has created a simple climate model that anyone can run on their laptops. He has embedded his model into the Climate CoLab contest so that the crowds’ ideas can be tested instantly using the models to see which ideas work best.
“Our goal is to test whether that actually amplifies the rate at which we can come up with excellent solutions,” Sterman said. “So you have this combination of the talents and wisdom of the crowds with the testing platform that’s enabled by the simulation models that you can run instantly.”
Sterman concluded that the Climate CoLab’s work, and conferences like this one, is needed to further the climate debate and help bring about solutions.
“Climate science needs to continue. But it’s not the bottleneck to progress,” Sterman said. “We need more research, and I think the Climate CoLab enables this research on… how that turns a crowd into a movement and into organizations that can make a difference.”
Anyone from around the world is invited to submit ideas to the Climate CoLab, which is now receiving proposals. Keeping with the crowdsourcing orientation, community members are invited to suggest contests they think can make a difference at http://climatecolab.org.
Watch video from the conference here: www.climatecolab.org/conference2013/virtually