But a couple days ago, I read in the New York Times that Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates and 4th largest OPEC oil producer is now stepping up for its own renewable energy revolution.

The article talks about the country bustin’ out new solar technologies to meet the growing need for renewables and clean energy sources. “We realize that the world energy markets are diversifying, so we need to diversify too,” said Sultan A. al-Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, the government arm that manages the Masdar Initiative. “We see the growth of renewable energy as an opportunity, not as a problem.”

Awesome, now Abu Dhabi has a new ring to it besides the Garfield jingle…

• Garfield’s “Abu Dhabi” song to Nermal:
  Abu Dhabi, it’s far away
  Abu Dhabi, that’s where you’ll stay
  Abu Dhabi, the place to be
  For any kitten who’s annoying me, yeah!
  Abu Dhabi, it’s off the track
  Abu Dhabi, now don’t come back
  Abu Dhabi, it’s quite a thrill
  For any kitten who can make me ill!
  Now some take a train, and some take a plane
  But I am sending you
  Not on a boat, or even by goat
  But in a box marked “Postage Due”
  Abu Dhabi, you’re what they lack
  Abu Dhabi, now you’re all packed
  Abu Dhabi, a far commute
  For any kitten who is too darn cute!

• Revised Clean Energy Abu Dhabi Song:

Abu Dhabi, it’s far away
Abu Dhabi, that’s where I’ll stay
Abu Dhabi, the place to be
For any person who wants clean energy, yeah!
Abu Dhabi, it’s on the track
Abu Dhabi, now don’t go back
Abu Dhabi, it’s quite a thrill
For any person who hates an oil spill!
Now some take a train, and some take a plane
But I am sending you
Not on a boat, or even by goat
But in a box marked “Reuse, Foo!”
Abu Dhabi, you’re what they lack
Abu Dhabi, you once were all stacked
Abu Dhabi, with fuels that pollute
But now it seems that you give a hoot!

Thanks Abu Dhabi!
-revision by Christina

Largely, the new statements are great. Plans are in the mix for a possible ban on filament lightbulbs (just like Australia), a BINDING goal for 20% increase of renewable energy use for the whole EU, diversification of energy sources and transporation systems within the region, 20% increase in efficiency through better monitoring of appliances and consumer products, plus all sorts of other initatives.

It’s got its challenges though. The policy has made the language on nuclear energy flexible, which has made it feasible for France to jump on. Also, it has allowed easier language for certain nations to have easier individualized emission targets. This concession is mostly justified by varying histories and economies of member states. Particularly, many post-Communist Eastern European countries are still running on heavy industry and coal, which often formed the backbone of any Soviet era development. According to the BBC, “a tenth of the world’s coal is under the ground here [in Poland], and more than 95% of Poland’s electricity is generated by burning it.” To try to remedy this concession, the EU is looking at carbon capture as its hesitant solution.

A little over a week ago, this 20% by 2020 business was just a hopeful, conceptual idea for EU targets. Now it’s on the table and member states of the EU will fight climate change on a broader scope together, with hopes to build a tangible global policy (including China, India, and US) soon enough.

Here’s some great articles about this latest move by the EU:
EU Sticks Out Neck in Global Climate Change Battle- EU Observer (haha I like this headline best)

Basic Q&A on the ““the most ambitious ever made” to tackle climate change- BBC

EU Agrees Renewable Energy Target- BBC (good comprehensive info on renewables policy)

Europeans Set Binding Energy Targets -New York Times (an American report on the policy)

Spain’s Navarra Embraces Green Energy- BBC (cool example of how Spain is going green)

EU Seeks Converts to Eco-stoicism- BBC (the irony of climate politics)

(EU Cupcake)

With the colorful Euro currency, passport-free borders, and consensus-driven policy making, I’ve always been delightfully interested in and yet slightly apprehensive of the European Union. (That’s what you get with an International Studies major, I suppose.) But regardless, the EU just got much cooler in my book. On Tuesday, European Union Commission ministers unanimously approved a series of proposals that resolved for the Union to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020, and by 30% if other developed nations agree to jump on board. With the EU now made up of 27 countries with over 490 million people emitting over 6,ooo million tons of greenhouse gases, this move is ambitious, bold, and necessary.

In 2002, the “EU-15″ (member states before its expansion in 2004 including: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) ratified the Kyoto Protocol, with the overall EU target to reduce emissions 8% (from 1990 base levels) by 2012. The EU-15 divided the task of meeting this target by assigning each member state a national target reduction level; and, unsurprisingly, there has been mixed degrees of success; some nations are making progress while others are falling behind in achieving their targets. Nonetheless, the proposal reports that the EU will still meet its 8% reduction target by the deadline (assuming completion of planned actions and additional non-domestic measures are taken) and that European GHG emissions are, in fact, decreasing (though very slowly) since the Protocol.

Yet since the 2002 Kyoto ratification and national emissions reductions have been set, 12 new nations have joined this European fiesta. Now that the EU has 27 member states, what does the fight against climate change look like? The new states are certainly not off the hook; and neither are candidate countries. Each new member has committed to national targets, most of which range from 6-8%, similarly to the overall EU Kyoto target. In fact, new EU projections show that if all planned actions are taken, the total EU-25 (Bulgaria and Romania just joined the EU on Jan. 1st of this year, so they weren’t included in this account) emissions reduction could even reach 10.8% in 2010. That’s not to say that this will be easy (far from it), Romania is already struggling to meet Kyoto emissions standards, check out this scary post-Soviet metal factory as an example.

But now EU Environment ministers say that Kyoto is not enough and that the EU is prepared to take the lead in the international community to cut GHG emissions FAST, with hopes that other developed nations will follow suit. According to a BBC article prepared by members of the Commission, the EU could accomplish these new, ambitious goals through a variety of means: “faster adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles, tougher and better labelling on appliances, better building insulation and more energy-efficient power generation and transmission […], strengthening and expanding the EU carbon trading scheme, […increased spending on] energy research [and implementing] an action plan on energy efficiency, and many more projects like regulating specific business sectors’ emissions (like aviation and transport), as well as using carbon sinks.

Yet, with the lingering questions surrounding the accomplishment of Kyoto’s base targets, what is the EU doing? It may be that the definitiveness of the IPCC’s latest report has provided leaders with the confidence and urgency to take steps never before taken and at rates previously unimaginable. I am curious to see how the EU will follow through with these ambitions and set it to action to curb global climate change. I surely hope that the EU’s autonomous commitment to drastically cut GHG emissions will catch on (quickly!) in other developed nations’ agenda and make this part of a global solution. The report also addresses the role of developing nations in the climate change arena quite well, but that is material for a whole separate post.

Just to clarify, the adoption of these proposals on Tuesday doesn’t mean that it’s actually happening yet. The Commission has conceptually agreed to this 20% by 2020 target, but we have to wait until March 8-9th to see what happens. At that time, a summit of EU environmental ministers will meet in Brussels to give the final word on the proposals and (fingers-crossed!) create a tangible energy and climate change strategy to meet the goals of this new, cool, and monumental EU initative.

Until then, go Europa!

Disappearing Worlds: Global Warming claims tropical island

For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas.
The Independent
Environment Editor, Geoffrey Lean reports
Published: 24 December 2006

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands – in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati – vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta’s Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university’s School of Oceanographic Studies, says “it is only a matter of some years” before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen “vanishing islands” in India’s part of the delta. The area’s 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years’ time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

Human cost of global warming: Rising seas will soon make 70,000 people homeless

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece

The first ever, Northwest Climate Justice Summit, hosted by the Sierra Student Coalition with the support of the Energy Action Coalition. During the past several years, the youth climate movement has been sweeping campuses across the country. It’s time to bring it to the Pacific Northwest in full force. To fight global warming, we need to act TOGETHER and NOW.

Who: Highschool and College students in WA, OR, ID, MT, BC (and anyone else who can make the trip!)
Where: University of Washington, Seattle
When: Friday, Feb. 2 – Sunday, Feb. 4

Join us to…
• Get Skillz. Receive trainings (by experienced SSC student organizers) on starting student organizations, working with the media, running energy and climate campaigns at your school and more!
• Connect with allies. Help build a strong, active, and successful network of student climate activists in the Pacific Northwest.
• Get inspired. Witness human side in the fight against global warming- hearing stories of direct victims of climate change from Global Exchange.
• Share experiences. See how other students in the Northwest have responded to the challenge- learning from each other’s work to bring clean energy, efficiency, and renewables to campus
• Make friends. Eat delicious vegetarian food and have a grand time with cool, new, like-minded students from across the region
• Hear the Rumble of a Movement. Listen to awesome speakers in the Climate Movement, including leaders of the Energy Action Coalition and Seattle’s own Mayor Greg Nickels- creator of the Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement.

Oooh, I’m interested…show me the Details!

]]> http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2006/12/14/northwest-climate-justice-summit/feed/ 0 christinabillingsley http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2006/12/08/did-ya-hear-about-washingtons-clean-energy-initiative/ http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2006/12/08/did-ya-hear-about-washingtons-clean-energy-initiative/#comments Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:19:20 +0000 christinabillingsley http://itsgettinghotinhere.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/did-ya-hear-about-washingtons-clean-energy-initiative/ ]]> IT PASSED. Washington state voters passed a ballot initiative in November (remember those elections? ahhh, glorious!) guaranteeing that by 2020, 15% of the electricity from Washington’s largest utilities comes from home-grown renewable energy sources such as wind and solar! The initiative (known as I-937) actually has teeth and timelines to make sure that state utilities actually do move forward with clean energy, conservation, and efficiency. Here’s the text of the actual initiative. Although endorsed by everyone (who’s cool) ranging from the Washington Association of Churches to the Washington Sustainable Food and Farm Network and the Sierra Club to the Washington Alliance for Retired Americans, passing this legislation was a tough job.

Many constituents had not been familiar with the initiative and initial polling surveys made its supporters worry about its chances. Luckily, (and it feels so good to write this in retrospect) our final pushes to voters and effective targeting of constituents made the difference; the initiative passed with a close 51% of the vote.

What does this mean for youth working on state initiatives and campaigns? I’d say many things, but the most pressing lesson learned in my group, the Sierra Student Coalition @ the University of Washington (SSC @ UW) was the importance of friends. (awwww!)

Having allies outside of the campus environment helped our group get started working quickly and efficiently on this issue and we in turn helped re-energize our allies’ own campaign work. By the time class started for students at UW (quarter system, yeesh!) our allies had been in the midst of I-937 work for months. Most of the grassroots (Cesar Chavez-style-talking-to-people-about-the-initiative) work began in the summer, so that by fall our allies were excellent resources. They knew what groups hadn’t been approached, what messages worked best for various constituencies, and they also had resources and materials ready for us to tap in to when we came back for the semester. In return, we as students offered a lot to help build upon the existing campaign and our allies’ efforts. Students (in any movement, really) possess unique creativity in tactics, strategy, and framing the debate, as well as the “hip, cool, new image” in a cause that allows us to build better relationships with young or new voters. We as students also, even more importantly, provide new energy, drive, skills, and connections for a campaign or a movement- and these make up a mighty fine recipe for success.

Back to UW: In our campus political environment, students are generally in support of renewable energy and against global warming. (It’s pretty cool that you don’t really have to convince them about it here in Seattle. Thank you Mayor Greg Nickels!) But it was our job to tell them about SOLUTIONS.

SSC @ UW students tabled on campus for weeks using carefully constructed visuals and information to get the word out about this ballot initiative (as well as one other scary ballot initiative regarding property rights, I-933, but that’s another story with a happy ending). To raise consciousness about global warming, we held a movie screening of the themed comedy show called Earth to America- you can check out a clip of Will Ferrell as President Bush and his take (or lack thereof) on global warming on youtube. We had a great turnout for this event and it helped establish our group’s role on campus in offering GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS- as exemplified by the lovely I-937.

In November, Washington state gave voters a chance to critically assess their take on energy production and consumption in the state. I-937 offered a “yes” or “no” answer to global warming solutions and tested Americans’ response to global warming threats. The response was clear: voters are ready to move away from global warming debates and toward adopting solutions. I-937′s success in Washington has sent a clear message of support for statewide clean energy alternatives, renewables, efficiency, and conservation legistlation. Perhaps (hopefully) this statewide call for a new energy future will be heard in Capitol Hill as the new Congress discusses global warming solutions. What’s even more exciting to know is that 22 other states passed similar clean energy legislation even before Washington did just one month ago.

So now, I’m curious… which one of you is next?