A recent trip to bicyle-peppered cities Copenhagen and Amsterdam got me thinking about the pedal possibilities in U.S. cities. Alas, New York, the country’s biggest city, has long way to go make biking easier, and that seems true in many other cities in the world’s largest motor fuel consumer.

As gasoline nears $4.00 a gallon throughout the country one might think that U.S. commuters would be jumping on their bikes. Evidently the prices aren’t high enough yet.

Here in New York, it’s Bike Month and though I live just 7 miles from my office in Times Square, I haven’t two-wheeled it in yet, though I did for years. Likely, I won’t any time soon because fighting traffic across the avenues isn’t appealing anymore.

Granted, NYC has made made biking improvements over the last decade, building and extending bicycle paths on Manhattan’s edges and keeping lanes open on most of its bridges, which offer spectacular river views. And New York City has plans to double the number of bike commuters by 2015 and add 200 miles of bike lanes by the end of the decade.

But bike lanes in the bustling parts of the island are probably used as much by darting cabs and other vehicles as much as people who pedal, which can make for a harrowing experience.

Sure, New York City streets will probably always be louder than those in Amsterdam where fenders banging against bike frames can sometimes be the loudest traffic noise one hears, or in Copenhagen, where bike lanes often have their own traffic lights.

But with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s traffic congestion plan defeated and few businesses offering bike parking space, things don’t look like they will improve much soon.

Or at least not enough so that New Yorkers will be biking their children around the city in droves like they do in Copenhagen.

What do you think, will New York and other U.S. cities catch up on biking as the price of oil rises?

Pic 1: Kid-moving bicycle in Copenhagen, a common site. Pic 2: Bicycle parking in Amsterdam. Pic 3: Biking in New York. Photos, Tim Gardner.

So what happened to global warming?

It’s not just that it’s disappeared from media headlines this year - shoved off by the credit crunch and natural disasters, for example. It can’t be ignored that 2007 came and went as another very warm year - the 7th hottest on record since 1850 according to the World Meteorological Organization.

But it wasn’t a record. In fact that was 1998, a full 10 years ago — the year of an exceptional El Nino, a Pacific weather pattern which heats the whole globe. So is global warming not living up to the hype?

Two weeks ago Leibniz Institute’s Noel Keenlyside stirred an academic hornet’s
nest by saying that we may have to wait longer - a decade or more - for another
peak year, because a natural weakening in ocean currents may be cooling sea
temperatures.

Many scientists flatly rejected the idea, saying Keenlyside had over-estimated the effect. But some pointed out that a recent switch in a weather pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation could indeed cool temperatures globally.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year recent warming was
“unequivocal” and most of it ”very likely” manmade. And almost all scientists in the latest debate, including Keenlyside, agree that any temporary cooling doesn’t alter that - blips due to natural effects are to be expected.

But how long is a blip? No-one knows.

It could be many years before there’s an El Nino as bad as 1998, scientists say. And in the meantime the doubts will grow, just as policymakers try to negotiate one of the most complex global treaties ever. A new Kyoto Protocol will affect issues of equity and poverty: in the case of poor countries the right to grow, for island states perhaps the right to exist, and for rich countries the right to compete on a level economic playing field.

Meanwhile one or two doubters are already saying the present lull in warming
casts doubt on just how far manmade greenhouse gases are influencing the climate. MIT’s Richard Lindzen reckoned that if it was as bad as all that temperatures would be rising faster.

What do you think?

A worldwide tree planting campaign is aiming to reach a total of 7 billion by the end of 2009 – that means just over one for everyone on the planet.

The United Nations says the campaign has exceeded expectations since it began in late 2006 with a goal of planting one billion within a year: two billion have been planted already. That means another 5 billion by late 2009.

A lot of the plantings so far have been by carried out governments —  including 700 million by Ethiopia, 400 million by Turkey and 250 million by Mexico. That still leaves a lot still to be planted by companies and people like you and me.

Of course it leaves questions about how many survive — there are no checks to see if the saplings — like the one in the photo being planted by Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangaari Maathai (right) in 2006, grow to maturity. 

Trees absorn carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they rot or are burned. So planting trees can take a chunk out of global warming — a U.N. official says that 7 billion trees would, if they reach maturity, soak up as much greenhouse gases as Russia emits in a year.

Have you noticed more trees in your neighbourhood? Or have you planted any?

A plan by President George W. Bush to set a distant 2025 ceiling for rising U.S. greenhouse gases has triggered criticisms by Germany that he is coming up with a “Neanderthal” solution to the problem – too little too late.

Most other delegates at 17-nation U.S.-led climate talks in Paris on Thursday and Friday have been far less damning, welcoming the fact that Bush is setting a ceiling for emissions, albeit one that will be a generation after most other rich nations.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel’s office called it a plan for losers rather than leaders and denounced it as ”Neanderthal”.

But who is right? 

The United States is isolated among developed nations in opposing the Kyoto Protocol, under which 37 countries are trying to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Global warming, we are always told, will only be contained if all countries work together.

“Neanderthal” was obviously meant as an insult but it strikes me that a Neanderthal solution is what the world needs — global warming was not a problem back in the Stone Age when people relied on renewable energies such as burning wood.

So who has the best strategy to fight global warming? — Bush with his belief in heavy investments in new technologies? Or Kyoto-style cuts embraced by the rest of his industrial allies? And how will the U.S. approach change after Bush steps down in 2009?

What’s in a name? 

Will the next international deal for combating climate change be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”, consigning the “Kyoto Protocol” to history?

Who would want the name of their favourite city linked to a treaty about global warming? It may be a momentous step towards a clean energy future but, if Kyoto is anything to go by, will also be hated by many. The poor “Little Mermaid” statue in Copenhagen harbour already suffers enough from protests, like red paint thrown by vandals last year (right).

A new U.N. pact for fighting global warming is meant to be agreed at the end of 2009 at a conference in the Danish capital and, by normal international practice, it would then be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”. 

Denmark has been adamant that a baby shouldn’t be named before it is born so I was surprised this week when Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, on a visit to Oslo, spoke repeatedly about the planned “Copenhagen Protocol” as if it were already decided.

The name “Kyoto” is badly tarnished by years of disputes between U.S. President George W. Bush, who dismissed the pact as “fatally flawed”, and his industrial allies who are implementing Kyoto’s curbs on greenhouse gas emissions running to 2012.

Of course Shakespeare wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. And the U.S. Senate was not swayed by Kyoto’s name — it voted 95-0 in 1997 against key principles before the treaty was either named or agreed.

So the suggestion may make the world’s lawmakers sound daft but maybe, just maybe, small things like names do have an influence? 

Companies, after all, often carry out massive research before naming products to try to make them attractive. And how many oil companies have put their names on their tankers since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska?

One leading environmentalist once said — only half jokingly – that the next climate deal should be called the “Los Angeles Protocol” to make it attractive to Americans and a follow-up around 2020, when more action to curb greenhouse gases will be expected of developing nations, the “Beijing Protocol”.

U.N. officials, meanwhile, prefer to say that Copenhagen will agree ”the second period of the Kyoto Protocol”, upset by the suggestion that Kyoto will somehow ”run out” at the end of 2012 or — even worse – “expire”.

So what should any new climate treaty be called? 

Maybe some corporate branding experts should be hired to come up with a name that perhaps has nothing to do with the city where it is agreed?

Or maybe the United Nations should have an international naming competition?

Perhaps most crucially, would a pact called something other than “Kyoto” have a better chance in the U.S. Senate?

There are plenty of ways to get around New York City, not all of them savory — subway, bus, car, taxi, bike, shoe-leather — but few offer the environmental cachet of the plug-in electric motorbike. Sleek, slim and silent, the Vectrix two-seater owned by filmmaker Michael Bergmann is definitely preferable to rocketing around town under almost any other kind of power. The ride from the East Side to the West Side one recent evening was an absolute pleasure, with less ambient noise than a golf cart as we zoomed across Central Park.

“I’ve always felt that enjoying life in New York to the fullest requires a way to get around New York,” Bergmann said later in an e-mail. “A way that’s quiet and up on the surface so you can enjoy the varied life and changing neighborhoods as you travel. That requires a vehicle that’s street legal (so I don’t worry about being stopped or having it confiscated), always available, that isn’t hard to park, that doesn’t contribute to congestion or pollution (air or noise), that can carry the amount of stuff one ordinarily carries, and carry a passenger as well. So as soon as I found out about the Vectrix I wanted one.”

Vectrix, headquartered in Rhode Island, first started selling its electric plug-in motorbikes in Europe and is now expanding in the U.S. market. The company bills its plug-in model as “an advanced zero-emission, battery-powered motorcycle,” with comparable performance to a 400cc gas-powered motorcycle.

Bergmann and his wife Meredith, a sculptor, use the bike as their principal mode of transport around Manhattan. The Vectrix gets parked and plugged in in the underground garage at their apartment house, where they pay for half a parking space, with electricity included. It gets about 40 miles (65 km) to a charge, which is enough to get around New York’s five boroughs, and Michael figures the company’s claim that it can get up to 62 miles (100 km) per hour is accurate, since he’s been able to accelerate uphill on the FDR Drive, no mean feat.

Bergmann has always been an early adopter of new technology, and he’s no exception here. You can see what he’s done in the film world.

He admits there’s one drawback: the price. His model cost $11,000. But he reckons that, because of where and how he and his wife live, “it will pay for itself in taxis not taken in two years.”

   It was like a scene from the future. A carpark brimming with fuel-cell and hydrogen-powered cars, while fuel-cell buses ferried delegates to lunch near the modern conference centre outside Tokyo.

   Japan was determined to display its green credentials at weekend G20 talks, one of the biggest meetings of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters since last December’s Bali gathering. Even conference staff were given chopsticks and traditional “bento” boxes that could be reused instead of the usual throw-away items.

    Inside the conference hall, though, delegates were more interested in substance than style as they discussed ways to agree on a global pact by the end of 2009 to curb growing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

    And for most delegates, Japan came up very short indeed.

   Japanese ministers told the gathering, ranging from G8 nations to big developing countries China, India, Brazil and Mexico, that combining individual emissions reductions targets for industries is one way to come up with national goals to fight climate change.

   But the plan met resistance from developing nations and a number of rich nations in the group that said the idea lacked clarity and didn’t fully cater to poorer states’ individual circumstances for their industries.  It was also unclear if the targets were voluntary or mandatory.

   Developing nations say they need more money and clean energy technology from rich nations to clean up their steelmills and power stations and that developed nations should do more to curb their emissions, too. That means clear and binding emissions targets.

   The European Union said Tokyo should get serious by adopting an emissions trading scheme, something Japan’s powerful business lobby has been reluctant to adopt until recently.

   But Japan, the world’s number two economy and fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter, balks at fixed emissions targets, preferring other benchmarks that have attracted criticism for being vague. This might seem strange for a nation whose ancient capital, Kyoto, is where the protocol was agreed more than a decade ago and is also struggling to meet its Kyoto reduction targets.

     Japan’s prime minister said earlier this year the government would instead back a global energy efficiency target of 3o percent by 2020 and spend billions in R&D in achieving this. Tokyo also backs a 50 percent emissions reduction target by 2050 but hasn’t fully settled on the base year.

   Europe, by comparison, says it backs a reduction of at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels but is struggling to enact laws to achieve this, keen to ”avoid excessive costs for member states”.

       All this means the world is a long way from agreeing by the end of next year a global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first period runs to the end of 2012.

   What do you think of global climate change negotiations and their chances of success?