A new day but not a new dawn

They talked hard into the night but the US could only get a framework for agreement with China and the other big polluters. We don’t know yet who was pushing for more but if president Obama’s public remarks are anything to go by it appears he was ready to take the United States into uncharted territory in order to get a meaningful agreement.

Sir David King, the climate guru, has just said it is as good as we could have hoped for. He argues that the momentum is up and that the EU, US and other ‘progressive states’ should focus on shifting the positions of India and China who appear to have been the major obstacles to agreement.

There are some powers in the compromise on the table according to reports but it is well short of where we should be. 

The five-nation deal promises to deliver $30bn (£18.5bn) of aid for developing nations over the next three years, and outlined a goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

President Obama said the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa had “agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2C and, importantly, to take action to meet this objective”.

There is an excellent rolling blog by Richard Black on the BBC website tracking the twists and turns through the night.  However top blogger by unanimous verdict goes to AFP’s Stephen Collison who has captured the emotion and events with wit.

Chaos and farce reigned at the birth of a climate accord agreed by a clique of leaders, with statesmen going missing, critics crying foul and hacks stampeding on vain hunts for Barack Obama.

Fatigue fermented a feverish cocktail of human emotion overnight Friday as the US president claimed to have staved off a default in the dying hours of global warming talks in Copenhagen.

But small nations like Cuba and Nicaragua erupted in fury at being snubbed in a game of big power diplomatic chess also involving developing giants Brazil, China and India.

Claiming a “meaningful” deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Obama fired up carbon-belching Air Force One and raced back from the global warming summit to outrun a storm ironically tipped to dump a foot of snow on Washington.Related article: Environmental groups denounce ‘abject failure’

It was a stunning turnaround, as earlier, as the summit went into extra time, the whole project was on the verge of collapse, US officials said.

Crunch time at Copenhagen

Its crunch time at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen. 

The BBC reports that US President Barack Obama has warned world leaders that time is running out to strike a deal at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

President Obama told delegates that the international community’s ability to take collective action was in doubt.

But neither the US, the EU or China offered anything new as fears grew that a deal may be slipping away.

The UN has now asked world leaders to plan for staying overnight in Copenhagen because of the deadlock.

Friday was scheduled to be the last day of the conference, but a draft political agreement drawn up by a small group of countries was rejected during overnight discussions.

And the EU did not raise its offer on cutting emissions from 20% to 30%, as some observers had anticipated.

Addressing the summit on Friday, President Obama said: “While the science of climate change is not in doubt, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now, and it hangs in the balance.”

‘Tear down the Wall and tackle climate change..’ Gorbi the eco-warrior

It is twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell.

There will be a big formal commemoration in the German Capital later. Today, writing in the London Times, Mikhail Gorbachev, reminds us all that the road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s the world was at an historic crossroad. The arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrents could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster, spending billions on an arms race, rather than investing in creativity and people.

He then goes on to make the following call:

Today another planetary threat has emerged. The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and today’s leaders are vastly underestimating the urgency, and potentially catastrophic scale, of the emergency….

….Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very future existence that no one nation can deal with alone. And, again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, world citizens are today demanding that action is taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it. Twenty years ago key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders will do the same.

Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War. But we need a “circuit-breaker” to escape from the business-as-usual that currently dominates the political agenda. It was the transformation brought about by perestroika and glasnost that provided the quantum leap for freedom for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and opened the way for the democratic revolution that saved history. Climate change is complex and closely entwined with a host of other challenges, but a similar breakthrough in our values and priorities is needed.

Time for 20mph zones?

Ask anyone living in an urban area and they will be worried about traffic speeding through residential areas.

Speed bumps, chicanes and cameras have all been deployed to keep motorists at 30mph in built up areas yet the simple fact is that you still stand a one in five chance of being killed if  hit by a vehicles travelling 30mph.  Drop the speed of impact to 20mph and the chances of surviving skyrocket (only one in forty chance of being killed).

A couple of years ago Bereaved families in the North launched a campaign for Northern Ireland drivers to slow down.

Gareth Ellesmere was just 13 when he was knocked down and killed by a bus while crossing a road in Newtownards, County Down, in February. Lauren Finlay was killed aged 15 by a lorry while trying to cross a dual carriageway near her home after a school trip in 2005. Today, Gareth and Lauren’s families are attending the Belfast launch of National Road Safety Week where road safety charity Brake will unveil the Northern Ireland results of its UK-wide survey of school children. Almost three-quarters (72%) of Northern Ireland children said drivers should slow down near their homes and schools.

I know the issue has also been picked up by some local groups including the Green Party at Queens. Maybe it has already been discussed by the Assembly and maybe there are trial areas here in NI which I am unaware of but it strikes me that a serious debate about dropping the speed limit to 20mph in residential areas would be a good idea.

Carbon saving from car free summer

Curious about the impact of my six months car free stint is having on my carbon footprint, I visited ActonCO2 to compare my results with other urban dwellers in a similar size house to my own.

Turns out I still produce a similar amount of CO2 to other households living in relatively new well insulated urban homes. My home’s footprint is 0.96 tonnes per year compared with an average of 0.99 for this type of dwelling. Likewise my appliance’s score is only marginally below the 0.49 average and 0.30.

The big difference is in Transport. By elimintaing my car (we still keep a family car) the footprint has gone down to 0.8 tonnes against an average of 3.93 tonnes for people like me.  My footprint still allows one family holiday in Spain per year by air as well as occasional car use for family trips.

This is a spectacular saving but still at 2.06 tonnes per year I am personally using enough energy to make 118,000 cups of tea. That’s enough to quench the thirst of nearly every adult in this city. 

Cuppa anyone?

Clean Energy can change the North and change the World

We spend 10% of our regional GDP on gas imports. This is the fuel we then use to generate our electricity. We are one of the least energy independent regions in the European Union. No wonder our consumer prices go up and down like cork floating on the turbulent tides of globalisation. Think of it another way. Your NIE bill may well be paying for the Chelsea Football team such is the amount of money we give to Russian gas companies.

This needn’t be so. We have enough biomass to fuel every rural dwelling in the North for example. There is also a lot we could to be be more energy efficient. Simply having proper insulation in our homes would be a good start as would simply moving to low energy lighting.

Energy policy is devolved and there is no reason why the Assembly and Executive should not be taking a major lead on this issue.

Others have. The Scots are energy obsessed as is Obama. He gave a speech this week calling on Congress to embrace the economic opportunity of clean energy. He tackles the climate sceptics and the cynics who see no economic opportunity in clean energy. Have a watch.

Cleantech opportunity being missed

Poor quality communication from suppliers is impeding the growth of the European cleantech market, according to a study conducted by Weber Shandwick with KRC Research.

Despite finding that eight out of ten large organisations in Europe have specific cleantech purchasing policies in place, the research highlights a lack of information from suppliers to help customers rationalise making cleantech choices.

High quality information that enables customers to properly evaluate cleantech products and services is critical, as half of the organisations surveyed perceive cost to be a barrier to making cleantech investments. Of 400 senior purchasing decision-makers surveyed across France, Germany, Spain and the UK nearly a third currently receive no information at all from cleantech companies (29 per cent). An additional quarter of respondents (26 per cent) say that they don’t get enough information from suppliers, while one in ten (11 per cent) feel the information they do receive is too complicated. Significant opportunities exist however for companies that can deliver effective communications to cleantech buyers.

The Weber Shandwick report shows that 60 per cent of European organisations are placing the same level of importance on green procurement as they did before the economic downturn. In fact 25 per cent expect to put more emphasis on green procurement, with only 14 per cent planning to make it a lower priority.

The research highlights significant differences between key European markets around clean and green products and services: • Nearly three-quarters of organisations in Germany have cleantech policies in place, compared to little more than half of UK respondents

• Two-thirds of respondents in France see cost as the key barrier to cleantech adoption – less than 40 per cent of Germans feel the same
• Less than a third of French respondents feel that they receive enough information about suppliers’ green credentials – by contrast, half of the German respondents we spoke to were happy with the amount of information available to them
• 83 per cent of German and Spanish organisations measure the environmental credentials of suppliers. Less than 50 per cent of French organisations do so
• As a result of the recession, Spain and France expect to place more importance on green procurement in the future (37 per cent and 28 per cent); the UK and Germany the least (17 per cent and 16 per cent).

 Full details of the research are available in Weber Shandwick’s Come Clean report, available at: http://www.webershandwick.co.uk/cleantech.

The report includes specific recommendations for communications professionals to use to help shape their strategic plans. Weber Shandwick has built a specialist team of cleantech experts across Europe and works with clients ranging from the biggest corporations through to the newest start-ups. The team’s experience spans a huge variety of specific industries including energy efficiency, clean energy, biofuels, green IT, smart building and advanced transportation.

Spend less – live longer

The good life may well be our only hope if we are survive to humanity’s assault on our planet according to the  Sustainable Development Commission’s Prof Tim Jackson who’s report ‘Prosperity without Growth?’is taking him to the UN next month and had him in Belfast last night to debate a local panel including myself.

His message is a simple one. We are living beyond our means and our planet’s resources are running out. We are on a self destruction path and the only way out of this quagmire is by radically changing the way we run our economies and manage our resources.  The economy is geared, above all, to economic growth. Economic policy in the current recession is all about returning to growth – but an economic crisis can be an opportunity for some basic rethinking and restructuring.

Professor Jackson argues that two objectives other than growth – sustainability and well being – have moved up the political and policy-making agenda in recent years, challenging the overriding priority traditionally given to economic growth.

His solution is much more complex.  Too complex to cover in 400 words and to be honest beyond my powers of summary. But the challenge is clear – macro economics needs to cease its pursuit of growth and that means all of us have to change our behaviour as consumers.

Prosperity without growth? analyses the relationship between growth and the growing environmental crisis and ’social recession’. In the last quarter of a century, while the global economy has doubled, the increased in resource consumption has degraded an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems. The benefits of growth have been distributed very unequally, with a fifth of the world’s population sharing just 2% of global income. Even in developed countries, huge gaps remain in wealth and well-being between rich and poor.

While modernising production and reducing the impact of certain goods and services have led to greater resource efficiency in recent decades, Professor Jackson’s report finds that current aspirations for ‘decoupling’ environmental impacts from economic growth are unrealistic. The report finds no evidence as yet of decoupling taking place on anything like the scale or speed which would be required to avoid increasing environmental devastation.

He argues that this is a global problem which requires global solutions, but is there anything that can be done locally?

Joanne Stuart from the IoD, Eleanor Gill and myself responded. I asked why we import every last drop of gas we need to generate electricity in this region, why our executive is showing no interest in putting sustainability at the heart of its economic strategies even though they have the power to do this.

My Dublin Bike

Its on yer bike for me next time I’m in Dublin as the much anticipated and long awaited Dublin Bike Scheme is launched today. 

The scheme is financed by an advertising agency and has been years in the planning. A total of 450 bicycles have been placed in 40 city centre locations from the Mater hospital in the north of the city to Grand Canal Street in the south.

As the Irish Times reports, in order to register, a person needs to leave a €150 deposit using either a credit card or a bank draft, which will be taken if the bicycle is not returned.

An annual subscription is €10 and a three-day pass is €2.

Prices to hire a bicycle range from nothing for a half an hour to €4.50 for six hours and €2 every half hour after that. The tariff is designed to encourage using the bicycles only for short trips.

Each of the distinctive silver bicycles have three gears, a basket and a lock for those who park in between bicycle stations.

So here’s one for the boys and girls at City Hall in Belfast. When are we getting ours?

The car free summer

The car free summer is going well.

I’m on the train to Dublin this morning and the bike is safe and sound in the bike rack at Belfast Central.

The weather has been my biggest problem. It is difficult to turn up at a meeting dripping in traffic spray from our latest Irish summer downpour but the bus, train and occasional taxi has saved my colleagues and clients from the drowned dog look.

So what now that the evenings are closing in and the rain is becoming more, eh – seasonal?

I’m going stick at it. I’ll stay on the bike until its not practical and see how the public transport experience feels on dark mornings. Worst case scenario - I buy  a small very low emmissions car for running about; best that I am able to enjoy the freedom to roam and ride at my leisure.

Lance Armstrong arrives tomorrow.

I’m just waiting for the tweet saying he will be riding out in Dublin. For once my Specialized Hybrid will be the coolest form of transport on this island!