TH!NK ABOUT IT

Last week, I went for a 2-day conference, TH!NK ABOUT IT, in Copenhagen which was held by European Journalism Center. There were 90 other participants from over 20 different countries.

On the first day, all of us went to Bella Center. This is where this year’s most important treaty will take a new shape, the COP15. We started off with a brief speech by Svend Olling, Head of Department of COP15 Logistics on how they were tackling problems to ensure a good conference in December and their importance. Then we had a panel discussion on a journalist’s perspective on climate change with Tasha Eichenseher, editor of nationalgeographic.com; RameshJaura , director of Inter-Press Service Europa; Gerald Traufetter, editor of Spiegel magazine; Asbjorn Jorgenson, professor at Arhus school of Media and Journalism; Mads Christensen, Head of Greenpeace Nordic region and Andreas Barkman from European Environmental Agency and the Head of the Group for Climate Change Mitigation.

Ramesh Jaura spoke developing nations' stance on Green House Gases emissions and agreed that its not possible for them to cap their emissions when the question of economic development comes into picture. Tasha Eichenseher discussed about some of National Geographic influential stories, Gerald Traufetter worries that some journalists are restricted from taking sides in the matters of climate change and that it would hurt a journalist's credibility. Mads Christensen threw light on EU's efforts to mitigate GHG emissions and its success of reaching Kyoto Protocol's target of 8% less emissions than 1990 by 2010. Andreas from Greenpeace believes that developed, industrialised nations should try reducing their emissions by 40% by 2020 and developing nations by 15-30%. He wishes for a fair and ambitious deal at the end of COP15 though he doesnt see that from happening. He fears that COP15 will lead to greenwashed plan (a bad deal made to look good) thereby leading to faster growth in global temperatures and threatening the of survival of islands. Gradually the discussions grew on whether Sahara was greening because of climate change, Obama sounding no different from Bush, if science was a valid tool to convince people, if US was holding up UN meetings, pressure on media, et cetera.We were later joined by Francois Roudie, policy coordinator of European Commission who gave an insight on EU’s future goals and its past achievements. EU plans to increase its renewable energy use by 10%, reduce carbon emissions by 20-30%. With their existing regulation on energy performance standards for buildings, they plan to make buildings more efficient and sustainable. While he spoke about Europe reaching its Kyoto Protocol’s targets, he unfortunately couldn’t give a good justification of why weren’t they including carbon emissions produced by the goods they imported into their annual emissions.

In the afternoon, Soren Hermansen who was ‘TIME magazine’s Hero of the Environment 2008’ gave a presentation on Samsø Island. Samsø is a small island that in 1997 won the Danish government contests to become a model renewable energy community. Today all its power comes from the wind.The next day, we went to Dyssekilde, an eco-village. Dyssekilde is a small village of 120 people near Copenhagen that generates most of its own electricity and manages its own waste. They claim to have a better waste treatment plant than the municipal. They have over 30,000 willow trees to purify waste water. The houses are so designed that consumes energy as less as possible and villagers are encouraged to use organic products.

You can read more about Samsø Island and Dyssekilde from here:

http://www.wind-works.org/articles/SamsoeRenewableEnergyIsland.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sams%C3%B8

http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/09/saving-the-planet-in-dyssekilde.html

http://dyssekilde.dk/ix.asp?m=97

Anindita Nayak

Geo-engineering as an alternative

The problem of global warming has been known to mankind over last 5 decades. Growth rate of CO2 and other emissions are accelerating and that it's accelerating even faster that what we thought was the worst case just a few years back. Carbon reduction is turning out to be a very slow process to combat climate change and targets set seem unreachable. With Kyoto protocol to be replaced at COP15, countries have geared into finding sustainable solutions and policies. The question is is reducing emissions the only way? No, its not. We have Geo-Engineering. David Keith, an environmental scientist, describes it as intentional, large-scale manipulation of the environment. It is believed to be a cheap, effective and inexpensive solution to climate change.

Geo-engineering isn’t being discussed much and has been kept away public since long. Its been at times considered as a moral hazard by economists because they've failed to weigh correctly the merits and demrits of geo-engineering. Geo-engineering has come up with solutions like: releasing sulfates to cool the atmosphere based on how volcanoes work; carbon capture and storage (CCS); fake trees that absorb CO2;cloud seeding, cloud albedo; ocean iron fertilization, etc. Without doubt, geo-engineering can trigger unforeseen results without further scientific study simply because of the complexity of ecosystems involved. With the dearth of funds and support for such research, it’s hard to proceed. We certainly should not put all of our efforts into just carbon reductions.
Geo-engineering will provide countries with extra time for further research into ways of reducing emissions or to stabilize their economies before signing some protocol similar to Kyoto's. However, we know that the negative impacts of global warming are distributed unevenly, and what may be acceptable levels of climate disruption for the major states may be utterly devastating for poorer, smaller nations. It is in this context that a scientifically-powerful developing nation like India or Brazil, for example may decide that it is unwilling to abide by UN decisions about re-terraforming, and begin to undertake such a strategy.
Geo-engineering is also now seen as a political issue in terms of control, liability and projects existing for the similar cause. It's also entirely possible that a state with the capacity to undertake such a project independently might decide that international restrictions are irrational, or that its survival is so threatened that the bureaucracy of a transnational body is unacceptable. When a hegemonic nation does it, such as the United States or China, there may be little the international community can do in response.
There will be blocks and obstructions, but they have always been even while discussing carbon reductions. But geo-engineering will be more quicker and inexpensive way to sort problems.

Anindita Nayak