11 November 2017, New York Times: Lessons From Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale. The Texas city’s response to a powerful storm says much about polarized visions of the country and diverging attitudes toward cities, race, liberty and science. HOUSTON — The mayhem that Hurricane Harvey unleashed on Houston didn’t only come from the sky. On the ground, it came sweeping in from the Katy Prairie some 30 miles west of downtown. Houston has grown to be as big as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia combined, a giant spread of asphalt smothering many of the floodplains that once shuttled water from the prairies to the sea. When finished, the newest road to ring the city and propel its expansion, called the Grand Parkway, will encircle an area equivalent to all of Rhode Island. For years, the local authorities turned a blind eye to runaway development. Thousands of homes have been built next to, and even inside, the boundaries of the two big reservoirs devised by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s after devastating floods. Back then, Houston was 20 miles downstream, its population 400,000. Today, these reservoirs are smack in the middle of an urban agglomeration of six million. Read More here
Monthly Archives: November 2017
10 November 2017, Corporate Accountability (REPORT): Polluting Paris: How Big Polluters are Undermining Global Climate Policy: Big Polluters like oil, gas, coal, and agricultural transnational corporations (TNCs) are not only the largest emitters; their climate denial, lobbying, and policy interference make these industries one of the primary obstacles to sound climate policy at the local, national, and international levels. This undue influence ensures that our economies continue to pollute at dangerous levels, our media continues to doubt the settled science of climate change,8 9 and that this treaty process continues to fail to respond with the urgency this crisis requires…… This report exposes how the industries most responsible for climate change, especially fossil fuel TNCs, are obstructing real progress to address the climate crisis across key policy areas where urgent progress over the next couple of years will largely determine how habitable our future will be. Within the U.N. climate talks, key negotiating tracks undermined by industry interference include finance, mechanisms for international cooperation, agriculture, technology, and observer participation. But all is not lost. This report highlights what can be done in each of these tracks to protect against corporate capture and implement the solutions already at our fingertips. Access Report here
10 November 2017, Climate Home News: Coal deals ‘very possible’ as US holds industry event at UN climate talks. Ghana and Ukraine are among countries for whom the presence of the US coal industry at UN talks in Bonn is opportunity to strike energy deals. Some countries attending UN climate talks in Bonn hope a Trump administration fossil fuels presentation will provide an opportunity to strike coal technology deals with the US. African diplomats told Climate Home News that talks on technology trades were “very possible” on the fringes of the US event on Monday. The following day, Ukraine is planning to table an initiative to bring energy corporates closer to the UN climate process, which it claims has US backing. The proposal would slot energy multinationals into an “intermediate layer” between the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and national governments. It has been encouraged by US officials and coal firms, its authors say, and will be raised by Ukraine’s environment minister Ostap Semerak on Tuesday. Industry executives and Obama-era climate negotiators say that pushing US coal into the heart of the UN negotiations could offer president Donald Trump political cover to reverse his plans to exit the global climate treaty, should he choose to do so. The White House and US state department co-organised the side meeting, which is titled: “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation”. Trump’s climate advisor George David Banks, who lobbied Trump to keep the US in the Paris deal, will address the event. Vice president Mike Pence’s advisor Francis Brooke will chair it. Holly Krutka, vice president of coal generation and emissions technologies for Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company on earth, will also attend. Read More here
10 November 2017, Climate News Network: Geo-engineering can work – if the world wants it. Geo-engineering can stop the Earth warming, at least in theory, scientists say, but doubts persist over the possible risks. Climate scientists now know that geo-engineering – in principle at least – would halt global warming and keep the world at the temperatures it will reach by 2020. It is simple: inject millions of tons of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere at carefully chosen locations, and keep on doing so for as long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The desired effect: global temperatures will be contained because the pollutants in the upper atmosphere will dim the sun’s light and counteract the greenhouse effect of all the carbon dioxide pumped from power stations, vehicle exhausts, factory chimneys and burning forests. It won’t be the perfect answer. The oceans will go on becoming more acidic, and the skies will become subtly darker. Rainfall patterns could be affected. Repairs to the ozone layer – an invisible shield against dangerous ultraviolet radiation – would be slowed.The volumes of sulphate aerosols that would need to be flown to stratospheric heights and released each year would continue to grow as humans went on burning ever more fossil fuels. The technical and energy demands of such an operation would be colossal. There could be serious geopolitical problems about the impacts and responsibility for such decisions. But, at least in principle, researchers now believe geo-engineering could be made to work. “For decision makers to accurately weigh the pros and cons of geo-engineering against those of human-caused climate change, they need more information,” said Ben Kravitz, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and one of a consortium which has published a succession of five studies in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. “Our goal is to better understand what geo-engineering can do – and what it cannot.” Read More here