Articles by Brian Beutler

China’s foreign minister talks climate and development

China's foreign minister Yang Jiechi focused on climate change during his moment in the CGI spotlight yesterday:

Bill Clinton wanted a carbon market back in the day, and he still does

Bill Clinton just gave a short speech and took a few questions from reporters. Some highlights:

When they were in office, Bill Clinton and Al Gore wanted to create a global carbon market. At the time, Europe thought the idea undesirable and unfeasible and didn't offer any support. The effort failed. Now, years down the line, the world is a different place and the idea has much more purchase. Clinton, when asked for his thoughts on this, managed to turn all of his administration's supposed failures -- from health care to peace in the Middle East -- into examples of his foresight: "It's a great thing to fail at a good cause because it keeps free people stumbling in the right direction." Clever. But also true.

So what does he support now? In response to a question about just that (it was the question I wanted to ask, but I guess I didn't raise my hand high enough), Clinton said he still supports a carbon market. A carbon tax creates incentives to individuals, he said -- but in theory, because it's largely untested. He sounded open-minded, but believes that as a catalyst for innovation and with greater enforcement and consumer information, a carbon auction is still the preferable regulatory scheme.

Addendum the first: In answering a question about the empowerment of women in the world, he managed to offer a frighteningly complete history of the world in two minutes.

Addendum the second: Apparently last year's CGI meeting was followed via webcast by about 50,000 people. This year, Clinton announced, that number is 500,000 -- a ten-fold increase. It's not surprising that the CGI audience would grow as the event's profile increased and technology spread and improved, but a 1000 percent increase over the course of one year is really remarkable.

Highlights from Brundtland, Zenawi, and Blair; lowlights from Paulson

Notable quotes from the plenary on "Economic Growth in the Face of Resource Scarcity and Climate Change":

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change: "Industry needs political signals and long-term ones. And it's not sufficient that individual countries set their own [goals] without connecting it to a global system."

Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia: "This is about property right ... it's about a scarce resource, which is how much pollution the atmosphere can take," and about allowing countries that don't need the resource to sell shares to countries that do.

Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the U.K.: "You're not going to get a global deal that is the same strategy operating in every country ... you will end up with a series of different strategies, probably based on cap and trade, and then a linking system."

Hank Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary: I'm not going to quote anything Hank Paulson said here, because it's all been obfuscatory Bush administration claptrap and, next to the three people on stage with him, everything coming out of his mouth sounds ignorant and mendacious.

Ethiopian leader lays out the real inconvenient truth on climate

Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, laid out the, ahem, inconvenient truth: That countries like his suffer because of what countries like ours have done, and that a world-wide cap-and-trade treaty would have to allow countries like Ethiopia to sell carbon allocations to countries like the United States.

He says the funds would be used to invest in green energy. Of course, they could also end up spent on Ethiopia's continuing quest to take over Somalia, so, it seems, there would have to be some oversight here.

Broadly speaking, though, this is a justice problem, and one that will be politically difficult to solve. Blair made the point earlier that if you say that solving global warming requires less consumption, you'll lose the argument. But if you suggest more accurately that saving the Earth from climate change will create new consumption choices, and that making the right ones will help the environment, then people will be convinced.

Creating the will to subsidize a real green revolution in the developing world will certainly require a similar analysis and framing.