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Philip Radford: Trimming Astroturf From the American Petroleum Institute’s ‘Vote 4 Energy’ Ad

by Philip Radford on January 8, 2012

Huffington Post…

It’s not surprising that the American Petroleum Institute — Big Oil’s premium lobbying entity — is using a synthetic media strategy. Their Vote 4 Energy astroturf campaign spews misinformation like a two-stroke engine belching greenhouse gasses. It attempts to portray ‘real (cough cough) Americans’ who are ‘energy voters,’ which translates to voting for whichever politicians support Big Oil’s dirty agenda. API also bought the back page of the A section of the Washington Post with a Vote4Energy ad that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s about as genuine as a gas-station burrito. If you want authentic insights on Big Oil’s scheming, start with our own mock Vote 4 Energy commercial. Anticipating this new misinformation campaign, PolluterWatch created a mock Vote 4 Energy commercial to show how API and it’s oil company members (Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron and all the usual suspects) are generating this phony citizen support for Big Oil. What’s really fueling this bogus outreach is API’s $200 million budget to push dirty energy incentives and tax handouts for oil companies — something the petrol pushers can’t do on their own. Hence the need to prop up a phony corps of pseudo-interested citizens. They’ve even gone so far as to stage faux-rallies for their Energy Citizens astroturf campaign, as revealed by Greenpeace in a confidential API memo to oil executives. The con-job is essential to their strategy because American’s overwhelmingly support clean energy over dirty oil development. We decided to fight astroturf with astroturf — the real stuff this time, rolling out a carpet of fake green grass at today’s API press conference, flanked by oil company logos that reveal who the real sponsors of this supposed citizens’ movement actually are. The K Street lobbyists seemed confused when the reality of their oily tactics was exposed for all to see. Of course, all of this points back to our own, honest Vote 4 Energy campaign , which we’ll put up against the fake API version any day of the week. API CEO Jack Gerard not only heralded the launch of the campaign, he championed even more dirty energy development like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in his “State of American Energy” address — a proverbial plastic cherry on top of this petroleum-derived sundae of misinformation. Media aren’t fooled. Outlets from the Financial Times to Fortune reinforce what we all know: that this is nothing more than a fossil-fuel-filled PR push. The Hill uses refreshing candor right from the headline, labeling the whole effort nothing more than an ad campaign , quoting Greenpeace reps who reveal the truth despite the API soot-screen. Oddly enough, just after bragging about a DC metro station “dominated” by API’s new Vote 4 Energy ads to those attending the campaign launch on Wednesday, Gerard say “This is not an advertising campaign. Our expectation is that it will be a conversation with the American people.” Except the Vote 4 Energy website’s front page clearly says “Vote4Energy launches ad campaign.” Hmmm… I guess that’s what astroturf campaigns are about — creating both sides of your “conversation with the American people” so you can easily come to a consensus with yourself. Americans are clearly too smart to be faked out by Big Oil’s phony grass roots strategies. Real citizens will continue to counter the fictional folks created by API. We’ll demand clean, renewable energy alternatives that mean genuine job growth, a healthier environment, and a sustainable future that puts our planet ahead of petroleum profit. Vote 4 yourself, not oil executives.

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Philip Radford: Trimming Astroturf From the American Petroleum Institute’s ‘Vote 4 Energy’ Ad

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New York Attorney General Accuses Bank Of New York Mellon Of Fraud, Moves To Block Bank Of America’s Mortgage Deal

by Shahien Nasiripour on August 5, 2011

Huffington Post…

WASHINGTON — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked a state judge to reject a proposed $8.5 billion settlement agreement over soured loans between Bank of America and a group of investors, claiming in court documents that a separate bank representing the investors committed fraud for failing to ensure that the mortgage securities were created in accordance with state law and for failing to act in the investors’ best interest. Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee representing the investors, “knowingly, repeatedly, and consistently” misled investors into thinking that the mortgage bonds were created properly, Schneiderman said in court documents. BNY Mellon also put its own interests before those of the investors it’s supposed to represent, he said. BNY Mellon, the 11th-largest U.S. bank by assets and one of the nation’s largest trustees, stands accused of “repeated fraud and illegality,” according to court filings, which alleges that the abuses “were repeated literally hundreds of times.” In short, Countrywide Financial, the lender purchased by BofA in 2008, failed to properly assemble loan documents needed for the creation of mortgage securities, and BNY Mellon effectively looked the other way, which “apparently triggered widespread fraud,” Schneiderman said in court documents. BNY Mellon should have known the mortgage securities were improperly created because the evidence was “abundant,” Schneiderman asserted, citing the bank’s own documents, news coverage of “foreclosure fraud” and foreclosure actions brought on the bank’s behalf. Schneiderman also accused Bank of America of fabricating the missing documents when it came to foreclosing on homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages. There are “serious questions about the fairness and adequacy” of the proposed settlement agreement, Schneiderman said in court documents. Spokesmen for Bank of America and BNY Mellon didn’t immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. The action throws a significant wrench into the accord, threatening Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, with billions of dollars in additional losses if the $8.5 billion deal with some of the world’s largest investors is ultimately rejected. It also opens up new worries for BofA, the nation’s largest handler of home loans, as the company could be faced with the prospect of having New York’s top legal officer determining that untold billions of dollars’ worth of mortgages turned into securities by Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage company when purchased by Bank of America during the credit crisis, aren’t really securities at all due to failures in the security-creating process. Schneiderman’s actions also threaten Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee for those mortgage bonds, with unknown losses, as his office may determine that the firm didn’t properly assemble and maintain critical loan documents necessary for mortgage instruments to become securities per New York state law. In his office’s court filing, Schneiderman is asking to comb through additional mortgage documents to see if the rot he claims to have discovered is more widespread. New York’s top law enforcement officer has waged an aggressive campaign in trying to root out Wall Street wrongdoing during the housing bubble. Experts and federal bailout watchdogs have questioned whether lenders and other firms took the necessary steps when bundling home loans into securities. Sloppy practices were common, some analysts assert. “If mortgages were not properly transferred in the securitization process, then mortgage-backed securities would in fact not be backed by any mortgages whatsoever,” Adam J. Levitin, a bankruptcy expert and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told a congressional panel last November. Levitin said the problem could “cloud title to nearly every property in the United States” and could lead to trillions of dollars in losses. In a New Jersey bankruptcy case last year, a Bank of America executive, Linda DeMartini, testified that Countrywide routinely did not convey crucial documents for loans sold to investors. Schneiderman’s action in the proposed BofA settlement is an extension of his investigation into Bank of America’s mortgage securitization practices . The probe, first reported by The Huffington Post in June, is part of a larger inquiry that is scrutinizing whether mortgage companies and Wall Street firms took the necessary steps under New York state law when creating mortgage-backed securities, people with direct knowledge of the investigation said at the time. Bank of America is seeking to end a months-long probe by state attorneys general and federal agencies into its mortgage and foreclosure practices. It’s been in advanced negotiations with the government agencies, offering billions of dollars in mortgage aid for strapped homeowners in return for a release from liability for a host of alleged mortgage-related violations, The Huffington Post first reported on Tuesday . Schneiderman’s Thursday court filing objecting to Bank of America’s proposed settlement with mortgage investors is a result of his office’s investigation into mortgage irregularities. It’s the kind of probe that could be stopped if his office agreed to such a release as is being contemplated for Bank of America in the state and federal settlement talks. In court documents, Schneiderman is demanding that his agency be allowed to further examine loan documents to ensure the securities were properly created. New York’s top law enforcement officer is using the Martin Act, a powerful state law that gives prosecutors broad powers to investigate fraud. As trustee, BNY Mellon is charged with ensuring that companies involved in the mortgage-securitization chain properly assembled the needed documents to transform a bundle of home loans into a mortgage bond. As the agent representing investors in those bonds, BNY Mellon owes them a fiduciary duty — a legal obligation to act in their best interest. The proposed settlement Schneiderman is seeking to disrupt involves claims from 22 institutional investors that had demanded Bank of America repurchase home loans packaged into 530 mortgage trusts with a original loan balance of $424 billion. The proposed $8.5 billion payout represents less than 4 cents on the dollar of the current unpaid balance, or about $220 billion. The settlement offer, if approved by a New York state judge, would apply to all other investors in the trusts, extinguishing similar claims. In court filings, some of the other investors have already demanded the judge reject the proposed settlement agreement. Schneiderman demanded that BNY Mellon compensate investors for its “fraudulent and deceptive acts.” * * * * * Shahien Nasiripour is a senior business reporter for The Huffington Post. You can send him an email ; bookmark his page ; subscribe to his RSS feed ; follow him on Twitter ; friend him on Facebook ; become a fan ; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 1-917-267-2335.

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New York Attorney General Accuses Bank Of New York Mellon Of Fraud, Moves To Block Bank Of America’s Mortgage Deal

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Kelly Dern: Women Entrepreneurs Continue to Hit the "Glass Ceiling" in the Technology Industry

August 5, 2011

Yesterday evening, I was among hundreds of technology start-ups, entrepreneurs and VCs who attended TechCrunch #CrunchUp , an ad hoc gathering of Europe’s entrepreneurs. However, when I looked out at the sea of over 300 of Europe’s technology gurus, I noticed that I looked very different from the majority of the people there: I was one of a handful of women. The lack of women attending this event illustrates how few women work in the technology sector and how even fewer are involved with start-ups in general. I have a master’s degree from the media and communications department at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, a department overwhelmingly filled by women students. However, judging by the number of women representing technology start-ups in Europe, very few are entering these positions, even though most technology start-ups today aim to take advantage of, or build new platforms for social media – suggesting that, if anything, these skills should be in greater demand. If women have the skills and education to enter into a tech start-up, then where are they? The under-representation of women in these industries suggests that despite the distance women have come in achieving equality in the workplace and in universities, that they still aren’t reaching the same level within burgeoning industries. This trend suggests that the “glass ceiling” still exists for women in the technology industry. The question is: why? When working with a tech start-up, there is a certain amount of risk and uncertainty that goes along with being a part of something that is completely new. At the same time, there is opportunity, creativity and excitement that you experience being part of something groundbreaking. Do young women not want to take on the risk? If they are just as creative, hardworking and capable as men, then why are they shying away from these opportunities? I am a member of the ‘digital natives’ generation; I grew up with the Internet and have only known an existence belonging to a networked society. Learning to use new technologies was part of growing up – for both men and women in my generation. However, even within a society that gives both sexes the opportunity to develop their skills, gender socialisation still continues – pushing women away from pursuing maths, sciences and technology studies. There needs to be a change in the messages sent to young women – one that reinforces strong female entrepreneur role models. Instead of idolising pop stars, our heroes should be Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey and Caterina Fake According to a recent study by blur Group that asked 1,000 entrepreneurs who they found most inspiring, female entrepreneurs received only 3% of the vote. Some women may be shying away from the ‘geek’ image associated with tech start-ups. There needs to be positive messages that enforce the importance of entering into the these industries, or even forging one of your own. While there are only a handful of women at the top of the tech pyramid, we must not let this imbalance affect who will become our future business leaders. Female entrepreneurs must be more visible, play an active role in mentoring young women, and recruiting them to join the wonderful start-up universe.

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Naomi Troni: The Social Currency Mint

August 4, 2011

Viral marketing and buzz can do a lot of the legwork to get people around the world interested in a brand or company, but there has to be more. There has to be a transformational idea that changes a brand’s business strategy. At Euro RSCG, we do that with Creative Business Ideas (visualize a Venn diagram with creativity and effectiveness as the two overlapping circles; in the middle lies the Creative Business Idea). But great CBIs need a home, a place that’s the hub of all the action. Today, that place is a website. Viral marketing will send consumers there for a first visit, but what will motivate them to come back? These four important elements: 1. Feed Them With Conversational Currency “He’s always got something interesting to say” meets “She’s never at a loss for words.” When people meet, they talk, and when they talk, it helps when they have things to talk about. People have always loved to have things to discuss, and that has only intensified in the digital age. A well-planned, well-stocked website serves an important need by giving consumers plenty of content to work with and talk about. From the moment we introduced The Most Interesting Man in the World (MIM) for Dos Equis, audiences loved him. He definitely always had something interesting to say (“Find out what it is in life that you don’t do well, and don’t do that thing”), and people used the campaign’s lines everywhere — and began creating their own. The MIM legend quickly jumped from TV ads to the Internet, on both the official brand website, where visitors were invited to post videos and comments, and YouTube, where fans posted their own parody videos. And Dos Equis became the first beer brand to surpass 1 million likes on Facebook. 2. Put Them At The Center Of The Action The key to the success of the Internet and social media is interaction. Consumers buzzing with interest in a viral campaign are ready to do more than just come to the site and look. They’re ready to vote, comment and even use interactive tools to design a new product or mix a new color, write a new slogan or even create new TV ads. We knew what a viral campaign could do for a brand because of the Guinness-World-Record-breaking popularity of our Roller Babies ad for Evian. Our next step in keeping people’s interest in the brand was to take the roller buzz and let consumers be part of Evian’s next record breaker. We invited the public to be part of the longest music video ever by taking a photo of themselves in a dancing baby T-shirt and uploading it to Evian’s website ( www.letsbabydance.evian.com ). Thousands of people have done it so far, and the video (currently at about five and a half hours) just keeps getting longer with every upload. 3. Soften The Hard Sell Actually, forget the hard sell. It doesn’t sell, and it can turn consumers against the initiative. Online or offline, how do people feel when they’re enticed to go somewhere for fun only to find that they’re faced with an insistent salesperson who won’t let them go? (Hint: They feel suckered.) Of course, for people who want to buy a product or at least find out more, there needs to be a clear click-through. Apart from that, we see the role of the brand on the site as host and enabler. 4. Teach Them Brands and marketers need to aim to provide interesting information that makes it worth consumers’ while to spend time on the site. That might be blogs, step-by-step how-to guides, or a forum for sharing opinions and ideas. If they find a site that has useful information that addresses their interests in a way they enjoy, they’ll come back. Interesting information has always been at the heart of The Atlantic , the venerated American magazine founded by Emerson and Longfellow, among others, 150 years ago. But what was perceived as intellectual heavy lifting didn’t appeal as much to a society addicted to short-burst texting and reality TV. Our “Think. Again” campaign for the magazine sought out the New Intelligentsia, posing provocative questions in public places and filming bystanders’ answers. That moved the campaign to the Web, where the videos were posted on a microsite and viewed in 139 countries. Site traffic increased 51 percent, and the first print issue of the magazine outpaced its predecessor by 35 percent. The Creative Business Idea did its job by pointing people to interesting information, reminding consumers of how wonderful an experience it is to think.

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Is College Worth It? Later Earnings Tied To Major, Study Finds

August 4, 2011

Later this summer, as millions of students around the country return to college, many will question the value of their investment. But according to a report released earlier today, both parents and students can rest assured: College is still worth it, and perhaps never more so than in a weak economic climate. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released the study, titled ” The College Payoff .” It found that earnings increase with education and that higher levels of educational attainment will almost always yield the greatest financial rewards. Although individuals with more education tend to make more money, Anthony P. Carnevale, who is the director of the center and co-authored the report, cautions students to be especially careful when it comes to selecting their choice of major. “While going to college and getting a degree is important, what really matters is the classes you take and what you do for a living,” said Carnevale, an economist. “Major trumps degree level and your choice of major is so important because that likely becomes the on-ramp to what you’ll eventually be doing.” This study is the third of the Georgetown center’s three consecutive papers examining the value of college. In May, ” What’s It Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors ,”first highlighted the stark difference in earnings between college majors . And in June, ” The Undereducated American ” argued that an economic recovery hinged on the addition of 20 million college-educated workers to the labor force. Considering the three studies’ findings, Carnevale sees an economic and future-earnings argument for picking the right major and, generally speaking, a benefit to earning degrees. Though a bachelor’s degree holder typically makes 84 percent more than someone with only a high school diploma, the report found that college major and later occupation often matter more than just the degree itself, when it comes to earnings. While students majoring in petroleum engineering earned paychecks averaging $120,000 a year, their counterparts who majored in counseling and psychology ranked among the lowest, at $29,000 a year. Occupation can sometimes trump education level, the authors argued, but not enough to trump a college degree. Accountants and auditors with only a high school diploma can expect to make about $1.5 million over the course of their lives, while an individual working in the exact same job but with a graduate degree can expect to earn double — or as much as $3 million. The study’s other main finding is that a woman generally needs more degrees than a man in order to earn the same amount of money. For example, the average woman must obtain a Ph.D in order to keep pace with the average bachelor’s degree-holding man. “The women’s story is grand and dismal,” concluded Carnevale. After scanning all 171 majors included in the study, he found not one major where women consistently out-earn men . The report also found similar gaps by ethnicity and race. For instance, African Americans and Latinos earn less money than their white peers — even those whites with less education. Further, the average African American or Latino with a master’s degree doesn’t exceed the lifetime earnings of white bachelor’s degree holder. Finally, the report concluded that Asian Americans with graduate degrees earn more than all other races, including whites. Despite the difference in earnings by race and gender, Carnevale still sees the investment in college as the essential gateway to the American middle class — allowing for greater career mobility, greater lifetime earnings power and a more promising future in general. While the findings come at a time when increasing college costs and a weak labor market have sparked talk of a potential higher education bubble , Carnevale and many of his peers remain wholly unconvinced. “The idea that college is less valuable or not worth it is just plain wrong,” said Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive officer of the Lumina Foundation. It sponsored the report. Merisotis cited Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as the rare college dropout who later amasses a huge fortune. “Those success stories are incredible long shots. Its like getting hit by lightning,” said Merisotis. “This report demonstrates over and over again that today’s jobs and the jobs for tomorrow will require post-secondary education.” Carl Van Horn, a professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, sees the findings as particularly valuable for students looking to translate their expensive college degrees into actual jobs. “Students can’t change the dismal state of the current labor market but institutions and individuals can change the supply side of things and how they prepare themselves for life after graduation,” said Van Horn. “We’re living in a brutal marketplace but how you fare in that marketplace is based on how savvy you are about equipping yourself with the right skills once you get there.”

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Small Businesses Cut Jobs In July: NFIB

August 4, 2011

(Reuters) – Small business owners cut jobs in July for the second straight month because of weak housing starts and meager spending on services, the National Federation of Independent Business said on Thursday. Fourteen percent of small businesses polled last month said they cut staff, while 12 percent made new hires, William Dunkelberg, the NFIB’s chief economist, said in a statement. The full poll of 1,817 small businesses is due to be released on Tuesday. “For the small-business community, the employment picture remained bleak throughout July,” Dunkelberg said. His comments came before Friday’s release of the government’s comprehensive employment report for July, which will be scrutinized for signs of how quickly the economy can regain its momentum. Nonfarm payrolls likely increased 85,000 last month, according to a Reuters survey, after rising only 18,000 in June. The jobless rate is expected to hold steady at 9.2 percent. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Gary Crosse) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Bill Maher On BP Oil Spill: ‘I Feel Oily … I Feel Their Sh*t On Me’ (VIDEO)

June 11, 2010

Friday marked Bill Maher’s last show of the season, and while the BP oil spill has been a subject on “Real Time” from week to week, this time Maher defined it as the subject. “I have been holding my nose about this oil issue. Every week, I do not want to talk about it and we do. But you know, this is the last show of the season, my last time to vent, so I kind of had a change of heart this week, and this whole show might just be about how much oil sucks,” he said at the opening of the show’s panel segment. “And I feel oily. Now that those pictures come in of the wildlife, I feel dir– I feel their shit on me. I feel like someone from Greenpeace should scrub me down every night.” Rachel Maddow, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) joined Maher on the panel, and when he asked what would have to happen for the gulf catastrophe to have some meaning, all three turned to the obvious answer — a major step forward on a comprehensive alternative-energy policy. “We’re trying to drill all of our oil, or a huge proportion of our oil, from the place where we get all our shrimp and oysters. And that’s awkward, it turns out,” Maddow quipped. Maher let loose on a host of villains-of-the-week during the segment, laughing at Blanche Lincoln’s claim that her vote was “not for sale” and calling the Houston oilman, lifelong game hunter and recent estate-tax dodger Dan Duncan a “world-class asshole.” But the panel zeroed in on the Senate filibuster as the reason why President Obama, in Maher’s words, “had to lie, basically.” “I saw this week that Lindsey Graham is pulled out of the global warming bill, and the whole reason Obama was coming out in favor of more drilling was as a sop to the conservatives. To try to get Lindsey Graham on his side, somebody like that, to get a couple of Republican vote, which would not be necessary if we did not have this filibuster nonsense, if you didn’t need 60 votes to pass anything. That’s why this president said something. That’s why he had to lie, basically. And the lie was, drilling has never been safer. And we know for a fact, actually, drilling has never been more dangerous. Not just this spill, but before this spill.” Frist employed several less-than-coherent defenses of Senate procedure and minority rights (most notably: “In the Senate, you can do anything that can’t be done”), but Maddow laid the blame at his party’s door for paralyzing Congress by procedural means. “And Republicans should have to answer for that,” she said, “because it’s a really stupid way to run the country.” Later on, Maher targeted the political canard of “running a state like a business,” which he and Maddow pointed out can be foolish given the cross-purposes of government and private enterprise. And Arizona won the final showdown in Maher’s “Stupidest State” contest, edging out Texas to receive a trophy of a man with his head up his ass. Maher claimed he’d send the trophy to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. WATCH:

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Video: Kronick Sees Spill Encouraging U.S. to Reduce Oil Usage

May 28, 2010

May 28 (Bloomberg) — Charlie Kronick, chief climate adviser for Greenpeace, talks with Bloomberg’s Andrea Catherwood about the reponse by BP Plc and the U.S. government to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Video: Greenpeace, IAEA Clash on Prospects for Nuclear Energy

April 9, 2010

April 9 (Bloomberg) — Alan McDonald, head of the programme coordination group at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear department, and Ben Ayliffe, senior nuclear activist at Greenpeace, talk with Bloomberg’s Mark Barton about nuclear energy.

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Climate Deal Brokered by U.S., China May Give Obama More Sway in Senate

December 20, 2009

By Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Kim Chipman Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) — The first offer by China and India to limit greenhouse gases in a global agreement may help U.S. President Barack Obama win over members of the Senate who don’t want to impose similar restrictions on American companies. The accord brokered by the three countries last week at United Nations talks in Copenhagen , while not legally binding, also calls for international verification. That addresses demands by senators who oppose UN rules that may hurt U.S. businesses’ ability to compete in the global marketplace. “The agreement helps us politically deal with the concerns that we would be putting American manufacturers at a disadvantage,” Senator Benjamin Cardin , a Maryland Democrat, said in an interview on Dec. 19, the day most of the world’s nations endorsed a framework termed the Copenhagen Accord. The plan calls for another year of talks for a treaty to tackle global warming by capping emissions and expanding the $120 billion carbon market. A U.S. law allowing carbon trading would move the market’s “center of gravity” from London to New York and Chicago, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said today . Some senators may never reverse their opposition to U.S. climate-protection legislation because China won’t follow through with its new duties, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said last week. China and India are the largest and fourth- largest producers of gases from burning fossil fuels. Inhofe, a Republican, has called the idea of man-made global warming a “hoax.” He spent a few hours in Copenhagen to ensure nations wouldn’t be “deceived into thinking the U.S. would pass cap-and-trade legislation,” the incentive system that requires emission permits and lets companies trade them. ‘First Step’ The Copenhagen Accord, called a “first step,” by Obama, may sway a few legislators to his side because it doesn’t legally bind the U.S. to limits imposed by other countries. “The agreement probably isn’t sufficient to win over conservative Republican votes, but may be sufficient to provide political cover for moderate Democratic votes from the coal and rural states,” said Robert Stavins , director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The U.S. president arrived at UN-led climate talks last week hindered by his own legislative priorities. Congressional debate over U.S. health care has put a climate-protection bill on the backburner until next year. Lack of legislation from the Senate, the only U.S. body authorized to approve treaties, left U.S. negotiators without clear guidelines on what lawmakers would accept in an accord. The strongest message to date from the Senate on global climate policy remains a 1998 resolution rejecting the existing Kyoto Protocol because it requires industrialized nations to cut emissions, not developing countries such as China and India. Emissions Pledges The Copenhagen Accord gives nations until Feb. 1 to offer emissions pledges. It’s unclear whether reductions will reach levels scientists say are needed to limit heat-trapping gases they blame for global warming. Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela were among countries that spoke out against the accord that analysts say will still provide impetus to U.S. legislators. “The Senate needed assurances that the U.S. is not stepping out alone,” Eric Haxthausen , climate policy director for Nature Conservancy, the Arlington, Virginia-based advisory group headed by Mark Tercek , former environmental markets chief at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The UN climate summit that ended Dec. 19, “as messy as it was, was sufficient to deliver on that objective.” The agreement fell short of unanimous support from UN members. It lacked the teeth of a treaty that was wanted by many of the 193 nations at the conference. The environmental group Friends of the Earth called it a failure. Unprecedented Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, said the accord lacks strong emissions targets and provides concessions to fossil fuel industries. “Averting climate chaos has just gotten a whole lot harder,” Naidoo said in a statement. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer , the California Democrat who heads a committee that drafted a climate change bill, said the deal was unprecedented. “For the first time, the world’s major emitting countries, including China and India, have committed to specific actions to cut greenhouse gas pollution,” Boxer said in Dec. 18 statement. “While there is more work to do, the progress made today will add to the momentum here at home for legislation,” to curb emissions. Trail of Legislation The U.S. House in June passed legislation that calls for a 17 percent reduction in emissions by 2020. The Senate may take up a similar measure in next year. Most Republicans oppose climate change legislation they claim will raise energy prices just as the U.S. is emerging from a recession. About half of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal, the most polluting fossil fuel and the most at risk, and the reliance in Indiana is 94 percent, according to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group that supports coal. In Ohio, coal provides 86 percent of power. Prior to the two-week conference in the Danish capital, nine U.S. senators sent a letter to Obama warning that bad climate policy could hurt U.S. companies and workers without improving the environment. Any accord should require “all major economies to adopt ambitious, measurable and verifiable actions,” according the Dec. 3 letter signed by senators from states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Copenhagen agreement, which calls for international measurement, reporting and verification of emissions cutting by poorer nations, was reached after Obama had last-minute talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao , Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh , Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President, Jacob Zuma . The accord carries more weight because it was reached in face-to-face meetings between the leaders, Haxthausen said. “Rather than having an agreement that was hammered out by negotiators, this was an extraordinary situation where the leaders came together and agreed to something,” he said. “You have the pledges of these leaders personally to each other.” To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr . in Copenhagen at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net Kim Chipman in Copenhagen at kchipman@bloomberg.net

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China Sets First Target to Slow CO2 Emissions as U.S. Offers 17% Reduction

November 26, 2009

By Bloomberg News Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — China, the world’s biggest polluter, set its first target aimed at slowing the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, less than two weeks before global leaders meet to negotiate a new climate change treaty. China’s announcement comes a day after the United States offered to cut emissions by about 17 percent in the coming decade. China will cut output of carbon per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 percent and 45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, according to a statement from the State Council, or cabinet, issued in Beijing today. Given the “magnitude of the climate change crisis, China needs stronger measures,” said Ailun Yang, a Beijing-based campaigner for Greenpeace China. Still, “this is a significant announcement at a very important point in time” and “another challenge to the industrialized world,” she said. The target gives the world’s fastest-growing major economy new negotiating points heading into the Copenhagen conference starting Dec. 7. Premier Wen Jiabao and U.S. President Barack Obama are among at least 66 global leaders who will seek to reach agreement on a framework for a final accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Negotiations leading up to the summit have been stymied as industrialized nations and developing countries disagreed on issues such as emissions-reduction targets and how much financial help rich nations should provide to poor ones. “The United States is the biggest developed country in the world, so it should shoulder its historic responsibilities and obligations suitable to its national development level,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing today. Legislation Stalled China and India have said industrialized countries must be willing to cut their carbon output 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 if they expect poorer nations to agree to long-term reduction goals. The U.S. will be offering cuts “in the range of 17 percent” from 2005 levels by 2020, Carol Browner , Obama’s top adviser on energy and the environment, told reporters yesterday. That also marked the first time the U.S. has offered such a target. U.S. legislation backed by Obama to cut greenhouse gases and establish a market for the trading of pollution allowances passed the House in June and then stalled in the Senate. China’s targets do not mean emissions will fall, only that their growth may slow. China’s economy has more than quadrupled since 2000 to $4.3 trillion and if growth continues at that pace the country’s carbon pollution will also continue to grow. Unfair Targets President Hu Jintao in September first pledged to cut China’s so-called carbon intensity, or the amount of the pollutant emitted per unit of economic growth, by a “notable margin.” At the time, Hu didn’t announce specific targets. China has resisted calls for it to cut its carbon output, saying such measures are unfair for a developing country to undertake. Yu Qingtai, a climate-change negotiator with China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters yesterday that rich countries such as the U.S., Japan and Germany are responsible for 80 percent of the carbon-dioxide pollution now in the atmosphere. Instead, China is pushing the development of alternative energy such as solar and wind, with a goal of generating 15 percent of all electricity from such sources by 2020. The world’s biggest photovoltaic solar plant, to be built by Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar Inc ., is set to break ground next year in Inner Mongolia. China is also working to increase energy efficiency. China also plans to increase its forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020, which amounts to planting 60 billion trees, Yu Qingtai, a Chinese Foreign Ministry climate-change negotiator, told reporters on Nov. 25. To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Wang in Beijing at ywang30@bloomberg.net ; Baizhen Chua in Beijing at bchua14@bloomberg.net ; Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net .

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Climate Talks End in Bangkok With Dispute Over Abandoning Kyoto Agreement

October 8, 2009

By Daniel Ten Kate and Alex Morales Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) — United Nations climate talks among more than 180 nations end today in Bangkok with envoys disputing whether to preserve or replace the Kyoto accord, the only existing global climate-protection agreement. Developing countries yesterday said the European Union was trying to abandon Kyoto. That was spurred by an EU proposal to borrow elements from the 1997 pact and put them into a new international agreement. “The EU and others are moving to somehow kill the Kyoto Protocol , something that we could not accept as G77, as developing countries,” Mohammad Al Sabban, Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator, said in an interview yesterday in Bangkok. EU officials discounted the assertion. Discord between the G-77, a group of 130 developing nations, and industrialized nations in the UN-led talks center on whether the Kyoto agreement should be extended or replaced with a new treaty that may appeal more to the U.S., which refused to ratify Kyoto because it gave no restrictions for developing nations. The Kyoto accord forces 37 developed nations to respect greenhouse-gas targets and penalizes them for exceeding their caps. Nations including Spain, Italy and Japan are headed to miss their targets. The UN aims to reach an agreement in Copenhagen in December. The discussions are split in two tracks: one to set new targets for developed countries to take after 2012 under the Kyoto pact, and another to lay out what the U.S. and developing countries will do, as they don’t have existing goals. The EU proposed unifying the two sets of talks into a “single legal outcome of the Copenhagen meeting,” Anders Turesson , Sweden’s chief climate negotiator, who speaks on behalf of the EU, said today in an interview from Bangkok. “All the basic elements of the Kyoto Protocol would be included.” Wrapping the Present Yvo de Boer , the UN’s climate chief, said negotiators should focus more on the substance of the eventual agreement, rather than the “packaging.” “There’s an awful lot of talk here about merging tracks, about abandoning the Kyoto protocol, which to me is a bit like arguing about the wrapping paper to go around the present you have yet to go out and buy,” said de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agency that oversees global climate regulations. Industrialized countries are trying to force poorer countries to make commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to help pay for the effects of warming in a new accord, actions not envisioned by Kyoto, Saudi Arabia’s Al Sabban said. ‘Race to the Bottom’ “An attempt to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new framework would be counterproductive,” Lumumba Di-Aping , a Sudanese negotiator who speaks on behalf of the G-77, told reporters in Bangkok. “What needs to happen is that those who are committed, the European Union, Australia, Japan, the rest of developed countries, need to rise up to the challenge rather than race to the bottom with the United States.” The U.S. has said it’ll cut emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, a target developing nations say doesn’t go far enough. The U.S. has also said developing countries need to include in any international treaty their domestic pledges to boost energy efficiency, reduce deforestation and slash emissions. “We expect them to stand behind those actions the way we stand behind ours and reflect them in this international agreement with a willingness to be transparent about them,” Jonathan Pershing , the negotiator for the U.S., said last week. The claims of abandoning Kyoto were turned away by the EU. EU Defense “We’re not trying to kill Kyoto at all,” said Tony Carritt , a spokesman for the EU negotiating team, by phone from Bangkok. “We want to integrate Kyoto into whatever is agreed to in Copenhagen,” site of the final meetings for devising the treaty under a UN-set deadline in December. Developing countries and environmental campaign groups have said they don’t want to abandon Kyoto because the treaty ensures developed countries take the lead in making costly emissions cuts. It also requires them to help poorer nations adapt to climate change. “We think this is a high-risk strategy to call for a single protocol at this moment of the negotiation, because it’s not at all clear you can keep the key components of the old protocol in a new one,” Martin Kaiser , coordinator of climate politics for environmental advocate Greenpeace, said today in a telephone interview form Bangkok. Kaiser said a new protocol would have to be agreed by all countries, including the U.S. That would make it harder to get agreement on compliance mechanisms that are already enshrined in Kyoto, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net ; Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net .

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