Last night, 60 Minutes had a long story on the California water crisis, featuring Lesley Stahl interviewing (among others) Arnold Schwarzenegger and UC Davis professor Jeff Mount. On the positive side, the story accurately portrayed the vulnerability of California’s fragile through-Delta water delivery system to a major earthquake or catastrophic levee break. But CBS News flubbed the overall storyline.

In typical media fashion, it oversimplified the story to “Delta smelt versus farmers,” with barely a mention of the two-year closure of the coastal salmon fishery or the crash of the Bay-Delta ecosystem as a whole. Worse, 60 Minutes swallowed whole a tall tale concocted by anti-regulatory interests: that protecting the Delta smelt has economically crippled California agriculture.

That story is demonstrably false on at least two different levels. First, while the San Joaquin valley has had a tough economic year, its woes have not been driven by water shortages. According to this independent report from economist Jeffrey Michael at the University of the Pacific, the real culprit is the collapse of the housing market and therefore of the construction industry:

Reductions in water deliveries due to environmental regulations have increased the Valley unemployment rate by 0.1 percentage point, and the drought 0.2 percentage points for a total water shortage impact of a 0.3 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The construction collapse has increased unemployment by at least 2.5 percentage points, and is only one component of the foreclosure and housing crisis that continues to drive the majority of job loss in the San Joaquin Valley.

Indeed, state and federal water suppliers have bent over backwards to give farmers water even as the Bay-Delta ecosystem collapsed. As the graph below shows, average water exports from the Delta  increased in recent years (before falling a bit in 2008 and 2009), while Delta smelt and Chinook salmon production were crashing.

From: NRDC, Fish Out of Water: How Water Management in the Bay-Delta Threatens the Future of California's Salmon Fishery (July 2008), p. 16

Second, it’s not true that California agriculture had a bad year across the board. Farming has always been a boom-bust business, as overplanting gluts the market and tough growing conditions deplete it. But 2009 was not a bust year. The California tomato crop, for example, hit an all-time high both in total production and in dollar value at the farm. As for the almond grower that complained to 60 Minutes that he was having to destroy his trees, take that with a grain of salt. Almond trees have a relatively short life-span, so orchards are continually removed and replanted. California almond production was down about 20% in 2009 compared to 2008, but not due to any irrigation restrictions. The fall was due to a combination of late frost, a wet spring during pollination season and heavy bearing last year. Almonds remain a boom crop, to the point that the big concern for almond growers is boosting demand, not increasing production.

So yes, California has a water problem. But no, it’s not a problem caused by the Delta smelt or by environmentalists. Nor is it a problem that’s destroying the California economy or even the California farm economy. Shame on 60 Minutes for perpetuating myths that only get in the way of addressing the real problem.

David Doniger, of NRDC, has posted his assessment of the Copenhagen Accord.  It’s more positive than a lot of what we heard right after the conference ended.  His conclusion:

So give up the sour and grudging reviews.  The Copenhagen Accord is a significant breakthrough that signals a new era of effective cooperation between all major emitters, and opens the door to finally enacting U.S. climate and energy legislation next year.

Doniger started work with NRDC thirty years ago and was also Bill Clinton’s director of climate policy.  So his views carry some weight.  There’s no doubt that Copenhagen was a disappointment in some ways, but it was also the first time that the major heads of state personally committed to action on climate change.  That has to mean something.

I did a survey of all articles with “climate change” in the title in the past couple of years, and then did a rough breakdown of topics.  Although the survey was  unscientific, the results were intriguing:

It’s a time for catching up, so here’s an appointment I’m embarrassed to admit I missed when it was announced. Marcilynn Burke has taken a leave from the University of Houston Law Center to become Deputy Director (Programs and Policy) of the Bureau of Land Management. This is a terrific appointment. The BLM is the nation’s largest land manager, but its more than 250 million acres, lacking the charisma of the national parks or the national forest system, have too often been treated as afterthoughts. In the Obama Administration, the BLM lands are taking center stage for their potential to provide renewable energy. Of course renewable energy is crticially needed, but its development entails environmental trade-offs that should not be swept under the rug. Under the leadership of Burke, a thoughtful and pragmatic scholar whose expertise ranges from local land use to national environmental policy, BLM will surely take those trade-offs seriously, and seek to produce both energy and healthy ecosystems on its lands.

The title of this post refers to a subject that I lack standing to discuss.  But this being Christmas, I thought it might be appropriate to link to the Evangelical Environmental Network, which has this to say:

The earthly result of human sin has been a perverted stewardship, a patchwork of garden and wasteland in which the waste is increasing. “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land…Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away” (Hosea 4:1,3). Thus, one consequence of our misuse of the earth is an unjust denial of God’s created bounty to other human beings, both now and in the future.

God’s purpose in Christ is to heal and bring to wholeness not only persons but the entire created order. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross” (Col. 1:19-20).

I leave it to readers to consider how this statements relates to their own religious views, if any.

Real or artificial?

I haven’t been able to find a full lifecycle analysis of the environmental impacts.  The real trees don’t release carbon when they’re growing, but it does take carbon to get a fresh tree to market every year.  The artificial ones require carbon but only have to be shipped once.  In addition, there are possible health effects from the artificial tree.  And so on and so on.  One site recommends the real tree primarily because it can be recycled and used for mulch.  Wiki draws no explicit conclusion but seems to favor the real ones too.  The American Christmas Tree Association cites a study saying that aartificial trees have a smaller carbon footprint.

If there’s a larger moral, I’m not sure what it is, except that life cycle analysis is really difficult to do right.  And maybe — I know I’m going to get in trouble for saying this –  you should rethink the whole Christmas tree idea — after all, it’s not a religious symbol unless you happen to be a Druid.  (I’d suggest that to our Environmental President, but I’m afraid the resulting barrage from Fox News would torpedo the health care bill.)

By the way, there’s a similar debate over diapers. But giving them up probably isn’t an option.

Rob Stavins has a good, concise overview of the session and the outcome on the Belfer Center website.  Not as negative as some other observers, he highlights the extraordinary procecess that resulted in the Copenhagen Accord:

It is virtually unprecedented in international negotiations for heads of government (or heads of state) to be directly engaged in, let alone lead, negotiations, but that is what transpired in Copenhagen. Although the outcome is less than many people had hoped for, and is less than some people may have expected when the Copenhagen conference commenced, it is surely better – much better – than what most people anticipated just three days earlier, when the talks were hopelessly deadlocked.

Overall, he sees Copenhagen as a constructive move forward:

The climate change policy process is best viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. The Copenhagen Accord – depending upon details yet to be worked out – could well turn out to be a sound foundation for a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments, which could be an effective bridge to a longer-term arrangement among the countries of the world. We may look back upon Copenhagen as an important moment – both because global leaders took the reins of the procedures and brought the negotiations to a fruitful conclusion, and because the foundation was laid for a broad-based coalition of the willing to address effectively the threat of global climate change. Only time will tell.

I am no expert on foreign affairs, but it seems unlikely to me that continuing with the U.N. negotiating process is going to be fruitful.  It worked (up to a point) at Kyoto, because nothing was asked of the developing countries.  Even than, the agreement wasn’t able to obtain U.S. agreement.  If you think of the key players as Japan, the EU, the US, and the four BRIC countries; Kyoto was only able to get three of the seven to commit to any action.

My guess is that the last-minute negotiations at Copenhagen were a harbinger of the future, which will be driven by agreement between the key players — the Great Powers of the coming era.

P.S.  Another interesting perspective on Copenhagen can be found here.

Copenhagen was a letdown, and it would have been a complete disaster without President Obama’s last-minute efforts.  Where do we go from here?  How do we get the climate change effort back on track?

We’ll be holding a conference at Berkeley on January 28 to explore those issues.  “Beyond Copenhagen: Forging a Global Response to Climate Change,“ will feature a spectrum of Berkeley experts, nearly all of whom were at Copenhagen:

Panel 1: The International Dynamic

What are the major forces shaping the negotiations? What are possible avenues for the next round of negotiations?

Moderator: Laurel Fletcher (Law); Rob Collier (Goldman School); Blas Perez Henriquez (Goldman School); John Zysman (political science)

Panel 2: New Directions in Global Climate Policy

Where should global climate policy be going? How do we get there?

Moderator: Paul Wright (CITRIS); Michael Hanemann (ARE); Dan Kammen (ERG, Goldman, Engineering); David Roland-Holst (ARE)

Save the date!

For those who are interested, the text of the accord can be found here.  There’s an important feature that does not seem to have gotten much attention, found in paragraphs 4 and 5.  Paragraph 4 says:

Annex I Parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020, to be submitted in the format given in Appendix I by Annex I Parties to the secretariat by 31 January 2010 for compilation in an INF document. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol.

Paragraph 5 says:

Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions, including those to be submitted to the secretariat by non-Annex I Parties in the format given in Appendix II by 31 January 2010, for compilation in an INF document, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. . . . These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be subject to international measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties.

Thus, both Annex 1 parties (the developed countries) and Annex 2 parties (developing countries) agree to mitigation measures which are going to be specified by the end of next month.  In a sense, Copenhagen has been extended for six weeks to allow negotiation further consideration of these measures. (Presumably any discussions will be informal, as has been pointed to me, so the term “negotiation” may be misleading.)  Importantly, this is the first time that the developing countries have agreed to binding mitigation requirements.

New climate change policy report from Berkeley Law released in Copenhagen.

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