Featured Blog Posts - A Climate For Change

From the Indus to the Mississippi, Climate Change Touches Us All

2012-02-02T19:00:00.000Z

As we reflect on 2011, a year of extreme weather all over the world, my thoughts have turned back to a very strange summer I experienced not long ago.

That summer, I met a government employee who was working in his office and received a frantic call from his wife. "The flood water is coming," she said.

At first, he didn't take much notice. Occasional floods are normal in our part of the world, where heavy rains come every year and help irrigate the crops.

It was only later, when he returned to his town and saw his home disappearing underwater, that he understood the world he knew had suddenly and irrevocably changed.

This story took place in Pakistan in 2010. But around the world, wherever you are, chances are good that you have lived through your own weather disaster. And if not, you may soon.

A report last fall from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that because of global warming, we can expect to see more and more catastrophic weather such as heat waves and heavy rains. For many of us, this news is not a surprise. The reality of climate change is catching up to us, and severe weather has become an increasingly common part of our lives.

In Pakistan, the 2010 flooding was an unprecedented disaster. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called the event a "slow-motion tsunami." One-fifth of the nation was covered in water, an area the size of England. Nearly 2,000 people died, 20 million were affected and 1.7 million homes were destroyed.

These events would have been traumatic enough; but last year, the floods returned." Unusually heavy monsoon rains brought flash floods that drove millions of people into poverty -- and international aid has been scarce.

I know many of you who are reading this live far from Pakistan. But in a fundamental way, our experience is the same whether we lived through the rains in my country or the famine in East Africa. Because of climate change, we have heightened our risk of disasters like the ongoing drought in the American South, or last spring's dramatic rainstorms that flooded the Mississippi River.

We are part of the same experience if we lived through events like last year's torrential rains over China that forced thousands of people from their homes, or the heat wave that crippled Russia two years ago. We have all reached a "new normal" -- but there is nothing normal about it.

During the Pakistan floods, I met people who saw their homes go underwater in an afternoon -- like the government employee who received a sudden call in his office. I met people who used to live comfortable lives who were standing in line to receive food. And I met others who would rather go hungry than accept the humiliation of charity.

I met local villagers who thought extreme weather was a sign they had done something wrong. They had never heard of carbon pollution or the greenhouse effect, so the only cause they could imagine was that God was punishing them for their sins.

That's the moment I learned that education must be the first step. For me, that means spending time traveling to remote villages to talk about extreme weather and climate change. I explain that bad weather has always been with us, but we expect global warming to make it far more frequent and more dangerous. Teaching people that their experience is part of a larger story is a way of showing them they are not alone.

The people I meet in Pakistan do not always accept climate change science right away. In that sense, they are no different than people elsewhere in the world. But it's clear to me that around the globe, there is a growing acceptance of the reality we face -- and an increasing readiness to find solutions.

Someday soon, Pakistan will recover from the floods -- just as I know the rest of the world will learn to confront the threat of extreme weather and climate change. This is an experience we all share, and it is a problem we can only solve together.

This blog was originally published on Huffington post.

James Hansen's Witness Statement

2012-01-30T12:13:32.000Z

This is a good read.

Dr James Hansen provided this witness statement in support of an application to reveal the name of the seed funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the UK. I have reproduced it in full, having previously been given permission by Dr Hansen to use his work to better inform the public by the most effective means. To access the original article (with diagram), follow this link: http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2012/20120127_CowardsPart1.pdf

Some clarification of what this is about, the secret efforts of Lords, the wealthy, the privileged, to dupe the public in our democracies into supporting their continued and growing privileges, is provided by the following news article and press release:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/bid-to-out-the-money-behind-the-voice-against- climate-change-20120126-1qjfp.html

http://requestinitiative.org/2012/01/lord-lawson-should-name-funder-of-climate-sceptic-think- tank-judge-told/

I, James Hansen of Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, USA, say as follows

1. I am Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and Adjunct Professor of Earth Sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute. I write here in my personal capacity, not representing these institutions. I was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of Dr. James Van Allen at the University of Iowa, receiving my Ph.D. in 1967. Since the mid-1970s my research has focused on Earth's climate and understanding the human impact on global climate. I am a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, have testified about climate change to our Congress many times, and have met with officials of numerous nations concerning actions needed to stabilize climate and assure a bright future for young people.

2. I make this witness statement in support of Brendan Montague’s appeal. The facts and matters set out in this statement are within my own knowledge unless otherwise stated, and I believe them to be true. Where I refer to information supplied by others, the source of the information is identified; facts and matters derived from other sources are true to the best of my knowledge and belief. References in this statement are to documents in the bundles of documents prepared for the Tribunal hearing.

The current situation regarding global climate change is described in a paper, The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy Prosperous Future, which I am preparing with the help of 17 international colleagues for submission to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. The paper includes more than 100 scientific references supporting the discussion in my statement below.

The abstract summarizing our paper is as follows:

Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2, is already 0.8°C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide. More warming is "in the pipeline" because Earth is out of energy balance, with absorbed solar energy exceeding planetary heat radiation. Maintaining a climate that resembles the Holocene, the world of stable shorelines in which civilization developed, requires rapidly reducing fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Such a scenario is economically sensible and has multiple benefits for humanity and other species. Yet fossil fuel extraction is expanding, including highly carbon-intensive sources that can push the climate system beyond tipping points such that amplifying feedbacks drive further climate change that is practically out of humanity's control. This situation raises profound moral issues as young people, future generations, and nature, with no possibility of protecting their future well-being, will bear the principal consequences of actions and inactions of today's adults.

Science, as described in numerous authoritative reports, has revealed that humanity is now the dominant force driving changes of Earth's atmospheric composition and thus future climate. The principal climate forcing is carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia. The climate system's inertia, which is mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, causes climate to respond slowly, at least initially, but in a very long-lasting way to this human-made forcing.

Governments have recognized the need to limit emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change, as formalized in the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite this, the Kyoto Protocol, established in 1997 to reduce developed country emissions and slow emissions growth in developing countries, has been so ineffective that the rate of global emissions has since accelerated to almost 3%/year, compared to 1.5%/year in the preceding two decades.

There is a huge gap between rhetoric about reducing emissions and reality. Governments and businesses offer assurances that they are working to reduce emissions, but only a few nations have made substantial progress. Reality exposes massive efforts to expand fossil fuel extraction, including oil drilling to increasing ocean depths, into the Arctic, and onto environmentally fragile public lands; squeezing of oil from tar sands and tar shale; hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas; and increased mining of coal via mechanized longwall mining and mountain-top removal. Governments not only allow this activity, but use public funds to subsidize fossil fuels at a rate of about 500 billion US$ per year. Nor are fossil fuels required to pay their costs to society. Air and water pollution due to extraction and burning of fossil fuels kills more than 1,000,000 people per year and affects the health of billions of people.

But the greatest costs to society are likely to be the impacts of climate change, which are already apparent and are expected to grow considerably. Climate change is a moral issue of unprecedented scope, a matter of intergenerational injustice, as today's adults obtain benefits of fossil fuel use, while consequences are felt mainly by young people and future generations. In addition, developed countries are most responsible for Figure 1. CO2 emissions by fossil fuels (1 ppm CO2 ~ 2.12 GtC, where ppm is parts per million of CO2 in air and GtC is gigatons of carbon). Alternative estimates of reserves and potentially recoverable resources are from EIA (2011) and GAC (2011). emissions, but people in less developed countries and indigenous people across the world are likely to be burdened the most while being least able to adapt to a changing climate.

The tragedy of human-made climate change, should the rush to exploit all fossil fuels continue, is that transition to clean energies and energy efficiency is not only feasible but economically sensible. Assertions that phase-out of fossil fuels would be unacceptably costly can be traced to biased assumptions that do not account for the costs of fossil fuels to society or include the benefits of technology innovations that would emerge in response to an appropriate price on carbon emissions. Fossil fuel emissions so far are a small fraction of known reserves and potentially recoverable resources, as shown in Figure 1.

There are uncertainties in estimated reserves and resources, some of which may not be economically recoverable with current technologies and energy prices. But there is already more than enough fossil fuel reserve to transform the planet, and fossil fuel subsidies and technological advances will make more and more of the resources available. Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows.

The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes.

Phase out of fossil fuel emissions is urgent. CO2 from fossil fuel use stays in the surface climate system for millennia. Failure to phase out emissions rapidly will leave young people and future generations with an enormous clean-up job. The task of extracting CO2 from the air is so great that success is uncertain at best, raising the likelihood of a spiral into climate catastrophes and efforts to "geo-engineer" restoration of planetary energy balance.

Most proposed schemes to artificially restore Earth's energy balance aim to reduce solar heating, e.g., by maintaining a haze of stratospheric particles that reflect sunlight to space. Such attempts to mask one pollutant with another pollutant almost inevitably would have unintended consequences. Moreover, schemes that do not remove CO2 would not avert ocean acidification.

The pragmatic path is for the world to move expeditiously to carbon-free energies and increased energy efficiency, leaving most remaining fossil fuels in the ground.

Transition to a post-fossil fuel world of clean energies will not occur as long as fossil fuels remain the cheapest energy in a system that does not incorporate the full cost of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are cheap only because they are subsidized directly and indirectly, and because they do not pay their costs to society. Costs of air and water pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and use, via impacts on human health, food production, and natural ecosystems, are borne by the public. Similarly, costs of climate change and ocean acidification will be borne by the public, especially by young people and future generations.

Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is a price on carbon emissions that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. The price should rise over decades such that people and businesses can efficiently adjust their lifestyles and investments to minimize costs. The right price for carbon and the best mechanism for carbon pricing are more matters of practicality than of economic theory. Economic analyses indicate that a carbon price fully incorporating environmental and climate damage, although uncertain, would be high.

However, it is not necessary or desirable to suddenly increase fossil fuel prices. Instead the price should be ramped up gradually, with the money that is collected from the fossil fuel companies (at the first sale, at the domestic mine or port of entry) distributed on a uniform per capita basis to legal residents. More than 60 percent of the public would receive more in their monthly dividend, distributed electronically to their bank account or debit card, than they would pay in increased costs due to higher fossil fuel energy prices.

An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at a level of $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each succeeding year would reduce emissions in the United States by 30% within 10 years. Such a reduction of carbon emissions is more than 10 times greater than the carbon content of tar sands oil that would be carried by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (830,000 barrels/day).

Relative merits of a carbon tax versus cap-and-trade continue to be discussed. Cap-and-trade has had some, albeit limited, success in Europe, but failed in the arena of U.S. policy, as opponents won the rhetorical battle by describing it as a devious new tax. The merits of an alternative, a gradually rising fee on carbon emissions collected from fossil fuel companies with proceeds distributed to the public, have been summarized by DiPeso, Policy Director of Republicans for Environmental Protection, as: "Transparent. Market-based. Does not enlarge government. Leaves energy decisions to individual choices... Sounds like a conservative climate plan."

A rising carbon price is the sine qua non for fossil fuel phase out, but it is not sufficient. Other needs include investment in energy R&D, testing of new technologies such as low-loss smart electric grids, electrical vehicles interacting effectively with the power grid, energy storage for intermittent renewable energy, new nuclear power plant designs, and carbon capture and storage. Governments must support energy planning for housing and transportation, energy and carbon efficiency requirements for buildings, vehicles and other manufactured products, global monitoring systems, and climate mitigation and adaptation in undeveloped countries.

Rhetoric of political leaders, including phrases such as "a planet in peril", leaves the impression that they fully grasp the planetary crisis caused by rising atmospheric CO2. However, closer examination reveals that much of the rhetoric is aptly termed "greenwash" (J. Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren, Bloomsbury, 2009, 304 pp.) as even nations considered to be among the "greenest" support expanded fossil fuel extraction including the most carbon-intensive fuels such as tar sands.

The reality is that most governments, rather than taking actions to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, are allowing and using public funds to partially subsidize continued fossil fuel extraction, including expansion of oil drilling to increasing ocean depths, into the Arctic, and onto environmentally fragile public lands; squeezing of oil from tar sands and tar shale; hydro- fracking to expand extraction of natural gas; and increased mining of coal via mechanized longwall mining and mountain-top removal.

How is it possible that a specter of large human-driven climate change has unfolded virtually unimpeded, despite scientific understanding of likely consequences? Would not governments – presumably instituted for the protection of all citizens – have stepped in to safeguard the future of young people? A strong case can be made that the absence of effective leadership in most nations is related to the undue sway of special financial interests on government policies and effective public relations efforts by people who profit from the public's fossil fuel addiction and wish to perpetuate that dependence.

Such a situation, with the science clear enough to demand action but with public understanding of the situation, and thus political response, hampered by the enormous financial power of special interests, suggests the possibility of an important role for the judiciary system. Indeed, in some nations the judicial branch of government may be able to require the executive branch to present realistic plans to protect the rights of the young. Such a legal case for young people should demand plans for emission reductions that are consistent with what the science shows is required to stabilize climate. Judicial recognition of the exigency and the rights of young people will help draw attention to the need for a rapid change of direction.

However, fundamental change is unlikely without public support. Obtaining public support requires widespread recognition that a prompt orderly transition to the post fossil fuel world, via a gradually rising price on carbon emissions, makes overall sense and is economically beneficial.

The most basic matter, however, is not one of economics. It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice. As with the earlier great moral issue of slavery, an injustice of one race of humans to another, so the injustice of one generation to another must stir the public's conscience to the point of action. Until there is a sustained and growing public involvement, it is unlikely that the needed fundamental change of direction can be achieved. A broad public outcry may seem implausible given the enormous resources of the fossil fuel industry, which allows indoctrination of the public with the industry's perspective. The merits of coal, of oil from tar sands and the deep ocean, of gas from hydrofracking are repeatedly extolled, all of these supposedly to be acquired with utmost care of the environment.

Potential climate concerns are addressed by discrediting climate science and scientists, including use of character assassination and every negative campaign trick that they have learned. The fossil fuel kingpins who profit from the public's fossil fuel addiction, some of them multi- billionaires, are loosely knit, but with a well-understood common objective of maintaining the public's addiction.

These kingpins have the resources to be well aware of the scientific knowledge concerning the consequences of continued exploitation of fossil fuels. However, they choose not only to ignore those facts, but to support activities intended to keep the public ill- informed. These kingpins are guilty of high crimes against humanity and nature. It is little consolation that the world will eventually convict them in the court of public opinion or even, unlikely as it is, that they may be forced to stand trial in the future before an international court of justice.

The fossil fuel kingpins are separated from the foot soldiers who serve as their public mouthpieces, separated by multiple layers of people, and even by corporations, which some courts have granted rights and protections of people.

The public has the right to know who is supporting the foot soldiers for business-as-usual and to learn about the web of support for the propaganda machine that serves to keep the public addicted to fossil fuels and destroys the future of their children.

This court cannot single-handedly cure the cancer that is afflicting democracies worldwide, the inappropriate power granted to money, to special financial interests. But by standing for the rights of the people, by exposing one link in the web of the oppressing fossil fuel propaganda machine, it just may start a process that allows the public to begin to realize what is at stake and where the public interest lies. Perhaps, if this process begins soon, there is still time to preserve a good future for young people and future generations.

I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

Goodbye 'Shop Til You Drop' Mentality: Renegade Band of Economists Call for 'Degrowth' Economy

2012-01-05T01:49:01.000Z

This is a very interesting article that points out the connection between consumption, economic growth, environmental destruction and resource depletion.

I’m very excited about all the talk these days pertaining to the idea of contracting (de-growing) the economy and then reestablishing a steady state economy (no growth).

Most people don’t even know that a continuously expanding economy has only been around for the past seven generations. During the vast majority of the time that humans have inhabited the planet the economy has been in a steady state. That all started to change as we shifted to agriculture about ten thousand years ago (growth rate rose to about 1%) and then accelerated with the start of the Industrial Revolution a little over two hundred years ago.

If you track our economic history on a chart it would look similar to a hockey stick. Does that sound familiar? It should. The economy would also track very close to resource use like energy, land use, deforestation, ground water depletion, fishing, mineral extraction as well as carbon emissions and ocean acidity and technology; let’s not leave out population growth. You can get a better idea of this from a short video from Crash Course by Chris Martenson. If you haven’t watched the Crash Course in its entirety I would certainly recommend it. Here is chapter three of the course:

You should keep in mind that the Industrial Revolution was only made possible by an abundance of cheap fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Many of those resources will be gone or seriously depleted over the coming decades and as the resources go so does the economy.

One might be tempted to hope for such a decline because it would also bring with it a decline in environmental destruction. However, the coming decline in resources will most likely include the spread of famine the likes of which has never been seen in human history. Besides we would hit tipping points long before the decline of resources could ever bring about an end to the destruction of our planets ecosystems.

Anyway, it all sounds great; shrinking the economy to save the planet, but all kinds of psychological stuff comes into play that I think would prevent this from ever becoming a reality by choice. To bring this all about we would have to deal with such things as loss aversion, political ideology (which causes cognitive dissonance) and denial to name just a few.

As difficult as this may seem I don’t see how we really have any choice in the long run. We can shrink our economy using somewhat controlled methods or we can just wait till it crashes on its own. Either way it’s going to happen.

To learn more about a steady state economy and the end of growth I can recommend two very good books that I’ve read:

Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

Ronnie Wright
World Change Cafe

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Goodbye 'Shop Til You Drop' Mentality: Renegade Band of Economists Call for 'Degrowth' Economy

By Christine MacDonald, AlterNet

In this country, shopping is not just a national pastime. Consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy, is a sort of patriotic duty -- never more so than in the last four years of economic malaise.

So news from the National Retail Federation that the country is on track for a record-breaking holiday shopping season -- $469.1 billion in sales, up 3.8 percent from last year -- could only be a good thing, right?

But what if all roads to prosperity don't lead to the shopping mall, as most economists would have us believe? What if, in fact, all that shopping -- and the imperative to grow corporate profits quarter after quarter and continuously expand the economy -- was actually the root of many of the problems we face today?

That's the view of a renegade but increasingly influential band of economists, who say the myth of perpetual economic growth and "the iron cage of consumerism" are the chief causes of world economic dysfunction and environmental crisis -- and the biggest obstacle to our very happiness.

"Overwhelmingly, growth is seen as the solution to all problems, but growth is failing," says Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist who is also known as the father of "ecological economics," an offshoot of the same field that spawned Adam Smith three centuries ago but challenges many of the assumptions that classical economists hold dear.

While the term may seem like an oxymoron to some, ecological economics places the economy inside the larger "ecosphere" that supports all life on Earth, rather than seeing the economy and job creation in direct opposition to environmental protection. That's an idea that has gained ground in recent years as businesses have become increasingly compromised by water and raw material scarcity, extreme weather, crop failures and other problems linked to global warming and environmental degradation.

The problem, says Daly, is that the economy, once an inconsequentially small part of the natural world, has become so supersized that -- sort of like an ingrown toenail or an evasive Japanese knotweed bush -- it's now growing into the remaining ecosphere and jeopardizing our ecological life supports: things like drinkable water, fresh air and a stable climate.

Those ideas can be found influencing, among other things, the slow money movement, D.I.Y. culture, modern barter systems, car sharing, and corporate sustainability rhetoric. They are also reflected in the views of ecologists such as Lester Brown and Jeremy Rifkin, the author, pundit and adviser to the European Union, as well as entrepreneurs such as Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, which ran an advertisement this holiday season urging consumers not to buy the pictured jacket and to think twice about making any purchases they don't really need. Even Unilever, the consumer goods conglomerate, has embarked on a corporate social responsibility campaign pledging to "decouple" its growth from its ecological footprint.

Daly's work and the related "degrowth" movement have inspired books, academic conferences and documentaries. Even as such ideas struggle to gain purchase with the world's leading economists, they are blurring the lines between the economic and the environmental and acquiring new political dimensions, as well.

"You can see it in the Occupy Wall Street movement; People are finally starting to say, what has growth done for us? It's simply increased the inequality in the country," Daly says.

While some may see growing income disparity as a political issue and global warming as an environmental problem, Daly sees them both in economic terms.
"What does the economy do when it runs into limits?"

One of Daly's more prominent disciples, U.K. economist Tim Jackson, tends to agree in his report to the British government, later published in book form, titled: Prosperity Without Growth. Even the 2008 world financial meltdown can't be blamed simply on "isolated malpractice or simple failures of vigilance," Jackson writes, but that the market "was undone by growth itself." He goes on to suggest, "There is something odd about the modern refusal to countenance anything but growth at all costs."

And world economic growth has been nothing short of astonishing in recent decades. Jackson notes that the global economy has doubled in size in the last quarter century, at the same time "an estimated 60 percent of the world's ecosystems have been degraded."

Signs of Crisis

Daly's steady state economy, which he first wrote about in the 1970s, isn't alone in calling attention to problems created by unchecked economic growth. Other works that waved red flags include Rachel Carson's 1962 classic, Silent Spring, widely credited with launching the U.S. environmental movement; and Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome-commissioned study by a group of MIT economists, which caused public consternation when it first appeared four decades ago.

Since then, evidence has continued to mount that humanity may be reaching the end of the road built by our Western industrial model with its assumptions that natural resources, and nature itself, are super-abundant. A few of the problems that have garnered headlines include the following:

Critical minerals are on the decline.
Experts worry that declining "energy quality" threatens growth, as the world's dwindling fossil fuel stores require more effort to extract.
Many countries including the world's biggest grain producers -- the U.S., India and China -- are depleting their aquifers to keep bringing in the harvests.
Carbon emissions are reaching a dangerous level.
2011 broke the record for extreme weather with 12 events costing $1 billion or more to clean up.
Plant and animal species are going extinct at unprecedented rates.
World population is growing and so is hunger.
We have already exceeded some important planetary boundaries.

"One reason growth doesn't work is we've underestimated the ecological cost of growth, and overestimated the benefits of growth," Daly says.

New Approaches

Most people probably conjure up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke or pundits like Mark Zandi, when thinking "economist." Daly started out similarly. He earned a PhD in economics at Vanderbilt University in the late 1960s, before setting off for Brazil, where he had landed a job in the northeast of the country preparing graduate students to follow his footsteps at U.S. universities. He says it was there that the environmental degradation he observed first made him challenge assumptions about resource abundance and capital scarcity that underpin classical economics.

In the 1970s, Daly published books on the steady state economy, which laid out an alternative path for humanity that would substitute year-on-year growth with a system geared toward keeping the economy within the ecological boundaries of the planet.

The books were received "violently," Daly, 73, quips today. But he thrived professionally, rising to the post of senior environmental economist at the World Bank until 1994, when he decamped for a teaching post at the University of Maryland and taught for several years before retiring. At the Bank, he was "a lonely voice of dissent in an organization that frowns on unbelievers," according to a 2003 profile in Grist that compared economics to a religion and Daly to an "arch-heretic, a member of the high priesthood turned renegade."

Ecological economics got off the ground formally in the early 1980s, with an international professional society and an academic journal of the same name that Daly cofounded with Robert Costanza, director of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University.

Today, U.S., European and Australian societies have also emerged as forums for a wide range of ideas about how best to strike an ecology-economy balance. There's plenty of disagreement within the field about how best to go about getting off the growth trendmill. Daly's steady state economy, which envisions practically no more growth, is perhaps the purist and most cold-turkey approach.

Some ecological economists such as William Rees and Costanza have done groundbreaking work helping to visualize the scope of the environmental-economic conundrum. Rees came up with the concept of the ecological footprint. Costanza was the lead author of a groundbreaking 1997 paper published in the journal, Nature, titled "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital." It tallied up the value of the planet's ecosystems in dollar terms -- between $16 trillion and $54 trillion a year.

Others like the UK's Tim Jackson, Canadian Peter Victor and Australian Philip Lawn, a professor at Flinders University, Australia, focus on taking the ideas pioneered by Daly and putting them into practical use -- thinking through, for instance, how to "de-grow" the economy, essentially sending it into a planned recession, without throwing large numbers of people out of work.

Daly says he's disappointed that more of the country's leading economists have not embraced his ideas but some experiments in low-growth living are underway around the world.

In South London, the mixed-income BedZED development, and the Findhorn Ecovillage in Moray, Scotland are two developments that slash the carbon emissions of residents nearly in half compared to the U.K. average. They are part of a growing "ecovillage" movement, though critics suggest the promised emissions reductions are sometimes less dramatic than advertised. In the U.S., commercial builders are starting to construct "net zero" homes aimed at middle-class buyers, such as the new neighborhood going up in Fredrick, Md.'s historic downtown that uses a combination of insulation, geothermal heating and solar panels to generate all the energy needed to run the homes.

On the city-scale, more than 1,000 U.S. cities have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions as part of U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, and other cities around the world have taken even more aggressive measures. Malmö, Sweden, for instance, has pledged to be climate-neutral by 2020 and run the entire municipality on renewable energy by 2030.

On a national scale, Daly says only the country of Bhutan has embraced larger changes with the substitution of its Gross National Happiness index in the place of the standard Gross National Product measurement.

New ideas and shifting demographics, however, suggest the mantra of perpetual growth may not be forever after all. The International Energy Agency has released a report showing that it's possible to provide clean renewable electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world living without it, with only "a negligible impact on energy security and climate change."

Even Lester Brown, whose thought-provoking work has earned him a reputation as a Cassandra, is upbeat about a wind-powered new economy. He's predicting a 20 percent decline in U.S. carbon emissions by 2020 from the 2007 level. In the last four years, the country's emissions have already fallen by 7 percent, a decline started by the economic recession but accelerating thanks to the phase-in of new lightbulbs and a major shift in the country away from the automobile as baby boomers retire and drive less and young people drive less.

"Young people today are not part of a car culture as my generation was. They socialize with smart phones and over the Internet," Brown says.

Money + Happiness

Another reason to believe degrowing the economy, while not painless, may make us happier in the long run is a growing body of research comparing health and wellbeing across national borders and economic classes. As a billion poor people around the world already know and many Americans have found out as unemployment has spiked in this country in the last four years, money enough to ensure a roof over one's head, a full belly and other basic needs is very important to well-being. Beyond a certain subsistence level, however, some provocative research suggests money won't buy you love.

In their 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, epidemiologists Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that a society's overall happiness is linked to income equality. Not only do they argue that equality -- not more income or more consumption -- make us healthier and more contented, their research shows that less equal societies like the United States have higher rates of anxiety and illness, violence, teenage pregnancies, obesity, drug abuse and eroding public trust. And they tend to consume excessively, among other negative effects.

"Wilkinson's and Pickett's work is unsettling to a lot of people since it basically says 'we the rich are wrecking the planet for no further gain.' In fact, many rich countries are going backwards," says William Rees, the Canadian economist who pioneered the concept of the ecological footprint.

Public Awakening

The latest report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, released December 7, shows that climate denial is on the decline again in the United States, perhaps propelled by this year's extreme weather.

While the percentage of people who understand global warming is happening has remained essentially unchanged since last May, at 63 percent, belief that human activity is fueling the warming edged up 3 points to 50 percent of those polled. Perhaps even more significantly, "A majority of Americans (57%) now disagree with the statement, 'With the economy in such bad shape, the US can't afford to reduce global warming' -- an 8 point increase in disagreement since May 2011."

Researchers say they were surprised that nearly 4 in 10 people surveyed said they had experienced the effects of global warming firsthand, perhaps signaling a shift toward viewing climate change as a current problem, not one looming off in a vague and distant future. And more than half saw a connection between global warming and growing poverty and said they are worried about running out of natural resources.

A similarly serious public mood was captured in last week's forecast of holiday season sales put out by the National Retailers Federation.

"They're still more cautious than in the past," Ellen Davis, an NRF vice president, told Bloomberg. While the story attributed the concern to continuing uncertainty over the economy and the political landscape in Washington, perhaps the country's continuing austere attitude isn't such a bad thing, though most observers don't expect it to last.

Daly says he's not optimistic about the direction of the country, despite the growing interest in degrowing the economy and moving toward greener growth. "Green growth is better than brown growth," he says, "but the key problem is that you are going to have continued growth in a finite and entropic world."

Christine MacDonald is an environmental journalist and the author of "Green Inc., An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad" (The Lyons Press).

This article was reposted from AlterNet.

NSW set to hinder wind energy with onerous planning regulations

2011-12-27T12:40:13.000Z

The NSW Draft planning regulations on wind farms was released on Friday December 23: on the very last working day before Christmas. You don't need to be a cynic to understand the Barrie O'Farrell conservative Government wants to bury news coverage of these draft planning regulations which impose strict limits on wind farm development which are very similar in scope to the draconian Victorian wind farm planning regultions.

Action: Live in NSW? You can oppose these planning regs by putting in a submission by 14 March 2012 by mail or email. See the end of the article for details.

"The new wind guidelines introduced today place more rigorous requirements on wind projects than on any other project development in the state." said Lindsay Soutar, national coordinator of the community 100% Renewable campaign. "While coal and coal seam gas get the red carpet, wind power just gets more red tape."

The draft planning regulations were criticised by Max Phillips, a Marrickville Greens councilor, who said on twitter: "So in NSW u can build a gas well within 200m of a home, or 5-8m of a future home, but a wind turbine should be 2km away. Go figure #nswpol"

Lindsay Soutar accused the O'Farrell Government of listening to a fear campaign by powerful disgruntled landholders rather than the overwhelming community sentiment. "NSW has a choice to make: does it want clean, safe renewable energy which is free and will never run out. Or does it want to keep on digging up coal, and burning dirty gas forever? In poll after poll the community overwhelming says it wants renewable energy."

"Today's announcement by O'Farrell is just another indication that the NSW government is refusing to take seriously the huge opportunity that renewable energy presents." Soputar said, "Barry O'Farrell is out of step with community expectations on this one"

Friends of the Earth was also critical of the draft planning regulations while welcoming confirmation of the NSW 20% renewables target by 2020. Friends of the Earth campaigns co-ordinator, Cam Walker said "While the guidelines are not as punitive as in Victoria, if this draft plan becomes law, there will be a number of worrying precedents which can be expected to negatively impact on renewable energy in the state".

"As is the case in Victoria, the guidelines use a 2km trigger when it comes to residents having the ability to oppose a project. What is the basis for selecting 2km? The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the government is following the wish list of anti-wind campaigners through adopting an arbitrary set-back model." said Cam Walker.

"On face value, the NSW proposal seems better than Victoria. Where residents within 2km oppose a turbine, the matter goes to a Joint Regional Planning Panel (JRPP). This is a better policy because it avoids the moral hazard of an outright veto, which can lead to a form of extortion given there can not be fair negotiations where one party - the objector - holds all the power."

Cam walker said the devil would be in the detail in the Gateway Process, "... until the NSW Gateway Process is tested, we will not be able to say whether the policy will set back the wind industry as the guidelines in Victoria clearly are doing. The final make up of people on the JRPP will greatly influence the outcome in terms of granting a Site Certificate, and may be the 'Devil in the detail' that destroys the ability of the wind sector to develop in NSW."

According to Brigid Glanville, ABC state political reporter for NSW, "There are 17 wind farm applications in, 13 haven't been put on exhibition. Those 13 applicants will be effected." she said on twitter.

Cam walker outlined the many benefits that wind energy brings to regional areas including jobs, business opportunities, income for local Councils and land owners, and the production of greenhouse friendly energy. "The government has clearly attempted to respond to a noisy minority which is deeply opposed to wind energy. We hope that the final policy does not work against the interests of the majority of people in NSW who do support renewable energy" he said. "Regional areas of NSW will enjoy significant economic benefit if the wind industry is allowed to flourish."

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge accused the O'Farrell government of looking to destroy this state's wind energy industry and pandering to climate denialists without any scientific evidence. "By pandering to the climate denialists and wind witch doctors, the NSW government is squandering the chance for the creation of four thousand new green jobs."

"The guidelines released today are delivering for Shooters and Fishers MPs Robert Borsak and Robert Brown and their mates in the anti-wind, anti-science climate denialists movement." said David Shoebridge, "Today we appear to be seeing the results of the grubby deal that saw the Shooters and Fishers party vote with the O'Farrell government to slash the police death and disability scheme.

"The government has a choice to secure the state's energy supply for the future. Blind to public opinion and proper scientific evidence Premier Barry O'Farrell has chosen coal seam gas over the cheaper, cleaner wind alternative," Mr Shoebridge said.

You can read the draft planning guidelines for Wind Farms. Public comments on the draft guidelines are being sought up to 14 March 2012. You can email submissions to: innovation@planning.nsw.gov.au or snail mail:

Policy, Planning Systems and Reform,
Department of Planning and Infrastructure,
GPO Box 39, Sydney NSW 2001;

Sources:

Media release December 23 2011 - 100% renewable energy - Wind turbines wrapped in red tape, while coal and gas drill on
Media release December 23 2011 - Friends of the Earth - NSW follows Victoria's backwards move on wind energy
NSW Greens media release - O'Farrell govt's hostility to wind energy placing jobs and environment at risk

"Waiting for the "Heavens to Weep"

2011-12-21T00:32:46.000Z

I read this great piece on the Inter Press Service site and thought I'd share it here with you on ACFC!

"Waiting for the "Heavens to Weep"
By Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 20, 2011 (IPS) - Duduzile Sibanda takes a break from preparing her long stretch of land for her maize crop in rural Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. She wipes her brow under the scorching sun and looks upwards. The sparse clouds are a cause of concern as she studies the sky and wonders aloud when the "heavens will weep."

A smallholder farmer all her life, the 57-year-old grandmother is worried about the late rainfall this planting season. Even the indigenous knowledge she has used all her life to study the seasons has failed her. Planting season here usually begins in October with the rains, but in early December they are yet to fall.

"We are headed for another drought," she muses with palpable frustration.

After last year’s poor harvest Sibanda does not wish to contemplate another year of low crop yield, especially here in the rural areas where villagers grow their own food.

Sibanda finds herself at the centre of growing climate change concerns that have altered cropping seasons, turning long-followed planting cycles on their head. Traditionally planting season in Zimbabwe begins in early October.

"We have always studied the sky to know when the season starts. We do not know anymore," Sibanda tells IPS.

Jennifer Nkomo, Sibanda’s neighbour, says she is all too aware about the threat of poor harvests and fears the delayed rains could mean she will be lining up for food assistance.

"What we have always wanted is to be able to feed ourselves but without the rains this won’t happen and we cannot afford to curse the skies," Nkomo says, expressing the frustration that has become palpable here among smallholder farmers.

"We only want the skies to open," she says.

But when the rains do come, the levels are not the same as they have been in the past. According to the Zimbabwe Meteorological Service Department, "below normal to normal" rainfall began in Midlands province on Dec. 18, more than two months after they were expected to start.

The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), which is working with the Zimbabwean government to formulate a climate change policy, says early research on the impact of climate change suggests the country will have to cope with changing rainfall patterns, temperature increases and more extreme weather events, like floods and droughts.

CDKN says that longer and more frequent droughts could substantially reduce crop yields, including that of maize – the country’s staple crop.

Sobona Mtisi, a climate change expert leading the CDKN research in Zimbabwe says, "The changing climate is adversely affecting production."

"This is in view of the discernable shifts in climate, a shift also marked by frequent droughts," Mtisi says.

The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union (ZCFU) says smallholder farmers across the country have seen reduced yields of between 50 and 75 percent this year as compared to the yield in 2000. Years of interrupted farming activities after the launch of the land reform programme in 2000, coupled with climatic shifts, have seen Zimbabwe experiencing successive poor harvests.

This year only 800,000 tonnes of crop was harvested against an expected 1,2 million tonnes, according to the ZCFU.

It has raised concerns about the need for alternative agricultural methods to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Today, Zimbabwe is a major importer of maize from its neighbours, paying 270 million dollars to import one million tonnes of maize this year.

"Smallholder farmers have especially been affected by climatic shifts as they have no clue about when not to plant and when to plant, as the knowledge systems they use are proving useless," says Josh Manyora, of environment watchdog Environment Africa.

"In the absence of programmes that teach people in the most remote of rural areas about the weather, the climate and new agriculture techniques that respond to climate change challenges, I think we will have these problems each year," Manyora says.

The Famine Early Warning System Network, the United States-based food security monitor announced in November that more than one million Zimbabweans will require food assistance in the coming year amid signs that the country will not be able to grow enough food to feed itself.

Food security remains tied to the challenges presented by climate change, says the University of Cape Town’s Climate Systems Analysis Group, which has noted that rain-fed agro-systems in Africa are bearing the brunt of climate change.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) says, "for hundreds of millions of people in Africa, climate change is not about lowering smoke stack emissions or turning off electric lights. It is about whether or not they will have enough to eat."

Sibanda and Nkomo know this only too well. But they are just two of the more than 70 percent of Africans – the majority of whom are women – who AGRA says rely on farming for survival.

Read the original piece here.

Xstrata Ulan coal mine expansion required to offset greenhouse gas emissions

2011-12-15T02:30:00.000Z

In a landmark judgement concerning climate change, a judge in the NSW Land and Environment Court has given approval for the expansion of the Xstrata Ulan coal mine near Mudgee in Central western New South Wales, but conditional on the mine offsetting all of its greenhouse gas emissions generated in mining the coal.

The Hunter Environmental Lobby brought an appeal against the $1.2 Billion Ulan West project based upon it's long term impact of exacerbating global anthropogenic climate change, as well as damage to groundwater systems and clearing of critically endangered vegetation communities. The mine expansion proposal includes a 239 hectare open cut mine and approximately 25 square kilometres of additional longwall mining. The environment group were represented by The Environment Defenders Office. (See June 2011 article - Legal Challenge to Xstrata Ulan Coal mine expansion)

In delivering her judgement on the landmark case on Thursday 24 November, Justice Nicola Pain invited the NSW Minister for Planning, Ulan Coal and Hunter Environment Lobby to come to agreement on several environment conditions in the Ulan West project. The Nature Conservation Council of NSW has welcomed the decision saying that this is a landmark legal precedent for coal mines required to offset greenhouse pollution.

Impact on Biodiversity

The mine will impact native vegetation, specifically the cumulative loss of 69 hectares of the critically endangered ecological community listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act , White Box – Yellow Box – Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland (White Box Woodland CEEC).

The security of Long term biodiversity offset areas have been negotiated with an amended condition 43 (Para 186): "the Proponent shall make suitable arrangements to provide appropriate long term security for the Bobadeen Vegetation Offset Area, the Bobadeen East Offset Area, the Brokenback Conservation Area, the stand of Acacia ausfeldii along the eastern side of Highett Road, and the Spring Gully Cliffline Management Area to the satisfaction of the Director-General."

Justice Pain decided (Para 280) the current Biodiversity Management Plan will remain (condition 44).

Impacts on Groundwater

New conditions were agreed to relating to Baseflow Offsets and a Water Management Plan. Condition 29 states "The Proponent shall offset the loss of any baseflow to the Goulburn and Talbragar Rivers caused by the project to the satisfaction of the Director-General. However, this condition does not apply if the Director-General determines that the loss of baseflow is negligible."

The Hunter Environment Lobby requested that "the project should be refused because of the undisputed long term impact through the depressurisation of the groundwater under the mine site and beyond unless a condition is imposed requiring the remediation of the groundwater by the end of the mine life." (Para 161)

Justice Pain said that the condition was not warranted "given the general nature of the concerns raised by the Applicant and the absence of any clear information that remediation is now or may become practical and feasible." (Para 166)

Greenhouse gas emissions and Impact on Global warming

On Greenhouse gas offsetting justice Pain said (Para 98):

I am aware of only one other merit appeal concerning a coal mine under Pt 3A, also heard this year, being Ironstone. The impact of GHG emissions was not raised in that appeal. This is therefore the first time the Court has had to consider the environmental issues raised by the GHG impacts of a large coal mine in a merit review process. The orthodox approach applied generally in all areas of environmental impact assessment is that any adverse impact must be avoided where feasible and practical to do so. Where harm is unavoidable other measures should be considered to ameliorate the impact, one of which can be offsetting measures. As acknowledged by Mr Kitto there is nothing inherent in an offset scheme for GHG which prevents such an approach.

Further, in para 100 she elaborates:

In the context of this application, the condition would be imposed on an approval that extends the life of this coal mine for 10 years and permits extraction of substantial additional coal each year of that extended period. The offsetting relates directly to the additional emissions generated over that time. That this is the first such condition imposed on a coal mine in NSW is not necessarily discriminatory, it is simply the first occasion that has occurred. I have found that it is otherwise lawful. Condition 18B does not require the offsetting of all GHG emissions just those which are emitted above the GHG budget identified in the EA. I consider it can be implemented reasonably (subject to clarification of the approach in some of the conditions referred to below). As other operating coal mines seek approval to modify or extend their operations, or new coal mines are opened, it would be open to the consent authority which may be the Minister to impose a similar condition.

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW, which the Hunter Environment Lobby is a member of, welcomed the decision. Nature Conservation Council CEO Pepe Clarke said in a media release:

"As Australia begins its transition towards a low‐carbon economy, it's fitting the Land and Environment Court has for the first time recognised that coal mines should take responsibility for the millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution they produce each year.
"The precedent set by requiring Xstrata to offset the production and transport emissions from its Ulan coal mine puts the fossil fuel industry firmly on notice. Coal mining activities have a significant impact on the health of our community and environment, and the era of ‘free’ pollution is over.

"The Ulan mine expansion will need to offset 23.5 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions each year, increasing NSW’s contribution to global emissions by 0.8% per year.

"But we mustn’t forget that Ulan is not the only coal mine project in the planning pipeline.

"As other operating coal mines seek to expand or modify operations, we call on all state governments to ensure strict offset arrangements become standard approval conditions so operators pay their fair share for mitigating the impact of their carbon pollution.

"Offsets for climate change impacts from coal mines are a significant reform, but it is only a first step towards our ambition of a clean energy economy for the future," Mr Clarke said.

You can read the full provisional judgement handed down by Justice Nicola Pain on 24 November 2011 - Hunter Environment Lobby Inc v Minister for Planning [2011] NSWLEC 221

There is also a Legal challenge against new Xstrata coal mine at Wandoan being brought by Friends of the Earth Brisbane. Read related documents on this case at Environmental Law Publishing

Sources:

You can read read a report in the Mudgee Guardian, 30 November 2011 - Mine Challenge Fail
Hunter Environment Lobby Inc v Minister for Planning [2011] NSWLEC 221- Decision of the NSW Land and Environment Court, handed down by Justice Nicola Pain on 24 November 2011
Nature Conservation Council of NSW, media release November 28, 2011 - Legal precedent: NSW coal mine required to offset greenhouse pollution
Environmental Defenders Office Casenotes
Climate Citizen, June 8 2011 - Legal Challenge to Xstrata Ulan Coal mine expansion
Ulan coalmine - part of the Xstrata group of companies
Image from Mudgee District Environment Group used under Fair Use.

17 years of talk and further behind than ever

2011-12-05T01:30:00.000Z

The biggest spike in global greenhouse gas emission in recorded history occurred last year. After a brief easing of emissions in 2009, generally accredited to the global financial crisis, a lift in economic activity produced a staggering 564 million more tons of CO2 in 2010, beating the previous year’s output by 6%. That's according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, and they should know, they have data collected from before the industrial revolution, as far back as 1971.

Half of that increase came from the U.S and China, which isn’t surprising given they are the top 2 emitters annually (the top 10 were announced at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa). China produced 9441 megatons of CO2e (a combination of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) gaining 212 megatons of carbon in 2010 over 2009, while the U.S. showed a 59 megaton increase. Several countries, including New Zealand, showed moderate declines from 2009 to 2010, but these reductions were nowhere near enough to offset output by the big emitters.

One of most troubling aspects of the 2010 milestone is the link it illustrates between economic growth and growth in global emissions. In a world fuelled by fossils, the surge in emissions for 2010 is an unfortunate signal for economic recovery.

The 17th UN climate summit is currently taking place in South Africa, yet 2010 exceeded the ‘worst case’ scenario put forward by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, showing that over those 17 years the situation is getting worse, not better. The pressure is on for these talks to start yielding results, such as a Green Climate Fund that helps poorer countries adapt to the effects of climate change and hopefully, allows them to work toward economic development that is de-coupled from CO2e emissions.

Durban climate talks going in to extra time

2011-12-10T11:30:00.000Z

“We’re back!”

These famous words by the US negotiator a few years ago, shortly after the election of Obama, had a less than positive tone for me this morning walking into the International Conference Centre, venue of this year’s UN Climate Summit.

After four intercessionals (negotiating sessions between the UN climate summits) and eleven long days of negotiations here in Durban the global community still does not have a consensus. So we’re back, hopefully, for only one more day.

These meetings normally finish late on the last day and thus I came prepared last night with a toothbrush, fresh fruit and plenty of water. However, the UNFCCC advised people at around 12:30am last night that negotiations would resume in the morning. Despite this, negotiations kept going until 3am.

So why are we still here?

The Indaba (ministerial meeting for broad political issues) resumed at around 6pm last night with small island states and LDCs saying the package was a “death sentence”. The US supported by Australia indicated support for a “legal instrument” instead of a “legal framework”. The EU stated that they could not accept this legal outcome. And so the South African presidency returned with a more ambitious text for discussions that went until around 3am last night.

This morning there has been draft text around the Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) negotiations and future of Kyoto Protocol. The LCA text, which covers big picture issues around reducing emissions, climate finance, a peaking year to reduce emissions and future legal form, is very weak on the mitigation side, and a cop-out on shared vision. However, it does foreshadow a work program on identifying long-term sources of finance. The inclusion of a plan is a flicker of light in an otherwise dark room. As these talks still needs to work out to mobilise the 100billion per year by 2020 needed to assist poor people in developing countries adapt to climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol text calls for a 5-year continuation period but does not have a provision in the amendments for countries to adjust the emission reductions targets after they are supposed to table them in May next year.

So far Australia’s actions have been less than satisfactory. They were one of the only countries to openly support a very bad deal being botched together by the US and China. They tried very hard to spin it positively to NGOs in our stakeholder meeting yesterday.

Australia now needs to cross the hallways and join the coalition of the willing. This coalition includes the EU, AOSIS (small island states) and the LDCs (least developed countries) who have a clear proposal to establish a plan for increasing ambition to keep the door open for the world to reach the below 2 degree target.

The US and others are proposing to slam this door shut, which would have a devastating impact for the world’s poor who are already the most vulnerable to our changing climate

I'm also blogging on the international site, Adopt-a-Negotiator (www.adoptanegotiator.org)

Will final days deliver for the people of Africa?

2011-12-09T05:34:36.000Z

This year’s UN climate negotiations in Durban are now entering the final stages. Heads of State and Ministers are giving short sharp speeches. Ambassadors and senior diplomats are discussing bottom lines and compromises. Environment groups are following the twists and turns, planning their next moves.

Against the backdrop of the current food crisis in East Africa in which 13 million are facing hunger, it is hoped that governments will agree to slash emissions and unlock much needed finance to assist poor people, especially those involved in food production, deal with climate change.

With less than two days left, this is looking less and less likely, though the final outcome is far from known. The question on everyone’s lips, is whether this round of negotiations will deliver an outcome that ensures poor people in Africa avoid the worst impacts of climate change?

One of the possible outcomes is that the global community builds on existing legal agreements by keeping the Kyoto Protocol alive and setting out a roadmap to a new legally binding agreement. A 2020 timeline has been pushed by the US and China however this is inadequate.

This outcome is unlikely to lead to a concrete plan to reduce the ‘emissions gap’, the gap between what the world has pledged to do and what it needs to do, in order to reach the below 2 degree target. As reported in my previous blog, the world is currently careering off the road to reach the below 2 degree target. The destination, without a change in course, looks like a catastrophic 3.5 degrees of warming. This would put further pressure on poor people, particularly those involved in food production.

Today 117 countries from the European Union, Least Developed Countries and Alliance of Small Island States announced a united position behind a legally binding agreement starting in 2015. Though it is too early to know the exact details it does place increased pressure on the US in particular, and China and India who have at times, been blocking progress here. If this coalition of ambition is able to draw China and India into their fold, then the US could be isolated.

The Green Climate Fund is the other piece of the negotiation puzzle here in Durban. Currently an empty shell, it needs governments to commit to provide funds. Yesterday, Germany and Denmark pledged 40 and 14 million dollars respectively to the fund. However, the world has committed to raise 100 billion per year by 2020. As the world watches the European economic crisis unfold, calls for new ways to raise climate finance such as a levy on shipping emissions and financial transaction tax are making headway.

For the millions of people who are vulnerable to impacts of climate change in Africa, and around the world, tomorrow must deliver an outcome that sets out a concrete plan to reduce emissions and provide finance to assist people adapt and mitigate to the impacts of climate change.

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa (November 28 – December 9) as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project.

A Pacific Perspective - Clancy Moore speaks to Reverand Tafue Lusama of Tuvalu

2011-12-08T08:30:00.000Z

Reverend Tafue Lusama knows a thing or two about the urgency to tackle climate change. Living in Tuvalu, he has seen the climate changing over the last twenty years. Rising sea levels, storm surges and ocean acidification have had devastating impacts of people’s culture, livelihoods and ability to grow food. A few months ago, Tafue and his family almost ran out of fresh water. Prolonged drought plunged the small island nation into a state of emergency. Schools shut down and bottled water had to be flown in from Australian and New Zealand.

At this year’s UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, Tafue is representing his country, population eleven thousand. Having lived the experiences of changing weather patterns and extreme weather events, Tafue is calling for urgent action to tackle climate change.

With just over two days to go, there is a clear coalition of ambition forming here in Durban. The European Union, Least Developed Countries (comprising many African nations) and the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) are all calling for urgent action to increase ambition and put the brakes on runaway climate change. These countries also want to see the Kyoto Protocol continue with stronger environment safe guards and transparency and the elements of the Cancun agreements implemented.

Today the E.U. stated that they were committed to looking into increasing their emission reduction targets next year. Denmark, which takes control of the E.U. presidency next, has committed to reduce emissions by 40% by 2020 as has Germany.

Contrasting this coalition of ambition, are other countries like the US, who is responsible for 18% of the world’s emissions, continue to block progress on attempts to limit warming to the below 2 degree target set in Copenhagen. The recent UN Environment Programme report sets out the gap between countries current pledges and what is needed to meet the below 2 degree target set at Copenhagen.

Today, AOSIS made the sensible suggestion that developed countries acknowledge the ‘gigatonne gap’. Their proposal involves a plan for countries to address the gap and includes a ministerial meeting in early 2012. This was a bright ray in a dark day here at the talks.

Australia and other developed countries need to join this coalition of ambition and urgently move to the higher end of their current 2020 pledges. Whilst developing countries also need to clarify what support they need to meet their targets.

This morning, thousands of young people gathered to form a lion roaring for their government to act.

The cost of acting now is far less than the cost of not acting. Delaying action will cost money and lives. As Reverend Tafue Lusama says “climate change is a matter of life and death”.

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa (November 28 – December 9) as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project.

Taking your voice and messages to the UN Climate Talks

2011-12-07T03:09:21.000Z

Dark, humid, noisy and little ventilation. This is the location of the Australian Government offices here at the UN climate talks. It is also where on Wednesday morning, some colleagues and I had the chance to meet with Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet.

Although this was a very short meeting, I took the window of opportunity to hand over messages from some Australian supporters and a big poster in the form of a to-do list which calls on Minister Combet to do the following here at the UN climate negotiations in Durban:

Ensure that the global Green Climate Fund is up, running and designed to help poor people, especially women – adapt to the impacts of climate change and embark on low carbon development.
Fill the global Green Climate Fund with money from shipping emissions and a robin hood tax
Ensure poor countries avoid the worst impacts of climate change – global warming above 1.5 degrees will mean catastrophic impacts for Pacific Island & African nations.
Keep the Kyoto Protocol alive – it’s the only current international agreement to tackle climate change and we need it.

We pressed him about the need to get agreement in Durban on long-term sources of climate finance to fill the Green Climate Fund. At last year’s UN Climate Summit, the world reaffirmed its commitment to provide $100bn per year by 2020 to flow through the fund.

In response, Minister Combet stated that “Australia is committed to long-term finance and getting the Green Climate Fund up”.

Minister Combet also spoke about the need for an “environment effective outcome” on the Kyoto Protocol and reiterated the government’s position for a global agreement, which covers all major emitters. The Kyoto Protocol covers most developed, with the exception of the US, and is due to expire at the end of 2012.

Many countries have passionately called on the global community not to let Africa be the deathbed of the Kyoto Protocol. Many developing countries including small islands states like Tuvalu and Kiribati are calling for negotiators to give life to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol as a stepping stone to a fair, ambitious, legally binding agreement by no later than 2015.

Significantly, China is suggesting it could commit to legally binding commitments to reduce emissions in the future, whilst the US is playing a blocking role on the big issues of a future global agreement. Increasingly the US is being asked to either step up or step aside and let others move forward.

With three days to go at this year’s UN Climate Summit, Ministers from all countries have parachuted in to negotiate the final pieces of the jigsaw. Australia can play a positive role here at Durban by working with its negotiating block, which includes countries such as the US, New Zealand and Norway to make progress around a legal deal and also support calls to fill the fund with new long-term sources of money like a charge on shipping emissions and a Robin Hood Tax.

Finally, a big thankyou to the hundreds of supporters who sent a to-do list to Minister Combet. Your commitment to action on climate change is inspiring and vital to ensure our government takes the next steps in tackling climate change.

You can still send a to-do list to the government here

You can also send tweets to the UN Climate Summit by tweeting @tcktcktck with the hashtags #COP17 and #UNFCCC

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project.

The myth of renewable energy

2011-12-06T02:34:49.000Z

I’m glad to see that science writers are starting to point out that so called renewable energy is not renewable after all. It’s being sold to us as the solution to our energy needs by an industry that, in my opinion, is no different than any other energy industry. Stop buying the bullshit and start asking difficult questions. Solar, wind, hydro and biomass are only temporary solutions.

I get a kick out of the response I usually get when I bring this up during discussions. Everyone just stares at me for a few seconds and then the conversation continues on as if I had said nothing (its called denial).

And don’t think I support nuclear either. If we go down that path we would quickly run out of uranium and be stuck with all the waste for thousands of years.

Sooner or later we will have to just get used to having less; less of everything.

Ronnie Wright
World Change Cafe

-----------------------------------

The myth of renewable energy

By Dawn Stover | 22 November 2011

"Clean." "Green." What do those words mean? When President Obama talks about "clean energy," some people think of "clean coal" and low-carbon nuclear power, while others envision shiny solar panels and wind turbines. And when politicians tout "green jobs," they might just as easily be talking about employment at General Motors as at Greenpeace. "Clean" and "green" are wide open to interpretation and misappropriation; that's why they're so often mentioned in quotation marks. Not so for renewable energy, however.

Somehow, people across the entire enviro-political spectrum seem to have reached a tacit, near-unanimous agreement about what renewable means: It's an energy category that includes solar, wind, water, biomass, and geothermal power. As the US Energy Department explains it to kids: "Renewable energy comes from things that won't run out -- wind, water, sunlight, plants, and more. These are things we can reuse over and over again. … Non-renewable energy comes from things that will run out one day -- oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium."

Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed -- not simply harvested or farmed. You need non-renewable resources:

• Solar power. While sunlight is renewable -- for at least another four billion years -- photovoltaic panels are not. Nor is desert groundwater, used in steam turbines at some solar-thermal installations. Even after being redesigned to use air-cooled condensers that will reduce its water consumption by 90 percent, California's Blythe Solar Power Project, which will be the world's largest when it opens in 2013, will require an estimated 600 acre-feet of groundwater annually for washing mirrors, replenishing feedwater, and cooling auxiliary equipment.

• Geothermal power. These projects also depend on groundwater -- replenished by rain, yes, but not as quickly as it boils off in turbines. At the world's largest geothermal power plant, the Geysers in California, for example, production peaked in the late 1980s and then the project literally began running out of steam.

• Wind power. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the 5,700 turbines installed in the United States in 2009 required approximately 36,000 miles of steel rebar and 1.7 million cubic yards of concrete (enough to pave a four-foot-wide, 7,630-mile-long sidewalk). The gearbox of a two-megawatt wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium -- rare earth metals that are rare because they're found in scattered deposits, rather than in concentrated ores, and are difficult to extract.

• Biomass. In developed countries, biomass is envisioned as a win-win way to produce energy while thinning wildfire-prone forests or anchoring soil with perennial switchgrass plantings. But expanding energy crops will mean less land for food production, recreation, and wildlife habitat. In many parts of the world where biomass is already used extensively to heat homes and cook meals, this renewable energy is responsible for severe deforestation and air pollution.

• Hydropower. Using currents, waves, and tidal energy to produce electricity is still experimental, but hydroelectric power from dams is a proved technology. It already supplies about 16 percent of the world's electricity, far more than all other renewable sources combined. Maybe that's why some states with renewable portfolio standards don't count hydropower as a renewable energy source; it's so common now, it just doesn't fit the category formerly known as "alternative" energy. Still, that's not to say that hydropower is more renewable than solar or wind power. The amount of concrete and steel in a wind-tower foundation is nothing compared with Grand Coulee or Three Gorges, and dams have an unfortunate habit of hoarding sediment and making fish, well, non-renewable.

All of these technologies also require electricity transmission from rural areas to population centers. Wilderness is not renewable once roads and power-line corridors fragment it. And while proponents would have you believe that a renewable energy project churns out free electricity forever, the life expectancy of a solar panel or wind turbine is actually shorter than that of a conventional power plant. Even dams are typically designed to last only about 50 years. So what, exactly, makes renewable energy different from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power?

Renewable technologies are often less damaging to the climate and create fewer toxic wastes than conventional energy sources. But meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That's a heckuva lot of neodymium.

Unfortunately, "renewable energy" is a meaningless term with no established standards. Like an emperor parading around without clothes, it gets a free pass, because nobody dares to confront an inconvenient truth: None of our current energy technologies are truly renewable, at least not in the way they are currently being deployed. We haven't discovered any form of energy that is completely clean and recyclable, and the notion that such an energy source can ever be found is a mirage.

The only genuinely sustainable energy scenario is one in which energy demands do not continue to escalate indefinitely. As a recent commentary by Jane C. S. Long in Nature pointed out, meeting ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gases cannot be accomplished with "piecemeal reductions," such as increased use of wind power and biofuels. Long did the math for California and discovered that even if the state replaced or retrofitted every building to very high efficiency standards, ran almost all of its cars on electricity, and doubled its electricity-generation capacity while simultaneously replacing it with emissions-free energy sources, California could only reduce emissions by perhaps 60 percent below 1990 levels -- far less than its 80 percent target. Long says reaching that target "will take new technology." Maybe so, but it will also take a new honesty about the limitations of technology. Notably, Long doesn't mention the biggest obstacle to meeting California's emissions-reduction goal: The state's population is expected to grow from today's 40 million to 60 million by 2050.

There are now seven billion humans on this planet. Until we find a way to reduce our energy consumption and to share Earth's finite resources more equitably among nations and generations, "renewable" energy might as well be called "miscellaneous."

About the author:

Dawn Stover

Stover is a science writer based in the Pacific Northwest and is a contributing editor at the Bulletin. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Conservation, Popular Science, New Scientist, The New York Times, and other publications. One of her articles is included in the 2010 Best American Science and Nature Writing, and another article was recently awarded a special citation by the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.

This article was reposted from The Bulletin.

Interviewing Australia’s Climate Ambassador

2011-12-05T02:06:38.000Z

The climate negotiations currently underway in South Africa are particularly interesting for Australia, as we are attending with a carbon emissions tax in place.

I met with Louise Hand, Australia’s Ambassador at the UN Climate talks in Durban to discuss the position Australia is taking at COP 17. This gave her the opportunity to outline exactly what Australia is willing to put on the conference table, and was a rare chance for our supporters to ask questions of the Australian government and have them answered directly by the chief negotiator.

Watch the video to find out what Louise had to say about Australia at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa.

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, Southa Africa as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project.

Coastal ecosystems suffer 100 fold decrease in capacity to store carbon mitigating climate change

2011-12-04T12:56:42.000Z

The carbon sink capacity of urbanized river estuary and coastal environments to mitigate climate change has reduced by 100 fold according to scientists from the University of Technology Sydney. The Scientists used core samples from Botany Bay in Sydney to reconstruct the sedimentation changes in the past 6000 years, highlighting the changes in the ecology. The plant samples in the sedimentation changed as rapid industrialisation occurred around Botany Bay during the 1950s.

"We have effectively gone back in time and monitored carbon capture and storage by coastal ecosystems, finding a 100-fold weakening in the ability of coastal ecosystems to sequester carbon since the time of European settlement. This severely hampered the ability of nature to reset the planet's thermostat." said Dr. Peter Macreadie, University of Technology, Sydney Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

The scientific analysis suggests a rapid reduction in seagrass and increase in microalgae occurrred during industrialisation of Botany Bay. The findings are critical because plants such as seagrass have a relatively large carbon sink capacity, which plays a critical role in mitigating climate change.

Radiocarbon dating was used to examine a chronology for the sedimentation cores. Changes in plant and algae composition over time were then determined according to the change in the isotopic ratio of the organic matter in the sediment.

The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology on 23 November 2011 as Paleoreconstruction of estuarine sediments reveal human-induced weakening of coastal carbon sinks. It was authored by Peter I. Macreadie, Katie Allen, Brendan P. Kelaher, Peter J. Ralph, and Charles G. Skilbeck.

Dr Peter Macreadie was a 2011 peoples choice finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, for his work on the carbon storage capacity of seagrasses.

"The research that we've got from seagrass systems indicates that they're really good at capturing and storing carbon. Unlike terrestrial systems, which often only capture and store carbon for a decade or so, the seagrass systems can store the carbon for thousands of years. And Australia has more seagrass than anywhere else in the world." said Macreadie on the Eureka Prize award website.

“Seagrasses, together with saltmarshes and mangroves, are estimated to capture and store up to 70 per cent of the carbon in the marine realm”, says Macreadie in an August 2011 report on the UTS website. “That’s five times more than tropical rainforests! And while forests typically bind carbon for only a decade or so, the seagrasses have the ability store carbon for thousands of years.”

The study paper abstract in Global Change Biologyconcludes with this statement:

Analysis of stable isotopic ratios of 12C/13C showed that the relative contribution of seagrass and C3 terrestrial plants (mangroves, saltmarsh) to detritus declined around the time of rapid industrial expansion (~1950s), coinciding with an increase in the contribution of microalgal sources. We conclude that the relative contribution of microalgae to detritus has increased within Botany Bay, and that this shift is the sign of increased industrialization and concomitant eutrophication. Given the lower carbon burial efficiencies of microalgae (~0.1%) relative to seagrasses and C3 terrestrial plants (up to 10%), such changes represent a substantial weakening of the carbon sink potential of Botany Bay – this occurrence is likely to be common to human-impacted estuaries, and has consequences for the role these systems play in helping to mitigate climate change.

The scientists argue that Greenhouse gas abatement schemes such as the Australian carbon farming initiative should be extended to provide funding for reversing the degredation of river estuary and coastal environments to improve their carbon sink effectiveness.

"Unfortunately, this outcome is common to urbanized estuaries throughout the world, therefore the study adds further support for the inclusion of Blue Carbon habitats (seagrasses, saltmarshes, and mangroves) in greenhouse gas abatement schemes," concluded Dr. Peter Macreadie.

Our coastal ecosystems play an important role as carbon sinks, fish nurseries, and for protection against storm surges and coastal erosion. Seagrass, saltmarsh and mangrove environments need preserving to maintain ecosystem resilience with increasing temperatures and sea level rise caused by global warming.

As sea levels rise it will be important to allow coastal marshes and ecosystems to advance inland to maintain biodiversity and their capacity to sequester carbon. But often human infrastructure - roads and buildings - may prevent their natural migration. They may need our help to survive according to a PRBO Conservation Science study of California coastal ecosystems which detailed that Marin's critical marshes could face extinction as sea level rises. The study found that 93 percent of San Francisco Bay's tidal marsh could be lost in the next century with 5.4 feet of sea-level rise, combined with low sediment levels. The researchers recommended protecting areas from development or that moving roads or buildings may be necessary.

Sources:

Eureka Alert media Release, 29 November 2011 - Industrialization weakens important carbon sink
Global Change Biology, 23 November 2011 - Paleoreconstruction of estuarine sediments reveal human-induced weakening of coastal carbon sinks (Abstract) DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02582.x
Sea Level Rise Foundation repost from Marin Independent Journal, November 25, 2011 - Marin's critical marshes could face extinction as sea level rises
Image - The Coorong (own collection)

Green Climate Fund: An important tool to tackle climate change

2011-12-05T02:22:14.000Z

“A camel is a horse made by committee and the Green Climate Fund needs to come out of the blocks like a race horse and start helping poor people”.

This was the comment from Singapore in the opening negotiation session on the Green Climate Fund late Thursday at the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa. Singapore was speaking against the request from Saudi Arabia and some Latin American countries to send the text on the fund to a committee for further discussion. Singapore wants to see the fund up and running by 2012.

At last year’s UN Climate Summit Cancun, Mexico last year, the world agreed to create and finance the Green Climate Fundto the tune of $100bn per year by 2020 to help poor people in developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change and develop in less polluting ways. At Cancun, a Transitional Committee was set-up to design the fund and present a proposal at Durban.

After four meetings, most nations had come to agreement on how the fund would work, where the money would go and who would oversee it. Significant comprises were made by many, including countries that are most vulnerable to climate change who wanted increased volumes of finance.

At the session yesterday, Saudi Arabia was joined by Nigeria and some Latin American countries in raising concerns with the proposal. The South African Presidency of the UN Climate Summit is now undertaking informal consultations to fine tune the text and find a way to take it forward.

The challenges of dealing with our changing climate are enormous. Getting the Green Climate Fund up, running and helping poor people deal with climate change is an important outcome that needs to be secured at Durban.

In this the second week of the summity, Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet arrives in town. As one of the key players in discussions around climate finance at Cancun, he can play an influential role in these negotiations. Australia can exercise some middle power diplomacy and as member of the Umbrella group, a key negotiating block that includes the USA, help ensure the Green Climate Fund gets out of the blocks.

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit (November 28 – December 9) as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project.

Things are heating up on day 4 of the UN Climate Summit

2011-12-02T05:01:48.000Z

With key discussions around the Green Climate Fund, set-up to provide life saving assistance to poor countries, and the future of Kyoto Protocol starting to sizzle. What's more, I just addressed the talks on behalf of the Climate Action Network in a session on what the legal form of a future global climate change agreement could look like.

And tomorrow I’m taking your questions to Australia’s lead negotiator, Louise Hand when we talk about Australia’s role in tackling climate change.

Watch my latest video from Durban.

Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, Southa Africa as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project (www.oxfam.org.au/climate-trackers)

You can become a UN Climate Tracker here (www.oxfam.org.au/climate-trackers)

Shocking: Rule changes to ease Australia's carbon task

2011-12-01T01:24:22.000Z

Australia has decided to become the world’s leader in climate fraud. It implements a carbon tax that won’t reduce Australia’s carbon emissions while misleading its citizens into believing that it will with claims that it will be reduced by 5% of 2000 levels by the year 2020. This is not true; Australia’s emissions will rise considerably but Australia will be paying some other country to not emit emissions on our behalf.

Now Australia wants to take it a step further and make claims that by not cutting down forest we are reducing our emissions. These forest should not be cut down in the first place.

We have a very serious crisis on our hands and these corrupt politicians are doing nothing to stop it. The lives of millions and possibly billions are at risk.

I am beginning to feel that the only hope we have to leave our children with a livable planet is through a Deep Green Resistance Movement.

Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can't fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. To save this planet, we may need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Deep Green Resistance evaluates strategic options for resistance, from nonviolence to guerrilla warfare, and the conditions required for those options to be successful. It provides an exploration of organizational structures, recruitment, security, and target selection for both aboveground and underground action. Deep Green Resistance also discusses a culture of resistance and the crucial support role that it can play.

Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet—and win.

To understand why this may be necessary watch this video. To learn more about how visit this website and buy the book.

Having learned the art of guerrilla warfare, while assigned to a Special Forces Unit for several years at the United States Army’s Jungle Warfare School, I can say that the methods covered in this book, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, would be very effective in organizing both the aboveground and underground segments of the movement. This book was obviously well researched by its authors.

Ronnie Wright

World Change Cafe

------------------------------------------------

Rule changes to ease Australia's carbon task

BY ROSSLYN BEEBY, SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT REPORTER

01 Dec, 2011 04:00 AM

Australia will reap millions in carbon permit sales and easily meet half its 5 per cent greenhouse reduction target if allowed to claim cuts to land clearing and native forest logging under new global carbon accounting rules, a new report says.

Australian National University climate law expert Andrew Macintosh said the new rules, being discussed at this week's global climate summit in South Africa, would generate ''a significant windfall'' for the Gillard Government.

Under new rules almost certain to be adopted, Australia can claim credits for cutting its deforestation emissions. This in turn will slash the number of overseas carbon offset permits Australia would need to buy to meet a commitment to cut 737 million tonnes of carbon by 2020 under the Kyoto climate change treaty.

Mr Macintosh said Australia had been expected to be ''a large importer of permits, but this will no longer be the case'' if allowed to claim cuts to previously high levels of land clearing in Queensland and NSW, as well as a market-driven decline in native timber harvesting. The federal government will be able to generate more revenue by selling carbon permits, and potentially earn ''ten of millions, potentially billions'' as a result.

''Even if harvesting rates of Australia's native forests stay at current levels, we will generate at least 12 million tonnes of carbon offsets a year, with a total of 96 million tonnes by 2020,'' he said.

''What these figures show is Australia cannot claim it faces a massive task to cut emissions by 5 per cent. We will already be half-way there once these new accounting rules kick in.''

The ANU research paper coincides with publication of an analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and global energy consulting firm Ecofys, tracking the emission reduction targets and actions of all countries attending the global climate summit in Durban.

The report rates Australia's 5 per cent target as ''inadequate'', but says recent carbon pricing legislation is ''a step in the right direction''.

Despite its new carbon pollution reduction laws, Australia failed to make the report's top 10 list of countries leading the world in climate change initiatives.

At the top of the list was the Maldives, the only nation to be given ''role model status'' because of its pledge to become climate-neutral by 2020.

The tiny island nation is followed by Bhutan, Costa Rica, Japan, Norway, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Brazil, Chile and Iceland.

Australian Greens deputy leader Senator Christine Milne said the Gillard Government needed to ''ditch [its] 5 per cent target'' and commit to a 24 to 40 per cent cut by 2020.

Reposted from The Canberra Times.

Farhana Yamin, expert on all things legal, tells us what needs to happen at COP17

2011-12-01T06:08:40.000Z

Farhana Yamin, the Climate Change Portfolio Manager for The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, sat down with me to discuss legal issues inside the Durban climate talks.

Tuvalu plight must be heard by UNFCC

2011-11-29T18:21:13.000Z

This article was originally published on ABC's The Drum.

By Reverand Tafue Lusama, General Secretary of the Tuvalu Christian church and community leader, Tuvalu.

When I was a young boy, growing up on the island of Funafuti, Tuvalu, my father would take me out fishing.

We would stay close to shore. There would be such an abundance of marine life that in one and a half hours, we'd come back with more than enough fish to feed our family. We would share extra fish with our community. Climate change has changed all this.

Tuvalu is an island nation made up of nine small island atolls in the central Pacific. Our way of life, culture and traditions have served us for thousands of years.

We are half a world away from the UN Climate Change Negotiations in Durban, but our fate is intertwined with the outcome of this South African meeting.

We have always had only two seasons: the wet season, which runs from October to March every year, and the dry season, from April to September.

These two seasons dictate what to do and when to do them. Our traditional skills to plant and to fish depend mostly on the pattern of the weather.

In recent years, we've noticed a lot of changes that are making it impossible for us to live a life free from anxiety and worry. In fact, on Tuvalu, there is now an atmosphere of panic and uncertainty.

Our main protein supply is fish. Our sea has always been our refrigerator. We would go out to take whatever is necessary for the day.

Our shores used to be filled with colourful corals and an abundance of all kinds of fish. About 20 years ago, we noticed the corals were starting to lose their colour.

Now, 80 per cent of our corals have been bleached, due to the increase of the ocean temperatures and acidification from additional carbon dioxide. Corals, as we all know, are houses for fish, and bleaching of corals leads to the disappearance of our fish stocks, as they swim further out into the ocean, or simply die.

Fishing has therefore become a very expensive exercise to the ordinary Tuvaluan. Whereas before, we could venture just off shore, now we need a boat, and petrol. Those who have these things may not catch enough fish to cover the expense of the trip out to sea. Many of us now have to buy fish. This is just one way that climate change has made our lives more expensive.

The disappearance of these corals also is the loss of our first line of defence against any storm and wave surges. Corals break down the strength of wave surges before they hit the shores. With the disappearance of this line of defence, the shores are laid bare to the ocean's assault.

Land is life to us. Our people are Indigenous communities who survive from their surroundings - the sea and the land. Whatever little land we have is considered very valuable, and is regarded as life passed on from father to son. Rising sea levels and increasingly intense storm surges have claimed a lot of land by poisoning it with salt.

In Tuvalu, if your land has gradually been eroded by the sea, you are literally looking at your life being eaten away. It tells you that you won't be able to give life to your children and your grandchildren.

Soon there will be no more land for the people to depend on. Where will we go?

Our weather is more and more unpredictable. In the middle of our dry season we will unexpectedly be hit by a storm, and in the middle of our wet season, a long drought will occur.

The recent extraordinary drought led to the Tuvaluan Government declaring a state of emergency. On the main island of Funafuti, households were rationed to 20 litres of water a day.

Australia and New Zealand responded by delivering water to the country.

All our crops of bananas, vegetables, and pulaka died, and we had to rely on imported food to survive. When the heavy rains finally came, there was nothing left for them to water. We will have to replant.

Compounding these problems are our increased rates of diseases such as cholera and dengue fever. These diseases, under control in past years, have resurfaced due to hotter temperatures, and now are becoming resistant to treatment.

Our one hospital and clinics across the islands, are overwhelmed with the number of sick people.

This is the reality for Tuvaluans - the consequences of a changing climate we did nothing to cause.

We are trying to adapt to our changed circumstances - by building strong sea walls, installing water tanks and planting mangroves to try to halt coastal erosion - but we do not have enough resources.

The longer rich countries delay releasing funds to help countries like Tuvalu to adapt to climate change, the more expensive it will be.

We are told that Australia will contribute to finance to help us adapt to climate change, but that it will be taken out of the aid budget.

I echo the concerns of development organisations like Oxfam, that argue that we need new financial commitments on the table from governments, rather than taking from a pot of money already pledged to assist us in our development - money we could use to educate our children or provide better health facilities for our families.

I am part of the Tuvaluan delegation for the UN Climate Change Negotiations because one of the things that keeps me going is the ability to be heard by the international community.

I want to make sure the challenges of ordinary Tuvaluans are heard, and that life in Tuvalu is recognised as just as valuable as anywhere else in the world.

Reverend Tafue Lusama, General Secretary of the Tuvalu Christian church and community leader, Tuvalu. And part of the Tuvaluan delegation to the UNFCCC negotiations in Durban (28 November 28 – December 9).

Durban Climate Talks: Solving climate change can not be separated from the struggle to alleviate poverty

2011-11-29T07:35:54.000Z

This article was first published on Crikey here

“Solving climate change can not be separated from the struggle to alleviate poverty.”

This was the message on the opening day of the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa.

In his opening address, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa highlighted how the Pacific island nation of Kiribati is set to become the first nation forced to relocate due to climate change. He also talked about the vulnerability of many African nations to climate change, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, where they are currently facing the biggest drought of the 21st century.

With these key themes shaping the start of the talks, there is a sense of urgency and hope amongst the thousands of environmentalists, activists and young people attending the UN Climate Summit. Hope, that our countries’ negotiators and environment ministers will be able to deliver solutions to assist the world’s poor in tackling climate change.

Poor people in developing countries are being hit first and worst by changing weather patterns. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlights the link between extreme weather and global warming. Whilst we can’t yet say that any particular flood, bushfire or cyclone was caused purely by climate change, the IPCC report does show that increases and intensification of some extreme weather events are likely to occur in the future as a result of climate change.

The IPCC report also showed that between 1970-2008, more than 95% of natural-disaster-related deaths occurred in developing countries.

Personally, I’m hopeful that Australia, the highest per-capita polluter in the OECD and a middle power in international diplomacy, can heed these messages and play an important role at Durban.

This includes ensuring that the Green Climate Fund, devised to help developing countries, is up and running by 2012. Australia’s negotiators also need to deliver on promises to fill the fund and support calls for new ways to raise funds such as a global levy on shipping emissions and a financial transactions tax (FTT). A FTT or Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax of about 0.05% on transactions like stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivatives which could raise money to fight climate change and alleviate poverty.

I also hope that rich countries including Australia can keep the Kyoto Protocol alive and increase their emissions cuts to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to protect the most vulnerable countries.

In the opening address speaking on behalf of the Umbrella group of countries, Australia’s Ambassador for Climate Change, Louise Hand quoted the recent International Energy Authority report which outlines that the world is currently slipping off the path to meet the below 2 degree target set in Copenhagen two years ago.

Australia is currently planning on cutting emissions by at least 5% by 2020 on 2000 levels. The IPCC recommends developed countries reduce emissions by between 25%-40% by 2020 on 1990 levels.

The passing of the Clean Energy Future legislation last month is a good first step for Australia in acting on climate change. Over the next two weeks, I hope that my government will take these next steps in tackling climate change and in doing so, help global efforts to tackle poverty.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with Australia’s Ambassador, Louise Hand so please send your questions in.

I'm also blogging on our sister site, Adopt-a-Negotiator (www.adoptanegotiator.org) and will be tracking the UN Climate Talks in Durban (November 28th - December 9th)

Australia and COP17 - why should we give a damn?

2011-11-29T14:23:28.000Z

Avid readers of the Daily Telegraph might be lured into thinking that the fourty-and-something-strong Australian delegation to the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (aka COP17), which has just started yesterday, were going to be spending their next two weeks in Durban, South Africa, sipping pina coladas rooibos teas and lounging on the beach, as opposed to gruelling 15-16 hour days shuttling back and forth between their hotel and the conference centre, doing their very best to hold together - and if they're lucky, progress - talks between 193 countries, all with different histories, interests and strategies. For some, this means being deliberately - and unashamedly - obstructionist. International negotiations may not be everyone's cup of tea, but a walk in the park they certainly are not.

None of this is intended to glorify the role of Australia's negotiators, nor those of any other country; nor is it intended to suggest that the sky would fall down if, for whatever reason, the "African COP" (as it is otherwise known) did not deliver on its already miserly expectations (more on this later). But easy as it may be to denigrate Australia's - and the world's fledgling attempts to deal with the wickedly difficult problem that is climate change, it would be equally unwise to underestimate the critical role that Australia currently plays in shaping a global solution, and brokering an agreement that can be acceptable to everyone in the room, ranging from the biggest elephants (the United States and China) to the smallest mice. To use a well-worn analogy, this is one big ark we're all on, and we're going to have to find a way to work together to find our way to dry land.

Like Noah's Ark, there's no escaping a global solution.

Source: http://mynews.mumbleabout.com/2011/07/noah's-ark-discovered/

Now, it is true that ambitions for Durban have been scaled back, and after the turmoils of Copenhagen, who can blame them? Recent media reports have suggested that negotiators have put off international agreement until at least 2015, and perhaps as far back as 2018 or 2020. As pessimistic as that may appear, it sounds about right. Even if a new legally binding treaty is concluded in 2015, as a recent Australia-Norway submission proposes, it will take at least a couple of years to be ratified by the requisite number of countries before entering into force. But that does not mean that nothing is being done in the meantime, or that whatever is being done is a supreme waste of time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will be an effective global response to climate change. (It took 47 years for the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) to turn into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), probably the most comparable recent international undertaking in terms of scale and ambition, and even then it was another 8 years before China became a member.)

But Durban can, like Cancun last year, continue to put into place the building blocks of a future international regime; one that, it is hoped, can be negotiated within the UNFCCC. Concrete steps can be taken forward on operational elements such as finance, technology and adaptation, all of which are crucial pieces in the puzzle to help countries reduce emissions and adapt to the current and future impacts of climate change. These will need to be balanced by progess on mitigation efforts and transparency, to clarify what each country is doing to reduce or limit emissions and build trust that effective results are being achieved, as well as to build a framework for countries to increase their ambition over time.

On this latter point, a key element for Australia, particularly in light of the passing of the Clean Energy Future plan (and with it a fully-functional emissions trading scheme with international linking by July 2015), will be to bring us closer to formally recognising importance of carbon markets in driving emissions reductions at least cost and mitigation ambition ever higher. To take up the ark analogy once more, the UNFCCC is the hull, countries are the oarsmen, mitigation, finance and technology are the oars, transparency is the helmsman and his quadrant, and adaptation is, well, the lifeboat.

Many have argued that agreement will never be reached in the UNFCCC at a level of ambition (both in terms of mitigation effort and legal bindingness). Some propose to move climate change to a smaller forum, say the Major Economies' Forum (MEF) or the G20, where the world's most important countries can gather and hammer out an agreement without those annoying attention-seekers trying to get their two cents' in. Others have argued quite simply that trying to reach political agreement first without having won the economic argument is like putting the cart before the already-flogged-to-death-horse.

Those of the first persuasion forget that, in international negotiations, the whole is almost never bigger than the sum of its parts. As a consequence, just because a negotiation with twenty-something of your peers is technically less complicated than with a-hundred-and-ninety-something, this does not mean that the results you get will be necessarily any better. Indeed, it is the big fish like the US, China, India and Brazil which have displayed the strongest opposition to legally binding mitigation commitments in line with what the science demands. On the contrary, it is the smallest, most powerless and vulnerable countries in the face of climate change that have made repeated calls for early and ambitious action.

As for the second view, it ignores the complex, interdependent nexus between political and economic decisions, meaning that without a sense of political commitment to supporting action on climate change (of which the status of the international negotiations is an important signal - look no further than Copenhagen), economic actors will not make the necessary decisions to follow the political lead (just witness the results of the crisis in political leadership over the European debt troubles). Fundamentally, an international agreement under the UNFCCC will be the keystone of the global effort to tackle climate change, and as its name suggests, it may well be the last piece of the puzzle that fits into place, but without it the rest will come tumbling down.

So what of Australia's role in all of this?

First of all, Australia has a keen interest in seeing the negotiations progress, as it is clearly in its national interest to see the necessary actions taken to keep global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius or lower. As the world's 16th biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and one of the highest per capita, Australia therefore has both a duty and an interest in contributing its fair share to the global response.

Australia: part of the problem, part of the solution.

Source: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/international/global-action-facts-and-fiction/australia-problem-solution

Furthermore, as one of the middle powers in the world and in the negotiations, Australia has a key role to play in proposing middle-ground solutions that can attract wide support amongst countries across the different negotiating groups, and eventually brokering the final agreement to balance all the competing interests. Quite significantly, as Hugh White has recently pointed out, Australia stands between the two great powers in the world in what has been termed the Asian (or perhaps Asia-Pacific) Century. Getting the US and China to agree on anything, let alone something as significant as climate change, would be no mean feat, and definitely a challenge worthy of its diplomatic corps.

But the most pressing challenge for Durban will be to rescue the talks from impasse and possible collapse on the oh-so-thorny issue of the future of the Kyoto Protocol. Much ink has already been spilt on this matter, including by yours truly on this very same blog at a very similar juncture at last year's COP. The chances of a legally binding second commitment period are close to zero, even with the European Union's ongoing tergiversations on this point, but it may be possible to salvage something from that agreement, most notably the infrastructure around accounting rules and international carbon markets. Scant consolation, but little is better than nothing.

Of course, that is unlikely to do it for the Daily Telegraph, which will no doubt report yet another failure, our battle-weary troops public servant fat cats coming home yet again empty-handed with nothing more than a handful of second-degree tan lines and safari tour photos to show for it.

Then again, as anyone with any experience of international negotiations would know, you just can't please everyone.

So frankly, it isn't worth trying to.

Hungry for climate action: climate conference begins in Durban

2011-11-28T16:15:40.000Z

The United Nations have unpacked the bunting and draped the decorations around Durban, South Africa, for the next round of climate negotiations, COP17. Leaders, policy experts, delegates, caravanites, photo exhibitions, puppets, the world’s media and all manner of colorful characters have arrived to get their teeth into securing progress in the fight against climate change.

Oxfam kicked off our efforts with a dinner party in the sea to provide a stark illustration of the effects that extreme weather will have on our already creaking food system. Poor people already spend a big proportion of their incomes on food and this will increase if crops fail due to an unpredictable climate.

We’re bringing messages of support from across the world, demanding that leaders act on climate change. As things stand, almost 1 billion people are going hungry, and this is set to increase.

A lot can be achieved over the next two weeks. Firstly, rich countries must start to fill the climate fund that was agreed last year in Cancun. They need to start raising the $100 billion that is needed per year to help developing countries adapt to the effects of rising temperatures. In these tough economic times leaders need to look at options like a tax on global shipping emissions – which account for the same carbon output as Germany. Or a tiny Financial Transactions Tax (akaRobin Hood Tax) to raise the money that they’ve said is needed. We’re also looking for progress on extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, ensuring that countries stick to, move to the top end of their target range and go further with the emissions cuts that have already been agreed.

Although the Summit starts tomorrow, people are already spreading the message and ramping up the pressure. The Trans-African Caravan of Hope has arrived in town with over a million signatures of support. Oxfam launched our photo exhibition, Enough to Eat by local NGO Women on Farms, highlighting the challenges that women food producers face. Today in Durban formerArchbishop Desmond Tutu led an interfaith rally where over 200,000 calls for action where delivered on an arc. People around the world are calling on leaders to make the decisions necessary to tackle climate change.

If they need some inspiration then they should head a few kilometers outside of Durban. There, they can visit the former home of Mahatma Ghandi, where he spent 21 years developing and promoting his non-racial and non-violent ideals. They can also stand on the spot where Nelson Mandela cast his vote in South Africa’s first democratic elections. Great things have been achieved in Durban! As Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Follow COP17 through Twitter and Facebook

Photo credit: Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam

Tracking the Climate Negotiations in South Africa

2011-11-25T01:30:00.000Z

In a few days time, the important UN Climate Summit starts in Durban, South Africa. It is here, that governments from around the world will meet to negotiate solutions to deal with our changing climate. A climate that continues to have a devastating impact on men and women in poor countries across the world. At Durban, our climate tracker, Clancy will be shining a light on the role of the Australian government and giving you the chance to have your say, ask questions and send your own special "To Do List" for the Australian government.

Watch Clancy’s video explaining more about this year’s UN Climate Summit above.

Clancy Moore is blogging from this year’s UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa (November 28^th - December 9^th) as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project

Climate Change a hot issue for Pacific Island Nations as Durban talks approach

2011-11-25T23:03:22.000Z

A major new report on climate change in the Pacific Ocean region reports that the region is getter hotter, sea levels are rising, rainfall is changing and equatorial winds have weakened. While cyclone may tend to decrease slightly in the future, cyclone intensity is likely to be greater.

The report launched today - Climate change in the Pacific, scientific assessment and new research - contains 530 pages in 2 volumes with over 100 authors. The research was led by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with strong input from 15 National Meteorological Services, Geoscience Australia, and from universities in the region. The report includes observations and climate projections for 15 partner countries involved : Cook Islands, East Timor, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Dr Scott Power, Senior research scientist from Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), outlined the primary findings in a media conference on Frday November 25 hosted by the Australian Science Media centre. He reported:

The Pacific region is getting hotter
Sea levels are rising
Rainfall is changing
Equatorial winds have weakened
Further warming and sea level rise in response to human forced greenhouse gas emissions seem inevitable

According to Dr Power, long term trends we have seen are accompanied by a great deal of naturally occurring variability linked to major cyclical weather patterns like the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. But the natural variability alone can't explain past climate and will not wholly determine future climate trends.

An important conclusion of the report is that the magnitude of human forced changes can be reduced if global greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

According to the observed changes CO2 concentrations are now higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.

Humans are primarily responsible for this increase.
Research over the past century clearly shows that higher greenhouse gas concentrations warm the planet.
All Pacific island stations have warmed over the past 50 years, most in the range 0.4 degrees to -1.0 degrees C. The regional warming observed over the Pacific matches the warming trend observed on a global basis.
Global sea-level has risen by 1.7mm/yr since 1900 and twice this rate since 1993. Rise in the Pacific since 1993 is much larger than this in the west, much less in the east.
The top 200m of the ocean has warmed
The Pacific Ocean has become more acidic
No significant trends in tropical cyclones (though records for Pacific are short)

Kevin Hennessy, Principal research scientist from the CSIRO, explained that researchers looked at 24 global climate models and found 18 useful for looking at regional scenarios in three 20 year periods with three emission scenarios. The projections found that:

2030: 0.5 to 1.0oC warmer, regardless of the emissions scenario
2055: 1.0 to 1.5oC warmer with regional differences depending on the emissions scenario
2090: the warming is around 1.5 to 2.0oC for B1 (low emissions); 2.0 to 2.5oC for A1B (medium emissions); 2.5 to 3.0oC for A2 (high emissions)
Large increases in the frequency of extremely hot days and warm nights
Increases in annual mean rainfall over most of the region, especially along the equator, but small decreases during "dry season" (May-Oct) in some countries
Tropical cyclone numbers are likely to decline in the Pacific Ocean over the 21st century
Many simulations with fine resolution models (downscaling) show an increase in the proportion of the most severe cyclones

Kevin Hennessy explained on ABC radio: "It is very difficult to almost have a competition as to who is the most vulnerable. Each are vulnerable in different ways and it is very difficult to get a standard measure or metric that can compare them on equal terms. I think it is sufficient to say that all the western tropical Pacific countries are exposed to projected changes and extreme temperatures and extreme rainfall, ocean acidification and sea level rise. Some of the low lying coral atolls are especially exposed to sea level rise and storm tides and most of the countries that we've look at are exposed to changes in tropical cyclones except those that are right along the equator. And many of the mountainous countries in the region are particularly exposed to land slides."

For Sea-level rise in the region is likely to be similar to the global average. o By 2090 sea level rise is likely to be 17-46 cm (B1 scenario), 20-58 cm (for A1B scenario), and 21-60 cm (for A2 scenario). The study noted that Improved understanding of ice sheet dynamics is needed to improve projections of sea level rise. (see Also Sea Level rise and Australia)

The recent IPPC paper on Extreme weather and Climate change - Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) - particularly mentioned sea level rise as an important risk factor for small island nations:

"It is very likely that mean sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high water levels in the future. There is high confidence that locations currently experiencing adverse impacts such as coastal erosion and inundation will continue to do so in the future due to increasing sea levels, all other contributing factors being equal. The very likely contribution of mean sea level rise to increased extreme coastal high water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states."

Many of the Island nations are dependent on the health of reef ecosystems for food and tourism. Reef ecosystems are likely to be compounded by other stressors including coral bleaching, storm damage and fishing pressure.

The oceans provide a giant carbon sink absorbing huge quantities of CO2. However absorption of CO2 causes ocean acidification and a decrease in aragonite saturation. Aragonite values less than 3.5 result in stress for coral - they cannot keep building their coral structures. Values of less than 3.5 will be reached by 2050 in much of the Pacific, and will continue to decline.

The Pacific Climate Change Science Program has set up an interactive website showing data and projections for each Pacific Island nation or region.

The full report will be presented at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations to take place for 2 weeks in Durban South Africa from late November 2011. Individual report chapters and country summaries can be downloaded as PDF files.

Two years ago at the Copenhagen climate talks Tuvalu made a heart wrenching stand and plea for action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and setting a 1.5 degree limit on the temperature increase to prevent the innundation and ultimate disappearance of small island nations like Tuvalu from rising sea levels caused by global warming.

I first started talking and blogging about the impact on climate change and rising seas on small island states in 2005 - Climate Change and Development Issues for Island States.

Will anything change at Durban?

Food is Life in a Changing Climate

2011-11-21T04:03:04.000Z

Growing up with two younger sisters and two older brothers, meal times in my family were a hive of activity. Almost daily, we would fight it out over a solitary Anzac biscuit, the prized prawn at a family bbq or the last scoop of home-brand vanilla ice cream on a hot summer’s day. As a middle class family of seven, we never went hungry.

Today, one in seven people on our planet are going to bed hungry every night. That’s more than a billion people.

In Africa, where this year’s UN Climate Change Negotiations are taking place, many people, especially women, rely on being able to grow their own food to survive. But the changing weather patterns are having a devastating impact on their crops.

Globally, climate change is affecting food production in two main ways.

Firstly, more frequent and intense extreme weather events have the potential to wipe out whole crop yields. The IPCC report ‘Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation’ released over the weekend highlights the link between extreme weather and global warming. Whilst we can never say that a particular flood, bushfire or cyclone was caused by purely by climate change, the IPCC report does show that increases and intensification of extreme weather are likely to occur in the future as a result of climate change.

Secondly, changes in rainfall patterns and increasing temperatures are making it harder for people to know when to sow, grow and cultivate crops. Research shows that the production of corn in South Africa could plummet by up to 35% in 20 years.

In East Africa, around 13 million people are already facing desperate food shortages following the worst drought in 60 years. Rains have failed for successive seasons, and families across large parts of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are struggling to find enough to eat or drink. Cattle and other livestock have died in their hundreds of thousands, and food prices have rocketed.

The price of food in Africa, already at all time highs is set to rise if climate change isn’t addressed. In September 2010, a jump in the price of bread and other goods sparked three days of protests on the streets of Mozambique’s capital Maputo.

At this year’s UN Climate Change Negotiations in Durban, wealthy countries including Australia need to ensure progress is made in order to support poor countries avoid the worst impacts of climate change. As the recent International Energy Authority report highlights, the world is currently slipping off the path to meet the below 2 degree target set at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen two years ago. This means wealthy developed countries must take action to reduce carbon emissions to levels that are based on science.

The world also needs to make further progress on how to assist poor people, particularly food producers, deal with the impacts of climate change through the Green Climate Fund.

At Durban, I will be shining a torch on the role of the Australian Government and reporting back via videos, blogs and social media on what’s taking place, who’s saying what and what needs to happen.

You can stay up to date and become a UN Climate Tracker and help influence the climate negotiations from your computer.

Clancy Moore is blogging from this year’s UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa (November 28^th - December 9^th) as part of Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker project

DOUBLE EXPOSURE: Pacific Climate Forum@UTS

2011-11-18T05:55:27.000Z

Interested in learning more about the Pacific Islands? Under thirtyish? Curious about the latest on how climate change is impacting the low-lying islands of the Pacific? If the answer to these questions is yes, then please join the Pacific Calling Partnership, at their third Pacific Climate forum, entitled DOUBLE EXPOSURE to learn more.

When: Tuesday, November the 22nd from 6pm-9pm
Where: University of Technology in Sydney. Level 2, Building 10, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo. Simply follow the signs.

The forum will take a look at the connections and interactions between climate change and globalisation, two 21st-century processes that are currently reshaping and transforming our world. Director of the Edmund Rice Centre and advocate for social justice, Philip Glendenning, a guest speaker at the forum, recently traveled to the island of Kiribati where he saw first-hand how ‘double exposure’ impacts the islands. Mr Glendenning said today that, “Climate change, unsustainable development and dependence on non-renewable resources within Australia and other developed nations, is putting the Pacific Islands at risk of losing not only their land, but also their culture. Looking at climate change and globalization together gives us some really useful clues for effective action ”

The forum will be compered by Maria Tiimon from Kiribati whose story is featured in the new film the hungry tide. Other guest speakers include, Dr. Natasha Kuruppu, senior research consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures and Mr. Marvin Alfaro, Fulbright scholarship recipient studying climate change and its effects on the Southern Ocean in Australia. The forum will also include free finger food, discussions, opportunities to network, a creative project, as well as the chance to learn about the up-and-coming U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban.

Enquiries Emma or Maria 02 87624200 or mariat@erc.org.au

The Pacific Calling Partnership is looking forward to seeing you there!

Tracking Climate Action with Australia’s Political Leaders

2011-11-15T00:56:17.000Z

The heavily debated carbon price legislation has just passed the Senate – an historic first step for Australia in tackling climate change - and so it was fortuitous timing for our meeting with Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage, Greg Hunt.

I, flanked by two fellow Climate Trackers, Jeff and Alana, arrived at the office of the Federal Member for Flinders in the sleepy seaside town of Hastings. Mr. Hunt greeted us in a crisp white shirt and asked us to sit down on the couch for a chat. He might have assumed we were there to discuss the significance of the carbon price legislation; instead we wanted to hear his thoughts on the upcoming UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa.

He was largely pessimistic about any real outcomes from Durban. He felt that a “big bang” global agreement is “its own worst enemy”. Instead he discussed a “G4” negotiation between the US, China, India and the EU. He also suggested the way forward being a series of sectoral agreements to reduce emissions - for example in aviation, agriculture, forestry, and shipping – leading to a global agreement post-2015.

I took this opportunity to discuss the idea of global levy on shipping emissions which would reduce emissions and raise much needed money to fill the UN Climate Fund to help poor people in developing countries deal with climate change. Oxfam’s research shows that a small levy of $25 per ton of emissions would raise $10 billion per year for the climate fund and have a significant reduction on emissions. Currently, the sector accounts for 3% of global emissions.

Personally, I relished the opportunity to talk with one of Australia’s most senior political leaders about the future of the UN climate talks, climate finance and Australia’s role.

Alana who has been tracking the climate talks since Copenhagen said “It was good to see that while we may disagree on the best path to get there, we ultimately share the same objective - securing a global agreement on climate change.”

Jeff who has recently returned from a 12 month volunteer program in Samoa said “I enjoyed meeting Greg Hunt and discussing how climate change has impacted on people’s food and water supplies in the Pacific including the islands of Savaii and Upolu in Samoa.”

Later this week, I and some other UN Climate Trackers will meet with the Australian Greens to hear their thoughts on the UN climate talks and Australia’s role. At Durban, I will also be meeting Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet and will take your questions and a special to-do list for the Government.

The International Energy Agency report released last week shows how much more rich countries, like Australia, need to do to reduce emissions and tackle climate change. Passing the carbon price through parliament is a good first step. However, I believe we need to keep pressuring our political leaders to act on climate change.

You can become a UN Climate Tracker and help influence the climate talks from your computer by receiving regular blogs, video updates and taking part in our on-line actions.

You can also join our core group of trackers and receive exclusive briefings during the UN Climate Summit and be given the tools to campaign for climate action. To join this exciting group contact Oxfam’s UN Climate Tracker, Clancy Moore at clancym@oxfam.org.au or 03 9289 9332

You can also follow me on twitter and our facebook page and use social media to call on Australia to do its fair share in tackling climate change.

I am also blogging for the international ‘Adopt A Negotiator’ project, check out my blogs and the blogs from other trackers (link: www.adoptanegotiator.org)

IEA: Bold change of direction needed globally to meet climate commitments

2011-11-09T23:50:32.000Z

A Bold change of direction is needed to limit global average temperature rise to a 2 degree limit as per the commitment made in Copenhagen in 2009 and re-affirmed in Cancun in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook for 2011.

The IEA released it's World Energy outlook on November 9, 2011. According to the report if voluntary comitments made in the Copenhagen accord are met, then cumulative CO2 emissions over the next 25 years amount to three-quarters of the total from the past 110 years, leading to a long-term average temperature rise of 3.5°C. China's per-capita emissions are forecast to match the OECD average in 2035. If these voluntary commitments are not implemented, we are on an even more dangerous track, to an increase of 6°C by 2100.

"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the "lock-in" of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," said Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist.

"Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. "Governments need to introduce stronger measures to drive investment in efficient and low-carbon technologies. The Fukushima nuclear accident, the turmoil in parts of the Middle East and North Africa and a sharp rebound in energy demand in 2010 which pushed CO2 emissions to a record high, highlight the urgency and the scale of the challenge."

The announcement comes in the same week as the Australian Senate passed carbon pricing and clean energy legislation that will impose a $23 per tonne on carbon emissions from the top 500 corporate polluters. The Fixed price is indexed, and will transform into a carbon trading scheme in 2015. The legislation includes substantial support for development of renewable technologies, as well as a comprehensive compensation package for the great majority of citizens for the expected rise in electricity prices. The measures aim to reduce Australian carbon emissions by 5 percent by 2020 from 2000 levels. The Australian Carbon pricing policy is a small start to tackling climate change. (read 4 Degrees or more? - Science into Policy: Securing a Clean Energy Future for Australia - speech by Greg Combet)

During 2010 global subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $409 billion. Renewables are predicted to increase from 13% of the mix today to 18% in 2035; the growth in renewables is underpinned by subsidies that rise from $64 billion in 2010 to $250 billion in 2035, although the IEA points out that support cannot be taken for granted due to fiscal austerity measures and the continuing economic crisis.

The IEA says there is considerable momentum to cut fossil-fuel subsidies. Although the intent of subsidies is to make energy use accessible to the poor, "the reality is that only a small proportion of fossil-fuel subsidies go to poor households." IEA recommends that "subsidy reform programmes need to be carefully designed as low-income households are likely to be disproportionately affected by their removal."

Biofuels are expected to increase from about 1 mb/d today to 4.4 mb/d in 2035. But there are major problems with sourcing biofuels from plantations that result from the destruction of tropical rainforests and peat swamps which result in substantial carbon emissions. Indeed, a new study from the University of Leicester on greenhouse gas emissions from oil palm plantations suggests European biofuels are as carbon intensive as petrol.

The World Energy Outlook presents a 450 Scenario - limiting CO2 in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (PPM) - which traces an energy path consistent with meeting the globally agreed goal of limiting the temperature rise to 2°C. Existing and proposed power stations already lock in 80 per cent of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the 450 Scenario. Without further action in the next five years, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035.

The report warns that delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

From the Factsheet - What will tackling climate change mean for the energy sector?:

"The 2°C goal can only be achieved with vigorous implementation of current commitments in the period to 2020 and much stronger action thereafter. According to climate experts, in order to have a reasonable chance of achieving the goal, the concentration of GHGs would need to be stabilised at a level no higher than 450 ppm CO2‑equivalent. Accordingly, the 450 Scenario describes how the energy sector could evolve in order to achieve this objective. It assumes implementation of the measures to realise the more ambitious end of target ranges announced under the Accord as well as more rapid implementation of the removal of fossil‑fuel subsidies agreed by the G‑20 than assumed in the New Policies Scenario. Emissions reach a peak of 32 Gt just before 2020 and then slide to 22 Gt by 2035 in the 450 Scenario."

The cost of getting on track to meet the climate goal for 2030 has risen by about $1 trillion compared with the estimated cost in last year’s Outlook. This is because much stronger efforts, costing considerably more, will be needed after 2020. In the 450 Scenario in this year’s Outlook, the additional spending on low‑carbon energy technologies (business investment and consumer spending) amounts to nearly $18 trillion (in year- 2009 dollars) more than in the Current Policies Scenario, in which no new policies are assumed, in the period 2010‑2035. It is around $13.5 trillion more than in the New Policies Scenario.

The timidity of current commitments has undoubtedly made it less likely that the 2°C goal will be achieved. Reaching that goal would require a phenomenal policy push by governments worldwide: carbon intensity — the amount of CO2 emitted per dollar of GDP — would have to fall at twice the rate of 1990‑2008 in 2008-2020 and four times faster in 2020-2035. The technology exists today to enable such a change, but such a rate of technological transformation would be unprecedented. These commitments must be interpreted in the strongest way possible with much stronger commitments adopted and acted upon after 2020, if not before.

Sources:

International Energy Agency, November 9, 2011 - WORLD ENERGY OUTLOOK 2010 FACTSHEET - What will tackling climate change mean for the energy sector
International Energy Agency Media Release, November 9, 2011 - The world is locking itself into an unsustainable energy future which would have far-reaching consequences, IEA warns in its latest World Energy Outlook
Eurekalert - media release 4 November, 2011 - New study suggests EU biofuels are as carbon intensive as petrol

Eating Animals by Jonathon Safran Foer

2011-11-10T02:46:32.000Z

I recently had the opportunity to see Jonathon Safran Foer talk at the Dangerous Minds festival. I have since begun reading his book "Eating Animals" and would recommend it to anyone questioning vegetarianism - whether you already are, are thinking to become or are simply conscious of the amount of meat being consumed in wealthy societies. This book takes a refreshing look at meat eating in modern society arguing it shouldn't necessarily be an all or nothing debate, but rather that we should be more honest with ourselves about our eating habits and in turn the effect we are having on our environments.

Another great initaitive I recently came across is "Meatless Mondays". There are a couple of great short clips about Meatless Mondays found at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpziz8cJMaI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv8u9VOgkiQ

Meatless Mondays clips state that if all Americas didn't eat meat just one day of the week it would be like taking half a million cars off the road and would prevent 1.4 billion animals from being factory farmed. The short you tube clips and corresponding website http://www.humanesociety.org/forms/meatfree_recipe_subscriptions.html are a great way to get motivated and informed about eating less meat. There is also an Australian humane society page - check it out at http://www.hsi.org.au/

The message from both sources is the same - you don't have to become a strict vegetarian and commit to a life without meat to make a positive change.

Like many others, Jonathan Safran Foer spent his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood—facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf—his casual questioning took on an urgency. This quest ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong.
This book is what he found. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir, and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many stories we use to justify our eating habits—folklore and pop culture, family traditions and national myth, apparent facts and inherent fictions—and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.
Marked by Foer’s moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the humor and style that made his previous books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Foer’s latest tour de force informs and delights, challenging us to explore what is too often conveniently brushed aside. A celebration and a reckoning, Eating Animals is a story about the stories we’ve told—and the stories we now need to tell.

Get Active
If you've already read Eating Animals, you know that factory farming - which accounts for virtually all meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants - is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans do to the environment. Changing the way our food is produced begins with us; with the choices we make every day. Here are 10 things you can do to make a difference:

Read Eating Animals and ask your friends, family, and coworkers to do the same.
http://www.eatinganimals.com/site/book/
In the words of Farm Forward: Eat conscientiously-as few animals as possible, ideally none. More than 99 percent of animal products are produced under factory farm conditions.http://www.farmforward.com/farming-forward/food-choices
Support pending state and federal legislation to improve standards for farms. Learn more about legislation aimed to improve conditions for farm animals [http://www.hsus.org/farm/camp/legislation.html] and legislation that addresses the effects of farms on our environment [http://www.waterkeeper.org/ht/d/Contents/cids/275,1383/pid/201] and communities [http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/community/].
Tell Congress that you want to support alternatives to factory farming. Every year, agribusiness receives billions of dollars in subsidies and grants that make factory farming possible.http://fdn.actionkit.com/cms/sign/Factory_Farm_Bailout/#1
Have a conversation with the people who produce your food. If you aren't allowed to see where your food comes from, you probably shouldn't be eating it. http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home
Stay informed about current issues in the fight for more humane and sustainable farming. Sign up to receive newsletters from groups like Farm Forward http://www.farmforward.com and the Humane Society of the United States http://hsus.org/You can also follow many of your favorite groups on Twitter.
Spread the word! Talk about Eating Animals with your friends, family and colleagues, and encourage them to read up on and these important issues themselves.
Support organizations working for change. Check out Jonathan's favorite organizations.
- Farm Forward - www.farmforward.com
- Farm Sanctuary - www.farmsanctuary.org
- Food and Water Watch - www.foodandwaterwatch.org
- Food Democracy Now! - www.fooddemocracynow.org
- Humane Society of the United States - www.hsus.org - there is also humane society Australia http://www.hsi.org.au/ - look for their 'humane choice' food labelling of true free range products
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - www.peta.org
- Sierra Club - www.sierraclub.org
- Sustainable Table - www.sustainabletable.org
- Waterkeeper Alliance - www.waterkeeperalliance.org
Buy products from the most progressive farmers in America (suppliers such as Feather and Bone here in Sydney). Sustainable Table's Eat Well Guide http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Homeprovides an extensive list of small farmers. We also encourage you to support Frank Reese, whose Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch is featured in Eating Animals. http://www.reeseturkeys.com/
Organize your friends and family to place large orders from progressive farmers. For small farmers like Frank Reese, shipping is by far the most expensive aspect of bringing their products to your table. By placing large orders together with your friends, family and colleagues, anyone can afford to eat the most humane and sustainable products in America.

Photo Competition: ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

2011-11-07T22:29:22.000Z

In an effort to raise awareness on the importance of adapting to the adverse effects of climate change, the Adaptation Fund invites you to demonstrate what adaptation means to you.

The best three images will be selected by a jury composed of: Cristina Algarra, IPADE Foundation Pedro Armestre, Photographer Marco Gordillo, Manos Unidas NGO, Sofía Moro, Photographer.

All entries must be received by November 22, 2011 to secretariat@adaptation-fund.org.

The winners of the contest will be announced at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa at the Adaptation Fund Side Event.

If you are interested read the rules of competition.