Australia's Emissions Rise Again In 2017, Putting Paris Targets In Doubt

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Exclusive: Excluding unreliable land-use data, 2017 greenhouse emissions were again highest on record

Rising greenhouse gas pollution comes despite decline in electricity sector emissions. Photograph: Getty Images/Universal Images Group

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 were again the highest on record when unreliable data from sectors including land clearing and forestry are excluded, according to consultants NDEVR Environmental.
Even including land clearing, overall emissions show a continued rising trend, which began in about 2011, putting Australia’s commitment under the Paris agreement further out of reach.
The rising greenhouse gas pollution comes despite continued decline in emissions from the electricity sector, following increased renewable energy generation and the closure of Australia’s dirtiest coal power station, Hazelwood.
NDEVR replicates the federal government’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI) quarterly reports, but releases them months ahead of the official data. Previous NDEVR reports’ figures have been within 1% of the official figures when they are eventually released.
The latest NDEVR figures include the last three months of 2017, allowing a comparison of calendar-year figures since records began in 2002, revealing 2017 had the highest emissions on record, when those from land-use change are excluded.

Even including the unreliable land-use figures, overall emissions continued their overall upward trend, taking Australia further from the commitments it made in Paris to help keep global warming under 2C. It is even making its current target (a 26-28% cut below 2005 levels by 2030), which experts agree is not yet strong enough to comply with the Paris agreement, seem increasingly out of reach.
In 2017, Australia’s total emissions from all sectors excluding land-use change came to 556.11m tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, according to NDEVR’s projections. That surpassed the last record, set in just 2016, by 7.21m tonnes.
Overall emissions including land-use change – which involves activities such as land clearing and forestry – were the highest since 2011, indicating a clear upward trend since that time, reversing years of declining emissions starting in 2007.
Emissions from the electricity sector in the last three months of 2017 were the lowest they’ve been in the data set, going back to 2001. And in the full year, they were the second lowest, pipped only by 2013.

But that reduction was overwhelmed by increases in other sectors. Emissions from transport were at a record high in the last three months of 2017, continuing a steady rise since the records began in 2001. Fugitive emissions, which include emissions from the production, processing, transport, storage, transmission and distribution of fossil fuels, were also projected to be the highest on record.
Stationary energy, which includes energy produced for industrial processes such as the growing LNG industry, was also projected to be at the equal highest on record, matching the previous quarter from July to September 2017.

Links

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Biggest Threat To Humanity? Climate Change, U.N. Chief Says

New York Times - Somini Sengupta

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said, “I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off." CreditGiuseppe Lami/European Pressphoto Agency, via Shutterstock.

UNITED NATIONS — Nuclear weapons? Famine? Civil war? Nope.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, on Thursday called climate change “the most systemic threat to humankind” and urged world leaders to curb their countries’ greenhouse gas emissions.
He didn’t say much, though, about the one world leader who had pulled out of the landmark United Nations climate change agreement: President Trump.
Instead, Mr. Guterres suggested that Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord nearly a year ago didn’t matter much. The American people, he said, were doing plenty.
“Independently of the position of the administration, the U.S. might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country,” the secretary general said. “And, as you know, all around the world, the role of governments is less and less relevant.”
That may be overly optimistic. Sixteen American states and Puerto Rico have pledged to stick to the commitment that the United States made in the Paris agreement to reduce emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025. Those states are on track to keep their promise.
But they represent less than a half of the country’s population, and the United States as a country will most likely fall short of its Paris pledge as Mr. Trump dismantles environmental regulations, according to a 2017 study by the Rhodium Group, a private economic research company. And a group led by Michael R. Bloomberg, the United Nations special envoy on climate change, and Gov. Jerry Brown of California, came to the same conclusion in a report that relied on the same data.
The Paris accord is written in such a way that the United States, in fact, remains in the pact even though it announced its intent to pull out. The actual withdrawal does not happen until 2020.
Mr. Guterres is planning a summit meeting next year to goad world leaders to raise their emissions reductions targets. But few countries are even close to meeting the targets they set under the Paris agreement, which was drafted in November and December in 2015, according to independent analyses.
His warnings came a week after the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, reported that a barrage of extreme weather events had made 2017 the costliest year on record for such disasters, with an estimated $320 billion in losses.
Speaking at the United Nations headquarters on Thursday, Mr. Guterres said floods in South Asia had affected 41 million people and that drought had driven 900,000 people from their homes in Africa.
“I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off before the world rises to the challenge,” he said. “We know it can be hard to address problems perceived to be years or decades away. But climate impacts are already upon us.”
Asked about the looming danger of floods and landslides facing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, Mr. Guterres said he had urged Bangladesh’s government to relocate them to higher ground. Bangladesh’s government has said it is preparing to relocate the most vulnerable refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal, itself vulnerable to the rising sea.
Mr. Guterres would not comment on those specific efforts except to say that “we believe higher ground is the best place.”

Links

• Secretary-General's press encounter on climate change [with Q&A]
• The Biggest Refugee Camp Braces for Rain: ‘This Is Going to Be a Catastrophe’
• Here’s How Far the World Is From Meeting Its Climate Goals
• Last three years hottest on record, severe weather hits 2018: U.N.

U.S. Judge Dismisses Exxon Lawsuit To Stop Climate Change Probes

Reuters - Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday dismissed Exxon Mobil Corp’s (XOM.N) lawsuit seeking to stop New York and Massachusetts from probing whether the oil and gas company covered up its knowledge about climate change and lied to investors and the public about it.

The logo of Exxon Mobil Corporation is shown on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, December 30, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

 U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan rejected as “implausible” Exxon’s argument that the states’ Democratic attorneys general, Eric Schneiderman and Maura Healey, were pursuing politically motivated, bad faith fraud investigations in order to violate its constitutional rights.
Caproni dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the Irving, Texas-based company cannot bring it again.
Exxon is evaluating its legal options, spokesman Scott Silvestri said in an email.
“We believe the risk of climate change is real and we want to be part of the solution,” he added. “We’ve invested about $8 billion on energy efficiency and low-emission technologies such as carbon capture and next generation biofuels.”
The case is one of several, including shareholder and employee lawsuits, centered on whether Exxon has for decades lied about climate change, including its impact on energy prices and the environment and its ability to develop reserves, and taken public positions inconsistent with what it knew.
Schneiderman, in a statement, welcomed the end of what he called Exxon’s “frivolous, nonsensical lawsuit that wrongfully attempted to thwart a serious state law enforcement investigation.”
Healey called Caproni’s decision “a turning point in our investigation and a victory for the people.”
Exxon sued in June 2016, after receiving subpoenas seeking documents about its historical understanding of climate change, and communications with interest groups and shareholders.
The company accused Schneiderman and Healey of conspiring to “silence and intimidate one side of the public policy debate,” violating its rights to free speech and due process and against unreasonable searches.

Much of Exxon’s case was based on a March 2016 news conference with the attorneys general and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, which it called a bid to coerce its adoption of policies that they and climate change activists preferred.
Caproni, however, said “nothing that was said can fairly be read to constitute declaration of a political vendetta against Exxon.”
She said the belief by Schneiderman and Healey, “apparently” shared by Exxon, that climate change is real does not mean they had no reason to believe Exxon may have fraudulently “sowed confusion” to bolster its bottom line.
Nowhere, she said, did Exxon suggest that the attorneys general believed the company “was itself confused about the causes or risks of climate change.”
The case is Exxon Mobil Corp et al v Schneiderman et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 17-02301.

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