Daily Briefing: Mon.

EMISSION CONTROL: The United States and China helped revive global climate talks last week, as both countries unveiled their own plans for slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. These pledges may have injected new life into the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference, which many observers had already pronounced dead weeks ago, but don't break out the champagne yet (it's full of CO2, anyway). The new U.S. and Chinese emissions targets fall short of many expectations, and there are still plenty of details that must be ironed out — such as how industrialized nations will help poorer ones pay for emissions cuts — before any new climate treaty can get off the ground. China's new goals focus much more on energy efficiency than other countries' plans do, and place less emphasis on long-term strategies like renewable power. And while substantial, Chinese leaders were quick to point out that their plan is only "domestically binding," and they renewed their calls for developed nations to bear the financial brunt of fighting climate change. Still, despite such sore subjects, last week's pledges by the world's top two carbon emitters are perhaps the biggest momentum boost yet for the high-stakes Copenhagen summit. They also put more pressure on India, which is the last major carbon-emitting country with no concrete emissions plan. "There's a very real chance of getting this done," a senior White House official says of the Dec. 7-18 summit, "but hurdles remain." (Sources: Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times)

 

CREDITS CHECK: Speaking of hurdles, Russia is holding a climatic wild card that could doom global negotiations just as they're finally gaining momentum. This bargaining stance was born from the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, since the resulting economic collapse caused its CO2 emissions to plummet, leaving the Russian government with a windfall of international carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol. Russia is actually the Kyoto treaty's most successful participant, with a 35 to 40 percent drop in emissions since 1990, even though its success is largely accidental. But now, as world leaders prepare to draft a new climate deal in Copenhagen, Russia wants to roll over its Kyoto-era carbon credits like they're old cell-phone minutes. "It may not have been intentional, but we went through very difficult times and paid a high price for this reduction," one Russian official tells the Washington Post. "We've already done it, while other countries are just talking about it." This has become a bit of a sticking point, however, because many experts worry Russia's glut of carbon credits would push down global prices, making it cheaper to emit CO2 than to buy emissions credits. And since Russia's low-emitting '90s, an economic comeback has driven back up the country's emissions nearly 15 percent since 1998. (Source: Washington Post)

 

STREET SMARTS: A small Maryland port town is taking the high road in building its new main street, combining clean power sources, energy efficiency and pollution control to create what city officials are calling the greenest street on the East Coast. "What we're hoping to do, from top to bottom, is build a street that is completely environmentally sustainable, " Edmonston Mayor Adam Ortiz tells CNN. Funded by the EPA through a $1.1 million federal stimulus grant, the street will stay cool using native tree cover, run its LED street lights using wind power, offer pedestrian and bicycle access, and will help protect the nearby Chesapeake Bay from polluted runoff. The United States' largest estuary ecosystem is plagued by runoff from farms, suburbs and cities, much of which washes into storm drains, sewers and then rivers before finally reaching the bay. But Edmonston's new main street won't send runoff directly to Chesapeake tributaries — instead, it will flow into specialized "gardens" that naturally filter out any pollutants before allowing the water to soak into the water table. "Our goal is that other towns and cities and communities will steal our ideas," Ortiz says. "We'll know we're successful when we see these technologies used in other places." (Source: CNN)

 

MAGIC BEAMS: The Large Hadron Collider has set a new world record for energy, scientists announced today, as the world's largest particle accelerator gears up to uncover some of the universe's darkest mysteries next year. A recent test run of the new-and-improved LHC eclipsed 1 trillion electron volts, the first time in human history that proton beams have been accelerated to such a high energy level. The LHC's 1.18 trillion volt warm-up broke the previous record of just under 1 trillion, set in 2001 at Fermilab outside Chicago, and bodes well for future experiments that will run with even greater power. "We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going," says Rolf Heuer (pictured, at right), director of the European agency overseeing the particle accelerator. "It is fantastic. However, we are continuing to take it step-by-step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then." The LHC is designed to reveal the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that's popularly known as the "God particle." By recreating the conditions that occurred a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, scientists are hoping to figure out some of the major inconsistencies in physics. (Sources: BBC News, AP)

 

PULP FRICTION: Indonesia is the world's No. 3 emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only China and the United States, even without the armadas of coal plants and freeways that fuel those two nations' emissions. The problem in Indonesia is peat — a soggy, subterranean precursor to coal that's been exposed and burned en masse by large paper and pulp companies as they raze the country's vast rain forests. Now, however, one of the largest Indonesian paper and pulp companies has pulled a 180 by announcing that it wants to save the forests it has made a fortune by destroying: The Asia Pacific Resources International Limited, aka APRIL, plans to build a ring of industrial tree farms around the center of Indonesia's Kampar Peninsula, one of its last large vestiges of tropical jungle. APRIL's sudden change of heart isn't the result of eco-enlightenment, however. The conglomerate is anticipating a likely feature of a new global climate treaty to be discussed next month in Copenhagen, in which the owners of significant carbon sinks — forests, grasslands or other areas that absorb CO2 from the air — could be paid for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. While such a feature is widely seen as beneficial in theory, many environmentalists are now balking at the idea of paying APRIL after years spent demolishing Indonesia's rain forests. "They are the ones that did the damage," says World Wildlife Fund Indonesia expert Michael Stuewe. "Now they’re saying: 'We were bad boys. Now we're good. So give us the money.'" (Source: NY Times)

 

— Russell McLendon