This has been a difficult week for those of us deeply concerned about the most challenging issue of our time: climate change. We have had to watch while the powers that be spent our time and carbon on a lot of words but no action in Rio.
But there has been something percolating in the background. A possible low cost, local/individual action that has yet to reach global consciousness but is finally starting to resonant with policy makers.
The Daily Beast calls it a game changer but of course here on Daily Kos we call it old news. Old news because I have been writing about it here for a few years.
The good news is that it far from the big U.N. halls, where talk outweighs action, a new and much more effective climate change strategy is emerging. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fleshed out a scheme with Sweden and a few other like-minded nations to cut warming pollution by working in a small, nimble group rather than the whole United Nations. Supported by the U.N. Environment Program and an array of leading scientists, the effort focuses on controls that don't just slow global warming but also deliver tangible benefits to health and food security.
This is what we have been talking about
here ,
here and
here.
US Embassy, Sweden
Global warming is the hardest environmental problem that diplomats have ever confronted. Since the 1992 Rio conference they have made the problem even harder to solve by focusing mainly on carbon dioxide. Nearly all of this warming gas comes from burning fossil fuels, and it is very expensive to regulate. While all countries have found ways to make bold promises at diplomatic meetings, back at home all the biggest emitters—China, the U.S., and India among them—have done little to tackle this problem.
[...]
A fresh start to climate diplomacy would emphasize that carbon dioxide is not the only warming pollutant. At least 40 percent of current global warming can be blamed on four other types of pollutants: dark soot particles called black carbon, methane, lower-atmospheric ozone, and industrial gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are used as coolants in refrigerators. These pollutants have life spans of just a few weeks to a decade—much shorter than that of carbon dioxide. But although their tenure is brief, they are potent warmers. Emitting one ton of black carbon, for example, has the same immediate effect on warming as emitting 500-2,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Because the impacts of these short-lived pollutants on the climate are severe and swift, limiting them could curb warming quickly, allowing more time for serious effort to reduce carbon dioxide.
The issue is not just starting to gain traction with some of the media but that most conservative of US institutions the US Congress has taken notice. This past week Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member
Henry A. Waxman, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member
Edward J. Markey, and Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member
Howard L. Berman sent out a letter praising Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her work on calling international attention to addressing short-lived climate pollutants and urged her to focus on the issue at the G20 Summit in Mexico and to make progress at the Montreal Protocol’s Meeting of the Parties in November.
I was particularly pleased to see this letter as I made a dual presentation with Gerard Wedderburn Bisshop in January to Rep. Edward J. Markey of the House Natural Resources Committee on our MIT Climate CoLab proposal on reducing the short-lived climate pollutants. It's not often that you can get through to these policy makers, but I was very impressed with the attention given to our proposals by Rep. Markey.
We here are at the head of the curve because we know that the greatest source (pdf) of the short-lived climate pollutants is livestock production. So it is in all our hands and power to be a part of the solution to the worse effects of climate change by simply eliminating/reducing our consumption of meat and dairy products.
Albert Einstein
Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act.