31/05/2017

Sky High Carbon Tax Needed To Avoid Catastrophic Global Warming, Say Experts

The Guardian - 

Leading economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern say taxes of $100 per metric ton could be needed by 2030
The aim of a steep tax on carbon would be essential to meet the targets set by the Cop21 Paris Agreement in 2015, the experts said. Photograph: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg/Getty
A group of leading economists warned on Monday that the world risked catastrophic global warming in just 13 years unless countries ramped up taxes on carbon emissions to as much as $100 (£77) per metric ton.
Experts including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said governments needed to move quickly to tackle polluting industries with a tax on carbon dioxide at $40-$80 per ton by 2020.
A tax of $100 a ton would be needed by 2030 as one of a series of measures to prevent a rise in global temperatures of 2C.
In a report by the High Level Commission on Carbon Prices, which is backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they suggest poor countries could aim for a lower tax since their economies are more vulnerable.
The aim of a tax on carbon would be essential to meet the targets set by the Cop21 Paris Agreement in 2015, they said.
The call for action will sting European leaders, who have presided over a carbon trading scheme since 2005 that currently charges major polluters just €6 (£5.20) for every tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere.
The European scheme, which issues carbon credits to firms that can be traded on a central exchange, has come under fire for allowing heavy energy users to avoid investments in new technology to cut their emissions.
Critics accuse officials of issuing too many credits and allowing the price to fall to a level that makes it cheaper to pollute than for companies to change their behaviour.
Stiglitz and Stern said prices should rise to $50-$100 by 2030 to give businesses and governments an incentive to lower emissions even when fossil fuels are cheap.
The Trump administration has rejected calls to introduce a carbon tax in the United States, saying it would cost jobs. Washington’s refusal to adopt a tax has deterred Brussels from moving to a more substantial charge on emissions, which would have the effect of increasing energy costs, at least in the short term, and imposing higher costs on European manufacturers.
The European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the world’s biggest scheme for trading greenhouse gas emissions allowances. It covers some 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 30 countries, whose carbon emissions make up almost 50% of Europe’s total.

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Queensland Says It Won't Play Any Role In Funding For Adani Project

The Guardian -  and AAP

Annastacia Palaszczuk says the Indian mining group will have to pay ‘every dollar’ of state royalties for the proposed mine
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced that there will be no royalty holiday for the Adani Carmichael mine. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP
The Queensland government has announced it will not act as a “middle man” to funnel federal infrastructure funding to support the Adani Group’s proposed coalmine.
The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has also confirmed the Indian mining group would have to pay “every dollar” of state royalties for the proposed mine, a significant departure from a previous deal to give the company a “royalties holiday”.
The state government on Saturday provided further detail on its financial support for the $16bn Carmichael coalmine in the Galilee basin.
Palaszczuk said her government would play no role in helping to facilitate a $1bn loan to Adani from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility – a federal government agency that hands out concessional loans for infrastructure development.
Adani is seeking the loan to build the rail link between its proposed mine site and the Abbot Point coal port.
The NAIF traditionally relies on state governments to administer such loans to the project proponents
The deputy premier, Jackie Trad, said the funding would now have to be provided and administered directly by the commonwealth.
“Our position is that the federal government should be funding Adani from the NAIF directly and not using Queensland as a middle man,” she said.
The new royalties scheme will allow the company to defer a proportion of its payments to the state government until the fifth year of the mine’s operation. But any deferred royalties would need to be paid back with interest, Palaszczuk said.
Palaszczuk and Trad would not give further details of the amount of royalties that could be deferred, or the rate of interest that Adani would be subject to, saying the details would be central to the government’s commercial negotiations with the company in coming days.
“But let me make it very clear, I am not going to budge from the decision that I have made, that we have made as a cabinet, because this is the best decision for Queenslanders,” Palaszczuk said.
“All royalties will be paid, and they will be paid with interest. That is our principle and that is the bottom line.”
Asked whether Adani was aware of the government’s new position, she responded: “They are now.”
The Queensland Conservation Council coordinator, Tim Seelig, welcomed the decisions by the state government.
“While we do not believe any new coal mines, including the Adani mine, should proceed given global warming trends and the imperative of carbon emissions reduction, we still welcome these announcements,” Seelig said.
“These are big, important decisions, consistent with previous election commitments.”
The announcement represents a significant departure from a previous deal reportedly struck with the company to cap its royalty payments, meaning Adani would only pay $2m annually over the first seven years of the mine’s operation, giving the miner a $320m loan.
That proposal had sparked internal tensions within the Labor party, led chiefly by Trad and the left faction, who argued the deal broke an election promise.
A cabinet meeting on Friday resolved to move away from any royalty holiday deal.
The Lock the Gate Alliance, an anti-mining group, has warned that the government, through its deferral of royalties, is still allowing Adani incentives using taxpayers’ money.
Its spokeswoman Carmel Flint told Guardian Australia on Saturday that the state government still appeared to be offering Adani a huge loan using taxpayers’ money.
The group has previously warned that the Adani and Glencore mines would be a “recipe for disaster” for food production and put 110,000 hectares of farmland at risk on the Western Downs.
“As far as we can see, there’s still a deferral, so they’ve changed their language, they’re calling it a deferral in royalties,” Flint said.
“It’s still a massive loan to Adani using taxpayers’ money,” she said.
Flint wanted to see the full detail of any deal with Adani on royalties, demanding that the government does not strike something in secret with the company.
The Australia Institute said, regardless of the announcement, the state government was still supporting new coalmines at a time of climate change and mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
“I think that’s the big picture, that a Labor government in a time of climate change is subsidising new coal,” Rod Campbell, the institute’s research director, told Guardian Australia.
“I’m just concerned that people will see this as some sort of win, or some sort of compromise, when in it’s not,” Campbell said.
Adani released a statement on Friday night saying it would “pay every cent of royalties”.
“Adani confirms again that it will pay every cent of royalties to the state as was always the case,” the company said.
It was quick to defer a decision on its final investment, set down for a board meeting on Monday, when the cabinet failed to follow through on the so-called “royalties holiday” deal this week.
Palaszczuk on Saturday denied there had been any backflip on the state government’s deal with Adani or that she had broken a promise to the company.
The Queensland Resources Council chief executive, Ian Macfarlane, told a Mackay audience earlier on Friday previous governments had burdened the industry through significant increases in royalties.
“It is vital that any changes to the state’s royalty system improve the competitiveness of the resources sector,” he said.
“Queensland’s royalty regime is uncompetitive by global standards so we look forward to seeing the government’s proposal.”
A ReachTel poll released on Friday showed significant opposition to the state government’s financial support for Adani.
A majority – 58.8 per cent – of the 1618 Queenslanders polled were either opposed or strongly opposed to such support.
The LNP leader, Tim Nicholls, criticised the government for delaying the mine’s go-ahead with its infighting, saying the last week had been marked by “crazy leaking” from all factions, and he doubted the hardline stance would stick next week.
“[It’s] a party that’s at war with itself, a government that can’t come up with a policy on Friday and stick to it by Monday,” he said.

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Australians Say Climate Change Is Catastrophic Risk, Even As Government Turns Blind Eye

RenewEconomy -  (Climate Code Red)

Three in four Australians understand that climate warming poses a “catastrophic risk,” even as the Australian government turns a blind eye. That was the clear result from a new survey for the Global Challenges Forum (GCF), and the publications of its 2017 Global Catastrophic Risk report.
84% of 8000 people surveyed in eight countries for the GCF consider climate change a “global catastrophic risk”. The figure for the Australian sample was 75%.
Question were asked about a number of risks, including nuclear war, pandemics, biological weapons, climate change and environmental collapse. The climate question asked how much participants agreed or disagreed that “climate change, resulting in environmental damage, such as rising sea levels or melting of icecaps” could be considered as a global catastrophic risk”? A global catastrophic risk was described as “a future event that has the potential to affect 10% of the global population”.
For Australia, the results were: 39% “strongly agree” and 36% “tend to agree” (for total agree of 75%), whilst “tend to disagree” was 15%, “strongly disagree” was 6% and “don’t know” was 4%.
The  2017 Global Catastrophic Risk report summarises the the evidence for catastrophic climate change risk as:
Discussions of climate change usually focus on limiting temperature rises to 1-3˚C above pre-industrial levels. A rise of 3ºC would have major impacts, with most of Bangladesh and Florida under water, major coastal cities – Shanghai, Lagos, Mumbai – swamped, and potentially large flows of climate refugees. While the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change sought to keep global temperature rises below a threshold of 1.5–2 º C, national pledges have fallen short and set the world on a 3.6°C temperature rise track. There is also now scientific consensus that, when warming rises above a certain level, self-reinforcing feedback loops are likely to set in, triggered by the pushing of the Earth’s systems – ocean circulation, permafrost, ice sheets, rainforests and atmospheric circulation – across certain tipping points. The latest science shows that tipping points with potential to cause catastrophic climate change could be triggered at 2ºC global warming. These include the risk of losing all coral reef systems on Earth and irreversible melting of inland glaciers, Arctic sea ice and potentially the Greenland ice sheet. As well as the immediate risk to human societies, the fear is that crossing these tipping points would have major impacts on the pace of global warming itself. Although climate change action has now become part of mainstream economic and social strategies, too little emphasis is put on the risk of catastrophic climate change.
The same survey found 81% of the 1000 Australian participants in the poll agreed with the proposition: “Do you think we should try to prevent climate catastrophes, which might not occur for several decades or centuries, even if it requires making considerable changes that impact on our current living standards?” The figure across the 8000 people polled in eight countries (Australia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, UK, Germany and USA) was 88%.
This shows a much strongly level of support for action that may impact on future living standards or have a personal material  cost that many other polls. This may be in part due to the framing of climate as a possibly catastrophic risk, which may provides a stronger basis for concern.
The GCF report found that many people now see climate change as a bigger threat than other concerns such as epidemics, population growth, use of weapons of mass destruction and the rise of artificial intelligence threats. GCF vice-president Mats Andersson says “there’s certainly a huge gap between what people expect from politicians and what politicians are doing”.
The report says that:
For the first time in human history, we have reached a level of scientific knowledge that allows us to develop an enlightened relationship to risks of catastrophic magnitude. Not only can we foresee many of the challenges ahead, but we are in a position to identify what needs to be done in order to mitigate or even eliminate some of those risks. Our enlightened status, however, also requires that we consider our own role in creating those risks, and collectively commit to reducing them.
However, “the institutions we rely on to ensure peace, security, development and environmental integrity are woefully inadequate for the scale of the challenges at hand”.
The dissonance between what Australian’s understand and what government is doing is remarkable. Australia is failing in its responsibility to safeguard its people and protect their way of life. It is also failing as a world citizen, by downplaying the profound global impacts of climate change and shirking its responsibility to act.
Australia’s per capita greenhouse emissions are in the highest rank in the world, and its commitment to reduce emissions are rated as inadequate by Climate Action Tracker, which says that “Australia’s current policies will fall well short of meeting” its Paris Agreement target, that the Emissions Reduction Fund “does not set Australia on a path that would meet its targets” and “without accelerating climate action and additional policies, Australia will miss its 2030 target by a large margin”.
Australia’s biggest corporations are no better. The S&P/ASX All Australian 50 has the “highest embedded carbon” of any group in the S&P Global 1200, according to the S&P Dow Jones Carbon Scorecard report, which assesses global companies’ carbon footprint, fossil fuel reserve emissions, coal revenue exposure, energy transition and green-brown revenue strain (Investor Daily 2017). At the 2017 Santos annual general meeting, chairman Peter Coates asserted that it is “sensible” and “consistent with good value” to assume for planning purposes a 4°C-warmer world.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins, File
Former senior fossil fuel industry executive Ian Dunlop has recently noted that the most dangerous aspect of fossil-fuel investments made today is that their impacts do not manifest themselves for decades to come. If we wait for catastrophe to happen — as we are doing — it will be too late to act. Time is the most important commodity; to avoid catastrophic outcomes requires emergency action to force the pace of change. In these circumstances, opening up a major new coal province is nothing less than a crime against humanity.

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30/05/2017

Loan Bodies’ Adani Conflicts: Answers Needed

Environmental Justice Australia


Environmental Justice Australia lawyers have written to the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) – the body that is considering giving a $1 billion loan for a coal-carting rail line to service Adani’s Carmichael mine – seeking answers about board members’ conflict of interests.

The letter, on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation, raises concerns about:
  • Ms Karla Way-McPhail, a NAIF board member who is also the CEO of Undamine and Coal Train Australia – companies that profit by hiring labour and machinery to coal mining operations 
  • Ms Annabelle Chaplain, a director of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC), which advises NAIF, is an independent non-executive director of Downer EDI, a company that has an existing commercial relationship with Adani Enterprises, the ultimate proponent of the mine
In July 2016 Downer EDI signed a Technical Services Agreement with Adani Enterprises Ltd for the provision of mine planning, design and project execution services for Adani coal mines in India.
“While it is not uncommon for directors to hold more than one directorship, if a perceived or actual conflict of interests arises, directors must act to avoid conflict,” said EJA lawyer David Barnden.
“Ms Karla Way-McPhail is on the NAIF board and is the CEO of two companies involved in the Queensland coal industry.
“Ms Annabelle Chaplain, an EFIC Board member who advises NAIF, is also a non-executive director of Downer EDI, a company with a significant existing commercial relationship with Adani.
“In our view Ms Way-McPhail and Ms Chaplain each have material personal interests that could give rise to a conflict of interests, making it inappropriate for them to be involved in the consideration of a huge public subsidy to a coal-rail project.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Dirty Deeds report last week exposed links between the fossil fuel industry, the government, NAIF and EFIC.
“EFIC has a track record of investing in large fossil fuel projects, backing fossil fuels over renewables at a rate of more than 100:1 over the past 11 years,” said ACF CEO Kelly O’Shanassy.
“NAIF’s board is skewed toward the mining industry and lacks experience with industries such as communications and renewable energy which are critical to the development of Northern Australia.
“Australians want public money to support industries that will create a positive future for Northern Australia – like renewable energy and tourism – not destructive, reef-wrecking coal mines,” she said.

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Federal Labor Feels The Heat Over Adani, And Coalition Is Sweating Too

The Guardian - 

The biggest environmental campaign seen in Australia since the 80s is causing bumps in the road for both sides of politics
‘One Labor figure puts the problem for his party this way: It is talismanic; It’s the litmus test.’ Photograph: Julian Drape/AAP
When it comes to the Adani Carmichael coalmine, the spotlight this week has been trained on Queensland as the state government battled an internal split on whether to give the project a royalties holiday. There have also been murmurings in Canberra, where Labor MPs are starting to express public opposition to a project many have been privately wringing their hands about.
But to fathom the next phase in the political battle against the project, we need to train our eyes a bit further south.
Over this past week in Victoria, the Greens have launched a new fundraising drive to produce placards which will begin appearing shortly around the electorates of Melbourne, Batman, Wills and Melbourne Ports.
The placards have a simple message, easily consumed from a passing car or tram. They say: Stop Labor’s Adani Mine. It won’t stop with some signage. The Greens are planning to door knock the inner urban electorates where they now slug it out with Labor in hand-to-hand combat during federal elections.
While a couple of Labor MPs, David Feeney and Peter Khalil, have got out ahead of the new onslaught by outing themselves as opponents of Adani, the Greens are telling their supporters the objective is to force the federal Labor leader, Bill Shorten, to rule out supporting the Adani coalmine.
“Here’s our strategy,” the pitch for donations reads. “We know that if Bill Shorten changes Labor’s position and commits to reviewing commonwealth approval, Adani’s plans will be dead. Labor are already starting to feel the heat, and it’s working, with some MPs saying they don’t personally support the plan. But now we need to ramp things up and force a formal change in Labor policy.”
Right now the Greens are focused on Labor in Victoria. But this campaign could easily flow on to other states, and to the seats where the Greens now also face off against Liberals in the inner cities.
If we view the electoral contest through an inner-city lens, Labor is already under acute political pressure on Adani, and the new Greens campaign won’t help. But it would also be a mistake to think Labor is the only major party feeling the heat on Adani. More of that story shortly.
The Greens’ placards have a simple message but it won’t stop there: the party is planning to door knock inner-urban electorates. Photograph: Greens
First we need to take a moment to comprehend the scale of what’s going on. #StopAdani is the biggest environmental campaign seen in this country since the Franklin campaign in the 1980s.
It is well-organised, rolling out in communities (there have been 320 events nationally over the past few months, and another 60 are in the calendar). The issue thunders through social media and reverberates through mainstream press coverage.
The campaign is also very well-funded. One seasoned environmental campaigner told me this week “there is more money in this campaign than in any campaign I’ve seen, anywhere” and noted it wasn’t entirely clear where the money was coming from.
The anti-Adani effort links in to coordinated global efforts by the environment movement to stop new coalmines. #StopAdani (and the associated activities) is the environmental movement’s equivalent of a multinational corporation – with Queensland the local frontline of a global, anti-coal offensive.
Whatever the intrinsic policy merits of constraining new coal development to help the world meet its pressing and existential challenge with climate change (and those merits are blindingly obvious to anyone who accepts the science – if you accept the science, a steady transition away from coal isn’t optional) the major parties remain highly sensitised to the fate of the project.
There’s the enduring Australian bipartisan tradition: the economic exploitation of resources means local employment and export dollars. And the Carmichael project sits, literally, at the epicentre of the political battle, in a region where disaffection has significantly altered the contours of the political contest.
The Coalition and Labor are eyeing off a group of marginal seats in Queensland that could easily decide the outcome of the next federal election. Both are also cognisant of the looming state election campaign. A recent ReachTel poll of 1,600 Queenslanders has the two major parties currently deadlocked 50-50 on the two party preferred measure.
On the politics of this development, Labor is caught uncomfortably between its blue-collar constituency and its progressive, inner-urban support base.
Federally, it articulates a formulation which attempts to placate both camps: Adani should proceed if it meets all relevant approvals because jobs are good – but not at the expense of the Great Barrier Reef, and it shouldn’t get a cent of taxpayer support.
The new Greens campaign, apart from the obvious objective of trying to gain political traction in targeted seats, is about pushing Labor off their hedged formulation into an overtly anti-coal position – which is not a decision the party as a collective is yet ready to take.
Triggering that debate is, in fact, a fast train to splitsville.
So that’s the challenging state of affairs in progressive politics. Now we need to consider the Coalition.
The Turnbull government doesn’t have to straddle the barbed wire fence quite so inelegantly but Adani is causing it grief as well.
Government MPs in north Queensland, where regional unemployment is high, are champions of the project. The chief cheerleader of Adani in Canberra is the resources minister, Matt Canavan, who is also responsible for the development of northern Australia. Canavan sometimes does several media interviews a day extolling the benefits of the project, creating an impression the Coalition is monolithic on Adani.
Canavan is so assiduous in his occupation of the airwaves you can fail to notice that he, and his party leader Barnaby Joyce, are really the only government people out there consistently banging the Adani drum.
In fact if you look and listen closely, apart from a moment of pure, mind-numbing idiocy where the treasurer, Scott Morrison, brandished a lump of coal in the parliament, you’ll notice the Liberal party has dialled the pro-coal rhetoric down in recent months.
Why would this be? Well, if you ask around, you get the feedback that evangelising about coal works in some pockets of the country but it isn’t that politically helpful for Liberal MPs in Sydney and Melbourne with either mixed constituencies – seats such as the prime minister’s electorate of Wentworth in Sydney, or Kelly O’Dwyer’s electorate of Higgins – or even in more blue-ribbon areas, with the sorts of constituencies that were once characterised patronisingly as “doctor’s wives”.
The rolling civil society campaign against the Adani mine – which includes environment groups and GetUp! – means Liberal MPs are getting regular anti-Adani traffic through their doors and inboxes and social media accounts.
MPs around the country are being put on the spot by either GetUp! or local #StopAdani groups who are asking them point-blank whether they support the mine or not.
Two Liberal backbenchers have already come out in opposition to the idea that the project will be given a $1bn concessional loan to fund a rail line linking the mine to Abbot Point: Bert Van Manen and Sarah Henderson.
Apart from what’s playing on out on the ground, there are other bumps in the Coalition road.
There is also strong opposition inside the cabinet to the idea of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility granting the loan, despite Canavan regularly arguing the case for a positive decision. One senior government figure is blunt in putting the counter-case. “That is not happening.”
Even if Canavan somehow prevails in a looming internal government battle over concessional support for the development, it’s unlikely to be the end of the story. On that issue, the anti-Adani forces are preparing for a legal fight.
Single issue, negative, “stop the ..” campaigns are always the easiest campaigns to run – just ask Tony Abbott.
They are simple, and they resonate.
All the polling I’ve seen indicates #StopAdani has been enormously effective in influencing public opinion.
Even if people have not yet crossed over into overt anti-coal consciousness because of their concern about climate change, Australians are highly sensitised about the fate of the Great Barrier Reef. Very few people will want a mine project that they fear will damage the reef.
One Liberal said to me forcefully this week when I asked how Adani was playing out on home turf: “Christ, I wish it would just go away.”
One Labor figure puts the problem for his party this way: “It is talismanic. It’s the litmus test. Adani has become shorthand for ‘are you serious about climate change?’.”

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Donald Trump's Paris Climate Change Call Will Define His Presidency

AFR - John Kehoe

A G7 summit moment: The meeting finished with Western powers far apart. AP
Donald Trump's imminent decision to either quit or remain in the Paris international climate change deal will be his most defining foreign policy call so far.
It will demonstrate the extent of the US President's populist nationalism or pragmatic realism.
Withdrawing the United States would be a massive rebuke to almost every country Trump is trying to work with on a host of foreign policy matters and make his job harder.
The leaders of China, Canada, Germany, France, among others, have personally urged President Trump to remain.
IMAGE
Paul Bledsoe, a former White House adviser to President Bill Clinton and now American University environmental and energy policy adjunct professorial lecturer, says: "It's one thing to stick out like a sore thumb in climate denial and his anti-climate policies, it's another thing to stick that thumb in the world's eye."

No cost to staying in
Quitting would be telling because Trump does not need to take any domestic environmental steps to stay in the historic deal, thanks to an abundance of cheap and clean shale gas and the fact that US emission cut targets are not legally binding.
Yet Trump will feel he needs to appease his hardcore political base and fulfil his campaign pledge to quit.
As a candidate he called climate change a "hoax" invented by China – a key partner of President Barack Obama's in sealing the Paris global accord.
World leaders remain on edge after Trump refused to agree to climate action at the Group of 7 meeting in Italy on the weekend.
In a veiled swipe at Trump, Germany's conservative leader Angela Merkel, remarked: "The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over."
Trump may not care if he becomes an international pariah.

Without US the deal could unravel
But he and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should be acutely aware that walking away from the historic climate deal will harm US interests to build support on other important security, economic, trade and diplomacy objectives.
None less so than with China's President Xi Jinping, who Trump is trying to woo to help deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program and to get a better trade deal from Beijing for the US.
Trump's most pragmatic course of action would be to grumble loudly and stay in the historic Paris accord, albeit with some strings attached, such as a review or possible weakening of US emissions targets.
Without the participation of the US, the world's largest economy and biggest historic carbon emitter, the Paris deal could unravel.

Evolving views
The "remain" camp in Trump's inner circle include his influential son-in-law Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka and former Goldman Sachs executive turned economic adviser Gary Cohn, as well as Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil chief executive.
After the Pope urged Trump to stay in the accord, Cohn said last week the President's views were "evolving".
Exxon, investment firm BlackRock and other big US companies are urging Trump to remain, so business has energy policy certainty.
Nevertheless, much of the modern Republican Party believe man-made global warming is bunkum, despite elders such as former senior cabinet members from the Reagan and Bush administrations – James Baker, George Shultz and Henry Paulson – imploring Trump to adopt a carbon tax.
Fierce nationalists such as chief strategist Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt are leading the "leave" campaign.

A nation of cheap gas
As the former attorney-general of Oklahoma, Pruitt successfully sued to stop the enforcement of President Obama's clean power plan and is now working to strike out the anti-coal regulations that were designed to help the US meet its Paris obligations.
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg met Pruitt in April and told him Australia will honour its international commitments. He stopped short of urging the US not to quit.
The great irony is Trump could stay in the deal, with little or no downside.
The US is on track to meet its 2020 target of a 17 per cent emissions reduction on 2005 levels, thanks largely to price plunges for natural gas and solar, which have made dirty coal less attractive.
Gas-fired electricity generation exceeded coal-powered generation for the first time in the US last year.
Obama's bolder 26-28 per cent emissions reduction by 2025 will be harder to meet and require new policy steps. Trump is trying to gut some of Obama's climate policies, especially on coal, so the target is in further doubt.
Nevertheless, left-leaning environmentalists have repeatedly underestimated the economy naturally lowering emissions through low-emissions technology.

No congressional approval required
Regardless, the US wouldn't cop a penalty for exceeding the voluntary goal.
The Paris deal, unlike the flawed Kyoto pact that President George W Bush rejected, was intentionally not legally binding, partly because a legally enforceable deal would have required US Congress approval.
Nigel Purvis, a former senior US climate change negotiator in the Clinton and Bush administrations, recalls the damaging impact Bush's withdrawal had on the US' international reputation.
"The decision by Bush to reject Kyoto really became a broader symbol of him being unilateral and go-it-alone American power that built up resentment in the international community," Purvis says.
Trump's best climate contribution could be to fulfil a promise to unleash a liquefied natural gas export boom to help replace coal around the world.
Bledsoe says this would have the added benefit of slightly raising the price of gas in the US and making zero-emissions nuclear power price competitive.
With this unpredictable President, anything is possible.
The bottom line is Trump would risk losing foreign partners and harm the US' broader international objectives by abandoning Paris.

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29/05/2017

Scoop: Trump Tells Confidants U.S. Will Quit Paris Climate Deal

AXIOS - Jonathan Swan | Amy Harder

Evan Vucci / AP
President Trump has privately told multiple people, including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave the Paris agreement on climate change, according to three sources with direct knowledge.
Publicly, Trump's position is that he has not made up his mind and when we asked the White House about these private comments, Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks said, "I think his tweet was clear. He will make a decision this week."

Why this matters
Pulling out of Paris is the biggest thing Trump could to do unravel Obama's climate policies. It also sends a stark and combative signal to the rest of the world that working with other nations on climate change isn't a priority to the Trump administration. And pulling out threatens to unravel the ambition of the entire deal, given how integral former President Obama was in making it come together in the first place.

Caveat
Although Trump made it clear during the campaign and in multiple conversations before his overseas trip that he favored withdrawal, he has been known to abruptly change his mind — and often floats notions to gauge the reaction of friends and aides. On the trip, he spent many hours with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, powerful advisers who back the deal.

Behind-the-scenes
The mood inside the EPA this week has been one of nervous optimism. In a senior staff meeting earlier this week, Pruitt told aides he wanted them to pump the brakes on publicly lobbying for withdrawal from Paris.
  • Instead, the EPA staff are quietly working with outside supporters to place op eds favoring withdrawal from Paris.
  • The White House has told Pruitt to lay off doing TV appearances until Trump announces his decision on Paris. (In past weeks, the EPA Administrator has gone on TV to say the U.S. needs to quit Paris, but Pruitt told aides he'll be keeping a lower profile. He doesn't want a Paris withdrawal to be seen as his victory. "It needs to be the President's victory," one source said, paraphrasing what Pruitt has told aides.)
  • Pruitt's aides have told associates in recent days that they remain confident the President will withdraw from Paris but they've been worried about him being overseas and exposed to pressure from European leaders and the environmentalist views of his top aides like Ivanka and economic adviser Gary Cohn. Top EPA staff were relieved when Trump refused to join the other six nations of the G7 in reaffirming "strong commitment" to the Paris agreement.
One level deeper
If Trump follows through and announces publicly he plans to withdraw from the Paris deal, an administration official laid out three ways he could do that:
  1. Trump could announce he is pulling the U.S. from the deal, which would trigger a withdrawal process that wouldn't conclude until November 2020 at the earliest. Under the deal's terms, any country can't send notice of its intent to withdraw until three years after the deal entered into force, which was Nov. 4, 2016. The actual process of withdrawal would then take one year. In this time, it's feasible Trump could change his mind, the administration source said.
  2. Trump could declare that the Paris deal is actually a legal treaty that requires Senate approval. Such a vote would fail, and then Trump would have Senate backing to not abide by the deal, which he deems a treaty. A letter that 22 Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent to Trump this week urging him to withdraw from the deal, increases the odds of this happening, the source said. Trump could also call for a Senate vote in combination with either the first or third option.
  3. Trump could withdraw the U.S. from the treaty that underpins the Paris deal, which is called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This would be the most extreme option because it would take the U.S. out of all global climate diplomacy. This process would take just one year.
Will we always have Paris?
All of these scenarios take more time and maneuvering than a simple announcement, which ensures the debate about what to do with the climate deal won't be over with any time soon.

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Climate Change: Trump Keeps World Waiting On Paris Deal

BBC

Antonio Guterres: "The agreement doesn't collapse if a country leaves the agreement"

Donald Trump has said he will decide whether to pull out of a key climate change deal in the next week, having apparently shrugged off pressure from US allies in recent days.
The US president tweeted he would make his "final decision" on the Paris accord after his return to Washington.
Mr Trump left the G7 summit in Sicily on Saturday without reaffirming his commitment to the accord, unlike the other six world leaders in attendance.
He previously threatened to pull out.
Mr Trump, who has called climate change "a hoax" on occasion, has reportedly indicated this is still his position to key members of his inner circle.
The uncertainty over his position on the Paris agreement puts him at odds with other members of the G7.

What is the Paris accord?
The Paris deal is the world's first comprehensive climate agreement, set out in 2015, with the aim of keeping the global average rise in temperatures below 2C.
In order to do that, countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.
Barack Obama, pictured with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Paris summit, signed the agreement in 2016. Reuters
But it came into force only after being ratified by 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions.
Barack Obama signed the US up in September 2016, and members of the G7 are keen for the US to continue to back it, not least because the country is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after China.

Why doesn't Donald Trump like the agreement?
Mr Trump told voters on the campaign trail he wanted to scrap agreements "contrary to the national interest", while repeatedly promising to strengthen the coal industry.
Coal power is a major contributor to carbon emissions. However, Mr Trump wants to boost coal production to create more jobs.
He has also expressed doubt about the causes of climate change, saying it is a "hoax" made up by China.

Will the US withdraw?
The Axios news site suggests Mr Trump is leaning that way currently, citing three sources who say his mind is made up, and that the wheels are quietly being put in motion behind the scenes.
This is despite US defence secretary James Mattis saying in an interview to air on Sunday that the president is now "wide open" on the issue.
Withdrawal would risk making Mr Trump unpopular not only with his allies abroad, but also with activists at home.
Mr Trump's attitude to climate change made discussions at the G7 "very difficult". AFP
It was noted his attitude to climate change was one of the major hurdles during the summit in Sicily - the first time he has met his fellow G7 leaders as a group.
His stance left him isolated, with Mr Trump's reluctance to reaffirm his commitment clearly annoying German chancellor Angela Merkel, who told reporters: "The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying."

What would be the effect?
There are fears the US pulling out may lead to other, smaller countries following suit.
Even if they do not, as the US has such a large carbon footprint, it will mean the impact of the agreement will likely be lessened significantly.
Whatever the US chooses, the EU, India and China say they will stick to their pledges made in Paris.
And what's more, some of Mr Trump's own country is likely to ignore his scepticism.
New York and California have already pledged to combat climate change without the Trump administration's support.

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Scientists Explain What Will Happen If Donald Trump Pulls Out Of Paris Climate Change Agreement

The Independent - Seth Borenstein (Associated Press)

 The Earth will get dangerously warm even sooner if the U.S pulls out of pledge to cut carbon dioxide pollution

 Earth is likely to hit more dangerous levels of warming even sooner if the US pulls back from its pledge to cut carbon dioxide pollution, scientists said. That's because America contributes so much to rising temperatures.
President Donald Trump, who once proclaimed global warming a Chinese hoax, will soon decide whether the United States stays in or leaves a 2015 Paris climate change accord in which nearly every nation agreed to curb its greenhouse gas emissions.
Other global leaders have been urging him to stay during high level security and economic meetings in Italy that began Friday. Pope Francis already made the case with a gift of his papal encyclical on the environment when Trump visited the Vatican earlier this week.
In an attempt to understand what could happen to the planet if the U.S. pulls out of Paris, The Associated Press consulted with more than two dozen climate scientists and analysed a special computer model scenario designed to calculate potential effects.
Scientists said it would worsen an already bad problem, and make it far more difficult to prevent crossing a dangerous global temperature threshold.
Calculations suggest it could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tonnes of additional carbon dioxide in the air a year. When it adds up year after year, scientists said that is enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.
"If we lag, the noose tightens," said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change.
Mr Trump has said he needs more to time to decide whether to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement (Evan Vucci/AP)
One expert group ran a worst-case computer simulation of what would happen if the U.S. does not curb emissions, but other nations do meet their targets. It found that America would add as much as half a degree of warming (0.3 degrees Celsius) to the globe by the end of century.
Scientists are split on how reasonable and likely that scenario is.
Many said because of cheap natural gas that displaces coal and growing adoption of renewable energy sources, it is unlikely that the U.S. would stop reducing its carbon pollution even if it abandoned the accord, so the effect would likely be smaller.
But others say it could be worse because other countries might follow a U.S. exit, leading to more emissions from both the U.S. and the rest.
Another computer simulation team put the effect of the U.S. pulling out somewhere between 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius (.18 to .36 degrees Fahrenheit).
While scientists may disagree on the computer simulations they overwhelmingly agreed that the warming the planet is undergoing now would be faster and more intense.
The world without U.S. efforts would have a far more difficult time avoiding a dangerous threshold: keeping the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The world has already warmed by just over half that amount — with about one-fifth of the past heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions coming from the United States, usually from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
So the efforts are really about preventing another 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) from now.
"Developed nations — particularly the U.S. and Europe — are responsible for the lion's share of past emissions, with China now playing a major role," said Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis. "This means Americans have caused a large fraction of the warming."
Even with the U.S. doing what it promised under the Paris agreement, the world is likely to pass that 2 degree mark, many scientists said.
But the fractions of additional degrees that the U.S. would contribute could mean passing the threshold faster, which could in turn mean "ecosystems being out of whack with the climate, trouble farming current crops and increasing shortages of food and water," said National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth.
Climate Interactive, a team of scientists and computer modellers who track global emissions and pledges, simulated global emissions if every country but the U.S. reaches their individualised goals to curb carbon pollution. And then they calculated what that would mean in global temperature, sea level rise and ocean acidification using scientifically-accepted computer models.
By the year 2030, it would mean an extra 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in the air a year, according to the Climate Interactive models, and by the end of the century 0.3 degrees Celsius of warming.
"The U.S. matters a great deal," said Climate Interactive co-director Andrew Jones. "That amount could make the difference between meeting the Paris limit of two degrees and missing it."
Climate Action Tracker, a competing computer simulation team, put the effect of the U.S. pulling out somewhere between 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius (.18 to .36 Fahrenheit) by 2100. It uses a scenario where U.S. emissions flatten through the century, while Climate Interactive has them rising.
One of the few scientists who downplay the harm of the U.S. possibly leaving the agreement is John Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the scientist credited with coming up with the 2 degree goal.
"Ten years ago (a U.S. exit) would have shocked the planet," Schellnhuber said. "Today if the U.S. really chooses to leave the Paris agreement, the world will move on with building a clean and secure future."
Not so, said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe: "There will be ripple effects from the United States' choices across the world."

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28/05/2017

Scientists Say The Pace Of Sea Level Rise Has Nearly Tripled Since 1990

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

An iceberg is pictured in the western Antarctic peninsula in March 2016. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images)
A new scientific analysis finds that the Earth’s oceans are rising nearly three times as rapidly as they were throughout most of the 20th century, one of the strongest indications yet that a much feared trend of not just sea level rise, but its acceleration, is now underway.
“We have a much stronger acceleration in sea level rise than formerly thought,” said Sönke Dangendorf, a researcher with the University of Siegen in Germany who led the study along with scientists at institutions in Spain, France, Norway and the Netherlands.
Their paper, just out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, isn’t the first to find that the rate of rising seas is itself increasing — but it finds a bigger rate of increase than in past studies. The new paper concludes that before 1990, oceans were rising at about 1.1 millimeters per year, or just 0.43 inches per decade. From 1993 through 2012, though, it finds that they rose at 3.1 millimeters per year, or 1.22 inches per decade.
The cause, said Dangendorf, is that sea level rise throughout much of the 20th century was driven by the melting of land-based glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms, but sea level rise in the 21st century has now, on top of that, added in major contributions from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.
“The sea level rise is now three times as fast as before 1990,” Dangendorf said.
Studying the changing rate of sea level rise is complicated by the fact that scientists only have a precise satellite record of its rate going back to the early 1990s. Before that, the records rely on tide gauges spread around the world in various locations.
But sea level rise varies widely in different places, due to the rising and sinking of land, large-scale gravitational effects on the waters of the globe and other local factors. So scientists have struggled to piece together a longer record that merges together what we know from satellites with these older sources of information.
The new study takes a crack at this problem by trying to piece together a sea level record for the 20th century, before the beginning of the satellite record, by adjusting the results of local tide gauges based on an understanding of the factors affecting sea level rise in a given region, and then also weighting different regions differently in the final analysis. That’s how it came up with a relatively small rate of sea level rise from 1900 through 1990, followed by a much faster one afterward.
Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University sea level researcher who has also published research showing a sharp acceleration of sea level rise, called the new study a “nice analysis” in an email to The Washington Post.
“Their final estimate of 20th century (particularly pre-1990) global mean sea level rise is in good agreement with the results of the two different analyses presented by [our] 2015 paper, and less than those of most other reconstructions,” Kopp said.
That 2015 study found that from 1901 to 1990, sea level rose at a rate of 1.2 millimeters per year, very close to the current study’s estimate. But other researchers have found figures more in the range of 1.6 to 1.9 millimeters.
These differences matter a great deal because the larger sea level rise was during the 20th century, the less of an increase there has been since then — and vice-versa.
Overall, though, the disparities between different studies — many of which point to an acceleration, but which vary upon its size — suggests that scientists have converged on the big picture but are still debating its details.
An acceleration of sea level rise, after all, is an expected consequence of ongoing global warming, and there are projections that it could rise as high as 5 to 15 millimeters per year (1.97 to 5.9 inches per decade) in extreme climate warming scenarios, according to Dangendorf.
Kopp added that in the past five years, there is some indication that sea level rise could already be even higher than the 3.1 millimeter annual rate seen from 1993 through 2012. He cautioned, though, that “those higher rates over a short period of time probably include some level of natural variability as well as continued, human-caused acceleration.”
Just how much control we are able to exert over the rate of sea level rise will critically depend on how rapidly global greenhouse gas emissions come down in coming years — making the entire outlook closely tied to whether the United States sticks with the rest of the world in honoring the Paris climate agreement.
“Sea levels will continue to rise over the coming century, no matter whether we will adapt or not, but I think we can limit at least a part of the sea level rise. It will further accelerate, but how much is related to how we act as humans,” Dangendorf said.

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Donald Trump Isolated On Climate Change In 'Intense' Exchange At G7 Summit

Fairfax - Arne Delfs | Margaret Talev (Bloomberg)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Donald Trump was isolated on climate change at the Group of Seven meeting on Friday, as the US president said he's in no rush to decide whether to scrap his country's involvement in the Paris Agreement.
A closed-door session on the first day of the G7 summit in Sicily found unity on stepping up efforts to combat terrorism, but entered stormier waters on trade and on climate, Mrs Merkel said. At that stage it was six against one as leaders pressed Trump to hold to US agreements made under the landmark Paris climate accord.

G7 summit braces for clash on trade, climate
US President Donald Trump's views on climate change are "evolving" following discussions with European leaders who are pushing for him to stay in the Paris climate accord.

 "We made it clear that we want the US to stick to its commitments," Mrs Merkel told reporters after the meeting on Friday. "There were very different arguments from us all urging the president to hold to the climate accord." She said the discussion was conducted in a very "honest" atmosphere, leading to a "very intense exchange."
After deriding climate change as a hoax and pledging to pull out of the Paris deal during his election campaign, Mr Trump has sidestepped the issue and passed up an number of opportunities to outline his international stance toward global warming. Members of his administration are deadlocked about whether the US should uphold the pact.
Mrs Merkel said that the US side made clear that it hasn't yet taken a decision on whether to scrap Paris "and won't make a decision here" at the G7.

Taking time
In the meeting, G7 leaders asked Mr Trump his timeframe for making a decision, according to a briefing by his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn. Mr Trump said, "I'd rather take my time" and get to the right decision, Mr Cohn told reporters travelling with Mr Trump in Sicily.
Mr Trump also expressed concerns that other countries that had tried to dial back their climate emissions like China and India had seen job growth suffer - and made clear he was not prepared to live with that trade-off, Mr Cohn said.
Mr Trump told the leaders, "he didn't want to be in second place," Mr Cohn said, especially because he ran on a platform of job creation and improving working-and middle-class opportunities and is committed to keeping that promise, Mr Cohn said.
G7 leaders, from left, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Donald Trump, and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. Photo: AP
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, the summit's host, said separately that there was "no agreement" on the Paris accord.
"President Trump will take time to reflect on it, and the other countries are taking note of that," Mr Gentiloni said.
G7 leaders met in Sicily on Friday to discuss trade, climate change, refugees and other issues.  Photo: Getty Images
"His views are evolving," Mr Cohn said, but Mr Trump's decision will be based on what's best for the United States. The president "is thinking about what his options are." Mr Trump "feels much more knowledgeable on the topic now," said Mr Cohn.

Pared down statement expected
Group of Seven leaders are preparing to sign off on a substantially pared-down statement at the close of their meeting, an indication of persisting divisions on climate change and trade.
Mr Trump and First Lady Melania, talk with Mr Trudeau as they arrive for a concert in the Sicilian citadel of Taormina. Photo: AP
The final communique - 32 pages last year - traditionally outlines the common positions of G7 leaders on the economy and other global issues requiring joint action by the world's leading powers. This year's statement is on pace to be one-third the length of last year's in Japan, according to three officials from delegations involved in the preparation.
Drafts of the communique as of Friday were due to address topics such as migration and gender equality. The "ongoing large-scale movement" of migrants and refugees calls for "coordinated efforts," according to a draft of the communique seen by Bloomberg News.
"We reaffirm the sovereign rights of states to control their own borders and set clear limits on net migration levels, as key elements of their national security and economic well-being," according to the draft.
The nations are also set to say gender equality is fundamental for human rights. The leaders also issued a separate statement on counter-terrorism efforts that called on social media companies to do more in the fight against terrorism.

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