The U. S. and China Announce Joint Emissions Reductions

People in China and the U. S. feel the effects of global warming in their daily lives.  Smog in Beijing and other cities, driven in part by burning coal for electric generation, severely impacts the lives of Chinese citizens.  During the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit Nov. 11-14, 2014, China closed factories and gave workers time off in Beijing to reduce emissions while foreign officials were there.   While the average global temperature has risen worldwide since the industrial revolution began, the average temperature in China has risen even more.  The frequency of extreme weather and exceptional natural disasters such as droughts, dust storms, heavy rains, flooding and mudslides in China has risen in recent decades.  Urbanization has increased in China’s coastal cities, such as Shanghai, Tianjin and Hong Kong, making them more vulnerable to inundations from rising sea levels.

American coastal cities such as Miami Beach and Norfolk, Virginia routinely suffer high tide flooding.  According to the U. S. National Climate Assessment (May 2014),

warming has already had adverse effects across the U. S., including heat waves, droughts, wildfires, changes in availability of water, floods, ocean storm surges, extreme weather and climate events and socioeconomic effects.  Worsening of these trends is foreseen during this century.

Global warming from man-made greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), is clearly a problem confronting all humanity, requiring the cooperation of all nations of the world to address it.  Once emitted into the atmosphere, GHGs disperse across the entire globe.  Multinational efforts to conclude a new global warming treaty are currently under way.  Nevertheless, some experts have suggested that agreements between two or a small set of nations could play an important role as well.  Along these lines the U. S. and China announced a joint agreement to address GHG emissions on Nov. 12, 2014, during the APEC summit.

President Obama and President Xi pledged that their countries would significantly reduce emissions of GHGs over the next 15 years, each in their own way.  They agreed that

• the U. S. would lower its GHG emission rates by 26-28% from the levels emitted in 2005, by 2025.  (The U. S. has already pledged to reduce emissions by 17% from the levels of 2005 by 2020.)  This requires an increasing the intended annual rate of reduction of GHG emissions from 1.2% per year up to 2020 to 2.3-2.8% per year between 2020 and 2025.

 

• China’s emission rates, which continue growing because it is adding new fossil fuel-driven electric generating plants to power its expanding economy, will reach a maximum annual rate by 2030 and possibly sooner.  China’s commitment to slow the growth of its emissions was not specified in numerical terms.  As part of this initiative China expects to increase the share of energy derived from renewable sources (solar power, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric) to 20% by the target date of 2030.

 

• The two nations agreed to extend and expand their cooperation in reducing emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, used in refrigeration, originally announced in 2013.  These substances are far more potent GHGs than CO₂.

These commitments are being made by the two countries that are the two highest-emitting nations of the world, accounting for over one-third of annual global emission rates of GHGs.  The importance of these pledges cannot be exaggerated.

• The commitments pledge major reductions in GHG emission rates by each of the two nations.

 

• The agreement was reached outside the framework of the worldwide United Nations sponsored negotiations for a universal treaty.  Those negotiations, occurring annually for many years, have been fraught with contention and disagreements.

 

• The commitments made by the two largest emitters of GHGs in the world to reduce emission rates should serve as a powerful incentive for other nations to reduce their emissions, whether individually or within the U. N. framework, to reach a meaningful agreement.

There is need for caution as well as enthusiasm in evaluating this agreement.  The U. S. White House put out a press release concerning this bilateral agreement on behalf of Presidents Obama and Xi.  This writer sought and could not find a corresponding English-language announcement on the web site of People’s Daily, the Chinese government’s newspaper, for Nov. 12, nor for Nov. 13, 2014.  However, China Daily, a non-governmental English language newspaper, did report the announcements.  If accurate, this leaves an impression that the Chinese government preferred to downplay or dissociate itself from the agreement even as President Obama embraced it.

This is not a binding agreement between parties.  As the White House wrote, the two parties separately announced goals or commitments to attain their respective targets by their respective dates.  President Obama has only two years left in office, so that most of the target conditions will have to be fulfilled by his successor(s).  A future president could just as well decide against following through on the present commitments.  He also faces a hostile Congress which may interfere with his intentions. 

President Xi heads a central government, so it may be easier for him to follow through on his commitments (see below, discussion on Five Year Plans).

The agreement imposes very different constraints on the two governments.  The American commitment is for numerically stated, and verifiable, reductions in emission rates.  The Chinese commitment, however, fails to specify a numerical standard for the extent of its reduction in emission rates.  The announcement states only that China will reduce the growth rate of its annual emissions until a maximum rate is achieved by 2030, or perhaps earlier.  Presumably China’s emission rate will actually begin falling after 2030, but this also is not stated.  (A common objective among climate scientists and policymakers, in order to keep the world’s global average temperature rise below 2ºC (3.6ºF), is that global emission rates have to be cut by 80% or more by 2050 below early 21^st century levels.)

China’s Five Year Plans (FYPs) have already programmed in significant changes.  China’s national development is set forth in successive FYPs, which are assembled by China’s central government.  According to the report “Delivering Low Carbon Growth – A Guide to the 12th Five Year Plan”,  the proportion of energy provided by non-fossil fuel sources is to be 11.4% in the 12^th FYP (2011-2015) and 15.0% in the 13^th FYP (2016-2020).  So it is seen that much of the goal in November’s bilateral agreement is already planned, leaving an additional 5% of total energy to be provided by non-fossil fuel sources in the ten years leading to 2030 in order to reach the specified 20% objective.

China Daily reported that the bilateral agreement used earlier language that has always distinguished between developing and developed countries.  The wording was first presented in the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change twenty years ago, namely, that nations of the world address climate change “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”.   This phrasing reflects the concerns that “the developed countr[ies] should take the lead in combating climate change” and that the “specific needs and special circumstances of developing countr[ies]…should be given full consideration”.  

China Daily reported that in the bilateral agreement "the two countries are committed to reaching an ambitious 2015 agreement that reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.”  In other words, developing countries such as China continue to stress equity in insisting that they be given the same opportunity to develop, using fossil fuels for energy, that industrialized countries have benefited from for more than a century.  At the same time they point to the responsibility of those developed countries now to limit their emissions because of their advanced economic status.  These attitudes stress hindsight or past history.

Developed countries such as the U. S., on the other hand, presumably consider equity as supporting a policy that, since developing countries are now the ones expanding the world’s burden of atmospheric GHGs, they should bear the “differentiated responsibility” of constraining their emissions. Whereas China was an impoverished developing country in the early 1990s, it is now the world’s largest emitter of GHGs and a powerful economic force.  One can legitimately question whether developed countries still have to acknowledge “differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” of flourishing countries such as China.

Conclusion

U. S. President Obama and China’s President Xi announced bilateral objectives of differing scope and timing to place their nations on paths toward significant reductions in GHG emission rates.  The joint objectives mark the first time the two nations of the world with the highest emission rates agree on the importance of mitigating emission rates; the result will be highly significant for the climatic health of our planet.  Citizens of both countries, indeed of all the world’s nations, will benefit from this undertaking.  It creates an important incentive for achieving agreement on mitigating emissions worldwide, resulting from U. N.-sponsored negotiations over the coming year.

© 2014 Henry Auer

Our Children Look Us in the Eye: President Obama’s State of the Union Speech

Summary.  President Obama delivered his annual State of the Union speech on January 28, 2014.  A portion dealt with energy policy and global warming.  He laid down a fundamental guideline for the U. S. and the world to address climate change, one whose motivation is the moral imperative to leave a world for our children’s children that is powered by renewable energy rather than by fossil fuels.

The President’s administration has put in place several policies that promote reductions in the rates of emission of CO₂.  Nevertheless, his “all of the above” energy policy emphasizes expanding the domestic production of fossil fuel, permitting the nation to approach energy independence.  The policies and the infrastructure underlying “all of the above” ensure that fossil fuels will be extracted, and CO₂ will continue to be released, for decades to come, defeating the President’s moral imperative.

Only by migrating away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources as soon as practicable (given the long delay times involved in transforming the necessary infrastructure) can we ensure the energy security of our children’s children.                                

 

President Obama’s State of the Union speech  on January 28, 2014, delivered to a joint session of Congress, included an important section on energy policy and global warming.  He stated what is probably the most profound and basic motivation for attacking the problem of global warming: 

“Climate change is a fact.  And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.” 

This statement illumnates the core of our attitudes and behavior about global warming, namely, the strong desire we all feel to pass on to our children and further progeny a secure world not threatened by the consequences of our present environmental actions.  Unfortunately the President’s remarks omit the important aspect of attribution: humanity’s use of fossil fuels is a major contributor to global warming.  This is explained in the following Details.

          Details

1.     Climate scientists have shown that it is possible to assess the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), a principal greenhouse gas, as well as the ambient temperature by sophisticated analysis of geological samples; the assay for temperature is termed a “proxy”.  Over the last 800,000 years the data show that atmospheric CO₂ and the temperature proxy fluctuate in cycles lasting thousands of years, and that their fluctuations over time are highly correlated with each other.  Over this interval the atmospheric CO₂ concentration was almost never higher than 280 parts per million (ppm; volume of CO₂ gas present in 1,000,000 volumes of air assayed).

2.     Just prior to the start of the industrial revolution, the CO₂ concentration was 280 ppm.  The industrial revolution has been powered by human’s burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) to provide the energy needed for industrialization.  This releases additional CO₂ into the air, increasing the atmosphere’s retention of solar energy as heat, warming the earth’s atmosphere.  Over the last 250 years all three data sets, humankind’s burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂, and the long-term globalaverage temperature, have all increased following timeline trends that are virtually identical to each other, i.e., they are closely correlated.  This raises the likelihood that there is a causative relationship among them.  The changes observed are occurring 50-100 times more rapidly than the natural geological changes described in the first paragraph.

3.     A further physical proxy can determine whether CO₂ originated from mineral sources (e.g. release of CO₂ dissolved in the water of the oceans) or from fossil fuels.  The time course of this fourth data set over the same time period follows the same course as do those for fossil fuel use, the increase in CO₂, and the global temperature.  This shows unequivocally that the additional CO₂ in the atmosphere appearing during the industrial era originates from our burning of fossil fuels, and not from some other natural process not involving humankind’s actions.  It also makes highly likely that the increase in global temperature is due to the increased CO₂ in the atmosphere.

4.     Climate models have been used retrogressively to seek to reproduce existing temperature data from about 1915 to the present.  If the models omit the added CO₂ from fossil fuels the predicted temperature remains low, not rising after 1950.  Only by including this additional CO₂ do the models successfully reproduce the observed higher temperatures in the record.  This shows unequivocally that the additional CO₂, which arises from fossil fuels, causes the increase in long-term global average temperature.

 

Projections of future greenhouse gas emissions predict that most developed countries of the world, including the U. S., will not increase annual emission rates significantly, whereas major emitters among the developing countries, especially China and India, will continue to do so at drastic rates.  This has been termed “business as usual”, and is projected to lead to large increases in atmospheric CO₂, higher average temperatures, and more frequent and severe extreme weather and climate events.  The President pointed out “we have to act with more urgency because a changing climate is already harming western [American] communities struggling with drought and coastal cities dealing with floods.”  It must be emphasized, however, that policies at the worldwide level, not simply within the U. S., are needed to interrupt this trend and keep harmful consequences to a minimum.

President Obama reiterated his “all of the above” energy policy, which promotes current expansion of fossil fuel resources within the U. S. while at the same time implementing policies that reduce their use in the future.  He praised the “all of the above” strategy, noting that “today America is closer to energy independence than we have been in decades.”   He cited the migration to increased use of natural gas as a major factor in this trend, calling this fuel “the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.”  He encouraged Congress to promote this trend by providing for natural gas fueling stations to help “shift more cars and trucks from foreign oil to American natural gas”.  At the same time, he noted, the U. S. is expanding its use of solar power, a renewable energy source.  He recognized the barriers facing expansion of renewable energy, urging “a smarter tax policy that stops giving $4 billion a year to fossil fuel industries that don’t need it so we can invest more in fuels of the future that do.”

The President reviewed the executive actions of his administration that will reduce fossil fuel consumption going forward.

“[E]ven as we’ve increased energy production, we’ve partnered with businesses, builders and local communities to reduce the energy we consume. When we rescued our automakers, for example, we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months I’ll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.”

 

Analysis

 

Moral basis for climate action.  President Obama laid down a forceful imperative, that of working to abate global warming for the welfare of our children and their children, and by inference, our future progeny whom we will never know.  We can consider this the most powerful, fundamental driver for action against global warming.  It is a principal motivation for the faithful, who consider that they have been appointed to be stewards of God’s creation.  It is an important guiding principle for others as well who direct their actions to the improvement of the world and the lives of their fellow humans.  On the national level here in the U. S., establishment of the national park system clearly is consistent with these principles, for it set aside federal lands in perpetuity for the benefit of our fellow citizens.

President Obama’s administrative actions have promoted mitigation of global warming.  The President has been faced with Congressional opposition to combating global warming, continuing a long history of Congressional recalcitrance.  Faced with this situation he has acted in several ways to reduce fossil fuel use.  He has set in place automotive fuel efficiency standards that halve fuel use by 2025.  His administration has just issued emission standards for new large electricity generating plants, and will follow up with standards for existing plants.  These will have the effect of eliminating use of coal-fired plants unless they install expensive capturing technology, since burning coal emits almost twice as much CO₂ per unit of electricity generated as does natural gas.  In addition, the President issued a comprehensive Climate Action Plan setting forth a broad range of policies.

President Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy needlessly prolongs CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels.  President Obama’s administration controls permits to develop fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and offshore, but not on private land.  Conventional wells have long production lifetimes, so that once in operation, there is a legacy period of production that ensures emission of CO₂ from the extracted fuels for the lifetime of the well, one to a few decades.  Installations for hydraulic fracturing to yield gas and oil have shorter service lifetimes.  To the extent that extraction on public lands is being promoted, “all of the above” ensures continued new emissions of CO₂ for one to a few decades. 

CO₂ and other GHGs persist in the atmosphere for a century or more once emitted; they are not cleansed by any natural process.  Ever since humans began burning fossil fuels in the industrial revolution, the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere has been higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.  The rate of accumulation of additional CO₂ is now about 50-100 times faster than has occurred in the geological past from natural processes.   For all these reasons, the longer the nations of the world, including the U. S., delay combating global warming, the more difficult it will be to achieve results later.

For this reason, President Obama’s “all of the above” policy is counterproductive, promoting expanded domestic production of fossil fuels.  Production of natural gas is expanding rapidly, and new drilling for offshore oil is being allowed to proceed.  Oil and gas pipelines are growing and a major pipeline, the XL project for importing Canadian oil originating from tar sands, is being weighed for approval. 

Minimizing increased global warming.  Every energy policy should be evaluated  according to whether it abates emissions or contributes more.  We may slow the rate of accumulating more GHGs in the atmosphere, but we are powerless at present to reduce the amount already accumulated.  “All of the above” continues to add greenhouse gases.  Our energy economy should have only one objective, namely, to reduce the additional accumulation of GHGs as rapidly as possible.  Only in this way can we limit the long-term average global temperature to as small an increase as possible.  Only in this way, “when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, [can we] say yes, we did.”

 

© 2014 Henry Auer