Africa’s first football World Cup will generate 2.75m tonnes of carbon emissions, one of the biggest environmental impacts of any sporting event in history, a study has found.

The finals in South Africa next year are expected to have a carbon footprint eight times that of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, even before long-haul international travel is taken into account.

The main reasons for the discrepancy are the vast distances between South Africa’s host cities and the lack of a green transport infrastructure.

The estimated output from South Africa is 896,661 tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to the optimistically entitled Feasibility Study for a Carbon Neutral 2010 Fifa World Cup, commissioned jointly by the South African and Norwegian governments. Another 1,856,589 tonnes will result from fans travelling from around the world, making the World Cup’s footprint the biggest of any major event aiming to be “climate neutral”, the report said.

It cites the geography of South Africa as the main culprit, forcing players, officials and supporters to travel great distances between the 64 matches spread across nine host cities. South Africa is five times the size of the UK. The distance from Cape Town to Johannesburg is 880 miles, the same as London to Warsaw, and it would take about 17 hours to drive.

South Africa’s transport systems are also less eco-friendly than in many countries. “For inter-city transport … distances between matches in South Africa are much greater than in Germany, and the lack of high-speed rail links means that most visitors will fly multiple times between matches, leading to much higher transport emissions,” the report said. Within cities, they will use hired cars or buses, because there is no underground or light railway alternative.

But getting there will be the biggest contributor to the total of 2,753,250 tonnes of carbon. International transport represents 67.4% of emissions, intercity transport 17.6%, intracity transport 1.4%, stadium construction and materials 0.6%, stadium and precinct energy use 0.5%, and energy use in accommodation 12.4%.

The report said carbon offset programmes to counter the World Cup’s impact would cost between $5.4m and $9m (£3.3m to £5.4m).

It called for the early implementation of carbon offset programmes from football’s governing body, Fifa, the local organising committee and the South African government. These should be visible during the event to “maximise the contribution to public awareness”.

The local organising committee responded this week with a “green goal” initiative. It said the construction of Soccer City stadium, the venue for the opening ceremony and the first and final matches, used thousands of tonnes of builders’ rubble from the demolition of parts of the old FNB stadium.

Waterless urinals will be used in the stadium and the pitch will be irrigated exclusively with non-drinkable water, the organising committee said. Waste reduction will be pursued, with reusable cups and limited use of food containers.

Buyelwa Sonjica, South Africa’s environmental affairs minister, told parliament this week: “Some progress has been conducted toward processes for offsetting the footprint. However, even the footprint on its own is huge in comparison to the 2006 Fifa World Cup footprint. At least three of the nine host cities have considered the implementation of bicycle lanes.”

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• guardian.co.uk,

1. A study published in the journal Science reports that the current level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere – about 390 parts per million – is higher today than at any time in measurable history — at least the last 2.1 million years. Previous peaks of CO2 were never more than 300 ppm over the past 800,000 years, and the concentration is rising by around 2 ppm each year.
2. The World Meterological Organization reported that 2000-2009 was the hottest decade on record with 8 of the hottest 10 years having occurred since 2000.
3. 2009 will end up as one of the 5 hottest years since 1850 and the U.K.’s Met Office predicts that, with a moderate El Nino, 2010 will likely break the record.
4. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that while a bit more summer Arctic sea ice appeared in 2009 than the record breaking lows of the last two years, it was still well below normal levels. Given that the Arctic ice cover remains perilously thin, it is vulnerable to further melting, posing an ever increasing threat to Arctic wildlife including polar bears.
5. The Arctic summer could be ice-free by mid-century, not at the end of the century as previously expected, according to a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
6. Recent observations published in the highly respected Nature Geosciences indicate that the East Antarctica ice sheet has been shrinking. This surprised researchers, who expected that only the West Antarctic ice sheet would shrink in the near future because the East Antarctic ice sheet is colder and more stable.
7. The U.S. Global Change Research Program completed an assessment of what is known about climate change impacts in the US and reported that, “Climate changes are already observed in the United States and… are projected to grow.” These changes include “increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows.”
8. According to a report by the US Geological Survey, slight changes in the climate may trigger abrupt threats to ecosystems that are not easily reversible or adaptable, such as insect outbreaks, wildfire, and forest dieback. “More vulnerable ecosystems, such as those that already face stressors other than climate change, will almost certainly reach their threshold for abrupt change sooner.” An example of such an abrupt threat is the outbreak of spruce bark beetles throughout the western U.S. caused by increased winter temperatures that allow more beetles to survive.
9. The EPA, USGS and NOAA issued a joint report warning that most mid-Atlantic coastal wetlands from New York to North Carolina will be lost with a sea level rise of 1 meter or more.
10. If we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century, some of the main fruit and nut tree crops currently grown in California may no longer be economically viable, as there will be a lack of the winter chilling they require. And, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. production of corn, soybeans and cotton could decrease as much as 82%.

Barack Obama stepped into the chaotic final hours of the Copenhagen summit today saying he was convinced the world could act “boldly and decisively” on climate change.

But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse.

Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.

He offered no further commitments on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries beyond Hillary Clinton’s announcement yesterday that America would support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

He did not even press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation, which environmental organisations have been urging for months.

The president did say America would follow through on his administration’s clean energy agenda, and that it would live up to its pledges to the international community.

“We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say,” Obama said.

But in the absence of any evidence of that commitment the words rang hollow and there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the audience.

Instead, he warned African states and low island nations who have been resisting what they see as a weak agreement that the later alternative — no agreement — was far worse.

“We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation,” he said.

“Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year – all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.”

He also took a dig at China, drawing attention to its status as the world’s biggest emitter and reinforcing America’s hardline on the issue of accountability for greenhouse gas emissions.

The lacklustre speech proved a huge frustration to a summit that had been looking to Obama to use his stature on the world stage – and his special following among African leaders – to try to come to an ambitious deal.

The president was drawn into the chaos within minutes of his arrival at Copenhagen, ditching his schedule to take part in a meeting of major industrialised and rapidly emerging economies.

Responding to Obama’s speech, a British official said: “Gordon Brown is committed to doing all he can and will stay until the very last minute to secure a deal… but others also need to show the same level of commitment. The prospects of a deal are not great.”

Tim Jones, a spokesman for the World Development Movement, said: “The president said he came to act, but showed little evidence of doing so. He showed no awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster.”

Friends of the Earth said in a statement, “Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world.”

The World Wildlife Fund said Obama had let down the international community by failing to commit to pushing for action in Congress: “The only way the world can be sure the US is standing behind its commitments is for the president to clearly state that climate change will be his next top legislative priority.”

The extent of crisis in the talks has taken leaders by surprise. The Brazilian leader, Lula da Silva, told the conference that the all-night negotiating sessions took him back to his days as a trade union leader negotiating with his bosses.

Suzanne Goldenberg and Allegra Stratton in Copenhagen

guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 December 2009 12.53 GMT

By DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD and JULIET EILPERIN
The Washington Post
Friday, December 18, 2009

What the heck is all this?

This is a United Nations-run conference that was — originally — supposed to produce a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because what happens after 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol is uncertain. There is a legal agreement in place, but it has no specifics in it, and countries would have to agree to a new round of targets. But the idea of a new global agreement was scotched before the conference even started. Now, countries say they’re trying to produce a “political agreement.” In U.N.-speak, that means a deal that settles some key issues, like climate targets for major greenhouse gas emitters and the amount of money that rich nations will pay to poor ones to adapt to climate change, and establishes a framework for inking a formal treaty next year.

Key issues remain unsettled, so the talks’ final outcome are uncertain.

What’s with those demonstrators?

Many of them feel the Copenhagen conference doesn’t take the problem of climate change seriously enough. For days, demonstrators outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen — the site of the talks — have battled with Danish police wielding tear gas and truncheons. Others have held nonviolent demonstrations in the city (and in Washington, where Thursday morning Greenpeace used fake police tape to cordon off the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labeling it a “Climate Crime Scene” because they believe the chamber is trying to slow progress toward emissions cuts). The goal of most of them is to push the delegates toward more stringent, ambitious cuts in emissions. But there are also skeptical groups, who believe that climate change is not happening in the way that mainstream science believes, or that tackling it would impose vast costs on the world’s economy.

What’s the deal with “two degrees”?

It’s a statement about the world’s thermostat. This summer, world leaders gathered in Italy pledged to prevent the earth’s average temperature from warming more than two degrees Celsius, which is about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, from pre-industrial levels. This conference was supposed to work out the stickier question of how to accomplish that goal. Many vulnerable countries have called for the world to aim for curtailing global temperature rise even more, by establishing an upper threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

For now, the world seems to be on pace to miss the goal. A consortium of U.S.-based scientists recently found that, even if all the world’s countries fulfill the emissions-cutting pledges they’ve made so far, temperatures will rise about 3.6 degrees Celsius (6.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

What progress has been made so far?

Some, but there’s a real question of whether it’s enough. The most encouraging news has come on the subject of the funds that rich countries will pay to poor ones, both to help them adapt to climate change and to reduce the greenhouse gases they emit. On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States would help mobilize $100 billion in annual financing by 2020 (although Clinton did not say, specifically, how much the U.S. would contribute). And, on Wednesday, there was a key signal from the other side, as Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said poorer countries would accept a smaller amount of short-term funding in exchange for a bigger long-term package. Zenawi said his side had agreed to take $10 billion a year in the next three years, if that amount rose to $100 billion by 2020.

Also, before the conference began, both the United States and China made pledges to tackle their greenhouse-gas emissions. In the U.S. case, President Obama offered to reduce them “in the range of” 17 percent, as measured against 2005 levels, by 2020. China pledged they would reduce their carbon output relative to the size of their economy by between 40 and 45 percent compared to what it otherwise would have been over the same period. Many experts said this is less ambitious than it seems, since China’s economy is bound to get more energy efficient in the coming decade as it develops and relies on cleaner technologies. Some say that China’s existing policies will lead to carbon output reductions in the 40 to 45 percent range and that they need to be more ambitious than that. Many countries have criticized the U.S. target as well, saying that it represents just a 3 percent cut below 1990 levels, the benchmark used under Kyoto.

What role is the United States playing?

No longer the villain, but not quite the hero, either. The Obama administration has been praised in Copenhagen for pledging to make emissions cuts, which was a break from the Bush administration’s approach. And, over the last couple of days, U.S. officials have proposed funding for poor countries, a breakthrough credited with keeping hope of a deal alive. But U.S. negotiators were criticized by some developing countries for taking so long to act and for demanding that major developing countries subject their emission cuts to international scrutiny. The U.S. delegation is likely to be cautious in any emissions-reductions it promises — mindful that climate legislation is stalled in the U.S. Senate, and that an angry Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol under President Bill Clinton.

Obama will arrive in Copenhagen on Friday. What he says, and whether he’s able to bring bickering blocs of countries together, will likely be the best-remembered story of the U.S. involvement there.

Wait, didn’t “Climate-gate” show that climate change isn’t happening after all?

No. The “Climate-gate” scandal involved a trove of electronic files stolen from a climate-change research center at a British university. The e-mails showed climate scientists fretting over problems in their data, and scheming to keep researchers who disagreed with them out of scientific journals. They certainly raised questions about whether the leading experts on the subject tried to make their field appear less messy, and the science of climate change more unanimous, that it really was.

But there was nothing in them that showed that the basic conclusions of climate science — that earth’s temperatures are warming, and that man-made pollutants appear to be trapping unusual amounts of heat in the atmosphere — are wrong.

Where do the delegates still disagree?

On a few key points. Countries have made little progress on how an agreement would capture the climate targets they’ve put on the table. They also disagree over how — or whether — third- party countries can check to see if countries are meeting their promises to reduce emissions.

Also, it was only Thursday that countries formally agreed on just what they were negotiating over here. Poorer countries want the next deal to be considered a formal sequel to the Kyoto accords, since they held industrialized countries to strong emissions cuts. A group of developed countries wanted to start with a clean slate, but on Thursday they gave up that bid.

How is this all going to end?

At the last possible moment. Though international negotiators have had two weeks to work out their differences in Copenhagen, it’s likely they will follow custom and pull off a deal on the conference’s last day. The arrival of heads of state, including Obama, may speed that along, since they have authority to make deals that lower-level negotiators do not. For now, however, it seems like the hardest issues of dealing with climate change — how deeply to cut emissions, how to make sure other countries are keeping their promises — will be left unresolved, to be handled at another conference (with many of the same players) next year.

(CNN) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen early Thursday morning amid concerns that time is running out at the climate change summit for world leaders to agree a deal to combat global warming.

Yvo de Boer, the U.N.’s top climate official, admitted Wednesday evening that negotiations had unexpectedly stalled and said that the next 24 hours would be crucial.

The conference’s Danish hosts had been expected Wednesday to table a text intended to establish a basis for further negotiations. But de Boer said he did not know if the Danish text had been tabled.

“The cable car has made an unexpected stop,” De Boer told journalists. On Monday he had said that the “cable car” was halfway up the mountain and that the rest of the ride would be “fast, smooth and relaxing.”

Clinton is among dozens of senior-level figures joining the negotiations in the final days in an effort to push the summit towards a global deal limiting carbon emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol. U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to join the talks Friday.

“The Secretary and the President decided that she could play a useful role in helping close gaps in our climate talks there by traveling to Copenhagen and personally participating,” a spokesman for the U.S. State Department said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was among world leaders to arrive at the summit Wednesday. He told reporters aboard his flight to Denmark that he intended to assert China’s “sincerity and determination” to work with the international community to tackle climate change,” according to the official Chinese government Web site.

“I hope the meeting, with joint efforts made by various parties, will yield fair, reasonable, balanced and achievable results,” he said.

Japan became the latest country to pledge climate aid to developing nations Wednesday, offering $15 billion by 2012 to help vulnerable states mitigate against the impact of global warming. Earlier in the week the European Union pledged $9.4 billion for the same purpose.

Climate change activists attempted to disrupt the summit Wednesday, resulting in around 250 arrests. Protesters had hoped to get inside the Bella Center, where the talks are being held, to set up a “people’s assembly” but police used pepper spray and dogs to contain the demonstrations.

A spokesman for the Copenhagen police told CNN that the majority of arrests had taken place outside the center but there had been no serious injuries.

While the protests were going on outside, inside it was being announced that Danish minister Connie Hedegaard had resigned as president of the U.N. climate change summit.

“The resignation is essentially procedural,” CNN’s Phil Black said, “and she’ll be replaced by the Danish prime minister. It’s a reflection of the fact that the talks are now at the high-level phase, and it was deemed appropriate that the PM should now take over.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen on Thursday to help secure a U.N. climate pact, staking his credibility on an as yet elusive deal that has ramifications for him at home and on the world stage.

Obama is expected to arrive in the Danish capital on Friday morning, joining about 120 other world leaders to finish a complicated process of reaching a political agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.

The time is short and the stakes are high. With his top domestic priority of healthcare reform legislation percolating in Washington, the president plans to stay in Copenhagen less than a day.

That may or may not be enough time to overcome persistent disagreements between developed and developing nations that have marred two weeks of talks, but Obama’s presence and contribution could be a potential deal-maker.

The United States has proposed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels. That corresponds to a 3 percent reduction from 1990 levels, the baseline used by the European Union and others.

Obama is unlikely to propose a more aggressive emissions reduction target, which many countries have demanded. His goals are based on a bill that passed the House of Representatives but has yet to go through the Senate before it can become law.

Still, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama hoped to help break a deadlock around outstanding issues surrounding developed countries’ emissions targets and disagreements about financial support for poor countries dealing with climate change.

“I think leaders representing developing and developed nations all over the world coming to Copenhagen gives … an opportunity for some of those issues to be resolved and a breakthrough to happen,” Gibbs said on Wednesday.

“The president is … hopeful that his presence can help that, and hopeful that, again, we leave Copenhagen with a strong operational agreement, even as we work toward something even stronger in the future.”

RISKS ON ALL SIDES

Environmentalists say Obama could turn the talks around by pledging his strong support for the Senate climate bill, which has a more aggressive 20 percent emissions reduction target, and by putting his full efforts into the issue once healthcare reform is finished.

He could also ease conflicts over funding by promising to ask Congress for more money in the U.S. budget for fiscal 2011 to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

His visit is fraught with risks. If the president, a Democrat, puts a more aggressive offer on the table, he could face criticism from Republicans who charge the United States is going too far without getting enough in return from big developing economies such as India and China.

If he is more cautious and the talks end up faltering, he would be connected to that failure and his efforts to pass domestic climate change legislation could suffer along with his credibility among other international leaders.

“He’s sort of damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, and (so) he might as well do the thing that’s right,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, urging Obama to push the talks forward.

“This is the kind of thing that, if you think about it, he ran for president to do. The kind of thing he got awarded his Nobel Prize because of the potential to do,” Meyer said.

Obama has been making phone calls to other world leaders this week to discuss the process before his arrival.

There is some speculation Obama would also sign an updated pact with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to reduce nuclear arms stockpiles during his short European trip, but the White House played down the chances a deal on that issue would be reached in time.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)