China plans to replace some 50 million incandescent lightbulbs in government buildings this year in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions but the United States has no plans to mandate such a change, a top White House official said on Wednesday.
 
While a fluorescent lightbulb may cost four times as much as an incandescent lightbulb and lasts 10 times longer, the industry is working on new technology that could be even better, said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
 
“Our perspective in general is that it’s better to set a performance requirement through new building codes than dictate specific technologies and approaches for achieving that performance because it varies stunningly from building to building and geographic area to geographic area,” he told the Reuters Global Environment Summit. 
 
“It’s one of these ‘be careful because you might block innovation,’” Connaughton said of the decision not to favor a country-wide swap. “So we have favored standards-based approaches based on performance.”
 
Still, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday kicked off its “Change a Light” bus tour that will go to 10 cities to ecourage every U.S. household to change one standard light bulb for an Energy Star bulb, saving $600 million in energy costs annually and preventing greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions spewed from more than 800,000 cars..
 
Legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year that would bar the government from buying lightbulbs that were not energy efficient. 

– Photo credit: Hyungwon Kang
 

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality told the Reuters Global Environment Summit that progress was made at talks in the United States last week on climate negotiations despite criticism from some overseas participants.

He said the meeting served as a useful discussion during which all parties expressed a willingness to consider new ideas on how to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

At least 16,000 species worldwide are threatened with extinction, the head of a global wildlife conservation network told Reuters on Wednesday.

“50% of turtles, 33% of frogs, 25% of mammals and 12% of birds all face a high risk of extinction in the near future,” Julia Marton-Lefevre said at the Reuters Global Environment Summit.

In this audio clip, the director general of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), which publishes an annual “Red List” of threatened species, relates the dangers of extinction to our own immune systems and compares the science of biodiversity today to where climate science was 10 years ago.

Governments may need to impose tougher curbs on climate change than the most stringent now under consideration to help safeguard the planet, the head of the U.N. climate panel told Reuters on Wednesday.

“People are actually questioning whether the 2 degree Celsius benchmark is safe enough,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said during the Reuters Global Environment Summit.

Click below to hear an excerpt from his interview.

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, told the Reuters Global Environment Summit that he doesn’t believe the current administration or U.S. Congress will enact new comprehensive energy legislation. He said real action won’t take place until new U.S. leaders bring forward a fresh viewpoint.

To hear more, click below:

A second installment of our Global Environment Summit interview with Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP).

In this audio clip, Steiner, citing the Montreal Protocol as an example, explains how an accelerated phasing-in of a proper regulatory environment under the Kyoto Protocol can initiate the development of a universal market economy mechanism that also acts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Montreal Protocol, celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, is widely seen as the most successful international environmental agreement to date. It aims to cut down on emissions of chemicals that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer, which shields the Earth from ultraviolet solar radiation that can cause skin cancer and other ailments.

Delegates from around the world will meet in Bali, Indonesia in December to discuss a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told the Reuters Global Environment Summit he sees little hope of getting climate change legislation approved because of stiff opposition from the Bush administration to mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Bingaman also warned that he already was seeing reduced investment in alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power because tax credits set to expire next year had not yet been renewed.

– Photo credit: Larry Downing (Bingaman, center, with Bush in 2005 during an energy bill signing ceremony).

 From striving towards acheiving carbon neutrality in New Zealand to switching to energy-efficient lightbulbs in Cuba, what are individual countries doing on a national level to combat climate change?

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) answers Reuters Correspondent Alister Doyle’s question on Monday at the Global Environment Summit.

The Bush administration miscalculated in believing it could get fast-growing economies like China and India to back voluntary limits on greenhouse gas emissions instead of the mandatory ones many developed countries favor, Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center for Climate Change, told Reuters on Monday during the Global Environment Summit.

Claussen said the United States, and specifically the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton, erred in assuming that the European Union could be isolated in its push for mandatory limits.

 To hear more, click below:

The American Petroleum Institute’s chief economist, John Felmy, discusses how rising gasoline prices have affected the behavior of American consumers while speaking at the Reuters Global Environment Summit.