What will a successful global climate change agreement look like? That question is only more important to ask in the wake of this weekend’s agreement by President Obama to a plan that will ask world leaders to reach a political agreement at this December’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen, ahead of a more binding agreement some time in 2010.

From a purely scientific perspective, the solution to climate change is straightforward. Burning fossil fuels and clearing forests over the last century have sharply increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to climate change. So, burn less fossil fuel and protect more forests in order to cap and eventually reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to a safer level.

The politics of that solution are much more complicated. Developed countries like the United States need to cut emissions dramatically, since their high emissions are responsible for getting us to this point. Developing countries like India and China need to take some responsibility for the future as their emissions rise and their forests continue to be cleared. For the former, that means breaking bad carbon-intensive habits. For the latter, it means establishing good low-carbon habits from the start.

A successful climate treaty will hinge on agreeing to how much developed and developing countries will reduce their respective greenhouse gas emissions, and also on agreeing how rich countries will help poor countries finance it all. At the same time, those emissions reduction commitments need to add up to enough global reductions to actually keep temperature change under 2 degrees C, the level beyond which impacts are likely to be irreversible and potentially catastrophic.

One reason countries are struggling to agree on emissions reductions going forward is that they have each had very different emission histories and so think they should have different responsibilities for containing future emissions. According to an interactive feature in the Washington Post, the United States has always been and remains a giant emitter of greenhouse gases. China’s surging coal-fired economy is now the single biggest emitter of all.

But China also has a population more than three times that of the United States, meaning that its per capita emissions are still a fraction of those from gluttonous Americans. Meanwhile, some European countries like Germany have already begun a steady but shallow decline in their total and per capita emissions. Missing from these statistics, though, are emissions from deforestation that catapult Indonesia and Brazil into the third and fourth ranks globally.

At the same time that negotiators work to agree on differential emissions commitments and the associated financing, they also need to make sure the emissions reductions add up to successfully stop climate change. According to Climate Interactive’s scoreboard, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by more than 80% by the end of the century to keep temperature change under 2 degrees C. Current pledges would reduce annual global greenhouse gas emissions by about 33%. Additional reductions being suggested could save another 33%. But more will be needed to turn the world onto a safer climate trajectory.

So what could a successful climate change agreement look like? What mix of emissions reductions would be fair for developed and developing countries, and will it be enough to stop climate change? Reductions of 25%-40% by 2020 are frequently suggested, but likely insufficient. Negotiators headed to Copenhagen have a hard job to do. But it is still possible for them to succeed.

You can explore some of these challenges and possibilities for a successful global climate change agreement using Climate Interactive’s C-Learn simulator. It lets you set emissions reduction targets for developed countries like the United States, fast-growing developing countries like China and India, and small developing countries like many in Africa. You can also set goals for reducing emissions from deforestation and sequestering emissions through reforestation. The simulator will then tell you how those targets add up in terms of overall emissions and predicted temperature change.

It may look and feel a bit complicated, but that’s how the real-world challenge is. Give it a try and see what ideas you come up with for how a successful global agreement could keep climate change under 2 degrees C. And then share your ideas here and at Planet Change.

(Image: Traffic at a stoplight in Bangkok. Credit: seasidebear/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Feeling unlucky this Friday the 13th? Fortify yourself with the latest in green news — recycled diapers, undersea gliders, a historic comeback and a new way to shut up those global warming skeptics close to you (speaking of superstitious…)

1. So you’re at a family gathering, arguing with Uncle Climate Denier over the reality of climate change — what’s your trump card? How about the huge increase in the ratio of record high temps to record low temps across the United States in the last six decades? Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth says the findings are accepted by scientists across the political spectrum. (I bet Uncle Climate Denier remembers those frozen winter mornings just fine…)
2. Also from Dot Earth — two U.S. senators have proposed giving a prize to anybody with a way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it permanently. (Isn’t that called “a forest”? Just asking…)
3. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out — two UK companies are building a plant to recycle diapers into, among other things, wallpaper — and the plant will run on the organic matter in the diapers themselves. Eeewww… (Hat tip: Triple Pundit.)
4. Cool Green Science Alert! A new undersea glider (huh?) is tracking the rare beaked whale off the coast of Hawaii…using only a listening device. (It’s the best way, because the whales are shy and live far off shore. Hat tip: Wired Science.)
5. Score one for the good guys — the brown pelican, once on the endangered species list because DDT weakened its eggs, has been declared “fully recovered” by the U.S. Department of the Interior, reports the LA Times. (Hat tip: Yale Environment 360.)

(Image: Brown pelicans off Morro Bay, California. Credit: mikebaird/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. Are hybrids more likely to hit pedestrians and bicyclists than other car types, as a new study reports? Treehugger analyzes the data.
2. Andrew Revkin at DotEarth takes a look at the topic of how journalists and scientists can effectively communicate about environmental topics like marine pollution.
3. Did an albatross die so you could eat a tuna sandwich for lunch today? Probably, says Scientific American. A new report says tuna fishing kills an albatross every five minutes.
4. Sure, scientist Stephen Schneider made a mistake back in 1971 when he predicted that aerosol pollution would cause a global cooling effect, but today he’s considered a leading climatologist. Check out this Q&A with him from The New Republic.
5. Thinking about taking a vacation this winter? A new study finds that nature tourism doesn’t necessarily bring more money to the pockets of local people – although the longer the stay, the more benefits for the local economy. 

As the “energy sprawl” idea has been discussed and debated in the media, I (one of the paper’s co-authors) have  grown a thick skin against criticism. Perhaps the harshest piece of invective, however, still bothers me: the criticism by Matt Wasson in the Huffington Post.

The factual criticisms Matt makes aren’t that troublesome to me, and I can understand his perspective as someone who works to minimize the impact of coal mining on the environment. Matt makes the point that an acre of coal mining is not necessarily the same biodiversity impact as an acre with wind turbines, a point we totally agree with (that’s why we made it in the original paper!). And of course our one measure of land-use can’t capture all of the myriad ways energy production affects the environment; it was never meant to.

What bothers me is the accusation that my scientific paper is “poisoning” the public debate about climate change and energy policy. Indeed, Matt advocates “burning” his post (and perhaps my paper), as if retaining memory of energy sprawl issues was morally corrupting. What does this say about the way we today regard the meaning and responsibility of science to advocacy…and the fragility of public discourse?

I suspect similar criticism will be made of the recent paper by Searchinger and others in Science, which makes the point (intellectually related to the energy sprawl issue) that if land-use change for energy production is not accounted for in climate change policy, extra carbon could be released. From a certain perspective, Searchinger’s article is inconvenient for environmental NGOs just as much as my paper is…if not more so.

But what an anemic view of democracy! As if a scientific paper which complicates the advocacy position of environmentalists is somehow morally equivalent to the myth of death panels hidden in the health care bill! Matt’s title reflects a misunderstanding of science’s relationship to the environmental movement. It is not the job of scientists to produce papers that reinforce a preconceived advocacy position. Rather, it is the job of scientists to lay the facts on the table, so those facts can inform advocacy.

To be sure, any one scientific paper can be interpreted different ways be different actors. Different environmental NGOs may have different positions on what Searchinger’s article means for their advocacy on energy policy, for example, but they can still acknowledge that there is a scientific issue there to consider.

And what an anemic view of the media! As if the political discussion about climate change is so fragile that our messaging must be simple and without nuance! I think this is a very TV-era mentality, where infrequent, carefully-worded press releases could control the public debate. While some of that phenomenon still exists, in a world where thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of activists and lobbyists work on climate change issues, it strikes me as a bit naïve.

I would rather make sure that the scientific facts are out there, and then trust in the marketplace of ideas to sort out over the long term what is important and what is not.

(Image credit: the_russians_are_here/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

It’s Election Day in the United States — get out and vote! Then immediately get back on your smartphone and check out the hottest in online green this morning — including what might possibly be the best green name ever…

1. Mt. Kilimanjaro’s ice cap is disappearing — but is that climate change’s fault? Two research teams are disagreeing, reports The New York Times, with one blaming a decline in moisture rather than rising temperatures. (No word on which side of this debate the band Toto — which had the 1982 smash hit song “Africa,” which in an eerie coincidence mentions both Kilimanjaro and “the rains of Africa” — comes down. We’ll keep you posted.)
2. Meanwhile, Nepal’s cabinet plans to meet on Mount Everest to show the world how global warming is melting Himalayan glaciers, reports Associated Press. (No need for oxygen tanks — they’re only going to base camp, not all the way up.)
3. The leader of Orthodox Christianity — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who calls himself “the green patriarch” — is in Washington this week, talking up the spiritual importance of environmentalism, reports the Washington Post.
4. Speaking of the Post, check out their great infographic tool that tracks total national per capita CO2 emissions since 1950. (Hat tip: Treehugger.)
5. Which societies will survive climate change best? Gaia Vince (which has to be one of the great green names in history) surveys the field at Yale Environment 360 and likes…Laos, among other places.

(Image: Mount Kilimanjaro. Credit: Picture_Taker_2/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. Can long-range climate forecasting get good enough to help us adapt climate change? That’s the vision of Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA. But other scientists say it’s pie in the sky, reports Climate Feedback. (Not that anyone’s predicting actual pie floating in the sky…)
2. Are exaggerated claims about the risks of global warming undercutting efforts to stop it? Indubitably, say some British scientists in a Times of London piece. (Hat tip: Dot Earth, who asks: Can world leaders and climate campaigners tout a low-emission energy future instead of shaking the climate change boogie man?)
3. Certified sustainable palm oil is a booming business, reports Environmental Leader — rising from only about 15,000 tons sold worldwide in May to more than 100,000 in the last two months. (Somewhere in Indonesia, an orangutan — maybe a bunch — say thank you.)
4. Mon Dieu! Why are vandals putting a big dent in Paris’ bike-sharing program? They see the bikes as bourgeois, reports The New York Times — maybe because you have to present a credit card to own one? (Hat tip: Triple Pundit.)
5. Why worry about energy sprawl when feeding Rover chews up so much more real estate? A new study in New Scientist says that it takes over two square acres of land to feed a medium-sized dog — and, with Americans owning about 75 million dogs and 88 million cats, that takes a land mass bigger than Texas, says Wired Science!

What’s more frightening than more Americans getting their news from Jon Stewart than a newspaper? When Jon Stewart says putting giant reflective mirrors into space will slow climate change…and he means it! It’s real scary stuff, kids, so we put it last in this morning’s Coolness to give you a good fright for the weekend! (Like you needed one.)

1. Wind turbines get bad press for killing migrating birds, bats…anything that flies. But a new study reported in CleanTechnica says cats and buildings kill far more…and that climate change poses the biggest threat of extinction to bird species. (Those darn outdoor cats…)
2. Were expectations too high for Copenhagen to begin with? A new study in Nature Reports Climate Change says researchers who study cooperation think “trying to get an effective multi-faceted treaty agreed between 192 nations is a waste of time,” reports Climate Feedback. Ouch! (But bilateral deals are a much more effective first step, says the report…and it seems U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern might now agree, reports The Guardian.)
3. Could reducing air pollution speed up global warming? A new report in Science magazine says some aerosols actually have an atmospheric cooling effect…perhaps akin to a giant antiperspirant. (Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)
4. Nothing is ever easy, is it? Solar farms, it turns out, demand a lot of water for cooling — pitting them smack against water conservation in the perpetually H2O-challenged state of California, says EcoGeek.
5. Jon Stewart endorses geoengineering (you know, like placing reflective mirrors in Earth orbit or seeding clouds) as the most viable solution to climate change, prompted by the arguments of Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner. Problem is, Levitt and Dubner are wrong, say a growing number of people. Treehugger reviews the debate.

(Image credit: jpstanley/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

It’s indeed a bright green morning today, with positive news everywhere: International Climate Day of Action a big success! Smart meters galore! And here’s the big news: a new study shows your personal actions can make a difference in the fight against climate change! Take that, all you climate change pessimists.

1. Bill McKibben says we need to “stop whining and man up” to the fact that we can fight climate change. Grist chatted with him about 350’s International Day of Climate Action on October 24 (see video above), which included thousands of events around the world. Did you participate?
2. If you don’t already have a smart meter in your home, now’s your chance to get one — a government grant for $3.4 billion will install 18 million smart meters into houses across the United States to help improve energy efficiency.
3. And just in case you’re thinking that a smart meter won’t make much of a dent in climate change, a new study found that 33 simple household improvements could reduce national carbon emissions by 7 percent –enough to offset emissions from the petroleum, iron, steel and aluminum industries combined.
4. Can conservationists save the world? It’s the vision and hope of Nature Conservancy President and CEO Mark Tercek. Read a Reuters interview with Tercek about using market forces to protect nature – and how conservation is in everyone’s economic interest.  
5. Scientists have a new tool in the battle to save frogs from a deadly fungus that’s killing them all over the world: a highly-technical protocol for detecting the fungus in frogs is now available online, making it possible for scientists everywhere to have the information they need.

Some days you wake up and find everything you’re doing and believing is wrong — like eating tomatoes or thinking your fellow Americans trust the scientific consensus that man is causing climate change. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those days. But tomorrow is Climate Action Day, so…maybe slice a tomato and take it in a sandwich?

1. Yesterday’s big news: A Pew poll showing a dive in the percentage of Americans who believe human activities are causing global warming — down to 35%. This morning, Grist’s Dave Roberts breaks down the numbers and says it means we should focus on making clean energy cheap.
2. Are we all wrong about how much biofuels could help reduce carbon emissions? A new paper in Science says yes — that policymakers and scientists have underestimated the carbon released by the land-use changes farmers have to make to grow biofuels…like cutting down trees. (Hat tip: Washington Post.com.)
3. Will eating carrots instead of tomatoes save the planet? Sweden is now listing the carbon emissions associated with food production, reports The New York Times…and its national food administration is making diet recommendations — like eat farmed carrots instead of hothouse cucumbers and tomatoes, which require lots of energy to produce. (Only in Sweden could this happen…)
4. Is Big Coal the obstacle to U.S. climate change legislation? Economist and former UN Millennium Project head Jeffrey Sachs says yes in the Guardian. (Hat tip: Environmental Capital.)
5. Are reptiles the world’s great unknown disappearing class of fauna? The BBC’s Richard Black says snakes, lizards, etc. are woefully understudied — but could be in as much danger of extinction as amphibians.

(Image credit: The Ewan/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. According to a new poll, American voters still don’t think climate change should be high on the government’s agenda. The poll from Politico found that just 4 percent of people think climate change is a top priority — far below the 45 percent who ranked the economy as most important. 
2. First there was bee colony collapse disorder, then white-nose syndrome…now, sadly, Mother Nature has a new malady: sudden aspen decline. Across the West aspen trees are dying off in huge numbers due to a syndrome that scientists believe is caused by global warming (you knew it, didn’t you?).
3. Climate change hits the courts: the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans has ruled that Hurricane Katrina victims can sue oil and gas companies for contributing to the global warming that worsened Katrina.
4. In case this weekend’s snowfall in New England (in October!) got you thinking maybe global warming isn’t such a big deal afterall, Bright Green Blog has some helpful reminders about just how climate change works — think long-term trends.
5. Is climate change indirectly causing more disease in humans? Scientists have noted a rise in disease transmission from wildlife to humans, spurring interest in a new field known as “conservation medicine” that looks to understand the connection between human health and environmental changes, particularly climate change.