1. There’ll be no more energy-sucking televisions in the state where TV was born, now that California has passed the nation’s first law requiring TV energy efficiency standards.
2. Sometimes, incentives just don’t work. The Responsible Travel company has canceled its carbon offsets program, saying it helps travelers appease their guilt over flying but doesn’t actually help reduce emissions — and may even encourage more traveling.
3. Climate change plays favorites apparently. A new report from the U.N. Population Fund says women suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change – but they also might be in the best position to mitigate it as well.
4. A rare giraffe species was on the brink of extinction in 1996, with just 50 animals left in Niger. But regulations against poaching and other conservation efforts have made a huge difference – 13 years later there are now 200 animals.
5. Wondering which major companies are going green? Check out this list of 5 big corporate names that are trying out new, more sustainable practices, from The Daily Green. 

1. What’s more important than reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen?  Scientific American thinks a U.S.-China deal on energy and climate could be just as big.
2. America’s oil capital is trying to green up its image, says Green Inc.  The city of Houston, home to densely packed highways and headquarters of a number of oil companies, plans to roll out an effort to convert 10 city Priuses (Prii?) into plug-in hybrids, and install vehicle charging stations around the metropolitan area.
3. Coca-Cola, the most recognized consumer brand on the planet, will soon start distributing plastic bottles made with up to 30% plant-based material, reports Triple Pundit.  I’m feeling a little less terrible about my Diet Coke addiction today.
4. At this point, the U.S. climate bill could probably use some divine intervention.  Maybe the Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative, a partnership between evangelical leaders and environmental scientists, can convince the Senate to get moving on climate legislation, says the Guardian’s Environment Blog.
5. If that doesn’t work, maybe this new study will change a few minds– the findings indicate that a “robust” climate bill could boost the U.S. economy by about $111 billion by 2020 and could create nearly two million jobs, according to GreenBiz.

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.)

Good news about cow poop. Good news (?) about Copenhagen. Good news for those of you who’ve always dreamed of a dress made of LED lights. Happiness is the smell of a new Cool Green Morning, to paraphrase Don Draper…

1. The rehabilitation of poop continues: The Netherlands has opened its second cow-dung power plant, reports CleanTechnica — to make biogas that will heat more than 1,000 homes.
2. In case you missed it yesterday, President Obama has endorsed a plan to push an ultimate climate change agreement sometime beyond December’s UN meeting in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times. Grist’s Dave Roberts says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Charlie the Tuna muzzled? Dot Earth says last week’s meeting among fishing countries to reach an agreement on restoring depleted numbers of tuna, shark, turtles and other marine life was missing one thing — a basis in science.
4. Count on Inhabitat to render us speechless — with a dress made of 24,000 LED lights (plus “4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals and 40-layers of pleated silk organza crinoline.” When’s it going to hit the shelves at Target?!)
5. Always like to end on good news — this time from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, says AP. But the “why” is a chicken and egg problem — is it because of the Brazilian government’s promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the region (coupled with enforcement of laws against deforestation), or just a drop in ag commodity prices worldwide?

1. We’re getting closer to regulating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — yesterday the EPA took one more step through the obstacle course of government process, inspiring much optimism.
2. Is it too late to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction? Scientists are hoping not. Only 150 remain, threatened by fishing practices, but there’s new hope: the Mexican government has passed a resolution to ban trawling in the vaquita’s only habitat, in the Gulf of California. 
3. Melting glaciers often seem purely symbolic of the climate change problem, but they have real consequences: a new report says the melting of India’s Kashmir glaciers will threaten the water supply of millions of people in the Himalayas, where 90 percent of glaciers are receding.
4. The situation for the koala is nowhere near as dire as the vaquita dolphin, but cute and cuddly can get you a lot of publicity. New estimates indicate Australia’s koala population is getting smaller due to habitat loss, prompting an all-out media campaign by the Australia Koala Foundation.
5. Botanists are in a debate over whether assisted migration of plants — helping them relocate in the face of climate change — is a wise endeavor. Opponents worry that the science isn’t accurate enough to predict if a plant species will become invasive once moved. 

1. Now here’s a question that’s been keeping millions up at night! Which is greener: Going into the refrigerator for a bottle of cold water or using the water dispenser on the fridge door? (Do those still exist?) Treehugger’s Ask Pablo says…um, why are you refrigerating your water?
2. What’s a ton of emitted carbon actually worth? The Institute for Policy Integrity consulted 144 leading economists and got…wildly disparate estimates from the pointyheads. (But 98% of them favored putting a price on the stuff to incentivize energy efficiency and innovation. Hat tip: CleanTechnica.)
3. How can you change a climate change denier’s mind? “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication,” a new report from Columbia University researchers, gives tips for advocates — don’t pile on the anxiety, and be honest about uncertainties. (The report also says people wonder why we can’t just reopen the ozone hole to release the build-up of greenhouse gases. Hat tip: Bright Green Blog.)
4. How many species have been listed as endangered by the Obama administration? Would you believe just one? That’s a much slower rate than that under President George W. Bush, reports Jeremy Hance at Mongabay.
5. 31 days to Copenhagen…what will happen? Today, the BBC’s Richard Black takes his best guess…and says get ready for some late night pizza deliveries and last-second deals. (There is good pizza in Copenhagen, isn’t there?)

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.)

1. How are things in Barcelona (aside from the shocking underperformance of its namesake soccer team this year)? For the climate talks now underway there, Climate Feedback’s Jeff Tollefson reports there’s some optimism that the world can reach political agreement on a climate deal in Copenhagen, with a binding legal agreement following in 2010.
2. We’re #1! (in funding for geothermal R&D, that is!) EcoGeek says the United States government has announced $300 million in such spending — putting it ahead of every other country and Google.org (which is its own planet, isn’t it?)
3. Another, not so nice kind of #1 — the  2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out, and Ecoworldy says Ecuador tops the list of countries with the most such imperiled fauna (2,211).
4. Great white sharks aren’t such sociopathic loners, after all — the Washington Post says they like to hook up in a spot halfway between Hawaii and California that researchers are calling “the cafe.”
5. Noah’s Ark Deux? A team of scientists is proposing an effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species in an effort to aid their conservation, says a report in the Journal of Heredity. (No talk of cloning…yet. Hat tip: Journal Watch Online.)

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.)