17/06/2019

Major Oil Companies Commit To Carbon Pricing At Vatican

AP - Nicole Winfield | Frank Jordans

Activists hold up signs outside the Vatican as Pope Francis meets with oil executives, Friday, June 14, 2019. The meeting marked the second year that Francis has invited oil and financial sector executives to the Vatican to impress upon them his concern that preserving God’s creation is one of the fundamental challenges facing humankind today. (Claudio Peri/ANSA via AP)
VATICAN CITY — Some of the world’s major oil producers pledged Friday to support “economically meaningful” carbon pricing regimes after a personal appeal from Pope Francis to avoid “perpetrating a brutal act of injustice” against the poor and future generations.
The companies, including ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Chevron and Eni, said in a joint statement at the end of a Vatican climate summit that governments should set such pricing regimes at a level that encourages business and investment, while “minimizing the costs to vulnerable communities and supporting economic growth.”
The CEOs, as well as leaders of major asset managers such as BlackRock and BNP Paribas, also called for companies to provide investors with clarity about the risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to transition to cleaner energy sources.
The joint statement was issued at the end of a closed-door summit in the Vatican gardens, the second time the Holy See has convened the world’s petroleum leaders for private talks on climate change, scientific research and the moral imperative to save God’s creation.
Francis attended Friday’s session and told the gathering that a “radical energy transition” to clean, low-carbon power sources was needed and that if managed well, would “generate new jobs, reduce inequality and improve the quality of life for those affected by climate change.”
“Faced with a climate emergency, we must take action accordingly, in order to avoid perpetrating a brutal act of injustice toward the poor and future generations,” he said.
He praised the executives in particular for taking on the core issue of carbon pricing, which he said was necessary for humanity to use the resources of creation wisely and not burden the poor and future generations with the debt incurred by the rich.
In their joint statement, the CEOs said “Reliable and economically meaningful carbon pricing regimes, whether based on tax, trading mechanisms or other market-based measures, should be set by governments at a level that incentivizes business practices ... while minimizing the costs to vulnerable communities and supporting economic growth.”
The pledge comes ahead of a European Union summit next week at which leaders will discuss the bloc’s efforts to combat climate change including a proposal to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere by 2050. While the announcement refers to the 2015 Paris accord’s goal of “keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)” by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, experts say capping the rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) would be safer.
The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based group that examines the impact the shift away from fossil fuels has on financial markets, welcomed the Vatican announcement.
“It is important that many of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas companies and many of the world’s largest investors have endorsed carbon pricing regimes,” the group’s executive director, Mark Campanale, said in a statement.
“Critically, asset owners with trillions of dollars under management are also calling for company disclosures of meaningful and material information on plans and investments in the energy transition,” he added.
Outside the summit, around half-a-dozen protesters held up signs urging the oil executives to listen to the pope.
Signs in Italian read "Don't steal our future", left, and "Climate emergency is not an opinion!", second from right. (Claudio Peri/ANSA via AP)
The meeting was held under unusual secrecy even by Vatican standards, with the program and guest list initially unpublished. A few executives confirmed their presence ahead of time, including the chief executives of BP and Eni, Bob Dudley and Claudio Descalzi.
On the BP blog, Dudley wrote this week that the meeting was coming at an urgent time, with BP’s own latest survey showing carbon emissions grew by 2% last year, even as experts say they have to dramatically decrease to meet standards set by the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Eni’s Descalzi said in a statement that four years after Paris, “it’s clear we have to change pace. Progress has been insufficient and the emissions continue to grow.”
The summit was co-organized by the University of Notre Dame, whose president, the Rev. John Jenkins, praised the commitment taken by the industry leaders.
The commitments taken “won’t solve the problem themselves,” he said. “But they’re extremely important first steps toward doing that.”
Francis has dedicated a major teaching document to the environment and is expected to press his case at a Vatican meeting of Amazon bishops later this year.

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Trump Official Goes Rogue, Says Climate Change May Cause Next Financial Crisis

Vanity Fair - 

One guess as to how the president will respond.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images.
Since taking the oath of office in 2017, Donald Trump has made it clear that he cares about the environment about as much as freedom of the press and sounding lucid on Twitter.
In the past 29 months, he’s:
The administration has muzzled science that contradicts its official stance that climate change is nothing to worry about—or is even a thing that exists—and, to that end, hired a guy who has said carbon dioxide is being demonized “just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” whose primary job is to discredit the conclusions of last year’s National Climate Assessment, a report written by 13 federal agencies that predicted harrowing consequences for not taking action on climate change.
At this point, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to learn that government employees caught even uttering the words “climate change” and “not good” around the water cooler gets cattle prodded by Aunt Lydia. Which makes it all the more shocking that a top regulator has gone “rogue” and defied Trump to speak out about the issue.
Rostin Behnam, who sits on the powerful five-member Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told the New York Times in an interview Monday that the financial risks from climate change are akin to those posed by the mortgage meltdown that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
“If climate change causes more volatile frequent and extreme weather events, you’re going to have a scenario where these large providers of financial products—mortgages, home insurance, pensions—cannot shift risk away from their portfolios,” Behnam said. “It’s abundantly clear that climate change poses financial risk to the stability of the financial system.”
If you’re wondering how it came to pass that Trump appointed a guy who actually believes climate change is real, well, he didn’t exactly have a choice.
Behnam’s seat, by law, had to be filled by a Democrat; legal experts told Times reporter Coral Davenport that it would be difficult, but not impossible, for Trump to fire or even demote Behnam. (The CFTC, like the Federal Reserve, is meant to operate more independently from the West Wing than other federal agencies, presumably to the president’s explosive chagrin.)
“I have a unique bully pulpit,” said Behnam.
While people in Behnam’s position have occasionally pushed back against presidential policies in private, government affairs experts told the Times that his initiative is unusual. “Rarely do you see a commissioner go rogue and public,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
And if Trump is unhappy about Behnam’s comments, he presumably won’t be thrilled with what’s coming next!
On Wednesday, Mr. Behnam plans to detail the formation of a panel of experts at the trading commission assigned to produce a report on how global warming could affect the financial sector, potentially impacting food costs, insurance markets, the mortgage industry and other economic pillars.Because the report, expected late this year or early next, would be a product of the federal government, it would most likely put Mr. Behnam in direct conflict with the policies of the Trump administration.
The report, which Mr. Behnam said he expected would focus in particular on potential harm to the nation’s agriculture sector, is likely to emerge at a moment when Mr. Trump will be making the case to farm states, which have already been hurt by his crop tariffs, to reelect him in 2020.
His interest in the financial effects of climate change, he said, stems from six years working for Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, on the Senate Agriculture Committee. He left the agriculture committee in 2017 to join the trading commission. Earlier, he had worked as a financial trader and a corporate lawyer in New York.
In January, California electricity provider PG&E was forced to file for bankruptcy on account of billions of dollars in liability stemming from the deadly wildfires (for which Trump blamed the victims, which analysts believe is a taste of what’s to come re: the economic damage from climate change.
Thirty-nine central banks, including those of England, Canada, China, Japan, and the European Union have formed a working group to study the effects of climate change on the financial markets, a project the United States has naturally declined to take part in.
“We understand that climate change causes a big systemic risk,” said Stefano Giglio, a professor of finance at Yale University, told the Times. “But right now, we don’t have enough information, and we don’t have the right financial products to insure this risk. The CFTC can help give that information and help lay out a global marker for what we need to do.”
Given the difficulty Trump would face in trying to get rid of Behnam, it’s likely the regulator is in for the sort of unhinged attacks that Fed chairman Jerome Powell has been subjected to.
 Of course, you’d think the CEO president who ran for office on the claim that his head for business was just what the country needed might care about preventing another global financial crisis.
Then you’d remember who we’re dealing with and pray the planet fares better than the Trump Taj Mahal.

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Climate Change: Arctic Permafrost Now Melting At Levels Not Expected Until 2090

The Independent  - Alessio Perrone

Series of 'anomalously warm summers' caused ground to thaw, researchers say


'Mothers Rise Up' protesters gather in May to demand action on climate change

Permafrost hs begun thawing in the Canadian Arctic more than 70 years early because of climate change, according to new research.
A "series of anomalously warm summers” has dramatically accelerated melting rates at three sites despite average annual ground temperatures remaining low. Ponds and hillocks have formed as a result.
It had been thought that the permafrost - ground that remains frozen for at least two years - would remain until at least 2090.
But the study found thawing levels were above 150 to 240 per cent above historic levels.
Researchers called this a “truly remarkable amount".
Mould Bay on Prince Patrick Island was the worst-affected site, according to the study, published on the journal Geophysical Research Letters.  
There, permafrost thawing levels were 240 per cent higher than historic levels and the ground sank 90cm over the course of the study which ran for over 12 years, between 2003 and 2016.
Researchers also recorded thawing at depths not expected until air temperatures rose to levels that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted it would reach in 2090.
Along with Mould Bay, researchers observed thermokarsts - a type of land surface that occurs when the ice melts in permafrost, characterised by uneven ground with low rounded hills and small ponds - at three siites along the 430 mile section of the high Arctic in Canada they were monitoring.
When permafrost thaws, it releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stored in or beneath it into the atmosphere.
There in turn, cause temperatures to rise and create a perpetual cycle where more permafrost melts.

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