Climate crunch and Copenhagen: the fierce urgency of now

[From Larvatus Prodeo]

Back in 2003 James Hansen was saying that we had about 10 years to get ourselves organised to tackle global warming and climate change. You ignore him at your peril.

For three days this May some of the best minds on the planet attended a curious meeting at Cambridge University, the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, to contribute their ideas and authority to some of the world’s most pressing challenges, in this case the climate crisis and its implications.

The choice of topic is not surprising. This was the second such meeting. The first was two years earlier at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. So the list of participants included one Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of said Potsdam Institute, Malte Meinshausen from the same place, Rachendra Pachauri, the IPCC head honcho, Lords Gidden and Stern, and a fella called Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy for the USA.

The message from our intellectual elders is captured in the phrase:

The fierce urgency of now…

[Read more here.]

Time to say ‘I do’ on marriage equality.

My favourite person of the day

Evangeline gets it.

‘To avoid runaway climate change and share pollution equally, Australia must become a zero net emitter by 2020.’

From David Spratt:

Assume the present population, and divide it into the total carbon budget and you get a budget per person to 2050. [This is based in the assumption that each citizen of the planet has an equal right to the budget, a proposition disputed by many in the developing world who rightly point to the historic carbon debt on which the developed world built their economies].

Nevertheless, by taking the per capita allocation to 2050 and comparing it to a nation’s current annual emissions per person, you get a clear picture of national responsibilities, and that’s what Schellnhuber did in a single chart:

Australia, like the USA, is top of the pops for per capita emissions.

If we maintain that rate, our carbon budget to 2050 runs out in five years. Five years!! Or put in another way, as the chart illustrates, Australia and the USA would need to be at zero emissions by 2020. Just follow the black line.

Not 25% by 2020, but 100% by 2020 for Australia. That’s the science, unadorned. God forbid the politics.

And meanwhile, start adjusting your expectations for Copenhagen.

Bob Brown to open Green New Deal conference in Melbourne this weekend

The Green New Deal
Conference
We are living in extraordinary times. Our choice is to move consciously towards a new sustainable and satisfying future or be overwhelmed by multiple converging global crises. Business as usual—a return to “trend growth”—is not a viable option. The idea of a “green new deal” is shorthand for taking deliberate, long-sighted, transformative steps to tackle these crises, not piecemeal, but in an integrated and holistic fashion.

And come and hear a great lecture from Bob Brown 6pm on Friday 23 October:
Public Lecture venue
The Friday evening public lecture will be at The Spot, building 110 of the University of Melbourne; on the corner of Berkeley St and Pelham St.

The Greens: getting results in Melbourne

Check it out: $10m to make Melbourne green! Even with only one Councillor on Melbourne City Council, and 3 out of 9 in Yarra, The Greens get results. Imagine what we could do with more folks in State and Federal parliaments …

[From the Melbourne Leader]

An agreement to fail

I love this cartoon from New Matilda. As The Age has said, Rudd’s so-called leadership on climate change is rapidly diminishing. From the left of the political spectrum, Slavoj Zizek makes a similar point:

The financial meltdown has made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In the fight against Aids, hunger, lack of water or global warming, we may recognise the urgency of the problem, but there is always time to reflect, to postpone decisions. The main conclusion of the meeting of world leaders in Bali to talk about climate change, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue the talks. But with the financial meltdown, the urgency was unconditional; a sum beyond imagination was immediately found. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children . . . All that can wait a bit, but ‘Save the banks!’ is an unconditional imperative which demands and gets immediate action. The panic was absolute. A transnational and non-partisan unity was immediately established, all grudges among world leaders momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe.

Why can’t we extend to the planet the same support we have to the banks?

And the reality is, the kind of deal Rudd  is now trying to cobble together is the worst of all kinds of deals. Leftists like Zizek usually have little in common with British nobility, but this respected part of the aristocracy make good points:

Sir David King, former scientific adviser to the UK government, said it would be better to postpone negotiations to next year rather than risk a weak deal. “I would rather see a 12-month moratorium on the agreement so that you can have a better agreement, with President Obama freed up from the Congress and Senate processes.”

His stance was echoed by Lord Stern, author of a landmark review of the economics of climate change, who told the FT he was still optimistic that an agreement could be reached but: “I would much prefer a framework that had to be filled in [next year] than something agreed with weak targets that would be difficult to unravel” (from the Financial Times)

What’s better: a failure to agree or an agreement to fail?

More jobs in clean energy than coal

According to a new report from Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council:

A switch from coal to renewable electricity generation will not just avoid 10 billion tons of CO_2 emissions, but will create 2.7 million more jobs by 2030 than if we continue business as usual. Conversely, the global coal industry – which currently supports about 4.7 million employees worldwide – is likely to contract by more than 1.4 million jobs by 2030, due to rationalisation measures in existing coal mines.

Click on the  picture on the left to go to the ‘Energy [r]evolution’ page and download a copy of the report.

The next 5 years under Labor

Two reports today present a sobering picture of life under coal-fired Labor over the next 5 years and reinforce why we need Greens in the houses of government.

First, David Spratt writes that Australia’s ‘carbon budget’ from now until 2050 runs out in just over 5 years. If we want to have a fair shot at stopping runaway climate change, and we want to distribute responsibility fairly, then at the rate we’re going we’ll use up 40 years’ worth of ‘carbon allowance’ in the next 5 years.

Second, according to a new Wood Mackenzie report:

Over the next five years Australia’s total coal production is set to bulge by 30 per cent to a record 450 million tonnes a year, compared with 350 million tonnes produced now.

And Labor’s view about all this?

A spokesman for the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, said cuts to emissions would encourage clean energy technology rather than lower coal demand.

All this on top of Treasury modelling that confirms Labor’s CPRS won’t cut emissions until 2035.

Which countries are most vulnerable to climate change?

From Reuters business wire:

First-Ever Climate Change Vulnerability Index Identifies the Most
and Least Vulnerable Countries and Companies

The newly released Maplecroft Climate Change Risk Report includes
the first-ever climate change vulnerability index and a set of
best-to-worst rankings for more than 168 countries worldwide. It
identifies the world's highest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters as well
as those countries most and least vulnerable to climate change. The
report finds many of the world's biggest CO2 emitters are also the
countries least vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Despite
being the biggest emitter, the United States is the 12th least
vulnerable to climate change. And Canada is "the best haven from
climate change". At the same time about 75% of the 20 nations most
vulnerable to climate change are found in Africa, the continent with
the lowest CO2 emissions.

And who has now leapfrogged to the top of the per-capita emissions list? Australia. On Labor’s watch.

Read David Spratt’s latest op-ed piece for an up to date analysis of Labor’s climate vandalism.