SUVs Are Back, And They’re Spewing A Boggling Amount Of Carbon

Grist - Nathanael Johnson

Greenpeace knows how to turn a photo op. Photo by Uwe Anspach / picture alliance via Getty Images   

How can we end our love affair with sport utility vehicles?
Sure, I get it: They carry more people than sedans, and they look cooler than minivans.
But consider the facts. A new analysis from the International Energy Agency shows that there are 35 million more SUVs on the road today than in 2010.
The number of electric vehicles increased by just 5 million in the same time period.
The result: The business of driving humans around is guzzling more gas.
So, while greenhouse gas pollution from regular passenger vehicles actually declined since 2010, emissions from SUVs and trucks have increased enough to wipe out those gains, and then some.
SUVs, counted alone, are now warming our planet more than heavy industry.

These gas guzzlers could single-handedly eliminate the possibility that the world achieves the climate goals set in Paris in 2016 by insuring that transportation emissions continue to swell.
The new IEA analysis concludes: “If consumers’ appetite for SUVs continues to grow at a similar pace seen in the last decade, SUVs would add nearly 2 million barrels a day in global oil demand by 2040, offsetting the savings from nearly 150 million electric cars.”
If you aren’t motivated by the long-term threat of climate change, perhaps you may learn to dislike SUVs if they threaten to kill you.
As Kate Yoder pointed out, every one of these vehicles that goes on the road makes the world more dangerous for everyone but the people in them. Pedestrian deaths have reached the highest levels in decades, thanks largely to the influx of bigger vehicles packing heavier punches.
So more deaths and more emissions. We got a preview of this trend in recent numbers coming out of California, where SUVs are also threatening to leave state climate goals broken and bleeding into the gutter.
The fact that beefy vehicles make their drivers a little safer, while endangering everyone around them is a hint as to why it’s been so hard to end our toxic relationship with SUVs.
The people making the choice reap the benefits, while everyone else bears the cost. That’s the larger problem popping up here, in the form of surging SUV sales.
It’s the problem that runs, and ruins, the world.

Links

• Vehicles are now America's biggest CO2 source but EPA is tearing up regulations
• Commentary: Growing preference for SUVs challenges emissions reductions in passenger car market
• World Energy Outlook 2019
• Are big cars really safer like Trump says?
• U.S. Monthly Energy Review September 2019
• Projected carbon dioxide emissions are sensitive to factors driving fossil fuel use 
• What’s driving California’s emissions? You guessed it: Cars.
• California vows to 'fight this stupidity' as EPA moves to scrap clean car rules
• Trump begins rollback of Obama's car pollution standards to curb emissions

Q&A: Short-Term 'Tribal' Politics Is Failing On Climate Action, John Hewson Says

The Guardian - Josh Taylor

Former Liberal leader tells ABC panel that children could see though the current generation of politicians

John Hewson: ‘That’s where I think the Greta Thunbergs and my kids see what’s wrong with us. They see we’ve missed the point.’ Photograph: ABC TV

Children are seeing through the short-termism of politics and the current generation of politicians, according to former Liberal leader John Hewson.

On ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, Hewson said the modus operandi of leaders such as US president Donald Trump and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was to target nervousness about alternative policies and instead focus on short-term political gain.
“The system has become sort of inward looking and self-absorbed. The sort of people who get preselected these days are not necessarily those who will make good ministers,” he said. “The skills you need to get through the factional process to be preselected in any of the major parties are not skills that will help you run a multibillion-dollar portfolio.
“We’re getting the wrong people.”

Hewson singled out, in particular, the “tribalism” of Australian politics leading to inaction on climate change for the past decade, and said the next generation would see through the short-termism.
“That’s where I think the Greta Thunbergs and my kids see what’s wrong with us. They see we’ve missed the point,” he said.
“I know it’s black and white, you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it, but it [will] make a big difference that the next generation as soon as they vote, you’ll have a very different world in this country and I think globally.”
In September Morrison responded to Thunberg’s speech to the UN, saying he wanted Australian children to grow up feeling positive about the future, without any anxiety.
Chloë Spackman, director of programs at Australian Futures Project, said the debate needed to be reframed.
“I think we need to reframe the conversation as it’s urgent and we need to do something but we want to be doing that from a place of possibility,” she said.
Science writer Julian Cribb said people shouldn’t be scaring children, but informing them.
“They can then apply their minds to solving them … Greta Thunberg and the rest are already into that and they will change the world whether we like it or not.”
Veena Sahajwalla, inventor and director at the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology, said people can be positive about the possibility of innovation in response to the challenges facing the world.
“I think the ability to see that there are positive solutions and to be able to think about how we might be able to convert something that might sound like it’s all doom and gloom but when you unpack it and think about what we can do with new technologies as we’re developing new technologies, I think it’s fantastic,” she said.

Links

• John Hewson Slams Coalition On Climate Change While Business Takes Lead Reducing Emissions
• A Little More Confusion Added To The Climate Policy Debate
• The Hot Topic Of Climate Change
• Climate Of Angst Laid Bare Within Battered And Bruised Post-Election Labor
• Could Climate Change Fuel The Rise Of Right-Wing Nationalism?
• Green With Rage: Women Climate Change Leaders Face Online Attacks
• Littleproud's Gaffe And PM's Reluctance Only Reinforce Australia's Climate Reputation
• John Hewson Urges Liberal Conscience Vote On Climate Emergency
• Parliamentarians Deserve Our Wrath For 30 Years Of Inaction, Not Climate Protesters
• Q&A: Labor made 'huge error' in being silent over coal, Joel Fitzgibbon says
• Wentworth byelection: John Hewson says seat ‘ripe for protest vote’
• Turnbull warns against ‘politics of race’ and says climate policy ‘very hard’ for Coalition
• Climate change: John Hewson accuses Coalition of 'national disgrace'

Australia Is The Only Country Using Carryover Climate Credits, Officials Admit

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn | Adam Morton

More than half of Australia’s Paris emissions commitment will come from controversial credits from previous targets

The Morrison government has rebuffed calls to abandon using credits to meet its 2030 emissions goal. Photograph: Alamy

The federal environment department says it is not aware of any countries other than Australia planning to use controversial “carryover credits” to meet international climate commitments.

The comment, at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, comes as the Morrison government rebuffs calls from international leaders, analysts and activists for it to abandon the use the credits to meet its 2030 Paris emissions goal.
The government says it has earned the right to use the credits, which represent the amount of carbon dioxide by which Australia has “beaten” the targets set under the previous international climate agreement, the Kyoto protocol.

Critics say the credits do not represent the emissions reductions needed to help meet the Paris goal of limiting global heating to as close to 1.5C as possible. Instead, they say, the credits are a fudge that cuts what Australia needs to do to meet its 2030 emissions target roughly in half and that Australia can claim access to them only because it set itself unchallenging targets under the Kyoto deal.
At the hearing, the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked if the department knew of any other country planning to use carryover credits to help them meet their Paris climate targets.
Kushla Munro, a first assistant secretary with the Department of the Environment and Energy, said: “At this stage, we are not aware of other countries intending to use carryover.”
“So just Australia?” Hanson-Young asked. “At this stage, yes,” Munro said.
Officials confirmed that to meet its 2030 Paris target, a 26% to 28% cut compared with 2005 levels, Australia would need to cut emissions by 695m tonnes cumulatively across next decade. They said 367m tonnes would come from the credits carried over from the previous Kyoto agreement.
Kyoto credits are not included in the Paris deal, but it is possible Australia could claim them unless they were ruled out through a consensus agreement by all countries involved in UN climate negotiations.
In its evidence at Senate estimates, the department suggested the government might not need to use the credits to meet its 2030 target if emissions from electricity generation continued to fall. Jo Evans, a department deputy secretary, said there had been improvements in emissions from the electricity sector year-on-year.
“There is some probability that the baseline level of projected emissions will be coming down and it’s quite possible that not all – if any – of that carryover will be needed in the end,” Evans said.
This assessment is at odds with several analyses, including one from the government, that found Australia is not on track to meet its Paris target.
While emissions from electricity have fallen in recent years, total national emissions have been rising since 2015, largely due to increases from natural gas production for export and transport.
Australia bettered its first Kyoto target, which allowed an 8% increase in emissions between 1990 and 2010, and is on target to meet its second Kyoto target, a 5% cut below 2000 levels by 2020. Neither target was consistent with what scientists said the country should be doing to play its part in addressing the problem.
The government’s Climate Change Authority recommended Australia should also be doing more by 2030 than it has promised, recommending a minimum 45% cut below 2005 levels if it is to play its part in a deal to limit global warming to less than 2C.
Department officials confirmed in Senate estimates that 92m tonnes of the emissions reduction needed to meet Australia’s target was projected to come from “technological improvements” not linked to policy changes but expected through unspecified innovations across the economy.

Links

• Emissions sums add up but questions remain
• BHP backs government on Kyoto carryover 'loophole'
• 'That's not what official figures show': Government under fire over climate claims
• Kevin Rudd: Unsustainable Australia
• Australian government seen globally as climate 'denialist', UN summit observers say
• Australia wasted decades in climate denial – and must break free of the mire of misinformation - Lenore Taylor
• How does Scott Morrison's climate declaration at the United Nations stack up?
• Pacific leaders plead with Australia to drop plans to carry over emissions credits
• Australia quizzed by EU and China on whether it can meet 2030 Paris climate target
• Labor edges away from using Kyoto credits to reach Paris target
• Greens demand documents on 'dodgy' carry-over credits for Paris target
• Labor won't rule out using 'accounting tricks' to meet emissions reduction targets
• Australia likely to use controversial Kyoto loophole to meet Paris agreement
• Climate change: Australia falling behind rest of world on emissions cuts, says report