4 May 2016, The Guardian, The time has come to turn up the heat on those who are wrecking planet Earth – reefs bleached of life in a matter of days. The moment when drought in India gets deep enough that there are armed guards on dams to prevent the theft of water. The moment when we record the hottest month ever measured on the planet, and then smash that record the next month,and then smash that record the next month? The moment when scientists reassessing the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet have what one calls an ‘OMG moment’ and start talking about massive sea level rise in the next 30 years? Join the Guardian Sustainable Business Aus network for news and features on the social and environmental impact of business, as well as other exclusive benefits. That would be this moment – the moment when 135 children have drowned in Thailand trying to cool off from the worst heatwave on record there. The moment when, in a matter of months, we’ve recorded the highest windspeeds ever measured in the western and southern hemispheres. For years people have patiently and gently tried to nudge us on to a new path for dealing with our climate and energy troubles – we’ve had international conferences and countless symposia and lots and lots and lots of websites. And it’s sort of worked—the world met in Paris last December and announced it would like to hold temperature increases to 1.5C or less. Celebration ensued. But what also ensued was February, when the planet’s temperature first broke through that 1.5C barrier. And as people looked past the rhetoric, they saw that the promises made in Paris would add up to a world 3.5C warmer—an impossible world. The world we’re starting to see take shape around us. So there’s a need to push harder. Read More here n interesting question is, what are you waiting for? Global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced as a civilisation — certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you’ve been waiting for just the right moment. The moment when, oh, marine biologists across the Pacific begin weeping in their scuba masks as they dive on
Tag Archives: coal
28 April 2016, RenewEconomy, Climate policy becomes trench warfare, once again. The release of Labor’s climate policy has led immediately to a resumption of World War I style trench warfare. The opening salvo, the pre-prepared advertisements and admonishments, was blasted off within hours, to be followed by tunnelling under the Labor trenches, minefields and more misery for both major Parties and for the population they are elected to serve. The misery is the suffering from current and future ill health which could be prevented if progress could be made in a bilateral, constructive manner. Labor’s policy has significant health implications because health is closely linked to energy policy and it is in this light that Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) makes comment. Our profession is reminded that WHO regards climate change as the biggest health threat of the present century. Our involvement is therefore a vital professional commitment to the health care of communities and patients. Good energy policy has the ability to provide the co-benefits of reduced air pollution which contributes to death and illness from heart and lung disease in thousands of Australians while at the same time reducing green house emissions which result in climate change and thousands of deaths world wide and many in Australia from increasing storm, flood and fire. Read More here
13 April 2016, Inside Climate News, CO2’s Role in Global Warming Has Been on the Oil Industry’s Radar Since the 1960s. Historical records reveal early industry concern with air pollutants, including smog and CO2, and unwanted regulation. The oil industry’s leading pollution-control consultants advised the American Petroleum Institute in 1968 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels deserved as much concern as the smog and soot that had commanded attention for decades. Carbon dioxide was “the only air pollutant which has been proven to be of global importance to man’s environment on the basis of a long period of scientific investigation,” two scientists from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) told the API. This paper, along with scores of other publications, shows that the risks of climate change were being discussed in the inner circles of the oil industry earlier than previously documented. The records, unearthed from archives by a Washington, D.C. environmental law organization, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), reveal that the carbon dioxide question—an obscure corner of research for much of the 20th century—had been closely studied since the 1950s by some oil company researchers. Read More here
13 April 2016, Vox, Why Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, just went bankrupt. The US coal industry is imploding. And here’s the biggest casualty yet: Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in St. Louis on Wednesday. It’s hard to overstate what a seismic shift this is. Peabody has been a giant in the mining industry seemingly forever, after starting out in Chicago in 1880 with just a wagon and two mules. A decade ago, coal provided fully half of America’s electricity, much of it dug up by Peabody in Illinois, Kentucky, Wyoming, Colorado. At its peak in 2008, the company had a market cap of $20 billion, supplying coal to 26 countries worldwide. But then came the fall. The rise of fracking and cheap shale gas in the United States, coupled with stricter environmental regulations, has helped push hundreds of coal-fired power plants out of business in recent years. US coal production has nosedived from 1.17 billion metric tons in 2008 to just 752.5 million in 2016. Coal consumption in China, another crucial market, has also cooled off of late. Between 2012 and 2015, Peabody laid off more than 20 percent of its global workforceand started closing some of its US mines. Today, the company is saddled with $10.1 billion in debt and its future looks much bleaker than it once did. Hence the bankruptcy filing. Read More here