More on coffee and cocoa

More on challenges facing the coffee and cocoa sectors.

From CIAT on impact of climate change on cocoa

By 2050, a rise of 2.3 degrees Celsius will drastically affect production in lowland regions, including the major cocoa-producing areas of Moyen-Comoe, Sud-Chttpand Agneby in Cote d'Ivoire, and Western and Brong Ahafo in Ghana. Farmers in these areas are particularly vulnerable since cocoa production is often their primary source of income.

"Many of these farmers use their cocoa trees like ATM machines," said CIAT's Dr. Peter Laderach, the report's lead author. "They pick some pods and sell them to quickly raise cash for school fees or medical expenses. The trees play an absolutely critical role in rural life."

And

Example from CIAT of Climate Smart Agriculture from a smallholder in Kenya

Film on its impact on coffee in Colombia

Taxing fat

Dave Pannell posts on the Danish fat tax - he argues that it is ineffective, regressive and potentially with high transaction costs. On the plus side, the revenue raised could be used to make it less regressive.
Are there parallels with a carbon tax?

Greg Mankiw argues that a carbon tax is not regressive as the poor use less on carbon than the rich (who own more cars for example). Although presumably proportionally more of their income is spent on meeting basic needs which are carbon related expenditures (like food and heating).

Mankiw and Hansen both argue the regressive element of carbon can be reduced through paying dividends to the poor from the revenue raised.

Rearranging chairs on the Titanic

Part of my job is to coordinate a UN agency's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Strategy. This is part of a UN wide initiative. At the annual meeting of all the Environmental Focal Points of the UN recently at FAO in Rome, I had the chance to share some ideas and hear what other UN organizations are doing to reduce emissions. The Greening the Blue website presents some of these.

Giving up business class

Here is a non official, voluntary idea - instead of the business class we are entitled to in the UN, we will forego the privilege to travel business and head to the back of the plane instead.

Like international chef David Chang, I really LOVE travelling business class but travelling business has around twice the carbon footprint than economy because of the extra space taken up in the plane.

Today, I will blog about the environmental case for going economy and why you shouldn’t worry too much about how much paper you print…

Why is climate change a serious issue?

On current projections, the Earth will be around 9C warmer in places by the end of the century. This means mass extinctions of species (50%+) are likely. For humans it also means billions of people living (and dying) in misery through destroyed agriculture, coastal flooding, lack of water, increased spread of tropical diseases.

The very scary thing though is feedback effects (already being observed) when increasing temperatures unleash further emissions of gases such the release of methane from the tundra of Siberia which further speeds up the warming effect and melts more tundra…(a vicious cycle).

So on current projections of economic growth, there is, as like to say, a nonnegliable risk of catastrophe….or put another way, it is possible that Plant Earth will not be somewhere worth living in the life of our children and grandchildren.

Why bother being a climate altruist?

Taking voluntary actions like flying less or taking the bus to work are seen as futile acts to many. Paul Krugman argues that climate altruism is pointless because you are simply freeing up space for someone to emit carbon. This is partially true and a strong argument for why we need carbon taxes to make markets work in favour of the environment not against it.

But change isn’t happening fast enough - bottom up initiatives are needed to signal to those in power that we will vote for them if they introduce strong green measures.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

How do we know what is the best action to take to reduce emissions? Everyone is telling us what is best. Supermarkets label food for its carbon to reduce our shopping basket’s carbon footprint. At work we are reminded to reduce printing and turn off lights. But are these actions really that effective or do they just make us feel like we have done something useful?

Simple calculations reveal where we should concentrate our efforts where we work:

In one UN organization (fairly representative of many), emissions per staff member per year are coming from
Lighting an office - around 0.1t CO2 eq
Paper - around 0.2t CO2eq
Travel - one business class to South Africa from Europe equals 3.0t CO2 eq (the per staff average is 9t CO2eq from travel in many UN agencies)

If just one flight to Africa emits 50 times more carbon than a year’s worth of printing, doesn't it makes sense to think more about alternatives to flying than fretting about lights and paper?

Agriculture and climate change

Donor Platform conference on agriculture and climate change

The Age of Stupid

How to get the message about climate change to your colleagues and friends

Travelling business in the aid business

How do you get a public organization to reduce its carbon footprint when 90% of its emissions come from travel. Options include:

1. Changes staff rules and make staff travel economy (less emission per km flown).
- productivity argument: staff will argue that productivity will suffer. Have to compute whether the higher cost of business is compensated by higher productivity on arrival from travelling in greater comfort. Example
Staff salary of USD700. Plus subsistence for day to recover: Lost productivity 1 day each way = 2000 USD. Extra cost of ticket in region of USD 1500 to 3000.
Therefore worth it in some cases.
- consider: travel east -west most lost productivity in subsequent days from jet lag. doesnt matter if business or economy.
- how do you measure lost productivity (minutes slept during meeting with a ministry official?)
problem: private incentives of business great (comforts, personal air miles accrued). considerable staff resistance to overcome.
- moral argument: we are paid to spend money helping the poorest of the poor. Therefore we must demonstrate we are taking all steps to ensure as much $ arrives with them as possible and not making bureaucrats lives easier.

CC and development

Amartya Sen on how climate change changes the development debate (in French)
via Le Monde

Cows under the cosh again

Fun facts of global warming impact of beef production

Waxman cap and trade bill

New cap and trade. Who is for and against

via Greg Mankiw

Stern talking to

Nick Stern on climate change

Climate change and food safety

Impact of climate change on food safety from FAO

"It is likely that some of the first detectable changes of global
climate change on food safety will be seen as longer summertime peaks of foodborne disease
and/or increased geographic range"

Workshop in Bonn on climate, agriculture and trade

Presentations from meeting on climate change, agriculture and trade organized by ICTSD

Selling a carbon tax to the electorate

Tom Friedman of the NY Times argues for a carbon tax over cap and trade

"People get that — and simplicity matters. Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened, breathe cleaner air and live in a more sustainable world with a stronger America. They are much less likely to support a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing, which is what cap-and-trade is all about. People won’t support what they can’t explain".

UK climate policy destined to fail

From the Tyndale Centre

"The CCC Report (UK Government Policy on climate change) is not in line with the level of global emissions cuts required to prevent breaching the 2°C threshold between ‘acceptable’ and ‘dangerous’ climate change".

Dealing with carbon leakage - rebates

US proposal to deal with competitiveness under a cap and trade programme

As part of the cap-and-trade program, the U.S. government would distribute rebates to manufacturing industries affected by foreign competition that doesn’t have to pay for emitting carbon. These rebates would be limited to U.S.-based manufacturing industries with globally traded products, including iron, steel, pulp, paper, cement, rubber, basic chemicals, glass, and aluminum, which meet specific eligibility criteria. In the event that an international agreement cannot be reached soon, the rebates are designed to compensate those industries that will incur additional compliance costs for direct and indirect carbon emissions under a U.S. cap-and-trade regime and face competition from overseas manufacturers located in countries without similar greenhouse gas-reduction requirements....

in the unlikely event that the rebate provisions are determined to be ineffective, then the proposed legislation authorizes the president to implement a so-called “border adjustment” program...

while the rebate provisions are not beyond WTO scrutiny, they are less likely than the border adjustments to raise trade or WTO issues as they do not involve potentially discriminatory treatment against imports.

via Climate Progress

Comparing cap and trade versus tax

From:

1. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

2. From an academic viewpoint Environmental Economics blog

Bringing agriculture in climate negotiations

Agriculture for the first time discussed last Saturday in the UNFCCC climate change negotiations

6C rise by 2100 without action to curb emissions

The Hadley Centre on their revised predictions on climate change. Without action to curb carbon use our grandchildren have nothing to look forward to.

via Climate Progress

Shell drop renewables - another reason for pricing carbon

Economists predictions come true about investment in renewable energy falling with lower oil prices. Shell has just announced it is dropping renewables from its portfolio as it is not profitable.

Environmental groups are raging, but the reason for this is not corporate malice, but a lack of a sufficiently high price for carbon to interest investors. As their CEO Linda Cook says,

"If there aren't investment opportunities which compete with other projects we won't put money into it. We are businessmen and women. If there were renewables [which made money] we would put money into it."

Carbon tax proposed by Nordhaus

William Nordhaus backed a carbon tax instead of the Kyoto protocol approach.

To bet the world's climate system on the Kyoto approach is a reckless gamble", he told the climate change congress in Copenhagen. "Taxation is a proven instrument. Taxes may be unpopular, but they work. The Kyoto model is largely untested and the experience we have tells us it will not meet our objective — to stablise the world climate system."

via The Guardian