Tiempo Climate Newswatch

President Barack Obama has called on the United States Congress to push ahead with a law aimed at cutting carbon emissions. The White House is, however, playing down expectations that climate change legislation will be in place before the crucial climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009. "If we had significant legislation that began to address climate change... whether that's this year or next year, I think both of us would agree that that's a big change that we would welcome," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs when asked about Obama's view on the legislation's timing.

The Obama administration's economic rescue plan, passed recently, includes US$100 billion to improve the energy efficiency of homes and government buildings. In the latest budget, a further $15 billion a year is committed to the development of wind and solar power and more fuel-efficient cars. "To truly transform our economy, protect our security and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Obama told the legislators. "So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."

The potential exists to control greenhouse gas emissions sufficient to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius, according to McKinsey & Company. Capturing all the opportunities that exist to limit emissions will, however, present a major challenge, requiring change on a massive scale, strong global cross-sectoral action and commitment and a strong policy framework. The McKinsey analysis, updating an earlier study, is based on assessment of the development of low-carbon technologies, macro-economic trends and understanding of abatement potential in different regions.

Over two hundred abatement opportunities were assessed across ten major sectors and 21 world regions for the period to 2030. By that year, China, for example, could halve the likely level of its emissions while cutting coal to as little as 34 per cent of its power supply from the current 80 per cent. "Making the leap would require a green revolution," said Jonathan Woetzel of McKinsey. "And as one famous communist said, a revolution is not a tea party. But the opportunity, from a technical perspective, is there."

Integrated solutions are the only way to deal effectively with the interconnected food, energy and financial crises, the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting of the United Nations (UN) Commission on Sustainable Development concludes. "Such multidimensional challenges did not have purely economic, social or environmental solutions," under secretary-general Sha Zukang said. "Rather, they required integrated solutions combining all three elements within the framework of sustainable development."

The United Nations' management of global treaties and programmes for environmental management has been heavily criticized in an internal investigation by the Joint Inspection Unit. A lack of coordination between the more than 500 treaties and environment-related agreements is cited amongst other deficiencies in governance. One problem resulting in confusion and additional costs is the " fractured bureaucratic focus," with treaties often having their own secretariats, each buried within existing UN institutions. The managerial chaos is increasing as development arms within the UN jump on the environmental bandwagon, building overlapping and conflicting initiatives on environmental protection and sustainable development without clarifying the difference between the two activities. The report criticizes the "lack of a holistic approach to environmental issues and sustainable development" and the "absence of a single strategic planning framework."