Urban Environment – Sustainability Comes of Age

Urban Environment – Sustainability Comes of Age – NYTimes.com.

PUBP 2030 Being Offered this Spring

From Professor Mary Frank Fox;

I am offering Organizations/PubPolicy 2030 this spring 2010 semester (in addition to the offering of the class in Fall 2010) — and hope this enables our students get into sequencing within the new undergraduate curriculum.

This is probably the single time that the course will be offered twice (both Fall and Spring semesters) in a given academic year.  The course will also be opened up to non-PUBP majors so do not delay in registering!

General Petraeus on Campus

The Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy (CISTP) within the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs welcomes General David Petraeus who will speak on campus Jan 19.
General David H. Petraeus
“Update from the CENTCOM Commander”
Tuesday, 19 January 2010, 2:30 PM
Ferst Center for the Arts
Seating is limited and immediate RSVP is suggested to secure a seat.
To reserve, email alevin@gatech.edu. 404-894-3199–tel

Congratulations to December Graduates!

The School of Public Policy congratulates our December 2009 graduates:

Katie Base

Patricia King

Andrew Rodrigues

Nick Wellkamp

Best wishes for the future, wherever it may take you.  We’re proud of you all, we’ll miss you, and we expect you to stay in touch!

A bit of pessimism from Copenhagen

As dawn breaks on the last day, it’s very hard to be optimistic about the outcome, either here today (taken loosely – important climate meetings notoriously run over schedule) or in the coming months and years. The big countries are plainly negotiating as if their primary objective is to protect their national economies, rather than to protect the planet and the vulnerable people, species and ecosystems that live on it. This even though it’s well known by now – including by the governments here negotiating -  that in the long run, climate change will undermine economic prosperity and possibly even economic survival.

The symbolism has been unfortunate, as civil society members like myself have gradually been restricted more and more from the physical facilities of the convention and the political processes going on inside (to say nothing of the arrests and beatings that have been widely reported and filmed). Yes, we can watch certain parts on the web, the speeches anyway. But it’s plain – and, ultimately, unsurprising – that we can have little influence in the span of days or weeks. If we’re going to make a difference, it’s through patient organizing over months and years, organizing that has done much to change the public consciousness, but not yet enough to overcome the inertia and active resistance to the necessary transformation.

And indeed, a big transformation is clearly needed. As I have said a hundred times in the last few years, if you can’t tell that it’s already too warm, you’re not paying attention. Debating whether we’re going try to limit climate change to two degrees Celsius, or accept a three or four degree increase, is not unlike debating whether you’ll wait till after lunch or after dinner to call the fire department, when your house is burning at 9 a.m. If it were in fact free to stop all greenhouse gas emissions, we would do so immediately. But it’s not, so we keep quarreling about who should do what, so that we can all avoid having to do anything.

It is safe to say that in the US, we’ll continue to be told that the problem is that the “emerging economies” are the problem, that it’s because China and India won’t do their parts that we’re not making progress. The obvious fact that the country with a quarter of the world’s pollution, a quarter of the world’s wealth but only a twentieth of the world’s population really does have a unique obligation, will probably go missing in the debate. Hopefully we’ll be able to get past this before it’s too late. Meanwhile, I sit in my hotel room, nothing to do but write, mere miles from the conference center, but very, very far from where I, and we, need to be.

Paul Baer

Undergraduate Fellowship in Public Policy

The Urban Institute Summer Academy for Public Policy Analysis and Research is a unique and challenging program of skills-building, career development, and mentoring for minority undergraduates interested in careers in public policy research.

The year-long fellowship begins with an intensive eight-week summer program. Our summer program gives students between their junior and senior year of college the skills and exposure crucial to obtaining highly competitive entry positions in the field. After students successfully complete the summer program, we follow up with continued mentoring, research conference opportunities, job and graduate school counseling, and research paper publication during their final year of college.

The UI Summer Academy is free to students who are accepted.  In addition, the program will provide students with:

* Round trip transportation to Washington, DC
* Housing at nearby George Washington University dormitories
* $3,000 stipend*

For more information:  http://www.urban.org/uisa/

Internship Packets

The required documents for internships have been added to the SPP Blog!!

Under “useful documents” at the top of the page there are two packets for internships.

• If you’re on the new curriculum and planning to take your internship to fulfill the new curriculum requirement, use the Core Requirement packet.
• If you’re on the new curriculum but enrolling in internship hours beyond the mandatory core requirement, use the Non-Core Requirement packet.
• If you’re on the old curriculum you should use the Non-Core Requirement packet.

Live from Copenhagen: moved to new site

Dr. Knox-Hayes with Thomas Friedman at the Copenhagen Summit

Good morning everyone. This is just to let you know that the blog has been moved to its own dedicated site: http://gtclimatepolicy.wordpress.com/. However, the blog may be an endangered species. This morning conference officials announced that next week access to the meeting will be restricted due to over-subscription. Over 30,000 participants registered and for security reasons the capacity of the Bella Center is limited to 15,000.  A few passes will be distributed to Research and Independent NGOs (RINGOs), but I only have a slight chance of getting one. Nevertheless, there are a number of alternative climate talks taking place in Copenhagen. So if necessary I will continue to blog from these events and contribute analysis of the results of the ongoing COP negotiations. More to follow today.

I got up early this mornging to get one of the coveted spots in the COP plenary at the ‘civil society’ table.

Cheers, Janelle Knox-Hayes

Live From Copenhagen: Stark Positions and Unraveling Negotiations

Yesterday the COP/CMP were suspended in the aftermath of a proposal from Tuvalu to create a new legally binding ‘Copenhagen Deal’ with stricter targets including for developing (non-Annex 1) countries and to move negotiation of the deal to a new informal contact group.  While small nation states and many developing countries including Brazil support the proposal, big emitters like the United States, China, India and Australia strongly rejected the proposal.  Meanwhile Todd Stern, US Climate Envoy, has demanded that China put its domestic announcements into an international agreement to achieve a deal in Copenhagen, and has stated that they will not receive any funding from the US.  Amidst the deadlock the potential for an outcome is now uncertain, and it is likely non-Annex 1 countries will be further subdivided to try to break the deadlock.    As a result many meetings were postponed or canceled today, including a contact group meeting on REDD.

Several of the major players expressed their views in press briefings.  He Yafei, Vice Foreign Minister of China expressed his view that the goal of the UNFCCC was to help developing countries to combat climate change, because they are the victims.  He then suggested that China too is a developing country, with a per capita GDP of $3000 per year and that they have done much to combat climate change in their country by working to combat poverty. Furthermore they have committed to domestically legal target of reducing energy intensity per capita by 40-45%.  He stressed the need to stick to the original framework and for all Annex 1 countries to meet the targets they agreed to in the first phase of the commitment, before trying to transfer responsibility to the developing world.   With an undertone of threat Mr. Yafei called Mr. Stern’s suggestion US would not offer funds to China ‘arrogant and irresponsible,’ especially in light of the joint technology development agreement that was achieved during President Obama’s visit to China.  Although China has a point that it is still industrializing and faces considerable poverty challenges, the position is clearly intended to benefit China’s national interests, not all developing countries.  If it can commit to a 40-45% energy intensity target within its own national legislation there should be no reason to stop it from proposing to join a new international agreement under a similar framework.  The real problem is that it would no longer have the protection of ‘developing’ country status when called to account.

Lumumba Di-Aping, head of the G77 delegation group, made a poignant but scathing speech that chastised the developed nations for seeking to undermine the Kyoto Protocol claiming they are falling to the interests of ‘industrialists and their representatives in their executive branch’.   He in particular singled out the UK and the United States asking them to consider how much money they dedicate to their defense budgets, and the hundreds of billions of dollars they allowed bankers in their countries to pocket, ‘for no purpose other than to incentivize the pursuit of profit.’  Several billion dollars in funding for climate mitigation is insufficient.  He urged that a 2 degree Celsius rise would mean the death of African and small island states, and reiterated China’s considerations that it too is a developing country ‘with more people living in poverty than all of Africa.’  To general applause from the audience, Mr. Di-Aping saucily declared that ‘dividing the G77 or helping to divide the G77 should be left to the CIA, the KGB and the rest.’  The battle lines of the negotiation have been drawn around the distinction of responsibilities of developed and developing countries (particularly China), the level of an emission reduction commitment, and the future of the Kyoto Protocol.  It will be interesting to see how the United States responds, and whether agreement can be reached with such unyielding positions.  At this point prospects look grim.   Meanwhile polar bears need to get to 350 (ppm atmospheric CO2 concentration).

Pres. Obama nominates Prof. Brown

December 10, 2009

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate several individuals to policy-making positions, including Prof. Marilyn A. Brown to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

President Obama said, “I am pleased that these talented individuals have joined my administration as we work to tackle the many challenges facing our nation. I know they will meet and exceed the American people’s expectations, and I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years.”

Dr. Marilyn A. Brown is an endowed Professor of Energy Policy at the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she joined in 2006.  Dr. Brown teaches energy policy and technology classes and collaborates with the Strategic Energy Institute, the Sloan Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies, and the Enterprise Innovation Science and Technology Innovation Program as the Director of Sustainability.  Prior to this position, Dr. Brown worked at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).