9 June 2016, Renew Economy, Victorian government targets net zero emissions by 2050. The Victorian Labor government has pledged to get the state – host to the country’s remaining brown coal generators – to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with the release of a series of five-year interim climate change policies and programs. The yet to be legislated, long-term emissions reduction target comes in response to the recommendations of the 2015 Independent Review of the Climate Change Act 2010, most of which have been accepted by the Andrews government. The supporting policies, released by Premier Daniel Andrews and climate and energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio on Thursday, include a wide-ranging emissions reduction pledge program for the private, government and community sectors. The government said the pledge program – called TAKE2 – would give those businesses and organisations already acting on climate change the opportunity to showcase their efforts and to build on it; while also inspiring others to take action. Participation in the program will also give businesses and organisations a say on the development of a 2020 interim emissions reduction target for the state, which the government plans to have in place by the end of the year. Further to the review’s recommendations, the government has also committed to amend the Climate Change Act (CCA) to require a Victorian Climate Change Strategy every five years, incorporating mitigation and adaptation; require integrated Adaptation Action Plans for key climate exposed sectors; and embed climate mitigation and adaptation as a key consideration in government decision making. Read more here
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8 June 2016, Climate News Network, Puzzle of Antarctica’s long-term ice loss. Analysis of satellite data records reveals that the worrying loss of hundreds of square kilometres of ice along West Antarctica’s coastline has been occurring for decades. Parts of Antarctica are not only losing ice to the ocean, they have been doing so for 40 years. Geoscientists from the University of Edinburgh and a US colleague report in Geophysical Research Letters that they looked at satellite imagery of West Antarctica’s coastline along a 2,000 km stretch and found that the region has lost 1,000 square kilometres of ice in four decades. The surprise is not that melting occurs, but that it has been happening for such a long time. Frazer Christie, a PhD student, and partners analysed data from NASA, the US Geological Survey and the European Space Agency to find that ice has been retreating along almost the entire coast of Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea since satellite records began. Some of the largest changes – where ice has thinned rapidly and retreated several kilometres since 1975 – matched those places where the ice front is deepest. “We knew that ice had been retreating from this region recently, but now, thanks to a wealth of freely available satellite data, we know this has been occurring pervasively along the coastline for almost half a century,” Christie says. Colder water He and his colleagues blame warmer ocean waters, rather than warmer atmosphere.But, paradoxically, a study from the University of Washington in Seattle, US, reports that the waters lapping the continent are not warming substantially − because of a steady upwelling of much colder water from the depths of the Southern Ocean. Read More here
7 June 2016, Washington Post, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: Arctic sea ice hit a stunning new low in May. The 2016 race downward in Arctic sea ice continued in May with a dramatic new record. The average area of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean last month was just 12 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That beats the prior May record (from 2004) by more than half a million square kilometers, and is well over a million square kilometers, or 500,000 square miles, below the average for the month. Another way to put it is this: The Arctic Ocean this May had more than three Californias less sea ice cover than it did during an average May between 1981 and 2010. And it broke the prior record low for May by a region larger than California, although not quite as large as Texas. This matters because 2016 could be marching toward a new record for the lowest amount of ice ever observed on top of the world at the height of melt season — September. The previous record September low was set in 2012. But here’s what the National Snow and Ice Data Center has to say about that: Daily extents in May were also two to four weeks ahead of levels seen in 2012, which had the lowest September extent in the satellite record. The monthly average extent for May 2016 is more than one million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below that observed in May 2012.In other words, for Arctic sea ice, May 2016 was more like June 2012 — the record-breaking year. Going into the truly warm months of the year, then, the ice is in a uniquely weak state. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Mark Serreze, who directs the center. “It’s way below the previous record, very far below it, and we’re something like almost a month ahead of where we were in 2012.” Granted, the NSIDC called the May numbers “tentative” because of problems with the satellites that scientists rely on to observe the Arctic, but added that they are “supported by other data sources.” Read More here
6 June 2016, BIEN, SWITZERLAND: Swiss Vote “No” on Basic Income Referendum. On June 5, 2016, Swiss people voted on a referendum that included a question about implementing a universal basic income. Although the official text for the vote did not specify the level, the campaigners proposed 2,500 Swiss francs for adults and 625 francs for children per month. Credit to Basic Income News Editing team (namely Josh Martin, Jenna van Draanen, Kate McFarland, André Coelho, Karl Widerquist and Tyler Prochazka) and Philippe Van Parijs. The referendum on Unconditional Base Income (UBI), as they call it, has been building since 2013 when the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative, co-initiated by Enno Schmidt, gathered enough signatures (more than 100,000) to successfully trigger their right to have a national referendum on the issue. Although the Swiss Federal Council rejected the initiative in August 2014, the rejection was more of a symbolic suggestion to vote against the basic income than a consequential political action: the Swiss people had already asserted their constitutional right to the referendum. Basic income advocates utilized headline-grabbing tactics to gain publicity for the referendum. Upon submitting the initiative in 2013, basic income supporters dumped 8 million five-rappen coins (one for each Swiss citizen) outside the Federal Palace in Bern. Then, in the final weeks before the vote, members of the Swiss Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income unveiled a poster that broke the poster size world record. While this referendum may have been voted down, the Swiss basic income movement helped spark an international dialogue on how a basic income can help fix issues related to poverty, social policy, and technology, among other topics. This conversation has caught the imaginations of citizens all over the world and has led to commitments from governments or non-profit organizations to establish basic income pilot projects in Finland, the Netherlands, Canada,Uganda, Kenya, India, and in Silicon Valley, as well as public considerations for basic income research in New Zealand, theUnited Kingdom, France, and Namibia. This dialogue is truly global, and media outlets all over the world have begun writing articles and making videos debating the merits and principles for a basic income. Read More here