Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @kate_sheppard

Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

The 0.5 Degree Question

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Dec. 17, 2009 12:13 PM PST

In the final 48 hours of the Copenhagen climate conference, one of the biggest differences remains a very small number: half a degree.

While most of the attention here is focused on the remaining divide between the United States and China when it comes to measuring and verifying emissions reductions, a much larger split remains between the 102 countries that have called for a limit on temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and the much more powerful nations that have called for a 2 degree target.

The nations pushing for a 1.5 degree target include members of the Alliance of Small Island States, the G77, the bloc of Least Developed Countries, the Africa Group, and several nations from Latin America and Asia. But there is significant pressure being exerted on these nations to consent to the 2 degree target that has been embraced the United States, European Union, China, and other nations here seen as the most powerful players in a final deal. But leaders from the 1.5 camp say they are holding firm on their target, and won't sign onto a deal that calls for anything else.

"I will not sign anything less than 1.5," said Apisai Ielemia, Prime Minister of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu, which may become one of the first casualties of global warming. The low-lying Pacific island nation made headlines last week for shutting down talks with calls for a legally binding treaty. Now they're staking out their desire for a deal at this summit that will not condemn them to rising tides, they say. "This meeting is about our future existence," said Ielemia. "We don't want to disappear from this earth ... We want to exist as a nation, because we have a fundamental right to live beside you."

"For developed countries to choose to not use that figure, is morally, politically irresponsible," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77.

The debate over what figure to put in the final agreement here maybe meaningless, however, if the corresponding emissions reductions goals would not put the world on a path to stay below that limit. A leaked draft analysis from the UNFCCC of the commitments put on the table from developed countries states that what they have pledged so far would lead to a 3 degree temperature rise. If targets aren't raised, "global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway," the document states.

Meanwhile, frustrations remain high among developing nations over what they see as pressure from rich nations to consent to a higher target. "We are not yielding to these pressures, because our future is not negotiable," said Ielemia.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Advertise on MotherJones.com

James Inhofe's One-Man Truth Squad

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Dec. 17, 2009 6:41 AM PST

James Inhofe swooped into Copenhagen on Thursday for very important meetings ... with the media.

The Oklahoma Republcan and strident climate change denier made himself available to the thousands of reporters gathered at the Bella Center in an attempt to "make sure that nobody is laboring under the misconception that the US Senate is going to do something" about climate change, he said. "There's not a chance in the world" that the Senate is going to pass a bill, the upper chamber's self-appointed spokesperson added. "I believe that we in the United States owe it to the other countries to be well informed, to know what the intentions of the United States are," he said. "I just want you guys to have a shot at the truth, because you're not getting it from other people."

The former chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committeee (he said he "probably will be again after the next mid-term election") had previously planned to bring an entire "Truth Squad" of GOP lawmakers to the climate summit. But in the end all he brought was himself and a gaggle of press handlers who told each reporter in the room that the senator was in town and later delivered a printed copy of his talking points. Inhofe thoughtfully gave his remarks in the press filing center, so that plenty of reporters would be able to cover his talk.

Unfortunately, delegates at Copenhagen will not get a chance to hear him. Inhofe only spent two hours on the scene—and at least a quarter of that time in the press room. He has to get back for votes in the Senate he said, as well as a debate on climate on CNN's "Situation Room" with Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), co-author of the House cap-and-trade bill.

With more than 45,000 people gathered in Copenhage for a summit on how to address a problem he doesn't think is real, one wonders exactly who he thinks is responsible for this grand hoax. "It started in the United Nations," he said, but "the ones who really grab a hold of this in the United States are the Hollywood elite." If that's true, I've missed all the celebs—other than California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made an appearance here earlier this week. Mostly the conference is filled with diplomats, policy wonks, earnest activists, and tired reporters.

Surrounded by a giant scrum of international reporters, the senator mostly used the forum to repeat his assertions that climate change is a huge hoax, and that the recent "ClimateGate" flap is proof that he has been right all along about this. (No one outside the ranks of climate change denialists seems to have reached that conclusion). Inhofe made multiple references to a speech he gave on the Senate floor in 2003, urging reporters to revisit it.

Questioned about his schedule for his two-hour visit, Inhofe mentioned that he had "already had a couple meetings with some people here." But when asked who those meetings were with, he replied, "It's not significant."

Divide and Conquer at Copenhagen

With talks at an impasse, the US and other rich nations seek to split the ranks of developing countries in order to push for a weaker deal.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Dec. 17, 2009 1:01 AM PST

With the Copenhagen talks at an impasse, President Barack Obama and the leaders of other developed nations have deployed a divide-and-conquer strategy. Until now, poorer countries have presented a united front, calling for major long-term investments to help vulnerable nations deal with climate change, and a more ambitious effort to slow the warming of the planet. But industrialized nations are unwilling to make such commitments, and are now seeking to break that alliance by picking off countries one by one.

Late on Tuesday, the governments of Ethiopia and France announced that Ethiopia, "representing Africa," had agreed to adopt an "ambitious agreement" that would call for limiting the average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. Previously, the African bloc, along with the G77 coalition of poor countries and the Alliance of Small Island States, had firmly insisted that a 1.5 degree limit was imperative to prevent dire consequences in their regions, which are especially vulnerable to climate change. Some observers see the France-Ethiopia side deal as a breakthrough that could bring developed and developing nations closer to a final agreement. But others view it as an attempt to drive a wedge through the bloc of developing nations in pursuit of a weaker deal that won't protect the most at-risk nations from harm.

[Read the full article]

Blame Canada

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Dec. 15, 2009 2:49 PM PST

You used to be able to count on the United States to be the bad guys at United Nations climate conferences. But this year, while the Obama administration's pledges aren't as ambitious as some might like, the US government is more willing to combat global warming than it has been for years. That's left our northern neighbor, Canada, to emerge as the summit's major stinker.

Perhaps the best sign of Canada's fledgling pariah status was the fact that it was targeted on Monday by the notorious pranksters, the Yes Men. The group issued a fake press release from Ugandan delegates celebrating an "announcement" from the Canadian government proposing "ambitious new emissions-reduction targets and vigorous climate-debt reparations to African nations." Canada now joins Yes Men victims such as George W. Bush, Dow Chemical, and, most recently, the US Chamber of Commerce.

The Yes Men's stunt drew attention to the chasm between Canada's climate policies and those environmentalists wish it would adopt. Back when Canada was governed by the Liberal Party, it ratified the Kyoto Protocol and agreed to cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But since the election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006, his conservative government has walked back from that commitment, arguing that those cuts are unattainable. Canada's emissions have also risen sharply since then—largely due to its increased production of oil in the tar sands of Alberta. Now Harper's government wants to do away with the Kyoto Protocol altogether. At Copenhagen, Canada has only offered a scaled-back proposal to cut emissions 3 percent below 1990 levels.

At last year's climate summit, Canada was voted the Fossil of the Year—an award handed out by Climate Action Network International to the conference's most obstructive country. So far, Canada is on track for a repeat victory—in the daily "fossil" awards at Copenhagen, it has landed in the top three six times. George Monbiot recently wrote that Canada is now to climate as Japan is to whaling. And on Monday, Canada took the second to last place on the Climate Protection Index, a project ranking major polluters on their efforts to curb emissions. Only Saudi Arabia scored lower on the list.

And Canada is about to become even more unpopular. On Tuesday, leaked documents from the Harper administration indicated that the nation is considering even weaker emission reduction targets for fossil fuel industries. The documents suggest that the Tories plan to abandon a 2007 plan that called for cutting emissions from the oil and gas sectors by 48 megatonnes. A new proposal only calls for a 15 megatonne decrease—raising questions about whether the country could reach its stated pledge at Copenhagen of reducing emissions 20 percent by 2020.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Is Copenhagen Melting Down?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Dec. 14, 2009 5:00 PM PST

On Monday morning, negotiators from African nations shut down the climate talks at Copenhagen. The Bella Center is rife with rumors that rich countries are trying to do backroom deals with poor nations in a bid to drive a wedge in the developing-country bloc. Is the climate summit on the verge of a meltdown?

Hovering over all this conflict is the ghost of the Kyoto Protocol. As David Corn has explained, there are two separate tracks of talks at the summit—one involving signatories to the Kyoto protocol and one that encompasses the few countries like the US that did not sign the 1997 accord. The African countries want the Kyoto process to be extended because it holds certain developing nations to binding emissions cuts, not mere goals. But the US prefers a brand new political deal that is not legally enforceable. This is partly because US negotiators are apprehensive about getting a formal treaty approved by the Senate and partly because Kyoto's mandatory cuts don't apply to developing behemoths like China and India that will fuel most of the future growth in emissions.

When the Danish government drew up an agenda for the next four days of discussions, the Kyoto Protocol track was apparently not included. So developing nations—particularly the G77 bloc of poorest countries and the Alliance of Small Island States—rebelled. The G77's response has been described by some reporters as a walkout, but in fact its negotiators halted formal talks scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. African negotiators have been roaming the Bella defiantly sporting buttons that read "Kyoto, Yes."

Talks eventually resumed later in the day. But the question of Kyoto's relevancy is fast becoming Copenhagen's fiercest battleground. Developing countries have made it clear that they want to keep the Kyoto Protocol as "the foundation on which you build the rest of the architecture," explains David Waskow, climate change program director at Oxfam America. Today's delay in the negotiations was significant, he said, because it reveals that poorer nations are coming close to treating a binding successor treaty to Kyoto as a dealbreaker.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]