China and Trade – Steven Chu suggested at a recent hearing in the House, as Reuters reported here, that “…once Washington develops a system limiting carbon emissions, if other countries do not impose a cost on carbon emissions the United States will be at a disadvantage.” Chu said that one idea in the mix is to place tariffs on imports from countries that do not place a price on carbon. I talked about this concept at Economic Levers for GHG Reductions about a year ago.
Chu’s remarks set off our brothers and sisters in the PRC. Reuters also reports that Xie Zhenhua, head of China’s Climate Change and Coordinating Committee was up in arms at the mere idea. “I oppose using climate change as an excuse to practice protectionism on trade.” This is more saber rattling of the kind we’ve been seeing from the PRC of late, testing the new American President no doubt. I think, however, the Chinese, if the US and EU and other parties committed to developing a robust world regime to curtail climate change are serious and smart, will go along. I think John Ikenberry’s analysis that the need that the Chinese have to be part of the liberal international order, not opposed to it, will bring them into the fold on this most critical of all global issues.
FT’s Climate Change Challenge – I wrote about this initiative here last fall. The FT, Forum for the Future, and HP have organized this contest and are offering a $75,000 prize to the winner. You can go to the web page for the contest and vote for your choice among the five exceedingly worthy finalists. This is just one more excellent example of the sort of spur that will help us solve the crisis.
Holdren and Lubchenco (Finally) – After some shenanigans in the Senate – see the ugly part of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – two entities at the heart of the federal government’s efforts on climate change, OSTP and NOAA, both have their directors in place.
Climate Change & Security – An important conference took place last week in Washington. Its message was simple: Policy on climate change must take into consideration the impacts on international and national security arrangements. The conference press release, from the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD), references any number of threats to the environment that will inevitably lead to diminished human security. One speaker talked about an issue, the Himalayas, that I addressed here recently. “Climate change is threatening 1,500 miles of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau that feed the rivers that supply drinking and agriculture water to billions of people in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.”
There are a number of good folks who’ve been looking at this including the UN Security Council, the CNA Corporation and the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) at the Wilson Center, among others.
The Greening of Hotels – I was delighted to learn that there’s a website devoted to making our days away from home, traveling for business or pleasure, more sustainable. Green Lodging News is “lodging’s leading environmental news source.” There’s a wealth of information here. I remember a line from a Stoppard play, “Night and Day,” that hotel rooms “…constitute a separate moral universe.” Apparently not.
