Reports from Bali
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Louisville Climate Action Network |
This page was most
recently updated on
13 Dec 07.
recently updated on
13 Dec 07.
Art Williams, the director of Louisville's Air Pollution Control
District, is in Bali, Indonesia, representing the National
Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) at the United
Nations conference for constructing efforts to build upon the
Kyoto Protocol. Read Art's first report below:
District, is in Bali, Indonesia, representing the National
Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) at the United
Nations conference for constructing efforts to build upon the
Kyoto Protocol. Read Art's first report below:
Hello, from hot and humid Bali!
I'm no Ken Colburn, Chris James or Amy Royden Bloom--so, you'll have to endure my
less colorful and less literary posts. (For reference purposes, Louisville is 13 hrs
behind Bali, so, as I write this Tuesday morning at 10am it's 9pm Sunday at home.)
Bali appears to be a much poorer country, in terms of per capita income, than I
expected. Considerably above subsistence, but clearly a lot of hand to mouth
existence here. One early and continuing observation: I've never seen so many
(badly polluting) motorcycles anywhere; the streets are very narrow and on my taxi
rides I observe scores of near misses with them.
Saturday and Sunday
Here's my take away message from two days of the adaptation workshops: If you
think carbon is going to be expensive from mitigating climate change (CC), just wait til
you get the bill for adaptation. Adaptation, in brief, is the notion of addressing the
impacts of CC. And, money is the lingu franca of the discussion. It's all about
shifting monies from the developed countries (donor states) to the developing world.
But, as in all things the devil is in the details. How much? Who pays? What's the
obligation on the international funding groups, World Bank, IMF, GEF, etc. Who
decides all this--what are the rules? The donors want accountability, the recipients
(developed countries, their citizens, NGO's) want transparency. It's estimated that
the price tag for adaptation is in the range of $10-50 billion per year for each year of
the next several decades. So, whatever we thought we'd pay from cap-and-trade or
whatever mechanism gets in place--somehow, sometime add more on top.
Adaptation is a broad tent. It includes a wide range of impacts to be addressed:
rebuilding damaged infrastructure, direct aid to displaced individuals or communities,
capacity building, the list goes on and on. Other key points: adaptation is very
country specific, so what it means will vary widely; also, adaptation "science"is in its
earliest stages. It's clear that it will be a fertile field for NGOs, universities, human
service organizations and many more.
One very interesting presentation was from Barry Smit, who has studied CC effects in
the Arctic on the Inuit people. One observation is that the Inuit have replaced sled
dogs with snowmobiles, with all kinds of results. An interesting one is that while they
can now travel faster, they more frequently get stranded on ice flows or fall through
thin ice because their dogs could sense thin ice or seismic vibrations on areas
that were about to beak off. Snowmobiles aren't quite that refined.
One interesting area of discussion that I hadn't thought about--as more attention is
paid to the carbon footprint of everything and to some extent a carbon stigma--what
will be the effect on fair trade goods--I'm used to having discussions about the energy
embedded in transporting food a long ways but when you put that over on fair trade
goods what happens to the indigenous peoples whose income may be coming
primarily from the fair trade opportunities that have opened up? What if a carbon fee
gets added to the cost? Would it hurt fair trade? Will I still be able to get my
shade-tree coffee?
Previously, most of the CC debate has been on mitigation. Adaptation issues are
now front-and-center; there's a substantial push to codify its treatment in much more
detail in the future than in the Kyoto Protocol. And, if I have my info straight, the
Lieberman-Warner bill that passed out of committee last week has a section
that would take some monies from the sale of allowances and put it into an
adaptation fund (though I think the projected dollar amounts are modest--maybe
in the range of $125M at expected carbon prices). Clearly, this will become a
substantial issues.
As a further aside the discussions made me think about adaptation issues for my own
fossil fuel state of Kentucky. As the cost of carbon increases and international
demand for coal continues to increase (China, India), isn't it likely that the coal
in Kentucky will be redirected to those markets creating both cost spikes and energy
supply disruptions that will adversely impact folks in my state. So, should I get that
application ready to send to the World Bank for Kentucky Adaptation Assistance?
I'm no Ken Colburn, Chris James or Amy Royden Bloom--so, you'll have to endure my
less colorful and less literary posts. (For reference purposes, Louisville is 13 hrs
behind Bali, so, as I write this Tuesday morning at 10am it's 9pm Sunday at home.)
Bali appears to be a much poorer country, in terms of per capita income, than I
expected. Considerably above subsistence, but clearly a lot of hand to mouth
existence here. One early and continuing observation: I've never seen so many
(badly polluting) motorcycles anywhere; the streets are very narrow and on my taxi
rides I observe scores of near misses with them.
Saturday and Sunday
Here's my take away message from two days of the adaptation workshops: If you
think carbon is going to be expensive from mitigating climate change (CC), just wait til
you get the bill for adaptation. Adaptation, in brief, is the notion of addressing the
impacts of CC. And, money is the lingu franca of the discussion. It's all about
shifting monies from the developed countries (donor states) to the developing world.
But, as in all things the devil is in the details. How much? Who pays? What's the
obligation on the international funding groups, World Bank, IMF, GEF, etc. Who
decides all this--what are the rules? The donors want accountability, the recipients
(developed countries, their citizens, NGO's) want transparency. It's estimated that
the price tag for adaptation is in the range of $10-50 billion per year for each year of
the next several decades. So, whatever we thought we'd pay from cap-and-trade or
whatever mechanism gets in place--somehow, sometime add more on top.
Adaptation is a broad tent. It includes a wide range of impacts to be addressed:
rebuilding damaged infrastructure, direct aid to displaced individuals or communities,
capacity building, the list goes on and on. Other key points: adaptation is very
country specific, so what it means will vary widely; also, adaptation "science"is in its
earliest stages. It's clear that it will be a fertile field for NGOs, universities, human
service organizations and many more.
One very interesting presentation was from Barry Smit, who has studied CC effects in
the Arctic on the Inuit people. One observation is that the Inuit have replaced sled
dogs with snowmobiles, with all kinds of results. An interesting one is that while they
can now travel faster, they more frequently get stranded on ice flows or fall through
thin ice because their dogs could sense thin ice or seismic vibrations on areas
that were about to beak off. Snowmobiles aren't quite that refined.
One interesting area of discussion that I hadn't thought about--as more attention is
paid to the carbon footprint of everything and to some extent a carbon stigma--what
will be the effect on fair trade goods--I'm used to having discussions about the energy
embedded in transporting food a long ways but when you put that over on fair trade
goods what happens to the indigenous peoples whose income may be coming
primarily from the fair trade opportunities that have opened up? What if a carbon fee
gets added to the cost? Would it hurt fair trade? Will I still be able to get my
shade-tree coffee?
Previously, most of the CC debate has been on mitigation. Adaptation issues are
now front-and-center; there's a substantial push to codify its treatment in much more
detail in the future than in the Kyoto Protocol. And, if I have my info straight, the
Lieberman-Warner bill that passed out of committee last week has a section
that would take some monies from the sale of allowances and put it into an
adaptation fund (though I think the projected dollar amounts are modest--maybe
in the range of $125M at expected carbon prices). Clearly, this will become a
substantial issues.
As a further aside the discussions made me think about adaptation issues for my own
fossil fuel state of Kentucky. As the cost of carbon increases and international
demand for coal continues to increase (China, India), isn't it likely that the coal
in Kentucky will be redirected to those markets creating both cost spikes and energy
supply disruptions that will adversely impact folks in my state. So, should I get that
application ready to send to the World Bank for Kentucky Adaptation Assistance?
| Keep Louisville Cool! |