Leaders Of The IMF World Bank And Germany's Angela Merkel Call For Price On Carbon

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

AGL Energy's brown coal fired power station in Victoria is one of the nation's biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. Photo: Bloomberg

Global leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have called on countries and companies to put a price on carbon to speed up efforts to fight climate change.
In what has been described as an unprecedented alliance ahead of the Paris climate summit starting next month, the leaders said pricing emissions was needed to steer the global economy to a low-carbon future that would avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
"There has never been a global movement to put a price on carbon at this level and with this degree of unison," World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement. "The science is clear, the economics compelling and we now see political leadership emerging to take green investment to scale at a speed commensurate with the climate challenge."
The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, which includes the giant California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS, plans to step up efforts at the Paris summit to get more regions to start pricing carbon. Some 40 nations and 23 cities, states and regions have fixed or floating carbon prices, covering about 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the group said.
"The market needs a transparent and consistent price that discourages carbon emissions and stimulates low carbon investment opportunities," said Anne Stausboll, chief executive of CalPERS. The group manages some $US295 billion ($405 billion) in assets and said this month that it would consider divesting its holdings in thermal coal companies.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was previously a strong advocate of a carbon price but promised not to revisit the policy when he deposed Tony Abbott last month. The Abbott government scrapped the Gillard-Rudd carbon tax in July 2014, replacing it with a reverse auction fund aimed at rewarding efforts by polluters rather than charging them to cut back.
"We are achieving real and significant abatement at around 1 per cent of the cost of the carbon tax," a spokeswoman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said. "What counts is the total amount of emissions reduced and we are playing our part in reducing global emissions without increasing electricity bills for Australian families.
"The World Bank has recently launched a $100 million reverse auction that largely replicates many features of the Emissions Reduction Fund."
The first auction of Australia's $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund contracted 47 million tonnes of carbon abatement at a cost of $14 a tonne, compared with the $24.15 a tonne carbon tax when that scheme was axed.
John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute, said the move by the World Bank, IMF and other leaders left no doubt that "pollution reduction through pricing mechanisms is a core climate policy tool and is one which Australia will need to return to".
"Some in government would have us believe the World Bank is adopting the taxpayer-funded Emissions Reduction Fund as an ideal model," Mr Connor said. "However, this move highlights the growing global engagement with carbon pricing that makes the polluter, not the taxpayer, the primary focus in modernising and decarbonising economies."
Germany's Dr Merkel said carbon pricing was important to drive investment into renewable energy and other "climate friendly technologies".
"We should advance our effort along this path further so that we can actually reach our goal of maintaining the two-degree upper limit," Dr Merkel said, referring to the temperature increase compared with pre-industrial times that is expected to lead to dangerous climate shifts.

Dalai Lama Says Strong Action On Climate Change Is A Human Responsibility

The Guardian

Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader says humans cause global warming so must now take action to protect fragile environments including Himalayan glaciers

The Dalai Lama is urging the world’s nations to take strong action to limit global warming. Photograph: Ashwini Bhatia/AP

The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged strong global action to limit global warming and to protect fragile environments, including the Himalayan glaciers and Tibetan plateau.
Calling climate change a “problem which human beings created,” the 80-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said all of humanity was now responsible for taking action. But instead, he said, “we are relying on praying to God or to Buddha. Sometimes I feel this is very illogical.”
He issued his plea in a pre-taped video released as part of a campaign launched by the Tibetan government-in-exile in the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, where the Dalai Lama has been based since fleeing a Chinese military crackdown in Tibet.


Watch the Dalai Lama’s video message on global warming and the Paris climate summit.

The government-in-exile said the campaign would continue through this year’s UN climate change talks, where nations hope to conclude a new treaty for limiting climate-warming gas emissions. The exiled government will also send its own delegate to the talks, which start 30 November in Paris, though it will not have a vote of its own.
“This is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home,” the Dalai Lama said. “There’s no other planet where we may move or shift.”
Acknowledging his advanced years, the Dalai Lama appealed to younger generations to “take a more active role in protecting this planet, including the Tibetan plateau.”
Temperatures for Tibet’s high-altitude plateau — referred to as the Roof of the World — are rising about three times faster than the global average, and are 1.3C higher than they were 50 years ago. The Himalayas are also called the Third Pole, referring to the fact that they are covered in snow and ice and are particularly susceptible to climate change, like the North and South poles.
The government-in-exile also argued that Tibetans should be restored as the “true stewards” of the plateau, which has been under Chinese rule for decades and where Tibetans accuse Beijing of mining indiscriminately while forcing nomadic communities to move elsewhere.
“Tibetans must have a say on what happens on their land,” said the exiled government’s prime minister, Lobsang Sangay. “Tibetan nomads are the expert custodians of the alpine pastures, and their knowledge and experience must be recognized.”
China has long understood the plateau’s environmental importance and vulnerability, with some 40% of the world’s fresh water locked into the frozen Himalayan glaciers and feeding seven major rivers that run through China, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences studies environmental and climate change from its Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in the region — a 2.5m sq km (966,000 sq m) area that includes the Tibetan Autonomous Region as well as most of China’s Qinghai province, parts of Sichuan and the southern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.
Up to 70% of the plateau is covered in permafrost, with large reserves of both carbon dioxide and methane trapped within the ice. Scientists say thawing could release long-stored emissions of both greenhouse gases. Methane can be 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping Earth’s heat.