Covid-19, which has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide, is thought to have originated in animals, perhaps bats, before infecting people in Wuhan, China.

Global warming, a rising human population, pollution and destruction of wildlife habitats are among the factors raising the risk of such zoonotic diseases, which jump from animals to humans.

Zoonotic disease was mentioned in the last round-up of scientific knowledge by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013-14, but the pandemic potential was not a focus.

That will change in its next assessment report, due to be published in stages over 2021-22 as the main scientific guide for government action on global warming. Each section is likely to be delayed by a few months, IPCC scientists say.

“Pushing wildlife out of natural habitats, high density living and closer interactions between animals and humans… are a risky cocktail,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Climate Home News.

Coronavirus: plane-free skies spur research into warming impact of aviation

In an Earth Day presentation on 22 April, he noted a study finding that 96% of the weight of all living mammals are people and domesticated animals such as chickens and cows, with just 4% made up of wild creatures.

Many researchers reckon that human activities have become the overwhelming force of change on the planet, and qualify for a new geological epoch dubbed the Anthropocene, based on the Greek word “anthropos”,  meaning “man”. It would succeed the current Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,700 years ago.

“This is a manifestation of the Anthropocene,” said Rockström of the coronavirus pandemic.

IPCC scientists say it is urgent to find out how far humans can influence the planet before ecosystems collapse, such as tropical coral reefs that are bleaching and dying in warming waters.

“Humans are exploiting natural resources and the world up to its limits. Knowing those limits would be very, very important. It’s a matter of survival,” Hans-Otto Pörtner, of the Alfred Wegener Institute and co-chair of the IPCC working group on the impacts of climate change,  told Climate Home News.

Climate activists form new tactics and alliances amid coronavirus lockdown

Before the coronavirus, the IPCC had already planned to explore links between climate change and biodiversity by holding a first joint workshop, in May, with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

That event will be delayed by several months, Pörtner said. More scientists were starting to look into the links between biodiversity, climate change and coronavirus and early findings will be included in the next IPCC report.

“There are similarities between the crises [of coronavirus and climate change] in the need for science-based policies – you see the same politicians failing on this [pandemic] as they are failing on the climate side,” Pörtner told CHN. “We need policymakers who have an understanding of the risks.”

He declined to single out any governments for criticism. IPCC scientists consulted for this article gave their personal views, not those of the IPCC.

The IPCC assessment report in 2014 had a chapter on health and climate change. It outlined health threats from heat waves and deadly wildfires, malnutrition because of less food production in poor regions and diseases such as malaria and dengue spread by mosquitoes expanding their ranges.

The publication of the first part of the next IPCC report looking at the physical science of climate change, including scenarios for future warming, is likely to be delayed by about 3 months from April 2021, said co-chair Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climatologist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

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She and Pörtner paid tribute to IPCC scientists who are continuing work despite lacking access to laboratories or field work as countries are put under lockdown. Particularly in developing nations, many struggle with weak internet links and face extra stresses in taking part – IPCC work is prestigious but unpaid.

Masson-Delmotte said the world needed to find ways to plan for the future even when there was “deep uncertainty”, a phrase used in past IPCC reports about how, for instance, to predict the future of Antarctic ice beyond 2100. A major collapse of the ice sheet would raise global sea levels by several metres.

“A clear lesson from the pandemic is that there is a global failure in preparedness, and planning for managing a known risk,” she said.

The response to the pandemic could also inform efforts to cut emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to fall around 6% in 2020, as non-essential work and travel is put on hold to slow the spread of Covid-19. The UN estimates that emissions will have to fall 7.6% a year over the coming decade to limit temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, the tougher target in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The post Next UN climate science report to consider lessons from coronavirus appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the Caribbean, new cases and associated deaths are rising, while in the Pacific, numbers are increasing but there are still some islands with no reported cases as yet.

The threat of coronavirus to overwhelm health care capacities has led the majority of small islands to put in place strict measures to prevent spread of the virus.

Many have closed their borders and banned domestic travel, with significant economic implications for the many island nations that are highly dependent on tourism. Small island nations have implemented physical distancing measures, curfews and complete lockdowns of all services except for medical care.

However, while they are responding to the threat of coronavirus, the very high risk from climate change impacts is still there.

Although the pandemic has resulted in lower global greenhouse gas emissions, SIDS are still affected by existing climate change impacts and must address these while they simultaneously respond to coronavirus.

The pandemic highlights how risks rise significantly with compound events.

That is, rather than addressing and recovering from one shock at a time, several extreme events may occur in rapid sequence and overwhelm capacities to respond.  Social and economic impacts would escalate with widespread effects across all aspects of life.

These risks compound events are exemplified by the current challenges that SIDS face as they address both coronavirus and tropical cyclones.

South Korea to implement Green New Deal after ruling party election win

Recovery from destructive tropical cyclones often takes many years to decades, meaning that SIDS that have been recently affected by cyclones are still actively addressing impacts from these storms. This has implications for the efficacy of coronavirus measures as well as for the economic resources that are available to respond to the pandemic.

For example, The Bahamas was devastated by Hurricane Dorian in September 2019, resulting in damages of over US$3.4 billion and the displacement of thousands of people.

Impacts were widespread, with the government anticipating that it would take at least five budget cycles to return to pre-Dorian levels of debt.

This left the nation at a disadvantage when it came to addressing the pandemic as financial resources were already low and communities are still in early stages of recovery.

Some residents are still located in shelters where the close proximity of people prevents recommended physical distancing measures and could promote the rapid spread of coronavirus.

Critical healthcare infrastructure has yet to be repaired since being destroyed by the storm, resulting in very limited capacity to care for those afflicted with the virus.

Thus, the island nation that was already severely handicapped by Dorian must rely on limited resources to protect a vulnerable population from the pandemic.

SIDS must also prepare for and respond to upcoming tropical cyclones during this health crisis.

Typical preparation measures such as repairing and reinforcing buildings are either not taking place or are much scaled back, as all but essential construction has been halted in many countries.

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In the event of a storm, protective measures such as evacuations and housing people in shelters will be a daunting task while adhering to physical distancing that is needed to prevent coronavirus spread.

Human resources needed to prepare for and respond to cyclones are already overburdened with the pandemic: senior governmental officials, law enforcement, healthcare workers and other critical staff have already been responding to the coronavirus crisis for weeks.

Budgets allocated to address cyclones may likely be limited as nations have had to transfer scarce resources into the urgent needs presented by the pandemic.

Sadly, the challenges of addressing tropical cyclones and coronavirus have already been experienced in the Pacific, where Cyclone Harold has caused widespread destruction in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga.

Shelters had to be quickly sanitised and monitored to prevent people identified as potential coronavirus carriers from exposing others.

Critical humanitarian aid supplies are being kept in quarantine to prevent spread of the virus, in a difficult decision that delays the distribution of much needed items to those affected by the storm.

In the Solomon Islands, dozens of people were thrown overboard from a ferry that was overcome by rough seas.

Rescue efforts were limited as the rescue helicopter could not fly since the pilot was in coronavirus quarantine; twenty-eight people are missing and feared dead.

Domestic travel restrictions to curtail the virus may also result in extensive delays for transporting much needed recovery support in archipelagic nations.

Faced with dire economic circumstances due to the pandemic, there is a risk that limited national and international funding previously earmarked for climate change may be shifted to other priorities.

However, just as compound events cannot be considered in isolation from each other, there must be a holistic approach to recovery that considers both the need for economic stimulation and climate change resiliency.

Fortunately, it appears that many of the lessons that are being learned from the pandemic are in line with the need for transformational and widespread change in response to the climate crisis.

A focus on addressing the needs of the most vulnerable through a human rights-based approach has been identified as a key lesson from the pandemic, and is one of the basic tenets of climate resilient development.

The need to diversify economies from unbalanced reliance on tourism and to improve domestic food production to support food security have also been identified as crucial. It will be critical to ensure that climate resiliency is ingrained in the response to the pandemic in SIDS and that strong climate action continues to be supported.

As highlighted by Jessica Moah, Pinoi Patterson and Thompson Mera, Ni-Vanuatu Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change members, “both crises – the virus and the climate – present the world with two choices; either we return to business as usual or use these opportunities to bring transformational change to our societies.”

These crises underscore the extreme vulnerability of SIDS and the need for an international response that limits global average warming in line with the Paris Agreement with transformational change that has been supported by science.

Dr Adelle Thomas is a Bahamas-based senior researcher at Climate Analytics, Director of the newly established Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Research Centre at the University of the Bahamas and an IPCC lead author in the upcoming Sixth Assessment.

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Around the world, millions became unemployed practically overnight and millions lost a huge portion of their savings.

These events will have catastrophic consequences for people’s well-being and will shape economic and political trends for years, if not decades. This doesn’t even account for the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on human health and the tragic situation unfolding in hospitals around the world.

Much will be written about this historical event as society takes stock of what just occurred, but one thing is clear: resilience must be a driving force in the policy response.

As investors of last resort, governments have the key role to play. The central bank playbook in 2008 and 2020 is similar, as liquidity evaporated and financial contagion spread, central banks had to step in as buyers of last resort with increasingly larger rescue packages.

Zoom climate diplomacy: ‘Technology doesn’t help build trust’

At the same time, governments are working desperately on the fiscal front to provide economic stimulus to the real economy and prevent an economic depression. Estimates of bailout packages are in the order of $10 trillion globally and growing.

 So where does this leave us?

Governments and taxpayers bear the ultimate risk and thus have the mandate and responsibility to reduce these risks.

There will be a cost but as we clearly see with the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of prevention pales in comparison. The same could be said about climate change. 

A working paper from the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that by 2100, the costs of climate change would reduce global GDP by 7.22% while the costs of prevention – by meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement – are substantially less, around 1.07% of global GDP.

For the US, the cost of inaction is even higher at 10.5% of GDP. To put things into perspective, this is roughly in line with the costs of a Covid-19 pandemic every year.

Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition

As we move forward past this crisis, policymakers should have resilience in the front of their minds. Below are some practical steps that can be taken in our policy response not only to enable us to boost green growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to create a more resilient financial system.

Rebalance incentives for publicly traded companies to reward long-term sustainability over short-term profits

Companies are too focused on the next quarter at the expense of their long-term financial viability. Fiscal and monetary policies need to reward long-term investment and risk reduction. Executives should not be compensated based on stock performance but broader metrics.

Company boards should emphasise long-term stability and survivability. Inherent in this is the need to address climate risk. Stock buybacks financed with debt should be forbidden.

Better safety nets

Our world is moving towards greater disruptions from climate change, but also other types of crises driven by greater interconnectedness, which generates systemic risk. As we see with Covid-19, a crisis in one place can quickly spread to the rest of the world and this is not limited to communicable diseases.

Financial crises in one corner of the globe can impact our supply chains, and our financial markets as trading in various financial products is linked in incredibly complex arrangements, again, generating systemic risk. A world with more risks needs better safety nets and more resilient systems. There is a need to improve safety nets for all citizens whether these are economic, health and climate-related shocks.

Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies

An estimated $5.2 trillion is spent annually on fossil fuel subsidies. This is wasteful and damaging to the environment. It leads to inefficient use and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, creates rent-seeking in the economy and presents a huge opportunity cost for taxpayers.

Trillions should, instead, be invested in industries of the future which have the potential to provide for our energy needs while eliminating the risk of climate change. With oil at around $25 per barrel, consumer subsidies could be eliminated now with very little consequences.

Embrace telework trends 

As companies and consumers race to adapt to the massive disruptions from Covid-induced shutdowns, we have seen how millions of workers have adapted to working from home and used new technologies to collaborate in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago.

A distributed workforce can increase the resilience of business operations, can massively reduce transport-related emissions from commuting and work-related travel and can even increase the affordability of cities and generate distributional effects as there is less need to concentrate workers in one place.

Embrace the public sector 

View the public sector not as an investor of last resort but as a leader, shaping future investment trends in a way that is aligned with societal goals. Public investment shapes markets and creates benefits to society that the private sector cannot provide.

Through publicly-funded research and development programmes, scientists have developed the core technologies behind the internet and modern medicine. Similarly, the revolutions taking place in renewable energy production, electric storage and electrified transportation would not have been possible without early-stage investments made by the public sector.

Investments for public benefit in areas like new energy technologies, public health and urban infrastructure are critical to reducing long-term risks and can ultimately lower public outlays when disasters strike.

Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly

While there is still hope for this public health threat to be minimised and, hopefully, eventually eliminated, our economic response will have repercussions for decades.

It’s the right time to focus on a vision for a resilient, inclusive, and sustainable economy.

Donovan Escalante is a manager at Climate Policy Initiative, an analysis and advisory organisation that works with governments and investors to drive economic growth while addressing climate change. 

The post Coronavirus: investors and policymakers must shift to increase resilience appeared first on Climate Home News.

Japan, the first G7 industrialised nation to submit an updated climate action plan known as a “Nationally Determined Contribution” this year, said it would “continue to aim at resolutely achieving” its goal set in 2015 of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 26% by 2030 from 2013 levels.

Its submission to the UN also said it “will pursue further efforts both in the medium and long-term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond this level”. It comes at a time when governments around the world are overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Laurence Tubiana, who was an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement as France’s climate ambassador, welcomed Japan’s submission but said it was “disappointing to see the government has not increased its ambition in response to the climate crisis”.

Britain is due to host a critical climate summit in Glasgow in November – providing the coronavirus crisis is over by then – to rally far more global action at the first five-year milestone of the Paris Agreement. Countries are under pressure to submit tougher climate plans to limit climate change that the UN calls an existential threat to humanity.

A UK government spokesperson told Climate Home News it had taken note of Japan’s “technical NDC submission” but expected Tokyo to come up with a more ambitious plan ahead of the summit.

“We are clear on the need for increased ambition from all countries, particularly from G7 partners. We hope to see a further submission that includes an increase in Japan’s headline target ahead of Cop26.”

Green bailouts? – Climate Weekly

Tubiana said that other nations such as European Union members, China, the UK and South Korea were moving towards a low-carbon economy and could leave Japan behind in “the high-tech race of this century”.

“At one of the most challenging times of recent memory, we need bolder, mutually reinforcing plans that protect our societies from the global risks we all face,” Tubiana, who is now CEO of the European Climate Foundation, said in a statement.

2019 was the second warmest year on record, behind 2016, with severe wildfires, bleachings of coral reefs and an accelerating thaw of ice in Greenland and Antarctica that is pushing up world sea levels. Last year, UN Secretary General António Guterres urged the world to cut emissions by 45% by 2030, and for developed nations to lead the way.

Christiana Figueres, who was head of the UN Climate Change secretariat at the time of the Paris Agreement, praised Japanese companies including business conglomerate Marubeni for moving away from fossil fuels. But she said the government’s NDC fell short.

“The new NDC limits the scope for Japan to meet the goals required by science, desired by humanity and committed to by its government in Paris. I hope this announcement does not hinder further leadership from the private sector in Japan,” she said in a statement.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

“When the world is learning through the Covid-19 pandemic that we need to work together to tackle global threats like climate change, it’s disappointing to see Japan not learning this lesson,” Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based think tank Power Shift Africa, said in a statement.

Japan says its industries such as steel, cars or cement have historically been more efficient than major rivals, partly because of its dependence on energy imports. Tokyo says that limits its ability to make deep cuts compared to other, less efficient, economies.

It originally submitted its NDC climate action plan in July 2015. Since then, the document said that Japan had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions for four consecutive years, from 2014-2017.

The submission also added that revisions to Japan’s NDC “will be carried out consistently with the revision of the energy mix” rather than having to wait for the next five-year milestone of the Paris accord, when countries will be expected to ratchet-up their plans further.

According to figures included in the submission, coal makes up 26% of Japan’s energy mix on which its NDC is based. Renewable energy makes up 22-24%, nuclear power up to 22% and liquefied natural gas about 27%.

A report published by Oil Change International earlier this year, also found that Japan’s export credit agency provided more support to oil, gas and coal projects abroad than any other government – an estimated $7.8 billion annually.

Coronavirus: in Hawaii’s air, scientists seek signs of economic shock on CO2 levels

In 2019, Japan also submitted a long-term strategy to cut emissions by mid-century to the UN.

Monday’s document said that long-term plan aimed to achieve “a ‘decarbonised society’ as close as possible to 2050 with disruptive innovations” such as artificial photosynthesis – a process used by plants to make food while absorbing carbon dioxide – and hydrogen.

Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions totalled the equivalent of 1.23 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2017, up 2.04% from the UN base year of 1990. They have declined from 1.34 billion in 2013.

Only four nations have submitted more ambitious climate plans to the UN so far – the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Moldova.

The post Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Emissions by Russia, the world’s fifth biggest emitter, plunged after smokestack industries collapsed after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and are still only around half the levels in the UN’s benchmark year of 1990.

All countries are under pressure to announce more ambitious policies on climate change in 2020, the first five-year milestone of the Paris climate agreement, with calls to link stimulus packages to combat the coronavirus to a greener economy.

In a draft plan stretching to 2050, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development projected that emissions would rise to the equivalent of 2.08 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030, including land use and forestry, or 67% of 3.11 billion tonnes recorded in 1990.

The 2030 level would be up from 1.58 billion tonnes in 2017, or 51% of 1990 levels, according to the “basic” scenario in the plan, published in Russian on Monday.

The 2030 goal is more ambitious, however, than the existing target to limit 2030 emissions to 75% of 1990 levels, or 2.33 billion tonnes, submitted by Moscow as its contribution to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

Under the new draft goal, Russia would seek to reduce demand for fossil fuels and boost renewable energy. It would also upgrade insulation for buildings and encourage energy efficiency from petrochemicals to agriculture, it said. It also noted some benefits from warming, such as greater access to shipping routes in the Arctic north.

By 2050, the basic scenario projected that emissions would dip to 1.99 billion tonnes, or 64% of 1990 levels.

“This is not an ambitious plan … it would allow emissions to rise,” Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the New Climate Institute, told Climate Home News.

“It’s not in line with the Paris Agreement. Countries need to go for the highest possible ambition”. He said that a Russian overview of its climate policies submitted to the United Nations in 2019 was more ambitious than the new plan.

“We welcome this as a start but it’s only baby steps,” Vladimir Chuprov, campaign director of Greenpeace in Moscow, told CHN. He said Moscow’s plan had some positive aspects, such as encouraging the growth of forests that soak up carbon dioxide.

But allowing a rise in overall emissions “isn’t ambitious at all. It means no real progress,” he said.

The Russian ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russia is the fifth largest emitter after China, the US, the European Union and India.

The United Nations says that global emissions will need to fall by 7.6% a year in the decade to 2030 to get on track to limit the rise in average global temperatures to the strictest goal set in the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times to limit heatwaves, floods, droughts and a rise in sea levels.

The Russian plan, now out for review by other ministries, also included a more “intensive” scenario that would allow emissions to rise slightly and then fall to 52% of 1990 levels by 2050, or 1.62 billion tonnes – little changed from current levels.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

“The transition to the trajectory of an intensive scenario of low-carbon development will allow Russia to achieve carbon neutrality in the second half of the 21st century closer to its completion,” the ministry said in a statement.

A Climate Action Tracker (CAT), run by European research groups including the New Climate Institute, last year rated Russia’s 2015 plan as “critically inadequate”.

President Vladimir Putin has sometimes argued that warming will bring benefits, such as higher farm productivity, to Russia.

CAT said Russia’s decision in October 2019 to ratify the Paris Agreement, long after most other nations, “was more symbolic than substantive, as it did not come with any improvement to its very weak emissions reduction target, nor with an announcement of any new climate policies.” CAT said it was still reviewing the new Russian plan.

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Plug-in vehicles emit less greenhouse gases than petrol and diesel models over a car’s lifetime – that includes the mining of metals or lithium for batteries, manufacturing, driving 150,000 kilometers and finally scrapping, a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability on Monday found.

Some past studies have questioned the greenness of electric vehicles (EVs), especially because of high emissions linked to making batteries.

“In most of the world, in countries accounting for 95% of road transport, EVs would reduce emissions compared to average petrol cars,” lead author Florian Knobloch, of the Environmental Science Department at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told Climate Home News.

Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans

The study said it made sense to drive an electric car rather than a fossil-fuel vehicle in major markets including China, the United States and almost all of Europe.

The exceptions, where EVs need electricity generated from coal-fired plants to recharge, were India, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Bulgaria, it said.

Transport, mostly by road, accounts for about a quarter of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

“But it’s not like driving EVs is a silver bullet solution for transport. It’s much better not to drive a car at all,” Knobloch said of the findings by a team also including researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge.

As electricity sources shift from fossil fuels to renewables such as hydro, solar and wind power, EVs would become relatively more attractive. India, for instance, is shifting to solar power so EVs would make sense within a few  years, he said.

India has previously committed to raise the portion of renewable into its energy mix to 175GW by 2022, with the aim of boosting it to 450GW in the long-term.

The benefits of driving EVs are highest in nations with few fossil fuels in electricity generation. “Average lifetime emissions from electric cars are up to 70% lower than petrol cars in countries like Sweden and France (which get most of their electricity from renewables and nuclear),” the authors wrote.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global electric car fleet exceeded 5.1 million in 2018, up by 2 million since 2017. China led sales with 1.1 million in 2018 but, worldwide, EVs are still less than 1% of the global car fleet.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), which campaigns for cleaner transport in Europe, said its research was more favourable to EVs.

“EVs are better than petrol or diesel cars in every country in Europe. This also includes Poland,” Lucien Mathieu, a transport and e-mobility analyst with T&E, told CHN.

Mathieu added that grids were likely to be a lot greener in 15 years’ time – the expected lifetime of a vehicle – if governments stick to pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

There are also massive differences between the carbon footprint of manufacturing, he said. Tesla, for instance, uses clean solar power at a Gigafactory in Nevada to assemble battery packs and reduce emissions.

The post Electric cars help limit climate change despite blackspots in India, Poland appeared first on Climate Home News.

On a video call hosted by Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg and her “Fridays for Future” youth movement, they said African nations have a role to play even though global warming has been caused overwhelmingly by major industrialised nations.

Deforestation in Africa and local energy policies promoting fossil fuels were all adding to the crisis, said Makenna Muigai of Kenya.

“I urge African leaders and world leaders to take into consideration that all of us at the end of the day will be affected by climate change,” she said.

UN relocates biodiversity talks to Italy from China after coronavirus emergency

Ndoni Mcunu, an environmental scientist at Witwatersrand University in South Africa, said that African nations should make their economies more efficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Africa only contributes 5% of the greenhouse gases yet we are the most impacted,” she said. China, the United States and the European Union are the top emitters.

Among policy advice, Vanessa Nakate, 23, of Uganda urged a halt to construction of a pipeline to export Ugandan oil via Tanzania to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga.

“We need to keep the oil in the ground,” she said. She said that activists in Africa often felt ignored, both at home and abroad.

“The biggest threat to action in my country and in Africa is the fact that those who are trying as hard as possible to speak up are … not able to tell their stories,” she said, adding that some feared arrest if they took part in local protests about climate change.

Nakate won unwanted attention last week after she was cropped from a news agency photograph at a meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. Her absence meant the image showed only white activists, including 17-year-old Thunberg.

Nakate said that the controversy about the photograph – subsequently reissued to include her – might end up helping. “I’m actually very optimistic about this. I believe it is going to change the stories of different climate activists in Africa,” she said.

Coronavirus side effect – Climate Weekly

Teenage activist Ayakha Melithafa of South Africa said it was difficult to galvanise local action on climate change when many people in Africa suffered crises, of poverty and unemployment.

“It’s hard to convince people in Africa to care about the climate crisis because they are facing so many socio-economic crises at the same time,” she said.

She called for better public education to show that climate change would exacerbate strains on water and food supplies.

Thunberg, named Time Magazine’s person of the year for 2019, said she wanted to focus on Africa by organising the call.

She said that everyone in power around the world needs “to start treating this crisis as a crisis.”

The post Youth activists urge African governments to do more to curb climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

The insects are ravaging Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in the worst outbreak in the region in decades, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report on Wednesday.

South Sudan and Uganda were also at risk and new swarms could form in Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, it said.

“Locust swarms have started laying eggs and another generation of breeding will increase locust numbers,” Keith Cressman, senior locust forecasting officer at the FAO, said in a statement.

“Urgent efforts must be made to stop them from increasing to protect the livelihoods of farmers and livestock holders,” he added.

UN biodiversity meeting in China under review following coronavirus outbreak

In Kenya, the FAO said eggs will “hatch in early February and new swarms are expected to form in early April”.

Almost 12 million people in the region already lack secure food supplies and a swarm of locusts covering one square kilometre can devour as much food in a day as 35,000 people, it said.

“Desert Locusts present an extremely alarming and unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa,” FAO said in a statement. FAO said it needed $70 million to support rapid control operations, such as spraying with insecticides.

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Scientists say that more study is needed to understand how far rising temperatures, more variable rainfall and shifting wind patterns caused by climate change will affect locust outbreaks.

The FAO says that desert locusts numbers can boom “if heavy rains fall in successive seasonal breeding areas”. It adds “unless prevented by control, drought or migration to unsuitable habitats, plagues can form”.

Cressman wrote a study in 2013 saying that a warming climate could especially help eggs and young locusts, known as hoppers, to grow faster in the colder parts of the year, giving the pests a head start.

The post Locusts lay eggs as plague worsens in Horn of Africa, UN warns appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a paper published on Sunday, the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC) said China had “the potential and conditions for improving” its Paris commitment, known as a ‘nationally determined contribution’ or NDC.

The NCSC recommended the government “evaluate and demonstrate the options for updating the 2030 nationally determined contributions in 2020”.

The NCSC, an official government thinktank, is one of the leading influencers of Chinese policy in the international climate arena. But observers said the paper did not represent government policy.

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China’s current pledge to the Paris deal is to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. But for years there have been signs that this target would be achieved early.

The country achieved its 2020 goal, to cut emissions 45% for each unit of economic growth (carbon intensity), by the end of last year. Given this faster-than-expected economic transition, China’s lead climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said last month that he thought the 2030 target would be achieved.

In that context, the NCSC said an early increase to China’s Paris pledge was possible.

Last week, Greenpeace analysis found China’s carbon emissions for the first three months of 2018 had increased faster than in recent years. But the NGO’s senior climate and energy policy officer Li Shuo told Climate Home News this did not threaten China’s 2020 or 2030 targets.

“On one hand emissions are indeed growing at a very rapid rate, but on the other hand it’s not growing to the extent of reversing our previous assessment that China is going to overachieve its 2020 and 2030 targets,” said Li. “As a result there is an open question in front of China, which is: do you want to ratchet up your NDC or not?”

Under the 2015 Paris climate deal, countries volunteered their own pollution cuts and other climate change efforts. These pledges are due to be revisited and updated in 2025. There will also be a moment in 2020 for progressive players to deliver new submissions. It is not yet clear how many will be ready to show increased ambition.

China: New environment ministry unveiled, with huge staff boost

Almost no country has volunteered cuts that represent a fair share of efforts to keep the world from warming by 2C. This means there is pressure on many countries to increase their pledges before 2025. But few want to commit to sharper cuts unless others join them.

The NCSC paper noted China’s role on the global stage was changing and acknowledged its “image as a responsible, big country” – a reference to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s 2018 New Year speech – came with pressure to lead on issues such as climate change.

With its decarbonisation outstripping its promises, China could put pressure on other countries without having to make major changes to its current direction, said Greenpeace’s Li.

“China is actually in the position, if you look at its real economy, to ratchet up, so why do we waste that opportunity?” he said.

But the NCSC also warned updating China’s pledge could be seen as an admission that China’s original Paris commitments were not ambitious, undermining any diplomatic boost. US president Donald Trump has frequently criticised the Paris accord for not eliciting tough enough action from China.

The NCSC laid out several ways China could update its pledge. These included increasing China’s emissions targets, providing clearer information regarding its emissions to the global community, expanding the targets to include greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide or committing to new policies.

The paper also discussed China’s approach to the mandatory upgrading of its pledge in 2025. It said China’s 2025 revision should set a new 2035 target. This would synchronise the targets with the year China’s government has set for the country to achieve “modernisation”.

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The NCSC is a government-affiliated thinktank. Its director and the paper’s lead author is Chai Qimin, who negotiates as part of the Chinese government delegation during UN climate talks.

When it comes to international climate policy, said Greenpeace’s Li, “the NCSC is one of the leading, if the not the leading, agency to provide guidance or advice to the Chinese government”.

Isabel Hilton, CEO of chinadialogue, warned against placing too much significance on the paper. “This is a description of process rather than any policy initiative. Thinktanks contribute ideas, but don’t make policy,” she said.

Any decision on altering the country’s Paris pledge would pass through the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and may be considered by the State Council or even president Xi, said Li.

He said the NCSC paper should not be seen as an adoption of any policy direction, but was nonetheless significant as it showed the discussion evolving.

It comes as Xie prepares for a series of climate talks with ministers from around the world in Berlin and Brussels. Cooperation between the EU and China is seen as critical to the success of this year’s UN climate summit.

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In Paris, nations reached agreement to mitigate against and adapt to climate change. It was an agreement between countries to take national action, but we live in a globalised world and climate change has global consequences. The Paris Agreement was never going to be enough.

The UN needs now to task global and multinational organisations with addressing climate impacts of global significance. In particular, it needs to prepare for potential conflict as a result of increased resource scarcity in fragile states, the fall-out of mass ice-melt on global sea level and the potential for states to resort to unsanctioned geo-engineering.

The UN system as a whole can and must do more to effectively manage climate-related risks to global peace and security. This becomes increasingly important as we begin to understand the true reality of climate impacts. The United Nations must change – and fast – as the risk of extreme impacts is growing by the day.

Here are four clear policy objectives the UN could establish.

First, climate change should be anchored at the heart of the secretary general’s UN reform agenda. António Guterres is pursuing a raft of reforms to improve the UN’s operations to deliver sustainable development and peace. Climate-related risks interplay with a range of the other challenges facing the organisation, from inequality and political instability to resourcing and programming.

Sidelining climate change is a mistake, and reforms that do not take into account a climate-changed future will be doomed to failure. With hurricanes, floods and droughts aplenty, the reality of climate change is already knocking loudly at the UN’s door.

Second, an ‘institutional home’ needs to be established to systematically address climate-related risks across all UN agencies and operations should be created under the auspices of the secretary-general. The cell could serve as an analytical task-force, translating the vast array of climate science and on-the-ground experience into digestible information for decision-makers. Agencies as well as political bodies, including the UN security council, would be advised on current and impending climate realities to improve their effectiveness and realign priorities.

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Third, this newly created unit should be mandated to conduct a climate risk assessment of all UN agencies and operations. There is little understanding of the strain the UN will experience from climate impacts. A climate risk assessment would identify the risks to UN effectiveness in maintaining peace and security. Furthermore, it would highlight priority areas for reform and guide resourcing.

Fourth, a special representative for climate security should be appointed to support political dialogue on climate-related security risks. The profound changes wrought by low carbon transition and climate impacts will involve tough political choices. An envoy would help elevate pressing concerns and convene actors to identify political solutions. For example, an envoy could gather nations and agencies with shared climate-related risks to reach agreement on resource sharing in the face of scarcity.

Time is running out and the world’s citizens are understandably growing anxious. As the fall-out from globalisation settles, people are identifying climate change as the world’s gravest threat. To maintain the UN’s relevance and make good on its mission, self-styled ‘UN reformer’ Guterres must live up to his name and place climate change centre stage.

Camilla Born is a Senior Policy Adviser in Climate Diplomacy and Risk at E3G. She is currently working in collaboration with SIPRI to support Sweden’s membership of the UN Security Council.

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But of greatest interest to us, as people who have been fascinated by climate change communication, was that for the first time we heard climate scientists in the media making a confident (albeit hedged) connection between an extreme weather event and climate change.

Recent breakthroughs in modelling have enabled scientists to attribute the role of climate change in an extreme weather event quickly and accurately. But this raises an important question: are people in Florida, Texas, the wider US and the Caribbean going to make that connection, or accept it when made by others? In short, will storms like Harvey and Irma increase public concern about climate change and generate increased demands for collective action?

Those who are already actively engaged – including activists and climate scientists – tend to assume that extreme weather events lead to increased public concern. After all, this is the point where the rubber hits the road, where the models and the graphs become tangible and real. Of course people can deny something which is theoretical and placed in the future, but how, it is often argued, can people deny the evidence in front of their own eyes?

Indeed there is evidence from the UK that people who have experienced flooding are not only more concerned about climate change, but also more likely to report that they have become more concerned about climate change. However this study didn’t look at the interplay with political ideology, and the wider sciences of cognitive and social psychology suggest that the relationship between experience and belief is never straightforward and is determined by a complex interplay of innate biases, cultural interpretation and social identity.

When the same authors looked at whether people interpreted cold weather as evidence for or against climate change they found political ideology was the main determining factor. What is becoming increasingly evident is that if people are strongly invested in an attitude, they will actively defend their position. Bizarrely, when confronted with counter evidence, people may even become reinforced in their views.

A research paper by Robert Brulle at Drexel University, published earlier this year, could find no conclusive evidence that extreme weather events shifted opinion. It concludes that “political ideology exercises a dominant influence on the perception of climate change and far eclipses the influence of weather events”. In other words, your views on climate change are predetermined by your political identity which, across the English-speaking world, is extremely polarised on this issue.

If you are a left-leaning, liberal environmentalist then extreme weather events will be a confirmation of your existing views. But how do people who do not accept climate change respond to such events?

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The primary response appears to be to remove the question altogether, by suppressing all conversation about climate change. Earlier this week a perplexed Guardian reporter found that residents in Florida had no interest in making any connection with climate change. He quoted a local real estate lawyer surveying the damage saying, “I don’t think climate change is such a big deal.”

In 2013, one of us (George Marshall), conducted extensive interviews in the US in areas affected by extreme weather events for his book – entitled Don’t Even Think About It: Why our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. He visited Bastrop, which had suffered the most extreme and expensive wildfires in Texan history and communities on the New Jersey seashore which had recently been devastated by Hurricane Sandy.

In neither location could he find anyone who could recall having a conversation about the connection between climate change and the extreme weather events. In Democrat New Jersey, people were more inclined to accept the scientific reality of climate change and the possibility that it might be associated with the hurricane. However, the dominant narrative concerned the strength of the community, the mutual support at a time of hardship, and the positive story of renewal and reconstruction. People had no desire to indulge in any narrative that might be socially divisive or to consider a worsening climate, and hoped that it really was a once in 100 years event.

In our work around flooding in the UK, it appears that on average it is only after experiencing a third flooding incident that people are prepared to take action. This is in many ways completely understandable: if your life has been turned upside down physically and emotionally, you want everything to return to ‘normal’ rather than accept that this is likely to happen to you and your family again. Clearly however, waiting for everyone to experience three extreme weather events before they catch on isn’t an option.

This does not mean climate communications should avoid talking about extreme weather events. Clearly these events provide an unusual opportunity to discuss the future risks and impacts of climate change. The question is, how can we do it effectively and navigate this difficult and emotionally charged space? If we talk too soon after an event, we can be accused of exploiting people suffering to bolster our issue (an accusation that recurs repeatedly in the US when people try to discuss gun control after a mass shooting). And if we talk too late, people have already moved on and recovered.

Research finds that some people even come to believe that they are now invulnerable to future impacts, particularly when such incidents are framed as once in a 100 or 200 years event, as the UK’s Environment Agency did until recently.

Report: Irma forces Caribbean delegates to abandon UN climate science meeting

What is needed is a careful and considered approach to discussing the connection between events such as Hurricane Irma and climate change. Following the 2013/14 floods in the UK, Climate Outreach ran workshops in communities who’d experienced flooding to explore these issues. We followed this with a project led by the Understanding Risk group at Cardiff University, bringing together a diverse cross-section of experts.

Out of this came a set of nine principles of best-practice public engagement for communicating flood risk in a changing climate. A key lesson from this work is that, in order to create a shift in attitudes and a stronger call for action on climate change, appropriate conversations have to begin before the weather events, seeding the discussion that can then occur between peers in relation to the unfolding impacts.

Increasingly people are joining the dots between extreme weather events and climate change but the critical need remains to enable discussions that actively involve all groups, especially those outside the liberal green networks. Doing so isn’t straightforward – it requires consideration, time and resources, underpinned by a keen awareness that political polarisation can swamp even the evidence before our very own eyes.

George Marshall is co-founder and director of projects and Jamie Clarke is executive director at Climate Outreach.

The post Now really isn’t the best time to talk about climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

If humans continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate, then rainfall will diminish by 30%, average temperatures will rise by 4.5°C, and the flow from the Jordan’s most important tributary could fall by 75%. The frequency of droughts will increase threefold, to recur almost every year.

And since the kingdom of Jordan – wedged between Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq – is already one of the most water-poor nations of the world, the future is challenging.

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Scientists in California report in Science Advances journal that they took a look at future conditions for one of the world’s political hotspots, and focused on the problems for one state in the region.

Pressure on water supplies has been exacerbated by population growth, economic development, dramatic increases in irrigated farming, and abstraction of groundwater from the aquifers that once filled wells and topped up desert oases. Jordan also houses the world’s second largest number of refugees per head of population.

In 1946, a Jordanian citizen could count on 3,600 cubic metres of water a year. Right now, this supply has dropped to 135 cubic metres – way below the 500 cubic metres a year set by the United Nations as the threshold for “absolute scarcity”.

The scientists looked at rates of water use between 1981 and 2010, and then fed in climate scenarios – including the notorious “business-as-usual” one in which humans go on burning fossil fuels – for the decades between 2011 and 2100.

They thought about drought in different ways, such as lower rainfall, higher temperatures, greater evaporation, changes in the way land is used. The changes could happen in Jordan itself, or upstream, in territories controlled by other nations.

The Jordan River is celebrated in three of the world’s great religions, but it is now a modest stream. It rises on the slopes of Mount Hermon, on the border between Syria and Lebanon, flows south through northern Israel, through the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), whose waters are at their lowest level in a century, then meanders down a 200km valley and ends in the Dead Sea.

It runs through a region already cruelly hit by drought and by the civil war in Syria that itself may have been precipitated by the same drought.

The Jordan is just one of the world’s 278 waterways that flow across national boundaries or that divide nations – that is, rivers that deliver water to more than one set of peoples. So the study has wider lessons.

Researchers have already identified future problems connected with the Nile, one of the other great rivers of biblical history.

But the Nile, for most of its history, has flowed and has delivered annual floods. The River Jordan was never famous for its floods, and its flow is likely to diminish as less water falls in the uplands, and as more people compete for more water from the trickle that is left.

The end of the Syrian civil war upstream could mean a return to farming and even more demand for water that would otherwise flow into the Jordan.

“The ability of the Jordan to satisfy future urban and agricultural water demands will be stressed by cascading effects on its freshwater supply,” says one of the report’s authors, Steven Gorelick, the Cyrus Fisher Tolman Professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stamford University, California.

“These impacts are from increasingly severe droughts and eventual agricultural land-use recovery in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war.”

This article was first published on Climate News Network.

The post Climate change threatens survival of the River Jordan appeared first on Climate Home News.

They haven’t and a third year of drought beckons. That puts 700,000 people in danger of starvation by early 2017.

Water, netball and basketball are the three pillars of evening life in Katse village, Lesotho. The basketball happens on a floodlit court, made for the contractors that built the nearby Katse Dam.

The netball doesn’t have the luxury of a formal court, and takes place on a field that has been flattened by running feet. It ends when the sun sets.

Some 40 women take part, either in playing or resolving disputes from the sidelines. During one argument over whether someone ran too far with the faded white ball, one admits: “We don’t really play by international rules.”

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The noise of both sports echoes across the village, mixing in with the sound of cattle bells and general discussion. It then bounces off the 2,400m tall mountains that form the community’s southern boundary.

The dam creates the other boundary, thanks to the 140m sheer drop down to its surface. That leaves a two kilometre strip of rocky ground for farming and homes.

The former take up the majority of land. Around 75% of the local population relies on rain-fed agriculture. The grey strips of fields stretch across any possible surface, giving the Mountain Kingdom a feeling of being full.

That means Katse village is squished into a small area along the spine of one of the ridges that rises into the mountains. The ground is too rocky for crops, and frost means vegetable gardens cannot use the space.

Located in central Lesotho, the Katse dam was built in 1996 (Pic: Google)

With night settling in, the ball players join the rest of the community in queuing for water next to the village’s one working tap. Its reservoir was built too low down to get water to the forever-dry taps higher up. Most homes are higher than the tap.

Dozens of white, green and yellow water containers reserve spots in the queue. Most are carried by children, who can barely lift the containers above the ground. These therefore knock against the uneven paths and spill, leaving trails on the wet ground.

A fortunate few strap containers onto donkeys, or push wheelbarrows. Three battered bakkies take water to homes more than a kilometre from the tap.

“They promised when they built the dam that we would get water all over the village.” Nchai Sitsane wears a baseball cap, more to match his American-style getup than for any practical reason – the sun has now set. He doesn’t make a concession to the biting wind, leaving his leather jacket unbuttoned. “But our parents didn’t follow up and make sure that happened, so here we are.”

(Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

His father – a miner in South Africa – passed away, as did his mother, before water came to the village. “Life here is about survival, more than about making it.”

He stops talking to look at the dam, now a dark strip to the north. It is the result of a 1986 agreement between Lesotho and South Africa.

The latter needed to solve a problem: the economic hub of Gauteng needed water and getting it uphill from KwaZulu-Natal would use up too much electricity (and money). Lesotho had lots of water, thanks to its 3 800m mountain peaks and winter snow melt, but no dams.

The 185m tall Katse Dam wall, which curves across a valley where two rivers meet, was the result.

Africa files: the best reporting on the continent’s climate crisis

Lesotho gets around R700 million a year (US$51m) from selling that water; 10% of government revenue.

The government says the money has meant new schools, roads and electricity in previously cut-off communities. Turbines in the system generate 75-megawatts of capacity, almost enough to power the whole country.

But people in Katse say they have seen little benefit from selling their water. Rain last fell in any volume in 2013. The worst drought in living memory has ensued, wiping out two season’s worth of crops.

People in Katse village doing daily tasks – cooking in the evening (Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

That streak looks set to continue. El Niño – which drove the drought in the southern hemisphere – has faded away and Nasa predicts that its wet counterpart, La Niña, will probably not materialise and bring heavy rains to fill dams.

Rainfall projections for the region from the South African Weather Service say the usual spring rains will probably not materialise. At best, good rains will come by Christmas.

This is because the climate is changing, undoing the predictable patterns that farmers rely on. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rainfall across the country will decrease by up to 20%.

That decrease will also come with a shift in rainfall patterns; more rain will be concentrated in shorter and more violent spells. For a mountainous country this is predicted to mean a great deal of topsoil washing away. 

A taste of that reality came during 2012, when Lesotho was hit with floods. These flooded fields and saw topsoil ending up in rivers and dams.

(Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

But in Katse the fields are being ploughed anyway. Four-oxen teams pull shiny metal ploughs, guided by one man while another follows, dropping seeds into the disturbed ground.

A product of volcanic activity, this soil gives farmers here an advantage over their counterparts in Lesotho’s lowlands. But soil needs rain.

“This place should be so wet now,” says Pakalitha Mokhele. His white gumboots – a fixture on the feet of all farmers here – sink into the ground whenever he puts his weight down.

Some rain fell last week, thanks to a cold front sweeping in from the south. Those that planted early have been rewarded with green maize shoots popping out of the ground. “

That isn’t enough. We will have real problems now without the rain.” Mokhele pushes his tall stick into the ground so he can free up a hand to adjust the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

(Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

Even in spring, the morning temperature stays in the single digits. Pointing to the scrappy cattle pulling his plough, he says: “Without the rain there will be a lot of meat in October.”

The herbivore’s rib cage protrudes from under a patchy brown hide. There is little nutrition left in the local grass.

For the cattle, water is less of a problem. A tap further down from the village’s reservoir pumps water into a cement trough. Sheep, donkeys, cattle and horses all take turns shuffling each other along so they can drink.

Their largesse makes a muddy pool around the trough, which gives off water into a sliver of a stream. This makes its way down a nearly dry watercourse, down to Katse Dam.

The Katse Dam and the Lesotho Highlands water project, which supplies water to South Africa (Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

Standing next to where one of these streams used to drop down the 140m to the dam, Terrence Moshoeshoe jabs his well-honed fishing knife into the crusty grey earth.

“They are releasing too much.” The water level, he says, was a third of a metre higher yesterday. Lesotho has to keep releasing water, helping to stave off a full-blown drought disaster in Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Free State. Katse supplies the Vaal Dam in Gauteng.

It is down to 30%. Emergency water releases have also sent water flowing the other way, to the Eastern Cape. But the cost to the dam means it is at 52% – its lowest-ever level.

A strip of recently exposed white rock runs along the dam’s winding cliff face – like the layer of grime left after water is let out of a bathtub. The water should be 26m above the point where Moshoeshoe is standing.

“People on that side [South Africa] don’t appreciate what they are taking from us,” he says. Like others in the village, he sees the dam as a form of South African colonialism – a project put here to help that country at the expense of locals who would otherwise benefit from the rainfall. “It is our resource. Where is our benefit?”

A boy collects water at dusk which he places on his donkey to take home – there is only one tap in the entire village of Katse (Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

A new dam is being planned to supplement Katse, in the second of five phases to develop Lesotho into a full-blown water resource for the whole region. Some of this will also go to Botswana and Namibia. But this expansion has been delayed for at least two years.

An official working at the dam shakes his head when unofficially queried about the delay. “Ministers always want their money.” That’s a reference to reports that South Africa’s water minister, Nomvula Mokonyane, has delayed the project because she wants to appoint her own contractors. She denies the claims.

The delay could be disastrous for Gauteng. The province’s water projections show that demand will exceed supply by 2020 – when the dam should have been finished. This is if there isn’t another drought.

A recent World Bank report – “Lesotho water security and climate change assessment” – warned: “Delays in implementing the project could undermine water security in South Africa and limit the economic growth benefits that accrue to Lesotho.”

It also leaves the 11 000 people that will be directly and indirectly employed by the project in limbo.

(Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

With precious little industry around Katse – the only big employers are the dam and local trout farms – this sort of delay means people do not have an income.

In times of drought, an income is the only way people can get food. Some 20 villagers from here used to do the two-day hike over the mountains to Ficksburg in South Africa to go work in that country’s mining industry.

Outside jobs like this used to make up 20% of Lesotho’s GDP. But a downturn in that industry means only four men in the village still work at mines and send money home.

This means it has to rain in Lesotho’s highlands. The seeds are in the ground. Entire communities are waiting for two years of drought to come to an end.

If the country’s most valuable natural resource doesn’t start falling from the sky, the World Food Programme warns that 700 000 people will need food assistance through to April 2017. South Africa and Botswana will also run dry, as the water level at Katse Dam continues to drop.

A child runs with a water bucket from school to collect water (Pic: Delwyn Verasamy)

The rest of southern Africa is facing the same problems as Lesotho, except its neighbouring countries don’t have as much water. Average rainfall in the semi-arid region is, at best, half the world average of nearly 1,000mm a year.

Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and the rest of the region has declared a drought disaster. The World Food Organisation estimates that 10 million people will need emergency food aid in the region. This is if it rains and maize crops grow in time for the early 2017 harvest.

Climate change projections – collated in the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report – paint a picture where more of the same can be expected.

The region will get up to six degrees hotter by the end of this century. That will dramatically alter rainfall, with less falling, but in more violent storms.

The report warned: “Africa as a whole is one of the most vulnerable continents due to its high exposure and low adaptive capacity.” Critically, maize yields in the region are projected to drop by a third by 2050.

This will make Lesotho’s precious water all the more valuable.

This article was produced with the Mail & Guardian, using funding from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN)     

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The G20 has already committed to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption” over the “medium term”. In May, the G7 nations pledged to achieve this by 2025.

When the leaders of the 20 largest economies on earth meet in Hangzhou on Thursday and Friday, they must go further, said a joint statement from multinational insurers Aviva, Aegon and Amlin, and commit to an end to assistance for fossil fuel companies within four years.

“Given the urgency of the climate change crisis, underscored by the Paris Agreement reached in December of 2015, the next steps on this commitment are long overdue,” the statement read.

The three insurers manage $1.2tn in assets. Aviva CEO Mark Wilson said: “Climate change in particular represents the mother of all risks – to business and to society as a whole. And that risk is magnified by the way in which fossil fuel subsidies distort the energy market. These subsidies are simply unsustainable.”

Considering the planetary crisis we face, it is completely inappropriate to continue giving billions in tax breaks to fossil fuel companies.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 28, 2016

Estimates of fossil fuel subsidies vary widely depending on the definition of a subsidy. The OECD reports that its member states contribute $160-200bn each year to the production of coal, oil and gas.

But the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said this neglects to account for the damage to the environment and human health for which governments carry the cost. The IMF estimates this to amount to a staggering $5.3tn a year, or $10m per minute.

“We’re calling on governments to kick away these carbon crutches, reveal the true impact to society of fossil fuels and take into account the price we will pay in the future for relying on them,” said Wilson.

Analysis: Do asset managers have a duty to reduce their climate risks?

Last year the US and China issued a joint statement in which they said they would use China’s G20 presidency to put a timeline on the phase out.

Shelagh Whitley, research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said the current G20 pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies was “empty” if it lacked a concrete timeline. ODI’s own estimate puts fossil fuel subsidies at $444bn each year.

“These subsidies fuel dangerous climate change,” said Whitley. “If we are to have any chance of meeting the 2C target set at the Paris climate summit then governments need to start a programme of rapid decarbonisation. The finance sector recognises the importance of moving away from fossil fuels, governments need to realise they may be the only ones left not moving.”

The statement was also signed by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and Open Energi. It comes six days after 130 investors issued a similar pre-G20 representation. In the US, the Sierra Club has launched a campaign call on the Obama administration to back the same target.

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Half of the reef’s coral has disappeared in the past three decades due to a combination of warming ocean temperatures, coastal development, invasive starfish and agricultural runoff.

A survey published this week in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism found 69% of tourists had been driven by a sense of urgency to see Australia’s coral icon while there was still time.

This year, the reef has experienced its worst bleaching event on record. A huge underwater heatwave, which has killed off coral across the globe, has affected 93% of the reefs along the 2,300km wonder. In the northern and central sections, almost half the coral has been bleached so intensely and for so long that it will not recover.

“Our research suggests that the ailing health of the Great Barrier Reef has in fact given tourists a new reason to visit, albeit one that doesn’t exactly promise a long-term future,” authors Annah Piggott-McKellar and Dr Karen McNamara of the University of Queensland wrote in the Conversation.

Healthy coral on Wilson Reef in the Great Barrier Reef marine park. Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Underwater Earth

It is a poignant example of the times we live in. Reef visitors were asked to choose between 15 reasons for their trip.

“To see the reef before it is gone” was the forth strongest motivator, after “to discover new places and things”, “to rest and relax; and “to get away from the demands of everyday life”.

Corbin Forest, a Texan student who visited the reef in June while studying in Australia, said he had never heard of bleaching specifically but was aware the reef was in danger.

“I had just heard for years that “it’ll be gone [sometime this century]”, “it’s being polluted”, “tourism is killing it”. So I figured I needed to make sure I saw it before it disappeared in case any of that ended up being true,” said Forest.

https://twitter.com/CorbinForest/status/752551753388691456

Forest took a snorkelling tour on Green Island, a popular dive spot near Cairns. In April, a survey found that a third of the corals there had been bleached, but few had yet died.

“I was not aware of any type of bleaching and am not sure what it is entirely so I wasn’t looking for it, but if it means the different colours of the coral disappear, I can see that being an occurrence there. Much of the reef looked a greyish-brown colour, unlike what I was expecting,” said Forest.

The most recent major assessment of reef health found that unless radical cuts are made to global carbon emissions, ocean conditions would become so warm that bleaching will occur on the reef every year by the middle of the century. Reef scientists believe that this would be the end of the ecosystem.

This has lead some tour operators, including Australia’s national airline Qantas, to use “last-chance tourism” as a marketing tool. Time Magazine listed the reef as one of ten “amazing places to visit before they vanish”.

Great Barrier Reef tourism is an industry worth $5.4bn per year and 60,000 people have jobs that rely on the reef’s ongoing health.

Source: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

Reef tour operators have reacted vociferously to media coverage of the bleaching event, which they deem to be damaging to their business prospects.

One business leader has called it a “great white lie”. Earlier this year, the Australian government and Unesco were left red-faced when it was discovered they had removed the Great Barrier Reef from a scientific report on the threat climate change posed to world heritage sites. The Australian government explained that it had been concerned about negative impacts on tourism.

But it may be that in the short term, the threat has played a role in a mini-tourism boom. The UQ survey was conducted in 2015, before the bleaching event had struck. That year saw record number of tourists visit the reef (although the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority notes that there a many factors that affect numbers).

“This raises another question,” said Piggott-McKellar and McNamara. “Is there a threshold beyond which the Great Barrier Reef is seen as “too far gone” to visit? If so, might future more frequent or severe bleaching episodes take us past that threshold?”

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(Pic: Lance Cheung/Flickr)

By Gerard Wynn in Paris

A new global climate agreement, to be reached this week in Paris, will accelerate a global low-carbon transition, given some 185 countries have pledged new, strengthened, greenhouse gas emissions targets, alongside a blizzard of climate-related news and releases.

Parsing the exact winners from a low-carbon transition, through the lens of the two-week conference which ends on Friday, is an inexact science, given the vagueness of announcements.

One approach is to name-check the technologies mentioned in the national pledges; in the thousands of speeches and side-events; and in the new funding and deployment targets. Another approach is to review the circulating analysis and commentary.

IN DEPTH: Breaking energy and carbon analysis

The International Energy Agency (IEA) analysed the energy-related impacts of the national emissions pledges, also called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). “The most common energy-related measures are those that target increased renewables deployment (40% of submissions), or improved efficiency in energy use (one-third of submissions),” the IEA said, adding that the pledges collectively would required $14 trillion additional investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency through 2030.

All pledges would limit emissions in the energy sector, whether through specific targets or vaguer policies and measures, but “only a handful of countries” mentioned other measures to cut energy sector emissions, the IEA said, such as phasing out of inefficient coal plants, lowering methane emissions from oil and gas, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon pricing, or other specific technologies such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage and low-carbon transport.

Turning to the business side events during the Paris conference, the Lima Paris Action Agenda held whole-day events along the themes: agriculture; forests; transport; renewable energy; energy access and efficiency; resilience; cities; private finance; business; innovation; buildings; and short-term pollutants. This is only a check-list of the most impacted sectors.

On specific targets, the standout announcement was made by India and France last week for an “international solar alliance”. The two countries sought to mobilise more than $1 trillion by 2030 to boost solar power in 120 developing countries.

Others included an aspirational, African target to deploy an additional 300 GW of renewable energy by 2030, with $10 billion support from industrialised nations. Other targets included a Global Geothermal Alliance target to develop 50 GW of geothermal power by 2030; and support from some 53 major companies (including BMW Group, Coca Cola, IKEA and Swiss Post) for an RE100 initiative to source all their electricity from renewable sources, by no fixed deadline.

Turning to donor announcements, the United Nations compiled a summary at the midway point through the conference on Sunday. While the funding comprised a headline total of tens of billions of dollars, there was negligible or zero resolution by sector or technology, referring mostly to “climate finance” or “climate action”. Rare exceptions included: Iceland’s $10 million annual support for “geothermal development, sustainable land and ocean management”; and Norway’s $400 million annual support for tropical forests.

Finally, there has been a diversity of analysis around the Paris conference and a low-carbon transition. Regarding the impact of an ambitious Paris agreement, Barclays Capital two weeks ago compared the impact across a range of sectors, identifying the biggest winners as renewable energy, efficient lighting manufacturers and power transmission manufacturers, and the biggest losers as automotive, fossil fuels and oil and gas.

Barclays Capital also found losers, where the fossil fuel industry would lose around $34 trillion in revenues cumulatively from 2014-2040 as a result of the new, national climate action pledges.

Regarding winners from a low-carbon transition more generally, Goldman Sachs last week highlighted four “front runner” technologies: LED light bulbs; solar power; wind; and electric and hybrid vehicles. Along similar lines, two weeks ago, Bank of America Merrill Lynch highlighted nine “entry points” for investors: energy efficiency; wind; solar; renewable energy yieldcos; nextgen vehicles batteries and storage; nuclear; hydropower; diversified cleantech; and other cleantech.

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Pastoralist and farming communities in the Sahel have been hit by recurrent droughts
(Source: Flickr/SOS Sahel UK)

By Alex Pashley

The G7 vowed on Wednesday to make  a “foreign policy priority” climate change’s threat to states braced for future resource conflict and natural disasters.

Foreign ministers meeting in Germany welcomed a study urging their members to boost at-risk countries’ resilience to climate impacts, and tasked a team with weighing up the proposals.

Ahead of pivotal UN talks in Paris at the end of the year, the G7’s annual summit in June is a key staging post on the road to a global climate deal.

With its members accounting for almost a quarter of the world’s heat-trapping gas emitted in 2010, the G7 summit offers a chance to take stock of countries’ volunteered emissions cuts, as well as a $100 billion commitment in adapting poor countries to an overheating planet.

Analysis: Germany’s G7 can ensure Paris deal a success

“I am delighted that based on this study we can develop joint measures and give new impetus to international processes,” German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the presentation of the report titled “A New Climate for Peace: Taking Action on Climate and Fragility Risks.”

“This is particularly important in light of the upcoming climate conference in Paris,” Steinmeier said from Lubeck, in northern Germany.

The report calls for the creation of a high-level G7 task force to address seven ‘compound risks’ identified by the four think tanks who compiled the report.

They range from water shortages, volatile food prices, and extreme weather events.

“Climate change is the ultimate risk multiplier,” said Lukas Ruttinger, a lead author and researcher at Adelphi, a German research institute. “It will increase the fragility of states and societies worldwide, bringing with it social unrest and even violent conflict.”

A UN report last year said that by 2020 around 60 million people could move from the infertile areas of Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe.

And by 2025, up to 2.4 billion people globally may face periods of intense water scarcity, which could in turn see 700 million people migrate to new areas by 2030.

Report: UN – climate change seen worsening conflicts in Sahel

The UK’s Foreign Office is poised to release a study on risks posed by climate change in July, RTCC learned recently.

Led by Britain’s senior climate envoy, Sir David King, meetings have taken place in the US, India and this week in London taking climate risk management as its focus.

Nick Mabey at London think tank E3G said the report would be used to track how countries’ voluntary emissions cuts can be improved and met, strengthening chances of success in Paris.

It was a “useful way to kick off,” Mabey told RTCC.

The G7, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US, meets from 7-8 June in Bavaria.

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Pic: IISD

By Sophie Yeo

Deeply entrenched positions are holding back attempts to negotiate a draft text for the UN climate deal at talks this week in Bonn.

In just over a year, countries must reach consensus on politically difficult issues for an agreement in Paris, including whether rich countries should compensate now for their historical emissions.

Officials met in Bonn for what co-chairs of the process called the “bridge building session”. But remarks from some negotiators and officials guiding the talks showed there was a way to go.

“Sticking to positions is not negotiating,” said Kishan Kumarsingh, co-chair of the talks, opening the session on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of G77+China, a large bloc of developing countries, a negotiator from Bolivia said on Tuesday: “It is important to listen to each other. We need a more interactive and dynamic process. We need to question. We need clarifications and to look for common ground, even texts, if possible.”

Difficult discussions

As the EU heads into domestic negotiations over its 2030 targets, a statement sent out by a bloc of countries including India, China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Ecuador, said that they were “gravely concerned” that rich countries “no longer seem willing to live up to their commitments”.

The statement accused developed countries of backing out of promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide support to developing countries.

This group, known as the like minded developing countries (LMDCs), is pushing back against the notion that rich and poor countries must both take on binding commitments under the new deal.

US negotiator Todd Stern has made clear that any deal which perpetuates the division between developed and developing countries – as used in the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s only climate treaty to date – will be a non-starter.

But the controversy at the heart of this week’s negotiations is what information countries need to include when they submit their contributions to the new deal to the UN by March next year.

Some want these pledges to include mitigation only, while others want to see promises of finance, adaptation, technology transfer and other elements that will be included in the final agreement.

The US is backing a proposal put forward by New Zealand, also backed by Australia. But it has not been welcomed by some other blocs, who reject its outright focus on mitigation.

Compromise

Andres Pirazzoli, an envoy representing Chile, told RTCC that countries were beginning to show flexibility on the talks relating to pre-2020 ambition on climate action, but that the spirit of compromise was still lagging in the post-2020 part of the talks.

“The sad thing is – and this is probably the case for the entire history of the negotiations – the most creative, flexible and active listeners in this business are the most vulnerable ones,” he said.

He said the least developed countries, small island states, and the Africa group were working hard to accommodate others, while his own grouping – a progressive Latin American alliance called AILAC – was trying to build bridges.

For the session to be a success, he added, there would need to be convergence between countries on the type of information that countries should provide in their contributions to the new agreement, as well as more agreement on how the elements of the final text should work.

A text by the co-chairs of the session, Kishan Kumarsingh and Artur Runge-Metzger, was welcomed by his group as the basis for the negotiations. “We feel very comfortable empowering the co-chairs to guide our negotiations,” said Pirazzoli.

Bridge building

The co-chairs said at the outset they had nicknamed this round of negotiations the “bridge building session”.

But their approach has rankled with other countries, with some rejecting outright the text compiled by the co-chairs on the information that parties should put forward.

“There was a general expression of unhappiness with the co-chair’s text,” said Alden Meyer, an observer of the negotiations from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The like minded developing countries did not think the co-chairs should be involved with drafting the text, he explained.

They also complained it was overly concerned with mitigation, at the expense of elements such as finance and adaptation.

The president of the next meeting in Lima, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, stressed that he wanted parties to arrive with “clear and substantive” ideas for the draft text, but he was confident that countries were beginning to move towards consensus.

Despite his confidence, the UN is already considering when it will hold extra sessions for negotiations next year, as diplomats attempt to cram in all the work that needs to be done ahead of next year’s vital Paris deal.

“The word I should use is hope. I’m hopeful… Nothing has really taken shape,” said Ruel Yamuna, a diplomat representing Papua New Guinea.

The post UN climate talks: Countries urged to build bridges appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: UNclimatechange/Flickr

By Sven Harmeling

This week’s climate talks in Bonn are an important stepping stone ahead of this December’s UN climate conference in Lima (COP20).

Once that concludes, only 12 months remain before 195+ governments aim to finalise a new legally binding climate agreement at the end of 2015 in Paris.

Many vulnerable developing countries have made it clear that they want to see far more action to address the impacts of growing climate disruption in addition to substantial emissions cuts.

As an organisation working to support vulnerable communities living on the climate change front lines, often in partnership with developing country governments, we couldn’t agree more with these priorities.

So, what do governments need to do in Bonn this week to lay the foundations of a 2015 agreement that really supports vulnerable countries and communities in the face of climate change?

Ensure adaptation is part and parcel of the INDCs

The so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) are likely to be a hot topic in Bonn.

Put simply, these are the climate pledges that all countries are expected to deliver early next year for the period after 2020. We want to see governments keep emissions reductions at the very heart of the INDCs, but there is also a pressing need for countries to clarify how and in which ways they can demonstrate their contributions to global adaptation efforts.

The AILAC group of countries from Latin America, for example, has stressed the benefits of covering adaptation, in addition to mitigation, in the INDCs. They rightly see this approach as a way to strengthen adaptation measures in both the international and domestic contexts.

That said, there are some important caveats. First, discussions about adaptation in the INDCs should be conducted in a way that does not distract from the importance of mitigation. Second, including adaptation in the INDCs should be voluntary, and ultimately this decision is up to each individual country. Third, including adaptation in the INDCs must seek to strengthen rather than interfere with adaptation planning efforts already underway as countries move forward with preparing their National Adaptation Plans.

We’ll be watching closely to make sure that this is the case.

Agree to a global adaptation goal

The Cancun Adaptation Framework (CAF) agreed in Mexico in 2010 was an early and commendable attempt to set out key parameters for international cooperation on adaptation in support of vulnerable developing countries. Yet, the CAF actually fails to link the level of adaptation action required with the climate impacts that poor countries can expect to experience in the coming years.

This is a problem because any temperature increase beyond 1.5 or 2C would, in many countries, require vast amounts of adaptation. What is more, such levels of warming may also require tough decisions to be taken, including identifying areas where adaptation measures would fail altogether.

The current 2015 negotiation text mentions a number of these critical issues, including proposals for a global adaptation goal – but it’s not there yet.

What’s missing in particular is a financial commitment (and target) from developed countries to help pay for adaptation in poor countries, as part of a global adaptation goal.

Although we cannot expect to see any progress in Bonn on the scale of the funding, negotiators should not forget that, sooner or later, they’ll need to signal just how much money they’re willing to commit to adaptation – and ensure they have processes in place to allocate it fairly and effectively based on the needs of the most vulnerable communities.

It must also be accessible to civil society. What needs to happen in Bonn is in depth discussion around the key pillars of the 2015 agreement relating to the adaptation goals and how to assess progress made towards achieving these goals, including finance.

If governments can identify the key sticking points that will require further work, this will give them a fighting chance of coming to an agreement by Paris.

Recognise the needs of the most vulnerable

To really serve the needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, the 2015 agreement must highlight the need for all climate action to be rights-based, gender-equitable and participatory, as set out by CARE, the Mary Robinson Foundation, and others.

Though the 2010 Cancun Adaptation Framework contains a catalogue of ‘guiding principles’ for action on adaptation, and urges “a country-driven gender-sensitive, participatory and fully transparent approach” so far these positive steps are yet to make it into the draft text which will underpin the 2015 climate agreement. The Bonn session is the time to fix this.

In fact, of the three international frameworks currently under discussion on climate, development and disaster risks, the UNFCCC agreement is now the least people-centred and rights-based of all.

In contrast, the proposal for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlights that “people are at the centre of sustainable development” and makes clear reference to human rights.

The draft post-2015 Disaster Risk Reduction Framework also states that “managing the risk of disasters should also be aimed at protecting persons, their livelihoods and property, while respecting their human rights.” The UNFCCC has some serious catching up to do here.

Commit to tackling loss and damage

After decades of failure to sufficiently reduce global emissions, loss and damage is becoming a reality for millions of poor and vulnerable people worldwide.

Last year’s decision in Warsaw to establish an international mechanism on loss and damage was a milestone in itself, but much work remains to be done to move this critical issue forward.

The current 2015 draft text highlights the need “to include provisions for loss and damage for cases where mitigation and adaptation will not be sufficient”. Governments must now prepare to come up with some answers.

The poorest nations will be seeking reassurances that those countries that bear the greatest responsibility for past emissions will be held accountable. Making additional money available to pay for climate-related loss and damage that is already occurring must be part of this.

Ultimately, the 2015 agreement must recognise the Warsaw mechanism and seek to increase its impact, in support of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities.

CARE will be following progress on these critical areas closely as governments continue their discussions in Bonn and later this year in Lima. Above all, we want to see the needs and voices of the vulnerable front and centre on the road to Paris. Focusing on these critical issues will help governments to do just that.

Sven Harmeling is CARE International’s climate change advocacy coordinator

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By Megan Darby

Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies would free up nearly enough cash for the green investment needed to avoid runaway climate change, according to an influential think-tank.

An extra US$ 800billion a year of investment is needed globally between now and 2050 to limit global temperature rise to 2C, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found. That is on top of the US$ 400billion a year expected to result from existing policies.

In a study published on Wednesday, the researchers noted this green investment gap is in the same order of magnitude as existing worldwide fossil subsidies, estimated at US$ 500billion a year. They did not attempt to quantify the potential fuel cost savings of a shift to green energy.

David McCollum, lead author of the study, said: “Nearly all countries say that they’re on board with the 2°C target; some have even made commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But until now, it hasn’t been very clear how to get to that point, at least from an investment point of view.

“It’s high time we think about how much capital is needed for new power plants, biofuel refineries, efficient vehicles, and other technologies—and where those dollars need to flow—so that we get the emissions reductions we want.”

Temperature Limits 

The study is part of a wider EU research project, called Limits, into the policies needed to keep global warming below the internationally agreed 2C threshold.

Altogether, the IIASA projected between US$ 30trillion and US$ 75trillion of investment in low carbon technology and energy efficiency will be needed by 2050, with a central case of US$ 45trillion. That is based on a comparison of the results of six different global economic models.

The greatest investments will be needed in emerging economies of Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

“Energy investment in these countries is poised to increase substantially anyway,” said Massimo Tavoni, researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, a climate research center in Italy, and overall coordinator of the LIMITS project.

“But if we’re serious about addressing climate change, we must find ways to direct more investment to these key regions. Clever policy designs, including carbon pricing mechanisms, can help.”

Due to the long lifespan of energy infrastructure, commonly between 30 and 60 years, study co-author Keywan Riahi said the investment decisions of the next few years were important. “There’s a considerable amount of technological inertia in the system that could impede a rapid transformation,” he warned.

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By Gerard Wynn

New U.S. regulation of carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants amounted to “crumbs”, given the urgency of the climate problem, said veteran climate scientist James Hansen.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a cap on power sector carbon emisisons, to 30% below 2005 levels in 2030.

US President Barack Obama is trying to regulate carbon emissions via the EPA, by-passing Congress.

That is after he failed to win support five years ago for a proposed climate bill, losing out to Republicans over the feared impact on energy prices in the teeth of the financial crisis.

But the EPA ruling was inadequate, argued Hansen, a veteran climate scientist who stepped down from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies last year.

Hansen is now an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

“President Obama had an opportunity when first elected, when his party had control of Congress, when he had 70% approval rating, when the country expected him to lead,” said Hansen, in his latest post on the Columbia University website.

“That was the time he should have explained to the public that we must have a rising price on carbon emissions, it would increase the price of fuel at the pump, but if all the money went to the public it would spur the economy.”

“Why is Obama reduced to fighting for carbon crumbs via regulations? The next Presidency will be a new opportunity, but this time groundwork must be done.”

Hansen has long argued for a national “carbon fee and dividend” approach to emissions regulation, rather than the cap and trade approach which Obama attempted, and failed to win support for, in 2009.

Hansen’s preferred approach would see an upstream tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels, the cost of which energy companies would pass to consumers. Such energy costs would be cancelled out, however, by the revenues of the tax, which would be paid entirely in equal amounts to all U.S. residents.

Hansen preferred that approach to cap and trade, which is rather cumbersome as it involves creating an entirely new, articifial market in emissions permits.

In its ruling announced earlier this month, the EPA gave states a flexible approach to meeting the carbon cap, for example by cutting energy demand or tweaking their energy supply mix.

Analysis of carbon emissions since 2005 shows that US power sector emissions have already fallen by 15%, halfway towards the EPA’s 2030 target with a decade and a half to go.

In addition, even without the proposed ruling, almost all the expected power plant closures in the next few years would be coal, the most carbon emitting form of power generation, because these were the oldest and due for retirement.

That raises the question what extra difference the EPA rule will make.

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Pic: Sterling College/Flickr

By Gerard Wynn

Hotter summers and heavier rainfall in Vermont will threaten the maple syrup industry, but also see some crop benefits, the first US state-level assessment of climate change impacts found this week.

The climate assessment aimed to bring home to Americans the local and personal risks of failing to curb carbon emissions.

The University of Vermont led the study, which partnered with federal and state agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.

It was based on the recent US “National Climate Assessment”, the third and most recent in a series published by the United States every four years and mandated by the US government in 1990.

The national assessment last month said that climate change was “moving into the present”, having widespread, visible impacts on the US people and economy, a view the Vermont report echoed.

“Climate change is no longer a thing of the future; it is affecting Vermont today,” the state assessment said.

“The Vermont Climate Assessment (VCA) is the first state-scale climate assessment in the country and speaks directly to the impacts of climate change as they pertain to our rural towns, cities and communities, including impacts on Vermont tourism and recreation, agriculture, natural resources and energy.”

“Wetter winters and extended dry spells in summers will place more stress on important tree species such as sugar maple and red spruce, which have already experienced periods of decline in Vermont.”

“Of particular significance are adverse effects to agricultural production, including dairy, fruit and maple syrup, more frequent flooding and heavy downpours, and negative influences on winter recreation industries due to reductions in snow cover.”

Political

Climate change is a polarising issue in the US Congress, with the vast balance of support for climate action from Democrats.

It was unclear to what extent the Vermont Climate Assessment was driven by local congressmen, including two senators, a democrat (Patrick Leahy) and independent (Bernie Sanders), and democrat member of the US House of Representatives, Peter Welch.

US President Barack Obama failed to pass a draft climate bill in his first term, a failure that analysts have attributed to the Republican Tea Party’s success in mobilising grassroots opposition. A focus on local, state-level climate risks might counter such opposition.

It was also unclear to what extent other US states may follow the Vermont initiative.

Vermont is the sixth smallest US state by area and the second smallest by population.

Its climate report highlighted increasing local climate impacts, including more frequent and intense downpours, a longer frost-free growing season and higher night-time temperatures.

“The state’s average temperature has increased by 1.3F since 1960; the most recent decade was Vermont’s hottest on record. Rainfall records show that heavy rainfall events are becoming more common and pose threats of flooding.”

“As a result of warmer winters, the time that Vermont’s rivers and lakes are frozen each winter is decreasing by 7 days per decade. Spring has started 2 to 3 days earlier per decade which has increased the growing season by 3.7 days per decade. Due to warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons, Vermont has already transitioned from hardiness zone 4 to zone 5 from 1990 to 2006.”

Regarding future impacts, the report saw an average temperature rise of another 3F warming by 2050 under a low emissions scenario, higher than global average warming recently projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Layers of smog hanging over Los Angeles, one of the USA’s most polluted cities (Pic: Robert S Donovan/Flickr)

By Gerard Wynn

US President Barack Obama’s administration has appealed to the expected health benefits from cutting carbon emissions, as it tries to win the climate argument against Republicans in a polarised Congress.

Obama failed to gain support in the Senate in 2009 for a proposed climate bill, losing the battle on fears over higher energy prices in the midst of a severe financial crisis.

This time he is attempting to regulate carbon emissions through federal action, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by-passing Congress.

He has appealed to the expected local benefits to American’s health, keen to head off a voter backlash at mid-term elections in November.

Analysts have attributed US popular support for a ban on ozone depleting chemicals to the dangers of skin cancer.

The White House released last week a report, “The Health Impacts of Climate Change on Americans”, just five days after the EPA’s proposed ruling on carbon emissions, and said that there were visible health impacts from climate change already.

“The past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital,” the report said.

“And extreme weather events are becoming more frequent across the country – from more rain falling in downpours in many regions, to longer and hotter heat waves in others, to more severe droughts and wildfires in some areas, notably the West and Southwest. Through commonsense measures to cut carbon pollution we can protect the health of our Nation, while stimulating the economy and helping to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.”

New ruling

The EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed to cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

The EPA itself was quick to reference health benefits from taking climate action, mentioning the word “health” five times in a one-page primer on its “Climate Action Plan”.

“The science shows that climate change is already posing risks to our health and our economy. The Clean Power Plan will maintain an affordable, reliable energy system, while cutting pollution and protecting our health and environment now and for future generations.”

“The Clean Power Plan will lead to climate and health benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion in 2030, including avoiding 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children.”

Clear benefits

Climate and health scientists see two health benefits from tackling climate change.

First, climate change itself is expected to have a wide range of impacts, including heat stress more frequent and intense heat waves.

“From 1999 through 2009, extreme heat exposure caused more than 7,800 deaths in the United States,” the White House report said.

“Extreme heat events are increasing in the United States in frequency, intensity, and duration. As climate change causes temperatures to continue to rise, heat waves are expected to become more frequent and severe in the coming decade.”

Other direct climate health risks include: more ozone pollution in cities as a result of higher temperatures; dangerous smoke from more frequent wildfires; more pollen from longer growing seasons exacerbating hay fever; more physical accidents and psychological stress from more storms and floods; and the spread of diseases and their vectors such as ticks and mosquitoes.

Secondly, curbing carbon emissions may spawn additional health benefits, called co-benefits, by burning fewer fossil fuels.

Burning oil, gas and coal produce or contribute to local pollutants including mercury, smoke, sulphur dioxide and ozone, which cause respiratory and other problems.

“Since air pollution from power plants can worsen asthma and other breathing problems, putting these (EPA) guidelines in place will help protect the health of vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly,” the White House report said.

Last month, Harvard University released a report which examined specifically the expected US health co-benefits from cutting carbon emissions, and in particular for improved air quality.

“Carbon pollution standards that reduce CO2 emissions from existing power plants can also cut emissions of other power plant pollutants that have negative human and environmental health impacts locally and regionally,” the Harvard report concluded.

“For human health, these co-pollutants contribute to increased risk of premature death, heart attacks, increased incidence and severity of asthma, and other health effects.

“For ecosystems, these co-pollutants contribute to acid rain; the over-fertilization of many types of ecosystems, including grasslands, forests, lakes and coastal waters; ozone damage to trees and crops; and the accumulation of toxic mercury in fish. Therefore, policies intended to address climate change by reducing CO2 emissions … can have important human and environmental health co-benefits.”

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By Gerard Wynn

A proposed U.S. cap on power sector carbon emissions is getting closer to equivalent European Union targets, shows a comparison of carbon prices and projected emissions.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new ruling, under its Clean Power Plan, to cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

The announcement came too late for the Department of Energy’s “Annual Energy Outlook” this year, published in May.

However, the department’s statistics service, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), drew attention on Monday to an analysis of similar climate policies, made in its Annual Energy Outlook 2014.

The EIA analysis showed how the EPA’s proposed ruling was similar to the impact of a $10 carbon price.

That compares with EU carbon prices presently around €5.5 ($7.4), which are not expected to rise above €10 this decade.

According to such a comparison, the U.S. policy is comparable with the EU, but a comparison of projected emissions cuts suggests that the EU is more ambitious.

The European Commission has proposed a halving of power sector emissions in 2030, also compared with 2005 levels, some way beyond the EPA’s proposed 30% cut.

The EU has long said that it is the world leader on climate change action, with some justification, given that it has by far the world’s biggest cap and trade scheme, and has binding national targets for the deployment of renewable energy.

But EU carbon prices have plunged since the financial crisis, while U.S. carbon emissions have fallen as a result of a shift to gas from coal.

Carbon price

The EPA proposed rule would target a 30% cut in power sector emissions, to 1.7 billion tonnes in 2030, from 2.4 billion tonnes in 2005.

In its Annual Energy Outlook 2014, the EIA considered the impact of two low carbon policies: a carbon price of $10 and of $25 per tonne of CO2 from 2015.

Each was assumed to rise by 5% annually thereafter, to $80 and $200 respectively in 2030.

Under an initial $10 carbon price, CO2 emissions would fall to 1.8 billion tonnes in the power sector in 2030, the EIA showed. That was equivalent to a 25% cut versus 2005 levels.

Under a $25 carbon price, emissions would fall to just 0.8 billion tonnes. That was equivalent to a 66% cut.

The EPA’s proposed 30% cut is therefore equivalent to a little more than the impact of a $10 carbon price, according to the EIA’s analysis.

That compares with EU carbon prices ranging in the past 30 days between €4.7 and €5.5.

Emissions trajectory

Alternatively, EU and US climate policies can be compared according to proposed emissions cuts in the power sector.

The proposed EPA rule is for a 30% cut in power sector emissions, against 2005 levels.

The EU, meanwhile, proposed in January a “policy framework for climate and energy”, including targets in 2030.

Here the EU was more ambitious than the United States, especially regarding cuts in the power sector.

The European Commission proposed, in general, a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions across the entire EU, in 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

Within that overall target, the EU proposed a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 43% across industrial sectors in its cap and trade scheme, including the power sector, compared with 2005 levels.

The brunt of the cuts would fall disproportionately on the power sector, however, with proposed cuts of about 50%, compared with 2005 levels.

The EU’s proposed target by this measure, therefore, is some way more ambitious than the EPA’s.

In addition, an analysis of power sector emissions to date, from 2005 to 2013, show that the United States has already gone a little further towards its 2030 goal.

US power sector emissions last year were 15% below 2005 levels, compared with the EU’s 12% below.

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(Pic: Joan-Campderrós-i-Canas/Flickr)

By Gerard Wynn

Plant growth in the Australian outback has taken an increasingly dominant global role in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in check, found an article published in the journal Nature.

Of more than 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted each year from human activity, less than half remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the oceans and by plants on land, called carbon sinks.

While the size of the ocean sink has remained rather steady, the amount of CO2 taken up by plants has grown over the past 30 years, including a record sink in 2011.

The latest study, published in the journal Nature, located the source of that extra plant growth, to semi-arid systems in the southern hemisphere and especially Australia.

“We find that the global carbon sink anomaly was driven by growth of semi-arid vegetation in the Southern Hemisphere, with almost 60 per cent of carbon uptake attributed to Australian ecosystems,” the study authors said in the article, titled “Contribution of semi-arid ecosystems to variability of the global carbon cycle”.

They found that increased rainfall as a result of a particular phase in the El Nino-La Nina Pacific Ocean weather cycle was partly responsible.

Green growth in the outback may be short-lived, diminishing the carbon sinks’ values (Pic: AnnieMullinsUK/Flickr)

The findings suggested that such dry lands were taking over from tropical rainforests as the main land-based carbon sink.

One concern was the variability of the climate in such regions, where more rain one year could be succeeded by drought the next, undoing the extra carbon absorption.

Another concern was the fact that the plants in such regions may be rather short-lived, unlike the hardwood trees in tropical forests which have traditionally served the role of carbon sinks.

Semi-arid regions are also vulnerable to wild fire, flooding, soil erosion and over-grazing.

“More research is needed to identify to what extent the carbon stocks accumulated during wet years are vulnerable to rapid decomposition or loss through fire in subsequent years,” the article said.

Vital reserves

The study authors used a range of techniques, including a model which simulated global plant growth in response to rising CO2 levels.

Understanding better what causes the uptake of CO2 could help scientists understand atmospheric levels through the course of this century, and so better predict climate change.

Carbon sinks serve an important role to limit climate change.

Even as growth in greenhouse gas emissions has accelerated over recent decades, the fraction of CO2 that accumulates in the atmosphere (the airborne fraction) has remained largely unchanged, on average, since 1959, at 44%.

But the airborne fraction changes from year to year, varying between 18% and 79% over the past half century, the Nature article said.

The study investigated the size of the land-based carbon sink over the past three decades, with particular interest in a surge in carbon absorption in 2011.

They matched model-based simulations with the satellite record. The latter showed record “greening” in 2011 of the landscape over three Southern Hemisphere semi-arid regions – in Australia, temperate South America and southern Africa.

High rainfall, associated with the La Nina cycle of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was partly responsible for the 2011 spurt in plant growth, they concluded.

That recent increase in rainfall combined with a long-term semi-arid regional greening trend.

“The greening trend in semi-arid regions has been previously associated with a range of drivers that include altered precipitation frequency and intensity, increased water-use efficiency (by plants) … and woody encroachment following land-use and grazing.”

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Pic: Stig-Nygaard

By Gerard Wynn

A combination of forest fires and exceptionally high temperatures were to blame for surface melt across almost the entire Greenland ice sheet two years ago, a study concluded on Monday.

In July 2012, over 97% of the snowy surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, the first instance of such a widespread melt since 1889, according to the latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a US journal.

While melting is an annual event at the margins of the ice sheet, it is almost unprecedented in its frozen interior.

Analysis of ice cores showed the researchers that 1889 was an unusually hot year, like 2012. But there had been other, hotter years, in 1785, 2002, 2007 and 2010, when the ice sheet surface in Greenland’s interior did not melt.

That led them to suspect an additional factor contributing to melting of the surface snow and ice, and they concluded that this a result of soot deposited on the ice as a result of distant forest fires.

Given that both Arctic temperatures and the frequency of forest fires are expected to increase in coming years as a result of climate change, the authors concluded that the ice sheet surface would melt more often in coming summers.

“In the future, warmer temperatures and more frequent Northern Hemisphere forest fires driven by climate change may increase the frequency of these widespread melt events, contributing to the further demise of the Greenland Ice Sheet.”

Forensic

The authors pinned the blamed on forest fires as a result of a forensic analysis of ice cores.

The scientists concluded that soot, also called black carbon, deposited on the ice was darkening the surface of the ice sheet, in years with especially ferocious, distant forest fires.

The study could attribute the soot to forest fires because of other chemicals present, which were typical of burning wood.

The darker a surface the more light it absorbs, and so the warmer it gets. The reflectiveness of a surface is also known as its albedo.

“Exceptionally warm temperatures combined with black carbon sediments from Northern Hemisphere forest fires reduced albedo below a critical threshold in the dry snow region, and caused the melting events in both 1889 and 2012.”

The melting snow does not contribute to sea level rise, instead percolating through the snow and ice of the vast ice sheet, where it re-freezes.

Black carbon from fossil fuel combustion or forest fires can reach the top of the ice sheet and reduce the albedo by up to 7%, they said.

The researchers found that since 1750 there had been four particularly sooty years over Greenland, in 1868, 1889, 1908 and 2012.

Only in 1889 and 2012 did the soot deposition coincide with especially warm Arctic summers.

“Our data suggest that during these two years, abnormally warm summer temperatures combined with black carbon deposited on the ice sheet to reduce albedo below a critical threshold.”

While they found it impossible to pin down a location of the fires in 1889, they found that two years ago the smoke could have originated from significant forest fires in Siberia and North America in late June and July.

Climate change models project that both temperatures and the frequency of forest fires will increase this century.

“The Arctic mean summer temperature is predicted to increase 2–9C by the end of the century, and forest fire frequency is expected to at least double per 1C rise in temperature,” the study reported.

The scientists estimated that at the top end of the range of projected warming and frequency of forest fires, the ice sheet surface would melt almost every year by the end of this century.

The post Forest fires and warming to blame for Greenland melt appeared first on Climate Home News.

By John McGarrity

Democrats in the US Senate will mount an overnight “talkathon” to draw attention to climate change, using tactics often deployed by Republicans to block laws regulating fossil fuels and curbing carbon emissions.

The marathon debate will hear from at least 28 Democrat senators in the latest front of an escalating battle ahead of and midterm elections in November and plans by  President Obama to regulate coal-fired power stations.

Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii that is organising the Democrat initiative, said: “Climate change is real, it is caused by humans, and it is solvable.”

California Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the recently-formed Senate Climate Action Task Force, said in a statement she wants to “wake up Congress” to the dangers of climate change.

Last Friday the Republican-controlled House of Representatives backed a bill that would remove much of the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate coal, but the proposed legislation is highly unlikely to pass a future vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Monday I’ll be up all night w/ a group of Senators calling on Congress to act on climate. Add your voice to our debate by using #Up4Climate.

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) March 7, 2014

Many Republicans either deny that climate change is happening, is the result of manmade carbon emissions, or that US action curbing the the use of fossil fuels will solve the problem.

Republicans are also using the courts, lobbying, and public campaigns to fight what they see as Obama’s ‘War On Coal’, arguing the White House’s plans will cost tens of thousands of jobs and drive up energy prices.

Although the Democrat action isn’t a filibuster – a tactic that can slow down or prevent a vote on a particular proposal – the talkathon aims to remind Americans of the threat that climate change could pose, particularly rising sea levels, droughts and increasingly damaging storms.

White House spokesman Seth Larson said the overnight event is “just one of a number of steps that the Senate Climate Action Task Force will be taking this year, and we hope it will help get more Americans engaged in the important debate about how we can act on climate change.”

President Obama told Congress in his State of the Union Address earlier this year he would bypass hostile lawmakers by using the EPA, which is expected to publish detailed proposals on coal curbs in the summer.

Splits

In 2009 pro-coal Republicans on Capitol Hill blocked moves by Democrats introduce a nationwide cap-and-trade scheme and regulate carbon emissions.

Some Democrat senators from states strongly dependent on coal and oil – such as Louisiana and Virginia – are expected to stay away from tonight’s debate.

Democrats are also split on whether President Obama should agree to extend a US-Canadian oil pipeline, Keystone XL, that would enable crude oil produced from Alberta’s dirty tar sands to pumped down to Gulf Coast refineries and which green groups say would drive up CO2 emissions.

In the absence of a national law on carbon emissions, many states agreed to participate in carbon trading while major cities such as New York have carbon reduction targets and participate in a global network of mayors aimed at cutting greenhouse gases.

The US says it is on target to cut emissions 17% from 2005 levels, but poor countries want the world’s largest economy to promise much deeper cuts and commit tens of billions of dollars to help combat the impacts of climate change.

Report: Keystone XL protestors say they’re proud to be arrested

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Farmers in Bhutan face an uncertain future if climate change starts to affect the region’s water cycle (Pic: World Bank)

By Ed King

The Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at the UN climate negotiations represents 49 states especially vulnerable to climate change.

Members include Pacific Islands like Tuvalu and Kiribati, smaller Asian states like Nepal and Myanmar, and African countries like Somalia, Eritrea and Gambia.

The group is economically weak, but acts as a collective conscience within the UN talks, offering a constant reminder why it is so important to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Below Prakash Mathema, Chair of LDC Group, outlines his priorities for next week’s set of talks in Bonn in a Q&A with RTCC.

What are your priorities for the meeting in Bonn?

In Warsaw, Parties agreed on clear pathways with concrete activities and timelines for the timely adoption of the 2015 agreement and increasing pre-2020 ambition.

At the Bonn session in March, the LDC Group expects Parties to further advance in elaborating the content of the 2015 agreement; initiate discussions on domestic preparations for intended nationally determined contributions; further elaborate on the opportunities for raising pre-2020 ambition; discuss challenges, constraints and support needed for developing countries; and agree on the next steps for both workstreams of the Durban Platform.

We would like to reiterate that urgency should guide the discussions because science continues to tell us what we have to do and that the window of opportunity to prevent dangerous man-made interference with the climate system is closing fast.

There will almost certainly be some sort of deal in Paris next year. The question is whether it is going to reduce emissions enough to stop potentially dangerous global temperature rises. So what, in your view, does such a deal look like?

Our goal is to agree on a comprehensive legally binding agreement applicable to all Parties in 2015.

To achieve this goal, we need to see the highest global solidarity, one that makes the case to every country on Earth that we are in this together, that rich and poor countries depend on each other, and that collectively we have the ingenuity to overcome this global challenge.

This means, every country taking the responsibility to climate change seriously, doing their fair share and avoiding free riding. However, what mostly matters is fair climate action by those most responsible.

A successful 2015 agreement would include not only concrete emissions cuts but also provide new, additional, sustainable and predictable finance for adaptation and climate resilient development for developing countries.

It will use common accounting rules and a strong compliance regime to ensure the delivery of mitigation and finance commitments, introduce a proper review mechanism to ensure the adequacy of these mitigation and financial commitments, and lead to new commitments when the existing ones are insufficient.

Given negotiations seem to be heading towards an outcome in which countries simply agree to do what they are already planning to do, and given existing commitments are not nearly enough to reduce emissions to a level the IPCC suggests is safe, how do you think a meaningful deal can be achieved?

Equity, fairness and effectiveness should be a central part of the agreement. We will achieve a meaningful deal only if all Parties have the sense that their contributions are fair, not only to themselves, but also to others.

There seems to be a huge political challenge to address the issue of equity and fairness. We believe that the most rational way to move ahead is to acknowledge the scientific evidence and act accordingly.

We all have invested a lot of time and resources in this process and the efforts that we have put together since the past many years rightly deserve to achieve concrete outcomes that can effectively address the problem at hand.

Any delay in global climate action will lead to greater adverse effects, increased needs for adaptation as well as more serious residual and permanent loss and damage in LDCs and other vulnerable countries.

What role do you see the Ban Ki-moon summit playing?

What has been lacking up to now in the climate change negotiation is a strong political will and engagement of top leaders. The UN Secretary General summit will gather the world leaders to focus solely on the issue of climate change.

This is important because in the face of devastating extreme weather events around the world and other climate change impacts, this summit is both the first and the last time world leaders will get together to discuss climate change before December 2015- the deadline Parties have set to reach a new global and legally binding agreement to address climate change.

Equity, fairness and effectiveness should be the basis for the new climate agreement. #UNFCCC #GlobalSolidarity

— LDC Chair (@LDCChairUNFCCC) March 4, 2014

Most of the Heads of State or Government are expected to attend the summit, and the spotlight of the public and the media will be firmly on this event. Therefore, this summit is a great opportunity to mobilise the necessary political will for a successful 2015 agreement.

We hope that the leaders will declare concrete and meaningful commitments to 2015 agreement at the summit. It is crucial that announcements to be made at the summit are in line with the requirements of science.

It would be a missed chance if the summit turns into a forum to formalize bottom-up approaches and for countries to merely repeat their existing commitments. This summit is a unique opportunity which the leaders should not miss in mobilizing real and meaningful climate action.

When do you think a final text needs to be ready in 2015 in order for the Paris summit to proceed smoothly?

According to the six-month rule of UNFCCC, the negotiating text should be ready by mid- 2015 for Parties to negotiate and adopt at COP 21.

However, the LDC Group has proposed a risk-averse strategy and called for Parties to present the negotiating text by COP 20 in Lima.

Such an approach will allow more time for Parties to negotiate and proceed smoothly towards agreement in COP 21.

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1. Keystone ‘Gulf Coast Pipeline’ opens
Oil is now flowing through the Southern leg of the Keystone pipeline, reports the Washington Post, but there are still doubts over the northern leg which would carry oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. The $5.3 billion project has been the subject of a fierce contest between climate campaigners and operators TransCanada.  Green groups say the tar sands oil is would transport is among the most polluter forms of fossil fuel on the planet.

2. US court blocks Arctic drilling
A federal court says licences to drill in the Arctic awarded in 2008 did not consider environmental impacts. Reuters say the dispute pits Native Alaska tribes against the federal government and energy companies. Shell is the major licence holder in the region, paying around $2 billion five years ago. Last year its drill ship Kulluck ran aground while being towed away from the Arctic.

3. Yeast to oil
Engineers in Texas have turned yeast into a form of biofuels, raising hopes of another source of potentially ‘green’ fuel that could replace conventional crude oil. “This yeast produces oils and fats, known as lipids, that can be used in place of petroleum-derived products,” reports the Science Daily website.

4. Salty biofuels
Boeing is working on plans to develop biofuel from desert plants fed with seawater says the Phys.org website. The Abu Dhabi-based project, which is linked to the Masdar clean energy research institute, plans to grow saltwater-tolerant plants called halophytes. It says the the plants will be fed with waste water from a fish and shrimp farm.

5. Solar powered bridge
The world’s largest solar powered bridge has finally opened in London, reports Business Green. The Blackfriars solar array sits on top of a mainline railway station based in the city of London. Made of 4,400 PV panels, it is expected to provide around half the energy needed by the station every year.

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The four horsemen of the apocalypse could be riding nearby, according to the scientists responsible for nuclear weapons

By Sophie Yeo

Alarm bells are ringing for scientists, who have set the Doomsday Clock at five minutes to midnight for the second year in a row.

Climate change and nuclear weapons programmes mean the world is teetering on the edge of an apocalypse, say the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who, every year, adjust the foreboding minute hand to indicate our proximity to catastrophe.

In a letter to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the scientists write: “even though there have been positive developments in the renewable energy field over the last year, worldwide efforts to limit the carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change have largely stalled, with emission-reduction programs being used as political footballs in several industrialized countries.”

The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by the scientists who helped to develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project in 1945.

Since then, they have reset the minute hand each year to reflect how close the planet has moved towards an apocalyptic catastrophe.

At first, this was a response to nuclear threat—it dipped to an all-time two minute to midnight low in 1953 when the US and Soviet Union both tested thermonuclear devices—but since 2007, it has also factored in the threat of climate change.

Ignoring the signals

In 2013, the UN’s latest and most comprehensive climate science report stated that the facts behind climate change was “unequivocal” and would bring along problems such as rising sea levels, acidifying oceans and shrinking ice sheets.

But despite this message, and the development and falling costs of renewable energy, “the world has failed to effectively curb emissions and adapt to a changing climate,” say the scientists, citing stalling efforts to cut emissions across the industrialised world.

This was most clearly demonstrated by Japan, they say, who reneged on their 25% emissions reduction pledges to an increase of 3.1% on 1990 levels in the midst of the UN’s climate change negotiations in November last year.

This is in addition to the failure of Russia and the US to reach an agreement over their nuclear weapons, exacerbated this year by Putin’s decision to shelter American NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“Since the end of World War II, the Bulletin has focused on the interface between scientific discovery and self-governance. Humanity has been sorely tested during its attempts to control the implements of nuclear warfare,” write the scientists in their letter to Ban.

But they add: “The difficulties of managing dangerous technology are perhaps even more challenging when the threat is not the fierce immediacy of atomic explosion, but slow, creeping dangers like rising carbon-dioxide levels or increased access to dual-use science.”

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(Pic: UN Photo/Evan Schneider)

By Ed King

The world’s 48 leading fossil fuel companies will be asked to run a ‘climate stress test’ at a summit hosted at UN Headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

Fund managers and investors attending the meeting want oil and gas majors to assess how compatible their assets are with global efforts to avoid dangerous levels of warming.

US low carbon business group CERES, which runs a network of investors worth $12 trillion, is organising this week’s event.

Its chief Mindy Lubber told RTCC the financial risks associated with a carbon ‘bubble’ of fossil fuel reserves that cannot be burnt was starting to concern experts, prompting the move to call for more transparency from the fossil fuel industry.

“One of the most important words and drivers of action on Wall Street is risk. That’s what they do. It’s one of the most important words in how insurance companies operate, and they’re the bedrock of our economy. It’s about risk,” she said.

The carbon bubble idea was launched in April 2013 to highlight the $674 billion of investments into oil, gas and coal that must stay in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous levels of warming.

With countries set to sign a UN global greenhouse gas emission reduction deal next year, Lubber believes the stress test they are calling for will demonstrate why oil majors need to diversify.

“We’re hoping that not only shows the risk but moves their new and future investments into something less fossil fuel orientated,” she said.

“Right now there is half a trillion dollars a year being spent to come up with new fossil fuels – digging, mining – that may very well be stranded on top of the already stranded assets.”

Critical year

CERES has organised a low carbon investor’s conference at the UN’s HQ for the past six years, but this week’s meeting has added significance given the political importance of 2014 to the climate negotiations.

In March national delegations are set to start the final set of negotiations on an international climate agreement. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he wants to see evidence of progress at a high-level leaders meeting he is hosting in September, ahead of the year’s main UN climate meeting in Lima this December.

Former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Swiss RE Americas chief J. Eric Smith, Cecilia Reyes from Zurich Insurance and the UN’s top climate official Christiana Figueres are among those taking part the one-day event, which will also explore the financial opportunities from clean energy investment.

On Wednesday CERES will launch their latest Clean Trillion Report, based on data from the International Energy Agency, that says $36 trillion needs to be found by 2050 for low carbon infrastructure projects.

Despite impressive growth in the wind and solar industries in the past few years, green investment flows are mixed. Bloomberg New Energy Finance say $281bn was invested in 2012, considerably lower than the trillions analysts like Lord Stern say are required.

Huge doubts remain over the potential of the UN-backed Green Climate Fund, which becomes operational this year, but Lubber cites the growth in the green bonds sector as evidence banks are starting to see the potential of low carbon infrastructure projects.

Last year $10bn of green bonds were issued, including $500m from Bank of America and a similar amount from HSBC.

Other big names investing in these bonds include Zurich Insurance, JP Morgan and Daiwa Securities. It’s proof, Lubber says, that the ‘green’ numbers are starting to stack up for the financial markets.

Further progress was announced on Monday, with news that a set of principles for the release of Green Bonds had been agreed by environmental groups, issuers and investors.

Lubber said: “These aren’t social investment firms. We’re not making the case that banks or asset managers should be doing this because it’s morally right. It has to be a financial issue.”

She added:  “We need to move the climate debate from a treehugger issue to an on-balance sheet financial risk, and we need to act based on the economic risks and opportunities.”

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(Pic: WEF/Flickr)

1. King calls for climate preparations
The UK needs to prepare for more extreme weather events, according to Sir David King, the government’s special envoy on climate change. Sir David King told BBC Radio 5 Live “storms and severe weather conditions that we might have expected to occur once in 100 years, say, in the past may now be happening more frequently.”

2. Antarctic sea ice and climate change
Local weather patterns in the Antarctic tell us little about the wider effects of climate change says Professor John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey. Writing in the Guardian he says “the increase in annual mean sea ice extent is only just over 1% per decade, making it impossible at present to separate natural variability from any human influence.”

3. Four US states confirm fracking pollution
Hundreds of complaints over water contamination linked to fracking have been made in the US states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas, reports the AP news agency. “Pennsylvania received 398 complaints in 2013 alleging that oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells, compared with 499 in 2012,” it says.

4. Exxon faces fracking waste case
An Exxon subsidiary stands accused of dumping “thousands of gallons of hydraulic fracturing waste” in Pennsylvania in 2010, reports the ThinkProgress website. XTO Energy are contesting the charges, which relate to the release of 57,000 gallons of contaminated water spilling into the soil.

5. Bats killed by Queensland heat
Thousands of bats have died across Queensland after extremely hot weather at the weekend says the Guardian. One observer says nearly 10,000 bats from one colony may have perished in a summer where temperatures have soared above 40C. Last week the Australian Bureau of Meterology warned average temperatures in the country are increasing significantly year on year.

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By Alex Kirby

Peru is the country chosen to host the 2014 UN climate conference, a key meeting for trying to advance an ambitious plan to rein in greenhouse emissions which is planned for agreement in 2015.

But the country has recently earned a rather more dubious distinction. In 2012, for the first time, the Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen, according to the latest human development country report of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

The Amazon rainforest usually acts as a carbon sink, absorbing atmospheric CO2 rather than releasing it. Scientists think this reversal of its normal behaviour results from the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 and say it shows Peru’s vulnerability to climate change.

Peru has more than halved its poverty rate in the last decade, from 48.5% in 2004 to 25.8% in 2012. But the 2013 UNDP report said its vulnerability to a warming climate could cancel the progress it has made in directing economic growth into sustained poverty reduction.

Glaciers going

One of the UNDP report’s authors, Maria Eugenia Mujica, said: “If we disregard [environmental] sustainability, whatever progress we have made in poverty reduction or improvement of human development will just be erased due to climate change”.

With a temperature rise in the Andes of 0.7°C between 1939 and 2006, Peru has already lost 39% of its tropical glaciers. Temperature rises of up to 6°C are expected in many parts of the Andes by the end of this century.

Peru’s economic success is in some cases directly linked to activities which contribute to climate change, for example illegal gold mining and logging, and the cocaine trade – all of them environmentally destructive, but lucrative.

“The growth does not come from education or health, but from predatory activities, like [resource] extraction and mining”, said Francisco Santa Cruz, another of the report’s authors.

Peru is trying to protect itself against the ravages of a warmer world, but the odds are against it. It recently announced plans to invest US $6 bn in renewable energy projects: around the same time came predictions that climate change could cost between 8% and 34% of its GDP.

A report by the Inter-American Development Bank has said the entire Latin American and Caribbean region will face annual damages from global warming of about $100 bn by 2050.

Taken for granted

The Global Canopy Programme and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, describing climate change as “a threat multiplier”, called in a report this month for a new security agenda for Amazonia and the countries of the region.

Manuel Pulgar, Peru’s environment minister, said at the report’s launch: “Climate change is a global problem, but one that will multiply local and regional problems in unforeseeable ways.

“In Latin America, we have taken Amazonia and its seemingly limitless water and forests as a given. But recent unprecedented droughts have shown us just what happens when that water security falters.

“it impacts food and energy production, it affects the wellbeing of entire populations, and it leaves governments and businesses with a big bill to pay. The science is clear, so we cannot afford to miss the opportunity for positive action now.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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By Ed King

The effects of climate change have cost China US$32.9 billion since 1990, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s leading planning agency.

It warns the country is ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of global warming, and has outlined a national adaptation plan to ensure all sectors take the threat seriously.

The NDRC recommends further investment in developing resilient infrastructure, warning that 2000 people died in the past two decades as a result of extreme weather events.

“We have deep concern of the negative impacts of climate change, like other developing countries,” Li Gao, Climate Change Deputy Director General at the NRDC told RTCC last month.

“If you look at China we have a very long coastal line, and if you look at sea level rising, it will have a very big threat to our development. Typhoon Haiyan reminded the world adaptation is urgent.

“We think it’s the right time to pay more attention to adaptation, because the urgent thing is something that is happening.”

What many are calling China’s adaptation blueprint warns that the health of the population and the natural environment it relies on are at acute risk from changing conditions.

“Degraded ecosystems, threatened biodiversity, and a variety of infectious diseases” are major concerns it says, recommending that forests, grasslands, wetlands, and desert regions are better protected.

The plans, which are region specific, call for more support to be directed to farmers, highlighting rising levels of soil erosion, poor water management and a lack of access to drought-tolerant crops.

Agencies must make “full use of international funds for adaptation action” the NDRC say, suggesting that the funding potential of ‘catastrophe bonds’ and ‘climate-related service products’ also need to be explored.

Critically, the report says early warning systems that can help populations escape dangerous storms are “insufficient”, while water supplies, drainage, gas and telecommunications need to be designed to cope with severe climate impacts.

The NDRC also suggests public awareness of climate adaptation needs to be urgently raised, while better South-South international cooperation also needs to be explored.

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(Pic: Leonardolo)

By Tim Radford

US and British researchers may have identified the fingerprint of global warming in one of the darkest, coldest, most mysterious places on the planet.

Four thousand metres below the sea surface, at the bottom of the north-east Pacific abyss, they have found changes in the food supply to some of the planet’s least known creatures. And these changes track changes to temperatures at the surface.

Kenneth Smith of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and colleagues from the University of Southampton in the UK, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a 24-year exploration of one of life’s deepest puzzles.

The research is important because it provides yet another indicator of the carbon cycle at work; it is important because it provides another level of understanding of the climate system; and because it provides yet another way to check on global warming.

The last aspect is probably the least significant, if only because the period of observation is so brief, the study is confined to only one site, and the conditions for observation so difficult. But it offers a neat demonstration of how science is done.

Life at depth

In 1989, at an ocean point known as Station M, researchers began collecting biological material as it sank to the depths.

The traps were roughly 600 metres and 50 metres above the ocean floor, and the catch was simple enough: dead plankton, fish excrement, mineral dusts and the carcases of tiny creatures will all ultimately sink and settle on the sea bottom.

Nature wastes nothing: this rotting material provides food for impoverished communities scrabbling for survival at the ocean bottom, so far from the Sun’s light.

When the food supply fails, such communities have a hard time. A sudden periodic bloom of plankton at the surface – itself an indicator of changing seasons and conditions – might guarantee a period of plenty, with enough left over to help some creatures survive the next famine.

The research team sank a time-lapse camera that provided hourly snapshots of change over a 20 square metre segment of the ocean floor.

They checked seasonal changes to the sediment and the bottom water by lowering an instrument called a free vehicle grab respirometer to take samples, and in 2011, they started using an autonomous deep sea vehicle called a benthic rover to take high resolution pictures of the ocean bottom.

They also used satellite imagery to measure changes in chlorophyll – the agency of photosynthesis – at the ocean surface

Warming pointers?

What they found was a distinct seasonal pattern, as upwelling brought fresh nutrients to the California Current, and phytoplankton – the sea’s primary food source – started to bloom again. They also started noticing peaks in organic particulate carbon, with the highest ever recorded in 2011, and another huge surge in 2012.

This could be because winds above the surface are increasing, leading to more upwelling and therefore more nutrients to help the algae bloom.

The researchers believe that these peaks can be linked to global warming, but the evidence so far comes from only one research station. More convincing answers could emerge from a study of other such monitoring stations.

More than 60% of the planet is deep ocean floor: what happens down there could answer questions about the traffic of carbon from the air to the primeval ooze.

Will carbon dioxide go on building up in the atmosphere?

Or will green things take advantage of that carbon, use it and ultimately bury increasing quantities of it, to limit the rate of global warming?

“Carbon remineralisation and sequestration in the deep ocean are major unknown components in attempts to realistically model the global carbon cycle,” the authors conclude. “Long time-series studies, such as the 24-year continuing study at Station M, remain the key mechanisms to resolving such carbon-cycle questions.” –

This article first appeared on the Climate News Network.

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(UN Photo)

By Nilima Choudhury 

Brazil, Chile and Nicaragua offer the most attractive low carbon opportunities in Latin America and the Carribbean, according to market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Clean energy investment in the three countries topped US$11.3 billion in 2012, BNEF crediting their open markets and high electricity demand for the figures.

The ratings are part of Bloomberg’s Climatescope index, an analysis of government policies and the level of current investment in clean energy which it now plans to expand to 55 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Backed by the UK, US and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), it will measure and rank the investment potential for clean energy in developing countries.

“We are delighted to continue and expand upon the important work we began with the MIF two years ago,” said Michael Liebreich, CEO of BNEF.

“Thanks to the additional support of the UK and US, we will widen the lens to profile activity in other developing nations where clean energy investors want to put capital, but lack information to make critical decisions.”

The UK’s International Development Secretary Justine Greening added: “Investors are clear – they have the capital but need reliable information to decide where and how to invest it. This index will provide the research investors need, helping to drive investment into new areas and to secure clean, stable energy supplies for millions of the world’s poorest people.”

Spending on clean energy between richer and developing countries shrank to 18% last year from 250% in 2007, according a UN report published earlier this year.

The biggest regional surge in investment was in the Middle East and Africa, where spending grew 228% to $12 billion in 2012.

One key complaint from international investors looking to finance developing world energy projects is a lack of clear, reliable information on risks and regulatory issues.

Ben Warren, EY’s global cleantech transaction services leader said: “Although renewable energy infrastructure projects will soon be economically viable in their own right, they are currently reliant on some form of subsidy to deliver returns.

“In the absence of stable policy and regulation, underlined by strong political support, long term investors will find it difficult to buy-in to this sector.”

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Chief executives at the Caring for Climate Inaugural Business Forum (UNclimatechange)

Jonathan Grant, director, PwC sustainability and climate change
“By taking us to the brink of collapse, looking over the edge and then pulling back, we come away feeling delighted that any progress has been made at all. A victory was always expected, but like the England football team, the COP made this a lot more dramatic than it needed to be.  The ‘talks about talks’ phase is now over, as countries agreed the agenda for the negotiations and the timeline for coming up with some numbers. With the increasing complexity of these summits now, there are a host of decisions, on finance, loss and damage, and the carbon markets that will take time to digest.”

Yvo de Boer special global advisor, climate change and sustainability, KPMG Advisory

Sad to see so many proud nations trying to hide behind the poor and re-write what they agreed at the climate summit in Durban.

— Yvo de Boer (@yvodeboer_KPMG) November 23, 2013

@juliettelucie the corporates stuck around to make sure their voice is heard. Politicians need to know they have backing for bravery.
— Yvo de Boer (@yvodeboer_KPMG) November 23, 2013

Legal Sector Alliance, which represents 270 law firms and organisations in the UK

“The nature of the threat posed by climate change means that there is an urgent need for mitigation and adaptation programmes to be incorporated as a matter of course into national law. The Legal Sector Alliance calls upon governments to adopt regulations on a global scale to achieve this and to implement any commitments they make at the Warsaw conference (COP19/CMP9) expeditiously and in accordance with these principles. By being creative and adopting a proactive approach governments can support businesses and individuals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, creating the opportunity for new jobs, economic growth and improved global living standards.

Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents over 85 of Europe’s largest investors

“The agreement on a timetable leading to Paris in 2015 is an important step but the actions needed to back this up must start now. Mobilising climate finance will be central to a global deal in two years’ time and the only way this can be achieved is if public bodies and private investors work together. This means putting policy frameworks in place which are truly long-term, enshrined in legislation and provide meaningful support for investors who want to back low-carbon energy.”

Steve Howard, Chief Sustainability Officer, IKEA Group via Damandeep Singh

Totally agree MT @_stephenhoward IKEA: Silent majority of companies want to see real change in climate response, need to speak up #C4Cbiz

— Damandeep Singh (@damandeep) November 25, 2013

Anthony Hobley, global head, sustainability & climate change at the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm

“These climate negotiations seems to drain optimism out of you. I’m more so surprised by the lack of engagement between the negotiation process and business. I think that’s [COP 19] better than Copenhagen, so that I think is our glimmer of hope. The other glimmer of hope is the other negotiations between China and the US. The other thing is we’ve got Angela Merkel in place, we’ve obviously got Obama in place and we’ve still got a [UK] coalition government that’s supported action on climate change. All of those things could change after Paris so we may not have the political leaders in place who have the appetite for these kinds of climate deals. I really do think that it’s all or nothing for Paris for a decade.”

Siemens via Stefan Henningsson, senior adviser climate innovation at WWF International

Siemens @ #c4cbiz:If we cant deploy cleantech innovation at home, we cant sell it to other countries.We need ambitious policy for ref cases

— Stefan Henningsson (@shenningsson) November 19, 2013

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(Pic: Gretar Ívarsson)

By Rachel Tansey in Warsaw

COP19 has been heralded as the most corporate captured climate talks ever; an army of industry lobbyists and business-affiliated side events; corporate “partners” that include fossil fuel companies and other big polluters; an official business day at the Pre-COP; and, the Polish government hosts teaming up with the World Coal Association.

Faced with the corporate domination of COP19, civil society groups of all shapes and sizes are outraged at the way corporations who profit from climate inaction are being embraced ever more tightly by the UNFCCC structure.

The sustainability spin of these polluting corporations doesn’t cover up the facts – and I do mean facts – that their core business models depend on excess emissions of greenhouse gases, and that they are lobbying very successfully against effective, ambitious, timely and just climate policies, at international and national levels.

In response to this, around seventy civil society, environmental, development, human rights, corporate  and youth groups from all across the world have written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, making the case for action to protect climate policy-making from the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry and their attempts to undermine and subvert urgently needed climate action.

The letter points to the example of another UN body that has faced the undue influence of a harmful industry and dealt with the situation effectively – the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) and tobacco.

Article 5.3 of WHO’s global tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), enshrines in international law the principle that the tobacco industry has no role in public health policy-making, due to the “fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests” and states that “Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry”.

The implementing guidelines to 5.3 elaborate that this involves limiting interactions between the industry that profits from harm and those tasked with minimising and ultimately stopping the harm it causes.

The tobacco treaty, which entered into force in 2005, followed decades of tobacco industry misinformation campaigns, use of front groups and aggressive lobbying, so-called corporate social responsibility (CSR), funding of junk science to discredit the scientific evidence of tobacco’s dangerous effects, as well as the funding of political parties, use of prohibitively expensive law suits to suppress dissent and infiltration of the WHO.

The extensive evidence of big tobacco’s tactics to undermine and subvert tobacco control policies, is paralleled by the well-documented evidence of similar strategies being used by fossil fuels and big polluting industries.

Yet whereas the UN’s public health body has recongised the need to put a firewall between its policy-making intended to reduce tobacco use and the companies that profit from it, the UNFCCC has done the opposite, literally inviting fossil fuel sponsorship of the climate negotiations. It has, in effect, invited the mosquito in to help eradicate malaria.

The seventy-odd civil society groups, from countries and regions as diverse as India, Mozambique, Ukraine, USA, Chile, Bulgaria, UK, the Middle East, Russia, Ghana, Australia, Nigeria, Spain and South Africa urge Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres to look at such examples and take commensurate action to protect climate policy-making from the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry – or companies whose core business model depends on the excessive emission of greenhouse gases – and their attempts to undermine and subvert urgently needed action.

Rachel Tansey, Writer and Researcher on Environmental and Economic Justice, @ecospaceship

 [1] For the full text of the letter, see http://corporateeurope.org/blog/open-letter-calling-rules-protect-integrity-climate-policy-making-vested-corporate-interests

[2] For more information on the role of corporations at COP19, see http://corporateeurope.org/blog/cop19-guide-corporate-lobbying

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(US Forest Service)

By Nilima Choudhury

Almost three quarters of Americans believe climate change has been caused by human activities, reveals new research.

A majority in every state polled wants limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Around 92% of Rhode Island’s citizens want action, while only 65% of participants from Utah support efforts to cut carbon.

The 21 surveys conducted by Stanford University were primarily done between 2006 and 2013 using data from 19,751 respondents. Four states had insufficient data: Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota and Wyoming.

“Our research has shown remarkably consistency of Americans’ opinions on this issue over the last 15 years,” said Jon Krosnick, senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

“I have often heard legislators in Washington express the belief that there is considerable variation in opinions about global warming across parts of the country, and that most of the people living in their state or district are sceptical about global warming.”

In only one state did a clear majority endorse giving government tax breaks to encourage building of more nuclear plants: South Carolina (64%).

Majorities also favoured tax breaks to encourage renewable energy (82%) and said governments should do more to mitigate the effects of climate change (66%).

Over 66% of participants said the government should take action on global warming despite the actions from other countries.

Percentage of Americans who believe global warming will pose a serious problem for the US. (Stanford University)

In October the US Treasury Department largely declared an end to the country’s support for new coal-fired power plants around the world meaning the Obama administration will no longer contribute to coal projects financed by the World Bank and other international development banks.

The country has also seen an increase in the generation of gas, which has been attributed to emissions in the US falling by 3.8% from 2011 to 2012.

Oregon, Washington and California last month agreed with the Canadian province of British Columbia to align carbon-cutting policies in the coastal region, which together is equivalent to the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Engagement with global warming issues was also consistent across states.

Despite the positive outcome of the survey, only an average of 9% of those questioned said green policies would influence who they voted for even though between 50 and 70% of people said they were highly knowledgeable about the issue.

The lowest self-reported knowledge levels were observed in Alabama (38%) and West Virginia (29%).

Krosnick said his research shows that politicians may assume that people in “red” and “blue” states have very different ideologies regarding climate change, but in fact the results change very little between states.

“Our findings suggest that the balance of communications from constituents to elected representatives may have created a misimpression of the public’s opinions on the issue.”

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UK climate chief Ed Davey. (Pic: DECC)

By Ed King in Warsaw

Japan’s decision to change its 2020 carbon reduction goals has led to heavy criticism from a wide range of countries at UN climate talks in Warsaw.

Earlier this morning the government in Tokyo revealed it was dropping a target to cut emissions 25% on 1990 levels by 2020, and replacing it with a goal that will see them rise 3% on 1990 levels by 2020.

UK climate chief Ed Davey says the move is “deeply disappointing” and runs against “broader political commitments” to tackle climate change.

“We also note that Japan has reaffirmed its long-term emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050,” he added.

“It will be important to understand how Japan intends to meet this, and set an ambitious 2030 target, in the light of the announcement to reduce its 2020 target.

China’s lead negotiator in Warsaw Su Wei said countries felt let down by the news: “I don’t have any words to describe my dismay at that announcement,” he told reporters.

A statement from the Alliance of Small Island States, which represents the world’s most climate vulnerable states, called the news a “huge step backwards”.

“AOSIS is extremely concerned that the announcement represents a huge step backwards in the global effort to hold warming below the essential 1.5-2°C threshold, and puts our populations at great risk,” it said.

“This is neither the time nor the place to be backtracking on commitments made by leaders in Copenhagen.”

Japan has struggled to control rising emissions since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, which prompted the government to abandon its long-term atomic energy plans and invest in fossil fuel power plants.

The country’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said the old target was “unfounded” and “unfeasible”.

Speaking in Warsaw, lead negotiator Hiroshi Minami said the new target is based on “zero nuclear power”, but revealed the country will increase its climate finance contributions to $16.1 billion.

The news has come as a blow to delegates at the Warsaw talks, which are aimed to developing a global emissions reduction treaty for leaders to sign in 2015.

The world’s traditional developing countries want richer nations to make larger carbon reductions and offer more financial support.

But there appears to be little sign of this happening.

In the past few days Australia’s Government has issued a bill in Parliament aimed at repealing a carbon tax on the country’s 300 most polluting companies.

This move was warmly supported by Canada, which said carbon taxes penalised families and “raise the price of everything”.

And a leaked cable from the US State Department reveals the Obama Administration’s strong opposition to a ‘loss and damage’ or climate compensation scheme many developing nations say is now critical.

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