25 November 2015, Renew Economy, Australia can meet its Kyoto target – but “real emissions” will not fall to -5% by 2020. In line with our earlier update, Environment Minister Greg Hunt will today announce that Australia’s greenhouse gas abatement task to meet its 2020 emissions reduction target has fallen “below zero”, meaning that Australia will meet its 2020 target. While we will officially meet our Kyoto target, Australian emissions will not fall to -5 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. Australian emissions are projected to grow from today (currently -2 per cent on 2000 levels) through to 2020, increasing 6 per cent to be plus 4 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020, well short of the -5 per cent target. Below, we summarise how Australia’s Kyoto target can be met, despite emissions continuing to grow. What is an “abatement task” and how is it derived? Read more here
Monthly Archives: November 2015
25 November 2015, Science Daily, Global growth in carbon dioxide emissions stagnates. After a decade of rapid growth in global carbon dioxide emissions, which increased at an average annual rate of 4%, much smaller increases were registered in 2012 (0.8%), 2013 (1.5%) and 2014 (0.5%). In 2014, when the emissions growth was almost at a standstill, the world’s economy continued to grow by 3%. The trend over the last three years thus sends an encouraging signal on the decoupling of carbon dioxide emissions from global economic growth. However, it is still too early to confirm a positive global trend. For instance India, with its emerging economy and large population, increased its emissions by 7.8% and became the fourth largest emitter globally. Read More here
25 November 2015, New Matilda, Halting Climate Change Means More Than Cutting Carbon. With the Paris climate talks just around the corner a focus on carbon dioxide is not enough. Geoff Russell explains. With yet another in the seemingly infinite sequence of climate summit conferences looming it’s time to take stock of what’s been happening over the past 25 years. But I’ll be taking stock properly, which means not being CO2 centric. Focusing exclusively on CO2 is rather like focusing on protein when thinking about nutrition: it’s simply silly. It’s been seven years since Barry Brook and I wrote an article about the misleading nature of the so-called “carbon dioxide equivalence” factor used to aggregate methane emissions in Greenhouse Inventories. This isn’t a priority claim; many understood the problem before us. Among the first was Kirk Smith of the University of California, Berkeley. Smith is an expert in air quality, among other things, and was the first to measure and understand the impact of indoor cooking smoke on health in India. Globally, it kills people, mainly women and children, by the hundreds of thousands every year. He’s also been tackling the problem in a practical way by spinning off students and companies designing and building cleaner cookers. Smith’s latest work, with main author Manish Desai, calculates a metric called the International Natural Debt (IND) which is a better than average measure who is responsible for our climate woes. Their study uses national emission inventories and greenhouse gas equations to calculate precisely the impact of emissions on radiative forcing (that’s just jargon for warming). In effect, while they don’t include all the components of a full climate model, they do at least account for the full impact of methane on warming. Their estimate, based on the best inventory data is that anthropogenic methane, on its own, contributes about half of our net warming influence on the climate. In technical language methane is about ~850 mW/m2 of the net ~1600 mW/m2 of anthropogenic radiative forcing. That makes methane a big deal. Even more importantly, reductions in methane have an almost immediate cooling impact. Read More here
November 2015, Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience – A concept paper by Post Carbon Institute, Communities across the United States are talking more and more about resilience. They’re spurred by recent natural disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, weather extremes like the harsh Northeast winter of 2014-15, and long-term drought in the West. Many people think of a community’s resilience as its ability to “bounce back” from disruption, and efforts to build resilience often focus on the impacts of climate change. Climate change is indeed an urgent and existential threat, with untold potential to destroy and disrupt countless lives. But it is not the only crisis we face, nor is preparing for disruption the only way to build resilience.[1] Truly robust community resilience should do more. It should engage and benefit all community members, and consider all the challenges the community faces—from rising sea levels to a lack of living wage jobs. And it should be grounded in resilience science, which tells us how complex systems—like human communities—can adapt and persist through changing circumstances. Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience describes how communities can approach the full scope of the 21st century’s challenges equitably and sustainably. The report draws on some of the most compelling recent thinking about resilience from academia, sustainability advocacy, and grassroots activism, as well as Post Carbon Institute’s prior work.[2] It is intended as an accessible resource for local leaders and activists in the United States, and as a contribution to the larger public conversation about resilience in human communities. It provides a conceptual starting point for community resilience that we will build on in future products focused on practical actions and tools. Read Full Report here