Lethal Heating: 09/24/21

24/09/2021

(National Geographic) Jane Goodall Joins Campaign To Plant A Trillion Trees By 2030

National Geographic - Michael Shapiro

Trees for Jane will support efforts underway, mostly in the developing world, to replenish the earth's trees.

British primatologist Jane Goodall walks at the CosmoCaixa science museum in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018. Photograph by Enric Fontcuberta, EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Jane Goodall, the renowned primatologist, is launching Trees for Jane on Tuesday, joining a global campaign to combat climate change by planting a trillion trees by 2030.

Goodall, a longtime National Geographic Explorer, made it clear that planting is just one aspect of Trees for Jane; there’s something even more important. “The key is protecting existing forest because those big trees already have stored CO2,” she said in a National Geographic interview.

Trees for Jane is one of a growing number of tree-planting campaigns around the world, aimed at removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Among others, Goodall’s effort joins the Trillion Tree Campaign and 1t.org, backed by the World Economic Forum and partnering with Trees for Jane.

Goodall, a United Nations Messenger of Peace, feels a strong “spiritual connection” to trees, she said in a Zoom conversation from her family home in southern England. “Trees absorb carbon dioxide. They give us oxygen. They help to make rain. So they are a gift.”

In A Trillion Trees, a short film being released during the UN’s Climate Action Week, which started on Monday, Goodall calls trees “God’s gift to humanity.” The number of trees Trillion Trees Campaign, 1t.org, and Trees for Jane seek to plant or preserve is staggering: 128 trees for every human on Earth.

Yet there’s a reason for that goal, Goodall said. The world now contains roughly three trillion trees, and the planet loses 15 billion trees a year, according to a 2015 mapping study in the journal Nature.

“I know that a trillion sounds like an insane number,” said Jeff Horowitz, Trees for Jane’s co-founder. “We’re not saying flat out that we’ll be able to succeed, but we want to come as close as we can.”

Supporting existing efforts

Trees for Jane will support “existing on-the-ground efforts” to protect and restore our planet’s biodiversity, Horowitz said. “Right out of the chute, we'll probably have 300 to 400 groups ready to go when it comes to planting trees for Jane. Shovels ready, trees in the ground on day one.”

Donations to Trees for Jane will support local groups working to stop deforestation, he said. And those who plant are asked to agree to care for the trees and monitor them until they’re established.

Forest preservation and tree planting are among natural climate solutions that together could provide up to one-third of the mitigation needed by 2030 to “avoid catastrophic warming,” said Susan Cook-Patton, senior forest restoration scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “We don’t always need to plant trees. When conditions are right, trees can grow back perfectly well on their own at a fraction of the cost.”

Of course, tree planting is not a substitute for reducing emissions, Cook-Patton said. “The most important action is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. However, even if we rapidly reduce emissions, we’re still going to need to remove carbon from the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic warming. That’s why carbon removal strategies like re-growing trees remain important.”

Some tree-planting efforts have come under fire from some scientists as being ineffective and counterproductive, since many programs don’t plant native species, essentially creating tree farms, not helping forests.

Cook-Patton’s message is clear: “Plant the right trees, in the right places, in the right way.” This means planting native trees where they historically lived. Goodall said this aligns precisely with the mission of Trees for Jane.

The U.N. warned last Friday that the world isn’t doing nearly enough to curb climate-changing emissions and is predicted to warm by a “catastrophic” 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit [2.7 degrees Celsius].

Advancing a movement

Tree planting to help the environment isn’t a new concept; it advanced in the 1970s when Kenyan activist Wangari Muta Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. The group organized local women to plant a million trees as part of a broader environmental restoration effort in Kenya. Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, showed how tree planting could improve local ecosystems and empower communities by giving them new sources of income.

Trees for Jane seeks to build on that model and will work with communities in Africa and throughout the developing world. The TACARE program in Tanzania, supported by the Jane Goodall Institute, works to preserve the Gombe forest where Goodall studied chimpanzees. It’s one of many groups ready to work with Trees for Jane, Goodall said.

Re-greening urban centers is also part of the Trees for Jane plan. This could help take the heat off cities, said Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, a California-based policy-action group. “Tree planting in urban areas with appropriate species can have benefits in addition to sequestering carbon, particularly in mitigating the heat-island effect,” she said.

“Study after study has shown that the poorest neighborhoods have the least amount of cooling vegetation. So tree planting in those areas can be essential to the survival of our communities.”

Goodall, noting that Trees for Jane encourages people to plant trees themselves or donate to support global efforts, said her love for trees dates back to her childhood. “Out there in the garden is Beech,” she said of the beech tree she could see through the window of the home where she grew up, and where she is now living.

“When I was a child, I loved Beech so much. I did my homework up there. I read books up there. I went to the tree when I was sad. When I was ten, I wrote out my own version of a will,” Goodall said. It stated that her grandmother, who owned the house, would leave Jane her favorite tree. “She signed it and left me Beech.”

Nearly eight decades later, Goodall is working tirelessly to share the gift of trees with the entire world, for the sake of the planet.

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(AU SMH) UN Climate Official Warns Low Ambition Is Costing Australian Growth

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Australia’s failure to set a clear net zero target is taking the nation “further and further into an isolated corner on the world stage”, damaging its reputation and economic outlook, a senior United Nations climate official has warned.

UK Prime minister Boris Johnson at the launch of the UK-hosted COP26 UN Climate Summit, being held in partnership with Italy in Glasgow in November. Credit: Getty

“Australia and its companies stand to lose both reputationally and economically if it continues to stay on the outer of international efforts, and throws good money after bad,” said Nigel Topping, who was appointed UN High-Level Climate Action Champion by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as host of November’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

“For the first time, there is now a fully unified G7 commitment to net zero by 2050, and Australia’s big client countries are stepping up their 2030 targets as well,” Mr Topping told a webinar on the business case for pursuing net zero targets, hosted by the UK high commission in Australia.

“There is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”
Nigel Topping, UN High Level Climate Action Champion.

“The IEA’s 1.5C report earlier this year could not have been clearer - there is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”

Glasgow summit

Xi says China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia will reach net zero as soon as possible, preferably before 2050, but Australia has not yet increased its goal of cutting emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 in the face of increasing international pressure in the lead-up to COP26.

Mr Topping told the webinar, which was attended by NSW energy and environment Minister Matt Kean along with executives from the energy sector, that there was “international confusion” about the Australian government’s position given that the Paris Agreement required all countries to update their targets by COP26, “reflecting ‘their highest possible ambition’.”

Mr Topping said it was rare for him to address an audience in a country that had benefited so much from natural assets that have fed the carbon-intensive industrial revolution of the 20th Century, “but that also sits happily (and some may say, unfairly) on many of the golden eggs that will feed the necessary and now-inevitable transition to a net zero world”.

He was also heartened by the number of Australian companies that were working towards net zero.

He called on Australia and its business sector to join the “Race to Zero” campaign associated with COP26 and not be drawn into a debate over the need to set more ambitious targets or support technology development.

“We clearly need both.”

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor told Sky News in August that the government was ambitious to meet and beat its targets.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters for global emissions is bringing them down, achievement. We have a very strong track record of achievement,” he said.

“We’re on track to meet and beat our 2030 targets. We’ve updated our projections each year, and we’ve improved them every year we’ve been in government.”

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(AU AFR) Why Australia Is A Bigger Carbon Pariah Than We Think

AFR - Adrian Blundell-Wignall

Counting carbon-based exports burned and smelted by others makes Australia the world’s third largest emitter. We can’t disown them as easily as all that.

Australia has to share responsibility for China’s emissions. Bloomberg

Author

Adrian Blundell-Wignall writes on the world economy and is a former director of the OECD.

The Glasgow summit on climate change is looming, and we continue to see Australia pretending to be a small emitter of carbon dioxide on the global stage.

It is not by any means. It’s all about Scope III emissions. A subject that Australian governments don’t want to hear about. Both sides of politics are no better than the other, they both put their electoral interests ahead of any vision for the future.

As other countries begin to reduce demand for our mining products, Australia will need that vision to replace wishful thinking that promotes statements such as: Technology will fix things; If we don’t sell carbon-intensive products someone else will; We’re only responsible for 1.5 per cent of the total carbon dioxide emissions; It’s China and India that need to change, not us.

I find myself wondering what future Australian generations will come to think of our current decision-makers.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter, Scope III emissions. Australia puts out data on Scope I and Scope II emissions, covering what we burn here, fugitive emissions, and purchased electricity and other energy.

Scope III emissions for companies look at the whole supply chain, such as transporting resources and, most important of all, the use of our supplied products.

So, for example, if we dig out a lump of coal it doesn’t contribute much to global carbon dioxide. But when we ship it, and someone else burns it the carbon dioxide release is much larger.

To say we dig it out and supply it, but hey it’s not our responsibility if they choose to burn it, ignores the world our grandchildren will face.

It’s like those ads on television that push sports betting and other forms of gambling: Here is the product to bet all you want, but please be responsible with betting.

We don’t publish official Scope III emissions in Australia and, to be fair, part of the reason is that full supply chain calculations are not easy to make and only a handful of large-sophisticated companies do so.

Fortunately, these do include large mining companies such as BHP and Rio Tinto. They deserve credit for doing so (and may yet be the ones to take leadership for a sensible climate strategy).

So, using factors from their calculations we can have a go at applying them to just three basic product types: metals, petroleum/gas and coal, for Australia as a whole.

If someone can supply better Scope III data, please do so. But, in the meantime, let’s try to put some magnitude on our supply chain responsibility.

From 1.15pc to 9.4pc of emissions

In a nutshell, we take the mining company Scope I, II and III calculations, excluding anything produced in their overseas operations (like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, etc).

The factors from this calculation are then applied to the government Scope I and II carbon dioxide data for metals, petroleum products and coal for the whole country. This focus is on mining and excludes Scope III from other industries.

Calculated this way, Australia is responsible for a total of 3320 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019, roughly five times the official Scope I and II number.

Instead of 1.15 per cent of global carbon dioxide, Australia would be responsible for 9.4 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide, third place globally.

If every country calculated their carbon dioxide including Scope III in this full supply chain sense, our Scope III carbon dioxide would need to be removed from other country’s numbers to avoid double counting.

Should such large numbers be a surprise? Australia is the largest exporter of iron ore, gas and metallurgical coal. It runs second in thermal coal. They are smelted and burned away from our shores.

This sheeting of supply chain responsibility to the home country, of course, is not going to happen. But these back of the envelope calculations illustrate the magnitude of the responsibility that Australia wishes to disown.

It is a case of “please take our products and if you choose to use them, well then it is nothing to do with us”.

Instead, both sides of politics duck and weave. Like swearing they didn’t ask the UK to go easy on them in the FTA. Or the frenzied diplomacy to stop the UNESCO World Heritage Centre from declaring that our Great Barrier Reef is “in danger”, astounding as that seemed to most Aussies. All upside you would think.

But there were the coal ships to Japan, China, India and Korea to think of. Promises about zero net emissions in 2050 without pricing carbon because they will use things like carbon capture technology (that doesn’t deliver).

The government of the biggest mining state literally crowing about growth and its budget surplus that is no fault of its own and oblivious to Australia’s large Scope III role in climate change.

All the while catastrophic climate events trend upwards. In the 1980s, such events averaged 292 a year., according to Munich Re, then 462 a year, in the 1990-2010 period, 730 in the last decade, and a record 980 in 2020.

I asked earlier what future generations will think of our current decision-makers? I suspect a future government dealing with the mess of climate change will probably apologise to the nation for the short-sighted leaders of today who didn’t have a plan that included our kids.

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