fossil energy

A Carbon Law to Protect the Climate

Stephen 1 Must Read, arctic, CANADA, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, developing world, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, News, Pollution and Toxics, Science , , , , , ,

The immediate must-do “no-brainer” actions to be completed by 2020 include the elimination of an estimated 600 billion dollars in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. Credit: Bigstock
$600 billion in annual subsidies to fossil fuel industries must be eliminated by 2020. Credit: Bigstock

 

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 24 2017 (IPS)

The Carbon Law says human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be reduced by half each decade starting in 2020. By following this “law” humanity can achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by mid-century to protect the global climate for current and future generations.

A “carbon law” is a new concept unveiled March 23 in the journal Science. It is part of a decarbonization roadmap that shows how the global economy can rapidly reduce carbon emissions, said co-author Owen Gaffney of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, one of international team of climate experts.

“Coal power plants under construction and proposed in India alone would account for roughly half of the remaining carbon budget.” –Steven Davis

To keep the global temperature rise to well below 2°C, emissions from burning fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) must peak by 2020 at the latest and fall to around zero by 2050. This is what the world’s nations agreed to at the UN’s Paris Agreement in 2015. Global temperatures have already increased 1.1 degrees C.

“After the Paris agreement we began to work on a science-based roadmap to stay well below 2C,” Gaffney told IPS.

The “carbon law” is modelled on Moore’s Law, a prediction that computer processing power doubles every 24 months. Like Moore’s, the carbon law isn’t a scientific or legal law but a projection of what could happen. Gordon Moore’s 1965 prediction ended up becoming the tech industry’s biannual goal.

A “carbon law” approach ensures that the greatest efforts to reduce emissions happen sooner not later, which reduces the risk of blowing the remaining global carbon budget, Gaffney said.

This means global CO2 emissions must peak by 2020 and then be cut in half by 2030. Emissions in 2016 were 38 billion tonnes (Gt), about the same as the previous two years. If emissions peak at 40 Gt by 2020, they need to fall to 20 Gt by 2030 under the carbon law. And then halve again in 2040 and 2050.

“Global emissions have stalled the last three years, but it’s too soon to say if they have peaked due largely to China’s incredible efforts,” he said.

Source: N. CARY/SCIENCE

The Science paper, “A roadmap for rapid decarbonization”, notes that China’s coal use swung from a 3.7 percent increase in 2013 to a 3.7 percent decline in 2015. Although not noted in the paper, China’s wind energy capacity went from 400 megawatts (Mw) in 2004 to an astonishing 145,000 Mw in 2016.

“In the last decade, the share of renewables in the energy sector has doubled every 5.5 years. If doubling continues at this pace fossil fuels will exit the energy sector well before 2050,” says lead author Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

The authors pinpoint the end of coal in 2030-2035 and oil between 2040-2045 according to their “carbon law”. They propose that to remain on this trajectory, all sectors of the economy need decadal carbon roadmaps that follow this rule of thumb.

Elements of these roadmaps include doubling renewables in the energy sector every 5-7 years, ramping up technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and rapidly reducing emissions from agriculture and deforestation.

The immediate must-do “no-brainer” actions to be completed by 2020 include the elimination of an estimated 600 billion dollars in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and a moratorium on investments in coal. Decarbonization plans must be in place for all cities and major corporations in the industrialized world.

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Rapidly growing economies in India, Indonesia and elsewhere should receive help to take a green path to prosperity. They cannot use coal as China did because CO2 emissions are cumulative and there is little room left in the global carbon budget, said Gaffney.

This is an extremely urgent issue. India is already on the brink of taking the dirty carbon path.

“Coal power plants under construction and proposed in India alone would account for roughly half of the remaining carbon budget,” said Steven Davis of the University of California, Irvine about his new study that will be published shortly.

Davis, who was not involved in the carbon law paper, agrees that rapid decarbonization to near-zero emissions is possible. Cost breakthroughs in electrolysis, batteries, carbon capture, alternative processes for cement and steel manufacture and more will be needed, he told IPS.

All of this will require “herculean efforts” from all sectors, including the political realm, where a cost on carbon must soon be in place. Failure to succeed opens the door to decades of climate catastrophe.

“Humanity must embark on a decisive transformation towards complete decarbonization. The ‘Carbon law’ is a powerful strategy and roadmap for ramping down emissions to zero,” said Nebojsa Nakicenovic of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

Oil, Coal and Gas Industry Destroying Our Childrens’ Future

Stephen 1 Must Read, Agriculture/Food, CANADA, Energy, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, Science , , , , , , , , , ,

“moving aerial” of a bike sml

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 4 2013 (IPS)

Around the world, 2012 was the year of extreme weather, when we unequivocally learned that the fossil fuel energy that powers our societies is destroying them. Accepting this reality is the biggest challenge of the brand new year.

Re-engineering our societies and lifestyles to prosper on green alternatives is the penultimate challenge of this decade. There is no more important task for all of us to engage in because climate change affects everything from food to water availability.

A number of scientific analyses have demonstrated we already have the technology to re-engineer our society to thrive on green alternative energy. The newest of these was published Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature. It plainly states that politics is the real barrier, not technology nor cost. (It is far cheaper to act than not.)

Keeping global warming to less than two degrees C is mainly dependent on “when countries will begin to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, according to the study “Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation”.

Climate change has already pushed global temperatures up 0.8 degrees C, with significant consequences. No climate scientist thinks two degrees C will be “safe”. Many countries, especially least-developed countries and small island states, want the global target to be less than 1.5C of heating. Even then large portions of the Arctic and Antarctic will continue to melt raising sea levels, albeit at a slower rate.

Delay in making the shift to non-fossil fuel energy sources will be very costly. Waiting until 2020 to curb global emissions will cost twice as much compared with peaking emissions by 2015, the Nature analysis shows.

Serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means 65 percent of current coal power plants will have to be shut down in the next decade or two, a previous Nature study reported by IPS shows.

US Fossil Emissions now and how much they need to decline

Instead of serious action, global emissions continue to break new records, rising about three percent per year. It appears 2012 will be about 52 gigatonnes (billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalents). This is our annual climate scorecard, the most important number in human history. That number needs to fall to be between 41 and 47 gigatonnes (Gt) by 2020 to have a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees C of warming. Continue reading →

Critics Brand Climate Talks Another Lost Opportunity

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, News , , , , , , , , , , ,

findlay ohio flooding AP

By Stephen Leahy

DOHA, Qatar, Dec 11 2012 (IPS)

Rich countries came to the U.N. climate talks in Doha intent on delaying needed action on climate change for another three years and a still to be hammered out new global treaty.

This delay will be extraordinarily expensive and risky.

Every year that fossil fuel emissions fail to decline adds to the cost and reduces the odds that a global temperature rise can be kept below two degrees C.

“Science says emissions need to peak in 2015,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, as the final plenary of COP 18 concluded last Saturday night, a full day late.

The 195 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) approved a set of documents called “The Doha Climate Gateway” that does not increase emission reductions or guarantee much-needed financial help to poor countries suffering present and future impacts of climate change.

“Doha is a betrayal of people living with impacts now. And it is a sellout of our children and grandchildren’s future,” said Naidoo.

“The fossil fuel industry won,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ director of strategy and policy, who has attended nearly every one of these climate negotiations over the past 18 years.

“The science is clear that four-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground but we continue to burn them like there is no tomorrow,” Meyer said.

“Doha became more of a trade fair…Negotiators protected the interests of corporations and not the needs of people,” he told IPS.

More than 16,000 delegates participated in the two-week conference of the parties (COP) in Doha, Qatar, a country rich in oil and gas in the heart of the Middle East fossil fuel empire.

Meyer, along with representatives from more than 700 civil society organisations, blamed the U.S. for blocking proposals for greater emissions cuts. The U.S. also refused to commit a singly penny to assisting countries hard hit by climate change. U.S. negotiators did acknowledge poor countries were suffering costly damages and losses.

The world has already warmed 0.8 degrees C, altering weather patterns and increasing extreme events which have led to nearly 400,000 deaths and more than 1.2 trillion dollars being lost every year, according a 2011 study.

A delegate from Bangladesh told IPS that climate-related damages cost his country three to four percent of its annual GDP. Climate change, which is also driven by deforestation and land conversion for agriculture, is undercutting development and will push his country’s and other countries’ economies into a steady decline, he said.

To help governments cope, industrialised nations promised to put 100 billion dollars a year into a Green Climate Fund by 2020. To bridge the gap until then, developing nations asked for 60 billion dollars in total by 2015. Britain, Germany and a few other countries promised to contribute six billion dollars.

But the U.S., Canada, Japan and others agreed only to more talks next year.

“The U.S. spends 60 billion dollars on its military marching bands,” said Naidoo.

The only hope is to build a robust grassroots movement to force countries to act in the interest of the public and future generations, he said.

“We have to build a new social movement like (the one) that overcame slavery,” agreed Oxfam International climate change policy advisor Tim Gore.

“We reject what our leaders are doing here. We are more angry, more impassioned to defeat this process,” said Gore.

The COP process is an obstacle because a few big countries can easily block the will of the majority, said Mohamed Aslam, former environment minister and chief negotiator for the Republic of the Maldives.

“The signs of global warming are obvious and we know that the safe limit is to stay below 1.5 C…and yet we are failing to act,” Aslam said in a press conference.

The U.N. spends millions of dollars on these negotiations and they are going nowhere, he said. “We are running out of time. (We) need to take this to another fora,” he said.

What is lacking is a real commitment to reduce global emissions, said Christina Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“What needs to change most is political will,” Figueres told IPS.

In Doha, the U.N. secretary-general announced a world leaders’ summit in 2014 to hammer out emission reduction targets to keep warming below two degrees C. The Doha Climate Gateway confirmed details for a new negotiation track to have a new global climate treaty ready for ratification in 2015 and go into force in 2020.

Under this agreement all countries will likely be obligated to make emission cuts, varying in depth and timing. Without additional cuts before 2020, reductions afterwards will need to be rapid and massive, moving to a zero-fossil fuel emission society in a few decades based on the science.

The Doha agreement includes a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol with the European Union, Australia and a few other countries agreeing to cut fossil fuel emissions between 2013 and 2020. However, they did not set new targets, agreeing instead to a mandatory review of targets in 2014.

The nations involved only represent 12 percent of global emissions, and do not include large developing country emitters like China, India and Brazil. The U.S. has never participated, while Canada and Japan have opted out of the second phase but are supposed to make to make comparable cuts but offered nothing new.

“Rich countries think they can protect themselves from the impacts, leaving the poor with no clear pathway to the future,” said Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid.

“Our leaders have let us down. Civil society will have to lead to get the future we really want,” said Adow.

Original IPS story

Fossil Energy Interests Buy Politicians – and they’re cheap says economist

Stephen 1 Must Read, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Energy, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, News , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

[This interview with economist Robert Repetto (now at Yale) was published two years ago. It is more relevant than ever in showing how fossil fuel money influences politics and prevents real action on climate. — Stephen]

‘What else can you do with coal except burn it? Railways make a lot of money shipping coal’

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 2, 2011 (IPS)

Powerful fossil energy interests are preventing the United States from making the necessary transition to 21st century energy sources, one of the country’s leading environmental economists documents in a just-published book.

Fossil energy interests are spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” lobbying U.S. politicians in Congress and funding groups to confuse the public about the serious risks climate change poses, says Robert Repetto, author of  “America’s Climate Problem: The Way Forward”.

IPS climate and environment correspondent Stephen Leahy spoke with Repetto about his new book.

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: We’re running out of time. The latest science shows that climate change is coming faster and posing greater risks than previously thought. We are at risk of triggering positive feedbacks that will lead to uncontrollable climate change.

Meanwhile, America is locked in a climate-policy stalemate, with very few in the public comprehending the real risks climate change poses. Most don’t understand that climate change is happening now. They don’t link extreme weather events we’ve been experiencing with climate change. As a result they are not demanding that politicians take action.

Q: Why don’t most Americans understand the fact that climate change is already underway and poses serious risks? Continue reading →