College class inspires eco-friendly construction

Sunday, March 08, 2009

PALM CITY — Kyle Abney was a first-semester graduate student in building construction at the University of Florida when a class in sustainable development changed the focus of his career.

"It completely changed my life," Abney said. "It opened my eyes and made me see we needed to be doing things better in the construction industry. There was a lot of waste."

Suddenly, building in a way that conserves resources and doesn't degrade the environment made sense.

Abney went on to become the first person in the United States to get a construction degree with a concentration in "green building," obtaining his master's in 2001. UF was the nation's first university to offer such a degree, and Abney was its first graduate.

Last year, the 33-year-old Abney founded his own company, Abney + Abney Green Solutions, a Palm City-based consulting firm. He and his wife, Harmony, are its sole employees.

He had worked for a couple of commercial construction firms in Orlando, and then for his family's company, Abney & Abney Construction in Okeechobee.

When construction there slowed, he decided to launch his own firm.

Abney works with both residential and commercial construction projects, guiding them through the nationally known Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification process or if clients prefer, the Florida Green Building Coalition's standards.

"It's starting to get to the point that if you are not building green-certified LEED, especially with urban office or condo buildings, you will be obsolete," said Abney, who is also a state-licensed general contractor.

The payoff for higher costs upfront are energy savings of up to 30 percent and even greater savings in water usage, Abney said.

While the total number of construction projects is in decline overall, the percentage of energy efficient, sustainable green projects is growing.

One factor is the energy bill passed last year in the Florida Legislature.

Its many energy-related provisions include the requirement that all state-constructed and financed buildings meet LEED standards or another nationally recognized green building rating system.

Abney, putting on his environmentalist cap, says a benefit of green buildings is better health and a cleaner environment for the people who live and work in them.

For example, morale is boosted at workplaces with better indoor air quality and energy-efficient windows that let in a lot of natural light.

The green building consultant is also working with Habitat for Humanity in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

"Ultimately, affordable housing is the preferred market sector that needs to use less energy and water," Abney said.

Charles Kibert, the UF professor whose class inspired Abney, estimated that as many as 50 students have since followed Abney in obtaining a master's degree in building construction with a concentration in sustainable construction.

"Construction has been historically a fairly wasteful business," said Kibert, who is also Director of UF's Powell Center for Construction and Environment. "We are out to change that as well. It is not only the building that is green, it is the process itself."

And green-conscious builders such as Abney can make that happen, he said.

"He has always had this drive to do the right thing, and make the world a better place," Kibert said.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2009/03/08/a1f_abney_0309.html

Carbon Market

Our natural climate control system depends most importantly on carbon dioxide (CO2). However, our Earth's system has been affected mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels which has significantly increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Global climate is changing. Earth is growing warmer. To deal with global warming now is through human intervention.

The Kyoto Protocol

In 1994, member countries joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to tackle the problem on global warming.

In 1997, the UNFCCC established an international agreement called the Kyoto Protocol committing the Annex 1 countries (developed countries) to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). However, it was only in 2005 that the Kyoto protocol entered into force. More than 160 nations other than United States and Australia ratified this protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol strengthens the international response to climate change. It commits the Annex 1 countries to reduce GHG emissions by at least 5% from 1990 levels within a five year timeframe from 2008 to 2012.

Emission Trading and CDM/JI

To help these countries meet their emission reduction targets, the protocol created three mechanisms - Emission Trading, Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM):

• Emission Trading allows Annex 1 countries to buy and sell emissions credits amongst themselves.
• Joint Implementation allows Annex 1 countries to acquire emissions reduction units by financing projects in other Annex 1 countries.
• Clean Development Mechanism allows Annex 1 countries to finance emissions-reduction projects in non-Annex 1 countries (developing countries) and receive credit for doing so.

Emission reduction generated through the above mechanisms is referred to as "carbon credits" or Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). The mechanisms allow Annex 1 countries to earn and trade carbon credits through projects implemented in other Annex 1 countries or in developing countries in meeting their emission reduction commitments.

In the advent of the Kyoto Protocol governments and private companies in Annex 1 countries are committing billions of dollars for emission reductions in other parts of the world. The carbon market now offers an important opportunity to help boost climate change solutions all over the world.

Water Crisis in China

Water Crisis in china

水是生命之源，没有洁净的水，就没有人类健康和社会发展。

中国的人均水资源是全球人均水资源最贫乏的国家之一，而正是这样一个国家，却正在面临非常严重的水污染问题。越来越多的中国江河湖泊正在成为工厂倾倒有毒废水的下水道。3月22日是世界水日，绿色和平将倒映着孩子捧水喝的贴纸贴到了北京的大街小巷，呼吁人们直面水污染的问题。 了解水污染真相，参加活动成为治水先锋，请前往绿色和平治水博客了解最新信息>>

CO2: They Should Bottle That Stuff

There's no word for the sound you hear upon opening a can of soda. But the tchk-ptoop-fshchss! of a top being popped is distinctive, immediately recognizable. It is the sound of carbonation — or CO2 — rushing from the can. And it's a sound that brings to mind a technology, much overlooked in the popular press, that could safely recapture and store much of that emitted carbon, and has the potential to prevent an impending climate catastrophe.

The CO2 in carbonated drinks is the same CO2 that is spewed from tailpipes and power plants and causes global warming. In fact, the CO2 that makes the bubbles in your soda comes from those same power plants. Instead of being released into the atmosphere as a global-warming gas, the CO2 is captured from power plant exhaust, purified and sold to the nation's bottlers and soft drink fountain suppliers. When you pop the tab, however, the CO2 escapes into the atmosphere anyway.

But there's a silver lining. The same process that captures CO2 from power plants to make drinks fizzy is the one half of a process that has the potential to capture and stash as much as 90% of all CO2 from coal-burning power plants. Engineers and scientists are working on several ways to catch the carbon, either before or after coal burns. One technology known as integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC, would turn the coal into gas before it's burned for energy; gasifying it releases the carbon for capture, transportation, and sequestration deep underground. Another process, called "oxy-coal" combustion, removes nitrogen from air before combustion; when coal is burned, the waste gas is close to pure CO2, which can be easily captured.

Scientists and engineers hope to pump this captured carbonation through mile-long straws that reach deep into the Earth's crust, into salt mines, aquifers and oil fields. Underground, the pressure will liquefy it and perhaps eventually turn it to rock. Think of it as "geo-bottling" — except we never want to pop the cap. From Houston to Huainan, scientists are already digging holes and pumping down CO2 by the ton. "The carbon belongs underground," Susan Hovorka, a geologist at the University of Texas, Austin, told one of us in 2005. "I say, put it back."

Today, the CO2 captured for producing soda is only a very small percentage of the total CO2 from power plants, but the technology for large-scale carbon capture and storage looks to be just around the corner. Spurring action from industry and governments has proved difficult, however, because the long-term economic, social and environmental costs of CO2 pollution are not included in the price we pay for energy. That makes CO2-intensive sources of energy like coal-fired power plants look like a better deal than cleaner technologies. But the truth is, it's a "pay me now, or pay me later" situation. In the context of climate change, it's more like, "pay me now, or your kids will pay me even more later."

Fortunately, a combination of efficient markets and smart policy could level the playing field. A carbon-storage industry will be virtually impossible without a national policy that puts a price on CO2 pollution. One such policy involves the creation of a national cap for greenhouse gas emissions and an accompanying market for tradable carbon emission credits. This summer, the U.S. Senate will likely consider legislation that would set up such a market. By making carbon a pollutant and unleashing market forces to find a price for it, the nation will essentially be revealing fossil fuels' true social cost — and giving cleaner technologies, including carbon capture and storage, a fair shot.

Even before the federal government creates a national cap — which is generally considered inevitable — the economy will need a bridge, economic nudges, so that the private sector can test carbon capture and storage before scaling it up. More than 30 states are looking at legislation that would give carbon storage technology a boost. Some call for comprehensive studies of the technology, while in Wyoming — one of several states identified as having underground carbon storage potential — laws are already being written to address questions about ownership of and liability for the underground CO2 vaults. These laws will help U.S. "geo-bottling" incubate while the federal government catches up to state and private efforts. At Duke University's Climate Change Policy Partnership, for example, researchers are modeling optimal routes for gas pipelines, based on engineering, social and environmental factors, to move the CO2 from plant to storage site.

There is little doubt that we'll need help from many new technologies to fight the inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions. And indeed, reversing emission trends is truly an all-hands-on-deck affair. But to achieve the targets talked about in current legislation — and notably by each of the presidential candidates — reducing carbon from our power production has to be disproportionately responsible for overall progress. If thorny questions surrounding carbon capture and storage are not answered, and if the technology is not implemented soon, we will have lost precious time in the quest to ward off irreparable consequences of climate change.

Today we bottle CO2 to make soda. Tomorrow we need to be bottling industrial carbon on a grand scale. It's something to think about when you take a soda break on this Earth Day. Pop the tab — tchk-ptoop-fshchss! — drink, think, and, of course, don't forget to recycle.

Global forum seeks to avert water crisis

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52E0YC20090315

By Alexandra Hudson and Thomas Grove

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Government ministers from 120 countries, scientists and campaigners meet in Istanbul this week to discuss how to avert a global water crisis and ease tensions between states fighting over rivers, lakes and glaciers.

Nearly half of the world's people will be living in areas of acute water shortage by 2030, the United Nations warned last week, and an estimated 1 billion people remain without access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

The world's population of 6.6 billion is forecast to rise by 2.5 billion by 2050. Most of the growth will be in developing countries, much of it in regions where water is already scarce.

As populations and living standards rise, a global water crisis looms unless countries take urgent action, the international body said.

"Water is not enough of a political issue," said Daniel Zimmer, associate general of the World Water Council, one of the organizations behind the World Water Forum.

"One of the targets is to make politicians understand that water should be higher up on their domestic agenda and care that it is a necessity for the welfare, stability and health of their populations."

Because of the lack of political attention, hundreds of millions of people remain trapped in poverty and ill health and exposed to the risk of water-related disasters, the U.N. warns.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said water scarcity is a "potent fuel for wars and conflict."

Water shortages have been named as a major underlying cause of the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan. Water is also a major issue between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the states of Central Asia, one of the world's driest places, where thirsty crops such as cotton and grain remain the main source of livelihood.

Tajikistan has asked World Water Forum organizers to mediate in its dispute with Kyrgyzstan over water during the conference, World Water Forum Vice Secretary Ahmet Mete Saatci told Reuters.

Other subjects on the agenda for the talks from March 16-22 will be how to avert catastrophic floods and droughts as climate patterns change, and how the global financial crisis threatens to hit large-scale water infrastructure projects within the next several years.

The heads of state, environment and development ministers, scientists and development organizations hope to draw up a list of recommendations to help safeguard water resources and to share experiences where projects have been successful.

Among the heads of states attending the conference is Iraq's President Jalal Talabani.

Maldives vows to be first carbon-neutral nation

he Maldives will shift entirely to renewable energy over the next decade to become the first carbon-neutral nation and fight climate change that threatens the low-lying archipelago's existence, the president said on Sunday.

President Mohamed Nasheed said the Indian Ocean islands would swap fossil fuels for wind and solar power, and buy and destroy EU carbon credits to offset emissions from tourists flying to visit its luxury vacation resorts.

"Climate change threatens us all. Countries need to pull together to de-carbonize the world economy," Nasheed said in a statement. "We know cutting greenhouse gas emissions is possible and the Maldives is willing to play its part."

The $1.1 billion plan would require 155 wind turbines supplying 1.5 megawatts each and a half a square kilometer of solar panels to meet the needs of the islands' 385,000 people.

"We aim to become carbon-neutral in a decade," he said.

The state-owned electricity monopoly will be privatized, and investors and donors invited to take part in the plan.

The program envisions installing battery backup in case wind and solar sources are inadequate, and a power plant to be run off coconut husks in the capital, Male.

The Maldives' economy, based almost entirely on fishing and tourism, is worth about $800 million a year, so it will need outside help.

Nasheed last year unseated Asia's longest-serving ruler, 30-year incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in the islands' first multiparty presidential election. Gayoom has become a vocal advocate for mitigating climate change.

Nasheed drew global attention shortly after his election when he said the Maldives would start looking to buy land in other countries to resettle people once the seas rose, but later acknowledged the plan was not feasible financially.

The new plan could pay for itself in 10 years because of the savings on oil imports, said Mark Lynas, an environmentalist and author of three books on climate change who worked with the Maldivian government on the plan.

"It's going to cost a lot of money but it will also save a lot of money from not having to import oil," he said.

The Maldives imports diesel and fuel oil to power its 200 inhabited islands.

"The point of doing it is that it is something the Maldives can lead the world in," Lynas told Reuters. "No rich country has the excuse that it is too expensive and we can't do anything."

In 2007, a U.N. climate change panel predicted an increase in sea levels of 58cm, which would submerge many of the Maldives' 1,192 islands by 2100.

Green Jobs: Still More Promise Than Reality

Nathan Chan is the ideal worker for the new green economy. He graduated last year from the California Institute of Technology with a double degree in environmental engineering and English literature. From there he went to Columbia University, where he's finishing up a master's in public administration with a focus on the environment. Chan, 23, has interned for the Audubon Society, calculating the venerable nonprofit's carbon footprint, and he's probably forgotten more math and science than the average environmentalist ever knew. "I want to align my life and my career with my ideals," he says. Only one thing is missing for Chan: that green job.

Chan was one of some 1,300 students who trekked to Columbia's Low Library on Mar. 6 for an Ivy League Environmental and Sustainable Career Fair — twice the number who attended last year, according to organizers. But while the popularity of the packed fair was a sign that not even Ivy Leaguers are immune from job worries in this recession, it also signaled that green jobs — which include everything from solar panel installers to EPA administrators — could be a rare bright spot for employment. "The jobs are really coming in this field," says Karen Marcus, a "green niche coach" who was advising applicants at the Columbia fair. "We're finally mainstreaming the green career. We're on the cusp of opportunity."

A lot of people — including President Obama — certainly hope so. Obama made green jobs a cornerstone of his economic platform as a candidate and as President; his stimulus package includes $500 million for green job-training programs, along with billions in loan guarantees for green industries. "At a time when good jobs and good wages are harder and harder to come by. it is critical we find new and innovative work opportunities for middle class families," Vice President Joseph Biden said at the launch of the White House's Task Force on Middle Class Families on Feb. 27. "That's why we're here today — to learn and listen about how investing in green jobs can help build a strong middle class."

It's not clear how many green jobs exist in America today — in part because there's no definite agreement on what constitutes a green job. A study by the International Labor Organization, the U.N. Environment Program determined that approximately 2.3 million people worldwide had found new jobs in the renewable energy sector in recent years, and that nearly 8.5 million people would be working in those industries by 2030. In the U.S., everything from solar power to energy efficiency is potentially poised to take off if Obama can pass carbon-capping legislation, as he has pledged — and many of those green jobs could come in the Rust Belt states that are bleeding manufacturing employment today. "What a cap does is open up the market and create a river of investment," says Steve Cochran, the national climate campaign director for the Environmental Defense Fund, which just launched a website to track the movement called Less Carbon, More Jobs.

Obama has said in the past that he wants to create 5 million new green jobs — but it's impossible to say how many of those jobs will be new, and how many will be simply shifted over from older, less environmentally friendly industries. And with the economy in free fall, green companies are struggling with credit and balance sheet problems just like their gray peers. Clearly, that has an impact; at the Columbia Fair, the number of organizations present was down a bit from the previous year, and many were more interested offering internships than full-time employment. "People with a lot of experience are looking for entry-level jobs," says Jeremy Esson, a graphic media manager with Green Careers Center. "There's a lot of competition out there."

That much was obvious at the Columbia fair, as extremely well educated young people in suits crowded three or four deep around company representatives. But while green jobs may not be plentiful today, they surely have a more sustainable future than the industries that are being wiped out. "Even in a sea of despair we're enormously encouraged," says Alan Salzman, the CEO of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has invested billions in green industries. "Cleantech is going to be the industrial revolution of the 21st century."

Hungary burns carbon credibility propping up budget

Hungary - a major seller of carbon credits - will weaken its credibility in the growing international carbon markets by using revenues to prop up its budget rather than green its energy production, WWF-Hungary has warned.

Mr Imre Szabo, the Minister of Environment, announced that 'the Ministry will cut its annual budget this year by freezing 67 million Euros from its 2009 Kyoto carbon trading revenues.'

According to WWF-Hungary, this will not improve the budget balances, create jobs or decrease the country's energy dependence on gas and oil but it will bring into question the validity of Hungarian carbon credits.

Hungary had recently settled deals with Spain of 6.6 million AAUs (Assigned Amount Units is the trading unit of the Kyoto carbon trading system) and Belgium of 2 million AAUs - on the basis of projects to be undertaken through the country's planned Green Investment Scheme (GIS).

'The Belgians have already criticised Hungary for being late with greening projects and freezing carbon trade revenues will only frustrate them even more,' said Gyoergy Dallos, climate change programme officer of WWF Hungary.

The Hungarian government already has a track-record in undermining carbon trading revenues, WWF said. Although the Ministry of Environment had prepared the draft of the National Allocation Plan for the years 2008 to 2012 a year ago, the Budapest government has been unable to have it approved by the European Commission so far.

The delay is estimated to have cost Hungary EUR5 million due to an inability to fully participate in auction revenues under the European Quota Trading System (ETS) at a time when higher prices prevailed.

Halting or slowing the pace of investment in green technologies is also running counter to world trends of increasing such spending.

'President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown as well the Canadian, the German, the Australian and many other governments agree with Sir Nicholas Stern that supporting green investments in energy efficiency and renewables is an effective tool to save and even create millions of jobs and decrease energy bills,' Dallos said.

The German 'Alliance for Work an Environment' programme saved and created 145.000 jobs and saw 342.000 flats had been retrofitted for energy efficiency in the difficult recession period of the German construction industry between 2001 and 2006, Dallos noted.

'If 1.8 million badly insulated Hungarian family houses were insulated within a 5-year period, it would create tens of thousands of jobs all over the country,' Dallos said.

'In addition to that, 1.5 million cubic metres of imported Russian gas, as well as 3 million tons of greenhouse gases, would be saved annually, thereby reducing energy costs. This would bring relief to millions of Hungarians.'

Other WWF Hungary proposals for new and sustainable energy politics include saving hundreds of millions of Euros by eliminating the current gas price support system and increasing 'ridiculously low' mining fees on lignite could cut budget deficits and decrease energy dependency.

Additionally the Government could also stop supporting the Vertes Coal Plant through the 'coal penny' system collected on every Kilowatt-Hour consumed in the country.

Another efficient way to save government money is stopping the state owned Hungarian Energy Company (MVM) to build a new lignite plant which would never reach a break even given current conditions.

'MVM, the largest state owned company, is sitting on piles of cash thanks to the exceptionally high profits in the last two years,' Dallos said. 'So far the government has hardly touched these profits in order to establish a new sustainable energy policy for a brighter future of Hungary.'

Market is Looking Up for Carbon Credits

Feb. 21--Nobody's getting rich keeping carbon in the soil, Steve Swaffar said, but the market is apt to change for the better.

The director of natural resources with Kansas Farm Bureau told 13 people Friday how farmers, ranchers and landowners can fetch payments for not tilling their soil or by using other conservation practices.

The checks might help pay property taxes or pay for a "vacation" to Wichita right now, he said, speaking at the 4-H Building in Kenwood Park. But if the federal government makes greenhouse gas reductions mandatory, the market could climb. Currently, carbon is not regulated.

"That's why this is primarily a voluntary market," Swaffar said.

If the government mandates reducing emissions in a "cap and trade" form, there is a chance for higher payments. If a straight tax on pollution is imposed, the carbon market will dissolve, he said.

Carbon dioxide is among the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. One of many ways to keep it out of the atmosphere is by not tilling the land.

"You're storing it in the soil and not releasing it," Swaffar said. "It's something you can't taste, touch or smell, but it's real."

A number of companies that produce carbon dioxide -- among them Ford Motor Co., American Electric, Dupont, Motorola and the city of Chicago -- are founding members of the Chicago Climate Exchange carbon market, which started in 2003.

Those 14 founding companies signed a voluntary but legally binding agreement to reduce their carbon emissions by 6 percent by the end of 2010. More than 200 other companies have since become "emitter members," including Cargill, IBM, Monsanto and Safeway Foods.

They got in the game expecting a regulatory mandate and wanting to get ahead of it and also to use carbon sequestration as a marketing tool, Swaffar said. In other words, being able to say "our product is produced in a more greenhouse gas-friendly manner," he said.

Half of the carbon reductions must be internal, Swaffar said, and half can come from external purchases of carbon credits. That's why the companies are willing to pay farm operators, ranchers and landowners not to release carbon.

"It is one way to offset what somebody else is doing," Swaffar said.

Getting credit

Farmers who don't use tillage, for example, can gain valuable credits that compute to $2 a credit each year, Swaffar said. For no-till land in Saline County, each acre is worth 0.6 of a credit. The tanking economy, presidential election and other political issues pushed the price down.

To trade on the exchange requires a membership in the exchange, which costs in the range of $50,000, which prevents most individuals from trading directly.

Kansas Farm Bureau is in a partnership with AgraGate Climate Credits, West Des Moines, Iowa, to buy credits and trade them. Owned by the Iowa Farm Bureau, AgraGate became a for-profit company in 2007.

Last year, AgraGate paid out $4.2 million in carbon credit payments to farmers, when the average sale price was $4.63 a credit.

Land farmed with no-tillage or strip-tillage practices, new grass planting, rangeland, even forestry and trapping methane gas, has a value on the Chicago Climate Exchange.

AgraGate has 260,000 acres of no-till and strip-till land under contract in 71 Kansas counties, 1,000 or fewer in Saline County.

The program snared Ellsworth County rancher John Svaty's attention. He attended the meeting to research whether a contract would fit into his operation.

"If carbon credits go up, it could be a possibility," Svaty said. "I'm probably going to enroll now, in hopes that the rangeland credits go up."

Obama's Backing Raises Hope For Global Warming Pact

Until recently, the idea that the world’s most powerful nations might come together to tackle global warming seemed an environmentalist’s pipe dream.

The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, was widely viewed as badly flawed. Many countries that signed the accord lagged far behind their targets in curbing carbon dioxide emissions. The United States refused even to ratify it. And the treaty gave a pass to major emitters in the developing world like China and India.

Yet, within weeks of taking office, President Obama has radically shifted the global equation, placing the United States at the forefront of the international climate effort and raising hopes that an effective international accord might be possible. Obama’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, said last week that the United States would be involved in the negotiation of a new treaty - to be signed in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December - “in a robust way.”

That treaty, officials and climate experts involved in the negotiations say, will significantly differ from the agreement of a decade ago, reaching beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions and including financial mechanisms and making good on longstanding promises to provide money and technical assistance to help developing countries cope with climate change.

The perception that the United States is now serious has set off a flurry of diplomacy around the globe. “The lesson of Kyoto is that if the U.S. isn’t taking it seriously there is no reason for anyone else to,” said Bill McKibben, who runs the environmental organization http:www.350.org.

This week the United Nation’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, will make the rounds in Washington, D.C., to discuss climate issues. United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is organizing a high-level meeting on climate and energy. Teams from Britain and Denmark have visited the White House to discuss climate issues. In China, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made climate a central focus of her visit and proposed a partnership between the United States and China, and a special envoy from China is coming soon.

A global treaty still faces serious challenges in Washington and abroad, and the negotiations will be a test of how far the United States and other nations are prepared to go to address climate change at a moment when economies around the world are unspooling. The global recession itself is expected to result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as manufacturing and other polluting industries shrink, lessening the pressure on countries to take action.

“The No. 1 thing will be for everyone to see that the U.S. is on an urgent and transformational path to a low carbon economy - that would have a galvanizing effect,” said John Ashton, the British foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change.

The Obama administration has said that it will push through federal legislation this year to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the United States - a promise that Obama reiterated Tuesday in his speech to Congress.

The Kyoto Protocol has been a touchstone of the environmental movement. Thirty-seven developed countries, including Japan, Australia and nations in the European Union, ratified the accord, agreeing to reduce or limit the growth of carbon dioxide emissions by specified amounts. President George W. Bush,pressed by the Senate, rejected the accord, because countries like China were not also subject to mandatory emission levels. China and India also refused to ratify the protocol.

At the tail end of his administration, Bush made tentative overtures toward China and other countries on climate matters. In 2007, he convened a meeting of countries that were major emitters of greenhouse gases. Later, in bilateral economic talks, China and the United States agreed that they would cooperate on clean technology development and some other climate issues.

Kyoto was shaped largely by climate scientists and environment ministers, not the higher-level officials now laying the groundwork. And even many who participated in the earlier accord now say they see it as weak and naive about political and economic realities. Of the countries that signed, more than half are not on track to meet their targets according to 2008 United Nations data, including Germany, Ireland and Canada.

“In Kyoto we made a lot of promises to each other, but we hadn’t done the domestic politics,” said Ashton, “and that is why Kyoto - though a valuable step forward - has ultimately been so fragile.”

The talks on the new treaty, said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “provides an opportunity to fill this gap that we’ve seen, and this time perform up to expectations.”

The 1997 protocol was a narrow accord about the emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses linked to global warming. The new agreement will need to address how those reductions can be achieved in a way that takes account of their effects on energy supplies and economies - especially at a time of global recession.

Negotiating the treaty when countries are under extreme economic stress presents challenges, de Boer acknowledged. Politicians in Italy and Canada have complained that it will be difficult to clean up industries to meet their Kyoto goals because of the economic downturn. But others say a global industrial recession, in which emissions tend to drop anyway and countries are poised to spend billions to stimulate economies, is the time to craft a global effort to combat global warming.

With developing countries like China and India emerging as major carbon dioxide emitters in the past few years, experts said that if the new treaty was to be effective, every nation would have to accept emissions limits. “If one part of the world acts and the other does not, that doesn’t really generate a climate benefit,” said de Boer, who is responsible for organizing the December meetings.

Developed countries would most likely get binding numerical targets, as some did in Kyoto. Developing countries, which were exempt under Kyoto, would probably be given less stringent goals, though it is not clear if these will be longer-term numerical targets or some other mechanism that ties allowable emissions to economic growth.

Obama has said the United States will lead the effort, but over the next months, he will have to show what exactly that means. A good first step, environmentalists say, would be to commit to trying to limit warming to two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial temperatures, an ambitious goal that the European Union has adopted but that the Bush administration steadfastly avoided. It could also pledge to reduce emissions by 50 or 80 percent by 2050.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that humans could largely adapt to two degrees of warming, but that a greater temperature increase could cause far more serious consequences, from a dangerous rise in sea levels to mass extinctions.

Climate experts added that the United States did not need to have in place national legislation to limit greenhouse gasses, a process that could take months, to negotiate in Copenhagen. “It’s not just about analyzing a piece of legislation,” said Ashton. “It’s about the feeling you get if you’re a leader sitting in Beijing. It’s like love; you know it when you feel it.”

A more complex issue is whether negotiators will retain the system of trading carbon credits that is central to the Kyoto Protocol, a kind of global commodities market for carbon.

That system allows developed countries that produce more than their allotted share of emissions to balance their emissions budget by investing in projects that curtail emissions elsewhere. Such projects might include the cleaning up of a coal power plant in China, planting trees in Africa or converting pig manure to electricity in the Netherlands. The same cap and trade concept is now used in Europe’s emissions.

As the European Union and the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol have tried such projects over the past few years, problems have emerged. Most notably, it is hard to determine the emissions-reducing value of carbon credit projects, making it easy to game the system. The new treaty, experts say, will also have to broaden Kyoto’s focus beyond industrial emissions to activities like airline travel, one of the fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions. In the end, it will also have to include financial mechanisms and technical assistance to help developing countries cope with climate change.

“This is not just about emissions but about creating a massive investment in a new global energy economy” that includes forests, oceans and the transfer of technology, said Angela Anderson, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Warming Campaign.

American negotiators were limited in Kyoto by a Senate resolution saying that the United States would not accept numerical caps unless China did as well. Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, “There has been a sea change in the Senate,” and he added that he believed that there were enough votes - Democratic and Republican - to ratify a strong treaty.

What is unclear is whether politicians will be willing to commit to large enough changes to have a significant effect on global warming. “The Bush administration set the bar very low,” said McKibben.