25 January 2018, Climate Home News, France, Germany, US among 166 countries late on UN climate dues. our out of five countries missed the agreed date for contributions to UN Climate Change, including some who claim to be leaders on climate change. Four out of five countries are late in making their contributions to the UN climate change body’s operating budget. Donald Trump has actively sought to block US support for international climate efforts, although this was challenged by the senate. The majority of member states support cooperation in principle but have been slow to pay. China, Brazil, France and Germany are among those failing to honour the agreed timeline for payments, a UN Climate Change statement on Thursday revealed. The body’s executive secretary Patricia Espinosa focused on the positive, thanking 31 countries who paid their 2018 share by the due date of 1 January. “I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to the parties that have contributed in a timely way,” she said. “The impacts of climate change are accelerating around the world, and it is essential that the response of the international community also accelerates and is scaled up so that countries can green their economies and build resilience to the inevitable impacts of climate change.” Punctual contributors included the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. While Espinosa did not explicitly call them out, the statement implies 166 out of 197 parties to the UN climate talks are behind on their payments. Read More here
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23 January 2018, Climate Home News, Davos 2018: climate change rhetoric and reality. he movers and shakers at the World Economic Forum warn climate change is a major threat to prosperity, but what are they doing about it? Climate change is a hot topic in the snows of Davos this year. The world leaders, business tycoons and celebrities jetting in to the annual World Economic Forum (Wef) have identified the biggest threats to prosperity as environmental. A global risk survey places extreme weather events, natural disasters and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation in the alarm zone for both likelihood and impact. So you can expect the topic to come up in speeches and panel sessions. India’s Narendra Modi is the headliner, to be followed by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. All have something to boast about when it comes to climate protection. All have weaknesses they would rather you didn’t mention. Then comes Donald Trump, who rejects the whole climate agenda, but may not have as much power as he thinks to reverse it. Read More here
19 January 2018, World Resource Institute. Global Environmental Risks Are Keeping Davos Leaders Awake at Night. As movers and shakers — reportedly including President Trump – fire up their private jets to travel to Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, the Forum issued its annual Global Risks Report. For more than a decade, the report has been surveying the WEF’s network of business, government and civil society leaders, asking them to rank global risks based on both their impact and likelihood. In short, the report asks what keeps the global elite awake at night. The answer? Mounting environmental threats. 2 Takeaways from the Global Risks Report First, a majority (five of eight) of the risks respondents said were both most impactful and most likely to happen were environmental risks. These were extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, man-made environmental disasters, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and natural disasters. A sixth, water crises, is labeled by the WEF as a societal risk, but it can also be considered an environmental risk. In other words, even while geopolitical and cyber risks are increasing and domestic politics in many countries are in turmoil, the leading decision-makers in business and government remain most concerned about the cluster of risks connected to the environment—many of them related to climate change. Read More here
15 January 2018, Climate News Network, District heating warms cities without fossil fuels. Heating homes and offices without adding to the dangers of climate change is a major challenge for many cities, but re-imagined district heating is now offering an answer. A district heating scheme is a network of insulated pipes used to deliver heat, in the form of hot water or steam, from where it is generated to wherever it is to be used. As a way of providing warmth for thousands of homes, typically in multi-storey apartment buildings, district heating has a long history in eastern Europe and Russia. But the hot water it distributes typically comes from power stations burning coal or gas, which means more greenhouse gas emissions. Tapping into other forms of producing hot water, from renewable energy, bio-gas or capturing waste heat from industrial production, supermarkets or IT systems, provides alternative sources of large scale heating without adding to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Sweden has pioneered the switch from fossil fuels to other ways of heating water. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency says the country has gone from almost exclusively relying on fossil fuels to being 90% powered by renewable and recycled heat in 2017. Read More here