8 December 216, The Guardian, Why electric cars are only as clean as their power supply. Experts argue whether electric cars are worse for the environment than gas guzzlers once the manufacturing process and batteries are taken into account. Jorge Cruz has just finished his overnight shift stacking shelves at Whole Foods in Los Altos, California, and is waiting at the bus stop outside. Like much of Silicon Valley, there’s a regular flow of Tesla, BMW, Nissan and Google electric cars that cruise past from their nearby headquarters, and Cruz rather likes them. “I really wouldn’t mind having an electric car,” he says, though his first choice is probably a Honda or an Acura. Regardless, for now, he rides the bus. “I need to save up for a car,” he explains. As Cruz waits, a newly purchased Tesla zips by, advertising “ZERO EMISSIONS” on its license plate. Electric cars have never been closer to the mainstream, the market pushed ahead by California subsidies for electric car buyers, and a wide array of new models from established car firms such as Toyota and Chevy. Tesla’s focus on luxury, high-performance vehicles has also broadened their appeal; electric cars are no longer purely an environmental statement, but a tech status symbol too. Yet the “zero emissions” claim grates on some experts, who have continued to argue over whether electric cars are really more environmentally friendly than gas guzzlers, once the manufacturing process for the vehicles and their batteries are taken into account. Read more here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
8 December 2016, Climate Home, Catch 22: when climate change *prevents* migration. Research shows those hit hardest by climate change can’t afford to move, supporting the call for more and better adaptation. Nobody wants to leave home. Even when it gets so hot that your crops fail, or the seasonal flood turns your house into a pond. But for some of the most vulnerable, the option isn’t even there. In Kenya, where about 60 to 80% of the population lives in slums, flooding is a regular menace that disrupts the life of the poor, often making the difference between a small income and an empty plate. Nairobi’s informal settlements cover only 6% of the total residential land area, yet 60% of the 3 million living in the Kenyan capital calls them home. For many slum residents, living in an insecure environment is not a choice and the prospect of climate change worsening the flooding problem fills them with dread. But escaping climate change is not that easy if you are poor. Western leaders, including US president Barack Obama and senior military figures, warn climate change could lead to “mass migration” and a “refugee crisis of unimaginable scale“. If climate change is not addressed urgently, they say, in the near future tens of millions of people will flee from rising sea levels, drought and even conflict exacerbated by harsher environmental conditions. The evidence available to date paints a more complex picture. A recent study examined the trends in six years of migration and weather data from Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal. “Many people would assume that extreme heat would force households to send more migrants out,” said Clark Gray, lead author of the study. “That’s what’s happening in Uganda but not in other countries.” Read More here
7 December 2016, Climate Home, Full circle: 33 hours in Australian climate policy. It took just over a day for the suggestion of a carbon price to be stamped out by right-wing MPs who hold the prime minister in their thrall. If you have ever wondered how Australian climate policy was high jacked by a minority group of government conservatives, Monday and Tuesday are worth a review. For Malcolm Turnbull and his government, this is a very old dance. The name of the jig is carbon pricing, a policy considered politically mundane across much of the world. The World Bank records carbon pricing in 40 national jurisdictions and more than 20 cities, states, and regions. But in Australia the very notion has had party leaders of the left and right prancing and backflipping for years. This week’s rendition was as uptempo and gymnastic as has been performed yet. On Monday, energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg was doing the early morning radio rounds. He was asked to fill in the blanks left by the terms of reference his department had released regarding the government’s scheduled 2017 review of climate policy. Would it include a form of carbon pricing? Not on the whole economy, said Frydenberg: that’s Labor’s thing. But he went on: “The review is explicit about looking at sector-by-sector approaches and given that the electricity sector is about one third of the total emissions across the economy it’s only appropriate to see if we’ve got the best mechanisms in place… A number of organisations have recommended an emissions intensity scheme but again this review still has a long way to go.” Analysis: China prepares for world’s biggest carbon market An emissions intensity scheme would necessitate placing a value on carbon. Frydenberg had opened the door and a whole flock of crazy was about to walk through. Read More here
7 December 2016, Climate Home, UN to extend freeze on climate change geoengineering. Draft documents suggest countries will agree to further ban on large-scale climate techno-fixes, warning risks of damage to biodiversity outweigh potential benefits. Countries should resist the urge to experiment with large scale planetary geoengineering until it’s clear what the consequences of meddling with the oceans or atmosphere may be. That’s the nub of a decision expected to be taken at the UN’s biannual biodiversity summit taking place in Cancun, Mexico this week, emphasising a “precautionary approach” to such projects. With greenhouse gas emissions closing in on levels that could guarantee warming of 1.5C above pre industrial levels and an El Nino-boosted 2016 likely to be the hottest year on record, some scientists are looking to emergency measures. But the UN is sticking to a familiar line: pumping the atmosphere with tiny mirrors to deflect sunlight, boosting the uptake of CO2 in oceans by stimulating plankton growth, or burning wood and pumping the emissions underground could be a bad idea. “We’re concerned that with any initiative regarding the use of geoengineering there needs to be an assessment,” UN biodiversity chief Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias told Climate Home. “These can have unforeseen results and spin-offs. If you capture carbon in the oceans, this is effective through all the food chains.” Even national risk assessments on individual geoengineering projects would still form an “incomplete basis for global regulation” says the latest iteration of the UN draft decision, echoing previous Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) decisions in 2010, 2012 and 2014. “More trans-disciplinary research and sharing of knowledge among appropriate institutions is needed,” it says, citing potential impacts on ecosystems and potential ethical issues. Read More here