23 March 2017, Independent, If you really care about climate change, you should boycott the ridiculous Earth Hour stunt. The people who are wrecking the planet are the fossil fuel companies, not Georgina from Enfield who occasionally leaves the kitchen light on all night. I am an environmentalist. For my whole adult life I have protested, campaigned, helped to elect climate-savvy politicians and worked hard on what I see as the cause of my life: putting a stop to the dangerous change to our climate that is killing millions. And yet I hate one of the world’s most prominent environmental events with the intense heat of a burning climate – the annual WWF event “Earth Hour”, which this year will take place on 25 March. The charity expects millions of people around the world to symbolically switch off their lights for an hour. Earth Hour is terrible, and not just because the symbolism of darkness is very poorly thought out. The worst thing about Earth Hour is that it tricks people into thinking they’ve done something useful by turning off the lights for 60 minutes, and lets the real villains in the climate change story off the hook. By focusing on individual behaviour, Earth Hour sends out the message that ordinary citizens are the ones to blame for climate change. It passes on the unhelpful message that all we need to do is change our lightbulbs and do more recycling and everything will be fine. Every time someone says that environmentalists are nagging busybodies obsessed with making you turn your TV off standby before you go to bed, Earth Hour has contributed to that. Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
21 March 2017, The Guardian, Record-breaking climate change pushes world into ‘uncharted territory’ Earth is a planet in upheaval, say scientists, as the World Meteorological Organisation publishes analysis of recent heat highs and ice lows. The record-breaking heat that made 2016 the hottest year ever recorded has continued into 2017, pushing the world into “truly uncharted territory”, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. The WMO’s assessment of the climate in 2016, published on Tuesday, reports unprecedented heat across the globe, exceptionally low ice at both poles and surging sea-level rise. Global warming is largely being driven by emissions from human activities, but a strong El Niño – a natural climate cycle – added to the heat in 2016. The El Niño is now waning, but the extremes continue to be seen, with temperature records tumbling in the US in February and polar heatwaves pushing ice cover to new lows. “Even without a strong El Niño in 2017, we are seeing other remarkable changes across the planet that are challenging the limits of our understanding of the climate system. We are now in truly uncharted territory,” said David Carlson, director of the WMO’s world climate research programme. “Earth is a planet in upheaval due to human-caused changes in the atmosphere,” said Jeffrey Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona in the US. “In general, drastically changing conditions do not help civilisation, which thrives on stability.” The WMO report was “startling”, said Prof David Reay, an emissions expert at the University of Edinburgh: “The need for concerted action on climate change has never been so stark nor the stakes so high.” The new WMO assessment also prompted some scientists to criticise Donald Trump. “While the data show an ever increasing impact of human activities on the climate system, the Trump administration and senior Republicans in Congress continue to bury their heads in the sand,” said Prof Sir Robert Watson, a distinguished climate scientist at the UK’s University of East Anglia and a former head of the UN’s climate science panel. Read More here
18 March 2017, The Guardian, CO2 emissions stay same for third year in row – despite global economy growing. International Energy Agency report puts halt in emissions from energy down to growth in renewable power. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy have not increased for three years in a row even as the global economy grew, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said. Global emissions from the energy sector were 32.1bn tonnes in 2016, the same as the previous two years, while the economy grew 3.1%, the organisation said. The IEA put the halt in growth down to growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas and improvements in energy efficiency but said it is too soon to say that global emissions have peaked. The biggest drop was seen in the US, where carbon dioxide emissions fell 3%, while the economy grew 1.6%, following a surge in shale gas supplies and more renewable power that displaced coal. US emissions are at their lowest level since 1992, while the economy has grown 80% since that time….. The pause in emissions growth was welcomed by the IEA, but it warned it was not enough to meet globally-agreed targets to limit temperature rises to below 2C above pre-industrial levels – considered to be the threshold for dangerous climate change. Read More here
9 March 2017, The Guardian, Renewable energy spike led to sharp drop in emissions in Australia, study shows. A sharp drop in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions at the end of last year came courtesy of a spike in renewable energy generation in a single month, according to a new study. Australia’s emissions fell by 3.57m tonnes in the three months to December, putting them back on track to meet quarterly commitments made in Paris after a blowout the previous quarter. The fall is the largest for the quarter since the government began recording emissions in 2001. The report’s authors said this was entirely due to record levels of hydro and wind generation in October. This brought emissions for the year to December to below the year to December 2015. But projected emissions for the December quarter were still 6.89m tonnes over levels demanded by scientifically based targets set by the government’s Climate Change Authority. And, long term, the results show Australia is set to run more than 300m tonnes over what is required to meet its Paris targets in 2030. Read More here