Let’s begin with a brief “green” history of time from 1962 – 2009. It all started in 1962 with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring which many consider to have single-handedly spawned the dawn of the modern environmental movement. Global environmental summits were held in Stockholm (1972), Rio de Janeiro (1992), Johannesburg (2002), respectively called: United Nations Conference on Human Environment (1972), United Nations Conference on Environment and Development aka “Earth Summit” (1992) and Earth Summit (2002).

In “Rio,” the international environmental treaty entitled the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted. Provisions to update the treaty are called Protocols. The Kyoto Protocol is the main update which became more renowned than the UNFCCC itself thanks to the non-ratifying parties.   

UNFCCC “Conferences of the Parties” have been held in The Hague (2000), Bonn (2001), Marrakech (2001), Montreal (2005), Bali (2007), Vienna (2007), Poland (2008).

COPENHAGEN IS COMING!  UNFCCC’s 2009 meeting in Copenhagen is almost upon us!  

WHY ALL THE EXCITEMENT? Three key reasons:

The world is more than ready to move beyond Kyoto which entered into force in 2005. Although 183 parties/countries ratified the Kyoto Protocol (as of 2009), major world players have not:  China, India and USA.   

An Inconvenient Truth, the fabulously sensationalist documentary, the worldwide movie blockbuster by Al Gore took the entire world’s hearts and minds by its own kind of environmental storm. And yes, we must not forget that he shared his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is a United Nations’ network of scientists.

But wait, another major reason for the exciting buzz surrounding Copenhagen…There is a high level of hope from the world at large, that the new U.S. government administration, circa 2009, will propel the potential of the UNFCCC to the next necessary levels and inspire all countries worldwide to proactively participate with fewer conditions and objections for the sake of humanity and all inhabitants of our only collective home. 

Yes, what is about to materialize (hopefully) in Copenhagen has been five decades in the making. If we extrapolate the progress to date to another five decades ahead of us, how certain are we that it will not be too late? How certain can we be that within the next five decades the world temperature will not rise on average by 2 degrees Celsius when there could be a systemic collapse of the world’s environmental ecosystem?  Forty-seven environment, science and faith-based groups came together in coalition (summer 2009) and sent President Obama a letter about these seemingly minute 2 degrees. We are DECADES OVERDUE for a major overhaul of business as usual.    

In politics, compromise is key. THE GOAL in Copenhagen is a legally-binding international environmental agreement that: limits greenhouse gas emissions, better ensures implementation of the agreement (clean development mechanism, joint implementation and emissions trading), increases compliance/accounting/reporting measures and minimizes impacts on developing countries (funds for their adaptation).  

Will an agreement “struck” in Copenhagen be enough to pre-empt an unimaginable world calamity?  This definitely depends on whether China, India and the USA make concessions to agree and ratify an agreement with acceptable terms.  Developing countries which comprise 90% of the future growth of greenhouse gas emissions need to be well-accounted for as a part of the agreement. According to the Swiss Re report published just last week: “Climate risks could cost nations up to 19% of GDP by 2030, with developing nations most vulnerable.” When developing nations’ economies suffer dramatically, there is a global environmental security issue, unprecedented severe mass migrations as we have not seen for centuries. “No one wants to stay put to die” is how Stephen Kass, who spoke at a Sustainability Practice Network NYC (SPN) event  last week, put it bluntly. Mr Kass has practiced environmental law since the 1970s. We cannot be sure about what may happen, but in Copenhagen, we better do our darndest to keep human kind and all living organisms from unimaginable suffering or even mass extinction.

WILL MARKET MECHANISMS SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT?  

Undoubtedly, there is a lot of optimistic interest over how the market can help the world reach environmental sustainability goals.  There are differing views on this matter.  Based on the speakers in last week’s  SPN NYC event, the environmental dream team panelists’ views:

Nat Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund:  The market mechanism (“cap and trade” of emissions/credits beyond imposed limits) will be key to the future of reducing greenhouse gases by countries, regions, industry. The market was highly successful for reducing acid rain (sulfer dioxide) and made it an environmental non-issue thereafter. Why not for greenhouse gases?

Stephen Kass of Carter, Ledyard & Millburn LLP:  Cap and trade is not a substitute for other methods and cannot be relied on to be the sole solution: Co2 gases are a much bigger and complicated problem than sulfer dioxide. And, very importantly: Can we rely on third party verifications of a market system by accounting firms or government bureaucrats?  He gave an example of complementary solution. A carbon tax could work well, but taxation is likely not going to happen especially in the U.S. because the word “tax” is involved!

Doug Cogan the Director of Climate Change Research at Risk Metrics: He believes that strong focus innovation research and entrepreneurship can propel us to the next level and developing countries like China and India can make the jump quickly beyond the current generation of technology to that which does not cause current levels of pollution (like Africa which “leapfrogged” over landline phones directly to cell phones).

Doug Cogan also reminded the SPN NYC event audience about the renowned 700-page Stern Report of 2006 which discusses the effect of climate change and global warming on the world economy.  He also made note of his company’s survey research report published just last week about the preparedness of financial institutions in developing/emerging countries to be integrated into the greenhouse emissions cap and trade system.

What in the view of these recent SPN NYC event speakers is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT THE U.S. CAN DO for the upcoming round of negotiations in Copenhagen?  

It is to PASS DOMESTIC LEGISLATION BEFORE COPENHAGEN on the environment, the Climate Bill.  But are we already too late? The eyes of the American public and federal government rest heavily on the issue of healthcare while the Climate Bill legislation is put on the backburner probably until the end of this year or the beginning of next year.  This means that there is a higher chance that there could be a repeat of what happened with Kyoto, where the U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen “come home” to the U.S. with an agreement that the U.S. Senate rejects.  In fact, they rejected Kyoto unanimously in 1997 namely noting that it would be deleterious to the U.S. economy.

BUT THERE IS HOPE.  We cannot rest our laurels on the agreement coming out of Copenhagen this December 2009.  Bilateral agreements in addition to the UNFCCC Copenhagen agreement should play a critical role. China and the U.S., which together contribute 50% of the world’s harmful greenhouse gas emissions could come to a bilateral solution e.g. the U.S. could also work with friendly ally Brazil on trade policy, corn-based fuel and deforestation. 

COPENHAGEN 2009: The world is watching. We have a COMMON RESPONSIBILITY as stewards of this earth.  I am optimistic that we the world, governments and individuals have the answer to move beyond the issue of harmful greenhouse gases, even within our lifetime.  You can do your part right now, by signing the United Nations campaign petition and adding your photo in the world mosaic as a supporter to “Seal the Deal” in Copenhagen.   

www.sealthedeal2009.org    

In the year 2000, fishermen scooped up the stuff off of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada and hastily dumped the “hissing mass,” an entire ton of it, back into the ocean. The USSR tried unsuccessfully to recover them from permafrost reservoirs in the 1960s and 1970s.  The governments of Japan, South Korea, India, Canada, China, Norway and the USA are all presently interested in figuring out how to take advantage of all of their potential energy. The first intentional commercial exploitation of them may come already by 2015. To date, there has only been one field commercially produced where some of the gas is thought to have been from them – the Messoyakha Gas Field in Russia. 

THEY are the huge reservoirs of methane clathrates worldwide which have gained attention especially from oil-poor countries such as Japan and India. Research into how to use methane clathrates as an energy source has been reinvigorated by the rabid global race to find new sources of energy. In 2006 China announced plans to spend $100 million over 10 years to study natural clathrates (gas hydrates). Already in 2000 the U.S. Senate authorized $47.5 million over five years for the Department of Energy to study them, a bill signed by then-President Clinton.  In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy has had a methane hydrates program since 1997 when it initiated the planning for a multi-agency natural gas hydrate R&D program.   

The New Scientist article Ice on Fire: the Next Fossil Fuel dated June 24, 2009 notes that conservative figures place global reserves at roughly 3 trillion tons of previously untapped carbon - more than is trapped in all the other known fossil fuel reserves put together. Tim Collett, a clathrate specialist at the US Geological Survey estimated in 2007 that there is between 0.7 and 4.4 trillion cubic meters of methane clathrate in Alaska alone…which could heat 100 million homes for a decade. 

Research of methane clathrates are important not only for their potential such as for the U.S. to achieve aggressive economic and environmental goals. This foremost is a cautionary blog entry…

There strong evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown aka the clathrate gun hypothesis, may cause drastic earth environment and atmospheric changes on a number of occasions in the past such as the Permian-Triassic extinction event, when 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct 251 million years ago.

If you had money to spend in these difficult economic times, it sure would be nice to know where the energy industry was going to end up 10, 20, 30 years from now and invest that money there.  With hundreds of billions of dollars being sent overseas to purchase crude oil, when the tide changes to domestically generated energy, there is going to be money to be made.  If you pick the right horse to ride now, you will be well off in the not too distant future.

I have been conducting, for several months, an unscientific survey of numerous articles, discussions with industry experts, and learning everything I can about the industry.  I thought it would be fun to set forth a suggestion as one possible theory regarding the future of US energy needs.  Please chime in with yours, or correct me where you think I have gone astray:

1.  We have reached a level of critical mass whereby sticking with crude oil is unacceptable for the future of America.  Continuing to rely on crude oil will negatively impact our national security (pumping dollars to enemy regimes), our environment (pumping CO2 into the atmosphere), and our economy (pumping jobs overseas instead of creating new ones here by investing in domestic technologies).

2.  That said, it will take time before we are significantly less reliant on crude oil, as compared to our current situation.

3.  In the short term, therefore, we will expand drilling in the US and continue to use alternative energy techologies that have begun to show progress, like geothermal plants, use of solar power, wind generators where appropriate, etc.  These steps will, in the short term, decrease our reliance on foreign crude.  These steps will also buy time until we can significantly lower our overall dependence on crude oil because of the emergence of other technologies.

4.  In preparation for the long term, we should continue to invest in research and implementation of all forms of alternative energy, including biofuels, geothermal, wind, solar, and hydro.  Over time, one or more of these technologies will, through innovation, rise to the top.  Solar might be most efficient in powering homes, wind at powering certain areas of the country, and biofuels at fueling the airline industry, so no single solution needs to be adopted, but the free market should sort out the best technologies from unfeasible technologies.  When this happens, the US will have high electricity capacity.

5.  Also long term, I predict that automobiles will be plugged into the energy grid.  Coal being our most abundant resource, clean coal technologies and expanded use of nuclear power will enable the US to transform from a mostly crude oil-based automotive industry to considerable reliance on electricity.   These forms of electricity will buy more time to develop large scale energy sources from the other alternative energy choices, mentioned above.

In sum, it is my prediction that our energy path will push us to be more reliant on electricity versus crude oil.  To get there, we will need to continue to support our current crude oil needs by more domestic production and incremental advances in alternative energy that will help (just not on a large scale, yet).  That will buy us time to convert our automobiles over to electricity that is supplied by clean coal and nuclear power.  The use of clean coal and nuclear power will, in turn, buy us even more time until the other forms of alternative energy are perfected and can provide large scale electricity production.

What do you think?