1 February 2016, WorldWatch Institute, Carbon Trading a hidden threat to soil carbon sequestration? If something has a price tag, people consider its perceived monetary value. But what if, by measuring the value of our planet’s natural systems using dollar amounts alone, we are minimizing their true worth? And what if our focus on solving global problems with money is taking all of us, especially poorer countries, down the wrong road? One global solution to the world’s climate challenges—soil carbon sequestration—may soon face the “threat of the price tag.” A French climate proposal known as the 4 Per 1000 initiative—aimed at increasing the global stock of agricultural soil carbon by 0.4 percent per year on average—attracted worldwide support and media attention when it was officially launched at the December 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris. The initiative recognizes that good organic agriculture and grazing practices could increase the soil carbon stock and lead to cascading benefits, including improvements in areas such as soil fertility, climate resilience, the nutritional value of foods, and farmers’ livelihoods, all while reversing climate change (see previous Worldwatch blog). But the potential addition of carbon trading—a market-based tool to moderate carbon emissions—into the strategy raises serious concerns.The principles of the 4 Per 1000 initiative will be clarified at a members-only meeting in the first half of 2016, to guide the projects supported by the initiative. As of now, it is unclear whether carbon trading will be part of the design, nor is it known how heavily this initiative will be branded as “a sink for current emissions,” rather than as a true means to reverse already-excessive past emissions in combination with emission-reduction strategies. However, the enthusiasm for carbon pricing at the Paris talks, together with the fact that the initiative’s goal of “0.4 percent annual increase of soil carbon stock” was back-calculated from current fossil fuel emissions (rather than based on the actual potential of soil carbon sequestration), raises serious concerns. Read more here
Tag Archives: Emissions
28 January 2016, Renew Economy, Hunt under pressure as Australia loses climate cred, gains carbon risk. Australia’s poor record on climate change action and energy market reform has been highlighted by two major global publications this week, bringing environment minister Greg Hunt under renewed pressure to defend his department’s policy. The first, the latest rankings of the Yale environmental performance index – described by Hunt himself as “the most credible, scientifically based, hard data-based analysis in the world – shows Australia has dropped 10 places in its overall ranking on “protecting human health and ecosystems”, leaving it at 13 out of 180 countries examined (just below Saudi Arabia). According to reports, where Australia lost most of its ground on the index was in the categories of electricity generation, where it is ranked at number 150 out of 180, and in climate. This point has been seized upon by Opposition climate spokesman Mark Butler, who said in a statement on Thursday that the index downgrading showed that the Turnbull government was taking Australia backwards on climate change “at a shocking pace”. Butler – who launched the first round of consultation on the Labor party’s 2030 emissions reduction target on Wednesday – also noted that while nearly every other country had improved its EPI score, Australia had turned up very close to the bottom of the pack on carbon trends. “I think the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that although there’s a different person at the front of the government, the policies haven’t changed,” Butler told Fran Kelly in an ABC Radio interview. “We have inadequate targets, we have a government that has no renewable energy policy beyond 2020, and we have a policy in Direct Action that’s actually seeing emissions rise again after having come down 8 per cent during our term in government, they will rise by 6 per cent between now and 2020 according to the government’s own official data.” Read More here
2 January 2016, Climate News Network, China clamps down on coal. A slowing economy and falling energy demand, plus concerns over air pollution, spur Beijing to halt new coal mines and close hundreds of existing operations. China says it will not approve any new coal mines for the next three years. The country’s National Energy Administration(NEA) says more than 1,000 existing mines will also be closed over the coming year, reducing total coal production by 70 million tons. Analysts say this is the first time Beijing has put a ban on the opening of new mines: the move has been prompted both by falling demand for coal as a result of a slowing economy and by increasing public concern about hazardous levels of pollution, which have blanketed many cities across the country over recent months. Beijing, a city of nearly 20 million, issued two red smog alerts – the most serious air pollution warning – in December, causing schools to close and prompting a warning to residents to stay indoors. A 2015 study estimated that air pollution – much of it from the widespread burning of coal – contributed to up to 1.6 million deaths each year in China. The country is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. Emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industrial concerns in China have made it the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, putting more climate-changing gases into the atmosphere each year than the US and the European Union combined. Coal’s share falling In accordance with an agreement reached with the US in late 2014, and in line with pledges made at the recent Paris summit on climate change, China aims to radically cut back on coal use in future. In 2010, coal generated about 70% of China’s total energy: last year that figuredropped to 64% as more large-scale investments in renewable energy sources came on stream. Read More here
29 December 2015 IACentre, Winner of Project Consored top 25 articles for 2009 – 2010 news stories: Pentagon’s role in global catastrophe. In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets — it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions? By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count. The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon’s aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil. Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon. Read More here