Monthly Archives: February 2016

PLEA Network

1 February 2016, Renew Economy, Australia emissions surging to record high despite Paris climate deal. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are posed to surge to a record high after 2020, and may not reach a peak before 2030 – despite the government’s claim it has been reducing emissions and its support for the Paris climate deal. A new analysis from industry analyst Reputex – a division of global ratings agency Standard & Poor’s – confirms what we already know: despite the Coalition’s rhetoric, emissions in Australia actually rose 1.3 per cent in 2014/15, for the first time since the Coalition was last in power a decade earlier.

reputex past

But the Reputex survey also notes that Australia’s emissions growth is now among the highest in the world, with the government’s own forecast showing emissions will grow 6 per cent to 2020, despite its “Direct Action” plan and the billions spent in the Emissions Reduction Fund. Ironically, the emissions growth would have been faster, but for the fact that Australia’s economic growth has been downgraded sharply from the optimistic assumptions of successive Labor and Coalition governments. Read More here

PLEA Network

1 February 2016, WorldWatch Institute, Carbon Trading a hidden threat to soil carbon sequestration? If something has a price tag, people consider its perceived monetary value. But what if, by measuring the value of our planet’s natural systems using dollar amounts alone, we are minimizing their true worth? And what if our focus on solving global problems with money is taking all of us, especially poorer countries, down the wrong road? One global solution to the world’s climate challenges—soil carbon sequestration—may soon face the “threat of the price tag.” A French climate proposal known as the 4 Per 1000 initiative—aimed at increasing the global stock of agricultural soil carbon by 0.4 percent per year on average—attracted worldwide support and media attention when it was officially launched at the December 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris. The initiative recognizes that good organic agriculture and grazing practices could increase the soil carbon stock and lead to cascading benefits, including improvements in areas such as soil fertility, climate resilience, the nutritional value of foods, and farmers’ livelihoods, all while reversing climate change (see previous Worldwatch blog). But the potential addition of carbon trading—a market-based tool to moderate carbon emissions—into the strategy raises serious concerns.The principles of the 4 Per 1000 initiative will be clarified at a members-only meeting in the first half of 2016, to guide the projects supported by the initiative. As of now, it is unclear whether carbon trading will be part of the design, nor is it known how heavily this initiative will be branded as “a sink for current emissions,” rather than as a true means to reverse already-excessive past emissions in combination with emission-reduction strategies. However, the enthusiasm for carbon pricing at the Paris talks, together with the fact that the initiative’s goal of “0.4 percent annual increase of soil carbon stock” was back-calculated from current fossil fuel emissions (rather than based on the actual potential of soil carbon sequestration), raises serious concerns. Read more here