On the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration as US President, appeals on climate change and energy reform are rolling in from around the world. Expectations are high that the early signs of a significant reversal of the Bush Administration’s stance on climate policy will start to materialise soon after he takes office this week. And the stakes have only been raised since the onset of recession in much of the developed world in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Outspoken NASA scientist James Hansen has followed up last week’s letter the President-elect with a warning that the incoming 44th President has only four years, the length of his first term in office, to act on climate change and avert disaster later this century.
In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Hansen said that carbon levels in the atmosphere had already reached a level where positive feedbacks have begun that will threaten runaway climate change. Such feedbacks include the greater absorption of solar energy in polar regions - speeding up global warming - after initial warming has reduced the highly-reflective ice-cap cover.
"We cannot afford to put off change any longer," Hansen said. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."
Hansen’s views were echoed by the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, who said the new Administration’s medium-term emissions reduction target must be stronger. Obama has set a target to reduce emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 but the IPCC says there needs to be cuts of at least 25 per cent below 1990 in all developed nations by that time.
“He has the unique opportunity of saving a large part of the human species and several others, because unless the US takes the lead, I'm afraid we will not get an adequate global response,” Pachauri told the Worldwatch Institute. “We're pretty close to the stage where impacts start to turn very serious and very negative.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has endorsed Obama’s goal to double renewable energy production in the US within three years. IEA head Nobuo Tanaka said that while Obama’s plan was ambitious it was quite do-able. The IEA also supports Obama’s longer-term green stimulus package to spend $150 billion over ten years on low-carbon energy sources and create three to five million jobs.
“We welcome the very strong initiatives of the US administration towards de-carbonising the power sector," Tanaka told Reuters. He warned, however, that the key to success was in laying down the right policy framework to give incentive to the private sector to invest in clean energy infrastructure.
The main policy instruments being considered and used around the world to do this are placing a price on carbon emissions via a
cap and trade scheme, setting mandatory renewable energy targets and funding research and development into low-carbon technologies.
Obama favours a cap and trade scheme, as do most governments around the world. James Hansen has implored Obama to switch to a universal fixed-price
carbon tax on fossil fuels.
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