In 2023, the figure reached 26.4 million worldwide as a result of floods, storms, wildfires and other disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Climate change is not solely responsible, but the frequency and intensity of extreme weather is increasing as global temperatures continue to rise. As a result we can expect that more and more people will face losing their homes and their livelihoods.

It is commonplace to see people boarding up their homes and literally battening down the hatches before a major hurricane is predicted to make landfall. For those facing extreme weather, this mentality is no longer confined to one-off events, but a regular mindset as the climate crisis continues to bite. Many communities around the world know that building resilience against intense storms, floods and heat waves is now essential to daily life.

“No country is immune to disaster displacement,” Alexandra Bilak, IDMC’s director, said in a recent press statement. “But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don’t. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better.”

This kind of planning is happening in countries on the front line of the climate crisis. Some small island nations, for example – many of them low-lying – are seeing their homes permanently washed into the Pacific Ocean.

Paradise lost

According to Fiji’s government, disaster events in the Pacific island state over the past 40 years have led to annual economic damages of around US$16 million, with 40,000 people impacted each year. This is due to increase to an average of US$85 million per year in losses, as a result of cyclones and earthquakes. These figures are high for a country with a population of under 1 million people.

Many of the people most impacted by climate disasters live in informal urban settlements. Their homes are extremely vulnerable to the regular cyclones that hit the island nation, especially as they are often located near riverbanks or around the coast.

The subtle art of scaling up climate adaptation

A recent Adaptation Fund project in Fiji was designed to build resilience against regular extreme weather events and “climate proof” housing for the foreseeable future. The project, implemented by UN-Habitat, looked at ways to protect thousands of homes when storm surges overwhelm local water and sanitation infrastructure. The settlements were located across four main urban areas on the island: Lautoka, Sigatoka, Nadi and Lami.

Low-cost, high-impact

Constructing cyclone-resilient buildings was an essential component of the work.

Moving new homes away from vulnerable hot spots, such as foreshores, floodplains and riverbanks, was a first step. As many settlements are self-built, training local people in new construction methods ensures future homes can be built with extreme weather in mind. An innovative element from the project was so-called ‘stilted safe rooms’ – low-cost and simple raised structures intended to provide refuge during periods of intense flooding.

Flood control is a key component of climate-proofing infrastructure. In Fiji, priorities included building upgraded site drainage to reduce runoff; upgrading water sources and storage; and improving access ways, to ensure people can respond when cyclones put pressure on local infrastructure.

School’s out

In Haiti, a very poor and conflict-torn country beset with repeated natural disasters, climate-proofing infrastructure is still at an early stage. The country’s education sector, for example, has been repeatedly hit by extreme weather, including in 2016 when Hurricane Matthew damaged a quarter of its schools. Rebuilding after such frequent turmoil now requires new ways of thinking.

With the help of around US$10 million of funding from the Adaptation Fund, UNESCO is currently supporting the restoration of 620 schools across the country. Their work has included raising awareness of disaster risk reduction, improving knowledge of safety levels, and retrofitting existing buildings.

As climate disasters grow, early warning systems become essential

Panaroty Ferdinand Prophete, UNESCO’s national coordinator, told Climate Home that “nearly 200 technicians, students and experts received training on new construction techniques, an early warning system and the management of temporary shelters.” This training included working directly with the Ministry of Education to develop new construction standards for schools.

Over 150,000 students have so far benefited from the project, a success Prophete attributes to “very good synergy” between the different stakeholders. “This makes it easy to put in place a community emergency plan as well as the execution of the national action plan for resilient school infrastructure,” he added.

Best defence

Experts agree that we need to change the way we live in response to climate disasters. Moving settlements away from major water sources is, if possible, a simple solution. More projects supported by the Adaptation Fund – from Indonesia to Antigua and Barbuda – are focusing on blocking, redirecting or draining excess water as it comes in, to keep homes intact and habitable. These responses will remain some of our best defence against more unpredictable and extreme weather.

“A key sector for the Adaptation Fund is averting and reducing loss and damage through disaster risk reduction and early warning systems, which account for about 16% of the Fund’s current portfolio. Many additional multi-sector projects also include elements that are building resilience to disasters,” said Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund.

“From climate-proofing homes and community centres to making informal settlements resilient to floods, it’s a vital aspect of the Fund’s work. Many of the projects are replicable and scalable so we hope they will also serve as models to create a larger positive impact on additional vulnerable communities beyond those served by the projects,” he added.

There is only so much adaptation can achieve if the flood waters get too high, or if cyclones increase in intensity and destructive force. But there are many cost-effective solutions to offer people a better chance of keeping their homes intact when extreme weather hits.

These investments can’t come soon enough for communities living in climate hot-spots and can serve to tackle long standing poverty issues at the same time. Fast-tracking these solutions will become ever more important if we want to reduce the millions of newly displaced people each year.

Sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post Climate disasters challenge right to safe and adequate housing appeared first on Climate Home News.

Achieving this aim would mean tens of billions more dollars flowing into adaptation projects. This huge – but achievable – feat would be immensely beneficial for communities around the world suffering from regular extreme weather events.

Alongside his call for greater adaptation finance, Guterres outlined five priorities for the sector, one of which was making it easier to access funding, especially for the vulnerable.

If billions are going to be spent on helping countries adapt to climate change, we need to make sure the money is reaching the people who need it the most. This is where the concept of locally led adaptation (LLA) comes in. The term refers to the central importance of providing frontline communities with the power and resources to respond to the climate crisis.

The Adaptation Fund was among the first group of international organisations to endorse a set of principles on locally led adaptation during COP25 in 2019. These principles cover everything from devolving decision-making to addressing inequalities, from providing predictable funding to ensuring the whole process is open and transparent. The principles have since been endorsed by over 100 organisations, including government ministries, global charities and development agencies.

This new model sets the scene for how current and future climate adaptation should be implemented. The focus is on an inclusive approach which puts communities most affected by climate change at the heart of how decisions are made.

Putting words into practice

The Adaptation Fund has been applying the principles of locally led adaptation for over a decade. The fund’s direct access scheme allows national organisations based in the countries they serve to manage all elements of a project, from design to monitoring.

The fund pioneered its first enhanced direct access (EDA) projects in 2014, taking direct access a step further in empowering national institutions to identify and fund local adaptation projects. This led the fund to establish an EDA funding window in 2021, and in April 2024, it went one step further by creating dedicated finance streams to support locally led adaptation.

The fund believes this new approach makes it “the first multilateral climate fund that has fully operationalised the global LLA principles,” it said in a press statement.

“The Adaptation Fund has a rich history of innovating and evolving to respond to countries’ urgent adaptation needs. Over several years, the fund has continued to offer more opportunities to vulnerable countries through diverse funding windows beyond its regular projects,” Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the organisation, told Climate Home.

“Creating these dedicated funding windows to support locally led adaptation will open even more opportunities for vulnerable countries to enhance capacity building by offering local governments, NGOs, community organisations, indigenous groups, young entrepreneurs and a broad range of local actors the opportunity to develop and implement sustainable adaptation actions directly,” he added.

Tailored solutions

One of the pioneering locally led adaptation projects the fund supported took place in South Africa from 2015 to 2020. On opposite ends of the country, two districts – Namakwa in the Northern Cape and Mopani in Limpopo – are subject to the same extreme weather: hotter temperatures with more intense dry and wet spells. These more uncertain, dangerous conditions put ever greater pressure on fragile local communities.

The pilot project was implemented by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). It was intended to strengthen local institutions to adapt to these new climate realities, and provided funding to 12 ‘small grant recipients’ – groups based in the region and with an intimate understanding of how the communities work.

Investments were made after vulnerability studies were conducted and tailored solutions created to meet local needs. The ambition of these groups was simple – to ensure resources went to people most vulnerable to climate change. A raft of innovative solutions were then implemented, from rainwater harvesting and solar pumps, to cooling sheds and bio-gas digesters.

‘Considerable impact’

“The reach and positive impact on people’s livelihoods and adaptive capacity through assets, learning and networks was considerable,” the project’s evaluation report concludes, adding that the focus on careful, appropriate investment “has significantly improved the lives of those directly, and indirectly connected with the projects.”

Mandy Barnett, SANBI’s chief director for adaptation policy, told Climate Home that one lesson from the project was a need to develop trust and effective relationships with people on the ground.

“We learned what we should do and what we shouldn’t do in terms of getting climate finance to the right people,” she added, noting that communicating expectations, from the funder downward, was key.

“A wider challenge is the need to translate climate science into local concerns. We want to empower people to make informed decisions, and to do this requires you to invest time and resources into capacity building,” she added.

New opportunities

The South African project helped pave the way for the many LLA schemes the fund is now supporting around the world. Fast forward to 2024 and a range of new proposals have just been approved which puts decision-making powers into the hands of local institutions.

They include a Peruvian project to support water, agriculture and food security; a Rwandan project to build climate resilience in rural areas; and in Belize, a plan to restore ecosystems and livelihoods battered by climate-related disasters. What these projects have in common is not only a plan to fight climate change, but one where the tools and resources are under local control.

“These new LLA windows take a significant step forward in providing an opportunity to directly lead and develop adaptation projects on the ground and accelerate effective, scalable actions worldwide in the process,” said Ollikainen.

The way forward

On World Environment Day this June, the UN Secretary-General took the opportunity to speak up about adaptation finance again. He highlighted how the last 12 months have been the hottest on record. “For every dollar needed to adapt to extreme weather, only about 5 cents is available,” he said.

The most recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that, in 2022, $115.9 billion was raised for climate finance, the first time this target has been achieved. Adaptation finance made up $32.4 billion of the total, a way off the 50% goal endorsed by the UN head, but still three times higher than what it was in 2016.

Where this money is spent will determine how vulnerable regions can survive the impacts of climate change in the coming years. But as more locally led adaptation projects are rolled out, affected communities will finally have a direct say in how that happens.

Sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post Finance flowing for locally led climate adaptation appeared first on Climate Home News.

We aim to be the go-to media outlet for a global community of doers and thinkers seeking to understand the political, social and economic drivers of the climate crisis and climate action.

To check we’re on the right path, we want to hear from you, the reader.

Please take ten minutes to complete our short survey on who you are, why you read Climate Home and how we can improve.

Take me to the survey

The post What do you think of Climate Home News? appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is the second year we have partnered with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) to support original reporting that focuses on communities, mainly in developing nations, who are suffering the worst impacts of climate change even though they have contributed very little to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The coronavirus pandemic has in many cases exacerbated inequality and vulnerability to climate extremes. With mounting debts amid Covid restrictions, many governments are struggling to meet basic needs, let alone build back better.

Articles will spotlight CJRF’s priority of “communities first hit, first to respond, and first to adapt to climate change”. We will highlight the stories of women, youth and indigenous people who are creating and sharing their own solutions for resilience.

Our climate justice reporting programme previously shone a light on Kenyan women who are claiming land rights to feed their families, indigenous women running a WhatsApp food exchange in Costa Rica and how Bangladesh’s Munda minority face extra barriers to climate adaptation.

We plan to publish 12 articles under the project, running until February 2022. We welcome stories from all around the world and will give priority to journalists from developing nations or marginalised communities.

The ideal story for us will capture the attention of our international audience with colourful or surprising details. Perhaps it contributes to an international initiative or represents a global trend. Perhaps it is financed by multinational corporations or public institutions from other countries.

Your story should combine on-the-ground reporting from affected communities, scientific evidence, innovative and rights-based solutions, and political tension or controversy. 

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, please send us your pitches. You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes.

Your pitch should explain the top line of the story and essential context in no more than 150 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail. Briefly explain what sources you would interview and any travel required. All stories should include photos of the communities you are profiling and we encourage partnerships between journalists and photographers. 

When pitching for the first time, tell us a bit about your journalism experience and background. Include links to one or two recent stories you are proud of. 

Throughout the reporting process, editors will work closely with you to provide feedback and advice.

For transparency to our readers, each piece will note that it was produced with support from CJRF along with a link to our editorial guidelines that outline how we interact with grant makers while ensuring independence.

The budget range for each story is £1,000-1,400, to cover all reporting, photos and travel expenses. Travel costs will be negotiated in advance and reimbursed subject to valid receipts.

Please send your pitches to reporter Isabelle Gerretsen (ig@climatehomenews.com), who will be overseeing the programme. We will review the first pitches in late March and subsequent ideas in coming months and will publish stories until February 2022.

The post Climate Home News seeks pitches for climate justice reporting programme appeared first on Climate Home News.

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, was right: people stood for the climate in every continent, even in Antarctica.

Today the spotlight shifts from the streets to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York convened by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres. The big question is: will leaders put forward the bold commitments that are needed?

People demand action. Many fear catastrophic weather events. Only this month The Bahamas and Southern Spain were the latest to be devastated. Mr Guterres grasps the imperative and has surprised some by making concrete asks: no more coal plants after 2020, tax pollution, end public fossil fuel subsidies and announce plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

It is a now or never moment. Governments, cities and the private sector have 15 months to define what they will do – or not – to help steer the world away from our current trajectory, which could see dangerous levels of heating of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

What is the UN climate action summit?

One of the cultural challenges is the disconnect between our daily lives and the timeframes of climate science reports referencing midcentury and 2100. Young people will still be alive and are furious that their future is at extreme risk and reject this broken inheritance.

In terms of Latin America and the Caribbean’s historical emissions, it has contributed relatively little to the climate crisis, yet many acknowledge that the time has come to act. The region is already suffering more intense extreme climate events, and future impacts look bleak.

LAC countries are joining initiatives to enhance their national climate plans and to align them with long-term decarbonisation strategies. The Inter-American Development Bank is helping build capacity of local modellers in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru on the design of decarbonisation plans and facilitating engagement with decision-makers to insert this local know-how into long-term strategies.

At the Summit, we expect the Presidents of Chile and Costa Rica to call for greater ambition and highlight the benefits of renewable energy and electric mobility, as well as nature-based solutions, which are essential to increase resilience to climate impacts.

We also expect to see Colombia and Peru highlight the importance of enhancing cooperation to protect the Amazon and its inhabitants following efforts by Colombia to bring together six Amazonian neighbours to sign the Leticia Pact to achieve that goal. Caribbean nations such as Jamaica, Saint Lucia and Barbados will also showcase their efforts to unlock private sector finance to boost climate action and build resilience to climate impacts.

Later this year Chile and Costa Rica will host COP25 and the pre-COP and are leading by example with plans to become carbon neutral by 2050. On Friday, Costa Rica was named “Champion of the Earth” by the UN for its plan to decarbonise.

By 2020, governments must present revised and enhanced commitments as part of the first 5-year cycle set out under the Paris Agreement to scale up ambition. The UN Climate Summit will intensify diplomatic efforts to ensure ambition continues to rise from New York through COP25 in Santiago and Glasgow’s COP26 next year.

Many countries in the LAC region have yet to signal when they will revise their climate goals. The progress we are seeing in many sectors provides grounds for increasing ambition. The rapid shift to sustainable mobility in Santiago de Chile surprised many with its fleet of around 400 electric buses. Other cities such as Cali, Medellin and Panama City are following suit; and Bogota aims to have nearly 600 electric buses in 2020.

There is progress in the financial sector, as demonstrated by the launch of Chile’s sovereign green bond. The first of its kind in the Americas, it came in at an historic low interest rate and was 13 times oversubscribed, underscoring the appetite for such offerings. We are also seeing how innovative approaches towards low-carbon agriculture in parts of Brazil and Central America can increase agricultural productivity whilst reforesting degraded land.

These inspiring stories from the region are often missed in the rollercoaster news cycle. That is why it’s important to tell the positive experiences of how decarbonisation works in practice. Efforts are underway to increase the visibility of change makers. The “Ponerse las Pilas” podcast, for example, tells the real-life stories of decarbonisation: From the first woman training electric buses drivers in Panama to pioneering efforts to develop the hydrogen economy in Latin America, which BID Lab, the innovation laboratory of the IDB Group, is supporting to help take to scale.

Greta and the millions of people marching across 163 countries provide an inspiring reminder for Latin America and the Caribbean that no country is too small to contribute towards this great transformation. On Monday we will see which countries are ready to take that stand.

Dr Amal-Lee Amin is Chief of the Climate Change Division at the Inter-American Development Bank @AmaleeAmin

Dr Monica Araya is a Latin American decarbonisation advocate. She has founded several initiatives including Costa Rica Limpia and hosts the Ponerse las Pilas podcast @MonicaArayaTica

The post No country is too small to lead at the UN Climate Action Summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

In partnership with Future Climate for Africa, we are supporting original reporting that explores why climate science and information matters to people in African countries. This covers competitive rates and reasonable travel expenses, to be negotiated in advance.

The ideal story for us will capture the attention of our international audience with a combination of reportage from affected communities, scientific evidence, innovative solutions and political tension or controversy. For more on our editorial values and process, watch this 14-minute video presentation.

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, based in and holding a passport from an African country, please send us your pitches.

Your pitch should explain the top line of the story and essential context in no more than 150 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail. Briefly explain what sources you would interview and any travel required. Our focus is on written articles but we are also open to multimedia projects.

When pitching for the first time, tell us a bit about your journalism experience and background. Include links to one or two recent stories you are proud of.

You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes.

Email Mat Hope with your story ideas and any questions: mat@desmog.uk

This opportunity is open from July 2019 to March 2020.

The post Climate Home News launches African reporting programme appeared first on Climate Home News.

With marches in more than 1,400 cities and more than 110 countries, organisers predicted the attendance will surpass 1.4 million they say came to the global action in March.

Social feeds have filled up with images of schoolkids and supporters of all ages demonstrating all around the world.

Send in your best images by tweeting us @climatehome.

In Germany, young activists hit the streets in the northern town of Kiel…

Der Rathausplatz in #Kiel ist wieder voll. #FridaysForFuture pic.twitter.com/S4TvT3pjRC

— Kristian Blasel (@KristianBlasel) May 24, 2019

In Syria, a student crowd hoisted a banner and did some street clean-up in the border town of Qamislo…

Fridays For Future Rojava!!!! Around 50 people joined the action today in Qamislo, Syria! #FridaysForFuture @GretaThunberg @FridayForFuture #Rojava #Syria pic.twitter.com/Vz0GlzOT06

— GreenRojava (@GreenRojava) May 24, 2019

In South Korea, striking students walked the streets in Seoul…

Students Striking in Seoul, South Korea!!!@GretaThunberg@Strike4Youth#lovethearth#fridaysforfuture#ClimateStrike#youthstrike4climate#savetheworld pic.twitter.com/VXYoaLrURF

— 박선우_SkylarPark (@SkylarPark2001) May 24, 2019

In New Zealand, a mass of people flooded into a city centre (we’re not sure which one)…

MASSIVE! Look at all the people out in New Zealand! 1623 places, 119 countries, and counting!

Young people standing up to demand we act on the growing climate crisis.#ActOnClimate. #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/zyYYQ5RhkK

— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) May 24, 2019

In India, young people showed up to demonstrate in Delhi, banner emblazoned with the Extinction Rebellion symbol…

#SchoolStrike4Climate in Delhi#ExtinctionRebellion #FridaysForFuture
India should declare #ClimateEmergency
The rich biodiversity and culture are under direct threat from Climate Crisis. pic.twitter.com/60xCsPLZiJ

— John Paul Jose (@johnpauljos) May 24, 2019

In Italy, climate protesters thronged the streets of Milan, and in the German city of Cologne the medieval cathedral was swamped…

MILAN, ITALY #FridaysForFuture #ClimateStrike

Video from ndlv74 on Instagram! pic.twitter.com/DAt8C7H16a

— FYEG #VoteForClimate (@FYEG) May 24, 2019

In Uganda, students prepped placards and posters before the strike…

We are just waiting for the hour. The last batch of placards and posters is done. Let’s meet tomorrow in Muyenga at 10:00AM. Uganda is ready, are you ready? #schoolstrike4climate #fridaysforfuture @GretaThunberg pic.twitter.com/6hGMdy8X5U

— #FridaysForFuture – Uganda (@Fridays4FutureU) May 23, 2019

In the Philippines, student organisers called for urgent action…

ATM: Agham Youth joins Youth Strikes for Climate! #SystemChangeNotClimateChange#FridaysForFuture#ClimateYouthStrikePH pic.twitter.com/ZmJyWp86Yf

— Agham Youth PUP (@aghamyouth_pup) May 24, 2019

In Ireland, a teacher led her class down the street early Friday morning…

Out early in Lisdoonvarna with Mary Immaculate Secondary School #FridaysForFuture #climatestrike First out the door in Ireland?! @GretaThunberg @Janemellett @trocaire pic.twitter.com/doWXdNnbWV

— Lorna Gold – Climate Generation (@gold_lgold) May 24, 2019

In Washington D.C., streets rang with calls for climate action, despite the sitting president’s position…

#StudentClimateStrike in Washington DC. #Fridays4Future pic.twitter.com/R4fk8ctj6S

— Valentina Ossa Yarrow (@ValentinaOssa11) May 24, 2019

And in Stockholm, the girl who started it all, Greta Thunberg, is on the march for the 40th week in a row. But she’s not alone anymore…

Stockholm right now. #FridaysForFuture #SchoolStrike4Climate #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/KwEXdLXECp

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 24, 2019

Stockholm right now. #FridaysforFuture #SchoolStrike4Climate pic.twitter.com/S63wZMWTyq

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 24, 2019

School strike week 40.#climatestrike #fridaysforfuture #schoolstrike4climate pic.twitter.com/bzy8iNLMhz

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 24, 2019

The post The best images from school strikes around the world appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Ethiopian Gebru Jember Endalew chairs the Least Developed Countries’ Group at the UN – a bloc representing 47 nations that are especially vulnerable to global warming, but have done the least to cause it.

Miguel Arias Cañete has been EU commissioner for climate action and energy since 2015. Initially booed by environmentalists for his shares in two oil companies, the Spanish conservative has nevertheless managed to defy expectations by raising the EU’s climate pledge. The EU 2030 renewable energy targets, the ETS, were all achieved in part thanks to Arias Cañete’s knack for getting things done.

Emblematic of a small gender revolution in the top climate jobs in the UN process, Saudi Arabia’s Sarah Bashaan moderates the climate talks in her role as co-chair of the ad hoc working group on the Paris Agreement (APA). She first stepped into the world of climate negotiations in 2012 when advising the country’s minister of petroleum and mineral resources.

François de Rugy is France’s environment minister. Relatively new to the post, de Rugy has positioned himself as a pragmatist on environmental policy, emphasising the potential for a green transition from within the current economic model.

CopCast: Episode three – Closing the mines

Throughout the next two weeks, we’ll be starting the morning with the news that is driving the day and guests to explain what is happening inside the room and out of it.

Megan Darby and Sara Stefanini go beyond the Cop24 walls to speak to trade unionists at a recently closed Polish coal mine and a Katowice climate activist

Xie Zhenhua is China’s chief climate change official. Since taking the reins of the State Environmental Protection Agency in 1993, he has led the country in energy conservation and cracked down on China’s pollution. He is the brains behind the Chinese national carbon emission trading system, a market mechanism to control greenhouse gases.

Michał Kurtyka, Poland’s deputy environment minister, is the president of the Cop24 talks, a role managing the running of the conference. When there are deadlocks, the Cop president can be key to mediating a compromise. As a relatively junior figure, his appointment broke a long-running tradition of appointing senior politicians to the presidency.

The head of Spain’s new ministry for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera has been working hard since June to turn her country into Europe’s green champion. Since taking office, she has scrapped the so-called sun tax, an unpopular levy on sun power, and impressed environmentalists worldwide with a 250m deal to retrain the country’s fossil fuel workers.

Middle row (left to right)

Patricia Espinosa is the UN’s climate change chief. Over the past years she has proved herself to be coalition-builder, be it as the president of COP16, or as Mexico’s foreign minister and ambassador to four countries.

South Korean energy economist Hoesung Lee is chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s climate science body. The IPCC released a major report in October with the finding that limiting warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C, could avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change.

Mohamed Nasheed is the Maldives’ first ever democratically elected leader of the Maldives. Only too aware of the threat posed by climate change to his country, he made the headlines in 2009 by holding a cabinet meeting underwater. The Maldives has announced a 2020 target for carbon neutrality. Nasheed is back after a period of political exile, leading his country’s delegation to the talks.

Catherine McKenna is Canada’s environment minister and a key bridge between the EU and China, with whom she has brokered a relationship. She is also one of the few major economy ministers who was in Paris in 2015 and remains in her job.

Harsh Vardhan is India’s environment minister. In its contribution to the Paris Agreement, India has pledged that 40% of the country’s electricity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030 and that it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions for each unit of GDP by a third.

Wells Griffith advises Donald Trump on the US’ energy policy. Like his boss, the White house representative is big on coal and is expected to lead an event promoting fossil fuel energy upon his arrival during the second week of COP24.

Self-described on her Twitter account as the “first female leader of the Pacific,” Hilda Heine is the president of the Marshall Islands. Save from the Fijians, Heine is currently the only leader to have strengthened her country’s climate pledge before the 2020 deadline.

Bottom row (left to right)

Jo Tyndall is the second co-chair of the ad hoc working group on the Paris Agreement (APA). Before that, she was New Zealand’s climate change ambassador and has, among other things, energetically called on governments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

With over 20 years of experience in climate negotiations, Paul Watkinson is now in charge of one of the engines of the UN talks, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). The French-British diplomat, who studied mathematics at Cambridge University, has long led the French delegation team in climate negotiations and advised the French minister for ecological transition.

Wael Aboulmagd is both Egypt’s ambassador and the chair of the 130-plus bloc of developing countries known as the G77 + China. That’s almost half of all of the countries present at the climate negotiations.

Emmanuel Dlamini used to chair the Africa Group, the negotiating block representing African continent in climate negotiations. He is now the head of another of the engines of the climate talks, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation, and likes to make spirited interventions. “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Being willing is not enough, we must do,” is one of the quotes that rang in Bangkok.

Trigg Talley is the US’ top climate negotiator. Having played a key role in securing the Paris Agreement in 2015, Talley now faces the unenviable task of continuing to represent US interests after Donald Trump decided to thrash the agreement he had negotiated. The US is expected to push for the implementation of the Paris Agreement to be as transparent as possible.

Svenja Schulze is Germany’s environment minister. Schulze recently announced plans to collaborate with a fellow social democrat on a CO2 price initiative, but the plan was rejected.

(Photos, row 1: LEDS GP/Flickr; EU2017EE Estonian Presidency/Wikimedia Commons; UNFCCC/Flickr; Bruno Perroud/Wikimedia Commons; US Dept of State/Wikimedia Commons; Commons/Flickr; EFE/Mariscal)

(Photos, row 2: UNFCCC/Wikimedia Commons; UNFCCC/Wikimedia Commons; Commons; Catherine McKenna/Twitter; MissionInnovation/Flickr;  US Dept of Energy; Wikmedia Commons)

(Photos, row 3: UNFCCC/Flickr; UNFCCC/Youtube; Canadian Arab Institute/Youtube; UN Climate Change;  UNFCCC/Youtube; Gerd Seidel/Rob Irgendwer/Wikimedia Commons)

The post Katowice climate power list appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is depressing that a situation Vincent “Ċensu” Tabone presented as “urgent” in 1988 continues to deteriorate three decades later – albeit with some causes for hope.

Malta’s foreign minister was the first to put climate change on the agenda at the UN General Assembly on this day, 30 years ago.

“My government decided to take action at this session of the General Assembly due to the urgent need to conserve climate in the interests of mankind by protecting it against negative man-made changes,” he said, according to the transcript.

“We are convinced that there should be global recognition of the fundamental right of every human being to enjoy [the] climate in a state which best sustains life.”

Inspired by a warning from law professor David Attard, Malta set out to show a small country could respond to emerging threats and influence international affairs.

Tabone’s intervention led to a UN resolution that December, recognising climate change as a “common concern” requiring “timely action”. It asked the newly conceived Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advise on the state of climate science and response strategies.

What happens in the next few months will impact the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

CHN will be there keeping you informed from the inside.

If you value our coverage, please consider helping us. Become a CHN patron for as little as $5 per month.

We have set up a Patreon account. It’s a simple, safe and easy way for you to become part of a community that will secure and guide our future.

Thank you!

A dozen other countries spoke, universally backing Malta’s call to action. There was some mild disagreement over the legal framing of the issue and its institutional home; nobody disputed the underlying science.

Joanna Depledge, co-curator of an exhibition at the UN climate headquarters on its institutional history, says the science had developed significantly over the previous decade.

“While the issue of climate change was unfamiliar to most diplomats, scientists had long suspected that human activities associated with industrialization – notably burning fossil fuels, deforestation and intensive agriculture – could release greenhouse gases that would accumulate in the atmosphere and lead to a warming world,” she tells Climate Home News.

In the discussion opened by Tabone, diplomats showed awareness of some of the expected impacts of global warming and ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The vulnerability of small islands like the Maldives was mentioned. So was the potential of nuclear and solar power to displace coal.

Yet there were few indications of how fraught and protracted the struggle to tackle climate change would become. In 30 years of oil lobby misinformation and bitter disputes over who is responsible, emissions have continued to rise, with global temperatures passing 1C above pre-industrial levels.

pic.twitter.com/TfGuz0AQHJ

— Cris Robertson ✍ (@karooyouth) October 23, 2018

Perhaps the clearest foresight came from Colombia’s delegate Enrique Peñalosa Camargo – father of today’s mayor of Bogotá.

“The political challenge is not an easy one. In the developed world, the oil and car-manufacturing interests have a lot of power. In the developing world debt, trade deficits and the vital need to increase the standard of living of poor populations enjoy top political priority,” he said.

“But,” he added, citing Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Bruntland, “if we do not succeed in putting our message of urgency through to today’s parents and decision-makers, we risk undermining our children’s fundamental right to a healthy, life-enhancing environment.”

This month’s IPCC report on the science of 1.5C warming underscored how much more acute the problem has got since then.

It would be easy to conclude that the UN has failed. The pioneers of climate diplomacy certainly underestimated the countervailing forces. But the process started that day did eventually, in 2015, yield an international pact that most of the world – don’t mention the US, or indeed Brazil – is committed to.

Republish this article

The post Time capsule: 30 years ago, Malta put climate on the UN agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.

The tech billionaire, owner of aerospace manufacturer SpaceX and CEO of electric car and battery company Tesla tweeted that he had a solution for getting the trapped boys out: a miniature submarine.

Ultimately the sub, which had been developed by engineers from two of his companies, was unnecessary and all 13 made it out of the cave unharmed.

But for Musk it was a low-cost coup. His tweet has been liked more than 200,000 times and captured newspaper headlines in major and minor outlets across the world.

It was only when Musk inexplicably and without evidence called rescuer Vern Unsworth a paedophile on Twitter that his involvement turned sour.

Musk had been responding to Unsworth’s take that Musk’s submarine offer was a “PR stunt” that “had absolutely no chance of working”.

I suspect that the Thai govt has this under control, but I’m happy to help if there is a way to do so

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2018

It was an unseemly, ultimately disastrous public meltdown from Musk, whose investors called on him to retract his statement. (He eventually did).

But the out-of-the-blue insertion of a Musk company into a moment of intense media and public anxiety is a familiar play Musk has turned to his advantage again and again.

It’s a strategy he has developed by taking on the biggest crisis of them all: climate change. Not only are his companies – Tesla, Solarcity, SpaceX (which is trying to build the hyperloop) – promoted as answers to the problem of carbon emissions. He has also made a habit of following severe weather events with offers of free, cheap or rapidly deployed tech.

I would be happy to talk. Hopefully, Tesla can be helpful.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2017

Following the devastation of October 2017’s Hurricane Maria, Musk responded by sending Tesla power battery packs to help resolve national power outages across Puerto Rico.

Tesla Powerwall batteries are rechargeable lithium-ion battery energy storage devices that can store solar energy – helpful where the grid has been destroyed. Children’s Hospital del Nino in San Juan was just one of the “11,000 projects underway” in the country (according to Musk) helped by Tesla in restoring power.

He helped restore power in Alabama, USA in 2010 after Hurricane Katrina by donating a 25-kilowatt solar power system to the relief efforts, and similarly in Fukushima, Japan a year later following the tsunami.

Perhaps his boldest and most audacious crisis intervention came after power was knocked out by a storm across the entire state of South Australia in 2016. As Australia’s right-wing commentariat blamed the government’s pro-renewable stance for the blackouts, Musk threw himself into the political fight, tweeting that Tesla would build the world’s biggest battery in 100 days “or it is free”.

Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2017

South Australia’s government took the bet and Musk came through. Tesla’s 100MW battery system brought power to more than 30,000 homes and has kept the South Australian power grid online when coal stations have crashed.

These high tech airdrops demonstrate the success of renewable power technology in crisis relief efforts. They also place Musk companies on the ground in moments where his competitors have been disrupted.

Musk’s companies create things that offer genuine hope for solving both immediate local problems and big global ones. He has a record of making a difference to intractable problems with engineering, technology and bold ideas.

He also has displayed a knack for turning those offers of help into PR bonanzas. Where that goes right, it goes really, really right. Among his fans, Musk’s reputation is that of a ubiquitous global saviour. His offers of help (see above) are often prompted by admirers on social media calling on him to turn his hand to the crisis of the day.

But Unsworth’s comments, which named up the more self-serving aspects of Musk’s Thai offer, evidently stung the billionaire. His mixture of business strategy, viral marketing and idealism is a high wire act. When it goes wrong, it can look cynical and the social media tools Musk uses to such advantage can quickly turn against him.

If you like what we do, support us

Become a CHN patron for as little as $5 per month to help us keep bringing you the most in-depth coverage of climate politics and underreported stories from around the world.

We have set up a Patreon account. It’s a simple, safe and easy way for you to become part of a community that will secure and guide our future.

Thank you!

Republish this article

The post Elon Musk’s disaster capitalism appeared first on Climate Home News.

Working from our office in Covent Garden, you will bolster CHN’s coverage of the global politics and impacts of climate change. This is a full-time role, reporting to the editor-in-chief.

Climate Home News is an award-winning specialist news site with a mission to bring important climate stories to as large an audience as possible. We are fiercely independent and seek to hold powerful actors to account, while also tracking the politics and actions that will decide the future of our climate. Our coverage of UN climate negotiations is unrivalled.

As a small news website, we prize original reporting above all, constantly looking to break news and cover stories others miss. We are seeking a versatile journalist with the ability to write news, features and analysis and source scoops.

As well as keeping our small newsroom ticking with regular, punchy news articles, you will be expected to help break more detailed stories of political intrigue – like our recent exposé of the story behind the removal of a leading Fijian diplomat – or corporate activity – like the documents we sourced on BP’s plan to drill for oil in Australia.

You should be able to demonstrate a flair for enterprise reporting and building investigations into stories. Data skills and experience using FOI are also advantageous.

Other desirable attributes:

• Knowledge of climate change, international climate politics and diplomacy
• Strong contacts in government, industry or finance in the climate space
• Experience reporting at UN climate conferences
• Languages other than English
• Ability to think creatively about story delivery, visualisation and use of social media to reach our audience

We specialise in reporting climate diplomacy, particularly the UN process. But we do much more than that. Our outlook is internationalist and the successful reporter will demonstrate an ability to source stories from around the world, for a global audience. The job will involve travel to report from climate summits and the frontlines of climate change.

Salary: DOE

All applications are to be completed and submitted by 5pm GMT, Monday, August 6, 2018.

All candidates interested in applying should send a resume, clips and cover letter as one document to CHN’s editor Karl Mathiesen (km@climatehomenews.org). You cover letter should be no longer than two pages. All candidates must have the right to work and live in the UK. You should be located, or prepared to relocate to London, although we are prepared to consider special cases.

Climate Home News is owned and operated by Climate Change News Ltd. We are an equal employment opportunity employer, and do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, disability, national origin or citizenship.

The post Climate Home News is seeking a full-time reporter appeared first on Climate Home News.

The environment minister of the Marshall Islands has just released striking new graphics that show how fast climate change may overwhelm his homeland.

The sea level rise projections were produced by researchers at the University of Hawaii, who topographically mapped Majuro to generate a specific picture of the future for the Marshall Island’s capital atoll.

“Majuro is so small that we can all see our own houses. My own house would be underwater. Everyone I love, everything I own, and every part of my history is in these islands,” says Paul.

The images showed that with a rise in sea level of 91cm (three feet), the majority of the low-lying land would become completely uninhabitable. That’s a rise in ocean levels scientists predict could occur by 2100 unless humans curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The graphics also show ranges of one and two feet (30cm and 61cm), which are well within projected rises without rapid pollution reductions.

Many of the homes of the 30,000 people who live on Majuro, as well as the entire airport, would be left completely submerged.

Darrit, the most densely populated part of Majuro atoll, which housing much of the Bikini atoll population, is also severely at risk. These people were forced to leave their original homes in the 1940s as a result of nuclear testing.

Paul has been in Europe attending ministerial meetings. “It is clear the images resonate with others too,” he says. “I printed them out and showed them to many other ministers in Europe this week. Many of them were in tears. They clearly left a big impression on the German minister [Svenja Schulze] – who is now a really close friend. And [French ecology minister] Nicolas Hulot asked me for copies so he could show them to president Macron.”

Increased flooding and droughts on the Marshall Islands are already demonstrating the reality of climate change, and the latest predictions showed the devastating impacts that will occur if sea levels continue to rise.

“What the images must also remind us though is that this is a global fight. If this happens to Majuro, the worst impacts will also be affecting everyone. No one is immune,” says Paul.

This is what climate change looks like. The latest projections for sea-level rise in Majuro, our capital atoll. Home to 30,000 people. My house would be underwater. That's why the Marshall Islands & 22 other countries have issued a Declaration for Ambition https://t.co/HZxP54jQMr pic.twitter.com/mt6TNorKp9

— David Paul (@SenatorDPaul) June 21, 2018

But he is convinced there is still hope. “It is not too late. This is why it is crucial we urgently increase global ambition by 2020. Our Paris targets are not enough. If these were predictions for any major power’s future, there would be a crisis summit taking place.”

Yesterday, the Marshall Islands launched a declaration along with 22 other countries, pledging intention to increase their climate action goals.

Paul also announced that the Marshall Islands will host a climate dialogue on 23 July in Majuro, to discuss further strategies to reduce emissions.

Republish this article

The post Graphics of Marshall Islands sea level rise ‘brought EU ministers to tears’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yearly, we produce five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from crop and livestock production.

From seed to mouth, it can be easy to forget how much in terms of production goes into our food. So here’s a couple of things you may not already know about the carbon footprint of your favourite dishes.

1. Sandwich fillers

Chicken isn’t the most carbon-intensive meat, but it may come as a surprise to know that some of our favourite veggies have an equally poor carbon record.

Researchers from the University of Manchester recently calculated the carbon footprint of ingredients in British sandwiches. For sandwich eaters, cutting out tomatoes from a classic BLT (bacon, lettuce, and tomato) may be better for the environment.

Natural gas and electricity are used for the heating and lighting of greenhouses for tomatoes in the UK, contributing to their high carbon footprint. A 2009 report by the WWF found that in the UK, tomato, pepper, and cucumber production is worse for the environment than chicken and turkey.

2. Tofu of us consider everything

Demand for soy is driving deforestation, but think again before you put all the blame onto tofu eaters or the vegan movement. Around 70% of the global soy production is fed directly to livestock.

Beef racks up to 105kg of Co2e per 100g, while tofu produces less than 3.5kg. Trying to feed all those cows has meant that the expansion in soy has led to deforestation and the decline in other valuable ecosystems that store carbon. The Cerrado, a savanna ecoregion of Brazil, has lost half of its natural vegetation to soybean plantations.

One study found that deforestation related to soy production in Brazil is responsible for 29% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Microplastics in the Azores (Photo: Creative Commons)

3. Something fishy about that

Maybe not strictly carbon footprint related, but microplastics, tiny pieces ranging from 5 millimetres down to 100 nanometers in diameter, are everywhere and a recent article from the World Economic Forum suggested that they have been found in a range of foods from fish to honey, chicken, and beer.

Besides polluting seas and oceans, microplastics are swallowed by fish and other marine creatures and enter our system when we eat seafood. Land animals also consume microplastics, although, unlike with fish, we tend not to eat their digestive systems.

4. Organic isn’t always better

Organic food has an image of health and sustainability but is not necessarily better for the climate than non-organic food. One study published in Environmental Research Letters found exactly that in June 2017.

“Organic systems require 25 to 110% more land use, use 15% less energy, and have 37% higher eutrophication potential than conventional systems per unit of food,” the study found. “In addition, organic and conventional systems did not significantly differ in their greenhouse gas emissions or acidification potential”.

Beetroot burger (Photo: George N)

5. Bleeding burgers

There are a variety of reasons why someone would consider going vegetarian, with studies suggesting that going vegetarian “can cut your carbon footprint in half”. While some vegetarians may miss the flavour of meat, we can’t be certain how many miss being reminded that that’s what they’re eating.

Now, vegetarians and vegans can treat themselves to a meatless patty that literally bleeds… beetroot juice. Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Naturli are some of the companies working on bringing meat-free ‘bleeding’ burgers to the mass market. 

These burgers are either grown in labs or made from ingredients such as mushrooms, wheat, nuts, coconut oil, beetroot and soy, and have a significantly smaller carbon footprint than the animal-based original. 

Farmers inspecting wheat near Pullman, Washington (Photo: Jack Dykinga)

6. Wheat for it

Most of the emissions from staples such as bread come from the fertiliser used to grow wheat. A 2017 study found that ammonium nitrate fertiliser accounts for 43% of all the greenhouse gas emissions in the production process of a loaf of bread.

But can different types of bread be better or worse for the environment (besides being better or worse for your body)? Cereals used in bread, such as oats and barley, have smaller carbon footprints than typical wheat used in white loaves, as well as rye.

7. One way isn’t the best way

Blanket agricultural production doesn’t work across the world, and it’s important to consider local ecosystems when looking at how best to produce food with the lowest carbon footprint.

A vegetarian typically has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eater but the plant-based diet isn’t practical everywhere, especially for those who live in dry or cold places that cannot support the growth of most vegetable crops.

Although approximately 1,799 gallons of water is needed per pound to raise a cow, the amount of water needed in order to successfully farm in desert-like climates can be huge and is currently unsustainable. Even though it may be better for the climate to be vegetarian, for some, that just isn’t sustainable.

The post 7 surprising things about the carbon footprint of your food appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate Home News is seeking two outstanding journalists to report deeply on the development impacts, challenges and opportunities of climate change in Africa.

We want to explore how climate knowledge, from adequate modelling to early warning systems, can be used to speed the development of African countries. Where does the science fall short? And why?

Fellows will be provided training and support in climate change reporting from CHN’s editorial team. They will also receive training in the scientific and technical challenges the continent faces from our project partners Future Climate for Africa.

Climate Home News is seeking mid-career journalists who want to expand their knowledge of climate change reporting. We encourage staff writers for African or overseas publications to apply and will support co-publishing arrangements with your employer.

Successful candidates will have at least five years of reporting experience. Background in climate change or environment reporting is not a prerequisite. A strong track record in original coverage of African politics and development will be seen as a positive.

Fluent spoken and written English is essential.

Other desirable selection criteria include:

• History of reporting from the field across Africa
• Ability to file clean copy on time
• Ability to tackle complex technical and political stories
• Excellent teamwork skills
• Ability to take editorial direction and write to a brief

Eligible candidates will be based in, and hold a passport for, one of the following countries: Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Each fellow is expected to produce four major stories between now and May 2019, receiving a fee of £3,000 for their work. There will be some budget for travel.

To apply, please send a CV describing your work history, a one-page cover letter, examples of four published stories and references to CHN editor Karl Mathiesen: km@climatehomenews.org.

Deadline for applications 29 June, 2018.

Please include an idea for a compelling and original story where scientific knowledge regarding climate change could be used to solve an African development problem. Your pitch should identify the place, the problem, the solution and sources you would use to report the story.

Climate Home News is an independent news website devoted to reporting the story of climate change from every corner of the world.

Future Climate for Africa is working to reduce the impacts of climate change in Africa by significantly improving scientific understanding of climate variability and change across Africa and improving the planning and decisions that will impact the continent’s development. Funding for this fellowship has been provided by Future Climate for Africa.

The post Climate Home News is offering two African reporting fellowships appeared first on Climate Home News.

Delivering the tools needed to put the Paris Agreement into effect will be the major challenge when countries meet at Cop24 in Poland this December. But talks stalled in May, leaving a mass of political and technical discussion to pack into the next six months.

The UN climate conference, which will be held from 3-14 December in the coal-mining town of Katowice, is the deadline to deliver an as-of-yet unwritten set of rules that will govern the Paris accord. 

It matters because a weak set of rules will mean countries will end up doing less to fight climate change.

The last half of 2018 is littered with meetings that could build or break momentum into those talks. Here are the moments to keep an eye on.

G7 Summit, Quebec, 8-9 June

Given the US has turned away from its commitment to climate action, big statements aren’t expected from the G7.

Last week, UNFCCC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa gave a statement in advance of the leaders’ summit, calling on the group to provide a clear signal for climate action. “The G7 is a very influential group that can make a huge contribution to stepping up climate action and ensuring that 2018 yields a successful outcome for all,” said Espinosa.

Petersberg Climate Dialogue IX, Berlin, 18-19 June

The annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue, an informal international conference, has offered the opportunity for governments to exchange their experiences in climate policy since 2010.

Ministers and negotiators from 35 countries will gather in Berlin to prepare for the next UN talks in Poland. This year the dialogue will focus on the impacts of delaying ambitious action, ensuring a just transition for all, and climate finance.

Negotiators will also look at how to complete the Paris Agreement work programme, which is colloquially known as the rulebook. Questions that will need to be answered include what must be in the guidelines to make the system work and what can be done to help poor countries take action on the ground?

Berlin (Photo: Nordenfan)

Second Ministerial on Climate Action (Moca), Brussels, 20-21 June

From Berlin, some ministers will jump straight into more talks on climate action. Just over a year after Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the Ministerial on Climate Action (Moca) between climate chiefs from China, the European Union, and Canada will hold its second meeting.

In September 2017, the three first met to advance discussions on the full implementation of the Paris Agreement, together reaffirming their commitment to climate action. This year, with big divides between the EU and China over aspects of the Paris rulebook, the world is looking to this meeting to broker some agreement. The US-China relationship was key to landing the Paris Agreement. But questions remain over whether a similar bond can be forged with the world’s other heavyweight economy – Europe.

There is the possibility that another meeting will be held in October, although an EU source said this might be tight considering the climate summit in California.

If you like what we do, support us

Become a CHN patron for as little as $5 per month to help us keep bringing you the most in-depth coverage of climate politics and underreported stories from around the world.

We have set up a Patreon account. It’s a simple, safe and easy way for you to become part of a community that will secure and guide our future.

Thank you!

UNFCCC Climate Change Conference, Bangkok, 4-9 September

Bouncing back from uninspiring negotiations in Bonn in May, the UNFCCC will hold extra climate talks in Bangkok in September. The extra negotiation session has been charged with producing an outline for an agreement to be struck in Katowice. Diplomats need a ‘negotiating text’, which can serve as a basis for talks. The pressure is on in Bangkok to deliver at least that. They won’t get another session before December to do so.

Bangkok (Photo: Gwengoat)

Rise for Climate marches, International, 8 September

Ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit, tens of thousands of people around the globe plan to take part in marches as part of the Rise for Climate campaign, which aim to demonstrate grassroots climate leadership.

A continental day of action will take place in Australia, local renewable energy summits across Africa, a major march in Portugal and virtual marches in East Asia, are just some of the hundreds of events that are planned.

Global Climate Action Summit, California, 12-14 September

Fronted by California governor Jerry Brown, the climate summit signifies the determination by US officials and non-state actors to show they can and will work to prevent climate change, despite the country’s intention to leave the Paris climate agreement.

California will convene representatives from subnational governments, businesses, investors and civil society. The summit organisers hope it will be a “launchpad for deeper worldwide commitments” that will help countries realise the agreement and help build momentum for a successful outcome at Cop24.

Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), Bonn, 18-21 September 

In 2016 in Warsaw, the UNFCCC established the Warsaw International Mechanism to look at what more the international community can do to help developing countries deal with the physical and financial impacts of climate change.

The upcoming meeting will focus on what action and support is needed by less economically developed countries, enhancing knowledge and strengthening dialogue. The mechanism allows for policy to be discussed and for the negative impacts of climate change to be addressed by government and non-government actors if global efforts to adapt to those impacts are not sufficient.

UN General Assembly and Climate Week, New York, 18-30 September

World leaders meet in New York at the UN General Assembly, running parallel to Climate Week in the same city. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcès, minister of foreign affairs of Ecuador, will be heading the 73rd session as president. She will also be the 4th woman to do so.

Climate Week NYC, which is organised by international non-profit The Climate Group, will also bring together international leaders from business, government, and civil society to demonstrate the need to keep up the momentum for global climate action.

In 2019, alongside the general assembly, secretary general António Guterres will host a climate summit for world leaders to review commitments made under the Paris Agreement.

IPCC 1.5C report launch, Incheon, 8 October

In October, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will officially present its special report on global warming.

The UN body for assessing the science related to climate change was invited by the UNFCCC to write a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. It will expose the difference in cost and suffering between the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C and 2C temperature goals.

The report’s launch is being planned as a political moment for poor countries and those who argue for greater ambition to make a push toward Katowice. 

Climate Home News obtained a copy of the first draft summary for policymakers earlier this year. Findings from the draft indicate that if the global community misses the 1.5C warming target, hunger, migration and conflict will worsen. In short, we don’t have much time.

G20 Summit, Buenos Aires, 30 November – 1 December

The G20 economies account for around 80% of world trade, 82% of energy-related CO2 emissions, two-thirds of the global population and approximately half of the world land area. Despite more voices being added to the mix, the summit will have to jump similar hurdles to the G7 if the US keeps its current position on the Paris Agreement.

Its timing brings world leaders together just two days before the conference in Katowice begins.

Republish this article

The post 10 key moments on the road to the Cop24 climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

Also nominated were comparably massive sites like Pink News, BBC East of England, the Belfast Telegraph and the Trinity Mirror. But a heavyweight panel of judges rewarded CHN’s keen global reportage and mission to spread it around the world.

“Quality journalism is needed now more than ever online and the winners tonight are some of the best internationally,” said editor of the year Steven McCaffery from The Detail, which was also nominated in our category.

There are a lot of people to thank for Climate Home News’ success. Our deputy editor Megan (who is definitely one of them) has done that here. I second every one of the people she mentions.

But I wanted to single out you, our readers, for a special mention. Climate change is an issue that affects and interests everyone. But there is a special, diverse community out there who care enough to follow it closely.

We are here to serve you and we are looking for better ways to do that. It’s tacky (and irresistible) to use an award as a platform to call for financial help. But we hope our new Patreon account will be much more than that. The link is here.

Members who sign up – for a small fee – will gain access to a forum we want to use to help us find new ways to respond to the needs of this community and help those who care about climate change to connect with each other.

It’s fantastic to have the work of the past years recognised. We think there is a lot more we can do and we’d like your guidance.

The post Climate Home News wins online media award appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2015 in Paris, governments struck a deal that lacked much of the substance needed to fight climate change. Now diplomats are trying to negotiate the complex rules of the deal. Their failure to make serious progress has been met with concern around the world.

Climate negotiations are becoming ever-more detached from the starburst of activity released by the Paris deal. In the coming years, the role of the UN will remain important, but no longer be the primary driver of global change.

Not willing to wait for the finer details, businesses, researchers, governments and citizens are coming up with new ways to move the climate to a safer place. There are thousands of stories, big and small. Here are just a few.

1. Looking down from space
Kenyan herders no longer have to rely on instinct or rumour to find the best grassland for their livestock. An app called Afriscout uses satellite data to point them in the right direction, Thomson Reuters Foundation reports.

It is one of the latest innovations to bring the world’s poorest into the information age and help them ride out increasingly volatile weather patterns.

The project is sponsored through US foreign aid. Under the Paris Agreement, rich countries committed to mobilising tens of billions of dollars every year to help poor countries cope with climate change.

The pact also put adaptation to the impacts of climate change on an equal footing to emissions reduction – the latter historically preoccupying the developed world.

As science and policy scramble to catch up, images from space can increasingly guide decisions on the ground.

2. Chile’s law unleashes action

In 2017, Chile released a sweeping new plan to reform its coal-heavy power sector. The Paris deal is referenced throughout the 250-page policy paper. Since the law was announced, the country has also announced a coal phase out and its new centre-right president has called for 100% renewable electricity to be achieved by 2040.

Every country that has signed the Paris Agreement has at least one climate law or piece of legislation aimed at a cleaner energy sector. Since the deal was struck in 2015, governments have implemented 106 new laws. This has opened up new avenues for suing governments who don’t act on climate change (see below).

However, the strength of the laws varies, according to the Grantham Research Institute, which maintains a handy database of all of these laws. Just 28 of the laws signed since the Paris deal actually make reference to it. This disconnect “might hinder” countries from attaching their domestic laws to the global transition that is underway.

We need to ask for your help.

Become a CHN member for as little as US$5 per month to help us keep bringing you the most in-depth coverage of climate politics and uncovered stories from around the world.

We have set up a Patreon account. It’s a simple, safe and easy way for you to become part of a community that will secure and guide our future.

Thankyou!

3. Courtroom drama

The Paris Agreement gives leverage to a whole new generation of climate change litigation. Columbia University’s Sabin Center lists 866 climate lawsuits worldwide, which deploy a range of international and national legal principles.

Campaign group Urgenda scored a notable victory in 2015, citing commitments the Dutch government had made in international fora. The government was forced to tighten its 2020 emissions targets.

While the verdict is under appeal – the next hearing is due on 28 May – it forced climate protection up the political agenda.

Prime minister Mark Rutte struck a coalition agreement to phase out coal power and is leading calls for the EU to raise its ambition.

Other cases use human rights, clean air or freedom of information arguments to hold governments and corporations to account.

Paris deal: Eyes on ministers to intervene as talks get mired in old battles

4. India’s forest man

The outlook for the world’s tropical forests is not good. But there are pockets of hope. On a sandbar in the Brahmaputra river, India, one man has almost single-handedly grown a 550 hectare forest.

Jadav Payeng took over an abandoned government scheme in the 1980s and has persuaded his community of the benefits to tree-planting.

The Mulai Kathoni forest prevents erosion and supports livestock for the growing human population. At the same time, Mongabay reports, it has become a haven for elephants, Bengal tigers and even a few rhinos.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to “conserve and enhance” forests and mobilise results-based payments for doing so. To succeed, initiatives will need to offer forest-dwellers sustainable livelihoods that do not depend on slash-and-burn.

5. Pipeline pressure

Kinder Morgan, developer of the controversial Trans-Mountain oil pipeline in Canada, is the latest major company to take heat from shareholders over its climate impact.

A majority of investors voted at last week’s AGM to demand the company justify its role in a safe climate future.

Like similar shareholder resolutions passed at Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP, the proposal hinged on the minimum goal of the Paris Agreement: holding global warming to 2C.

As the world moves towards a low carbon economy, does it really need more fossil fuel infrastructure? Crucially for financiers, will those investments pay off or become stranded?

The Kinder Morgan vote is another drag on a project facing strong opposition from indigenous groups whose territory the proposed pipeline crosses.

In countries where governments are unable or unwilling to regulate big oil, organised shareholders are checking the industry’s short-termist impulses.

Sign up for Climate Weekly

6. Meat alternatives

Many westerners are ditching our diets and opting for a plant-based lifestyle.

Those choosing to adopt a vegan diet has increased over 600% in the United States in three years, and vegetarianism is up 350% and 400% in the UK and Portugal in the past decade.

Figures range between 6-32% for how much livestock contributes to greenhouse gases, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization puts it at 14.5%.

Countries have committed to limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally under the Paris Agreement.

With some studies suggesting that going vegetarian “can cut your carbon footprint in half,” the movement to a plant-based lifestyle may just be the best food trend so far.

7. Soak up the sun

Can our cities be turned into huge energy farms?

Windows and pavements cover much of the built environment. But how do you create a solar panel that can both absorb light and let it through?

A new technology called organic semiconductors could be the solution, according to a recent article on the Conversation, as it may be possible to design panels that are flexible, lightweight, colored or completely transparent.

Meanwhile in Scotland, researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University have invented a tile that can generate power when exposed to sunlight. The success of the solar pavement will depend on how it performs during tests at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Climate change has driven a burst in ideas and innovation. In the build-up to the Paris conference, 22 countries and the European Commission, representing over 80% of global clean energy research budgets, committed to doubling investment in clean energy research and innovation over five years to 2021.

8. Recharge your batteries

Under the Paris Agreement, 140 countries have included a push towards expanding renewable energy as part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), with 75 including it as a focus area.

But one of the biggest challenges is overcoming how to store the variable electricity it produces.

Current battery solutions are difficult and too expensive to build on a scale that fits the needs of national power grids – with the notable exception of Tesla’s super cell in South Australia. A further worry is availability of lithium, the base chemical for many of today’s batteries.

Researchers at Stanford University in the US have developed a battery that runs on saltwater, allowing excess energy to be stored in a cheap and safe way, and then used when there are higher demands for power.

Lead researcher Yi Cui said all they had done was create a salt and water solution, “dropped in an electrode, and created a reversible chemical reaction that stores electrons in the form of hydrogen gas”.

9. Plugging the gaps

In 2014, Ioane Teitiota had a bid for refugee status based on the climate threat to his Kiribati homeland rejected by New Zealand’s courts.

Teitiota’s claim had no basis in law, they decided. Climate refugees slip through a gap in the UN refugee convention, which focuses on human persecution rather than environmental threat. Its founders probably never imagined a global climate crisis that could displace millions.

Last year, a newly-elected New Zealand government said it planned to amend that by implementing a special climate refugee visa. It is consulting with Pacific countries – who say they don’t want to consider contingencies that include abandoning their islands – about how the policy can be introduced. But this could become a model that gets around the fact that, under international law, climate refugees do not exist.

10. Green bonds unleashed

Before the Paris deal was signed, green bonds – which raise money for environmentally beneficial projects – were a drop in the bucket. In total, $37bn worth of these bonds were issued in 2014.

In 2016, the leaders of the world’s biggest 20 economies committed to growing green bonds as part of the G20 leadership statement. It shined a huge light into a little corner of the financial world.

This, combined with the Paris deal, has convinced investors governments are committed to action on climate change and are ready to back it with cash.

In 2017, $157bn worth of green bonds were issued. That could go past $250bn this year, according to Moody’s.

11. Car-free cities

Melbourne, Australia has become the latest city to consider a car-free overhaul of its public spaces, setting out to reduce air and noise pollution by drawing inspiration from Barcelona’s ‘superblocks’.

The number of car-free places in cities is expanding and several countries have committed to banning diesel cars within the next few decades.

Similarly to Barcelona, the Australian city is mapped out like a grid. The redesigned superblocks prioritise cycling and walking, with cars and public transport banned from the centre, instead travelling around the perimeter.

Along with carbon reductions come health benefits. In Vitoria Gasteiz, a city north-west of Barcelona, a superblock in the city centre led to a 38% reduction in particle pollution.

Republish this article

The post 11 ways the Paris climate deal is working in the real world appeared first on Climate Home News.

By 2020 at least seven new gigawatt-size battery factories are scheduled to start operating on the continent, with another three developments rumoured.

Within a decade, these facilities will be churning out 80GWh a year. More than three times the 2017 global production capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

‘Gigafactories’, a term coined in the US by Elon Musk’s Tesla, produce batteries on the scale of more than 1GWh per year. Until this year, Europe had no factories of that size.

But with demand for electric vehicles on the continent predicted to surge (Dutch bank, ING, predicts that all new vehicle sales in Europe will be electric by 2035), a new battery infrastructure is coming for Europe.

Of the five leading global manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, three are planning, or have begun building, gigafactories in Europe: LG, Samsung and the Tesla/Panasonic partnership.

Norway’s electric car demand is outstripping supply – with lessons for the EU

The push from these established US, Japanese and South Korean players has prompted a number of European companies to invest in the construction of their own regionally-based gigafactories.

Car manufacturer Daimler has two planned facilities in its home country of Germany. Daimler is also working on plants in the US, China and Thailand.

A spokesperson for the company, which owns Mercedes-Benz, told Climate Home News the company would be investing more than €1 billion in a global battery production network.

“The local production of batteries is an important success factor for the electric offensive of Mercedes-Benz Cars and decisive for flexibly and efficiently meeting the global demand for electric vehicles. The production network is thus very well positioned for the mobility of the future,” she said.

European start-ups have caught on to the EV business opportunity. Swedish company Northvolt plans to spend $4.7bn on a Nordic plant and Germany’s TerraE has announced two plants at undisclosed locations in Germany.

Browse our interactive map to see how European demand for electric car batteries will be met.

The post Europe’s coming gigafactory boom, mapped appeared first on Climate Home News.

Foremost is the stark reminder that the Earth is mostly blue, salty water. This is easily forgotten when my Australian life is spent mostly on land, of which there is comparatively little in the Maldives.

Burning carbon on the flight here, I watched a film about philosopher Hannah Arendt. It is a glimpse of the controversy that followed her essays about the Nazi war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. Arendt is presented as profoundly misunderstood by those who misconstrue her attempts to understand ‘the banality of evil’ as she famously coined, as an effort to justify it. 

Arendt concluded that evil prospers when humans fail to think for themselves. The officers of Hitler’s Reich are very ordinary men of no particular distinction that acted mindlessly; they obeyed without thought for consequences. The conditions that allowed evil to prosper during the Holocaust were not the sum of men’s thoughts but rather the consequences of their thoughtlessness.

In 120 (albeit limited) movie minutes, this is what I learnt of Arendt’s work and her passionate pursuit of good ‑ and her conflicted engagement with evil’s avoidance. It was a brief but timely tutorial before we arrive in the Maldives.    

The Maldives are unspeakably beautiful. It is such a quintessentially tropical island paradise, it is almost a caricature. I’m incredulous. Palm trees sway in the breeze, white sandy beaches and waters that are true aquamarine.

Maldives: Regime imperils coral reefs in dash for cash

And then I step onto an uninhabited island for a sunset walk. Immediately I see mostly plastic water bottles strewn along the foreshore and more plastic rubbish. Every island I visit on our surf safari, the beauty of the Maldives is soured by plastic water bottles. Plastic water bottles are consumed thoughtlessly on our surf trip too, and everywhere. On planes, trains, cars, at sporting events, in offices, homes and on holidays. It is a plague of epic proportions evident even here in the southern atolls of the Maldives where boats are many and people are sparse.

I begin to think plastic water bottles may be evil.

They are the epitome of the often daily, banal, planetary vandalism that creates climate change. They are a beacon of fossil fuels in both form and production, symptomatic of insatiable mindless consumption and geopolitical injustices. In this water world, these bottles speak to one of the key challenges of climate change: how do you empower or mobilise humans to care for places where they are not present? And in particular, these mostly uninhabited water places that constitute the greatest proportion of the earth?

I talk to our boat’s captain about the bottles and he shrugs his shoulders in defeat.

“What can we do? We collect the water bottles and clean up the beach at home and put them in a place but no one comes to collect them. There are no bins.”

“The Maldives are unspeakably beautiful” (Photo: Gzzz)

We share a moment of consoling each other for our sense of powerlessness and the futility of our efforts in the face of such magnitude. He tells me he has noticed the death of the corals too. “Now, no good”, he says.

Industry, science and governments – the big end of town – play a critical role in climate change responses, but I’m increasingly disenchanted by their discussions. There is little solace for me, or my Maldivian boat captain in these slow churning machinations of responsibility, diplomacy and administration. And it never seems long before the discussion turns to a roomful of mostly men, massaging their numbers: the 1.5, 2.0, 350 parts per million, the 365; the metres; the years; the graphs.

Who might be able to help us, those outside the corridors of power to think again? To be conscious and as urgent about the everyday mass evil of the proverbial ‘plastic water bottle’ and the ecocide they signal, as we are about the evil of genocide?

In what by now must seem a fairly eventful plane journey to the Maldives, I read about a new thinker:  Fathimath Thanzeela Naeem or ‘Thanzy’. In response to development proposals and rampant pollution and trash, she founded Save the Beach Maldives, a local organisation dedicated to local participation and action in beach and reef protection. Their work helps buffer corals against the impacts of climate change, such as the bleaching lamented by our captain.

Report: Saudis make Maldives land grab to secure oil routes to China

You won’t find Thanzy and the millions of others like her at the fore of climate change discussions or national statements of efforts to decrease carbon emissions. And yet, these local individuals and organisations work at the shorelines of climate change responses.

This is where the ordinary evils of climate change can be known and changed at the everyday level of people and their places. For whatever reason, we care most about our homes. Communication of, and action on climate change and other environmental issues is best mindful of this principal relation first.  Our efforts then have the best chance of being meaningful to the people we need to care – to be the caring custodians, the environmental stewards of where we are – with impacts on the places we are not.

These everyday people are the Oskar Schindler’s of climate change waiting for the ‘allied troops’ to arrive but in the meantime, leading climate change responses in ways that are relevant, tangible and as often, unauthorised. They are the banality of good.

Kerrie Foxwell-Norton is a senior lecturer at Griffith University, Australia. Her research focus is communication of coastal and marine environments.  She is the author of Environmental Communication and Critical Coastal Policy: Communities, Culture and Nature (2018) and co-author (with Robert Hackett, Susan Forde and Shane Gunster) of Journalism and Climate Crisis: Public Engagement, Media Alternatives (2017).

Republish this article

The post What would Hannah Arendt have seen on a beach covered in plastic bottles? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Funded by the German government, the Global South Scholarship exposes youth to the complex world of international negotiations and the discussions that swirl around it.

Climate Home News asked three participants about their impressions of the Cop23 summit.

Harlino Nandha Prayudha (21, Indonesia) works with the International Association of Students in Agriculture and Related Science

How did you participate at Cop23? I joined two working groups. I was exposed to a lot of new information about adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, which is knowledge that I have never come across in my country.

I will share this knowledge when I return to Indonesia. I’m already drafting a proposal for a project where I will target teenagers and train them about climate change to create more awareness in my country.

Have you been disappointed so far? I didn’t get a badge to the Bula Zone, where the negotiations take place, because I came with an NGO delegation. So I can’t go and see how the negotiations go, but there is a computer lab where I can go and watch the live webcast of some of the sessions. The distance between the Bula and Bonn zones is too far – it’s like we’re dealing with exclusive issues.

What is your hope for the future? The youth in Indonesia spends a lot of their time on their mobile phones and they don’t care about important issues like tackling climate change. I hope future generations improve their awareness and also contribute something in dealing with the problem.

What is your experience with other delegates? They are patient and willing to listen when I make contributions. This is a good environment. This is my first Cop, there is a lot of information, so sometimes I get intimidated but it’s a learning process.

Jamilla Sealy (29, Barbados) is a member of Caribbean Youth Environmental Network

What struck you the most when you got here? Other than the Indian Pavilion, which is beautiful, I was struck by the messages of sustainability everywhere, the giving of renewable water bottles to delegates and the using of electric cars. It wouldn’t make any sense to me to try and fix the problem through talking while we’re doing the wrong thing. I’m glad we’re doing the right thing while we’re here.

Another thing is that this Cop is hosted by Fiji, a small island developing state, just like my country. We have huge problems resulting from climate change impacts.

In what way have you been participating at Cop23? I am part of my country’s government delegation so I’ve been between the Bonn Zone and the Bula Zone. I have been to the Aosis [association of small island states] meeting and I have been to the opening ceremony. I have also been to some side events. This has given me a broader sense of what a Cop is about.

What has disappointed you at Cop23? Having the two venues separate is a big mistake because the amount of time it takes one to get between the two places, including walking and going through security, is a lot. What also disappointed me is that I went to one session where most of the countries were trying to put pre-2020 ambition on the agenda but the US refused. An hour was spend discussing this. Eventually the matter was pushed to the next day.

What are your hopes for the future? I hope that global south governments will include young people in their delegations and pay for them. Not only that, I hope that governments would train their delegates about the negotiations before coming here, because the Cop can be very overwhelming.

Mathias Edetor (27, Ghana) works with NGOs including the Greener Impact International and Climate Change Resource Centre on education and capacity building

How do you feel about being at Cop23? I’m very happy to be part of this process because as people from the Global South we are more impacted by climate change, less capacitated to respond and under-represented in these forums.

I’m hopeful that the outcome of COP23 will advance the implementation of the Paris Agreement. By that I mean having the Paris Agreement rulebook done. I learnt that it will be finished in 2018 but I want a lot of progress on it now.

I’m happy to note that the gender action plan has been adopted and that the Green Climate Fund has now launched a simplified approval process, because it was difficult for people from developing countries to go through the stringent processes required to follow when applying for funding.

What do you hope to do when you get back to Ghana? I have been trained as a climate reality leader so when I get back home I will create awareness about climate solutions based on the knowledge a I got at this Cop. I’ll be visiting schools and I will organise an event at my former university where I will help students appreciate the linkage between climate change and development. My focus will also be to ensure the implementation of my country’s national climate plan on the ground.

What are you looking forward to after this Cop? The coming together here through the Global South Scholarship is an opportunity for us to network and share experiences. One of my hopes is that we can have a network that focuses on implementation of national climate plans in the Global South countries.

The post ‘Sometimes I get intimidated’: first-timers at UN climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

Time Magazine has said it. The BBC has said it. The Guardian, too.

All agree that US President Donald Trump has pulled his country out of the Paris Agreement – the 2015 deal under the United Nations climate convention in which every nation vowed to constrain its greenhouse gas emissions and thus hold climate change within bounds that many regard as ‘safe’.

So it must be true, right?

Well; I’ve thought for a while (and written before) that it ain’t necessarily so. The US clearly hasn’t withdrawn, despite the newsprint; and my personal conclusion is that it probably won’t.

Remember that there are basically two ways for the US to withdraw. One is to abide by the terms of the Agreement – which means it can’t submit formal notice to withdraw until November 2019, which then takes a further year to take effect. The withdrawal date turns out to be the day after the next US Presidential election. When Mr Trump spoke with so much fanfare about pulling out back in June, in the White House Rose Garden, he implied that he was taking this formal course; and this was confirmed in a diplomatic cable leaked to Reuters last week.

The second course is just to walk away – what I described earlier as the ‘Cartman solution’. But there’s no sign of that happening.

So, by my reckoning the US is in for the duration. Last week I decided to put my money where my gob is, and offer a bet on it. Follow my Twitter stream and there’s a bottle of brandy up for grabs for anyone who thinks the US is seriously on the way out.

I will bet bottle of brandy that US won’t leave #ParisAgreement. Needs to be time-limited so… still in on Christmas Day 2020. Any takers? https://t.co/YmGqFnfvqC

— Richard Black (@_richardblack) August 9, 2017

Richard Black is director of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He is a former BBC science and environment correspondent. This blog was originally posted on the ECIU website. 

The post A bottle of brandy that Trump won’t leave the Paris deal. Any takers? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The anxiety before this last swim, along the edge of the Arctic sea ice, was the worst I’ve ever experienced.

The training leading up to it was not what I’d wanted. Even though my preparation went well, and I was fit and strong – probably in the best pre-swim condition ever – there was just not enough cold water training.

When I arrived in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen for the final acclimatisation, the water was 10C (50F) – and this was just 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole! Yet another example of the runaway climate change we are witnessing in the Arctic.

When I did my North Pole swim in 2007, there were a number of leaders denying what was happening in the Arctic. Today there is just one.

This swim returned us to the high Arctic ten years later to show the world the speed at which things are changing, and remind our leaders that what happens here affects all of us.

There were some added pressures on this swim. For one, we had a Sky News team on the expedition filming a documentary – the first time we’d had a TV crew on board.

Report: Arctic sea ice melt “like a train wreck” says US scientist

This would be my fifteenth long distance swim in very cold water. People assume that it gets easier over time. It doesn’t. It gets harder, because you know the place you’re going to; you know the pain you’re in for. Once you experience such extreme cold, you never really thaw out. Plus I’m not getting any younger.

Before I set out on this expedition I wrote the names of every person who has helped me prepare for this swim. There were 67 names in all, starting with Professor Tim Noakes who pioneered the science behind my cold-water swimming. Now I had one of the most competent safety officers a swimmer could wish for in Karin Strand, I had photographer Kelvin Trautman close by, and safety paddler Kyle Friedenstein alongside.

The setting was perfect; a brilliant sunny day and a clean edge of Arctic sea ice at 80° North, along which to mark our kilometre. When the team measured the water temperature, it was minus 0.5C (31F). They told me it was 2C (37F). In retrospect, I’m glad they kept the truth from.

I've received lots of questions about how I’m able to swim in the Arctic. Read this thread > pic.twitter.com/rsop2Iqyov

— Lewis Pugh (@LewisPugh) August 1, 2017

The moment I dived in I knew I had a problem. The sun never sets this far north in July, and at this latitude it angled straight into my eyes. I couldn’t see Kyle’s signals, and I couldn’t hear him shouting directions. I had to rely on counting strokes to measure my distance.

My cadence was off from the start. Perhaps it was the shock of sub-zero water, but whereas I usually count 100 strokes for 100 metres, it took me 130 strokes to reach that same distance. At 650 metres I was struggling to coordinate my kick, and my hands were frozen so they couldn’t grip the water. I stopped and shouted to Kyle, ‘I think I’m finished. Let’s get out!’

But at that moment, the support boat, which had been filling with water, had to peel away in a wide circle to clear the sluices. It was easier to swim on than to tread water in the freezing sea. I decided to try and squeeze out another 50 metres.

“I don’t remember ever having been so cold”
(Photo: Kelvin Trautman)

Earlier in the day, I’d given a talk on board the expedition vessel about my North Pole swim. I spoke about how frightened I was diving into the unknown, how breaking that swim into manageable chunks had helped me get though it, and how quitting can very easily become a habit.

Having relived that day, 10 years ago to the day, how could I give up now? I decided to press on to 750m. Once I got there, I reached for 800m. At 900m my body was shutting down, and I hardly remember the rest of the swim. But somehow I crawled to the end.

At 22 minutes in the water, it was my longest sub-zero swim, and it took its toll. I don’t remember ever having been so cold. Getting into the support boat was an ordeal. Kelvin Trautman had to stop taking photos to help me. But my hands were so frozen that I could not hold onto him. In the drama that ensued the only way I could hold onto him was by biting his arm, and holding on tight. Luckily he was wearing a dry suit. My body is now bruised all over. When I get back on shore I’ll be examined by my medical team to find out exactly why.

The Sky News team will air their documentary later this year; we’ll advertise the date, but issue a warning. I’ve watched the footage and it does not make for comfortable viewing. It is as raw as it gets.

Anyone who tells you they enjoy swimming in freezing water is either mad, or has never done it. I certainly don’t enjoy it. I am doing it to carry a message about the health of our oceans. We are in a very, very dangerous situation, and the world needs to know about it, and take immediate action.

Will I still be doing this in 10 years time? After this swim, I’m not so sure; but be assured that my commitment to being on the frontline of this battle to protect our oceans will go beyond the next decade.

Lewis Pugh is an endurance swimmer and the UN Patron of the Oceans. This article was orignally published on his blog.

The post One kilometre along the Arctic sea ice – my hardest ever swim appeared first on Climate Home News.

The address starts at 3pm ET/8pm BST. You can watch it below. Our team of Megan Darby and Zack Colman are in the US and will bring you quick analysis and reaction.

Trump has been heavily tipped to take the US out of the Paris accord. But the ways in which that could happen are many. The mercurial president could also flip his decision and stay within the accord.

Either way, the US has already left the fold of nations who are trying to solve this problem. Striking out alone, lead by a man who either doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about the impacts of climate change on the global future.

Send your comments to km@climatehome.org or @karlmathiesen.

Summary

• Trump made speech that betrayed poor understanding of the accord from which he has decided to withdraw. Instead he constructed a fantasy deal that was at once “non-binding” and unfairly punitive on the US.
• The president floated an idea that the US would reenter the deal, but renegotiate its terms. An idea immediately quashed by the three most powerful European leaders and the UN’s climate body. Megan Darby will have more on that for you soon.
• He railed against the Green Climate Fund, which he said was a programme to redistribute US wealth to poorer countries and accused Barack Obama of pinching money from US counter-terrorism money to supply it.
• The world’s reaction has been anger, resolve and confusion in equal measure.
• The live blog will wrap up here. Read Zack Colman’s full story.

1735 ET – On Twitter

“This is not the future we want for our children,” said French president Emmanuel Macron.

Statement on the US' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreements. #parisagreementhttps://t.co/T4XOjWZW0Q

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 1, 2017

https://twitter.com/EPAScottPruitt/status/870369891211202560

.@realdonaldtrump's withdrawal from #ParisAccord is an abdication of American leadership. Rejection of both science & economic opportunity.

— Ernest Moniz (@ErnestMoniz) June 1, 2017

Today's decision is disappointing & confusing for those that support US leadership. Our own commitment to #ParisAgreement will never waiver. pic.twitter.com/wvnr7upPqa

— Dr. Hilda C. Heine (@Senator_Heine) June 1, 2017

Every foreign leader attacking Pres Trump over leaving Paris Accord -further proof the deal was one sided and better for foreigners than US

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) June 1, 2017

Today's decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world. #ParisAgreement

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) June 1, 2017

1710 – ET Leaders of France, Germany and Italy: Paris cannot be renegotiated

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have released a joint statement saying the Paris agreement cannot be renegotiated, Reuters has reported.

“We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” said Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Paolo Gentiloni.

1700 ET – What does this all mean?

Climate Home’s Megan Darby has this thoughtful first take on a befuddled and befuddling speech.

Donald Trump kept the climate world guessing for months about his stance on the Paris Agreement. Today’s self-contradictory speech raises as many questions as it answers.

Here is what we know: Trump intends to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. There is a legal provision for doing so. Three years after the deal came into force, which was 4 November 2016, any party can give notice of their intention to quit. That takes effect a year later, on 4 November 2020. Not incidentally, that is one day after the next presidential election, teeing up the question of re-entry as a political football for the campaign.

During that period, the US can take part in the negotiations, as countries work to develop a rulebook for the Agreement. Trump made clear he plans to cease implementation of the deal, which he describes in the same sentence as “non-binding” and “draconian”. Go figure.

There was no mention of pulling out of the overarching UN climate convention, a quicker but more legally complicated way to leave.

Here comes the confusing part: Trump says that he will negotiate to re-enter the pact on more favourable terms to America or strike an entirely new deal. How can the US re-enter a deal it hasn’t left yet? The Paris Agreement took decades to thrash out. Why would the rest of the world re-open it now? What terms does he hope to improve? The US carbon-cutting and finance pledges were always voluntary.

Once again, Trump played to his base, promising to protect American jobs in coal, cement, iron and steel. In a hostage to fortune, he said *all* forms of American energy would be needed to achieve annual growth of 3-4%. It is doubtful whether watering down climate regulations can revive coal regions suffering from shale gas competition and automation. If Trump cannot deliver on his economic target, voters may well ask what this was all for.

1654 ET – UNFCCC says agreement cannot be renegotiated

The UN’s climate body has released a statement saying it regretted the decision and “notes the announced intention to renegotiate the modalities for the US participation in the agreement. In this regard, it stands ready to engage in dialogue with the United States government regarding the implications of this announcement”.

“The Paris Agreement remains a historic treaty signed by 194 and ratified by 147 counties. Therefore it cannot be renegotiated based on the request of a single Party.”

1634 ET – “I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility”

Zack Colman grabbed a couple of people’s thoughts on his way to and around Boston today.

Mike Hicks, from St. Mary’s County, Md., 43, contractor, retired marine, no kids, just traded in his truck for a hybrid because it gets better gas mileage. Colman interviewed him on a bus in Boston. He said he thought the problem was not for the government to solve.

“I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to try to change or help the environment. We in America when we see something bad we’ve learned to think, oh, it’s the government’s fault. I think we need to be taught, like in school, how to take care of the environment so we don’t get to this point where we have to ask the government to tell us what to do.”

“We weren’t taught the effect of the fossil fuels, the impact it has on the climate. Because I do believe the climate is changing due to us excessively using, whether it be transportation methods or throwing away things that can be recycled. Those are contributing factors. Asking the government to take care of it, well, it’s still going to come back on us to be doing it.”

“Over time, mankind has kind of evolved with change in the environment. I feel like we’re probably changing the environment quicker than we can evolve, so to speak. … I don’t think we as a people are changing enough. I think it’s going to get to a point where it’s too late.”

Matt (declined to give last name) from Boston, was on an airplane to Boston, 30. He is a government worker.

“It speaks a lot to stand with other countries. It must take a really strong opinion to step back from that kind of table. It’s not good for the environment. I don’t know exactly what the downside [to staying in Paris] is for the country, but somebody should be explaining that to me pretty soon, right?”

1625 – ET Full report now live

Read Zack Colman’s report on Trump’s speech here.

1620 – ET “Decision harms the US most of all” – German environment minister

Germany’s environment minister Barbara Hendricks said she regretted Trump’s decision but that “climate action will continue and will not be stopped by this decision”.

“The damage this causes to multilateral cooperation is even more severe than the damage done to international climate action… By leaving, the US administration is throwing away a precious opportunity for forward-looking development in the United States. This decision harms the United States itself most of all,” said Hendricks.

1614 – ET “Media’s epic climate blunder”

Media Matters have released this important note: “During Trump’s June 1 speech, all four major networks interrupted their scheduled programming to take Trump’s speech live. The same networks devoted 0 total minutes to discussing the climate implications of a Trump presidency on their Sunday and evening newscasts during the campaign.”

It’s no wonder most US voters care relatively little about climate change.

1605 – ET Pruitt ends address

Scott Pruitt, the man who has perhaps pushed Trump hardest to make this decision praises his unflinching fortitude in standing up for the US people. And then it’s over. More to come from us though as we try to work out what this renegotiation could look like.

1555 ET

Trump:

The same nations that are asking us to stay in the agreement are the same nations that have cost us billions through lax trade practices and unpaid contributions to Nato

We don’t want leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be, they won’t be.

Green Climate Fund is a system of global wealth redistribution, he says. “The Green Fund would likely obligate the US to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars… including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism.” That’s the $500m appropriated by Barack Obama from the State Department budget in January. “Not good,” says Trump.

1545 ET

He says the accord blocks the development of clean coal in the US. Trump’s latest budget slashed funding for research into coal technology.

Trump appears to accept science of climate change by saying that the Paris accord will only shave 0.2C off global warming.

US will work with Democratic leaders to enter back into Paris on terms that are acceptable. Or negotiate a separate deal – presumably a special agreement for the US. Which is actually what the Paris accord is.

1538 ET – US to leave Paris accord then “reenter” on new terms

Trump says the US will leave the “non-binding Paris accord” effective immediately – applause and hooting from the crowd – but begin negotiations to renter the Paris accord on terms that are acceptable to the United States – silence.

“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.” Citing China’s ability to grow its emissions until 2030 and the shifting of climate finance to the poor world.

1530 ET – Mike Pence introduces Trump

“With this action today Donald Trump is choosing to put American workers first.”

Trump to follow.

1508 ET – “The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans”

Trump is running late for the 3pm start.

Meanwhile the White House has released talking points to conservative groups and those wunderkinds at Politico have found it. It’s a greatest hits of complaints about the paucity of the deal for the US. All of which ignore the key fact that the deal was utterly voluntary.

One key line though, which is likely to be a fig leaf in Trump’s speech, is this: “The U.S. is ALREADY a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader; we can reduce our emissions and continue to produce American energy without the Paris Accord.”

Somehow I think this is unlikely to appease environmentalists.

WH talking points released to conservative groups ahead of Paris withdrawal via @politico "The Paris Accord is a BAD deal for Americans" pic.twitter.com/cFzO4Yn8BH

— Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) June 1, 2017

1457 ET – Confirmation from senate staff

Climate Home’s Zack Colman has it from GOP senate environment and public works committee spokesman Mike Danylak that Trump has informed them that he will leave the accord. Live stream scheduled in two minutes.

1448 ET – International reaction predicted to be fierce

Germany: Today Politico reported that Martin Schulz, who is challenging Angela Merkel for the chancellorship, vowed trade retaliation against Trump over. Merkel has also raised the prospect of degraded relations.

EU-China: Leaked documents, only in full on Climate Home, show a surprisingly vociferous bilateral statement from the world’s second and third largest economies. They will deepen their cooperation on the issue they said.

Meanwhile, president of the European Council Donald Tusk told Trump on Twitter that he would be changing “the (political) climate for the worse”.

 1417 ET – Congress informed of withdrawal – CNN

CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta hears Congress has been informed. We’ll try to confirm this, but all will be revealed very soon.

Hill source: WH has informed members of Congress that President Trump will pull out of Paris climate agreement.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 1, 2017

1409 ET – Invite list a give away

The list of invitees to the Rose Garden announcement should give you an indication of the way this is going to go.

Politico reports that the list includes Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, will be there with staff. Competitive Enterprise Institute director Myron Ebell, who worked on Trump’s transition team on energy policy and is a long time enemy of the UN climate process will attend. See Climate Home’s interview with him in Paris. The Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner and other top dogs.

All three of these organisations has campaigned hard against Paris. Trump would be unlikely to invite them for anything but total victory.

The post As it happened: Trump says US will withdraw from Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

He will speak in the Rose Garden at the White House. Just seven months ago, Barack Obama stood in the same place and hailed an “historic” day as the Paris agreement entered into legal force.

Trump is heavily tipped to take the US out of the international climate accord – including by sources Climate Home’s Zack Colman spoke to in Washington on Wednesday.

Report: Trump told Pruitt to make plan to leave Paris deal, stay in UNFCCC

One source told Colman the president had told his environment chief Scott Pruitt begin preparing a plan that involved the US staying within the overarching UN climate treaty, but pulling out of the Paris deal. That’s significant for future reentry.

But the machinations of the White House and its rival factions have continued to the last, with secretary of state Rex Tillerson meeting Trump on Wednesday afternoon. Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil chief executive, has argued that the US would be better to push its reinvigorated pro-fossil fuel agenda from within the agreement.

Follow: @ClimateHome, @climatemegan , @zcolman , @KarlMathiesen

Don’t expect today to be the end of speculation. The permutations of how Trump could manage the withdrawal are many. As are the differing stresses on the agreement if the US does remain a party.

Whatever Trump announces will answer one question, but likely throw up many more – this president is not in the certainty business.

Join our live blog, with Zack Colman stateside and myself in London, from around 2pm ET (7pm BST) for quick analysis and decoding of what is likely to be a cryptic speech.

The post Trump schedules Paris announcement for 3pm Thursday appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the local creole, Bislama, the phrase for the boxes of plastic water bottles we are buying is ‘Carton big fella plastic!’. We buy boxes and boxes of the bigger bottles with the blue caps because our host tells us that the tap water is ‘not good to drink’: the surrounding coral reefs leave high levels of calcium carbonate that can cause kidney stones and bacteria in the water could make us sick if we were to drink it –  like the locals do, I presume, but we need water, so there is no option but to buy plastic.

This seemingly innocuous exchange, between researchers and the kindest of hosts about plastic water bottles epitomises the many challenges that threaten Tanna and its environment. We are here to work with four remote villages on Tanna to address the existing impacts of climate change and to develop adaptation projects. We are here to help, but our presence is also symptomatic of the march of the modern to Tanna.

I am part of a research team consisting of a forest ecologist and climate change science expert, two oceanographers, a sustainable tourism doctoral candidate, a coastal geographer and myself, an environmental communication scholar.

Tanna is becoming enveloped in ways of life that will shake its capacity to retain traditional culture, their way of life

Mine is an internal conflict. These people are not the Anthropos of ‘anthropogenic climate change’. I am. And I arrive with my plastic bottles, my muesli bars and my toiletry bag fall of chemicals and more plastic crap. On radio, television, on my phone, I bring the modern world – or, ‘modernity’ to the Tannese. I am not the only one, of course. A development corporation is building sealed roads on Tanna and there are rumours of increased tourist traffic and more direct flights from China.

When I go snorkelling early the next morning, I see one of the water bottle caps in the water and I reach to pick it up. But it’s a brilliant blue fish. My ‘tsk!’ turns to laughter and excitement. There are ‘bottle caps’ everywhere! It’s a strange relief.

‘Climate change’ fails to encapsulate what is happening on Tanna. True, the villages I visit communicate changes to local weather patterns and the consequences for their crop yield, but their challenges include and are much more than those identified by weather patterns and science.

In the haze of volcanic ash from Mt Yasur, villagers repeat the negative effects of recent population growth. Part of the explanation is the breakdown of the traditional custom of arranged marriages that means young women are getting pregnant earlier. The formula is simple: more babies, and thus more people, which has consequences for local food and resources.

On Tanna, population increase and associated breakdowns of traditional culture converge with climate change, which leads to compounding threats to resource security and ecologies. The local people look outwards for a response to climate change threats and to projects to remedy new challenges. And while our responses are mostly ‘environmental’, I am struck by the environmental impacts of social and cultural change.

Weekly briefing: Sign up for your essential climate news update

Evidence abounds that Tanna is becoming enveloped in ways of life that will shake its capacity to retain traditional culture, their way of life. For example, the film, ‘Tanna’ was nominated for Best Foreign Film category at the 2016 Academy Awards, attracting more international attention. 

Women tell us that the film has received a mixed response, with some angry about exposing Tanna to the world. Others are happy that it empowers Tannese women, to make their own marriage and other choices, perhaps one of the more welcome impacts of modernity. Science, technology, markets, tourism, wealth – and global communication and media – descend on Tanna bringing both risk and reward, opportunity and challenge.

On Tanna, land has been customarily owned forever, with a sense of ecological stewardship that is, or should be, the envy of those pursuing climate change action. Before I left for Tanna, I had read Australian indigenous elder and philosopher, Aunty Mary Graham – a Kombumerri person and also affiliated with the Waka Waka group through her mother – who described two basic premises of an aboriginal world view. These are:

• The Land is Law
• You are not alone in the world. 

As a majority indigenous population and with a still strong commitment to custom, Tannese people seemingly share this perspective.

So when I arrive with my learned insights and a genuine desire to help adapt to climate change, there is voice within me – a critical voice – that will not be silenced.  We go there to listen and our responses seek to remedy declining food and water quality, and to provide early warnings of impending natural disasters. It is life-saving, critical work with real impacts for these beautiful people and their magnificent island.

But what have we heard?  What could the Tannese tell us about our relation with the land and each other? And we, with all our hindsight and foresight about the impacts of modernity, what could we tell the Tannese about the direction they are headed?

I know that my research colleagues are mindful of the challenges of this intercultural exchange. What to do? My best is to offer this ongoing and often uncomfortable examination of myself, and how this may impact my engagement with local people, my teaching and research. And honestly, I make mistakes as I navigate the complex terrain that is meaningful, thoughtful and respectful climate change communication.   

But they are mistakes worth making.

Dr Kerrie Foxwell-Norton is a senior lecturer in climate change communication at Griffith University, Australia

The post To save communities from rising seas, we must open our ears appeared first on Climate Home News.

An unreality field surrounds US president Donald Trump’s Energy Independence Executive Order (aka Executive Order to Neuter Obama’s Climate Legacy).

You can read the White House news release here, and probably should – the loaded language is at least as interesting as the content, the main ingredient of which is to scrap several elements of the Clean Power Plan under which President Obama hoped to bring down the carbon emissions of the US energy industry.

The post Executive disorder: Trump’s climate policies bid goodbye to reality appeared first on Climate Home News.

When the leader of the free world surrounds himself with oil men and appears ambivalent at best about greening the US economy, what gives you hope?

We asked email subscribers. Your answers suggest a response rooted in local action, while staying connected to like-minded people.

Julia Christian takes heart from a state that is going beyond federal targets. “California’s climate policy (biggest economy in the US, biggest population, and responsible for much of its energy consumption) make me feel less depressed! Energy policy is mostly done at the state level anyway, and California has been & will continue to be at the forefront of renewable energy transition in the US,” she writes.

Jürg Staudenmann isn’t a fan of Trump’s politics, but sees a silver lining in his protectionist stance: “If indeed (who knows) he will close borders and thus weakens US-global trade relations, less shipping and flying around of resources, half-goods and products may result in less carbon emissions from the globalized transport sector.

“Weren’t we as climate activists always against unnecessary ‘globalization’, i.e. that the various steps in manufacturing for one product are more and more scattered around the globe due to low-wage and other ‘economic reasons’? I put this in quotation marks, since a true economic approach would count in external costs as well, but they are usually not internalised in global trade-deals, as we all know.”

#Trump is the only one that COULD convince Republican sceptics about #climatechange, IF he chose to do so (e.g. for good business reasons?) https://t.co/relMAanzTG

— Jürg Staudenman #Peace #PlanetaryJustice (@staudenmann) January 20, 2017

Bernard Perkins draws inspiration from the Transition Network and Post Carbon Institute, which both champion community-led clean energy and resilience initiatives.

“Trump and Brexit are good reminders that we shouldn’t only rely on governments too much to solve climate change because governments change. As the economics of low carbon solutions improve and the externalities become more obvious, these projects will make sense to do in their own right.”

Kerry Willis points to a handbook by the Australian Psychological Society for taking care of your sanity amid warnings of a warming world. Advice includes breaking the silence around climate change and reaching out to people based on shared values.

Carolin Schellhorn echoes that with a short and sweet comment: “Continue reading your messages. Staying connected with others who try to make progress with addressing the climate challenge.”

What do you think? Is localism the way forward, or should climate advocates defend globalisation? How do you stay positive and take action? Add your comments below the line, on Facebook or twitter.

This morning on Millennium Bridge in London. #BridgesNotWalls pic.twitter.com/SruWoqkdpb

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) January 20, 2017

The post Your views: climate hope in the Trump era appeared first on Climate Home News.

Here, Climate Home celebrates just a few of the many people we met, spoke to, read and wrote about in 2016 who impressed us by refusing to accept defeat.

21 US kids

In November, a group of 21 US youths won the right to have a lawsuit heard in the federal court that will test whether their government can be compelled to act on climate change.

In response to a government motion to dismiss the case, district judge Ann Aiken said: “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”

The ruling could set a precedent for a major weapon in fighting new president Donald Trump’s administration if he seeks to strip away regulations that are intended to clean up the US energy sector.

Climate Home’s Megan Darby spoke to 19-year-old Kelsey Juliana in March.

“Who do you serve, government: the interests of the youth, or the interests of the industry?” she said.

Tzeporah Berman

The Canadian environmentalist is a long time adversary of the tar sands companies that have held successive Canadian governments in thrall. In July she spoke to Climate Home’s Ed King about negotiations with those companies that lead to a cap on what she calls the “single largest and most destructive project on earth”.

Ed Hawkins

Hawkins’ graphical representation of a climate spinning out of control grabbed the public imagination. His original tweet has been shared more than 15,000 times and spawned dozens of news articles reaching parts of the internet where the global rise in temperature is often ignored or misrepresented.

Spiralling global temperatures from 1850-2016 (full animation) https://t.co/YETC5HkmTr pic.twitter.com/Ypci717AHq

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 9, 2016

“As scientists I think we need to communicate, and try different things,” Hawkins told the Washington Post. Climate Home’s Megan Darby reported on the many copycat approaches it spawned as other scientists rebooted their own findings as spirals.

(Kudos to Ed King and Megan for “It’s the GIF that keeps on giving” and “the spiral that went viral”.)

Daphin Juma

A newly graduated solar engineer from Kenya who runs her own solar installation business. Juma spoke to Climate Home’s Africa reporter Lou Del Bello about her career ambitions and her wish to ensure that everyone in her community had “at least some lighting at home”.

Juma was trained by the Women in Sustainable Energy and Entrepreneurship (WISEE). She is one of thousands of women entering the workforce around the world as solar technicians.

Mark Carney

The Bank of England governor has done more than any other in the financial world to raise the risks and opportunities of climate change, says Ed King.

In what may become one of the most influential climate reports of all time, Carney helped to produce a document that called on corporations to get real about the risk climate change poses to their business models. The report was backed by some of the world’s biggest investors and financial institutions, giving it serious clout.

Tokata Iron Eyes

In the late days of 2016, a coalition of Indian tribes and environmentalists triumphantly celebrated the announcement that the North Dakota Access Pipeline had failed to get permission to cross the Missouri River. 13-year-old Iron Eyes, a member of the Sioux tribe that owns the downriver Standing Rock reservation, was part of a local youth movement involved in organising the protests long before they became global news.

Her chat with activist Naomi Klein, posted on the latter’s Facebook page on the day the pipeline was redirected, is anti-venom for the poisonous US debate that lies ahead. “I feel like I got my future back,” she said, causing Klein to 100% lose it.

Women at the top of the UNFCCC

In 2016, the top six UN climate diplomats were all women. UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa, French environment minister Ségolène Royal, her Moroccan counterpart Hakima El Haite and Paris agreement architect Laurence Tubiana lead negotiations in the lead up to the Marrakech talks. Saudi Arabian diplomat Sarah Baashan and New Zealand’s former climate ambassador Jo Tyndall joined them as co-chairs of the UN talks.

Further down the UNFCCC foodchain, there remains work to be done to bolster gender equality on national delegations. But the sight of so many women – representing the gender that will suffer more from climate change – at the top is heartening.

Richard Betts

In an interview with Ed King, Betts called on climate scientists to face up to the complexity of their subject when engaging in public debate. In the face of an ever-growing demand for news and views to come in discrete and definitive packages, Betts has fought the urge to dumb things down.

The post Our climate heroes of 2016 appeared first on Climate Home News.

I am very sad I am unable to be with you all today to celebrate the special moment in history we all shared exactly one year ago today.

I will never forget leading the High Ambition Coalition into that final plenary; or when Laurent brought down the gavel; or the feeling I had when handing over to a young Selina Leem to make the closing statement on behalf of the Marshall Islands.

At the end of that day I said that my country felt a little bit safer as a result of the historic agreement we had forged in Paris. And I feel the same way today.

No matter how many more dangerous impacts are to come, or how uncertain international politics may seem at times, it is those of you in this room that helped give my country a renewed sense of hope and a pathway to survival. And I will never forget that.

Paris was a team effort. So is our future fight. My country & everyone I love is counting on this. #HighAmbitionCoalition #CommittedtoParis pic.twitter.com/C3yz7DnB5I

— Tony de Brum (@TonydeBrum) December 12, 2016

Paris was a team effort, and so must be our fight for the future. If we don’t each play our part, and do so with the same spirit of solidarity, determination and urgency that we did in Paris, then our ability to win this fight will quickly fade. Now, more than ever, we need our friends to realize this and seize the opportunities that come with it.

On behalf of a grateful nation, I therefore want to thank you again for all that you did to secure the Paris Agreement and ask you to be relentless in your continued fight to now make it a reality. Paris was just the start, but it is what we do now that will really matter.

I am counting on you. My family is counting on you. And my country is counting on you.

Kommol tata and thank you very much.

Climate Ambassador Tony de Brum

The post Tony de Brum: my country is safer after Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

It doesn’t mean they don’t still want to build one of the world’s biggest coal mines, but the Aussie’s didn’t turn up to the party completely empty handed. After a tricky political year back home in which the committee that ratifies treaties was shut down for months by the federal election, Australia’s parliament formally endorsed the Paris agreement on Thursday.

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Thursday: “We look forward to actively and fully implementing our obligations and commitments under the agreement… The agreement was a watershed, a turning point. And the adoption of a comprehensive strategy has galvanised the international community and spurred on global action… As you know, we are playing our part with ambitious targets.”

Dogs barking & then phone buzzing woke me from deep but troubled sleep. Outstanding. Respect. Churlish not to recognise significance https://t.co/VqD5QSJO2b

— John Connor (@jconnoroz) November 10, 2016

If only that last bit were true, said Dr Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong.

“Australia’s commitment to cut emissions by 26-28% by 2030 will not be enough to meet the 2 degree target. I encourage our leaders to plan and implement deeper cuts, the sooner the better — the climate system waits for no politician.”

2. Forests have their day in the sun

Indonesia’s government extended its forest protections by declaring a moratorium on clearing super-high-carbon intact peatland. That adds to the number of concessions that are covered by the existing moratorium.

At the same time, Colombia announced a plan to link forest protections to its peace process. The announcement included a plan to recognise indigenous claims to huge areas of rainforest. Recognition of native land tenure protects forest from illegal loggers and gives huge boosts to carbon storage.

The Brazilian state of Mato Grosso said it had a plan to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 90% by 2030 all while increasing agricultural production.

3. Paris pledges on course for 2.8C of warming

Climate Action Tracker (CAT) released their updated prediction of where the sum total of countries’ climate pledges will take us. The answer? The same as last year: to a 2.8C warmer than the pre-industrial normal. Actually, it’s not quite the same. Last year they predicted 2.7C, but some updated numbers from historical emissions meant the destination was tweaked slightly.

Current policies will warm the world 3.6C – the same as last year. The reason there has been no change is because since Paris, no-one has really done much. As we reported last week, apart from a few backsliders 2016 has been a year of inaction.

Major challenge for Paris Agreement to meet 1.5degC warming limit. CAT update, Marrakech #cop22 #unfccc https://t.co/A0XaCW5UbR pic.twitter.com/wE6tczJ737

— ClimateActionTracker (@climateactiontr) November 10, 2016

CAT’s Bill Hare says that’s because policies take a long time to formulate. But that there are “strong tailwinds for climate action we see today in many parts of the world, with the incredibly rapid growth of renewable technologies worldwide, the rapid acceleration of the markets for electric vehicles and plummeting battery storage costs, fundamentally change the geopolitical forces working on climate policy.”

Sigmar Gabriel. Photo: Arne Müseler

4. Germany delays releasing its 2050 climate plan because of pro-coal lobbying

German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel (who has had a big fortnight for blocking carbon-reducing initiatives) vetoed the release of Germany’s 2050 emissions reduction target on Wednesday. Reuters reported that appeals by industry and union bodies convinced Gabriel to block the draft plan.

Germany is moving towards one of its most divisive elections in years and aggravating the unions is the last thing Gabriel wants to do. But he’s also under pressure to defend Germany’s role as a climate leader. The US, Canada and Mexico are all likely to release mid-century targets next week.

“Germany is already struggling to meet its 2020 climate targets and is under additional pressure after Chancellor Merkel repeatedly said she would make climate policy a priority of Germany’s G20 presidency next year,” report Clean Energy Wire.

5. Public health threats are now high on the climate agenda

The Moroccan Health Minister, El Houssaine Louardi, highlighted the connection between climate change and air pollution in affecting Moroccan citizens’ health. He said public health should be put at the heart of COP22 negotiations. While vector borne diseases are on the rise in Morocco as a result of a warmer climate, “less than 1.5% of international finance for climate change adaptation is currently allocated to health projects”, Louardi said.

Far from affecting just the COP’s host country, the burden of climate change-related diseases is getting worse all over the world. Yves Souteyrand, representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Morocco, warned that about 12.5 million people globally die each year as a result of environmental factors linked to climate change.

Representatives of a dozen member countries got together to discuss and coordinate cross-border health response as part of the Nairobi Work programme, which facilitates knowledge building and sharing on adaptation related issues.

The group released a statement highlighting that: “Climate change will have a significant impact on human health by expanding the geographic range of many diseases. In addition, the impact of extreme events, both fast and slow-onset, affect human health and health infrastructure in numerous ways and on different levels.”

African governments and businesses are seizing the opportunity to be at the forefront of the climate debate this year, with Morocco taking up the role of African climate champion.

Yesterday it was the turn of the Africa Renewable Energy initiative, which was presented to a large audience of businesspeople, activists and researchers from the continent and beyond. The initiative aims at mobilising as much money as possible by 2020, to fund a massive boost in large scale renewable energy projects. The target is an additional 10GW of clean energy capacity deployed by 2020.

But the money to change the face of Africa with solar power and lift its people out of poverty at the same time is not there. To turn big ideas into reality, the energy sector will need an investment of about US$20bn before 2020. A figure that looks increasingly unrealistic as the Republicans now in charge in the US (a major contributor to the Green Climate Fund) have promised to slash climate aid.

7. Wednesday was Water Action Day

The event that ran throughout the day was promoted by two of the most prominent figures of this year’s COP, Moroccan and French Climate Champions Hakima El Haite and Laurence Tubiana.

More than 80% of national climate plans have identified water as a key area for adaption, but according to El Haite there’s still need for greater awareness on the subject. On Wednesday, the Moroccan Government introduced the “Blue Book on Water and Climate”, which collates recommendations on how to turns promises in water-focused policies, and policies into solutions that work on the ground.

The post 7 things you missed at COP22 while Trump hogged the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.

The post In pictures: creatures of Tasmania’s disappearing kelp forests appeared first on Climate Home News.

The baby’s home came down around her when flash floods struck the outskirts of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. She was found in a basin, perhaps put there by her mother while she attended to domestic work. It might just have saved her life.

Later identified as Delarine Saisi Wasike, the six-month-old had a lucky escape from the Huruma Estate disaster in April this year. At least 134 others were injured and 12, including the baby’s mother, were killed.

The rescue team searching for people buried under the debris (Credit: Kenya Red Cross Society)

Mwangi, who was part of the Kenya Red Cross unit that arrived first to the scene of devastation just 20 minutes after the collapse, said the incident was so much worse because of the timing of the floods.

“It all happened around 9PM, when people in Kenya would normally be at home, after dinner,” he says. That meant the majority of the 200 residents were at home at the time.

“Luckily, the building shook just minutes before going down, so many fled in time to avoid the worst,” he says. “Others weren’t as lucky.”

Last year’s El Nino had a huge impact on Kenya with violent rainfall, landslides and mudslides that destroyed infrastructure and swept away livestock. According to the UN, the heavy rains intensified in late April, affecting nearly half a million people in the East African region. In Nairobi, the urban poor had to face the double whammy of erratic weather coupled with poorly constructed buildings and unregulated, unsafe settlements.

Six months later, I visited Huruma to see how people were coping.

Samuel Obera Onguto is a Huruma resident, and remembers that day well. “It rained very heavily for hours, and after that the lives of most people in Huruma were put on hold. Poor children whose parents don’t have a car could not go to school for three months, because the roads were damaged,” he says as we walk through the dusty roads of the neighbourhood.

Around us, most buildings are decrepit, with frameless windows like empty black eyes. I ask Samuel if all of this is down to last spring’s floods. “No, these buildings are built with cheap materials and just crumble”.

The government found some of the structures to be so insecure that it ordered they be demolished. But people keep living there because they have nowhere else to go, and the landlords still collect their rent.

Both Obera and Patrick Agengla Nyegenye, another resident we meet along the way, agree that infrastructure in Huruma is so poor that people have no protection in case of extreme events. They hold the government responsible for the situation: “Kenya is riddled with corruption. The government sells the land concession to private builders who choose sub-standard materials to save money,” Nyegenye says.

He and Obera agree that the government should directly take care of building quality structures and then sell the finished homes to people. “The government has plans,” says Obera, “but these plans and regulations are never enforced, unless an election is coming up. Right now they are going to erect small buildings to show that the government is doing something.”

Walking towards the slum part of Huruma, people express a sense of impotence in the face of seasonal floods.

The UN’s climate science panel tentatively foresaw in its last assessment report a rise in flash flooding risk for Kenya, as global temperatures rise. Models show an increase in bouts of heavy rainfall for East Africa, although the data is too patchy for strong predictions. In any case, the growth of cheaply built housing near rivers means more people are exposed to extreme weather.

The residents see the weather becoming more erratic by the year and they feel left alone by the authorities. Both the buildings and the informal settlements are extremely insecure, and the slum stretches right next to the riverbanks, its shacks prone to be wiped out as soon as the river swells.

“[The poor] who live in urban areas have been neglected consistently and that continues to be true with climate change, which is a new area of concern,” says Sarah Colenbrander, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The way extreme poverty is defined (having less than US$1 a day) can fail to capture the struggle of the urban poor. They may have a bit more money, but their quality of life can be worse than that of those who live in rural areas.

Improving adaptation in urban areas is becoming an increasingly urgent issue, says Colenbrander: “A growing proportion of the population lives in urban areas and by 2050 more than half of the people in Africa will live in cities.”

She sees the growing density of urban population as an opportunity to get things right quicker: “[In cities] you can provide essential infrastructure such as draining, sanitation and drinking water in a way that is climate resilient, where you can serve more people with the same amount of investment.”

For now, Huruma’s slums lack basic safety measures and the shacks, with naked cables hanging over water puddles from the last bout of rain, are full of hazards. Charities are trying to introduce a few safe homes made of bricks, but those we see seem half built and already deteriorating in the sun.

For those who have been displaced by the floods, there is little hope. “Currently they don’t have an alternative, the authorities are just demolishing the houses that still stand but are at risk. People have lost everything and have no safeguards. They are back at square one,” says Obera.

We get to see what remains of the collapsed building, a tall dune of fine rubble. A group of boys playing tag rushes through and disappears over the horizon.  

If nothing changes, the situation in Huruma can only deteriorate, with the damage left unfixed and the mounting threat of climate change. Last spring’s floods were linked to a wicked El Nino, which is not caused by climate change, but could have been exacerbated by rising temperatures.

“El Nino comes around regularly, and when you have climate change accelerating as well, that combination is going to be very pronounced,” says Colenbrander.  

But something is slowly moving. Associations of slum dwellers, who negotiate with the city council to address their problems, are now putting climate change at the top of their agenda. Groups such as Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Swahili for “United Villagers”) are raising awareness and calling for the government to help climate-proof their communities, with better drainage systems and more robust buildings.

Preventing the worst impacts of floods in slums can be straightforward – just a matter of improving basic infrastructure – but it can lead to long lasting benefits.

Lou Del Bello’s series of reports on Africa and climate change is funded by CDKN

The post In pictures: the aftermath of Nairobi’s deadly flash floods appeared first on Climate Home News.

Kibera’s relatively small area hosts somewhere between 200,000 and half a million people, crammed together in a jigsaw of mud houses with curled tin roofs, navigated by a maze of narrow passages.

The place is riddled with hazards, from its regular cholera outbreaks to a chronic lack of water supply and healthcare facilities. But that’s not the impression given out when you talk to the residents here.

Asked about its shortcomings, many just smile and say they love Kibera, where their families have lived for generations and the community runs a variety of small businesses as well as social and art projects.

People in Kibera aren’t resigned to poverty, they want the place to thrive without giving up its identity.

You only get a shrug of resignation when touching on the topic of energy.

Electricity is lacking, and locals feel there’s nothing they can do about it. To get that little bit of power that keeps their households going, they tap into the public grid illegally. It is a dangerous operation, with electrical faults a common cause of house fires that spread rapidly in the crowded conditions.

“When the latest explosion destroyed almost 40 houses, the government promised us 100 iron sheets, but they never arrived,” says Shadrach Otieno, a musician living in a single room in a network of mud houses at the heart of the slum.

While the government is ambitious in its plans to power rural areas, and off-grid energy is a growing market for private businesses, authorities seem consistently at a loss as to how to provide the city’s poor with basic energy.

Seen from a height, Kibera’s landscape is dotted with poles carrying white meters, a relic of the the latest unsuccessful attempt to solve energy poverty in the slum.

The prepaid meters have been installed by Kenya Power and Lighting Company, which distributes electricity around the country, as part of the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid programme.

With financial support from the World Bank, they are designed to offer a cheap and reliable alternative to the dangers of DIY engineering.

While regular customers pay US$150 for a new connection, the same service in Kibera costs 1,160 Kenyan Shillings (KES), or $12. The World Bank and Kenya Power cover the difference.

The catch is that there simply are not enough meters to meet demand. When electricity runs out they become empty boxes towering on the roofs, surrounded instead by home-made electric poles carrying stolen power.

Johnstone Ole Turana, spokesperson for Kenya Power, says: “The biggest challenge we are facing is once the residents finish the power units that were installed with the prepaid meters, they resort to illegal connections.” He says that the company expects to receive more financing from the World Bank to connect more households, but this has yet to materialise.

Otieno walks me around the slum, where I meet Carol Okoth, a beautician who lives with her family in a small, prettily decorated apartment. When they welcome me in, the power has just come back in the neighbourhood, but the two rooms where Okoth lives are still in the dark. A light bulb has short-circuited, leaving a black mark on the plastic-coated ceiling.

“These things happen all the time. We know it’s dangerous but there’s no other way,” she says. Her family has enough electricity to power a TV in the main room, but they don’t have enough to also iron their clothes or cook.

,

“We just use kerosene, or coal,” she says. Charcoal trade is heavily regulated in Kenya due to the threat it poses to forests but in many places, including Kibera, it remains a key source of energy. In Kibera, you can find it on the streets much more often than in other parts of Nairobi. Charcoal makes for good business, as residents are undaunted by the threats it poses to their health or their often flammable furniture.

Outside, by the door, a tangled ball of thin, colourful cables connects several apartments in the block, while a bigger rubber cable hangs from a roof, its tip naked. Otieno picks it up: “You see? This is connected to the meters. It’s useless.”

David Njenga tells me a similar story. The soft spoken young man is a kinyozi, Swahili for hairdresser, and because of the power cuts he has just lost a day of work at the most profitable time of the year – “when kids go back to school and they want to look nice”.

An erratic electric supply is also bad for Njenga’s healt. “I have chest problems and when the power goes down, sometimes for hours, my house gets really cold and I can’t sleep.”

Making my way through the slum’s pathways I wonder why clean energy solutions seem to be unexplored here, while in rural areas the race for electrification is so often fueled by solar panels. I ask the energy ministry, but get no comment.

Some of the hurdles are clear. Most residents don’t own the houses they live in and have no incentive to invest in solar panels for their roofs, regardless of the price.

Small “plug and play” devices, with a panel that can charge a lamp or a mobile phone, don’t solve the problem and the batteries are generally short lived. Otieno tells me that people simply aren’t willing to pay up front for the device. Prices start at about US$6.

Kibera is developing fast and and where aid falls short the residents take the lead. Almost everyone owns a mobile phone and local teachers run independent primary schools to keep the kids safe, fed and teach them how to count and read.

But chronic energy poverty is often overlooked, trumped by an array of other problems such as poor sanitation or lack of education.

The people of Kibera know that in the modern world there is no life without energy. If they don’t have safe, clean options, they will resort to dangerous, dirty ones.

The post In pictures: the energy poor of Africa’s biggest slum appeared first on Climate Home News.

Turns out it’s a fairly simple procedure, requiring cabinet approval. That’s not what diplomats said on the sidelines of the G20, arguing India needed time to work the deal past lawmakers.

So what has been going on? Why has the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases – and a key reason why last year’s deal was passed relatively smoothly – suddenly gone all out to join the US, China, Brazil in signing up?

Few know the insides of Indian climate diplomacy like Nitin Sethi, environment correspondent for the Business Standard, and few government officials will like his take on events – tweeted earlier today.

Delhi climate professionals will read and weep.

Some views on India's decision to ratify #ParisAgreement : Modi finally made the only decision he could in the first place…1

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

2. The linking to NSG membership was as silly as others' previously linking #ParisAgreement to India's membership of the UNSC seat

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

3. There were opportunities earlier when negotiating the #ParisAgreement to make it a more balanced and ambitious pact.

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

4. India's political leadership was too feeble at the critical junctures to ensure that #ParisAgreement is more favourable to equitous

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

5. "Climate Justice" exists as a phrase but not in meaning in the #ParisAgreement. In fact its a global joke how the concept was treated

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

6. India had one of the finest negotiating teams at #ParisAgreement but with a weak/unsure political leadership at helm

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

7. The real work now is at home, to build a cogent Energy Policy. Right now its a dance in the dark

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

8. The first step to a cogent Energy Policy is to put out info for public to understand how India's #ParisAgreement commitments were set

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

9. Ratification is just the beginning. There is a tough 4 year period ahead of global negotiations and setting domestic policy in place

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

10. There is not going to be any worthwhile public funding transfers from developed countries that India can depend upon

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

11. India looked silly during the ratification drama. Half this political weight put in crafting #ParisAgreement would have been invaluable

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

12. Instead it was put behind theatrics such as International Solar Mission. There is still time to work beyond image building on #Climate

— Nitin Sethi (@nit_set) September 26, 2016

The post Why did Modi decide to ratify the Paris climate deal? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Financed by the French and Chinese governments and to be built by French state-controlled energy company EDF, the Hinkley C power plant has been the subject of fierce debate in the UK.

Critics say the new plant will be an expensive “white elephant” and is unsuited to a fast-developing energy sector where cheaper renewables, flexible demand management and tech-driven efficiency measures will reign.

Supporters argue the UK needs a guaranteed source of low carbon base-load power to fill a gap left by a planned phaseout of coal by 2025, and the closure of other nuclear plants.

The government says it’s essential to keep the UK on course to meet a legally binding goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% on 1990 levels by 2050.

So what’s the skinny? Simon Evans at Carbon Brief offers a nuts n’ bolts look at the deal in this article. Below is a taster of how the decision has gone down among domestic experts and international observers.

First off the market – and judging by initial reactions, it’s not convinced…

Oh… pic.twitter.com/XfChFb6KrH

— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) September 15, 2016

True, the plant will offer a huge wedge of power, but it will be expensive…

Greg Clark "minded" to offer £92.50/MWh to EDF for Hinkley, govt statement says. Renewables still cheaper pic.twitter.com/CnQqlqWdeh

— Jess Shankleman (@Jess_Shankleman) September 15, 2016

Bloomberg and Greenpeace agree on this – not a natural alliance, perhaps. Here’s the green group’s executive director John Sauven:

“Today’s announcement has changed virtually nothing. This deal remains terrible value for money for bill payers and taxpayers. The inflation linked electricity price for Hinkley over the coming decades will be astronomical compared to the falling price of renewable power, battery storage and smart energy technology.”

Confused? You’re not the only one…

"Nuclear is too expensive!"…. "OK, let's find ways to make it cheaper"… "Cheaper? No, we're finding ways to make it even more expensive"

— Carbon Counter (@CO2Counter) September 15, 2016

That said, it does offer a base-load power and the costs are subject to further analysis, argues Sam Fankhauser, co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment:

“Analysis by the Committee on Climate Change has shown that it would be very difficult for the UK to achieve the average cut in annual emissions of greenhouse gases of about 57 per cent over the period between 2028 and 2032 compared with 1990, as required by the Fifth Carbon Budget which was passed by Parliament in July, if neither new nuclear power plants nor carbon capture and storage technology are operating.

“There has been much speculation about whether the strike price for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50 per megawatt-hour is too high. However, it is important to note that such an assessment requires estimations of the wholesale price of electricity for the 35-year period from when Hinkley Point C starts operating, which is not likely before 2025. Such estimates cannot be made with any precision and are subject to large uncertainties.”

Govt said they'd review all parts of #Hinkley deal. Strange then they've not reviewed high price that saddles consumers with a £30bn bill!

— Barry Gardiner (@BarryGardiner) September 15, 2016

But as Labour MP and climate spokesperson Barry Gardiner alludes to in his tweet, this is a gamble – a bet that future costs of renewables won’t fall fast and the storage required to unleash wind and solar won’t come online faster.

Cash available to invest in these other forms of energy will also be tighter as a result: here’s a handy chart from UK energy wonk Simon Moore:

The share of agreed UK low-carbon spend taken up by #Hinkley (area=total support) – the fat purple one in the middle pic.twitter.com/J36ELLh0qS

— Simon Moore (@SMoore1984) September 15, 2016

Let’s be clear, this was not a decision solely based on the economics of the project or on the number of jobs it will create, despite the government’s best efforts to spin that line today…

Building #Hinkley will create 26,000 jobs and #apprenticeships pic.twitter.com/RkAJs77hcS

— Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (@SciTechgovuk) September 15, 2016

Sky News touched on a vital angle to the UK’s hunt for a new nuclear reactor: relations with Beijing

Hinkley deal eases UK-China ties… for now https://t.co/EwWUiR9xds

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 15, 2016

The Chinese were angered when new prime minister Theresa May put plans for Hinkley C on ice in July. The UK had to send its top diplomat in Beijing to smooth the waters today.

Details of deal were explained to Chinese National Energy Administration by UK ambassador in Bejing

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) September 15, 2016

The simmering rage comes out in the coverage from state news agency Xinhua…

#Hinkley @XHNews coverage. Reading between the lines… pic.twitter.com/CzASt1Bs41

— Ed King (@edking_I) September 15, 2016

Failure to seal a deal, it suggests, would have represented a severe blow to China’s nuclear ambitions, and to Sino-British diplomatic links…

More from that priceless @XHNews report… pic.twitter.com/Ef7GsYZM1h

— Ed King (@edking_I) September 15, 2016

Now these are back on track (for now) the UK will hope one of its other climate plans – to become a hub for Chinese green finance – can bear fruit.

Domestically May’s decision has already caused a backlash among some Conservatives – notably the influential columnist Tim Montgomerie.

For decades to come, UK business & consumers will be paying over the odds while competitors use cheaper, new energy technologies #Hinkley

— Tim Montgomerie (@montie) September 15, 2016

…and fund manager Ben Goldsmith, who sits on the Conservative Environment Network

I wish we could know what was said in conversations that led to our Gov't saying yes to a huge, extortionate monstrosity of a nuclear plant.

— Ben Goldsmith (@BenGoldsmith) September 15, 2016

Still – for Tory voters it may be as good as it gets, given their longstanding antipathy to onshore wind. Imagine this instead?!

100% renewable electricity in Britain: cover an area the size of Wales in wind turbines and be able store up to a week of demand. #easy

— Carbon Counter (@CO2Counter) September 15, 2016

Wrapping up… the decision marks the start of a new round of work to deliver a UK low carbon energy plan to meet recently-agreed 2030 emission-slashing targets.

Clean energy expert Dr Jonathan Marshall from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit says more focus is now required on building an energy matrix suitable for the next century…

“Now the decision is done, one assumes that the Government will turn its attention to delivering similar certainty to other parts of the low-carbon energy system, notably offshore wind, tidal power, energy efficiency and demand-side response. Another thing for it to consider is whether the Hinkley model of bespoke, one-off deals with preferred bidders is really the way it wishes to do business; a more free-market approach, with genuine competition between low-carbon providers which also rewards innovation rather than incumbency, is surely the way to go.”

With offshore wind costs falling fast and the case for renewables increasingly compelling it remains to be seen if Hinkley C looks such a good deal when it comes online in 2025.

Or should that be if?

"First electricity from Hinkley C is due to be produced in 2025" – EDF still sticking to timetable no-one quite believes

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) September 15, 2016

The post Atomic politics: UK mends China links with Hinkley deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

It’s hard to believe that one day all of this green might wither away, but this is a danger as drier seasons and soil erosion due to heavy, erratic rains take their toll.

During my trip across the Kenyan Rift Valley, I see early signs of such a dire outcome, amid the luscious forests and shiny tea plantations that are Kericho’s main source of income.

My guide, Suzanne Jacobs, a PhD student with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Kenya, explains that climate change is one of the biggest challenges that her research program is trying to address. Many developing countries are not putting adaptation at the top of their priorities, despite being more vulnerable. Not only do they have to battle poverty first, but they also lack the basic infrastructure to ramp up climate action.

Kenya is one such example when it comes to water management in the face of increasing temperatures and erratic rains. Scientists know so little about the country’s water system that they in turn fail to inform local institutions on how better to allocate water when it becomes scarce, or how to prevent the worst impacts of floods.

In order to develop predictive models for the short and long term, and learn to distribute resources more effectively, Kenya needs a monitoring system that simply isn’t there, and would cost a fortune to set up. Jacobs and her team have devised a strategy to make water system monitoring simpler, cheaper, and almost as effective as deploying thousands of high-tech sensors across the country.

The idea is to involve local communities in the daily measurement of water levels, turning smallholder farmers into citizen scientists. They teach people to read gauges installed at key locations, then send the value to a main database by a simple SMS text.

The project is being piloted at 14 sites in the river Sondu catchment, near Kericho, with a view of scaling it up to regional and national level if successful.

“We aim at receiving one text per station every day. This should be enough to build a comprehensive body of data capturing the dynamics of the local water system,” says Jacobs. She explains that the geological features of each place determine what happens to the rain that falls there.

“In some places, the soil will absorb a lot of precipitation through infiltration, the water will be stored in the catchment for a long time before emerging into the main water stream, and travel to Lake Victoria,” she says. “In other places, especially where the soil is depleted by grazing, the water flows straight into the river.” This means that the stream will be much “flashier”, Jacobs tells me, often causing floods.

Understanding the dynamics of a water system is vital both to plan ordinary resource management – who gets water and when – and be prepared in case of extreme events. A simple step such as mapping water levels across a region can make a world of difference, but the process is lengthy, at least at the beginning.

Zacchaeus Kemboi of the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), CIFOR’s partner for the project, is tasked with facilitating communication between researchers and citizens, who often speak little English.

I tag along to one of the training workshop where farmers of the Bomet county get their first introduction to the project, and I receive a warm welcome as well as permission to take photos.

The farmers arrive in small groups at the meeting point, a monitoring station on the Lower Sisei river which consists of a simple gauge installed under a bridge. Even for a visitor exploring the site for the first time, the metal bar says it all: the water level is extremely low, especially given August and September are supposed to be the peak of the rainy season. Kemboi confirms that this season has been particularly dry, perhaps as a consequence of the heavy rains brought about by El Nino last year.

Men and women gather on a patch of grass where Jacobs, the village chair and Kemboi introduce the project and demonstrate how to read the gauge. People seem curious, but later on the researchers explain that involving them is one of the sticking points of the initiative: people may attend the meetings and show interest, sometimes out of politeness, but when it comes to taking action they often aren’t bothered.

The village women, who would be best placed to take part because they are the ones who collect water and wash clothes by the river on a daily basis, are present at the workshop but sit apart and don’t actively participate, leaving it to the men to approach the trainer and ask questions.

Jacobs explains that the cost of each SMS, 1 Kenyan shilling (US$ 0.01) can put people off. “It seems cheap to us, but if you have 100 shillings in your pocket, it’s a significant amount,” she says.
Perhaps the main factor that fuels people’s skepticism is the lack of a tangible, direct benefit. After the workshop, as we drive back to Kericho, Kemboi explains that “what’s in it for me?” was the main question he was asked during the day.

Grasping the importance of long term planning in the face of climate change is a challenge that crosses continents, and in different ways the whole world still struggles to come to grips with it. But some of the citizens who participate in the pilot group have quickly become enthusiastic champions. I meet them at the station on river Sondu, where a series of three gauges tells the same story: this year water is scarce.

As we speak, women trail through the green patch towards the river to collect water or wash clothes, and further downstream others swim. Teresa Adhiambo, chair of the Water Resource Users association, tells me that the group protects the river by planting indigenous trees to strengthen the river banks. They also raise awareness within the community about the need to avoid toxic discharges, and since the monitoring project started a few months ago, about the importance of keeping an eye on water levels.

“We read the gauges and we send the level measurement via phone,” she tells me. “And right now we hope that these messages will help us.” I ask how these texts are going to make a difference for them.

“Our community is located on the lower catchment, so when there is a lot of rain from the upper catchment our homes get flooded and people have to shelter on higher ground.” she explains. A system that provides timely alerts on flood risk would be invaluable: “For us the [positive] impact [of this initiative] is very tangible.”

Zacchary Samoei, the association’s treasurer, also helps monitor levels at the water station. He tells me that over the past few years many springs that used to feed into the river have dried up, “and the environment is changing in many other ways. The rain is becoming scarcer by the year and water-borne diseases – such as typhoid, amoeba, cholera – are on the rise.”

Samoei confirms that a big part of their work consists of raising awareness of the problem among the public. As many villagers in rural areas do not speak English, they act as mediators passing on the knowledge provided by the researchers. But he also concedes that the association represents a tiny minority. Africans, as he puts it, are not easy to convince if they don’t see a direct, material return. “It takes time,” he says, “and you have to convince people step by step by setting an example and showing the benefits of a new idea or method.”

Members of the Water Resources User Association of the river Sondu with researcher Suzanne Jacobs (right)

Citizen science has a long way to go in Kenya. If this pilot takes off, though, it could eventually bypass one of the main hurdles to climate change response in the developing world – the sheer lack of monitoring infrastructure – while helping communities to take control of their future.

Lou Del Bello’s series of reports on Africa and climate change is funded by CDKN.

The post In pictures: the citizen scientists tracking Kenya’s water woes appeared first on Climate Home News.

Each September, when the ice reaches its annual minimum, there used to be around 7.5 million sq km of ice. It is now regularly below 5 million sq km, and hit a record low of 3.6 million sq km in 2012.

This downward trend is projected to continue as global temperatures increase, but somewhat erratically.

The year at which the Arctic first becomes ‘ice-free’ (traditionally defined as 1 million sq km) is much discussed by scientists and the media, but is often a controversial topic.

The IPCC AR5 assessed that the Arctic would likely be ‘reliably ice-free’ (more than 5 consecutive years below 1 million sq km) by mid-21st century, assuming high future emissions, but did not assess the year when it would first be ice free, which would be earlier.

Also, we have seen more ice melt than the models projected so an even earlier date is a distinct possibility.

But, what about this year? I noticed this recent comment in The Guardian by Professor Peter Wadhams:

“Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover.”

However, the SIPN team, who collect sea-ice forecasts from 40 international groups, actually have none who think 2016 will be a record low.

In The Guardian, Professor Wadhams went on to say,

Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship.

Professor Wadhams has made similar statements before – so should these forecasts be taken seriously?

Firstly, we should all make predictions ahead of time as this tests our physical understanding. Ideally, the methodology used should be clearly documented.

The SIPN project described above has done this in a very open way and I have previously describedinformal efforts for Arctic sea ice forecasts.

Professor Wadhams also submitted a forecast to the SIPN team in June 2015 suggesting that the September ice extent would be 0.98 million sq km, but has yet to publish his methodology, as far as I am aware.

In the end, there was 4.6 million sq km of sea ice in September 2015, the fourth lowest on record.

Why does all this matter?

Such dramatic sea ice forecasts make headlines. They are shared widely around the world. But, our credibility as climate scientists depends on communicating forecasts based on our best physical understanding.

These forecasts may or may not change over time as more evidence accumulates.

If we make predictions that turn out to be incorrect then that should be acknowledged, the reasons understood and our understanding reevaluated*.

There are very serious risks from continued climatic changes and a melting Arctic but we do not serve the public and policy-makers well by exaggerating those risks.

Journalists need to be aware of any past history of forecast successes or failures when writing articles.

We will soon see an ice-free summer in the Arctic but there is a real danger of ‘crying wolf’ and that does not help anyone.

Notes:
* Whether individual forecasts are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ needs careful interpretation when considering probabilistic predictions.

Ed Hawkins is a climate scientist in the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) at the University of Reading. IPCC AR5 Contributing Author. Can be found on twitter too: @ed_hawkins. This article first appeared here.

The post The dangers of ‘crying wolf’ over Arctic sea ice melt appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Arctic is one of the most spectacular and pristine places on earth, and it’s no wonder people want to see it for themselves.

Yesterday, the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity left port with 1,725 passengers and crew on board for a 32-day voyage through the Northwest Passage.

She’ll journey from Seward, Alaska, to New York City, stopping at several communities along the way—many of which have far fewer inhabitants than the Serenity has passengers.

Weekly briefing: Sign up for your essential climate politics update

While a smattering of yachts and smaller passenger ships have plied these Arctic waters over the years, never before has such a large ship set sail on such an ambitious, and risky, voyage through the Northwest Passage.

The Serenity’s hull is not strengthened against sea ice, and a conventional icebreaker won’t escort her; instead, she’ll be accompanied by the RRS Shackleton, a British logistics vessel typically used to support Antarctic researchers.

Perhaps that’s why each passenger is required to carry $50,000 in evacuation insurance in addition to the $20,000 to $120,000 they paid for their ticket.

However unprecedented, the Serenity’s voyage is a sign of things to come. This may be the beginning of a boom in Arctic vessel activity.

Crystal Serenity can sail through Northwest Passage: Canadian Coast Guard https://t.co/zgIcbhifPf pic.twitter.com/TYzRxbR6gI

— Nunatsiaq News (@NunatsiaqNews) August 18, 2016

And while Arctic shipping may bring economic benefits to both local communities, in the form of increased trade and tourism revenue, and to the global economy, through the ability to ship goods via shorter routes, the environmental risks are undeniable.

One concern is how to deal with the waste products of what is basically a floating city. Based on the EPA’s estimates of per capita sewage and graywater generation aboard cruise ships, we estimate that each day the Serenity will generate about 15,000 gallons of human sewage and another 116,000 gallons of graywater.

Crystal Cruises, which operates the Serenity, says it will “voluntarily” discharge this waste at least 12 nautical miles from shore — which is, by surprising coincidence, the minimum distance from shore the ship can legally discharge sewage without treating it first.

Of course, mistakes do happen. Another Crystal cruise ship, the Harmony, has been banned from visiting Monterey Bay California, for releasing effluent too close to the Monterey marine sanctuary.

Offshore carbon: why a climate deal for shipping is sinking

But the real risks aren’t posed by negligence or misbehavior but by the harsh, violent sea environment of the Arctic itself, and the bigger concern isn’t wastewater, it’s oil spills.

Most ships operating in the Arctic will burn heavy fuel oil (HFO), the residual leftovers of the crude oil distillation process. While HFO is dirty and viscous, it’s cheap and widely available, making it the preferred fuel for ships.

The Arctic Council has recently identified HFO as “the most significant threat from ships to the Arctic marine environment.” Due to its viscosity and chemical properties, HFO is inherently difficult to clean up, not to mention highly toxic.

A release of HFO in the Arctic could have devastating effects on this profoundly important and fragile ecosystem.

Meanwhile, in the Arctic, sea ice volume is at a record low for the time of year according to PIOMAS. pic.twitter.com/ig2X5MXcCg

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) July 4, 2016

Using HFO to power ships not only increases the risk of spills and illegal discharges of oil in the Arctic, it also produces harmful air and climate pollutants, including black carbon.

Black carbon – a small, dark, airborne particle – is the second largest contributor to human-induced climate warming, after carbon dioxide.

Black carbon is particularly detrimental to the Arctic environment, as its dark particles settle on ice and snow, setting into motion a vicious cycle of more melt, less ice, and more warming.

Despite the risks posed by the use of HFO, marine vessels in the Arctic are not encouraged to use cleaner fuels, unlike ships in other areas of the world.

Within Emission Control Areas (ECAs), ships are required to reduce their air pollutant emissions by either burning cleaner distillate fuels or by using scrubbers.

All the coasts of the U.S. and Canada are covered by an ECA, with one notable exception: their Arctic coasts. In fact, despite its sensitive ecosystem, no part of the global Arctic is covered by an ECA, an omission we’ll discuss in an upcoming blog.

Arctic shipping poses significant threats to the climate and to the Arctic environment—not unique to the Arctic, but uniquely serious there.

There are policy measures we could take to mitigate the risks. As the Serenity makes her way through the Northwest Passage over the next month, we’ll highlight the risks and policy opportunities associated with Arctic shipping.

Bryan Comer and Naya Olmer are policy analysts with the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). Follow their blog series here.

The post Arctic faces ‘boom’ in shipping as ice melts appeared first on Climate Home News.

But when news programmes present uncontroversial aspects of climate science as somehow unsettled, we all lose.

Prof Brian Cox and Malcolm Roberts squared off on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s panel show Q&A over the factual basis for global warming.

They ran over some very old ground, including the “pause” in warming since 1998 – which didn’t happen – and the global scientific conspiracy – which we can only hope is happening because climate change is worse than being lied to by a global cabal of shady scientists.

Roberts, a well-known arguer against the scientific consensus on climate change, had been brought on the show for one reason. Cox had come prepared, brandishing a graph showing the rising global surface temperature.

It was a confected affair. Q&A knew exactly the spectacle the two would create. Newspapers and television in Britain, where Cox is hugely popular,  as well as dozens of internet sites enthusiastically reported the exchange.

But when programmes like Q&A, which is one of the most watched current affairs programmes in Australia, go for headlines it emboldens the voices of climate scepticism.

The very next day, Queensland’s opposition environment spokesman Christian Hunt told the state’s parliament: “There is no doubt that whilst climate change is real and has occurred over thousands of years, what has always been in scientific dispute is the extent of man’s contribution.”

This pattern is repeated across the world. In March, the BBC invited well-known climate sceptic Piers Corbyn to debate whether the time had come “to take climate change seriously” – a question decades behind the actual discourse happening between the world’s scientists and leaders.

This has been previously described as “false balance”. But it is worse than that. Producers choose which questions they should be asking. Roberts would argue that he has a right to express his position. This is true. But such a position is simply not relevant.

Report: UN science panel debates 1.5C as climate records fall

Cox’s most telling input was when he turned away from Roberts and told Q&A host Tony Jones: “The key point is can we respond to it? Do we have the political institutions and the political will and the organisation globally to respond to this challenge?”

These are the hard questions societies are struggling with all over the world.

The Australian government repeatedly faces questions over the adequacy of its policies and the ambition of its commitments to the Paris climate agreement.

The man who drafted those policies, former environment now innovation and science minister Greg Hunt, was sitting beside Roberts.

The panel spent 20 minutes discussing Robert’s poor grasp of reality and just eight challenging Hunt over his handling of funding cuts to climate science.

It might have been entertaining. But it’s not the conversation we need.

Weekly briefing: Sign up for your essential climate politics update

The post Brian Cox’s sceptic takedown: a low point for climate journalism? appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an essay on Whitehall’s future low-carbon policies, Stephen Heidari-Robinson argues Europe’s influence on the green sector has been minimal, even negative.

Released from restrictive policies like the 2020 renewables target, which he argues does not address the real climate killer – coal – the country’s emission-busting aims can fly.

A high domestic carbon price (relative to the EU) and fast growing offshore wind and solar sectors are reason to be confident he says, while adding new nuclear is essential to meet post-2030 climate goals (note: the UK’s nuclear plans are in chaos).

Nor does he see a conflict between leaving the EU and deepening clean energy supplies through interconnecting power lines: these are essentially bilateral deals.

Still, this is optimism laced with realism: prime minister Theresa May’s chief advisor hates the climate change act and much public debate is backed by “factless assertions” that distort government thinking and its efforts to develop policies.

It’s well worth a read in full. Below is the Brexit section:

“Despite many claims to the contrary, the EU is not the driving force for climate change action in the UK: our commitment is home grown, rooted in the Climate Change Act, and monitored by an independent British Climate Change Committee.

“As is well known, carbon pricing in the European Trading Scheme (ETS) is too low to make much difference to the problem.  The UK’s own Carbon Price Floor, which more than quadruples the ETS price to £18 ($24), has had the positive effect of disadvantaging coal versus gas, and is a nice earner for the Treasury, but otherwise has limited impact.

“Once coal is out of the way, or if coal can be restricted and phased out through other means, the carbon price should be reduced, as it adds unnecessary costs of consumers and business.  By contrast, the way in which we have delivered the UK’s impressive decarbonization performance in electricity generation is not by dis-incentivizing other energy sources through taxes, but by paying renewables technologies the higher prices they needed (“contracts for difference”).  This has provided a much surer funding model, given the glut of hydrocarbons and collapse in their prices.

“The EU’s 2020 renewables targets – which only focus on one aspect of decarbonization and ignore ending coal, building nuclear and overall efficiency – have been generally unhelpful, allowing EU countries to build out renewables while carbon emissions fail to fall.  For example, between 2010 and 2015, Germany has increased the proportion of renewables by 17% to 33% but but its carbon emissions today are the same as they were five years ago, due to the phasing out of nuclear power and an increase in coal and lignite burning.

“Brexit provides an opportunity to strip away these unhelpful EU renewables targets, together with the absurd system whereby the UK’s performance in decarbonizing electricity generation and industry is reported as a calculated share of the EU’s, making us look like we are doing worse than we are.  What really matters is that less actual carbon goes into the atmosphere.  This is, of course, not an argument for isolationism.  Climate change is a global problem, the UK only accounts for only about 1% of global emissions, and we will only be able to solve the problem by working in concert with others.

“Of course, potential investor uncertainty following Brexit is a challenge that needs to be addressed here as elsewhere.  Foreign investors in nuclear and offshore wind will need to balance lower revenues from a weaker pound, on the one hand, against more investment bang for their buck and lower local input costs, on the other.  This is a good reason to localize more of the supply chain in the UK than has historically been the case – creating jobs in the regions, for example at the Siemens factory in Hull.

“With interconnectors (big wires connecting European countries which help manage the challenges of intermittent renewables by spreading capacity across countries), regulatory deals will need to be struck with individual EU countries.  But there are several reasons to be optimistic: all previous interconnectors have been one-off country-to-country deals; the issue is more technical than political; non-EU countries are also involved (Iceland, Norway); and the UK has been leading on energy market reform in the EU anyway.  More challenging is securing export markets for the UK’s low emissions vehicles (we currently manufacture a quarter of the total in Europe).  This should be one (among many other) objectives in the trade negotiations.

“Finally, Brexit has of course led to a wholesale change in government personnel and a merger of the old Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) into the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.  The selection of ministers for the key posts provides reason to be confident that the UK’s successful decarbonization strategy will continue: Philip Hammond as Chancellor, Greg Clark as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Nick Hurd as the Climate Change Minister have all made public commitments to combatting climate change.

“Furthermore, after Brexit and before changing roles, Amber Rudd, the former Secretary of State for DECC and now Home Secretary (Interior Minister), ensured that the government committed itself to the challenging targets of Carbon Budget 5, entailing a 57% reduction in UK greenhouse emissions versus 1990 by 2030.  On the other hand, the new PM’s chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has called the UK’s climate change act “a unilateral and monstrous act of self-harm… inflicted upon industrial Britain.”

“As highlighted throughout this article, there are areas where the structure of the act, and the actions taken as a result of it, could be improved.  However, let’s hope that we can convince Nick and others that, if done the right way, decarbonization can be an opportunity for UK industry not a burden.”

The post Why post-Brexit UK can be a climate champion appeared first on Climate Home News.