The Biggest Climate Stories of 2015

The Guardian - Alison Moodie

From the 195-nation agreement in Paris to curb global warming, to a journey down the Mekong River, evidence that climate change is impacting livelihoods and political decisions is stronger than ever

Demonstrators in Rome, Italy, participating in the Global Climate March on November 29, 2015. Photograph: Giuseppe Ciccia/Pacific Press/BI

2015 has been a big year for climate change. The year has witnessed dizzying highs and stunning lows, from the hottest January on record, to March, when global carbon dioxide levels hit a million-year high, to December, when nearly 200 nations signed an agreement to minimize global warming. Here are seven stories that give a good snapshot of the political, economic and scientific milestones that changed the way we view – and the way we deal with – global warming.

Paris climate deal: the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel era

French president Francois Hollande, president of the COP21 Laurent Fabius, United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hold their hands up in celebration after the final conference at the COP21, the United Nations conference on climate change. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

The United Nations Environment Programme has said that carbon emissions must be zero by 2070 to avert climate disasters. In December, after two decades of fraught climate talks, representatives from nearly 200 nations reached a historic milestone on the way to that goal.
The Paris agreement, which signals a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, will hold governments accountable for hitting their greenhouse gas emissions targets. It has been lauded for its long term goal to achieve net-zero emissions in the second half of the century, and political leaders hailed the deal as a "major leap for mankind".

Pope Francis calls for urgent action on climate change

Pope Francis has called climate change "a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation". Photograph: Angelo Carconi/EPA

Pope Francis delivered a bracing speech on climate change during a White House speech in September, calling it "a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation".
The speech followed Praise Be to You, a 184-page encyclical that the Pope released in June, in which he urged rich nations to take the lead in fighting climate change. It describes climate change as a "global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods".
The Pope's words appear to have already swayed some of the millions of Americans who are still skeptical about the impact of climate change. A recent study found that, in the past six months, a growing number of Americans – especially American Catholics – have come to believe that climate change is happening and are worried about its effects.

Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change

Activists celebrating Obama's blocking of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in front of the White House in November. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline after a seven-year review, saying its construction would have undermined America's position as a global leader in fighting against climate change. The 1,1179–mile pipeline would have carried crude oil from tar sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast. Obama is the first world leader to reject an infrastructure project because of climate change.
"America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change," Obama said. "And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership."

US science agency says 2015 is 97% likely to be the hottest year on record

People walk through a park along the East River during an unseasonably warm Christmas Day this year, when temperatures reached near 20C. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Each month of 2015 has so far been the hottest on record, putting this year on track to be the warmest since records first started being gathered, 130 years ago. Scientists have pointed out that the three warmest years – 2015, 2014 and 2010 – in recorded history have all occurred in this century. This, they say, demonstrates that global warming is getting worse and that actions need to be taken.

Dutch government ordered to cut carbon emissions in landmark ruling

The E.ON coal-fired power station in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, is one of the most powerful coal-fired power stations in Europe. Coal power plants are under pressure all over Europe due to targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

In the first ruling of its kind, the Hague has ordered the Dutch government to cut its carbon emissions by 25% within the next five years. The landmark decision came after 886 Dutch citizens sued the government for not taking enough action to reduce emissions.
Lawyers say that the ruling could have ripple effects around the world. Citizens in Belgium are already preparing a similar case, and another suit may follow in Norway. James Thornton, chief executive of environmental law organization ClientEarth, told the Guardian that: "A major sophisticated European court has broken through a political and psychological threshold. For the first time a court has ordered the government to protect its citizens from climate change."

Global carbon dioxide levels break 400ppm milestone

Smoke billows from stacks as a Chinese woman wears as mask while walking in a neighborhood next to a coal fired power plant in Shanxi, China. A history of heavy dependence on burning coal for energy has made China the source of nearly a third of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions. China's government has publicly set 2030 as a deadline to reach the country's emissions peak. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Concentrations of carbon dioxide hit a new global average record in March, reaching levels unseen for over 1m years. UN experts said the Earth's climate would enter a "new permanent reality" next year as a result, and that its denizens will likely experience hotter temperatures, extreme weather events like droughts and floods, and rising sea levels and acidity in the oceans. The finding underscored the urgent need for leaders at the Paris climate talks to reach a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Mekong River: where energy needs and ecological damage collide

Sunset over the Mekong River. Photograph: Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images

In this Guardian interactive feature, reporter John Vidal traveled down Southeast Asia's Mekong river, meeting the people who depend on the 2,500-mile river for their livelihoods and struggle to deal with the effects of climate change. The piece puts a face to alarming statistics and demonstrates that climate change isn't something that will emerge in the future – it's already happening.

Links

• Top 5 sustainable technology trends of 2015
• Did our 2015 sustainable business predictions make the grade?
• Eco-condoms to Ikea's veggie balls: the top 5 ethical living stories of 2015
• VW and Exxon: indicative of a polluted corporate culture that must change

China to Halt New Coal Mine Approvals Amid Pollution Fight

Bloomberg

• Country plans to close 1,000 mines to trim excess capacity
• Aims to reduce coal's share of energy mix in 2016 to 62.6%

Workers sort coal on a conveyer belt, near a coal mine at Datong, in China's northern Shanxi province. China will suspend the approval of new mines starting in 2016 and will cut coal’s share of its energy consumption to 62.6 percent next year. Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

China will stop approving new coal mines for the next three years and continue to trim production capacity as the world’s biggest energy consumer tries to shift away from the fuel as it grapples with pollution.
China will suspend the approval of new mines starting in 2016 and will cut coal’s share of its energy consumption to 62.6 percent next year, from 64.4 percent now, Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday, citing National Energy Administration head Nur Bekri. It’s the first time the government has suspended the approval of new coal mines, according to Deng Shun, an analyst with ICIS China.

The world’s biggest producer of carbon emissions is seeking to boost the use of renewable fuels as smog has blanketed cities from Shanghai to Beijing, forcing factories and schools to close and intensifying pressure on public officials to cut pollution. This month China suspended price adjustments for fuel as a way to curb automobile exhaust and it has pledged to peak carbon emissions around 2030, by which time it aims to derive 20 percent of the energy it uses from clean sources.

“This new policy, along with efforts to eliminate inefficient mines, may help to ease the severe domestic oversupply” of coal, Deng said by phone from Guangzhou. “It will take several years to take effect.”

Renewable Boost
The country will also close more than 1,000 coal mines next year, taking out 60 million metric tons of unneeded capacity, according to the Xinhua report. China shuttered a similar number of mines this year, wiping out 70 million tons of production, according to a separate statement from the NEA dated Dec. 29. The country is on track to produce 3.58 billion tons of coal this year, down 0.5 percent from 2014, according to the NEA.
China plans to increase wind and solar power capacity by more than 21 percent and have at least 20 gigawatts of new wind power installations and 15 gigawatts of additional photovoltaic capacity next year, according to the NEA statement.
Beijing officials on Friday raised the city’s air pollution alert to orange, the second-highest on the four-grade scale, warning children and the elderly to avoid outdoor activities as limited visibility from the thick smog forced the airport to cancel 227 departures. The chronic air pollution has renewed calls for the government to make better forecasts and act faster to help clear the skies over the city of 21.5 million.

Coal demand in China has slid as its economy slows amid a shift toward consumption-led growth and while it intensifies efforts to rein in pollution. China plans to ask companies to replace electricity generated from their own coal-fired plants with renewable energy, the National Development and Reform Commission said last month.

Thermal coal at the port of Newcastle in Australia, a global benchmark, dropped to $50.63 a ton in the week ended Dec. 25, the lowest since December 2006, according to data from Globalcoal. Prices have declined 18 percent this year.
China’s total coal production capacity including under mines construction is estimated at more than 5 billion tons while its coal output for next year will probably reach 3.7 billion tons, leaving more than 20 percent of its capacity idle, according to David Fang, a director with China Coal Transport and Distribution Association in Beijing.
“We expect to see less downside pressure on coal prices in view of ongoing production cuts in 2016 and demand recovery, albeit at a slow pace,” said Helen Lau, an analyst with Argonaut Securities (Asia) Ltd. “China is still oversupplied.”
The NEA estimates China next year will consume 3.96 billion tons of coal, 550 million tons of oil and 205 billion cubic meters of natural gas, according to the Xinhua report.

The Storm That Will Unfreeze The North Pole

The Atlantic Monthly - Robinson Meyer

It caps off a month — and year — of weird weather.

Arctic sea ice in the spring Wasif Malik / Flickr

The sun has not risen above the North Pole since mid-September. The sea ice—flat, landlike, windswept, and stretching as far as the eye can see—has been bathed in darkness for months.
But later this week, something extraordinary will happen: Air temperatures at the Earth's most northernly region, in the middle of winter, will rise above freezing for only the second time on record.
On Wednesday, the same storm system that last week spun up deadly tornadoes in the American southeast will burst into the far north, centering over Iceland. It will bring strong winds and pressure as low as is typically seen during hurricanes.
That low pressure will suck air out of the planet's middle latitudes and send it rushing to the Arctic. And so on Wednesday, the North Pole will likely see temperatures of about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius. That's 50 degrees hotter than average: It's usually 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero there at this time of year.Winter temperatures have only snuck above freezing at the North Pole once before. Eric Holthaus, Slate's meterologist, could not find an Arctic expert who had witnessed above-freezing temperatures at the pole between December and early April.
2015 is the warmest year ever recorded. Thirteen of the top 14 warmest years on the books have happened this century. And here in the United States, it has been a hot, strange month. Many cities across the northeast smashed their Christmas and Christmas Eve temperature records not at midday, but at the stroke of midnight. For the hundred-plus years that New York temperatures have been recorded, the city has never been warmer than 63 degrees Fahrenheit on a December 24. Yet at 1 a.m. on Christmas Eve of this year, the thermometer measured 67 degrees.
Some of this North American heat is a regular feature of every El Niño. (Indeed, I wrote about this El Niño-associated heat a few weeks ago.) But in the Arctic, this level of warmth is unprecedented. In order for this huge, hot storm to reach Iceland on Wednesday, it's punching  right through the Jet Stream, the atmospheric "river" that brings temperate weather to Europe. Yet El Niño should typically reinforce this current, explains the climate writer Robert Scribbler—for the Jet Stream to weaken is a sign that something else is going on.
While institutional science will take years, if not decades, to confirm a correlation between human-forced climate change and strong North Atlantic storms, Scribbler believes that Wednesday's insane warmth at the pole resembles the southern incursions of the "polar vortex" that have been seen in recent winters. These changes are related to human-forced climate change, he writes: a sign that something in the atmosphere has gone "dreadfully wrong."

Link

• Is Hope Possible After the Paris Agreement?

To Help Stop Global Warming, Curb Short-Lived Pollutants

Los Angeles Times - Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Daniel Press*

People walk through Beijing wearing masks on Dec. 22, a heavy pollution evening. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)

Among climate scientists, the consensus is that we must become carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic environmental disruptions. Negotiators at the recent summit in Paris accordingly focused on curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
There's a major problem, however, with a CO2-centric strategy. Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more, and because we won't abandon fossil fuels overnight, neutrality by 2050 simply isn't good enough to keep the Earth from warming 2 degrees Celsius — the generally agreed-upon limit — much less the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees C that many nations support.

As we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon coolants.

If we're serious about preventing or at least slowing climate change, we have to broaden our hit list; even as we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon coolants. These pollutants are about 25 to 4,000 times more potent warmers than carbon dioxide, but they remain in the atmosphere from mere days in the case of carbon soot to 15 years in the case of HFCs.
Curbing the emissions of these short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs, unlike curbing carbon emissions, will have an immediate effect and can dramatically slow global warming within a few decades.
To put real numbers on it: If we reduce our emissions of methane 50%, black carbon 90% and fully replace HFCs by 2030, then we'll cut in half projected global warming over the next 35 years. These steps will delay environmental disaster and give us time we desperately need to radically change our energy diet.
Existing technologies, clean alternatives and regulatory mechanisms such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol that have proved effective for other climate pollutants can be quickly repurposed to deal with SLCPs.

Climate change is indeed a cause of social conflict

In November, the 197 parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed to work toward an HFC amendment in 2016. Some parts of the world aren't waiting. India and Pakistan committed to phase down HFCs. Mexico has pledged to cut SLCPs 25% by 2030. California has already cut its carbon soot and ozone-forming gases 90% and is on its way to curbing all four SLCPs.
There's no downside to this approach. By curbing short-lived pollutants, not only will we obtain short-term relief from rapid warming, but we will also slow sea-level rise, increase crop yields and score a major victory for public health. Indoor and outdoor pollution today causes more than 7 million premature deaths annually. Curbing SLCPs can benefit us now, saving potentially 40 million lives over the next 20 years.
What we have in front of us isn't a choice between pulling lever one (carbon dioxide) or lever two (SLCPs); it's crucial that we pull both levers with all of our collective might. We have a moral imperative to act immediately with everything at our disposal, not only because there's no Planet B — as environmental activists put it — but because climate change seriously harms human well-being.
Beijing's air quality index hit 253 this month, registering in the "very unhealthy" zone. The last time Los Angeles County reached that level was in 1991. Many cities around the world have reduced urban air pollution using technologies and rules that have stood the test of time, while constantly evolving. California is already pulling both levers, while its population and its economy are growing and its people are breathing cleaner air.
By acting unilaterally or in small alliances, it's possible to make real progress on climate change now, above and beyond what the Paris agreement calls for. We have the levers; we just need to pull them.

*Veerabhadran Ramanathan is distinguished professor of climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a council member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Daniel Press is a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz and author of "American Environmental Policy: The Failures of Compliance, Abatement and Mitigations."