Hasta La Gadget!

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements hosted a research workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 14-15, 2016, the purpose of which was to identify options for elaborating and implementing the Paris Climate Agreement, and to identify policies and institutions that might complement or supplement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. We were motivated by our recognition that while the Paris Agreement sets forth an innovative and potentially effective policy architecture for dealing with global climate change, a great deal remains to be done to elaborate the accord, formulate required rules and guidelines, and specify means of implementation.

Participants in the workshop — International Climate Change Policy after Paris — included twenty-one of the world’s leading researchers focusing on climate-change policy, representing the disciplines of economics, political science, international relations, and legal scholarship. They came from Argentina, Belgium, China, Germany, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (A list of workshop participants is here, biographies here, and the agenda here.)

The Harvard Project will next focus on communicating the ideas, insights, and recommendations of workshop participants to climate negotiators and policy makers, in the expectation that they might prove useful in elaborating and implementing the Paris Agreement. Each participant is preparing a brief–based largely on her or his presentation during the workshop. These briefs, together with a workshop summary, will be conveyed to participants in the Twenty-Second Conference of the Parties (COP-22) of the UNFCCC in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016. This will be done in meetings with negotiators representing UNFCCC member governments and in a side-event panel at COP-22.

Today I wish to share with readers just one of these draft briefs — namely, my own — on the topic of “International Linkage under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.”

A Key Challenge for Sustained Success of the Paris Agreement

For sustained success of the international climate regime, a key question is whether the Paris Agreement with its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), anchored as they are in domestic political realities, can progressively lead to submissions with sufficient ambition? Are there ways to enable and facilitate increased ambition over time?

Linkage of regional, national, and sub-national policies can be part of the answer. By “linkage,” I mean connections among policy systems that allow for emission reduction efforts to be redistributed across systems. Such linkage is typically framed as being between two (or more) cap-and-trade systems, but national policies will surely be highly heterogeneous under the Paris climate regime. Fortunately, research &#8212 by Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University and David Weisbach of the University of Chicago &#8212 indicates that linkage between pairings of various types of domestic policy instruments may be feasible.

Linkage under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement

It was by no means preordained that the Paris Agreement would allow, let alone encourage, international linkage. Fortunately, the negotiations which took place in Paris in December, 2015, produced an Agreement that includes in its Article 6.2 the necessary building blocks for linkages to occur.

Under Article 6.2, emissions reductions occurring outside of the geographic jurisdiction of a Party to the Agreement can be counted toward achieving that Party’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) via Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs). This enables both the formation of “clubs” or other types of coalitions, as well as bottom-up heterogeneous linkage. Such linkage among Parties to the Agreement would provide for exchanges between compliance entities within the jurisdictions of two different Parties, not simply the government-to-government trading (of Assigned Amounts or AAUs), as was the case with the Kyoto Protocol’s Article 17.

Linkage among Heterogeneous Nationally Determined Contributions

There are three types of heterogeneity which are important in regard to linkage under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. First is heterogeneity among policy instruments. As demonstrated by Metcalf and Weisbach (see above), not only can one cap-and-trade system be linked with another cap-and-trade system, but it is also possible to link a cap-and-trade system with a carbon tax system. In addition, either a cap-and-trade system or a tax system can be linked (via appropriate offsets) with a performance standard in another jurisdiction. (Linkage with systems employing technology standards are not feasible, however, because such systems are not output-based.)

A second form of heterogeneity that affects linkage and is potentially very important under the Paris Agreement is heterogeneity regarding the level of government action of the relevant jurisdictions. Although the Paris Agreement has as Parties both regional jurisdictions (in the case of the European Union) and national jurisdictions, sub-national jurisdictions are also taking action in some parts of the world. In fact, linkage has already been established between the state of California in the United States and the provinces of Québec and Ontario in Canada.

A third form of relevant heterogeneity is with regards to the NDC targets themselves. Some are in the form of hard (mass-based) emissions caps, while others are in the form of rate-based emissions caps, either emissions per unit of economic activity, or emissions per unit of output (such as per unit of electricity production). There are also relative mass-based emissions caps in the set of existing NDCs, such as those that are relative to business-as-usual emissions in a specific future year. Beyond these, there are other parties that have put forward NDCs that do not involve emission caps at all, but rather targets in terms of some other metric, such as the degree of penetration of renewable energy sources.

Combinations of various options under these three forms of heterogeneity yield a considerable variety of types of potential linkages, which may be thought of as the cells of a three-dimensional matrix. Not all of these cells, however, represent linkages which are feasible, let alone desirable.

The Path Ahead — Key Issues and Questions

There are a substantial number of issues that negotiators will eventually need to address, and likewise, there are a set of questions that researchers (including within the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements) can begin to address now. Among the key issues for negotiators will be the necessity to develop accounting procedures and mechanisms. Also, it will be important to identify means for the ITMOs to be tracked in order to avoid double-counting of emissions reductions. And a broader question is whether and how the UNFCCC Secretariat or some other designated institution will provide any oversight that may be required.

For research, three questions stand out. First, among pairings from the (3-D matrix) set of instrument-jurisdiction-target combinations that emerge from the three types of heterogeneity identified above, which linkages will actually be feasible? Second, within this feasible set, are some types of linkages feasible, but not desirable? And third, what accounting treatments and tracking mechanisms will be necessary for these various types of linkages? Future research will need to focus on these and related questions in order to achieve the potential benefits of Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. Please stay tuned as this work develops.

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The hunt for alien life might have turned up something special. A Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence team using Russia’s RATAN-600 radio telecope (above) is investigating an unusually strong signal from a star 95 light years away, in the Hercul…

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Many of us grew up reading Anais Nin’s diaries which famously document the inner experience of a free openly sexual woman. Living in Paris in the 1930’s, Nin shunned conventions, demanding to be allowed to live an uninhibited life like any man of her time. For many, Nin remains the ultimate feminist icon.

Anais, A Dance Opera premieres this week in Los Angeles, using music, dance, theater and projections to evoke the life of Nin and celebrate a woman who continues to influence the world today. Sensuous, compelling and thought provoking, the production brings to life Nin’s story – from her emergence as an important literary figure in 1930’s Paris to her death in Los Angeles in the 1977.

The show was created by composer Cindy Shapiro, a Tides Grant recipient and artist-in-residence at Cite International Des Arts, and choreographer Janet Roston, an Ovation Award winner. Shapiro’s powerful lyrics and music combine with Roston’s inventive choreography and designer Joe LaRue’s visual projections to weave a compelling rendition of Nin’s life story, intertwining excerpts from her diaries and her groundbreaking erotica.

Two Nins are featured in the production. Vocalist Marisa Matthews plays Eternal Anais who is onstage for virtually the entire 90 minute production and provides commentary as her life plays out onstage. Matthews roams through the scenes using a handheld mic, “creating an effect that is part rock show, part theater experience”, says Shapiro. Dancer Micaela DePauli plays Anais Nin at various ages in the unfolding story. Like Matthews, DePauli is onstage for almost the entire show and delivers an impressive sensuous and athletic performance. Nin’s famous lover, writer Henry Miller, her husband Hugh Guiler and other key figures in Nin’s life are evoked by an ensemble of dancers.

The production has the full support of the Anais Nin Trust as well as Nin’s publisher Paul Herron. The writers also had access to Nin’s diaries and papers which are archived at UCLA. Nin’s own words are projected onto a screen throughout the performance, along with lyrics from the songs. In one scene, a recording of the real-life Nin reading from her diary is heard as dancers interpret her words.

The dancers and vocalist unveil the author’s journey of self-discovery which took her from a naïve young housewife into the café society of Paris where she emerged as an important literary figure during the 1930’s, through her life in the United States during and after World War II, to her death and its aftermath in the 1970’s. Nin’s adventures of self-exploration led the author through numerous simultaneous relationships, anonymous and random sexual encounters (at times dressed as a man), bigamy, and other grand deceptions which she kept track of using what she called her “Lie Box,” ultimately to be revered as a multifaceted, multidimensional woman.

Addressing the author’s complex relationships with her father, her husbands, and her lovers, including her most famous partner, Henry Miller, Anais, A Dance Opera reveals that Nin’s deepest and most passionate relationship was with herself, her self-examination through writing being more intimate than any sex act.

“I feel like her story about the empowerment of women still resonates today,” says Roston. “It has a big appeal for a wide age group.” “Nin was the original blogger, Roston adds. “She would have felt right at home on Twitter.”

Anais, A Dance Opera plays through September 18 at the Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles.
For tickets and more information, visit www.greenwaycourttheatre.org/anais

This blogger has a psychotherapy practice in Los Angeles. To make an appointment with Christine, contact chris@talktherapynow.com

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Hillary Clinton is winning in states with a greater proportion of highly educated white voters, a demographic that her rival Donald Trump needs to win over in order to have a shot at the presidency.

Clinton polls proportionally better in states that have a higher ratio of white people with college degrees relative to the overall number of white people in the state. As the following chart shows, in the 21 states where HuffPost Pollster has enough survey data to estimate the state of the race, there’s a moderately positive correlation between Clinton’s margin and the percentage of whites over age 25 who’ve obtained a bachelor’s degree.

These white, highly educated Americans, who have tended to lean Republican, could help to reshape the electoral map, keeping Clinton competitive in traditionally red states and contributing to her advantage in states like Colorado and Virginia, where races have often been closer.

As The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein notes, winning over educated white voters is crucial for Trump. With white voters who don’t have a college education still largely in Trump’s camp, and nonwhite voters unlikely to give him much support, “that leaves college-educated whites as the campaign’s most closely contested ― and conflicted ― major constituency,” Brownstein wrote in July.

“Even if [Trump] grows among blue-collar whites to Reagan ’84 levels, his struggles among non-whites means he likely can’t win without capturing either slightly below or just above 60 percent of college-educated whites, depending on how large a share of the vote they comprise,” Brownstein went on. “For comparison, the exit polls showed Romney winning 56 percent of white-collar whites last time.”

Now, a month later, Trump seems increasingly unlikely to match even those numbers. Clinton leads among white voters with college degrees by 10 points, 46 percent to 36 percent, according to the most recent YouGov/Economist poll. Other surveys have shown her leading among that group by smaller margins.

If those numbers hold, they would mark a significant realignment along educational lines, making Trump the first Republican presidential candidate in 60 years to lose white college graduates.

Clinton’s strength among that demographic is the culmination of a long shift in American politics.

As recently as 1992, there was no correlation between the share of a state’s population with a college degree and that state’s willingness to vote Republican, according to Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. By 2012, Democrats were performing markedly better in more educated states.

“Republicans and Democrats essentially underwent a four-decade exchange program,” Drutman wrote. “Democrats sent Republicans their non-college-educated, culturally conservative white voters, mostly in declining rural and exurban areas, who had once been the core of the New Deal. In return, Democrats got culturally liberal wealthy professionals, largely in prosperous urban and suburban areas, many of whom were once ‘Rockefeller Republicans’ and had once opposed many elements of the New Deal.”

Trump’s weakness with well-educated white voters, in fact, could explain his recent outreach to black and Latino voters. Polls have shown that one of the things college-educated whites don’t like about Trump is their belief that he is either racist or willing to use racist themes in his campaign. It’s been argued that his newfound concern about minorities may be less about winning voters of color and more about persuading skeptical white voters that he is not a racist.

S.V. Date contributed reporting.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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