The World Welcomes Obama, Chu Warns of Irreversible Damage to the Planet

I woke Wednesday morning at 2:00 a.m. to watch live election returns in my home country that, just three hours later, would confirm we had chosen Senator Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president.

Watching the unabashed joy of the 250,000 people gathered in Chicago's Grant Park to listen to Obama's victory speech, I began to think of what Obama's presidency will bring. Surely, I thought, the progressive energy plan Obama promoted during the campaign will replace the Bush administration's love for fossil fuels, and his promise to re-engage with the world will crack the dipolmatic isolation, especially in addressing global warming, that has marked much of Bush's presidency.

Restoring America's legitimacy in international climate talks begins in three weeks, the Guardian's John Vidal writes, when Obama sends his own energy advisers to the COP14 talks in Poznan, Poland.

The next U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator will lead an agency with a much-expanded role, as any significant climate change legislation to emerge from Congress is likely to direct the EPA to prepare mechanisms, including a cap-and-trade system, to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Wired.com's Brandon Keim handicaps the current favorites to replace Administrator Stephen Johnson:  Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection head and Clinton White House environmental official Kathleen McGinty; California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols; and Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The primary beneficiary of Obama's plan to invest US150 billion over 10 years in alternative energy will be a Department of Energy with a renewed focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy. PostGlobal advances the names of candidates, including Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Washington  U.S. House member Jay Inslee, to lead Obama's Energy Department.

At Yale Environment 360, American author Bill McKibben urges Obama to prioritize green investment, push for a stiff cap on carbon, and to provide strong leadership at COP15, here in Copenhagen in December of next year.

An insider's look at what an Obama administration will mean for America's energy policy and its role in international climate talks is found in a Climate Community interview with Obama energy advisor and Copenhagen Climate Councillor Daniel Kammen.

At Clean Break, Tyler Hamilton ruminates on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's course reversal on climate change, expressed in a day-after-the-election invitation to Obama to create a North American cap-and-trade system. Perhaps Harper read, courtesy of a Mike De Souza report on a Carbon Disclosure Project survey released Tuesday, that Canada's largest corporations are starting to realize that more business opportunities than risks await innovative firms that move to cut emissions.

In Europe, this week, there were mixed signals. Ben Block at the Worldwatch Institute covers the launch of the world's first International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a project backed by 51 countries and led by Denmark, Germany, and Spain. IRENA will offer technical, financial, and policy advice to governments around the world interested in launching renewables projects.

At the same time, James Kanter, at Green Inc., writes about the European Commission's decision to delay to 2015 the requirement that entire car fleets meet stringent carbon dioxide emission standards first set two years ago. And Reuters' Gabriela Baczynska details the ongoing EU spat that has a bloc of seven Eastern European nations, led by Poland, working to scuttle part of the Union's proposed climate change package.

China, meanwhile, sent signals Thursday that it looks to engage more forcefully in international climate talks and boost green investment. The country hosts a two-day conference beginning today to announce a new multi-billion-dollar international fund for climate-friendly technology, writes Chris Buckley at Reuters. The fund complements China's recent challenge to developed countries to devote as much as 1% of their GDP to help poor countries fight global warming.

China, itself, is making impressive gains in deployment of green technologies. A new report from the Clean Edge Group finds that installed wind energy capacity in China surged 145% from 2006 to 2007. China already has the world's largest wind turbine manufacturing industry, and it will overtake Germany by the end of next year as the world's top wind energy nation, the report finds.

China's renewable energy surge can be amplified further, replicated internationally, and it still might not be enough to stave off global warming. Reuters reports today that the European Union target to limit warming of the planet to no more than 2°C may not be achievable, according to the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook to be published next week. "Even leaving aside any debate about the political feasibility ... it is uncertain whether the scale of the transformation envisaged is even technically achievable, as the scenario assumes broad development of technologies that have not yet been proven," the reports says.

The IEA's sober assessment of our ability to control rising temperatures was preceded by an exclusive interview published this week at the Climate Community. In the interview, which Copenhagen Climate Council Founder Erik Rasmussen calls "the most serious warning against global warming yet offered by the scientific community," physicist and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Director, Steve Chu warns that the public and policymakers have ignored the alarming data and scenarios released since the IPCC's Fourth Assessment report was published in 2007. We underestimate the risk, Chu says, and ignore the fact that the planet is threatened with "sudden, unpredictable, and irreversible disaster."

Justin Gerdes,

Web Editor