09/11/2017

Graphs Of The Day: Australia The Global Climate Laggard

RenewEconomy - 

As the 23rd UN Climate Conference in Bonn nears the end of its first week, a new report has highlighted just how far Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world in its efforts to avert catastrophic global warming – and how bad it would be if everyone else was putting in such a woeful effort.
The report, the latest edition of the Climate Council’s signature bi-annual Critical Decade series, describes Australia’s emissions reduction target of 26-28 per cent on a 2005 baseline as “unusually weak,” and nowhere near its fair share in tackling global warming – a situation that boils down to “a decade of interference by vested interests” and a shortage of political courage.
“Australia is failing to tackle climate change with emissions rising and a lack of any coherent, national approach to reduce emissions in the short, medium or long term,” the report says. “We are known as a global climate laggard.”
So how far behind is Australia lagging? Here are a couple of charts that help put it in perspective.


This first, pictured above, shows a comparison of Australia’s commitments at the 2015 Paris climate conference to those of other OECD countries. As the Climate Council notes, this shows that Australia is far behind the level of climate action around the world, with a commitment “inconsistent with limiting temperature rise to no more than 2°C.”
“Compared to an average annual rate of emission reductions of 2.6% pledged by many developed countries, Australia’s proposed rate of emissions reduction is only 1.6% per annum,” the report says. “Worse yet, our emissions continue to rise!”


The second graph, above, is adapted from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “Burning Embers” diagram on 2014, which is based on a synthesis of “thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers to assess the degree of risk at increasing levels of global average temperature.”
What it shows, is that the Australian government’s approach, if adopted globally, would lock in a dramatic rise in global temperatures of around 4°C, “resulting in worsening extreme weather events and catastrophic damage to natural systems that support human life.”
As the report notes, there is a significant difference in the degree of risk between the 1.5°C and 2°C Paris targets, with higher risks of damage to natural ecosystems and more intense and/or frequent extreme weather events for the 2°C target.
“At a 2°C temperature rise, there is a high level of risk for 3 of the 5 categories – impacts on natural ecosystems, extreme weather events, and impacts on the most vulnerable. That is,
a 2.0°C temperature rise is not a “safe” level of climate change,” the report says.
“A 4°C temperature rise (business-as-usual) would lead to a vastly different world, with very high risks to many natural ecosystems and highly damaging impacts on the most vulnerable.”

Climate Council Key Findings
  • Australia is failing to tackle climate change with emissions rising and a lack of any coherent, long-term national approach to reduce emissions in the short, medium or long term. We are known as a global climate laggard.
  • Failure to rapidly and deeply reduce greenhouse gas emissions increases the risk of deteriorating human health and well-being, massive forced migration and conflict, crippling economic damage around the world, and the Earth’s sixth great extinction event.
  • Australia is highly vulnerable to many of the consequences of a changing climate, from worsening heatwaves, droughts and bushfires, to devastating coral reef bleaching, and most of our population centres being exposed to sea level rise.
  • Amongst the G20 countries, Australia’s emission reduction target – a reduction of 26-28% on a 2005 baseline – is unusually weak, nowhere near what is required for us to play our fair share in meeting 2°C Paris target.
  • Renewable energy has already replaced ageing, polluting fossil fuels as the energy system of the future, with the installation of solar and wind systems globally doubling every 5.4 years.
  • Maintaining this rate of renewable expansion could see the world’s energy systems completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
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Politicians And Activists Gather For COP23 Bonn Climate Talks - In Pictures

The Guardian

Bonn climate change conference
The world’s nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd annual “conference of the parties” (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to prevent dangerous global warming. This year, Fiji plays president and meeting the Paris climate goals are top of the agenda.

Members of the Guardians of the Forest, a group of indigenous leaders who have been criss-crossing Europe by bus over the past two weeks. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

For the first time, this round of UN climate talks is being held by one of the small island nations that are most at risk from the sea-level rise and extreme storms that climate change is bringing. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama (second right), is the COP president, though the summit is being held in Germany for practical reasons. Photograph: James Dowson/UNFCCC

Activists hold giant balloons labelled CO2 in front of the Neurath coal power plant during protests prior to talks. 2017 is set to be one of the hottest three years on record, provisional data suggests, confirming yet again a warming trend that scientists say bears the fingerprints of human actions. Photograph: Philipp Guelland/EPA

Climate change activists march to demonstrate against coal energy and other climate-related issues. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Not far from the UN talks, activists frustrated with slow progress by governments are turning up the heat at Germany’s opencast mines, highlighting the country’s failure to live up to its green pledges. Photograph: Omer Messinger/EPA

People arrive for the opening ceremony of the COP23 talks, which aim to meet the goals laid out in the Paris agreement two years ago. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

The welcoming ceremony. Photograph: UNFCC

Fijians perform a traditional ceremony during the opening of the talks. The conference is under the presidency of the government of Fiji this year. Photograph: Ronald Wittek/EPA

Children take part in a climate march prior to the opening session. New data shows how the world would look if governments fail in their pledge to hold global warming to 2C. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

At the welcoming ceremony (l-r): Hoesung Lee, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Ashok-Alexander Sridharan, mayor of Bonn; UNFCCC executive secretary, Patricia Espinosa; Jan Szyszko, minister of environment, Poland, and incoming COP24 president; Frank Bainimarama, COP 23 president; Salaheddine Mezouar, Moroccan foreign minister and president of COP22; Barbara Hendricks, German environment minister, and Petteri Taalas, secretary-general, World Meteorological Organisation. Photograph: James Dowson/UNFCC

Fiji has renamed the talks from the bland “facilitative dialogue” to the “talanoa dialogue” after a Pacific island concept of using storytelling and talking as a way to make good decisions. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Jason Box, professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, joined a session on Arctic climate change and its global impacts via video call. Photograph: Courtesy of IIDS

Veteran climate scientist James Hansen and his granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, who is among 21 young plaintiffs bringing a lawsuit against the US federal government over its CO2 emissions. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Young bloggers from Brazil prepare climate change messages for social media. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Representatives of the Women and Gender constituency conduct an aerobics class to remind COP23 delegates to metaphorically “mind the gap” of gender inequality, and “reach” for a gender action plan. Photograph: Courtesy of IISD

Delegates read the Earth Negotiations Bulletin to keep track of progress. Photograph: Courtesy of IISD

The breadth of protest at the talks can be seen by these banners. Photograph: Ronald Wittek/EPA
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Fight Climate Change By Suing Polluters, Says Scientist

National Geographic - Stephen Leahy

 Prominent climate scientist James Hansen has a message for world leaders gathering in Germany for the United Nations conference on global warming.
A supercell thunderstorm strikes in South Dakota. Among the most severe storms, supercells can bring strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes. (See more extreme weather pictures.) Photograph by Jim Reed, National Geographic
Countries should sue the world’s biggest oil, coal and gas, and cement companies for damages resulting from climate change—says well-known climate scientist James Hansen.
Hansen, a former NASA scientist who warned Congress about the dangers of climate change in 1988, says global warming of 2°C, or even 1.5°C, is dangerous, risking sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. That would put major parts of coastal cities like New York underwater. He believes major impacts of climate change are happening faster than what is reported in even the latest science reports, including the U.S. government’s Climate Science Special Report released last Friday.
An enormous amount of money is urgently needed to dramatically slash emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), take existing CO2 out of the atmosphere, and for countries to cope with the impacts of climate change, Hansen argues. And that money should come from the companies that profited most from burning fossil fuels, Hansen will tell world leaders Tuesday in Bonn, Germany, at the annual United Nations climate negotiations.
Known as COP 23, negotiators from 197 countries are meeting this week to finalize details around the Paris Climate Change Agreement, including a process to increase emission reductions. The current reductions promised by countries under the Paris Agreement are only a third of what is needed to stay below 2C, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
“I tried to get an opportunity to address the negotiators but did not succeed. I will give my talk at a press conference,” Hansen told National Geographic in advance of the meeting.

Targeting “Carbon Majors”?
The companies that could be sued are known as the “carbon majors,” Hansen says. These are the 100 companies who have been the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron are listed as among the highest carbon-emitting, investor-owned companies.
“The judicial system is the only way to get the funds needed to deal with climate change,” Hansen says. “Legislation won’t work because that’s where lobbyists rule.”
This legal action is comparable to the successful tobacco industry lawsuits that resulted in billions of dollars in settlements, he adds.

Legal Precedents
In fact, climate lawsuits are already happening. Last year, a Filipino government body called the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines accused 47 carbon majors of human rights violations because of their role in climate change. Three California coastal communities sued 31 fossil-fuel companies in July. Last month, four municipalities on Canada’s west coast asked Chevron, Exxon, Shell, and others to pay their share of the climate costs those communities are facing. There is now even a nascent movement called Climate Law in our Hands that helps communities go after these carbon-emitting companies.


Causes and Effects of Climate Change

Governments are also being sued. A Dutch citizens’ group won the first-ever climate lawsuit against a government in 2015. The courts agreed that the Netherlands government wasn’t doing enough to protect its citizens and made the unprecedented ruling that the country’s annual CO2 emission reduction target had to increase from 17 percent to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.
For comparison, 2015 (most recent available) annual U.S. emissions are four percent higher than 1990.
Hansen is involved in a 2015 lawsuit against the U.S. federal government, brought by 21 kids under the age of 21, including his own granddaughter. The case argues that the government’s failure to curb CO2 emissions has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. A trial will be held February 5, 2018 in the U.S. District Court of Oregon.
Another group of youth just filed a lawsuit against Governor Bill Walker of Alaska alleging that “the state is violating their constitutional rights by putting fossil-fuel production above the safety of their lives.”
Could Puerto Rico sue the carbon majors for the billions in damages caused by Hurricane Maria? Legal experts say this is a difficult question.
“You need to establish a sufficiently direct relationship between an act or omission by the entity sued and a significant impact,” says Jorge Vinuales, Professor of Law and Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge.
However, some cases along these lines are starting at the UN Human Rights Committee, says Vinuales, who said he couldn’t yet provide further details because they aren’t public. For low-lying, small island nations whose existence is threatened by rising seas, a better approach might be to bring an action against some major polluters before either the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, Vinuales says. “I'm quite confident that such a suit could be formulated in terms that could work,” he says.
A group of citizens could also try to sue carbon majors using transnational tort litigation. However, this approach may have been made more difficult by the fact that the U.S. climate delegation made sure the Paris Agreement included a paragraph that reduces the risk of litigation.

Future Solutions?
It has long been recognized that large amounts of funding is needed to help poorer nations cope with impacts of climate change and ramp up cleaner energy. In 2009, the U.S. and other developed nations agreed to step up financial support for developing nations to $100 billion a year by 2020.
In 2016 this support amounted to just $2.78 billion. For comparison, a recent report estimated that extreme weather—made worse by climate change—and the health impacts of burning fossil fuels cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year the last ten years.
The World Meteorological Organization also announced that 2017 is very likely to be one of the top three warmest years on record, and likely the hottest year in the absence of the El Niño phenomenon.
As COP 23 in Bonn began this week, Malaysia and Vietnam were just beginning to assess the damage from last weekend’s powerful Typhoon Damrey that killed at least 60 people.
Global warming is already at 1C and there is much worse extreme weather to come unless carbon emissions are eliminated, says Hansen. To protect low-lying island nations and global shorelines, global warming needs to be less than 1C.
That means removing at least 100 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere through afforestation and changes in land management, he says. That alone will cost at least a trillion dollars.
Lawsuits against governments and carbon majors could force what Hansen and many climate activists have long advocated: a carbon fee or tariff system on fossil fuels to raise their cost and provide funding. “As long as we allow fossil fuels to be cheap energy, and not required to pay their costs to society, we cannot kick our fossil fuel addiction,” he says.

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