1 March 2016, Jeremy Leggett, Big Oil faces courtroom showdown. ExxonMobil is being investigated by the Attorney’s General of New York and California with a view to criminal charges for securities fraud and racketeering over their stance on climate change. The ramifications are enormous for the course of the global energy transition. The oil and gas giant stands accused of lying to its shareholders for many years. On the one hand it professed that climate change was a green scaremongers’ invention, and paid many millions of dollars to organisations devoted to torpedoing the international climate negotiations that began in 1991. Meanwhile, on the other hand, it suppressed its own research proving the dangers of climate change, yet built assumptions of global-warming-driven sea-level rise into engineering of coastal and offshore infrastructure. In my book The Carbon War I documented much of what its lobbyists did and said in and around the climate negotiations through the 1980s and 1990s. I know the company is guilty of malfeasance. Now that ExxonMobil has finally been dragged into courtrooms, its problems are likely to escalate fast. Legal experts expect other States’ Attorneys General to launch suits. Presidential candidates Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have called for the federal Attorney General to investigate. Class actions by investors will surely not be far behind. Existing investigative journalism makes it almost certain that other oil majors will soon stand accused with Exxon. Ongoing investigations will surely add to their legal woes, since Exxon and Mobil alumni are beginning to blow whistles. On top of this will come the evidence that subpoened internal communications will bring into the open. Read More here
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26 February 2016, Climate News Network, US blocks India’s solar power plan. World trade regulations have been invoked by the US to challenge India’s ambitious programme to expand massively its renewable energy capacity and provide local jobs. India has been told that it cannot go ahead as planned with its ambitious plan for a huge expansion of its renewable energy sector, because it seeks to provide work for Indian people. The case against India was brought by the US. The ruling, by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), says India’s National Solar Mission − which would create local jobs, while bringing electricity to millions of people − must be changed because it includes a domestic content clause requiring part of the solar cells to be produced nationally. What a difference two months make. On 12 December last year, US President Barack Obama praised the Paris Agreement on tackling climate change, just hours after it was finally concluded. “We’ve shown what’s possible when the world stands as one,” he said, adding that the agreement “represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got”. Clear-cut victory The WTO says that its dispute settlement panel “handed the US a clear-cut victory . . . when it found that local content requirements India imposed on private solar power producers in a massive solar project violated trade rules, although the two sides are still discussing a potential settlement to the dispute”. One official of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy told India Climate Dialogue that the ruling might make the country’s solar plan more expensive, and would definitely hit domestic manufacturing and, consequently, the possibility of creating jobs in the sector. Read More here
25 February 2016, DELWP, The Victorian Government is committed to positioning Victoria as a leader in climate change, by mitigating risks, reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. DELWP leads the Victorian Government’s commitment to reinvigorate climate change action within the state, working across state government and with local governments, businesses and the community to develop effective strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help Victorian’s adapt to the effects of climate change. DELWP will partner with Sustainability Victoria, whose new role in helping communities respond to climate change will be a critical contribution to addressing and minimising the effects of climate change on our environment, community and economy. The independent review of the Climate Change Act 2010 is a significant step towards restoring Victoria’s status as a leader and model for other governments in tackling climate change. Additionally, the latest climate change science will be used to identify issues for Victoria and strengthen the state government’s climate change response. Access more details go here
25 February 2016, Climate News Network, Carbon budget is only half as big as thought. Fossil fuel use will have to fall twice as fast as predicted if global warming is to be kept within the 2°C limit agreed internationally as being the point of no return, researchers say. Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted. Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous. Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 billion tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 billion tons. Available levels In effect, that halves the levels of diesel and petrol available for petrol tanks, coal for power stations, and natural gas for central heating and cooking available to humankind before the global average temperature – already 1°C higher than it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution – reaches the notional 2°C mark long agreed internationally as being the point of no return for the planet. In fact, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Paris agreed a target “well below” 2°C, in recognition of ominous projections − one of which was that, at such planetary temperatures, sea levels would rise high enough to submerge several small island states. The Nature Climate Change paper is a restatement of a problem that has been clear for decades. Carbon dioxide proportions in the atmosphere are linked to planetary surface temperatures and, as they rise, so does average temperature. For most of human history, these proportions oscillated around 280 parts per million. Read More here