TANSTAAFL is Danish for "no deal": What we got out of Copenhagen.

By Dave Rochlin - originally posted on care2.com

Have you ever thought about what it would be like if we lived on the moon? On such a barren and lifeless rock, many of the things we take for granted - air, water, trees - would be imported and manufactured goods. Instead of exploiting them, we would almost certainly be paying for them. In his science fiction classic The Moon is Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein has a term for this: TANSTAAFL. It stands stand for There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. In his lunar cities of the future, even air is paid for.

Life mirrors art.

The most definitive message out of the UN's two-week three-ring circus in Copenhagen is that if we want these things, we're going to have to pay for them. But unfortunately, our institutions have been operating as if they are free for a long time. The value of trees as air scrubbers, carbon holders, and fresh water producers has never been factored into the cost of cutting them down, or a fair price to save them. The ecological impact of extracting and burning coal and oil is seldom considered as part of their true cost as an energy source. The environmental cost of garbage, beef, cars, bottled water, and a million other man-made items is not reflected in what we pay to consume them.

The concept of doing so is called natural capitalism. It's not socialism or tree hugging, it is simply seeing the world's economy as connected to the larger economy of natural resources and ecosystem services that sustain us, and placing appropriate value on the ecological commons. Another way to look at it is as achieving "sustainable resource use"; a lifecycle based perspective on growth, production, and consumption. As long as we are tethered to this one tiny planet, it is the only long term model that will work.

So what good came out of Copenhagen? Acknowledgment of TANSTAAFL - that there ain't a free lunch. While no binding agreements were signed, there was explicit consensus reached ("The Copenhagen Accord") that the current carbon and methane intensive model of global capitalism has a cost, and that it's time to make a payment. Representatives from virtually every UN member country including the US, China, India, Brazil, and the EU members agreed that we need to come up with financial models to save rainforests, invest in cleaner renewable energy sources, consume less, and think holistically about how we achieve growth, wealth creation and a future world that is sustainable and socially just.

The bickering is all about who is going to pay for it, and of course the countries with the biggest wallets and the biggest bills are calling the shots. Did anyone really expect the Maldives to successfully set the agenda?

So while progress towards a binding solution to climate change was limited, at least the problem is now framed, and that's something positive we can take out of what otherwise would be considered a complete fiasco.

Unlike the moon, the earth is a generous and forgiving mistress. But the era of the free lunch is over.

You can download the Copenhagen Accord at this link (courtesy of the Washington Post.)

Photo copyright http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

The UN Says Trees Matter....Really?

By Dave Rochlin - Originally posted on care2.com

With all of the billions of dollars being invested in clean technology, carbon reduction and smart grids, it's amazing that forests have been largely overlooked as a source of carbon capture and storage. As a new report by the United Nations Environment Program points out: "forests...have been doing the job in a tried and tested way for millennia." Unfortunately, when forests are cleared via slash and burn, that carbon is unlocked. The UN estimates that 20% of global emissions come from releasing carbon stored in forests, tundra and other ecosystems.

The UNEP report comes at a pretty significant time. There has been a lot of ongoing debate leading up the next round of climate talks in Copenhagen about the role of forests and land use in reducing carbon levels. Establishing baselines, proving that money directly creates a carbon benefit (aka additionality), insuring that they don't burn and modeling ecosystems is pretty complex, and has made forest preservation an outsider when it comes to cap and trade and carbon finance.

I have written about REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) before, and the idea that forests have a carbon value that can be quantified and monetized. An acre of tropical forest can store 100 tons or more of carbon, and UNEP estimates that we are losing at least 20 million acres a year. They also point out that a number of other natural systems, from peatlands to savanna are under similar pressure. The greenhouse gas math is scary. Population growth and the need for income is driving a lot of the destruction, and providing an economic solution, for example by paying indigenous groups to care for forests and set them aside, rather than farm them, is an elegant way to 'unlock the value' of the forest land without unlocking the carbon. ClimatePath has been working with several groups that are using the voluntary carbon markets to do just that.

I have to say, it is a sign of how far decoupled and out of balance our global economy has become that the idea of protecting forests and other natural ecosystems as a way of fighting climate change is open for discussion. While the true 'cost of carbon' is open for debate, can you picture a world without forests? Aside from the carbon, deforestation is often irreversible, and deadly for the plants and animals that call specific forests home. For these reasons alone, let's err on the side of saving them.