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.

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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.

ClimateGate Overshadows Climate Change At Copenhagen

—By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Dec. 8, 2009 8:49 AM PST

The past decade has been the warmest on record, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. But in the early days of the Copenhagen summit, climate change is in danger of being overshadowed by the so-called ClimateGate affair.

Climate skeptics and dirty energy front groups falsely claim that a decade's worth of emails stolen from the a climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom are a smoking gun proving that scientists have colluded to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it really is. In fact, nothing in the messages challenges the finding by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the premier body of climate scientists organized by the United Nations—that the evidence of climate change is "unequivocal." Yet ClimateGate seems to be the main topic of interest for many of the 5,000 journalists here. I've been quizzed about it on several television programs, and yesterday I spotted British climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton dishing on the affair to a gaggle of avid journalists. Scientists and leaders at the summit are being bombarded with questions about the "controversy."

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

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Good News and Bad as Climate Talks Kick Off

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Dec. 7, 2009 11:11 AM PST

It's only the first day of the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, but as I waited in the three-hour line to enter the Bella Center where the conference is taking place, my inbox was already filling up with a flurry of both good and bad news.

Let's start with the good news. There was much celebration over the weekend after the White House announced that Barack Obama was planning to push back his arrival at the summit to the final day—when other world leaders would be present, and when his appearance has the best chance of affecting the negotiations. The White House said that the president expects a "meaningful" agreement and wants to arrive when his presence will be "most productive." The Obama administration also acknowledged that developed nations should provide $10 billion a year by 2012 to help poorer countries adapt to climate change—a major concern for poor nations heading into the summit.

On Monday, the Obama administration is also expected to announce that it has finalized the finding that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health. This is the final step before the Environmental Protection Agency can begin regulating emissions. The announcement is expected for Monday afternoon, timed to coincide with the start of the climate gathering. The announcement is "absolutely the right decision at absolutely the right time," said Joe Mendelson, Global Warming Policy Director for the National Wildlife Federation in a statement.

Also on Monday, the UN Environment Program released a report conducted by British economist Lord Nicholas Stern and the Grantham Research Institute which found that pledges from both developed and developing countries are actually closer to the cuts that science deems necessary than previously assumed. In other words, the pledges on the table at Copenhagen still fall short, but bridging the gap between what's on offer and what's needed is now a somewhat more maneagable task.

There was also some good news from India, which announced climate targets over the weekend. The country won't accept legally binding targets, but agreed to reduce greenhouse gas intensity between 20 and 25 percent by 2020. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will also attend the summit—yet another high-level visitor for the conference's final days.

And now, the bad news. The G77—the bloc of developing countries—is unhappy with what richer countries have promised so far. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says that the US could do more on climate via executive action, rather than waiting around for Congress to act.

There was also disappointment among NGOs at the summit as news broke that the U.S. Export-Import Bank is providing $3 billion in financing to Exxon Mobil Corp. for a natural gas project in Papua New Guinea, instead of funding cleaner forms of energy.

The next two weeks will be filled with similar positive signs and disappointments. There are a lot of issues to be grappled with, some big, some small. There will be moments when it seems like a breakthrough has occurred, and moments where negotiations will seem to be on the brink of absolute failure. It's all part of the grueling process of hammering out a major, contentious international treaty in which every single player has a lot at stake.

Swing-Vote Dems Fire Warning Shot on Copenhagen

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Dec. 7, 2009 9:55 AM PST

In a letter to Barack Obama late last week, nine swing-vote senators outlined a set of demands that any climate action—domestic or international—must include in order to get their votes. The letter can be read as a warning to Obama as he heads to Copenhagen about what these key senators will and won't support.

The five-page letter acknowledges that the goal of action should be to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, that a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050 is necessary, and that developed nations must cut emissions by 80 percent. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Begich of Alaska all signed onto the letter. These senators, who mostly hail from Midwestern and fossil-fuel dependent states, are all seen as on the fence when it comes to a climate bill. They listed a set of specific conditions needed to win their support for any climate measure:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Copenhagen: What Would Success Look Like?

There won't be a binding treaty. But here's what the climate summit could achieve.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Dec. 7, 2009 4:00 AM PST

Over the next two weeks, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to discuss the future of the planet. We already know that the summit will only produce a political agreement, not a binding treaty. But that doesn't mean the conference will be a total wash. Here's what the historic meeting in Denmark can—and should—accomplish.

The White House's surprise announcement late Friday afternoon that the president will delay his arrival until the conference's final day on December 18—rather than December 9, as he'd previously planned—is a very good sign. It's unlikely Obama would risk a repeat of his failed Olympics pitch in October if there was any danger that negotiations would fall through. His late appearance signals that the administration is confident that the assembled leaders can hammer out a solid deal.

[Read the full article]

A Carbon Tax Hail Mary?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Dec. 4, 2009 5:39 PM PST

On both the left and the right, there are mutterings that the Senate should ditch cap-and-trade legislation in favor of a carbon tax. But is a carbon tax the silver bullet its supporters claim, or simply a product of wishful thinking?

At an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on climate policy this week, Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Corker of Tennessee repeatedly suggested that a carbon tax would be simpler and more transparent than a cap-and-trade scheme. Corker has also argued that a tax could return the revenues to consumers via rebates.

For carbon tax fans, these kinds of remarks are signals that their favored policy isn't a lost cause. That's the case made by the US Climate Task Force, a project founded by former Clinton administration officials Robert Shapiro and Elaine Kamarck.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]