Clean Energy Won’t Save Us – Only A New Economic System Can Do That

The Guardian - Jason Hickel

It's time to pour our creative energies into imagining a new global economy. Infinite growth is a dangerous illusion

'That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from non-fossil fuel sources isn't static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year.' Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images/Alamy

Earlier this year media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records, too. In June our screens were covered with surreal images of Paris flooding, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, the floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two metres deep.
With such extreme events becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. Finally, a consensus is crystallising around one all-important fact: fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy, and fast.
But while this growing awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels represents a crucial shift in our consciousness, I can't help but fear we've missed the point. As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won't save us from climate change.

What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we're doing with fossil fuels

Let's imagine, just for argument's sake, that we are able to get off fossil fuels and switch to 100% clean energy. There is no question this would be a vital step in the right direction, but even this best-case scenario wouldn't be enough to avert climate catastrophe.Why? Well, first, the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The other 30% comes from a number of causes, including deforestation, and industrial livestock farming, which produces 90m tonnes of methane per year and most of the world's anthropogenic nitrous oxide. Both of these gases are vastly more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. Livestock farming alone contributes more to global warming than all the cars, trains, planes and ships in the world. There are also a number of industrial processes that contribute significantly, and then there are our landfills, which pump out huge amounts of methane – 16% of the world's total.

Jeffrey's Bay wind farm in South Africa. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA

 But when it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it's what we're doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.
within just 60 years, releasing more still. Emissions from the cement industry are growing at more than 9% per year. And our landfills are multiplying at an eye-watering pace: the by 2100 we will be producing 11m tonnes of solid waste per day, three times more than we do now. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.

If we keep growing at 3% a year, that means that every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy 

The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we're only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.
The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.

Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world's shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles. Photograph: Feature China/Barcroft Images

 Our more optimistic pundits claim that technological innovations will help us to decouple economic growth from material throughput. But sadly there is no evidence that this is happening. Global material extraction and consumption has grown by 94% since 1980, and is still going up. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world's shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles – along with all the material stuff that those vehicles transport – almost exactly in keeping with the rate of GDP growth.
doesn't make us any happier, it doesn't reduce poverty, and its "externalities" produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change. We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, and we need to do this immediately – as part and parcel of the climate agreement that will be ratified in Morocco later this year.
It's time to pour our creative power into imagining a new global economy – one that maximises human wellbeing while actively shrinking our ecological footprint. This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption. And Daniel O'Neill, an economist at the University of Leeds, has demonstrated that even material de-growth is not incompatible with high levels of human well-being.
Our focus on fossil fuels has lulled us into thinking we can continue with the status quo so long as we switch to clean energy, but this is a dangerously simplistic assumption. If we want to stave off disaster, we need to confront its underlying cause.

Links

• Forget 'developing' poor countries, it's time to 'de-develop' rich countries
• The pope v the UN: who will save the world first?
• Protesting to #Breakfree of fossil fuels – in pictures
• Experts discuss how to build a carbon-free energy industry
• Clean energy in refugee camps could save millions of dollars
• From Kansas to Copenhagen: clean energy beacons around the world
• World bank to focus future investment on clean energy
• UN climate chief calls for tripling of clean energy investment
• Abundant fossil fuels leave clean energy out in the cold
• Small island states in clean energy race

California Breaks Solar Record (Again), Enough Electricity For 2 Million Homes

CleanTechnica - Zachary Shahan

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the largest electricity grid in California, broke its own solar generation record last Tuesday.

Topaz Solar Farm, by First Solar

The 8,030 megawatts put out at 1:06pm were approximately double the 2014 high, and ~2,000 megawatts (MW) higher than last year's record.
Naturally, as a lot more solar power capacity is added to the grid, all you need is a particularly sunny day (middle of summer is good for that) to break such a record. The record could be beat yet again in the coming weeks, and it would surely be clobbered in 2017, after another year of solar power additions rush the grid.
As indicated in the headline, the 8,030 MW put out at 1:06pm on Tuesday, July 12, was enough to power ~2 million California homes. Notably, however, solar homes weren't part of the equation in this new solar record. The thing is, CAISO's numbers are just for utility-scale solar installations, excluding rooftop solar power — which is a sizable portion of California's overall solar power capacity.
Additionally, CAISO only accounts for ~80% of California's electricity grid — just the Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric jurisdictions. Smaller municipal utilities like Sacramento Municipal Utility District aren't included.
Getting back to the record, I imagine many of you are curious how 8,030 MW compared to overall electricity demand in the state. At the time of the new record, utility-scale solar and other renewables were together providing ~29% of the network's electricity needs. While that is an encouraging number at this stage, it wasn't even close to the percentage record set earlier this year. Such renewables (again, this excludes rooftop solar) accounted for 54% and 56% of CAISO's electricity needs for periods of time on May 14 and May 15 (not for the entire days).
Hopefully it won't be long until we're seeing utility-scale renewables supplying 50% of electricity demand on a regular basis, and 75–80% at record times. Again, though: it would be nice if rooftop solar generation numbers were worked into these figures, which would get us to the more exciting numbers a lot faster.

Links

• California Solar Energy – Solar Incentives, Installers, Costs
• Auto Industry: "We Can't Change, Please Let Us Keep Abusing You"
• California Fining Volkswagen Additional $86 Million For Diesel Emissions Cheating Software
• California Mulling Changes To Zero-Emissions Mandate Owing To Credit Glut
• PG&E Launches Distributed Energy Resource Projects With GE, SolarCity, & Enphase Energy

Jobs Expand In Renewable Energy Sector

Fairfax - Ross Larkin

Job opportunities are on the rise in the renewable energy sector, particularly in regional areas.
A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has shown more than 8.1 million people worldwide are now employed in renewable energy, up 5 per cent since last year.

Jarra Hicks and Nicky Ison with the two wind turbines, Gale and Gusto, at Hepburn Wind. Photo: Supplied

Founding director of the Community Power Agency, Nicky Ison, says the industry is growing and changing, increasing the need for an array of job skills.
"Renewable energy is a jobs-rich industry. It's an extremely dynamic sector in the midst of a rapid transformation," she says. "There's a huge amount of change happening, huge opportunity, huge innovation of learning. The sector requires a variety of skill sets, so everything from engineers to tradespeople to accountants and lawyers."
Ison says that when renewable energy projects are regionally based, it helps to stimulate local economies and employment in areas where the need for jobs is even higher. "Most of the renewable energy resource is in regional Australia. Community-owned projects generate more employment in the region where the renewable project is based," she says.
According to US research, jobs and economic benefits increase up to almost four times if renewable energy projects are at least partially local-owned.
Ison adds that some of the opportunities are unique while others are helping to advance the industry.
"There are jobs that have been done for 20 to 40 years but also those which have never been done before.
"There are direct jobs delivering projects and then there are jobs supporting and creating the sector."
She says the type of workers drawn towards renewable energy as a career are passionate about the bigger picture. "Climate change is the biggest challenge we face in society. This is one of the reasons why the renewable energy sector is attracting a lot of dynamic thinkers and entrepreneurs, people who are really interesting to work with.
"Australia has some of the best solar and wind resources in the world. It's a huge competitive advantage that we hope to capitalise on if we want to address climate change."
Ison notes that work of this nature can be met with a variety of difficulties, however, the difficulties often lead to a further increase in employment.
"It comes with challenges. Community renewable groups specifically face a lot of barriers," she says.
"For example, Australia leads the world on rooftop solar per capita, but as a rental tenant, if I want to purchase solar power from my neighbour, I have to pay the same cost for using the grid even though I'm only using 20 metres of it.
"It doesn't make much sense at all, so there's a lot of regulatory barriers, but in turn, changing those — we will see policy and regulatory change which creates huge employment opportunities for policy makers."
Ison says she is excited for the future of the sector and says it will only get stronger. "Globally, the sector is growing really fast. 2015 was record breaking and workers will be in high demand in the next five to 10 years."

Links

• Two new wind farms gain government support
• Green bonds' time has come
• Australia set to cash in on low-cost renewable energy
• Australians still waiting for climate leadership

How the Right Wing Denial Machine Distorts the Climate Change Discourse

EcoWatch - Michael Mann

Several weeks ago, on June 17, I provided testimony about the threat of human-caused climate change to the Democratic Party Platform drafting committee in Phoenix, Arizona. Fittingly, my testimony was just one day before record heat struck Phoenix.

At the beginning of my testimony, I made the point, using slightly lofty language appropriate for the occasion, that the impacts of climate change are now so profound that we no longer need sophisticated signal-detection machinery to see them:

I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate model output and observational climate data, trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.
What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we've spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see the impacts of climate change playing out in real time on our television screens in the 24 hour news cycle.
Regardless of how you measure the impacts of climate change—whether it be food, water, health, national security, our economy—climate change is already taking a great toll. And we see that tool in the damage done by more extreme floods, like the floods we've seen over the past year in Texas and in South Carolina. We see it in the devastating combination of sea level rise and more destructive hurricanes which has led to calamities like "Superstorm" Sandy and what is now the perennial flooding of Miami beach. We see it in the unprecedented drought, like that which continues to afflict California, a doubling in the area of wildfire, fire burning in the western U.S. and indeed, in the record heat we may see this weekend in phoenix.
The signal of climate change is no longer subtle. It is obvious.

My point—that we don't need sophisticated techniques to identify the human fingerprint present in e.g. the doubling of extreme heat or the tripling (in fact) of western wildfire that we have seen in the U.S. in recent decades, ought to be clear to any honest observer.
It would be absurd to conclude that I was arguing that climate models and climate data are no longer necessary in climate science, especially given that they continue to form the bread and butter of my own scientific research (I've published over a dozen scientific articles using climate models and climate data during the past year alone).
So you can imagine my shock—yes, shock—that climate change deniers and conservative media outlets that serve as mouthpieces for them, would seek to convince their readers of just that.
It is an instructive ontological exercise to follow this particular affair—from its inception through the latest developments, sort of like observing a deviant version of the game "telephone" (or "Chinese whispers" for British readers) wherein the participants are actually trying to distort the message as it is passed along from one person to the next.
It all started on Monday, June 27 with Steven J. Milloy and his outlandishly untruthful claim "Michael Mann says there is no need for statistics."
Milloy, who actually calls himself the "junk man" with no apparent sense of irony, is a denier-for-hire who happily takes money from tobacco interests, chemical interests and of course fossil fuel interests to do their dirty work, attacking seemingly any scientist whose findings threaten their financial bottom line.
Milloy frequently publishes columns in the notorious Washington Times. Which brings us to the next stage of the affair ...
Later that same day, the Washington Times—a paper founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, ran a piece by one Valerie Richardson entitled Michael Mann, scientist: Data 'increasingly unnecessary' because 'we can see climate change.'
Somehow "tools" have become "data." It almost seems like they're going out of their way to misrepresent my statements, doesn't it?
Almost as if to demonstrate that they too have absolutely no sense of irony, the Washington Times referred to me in the piece as a "Leading climate doomsayer" (the Unification Church, you see, is often considered a doomsday cult). The Washington Times also happens to be closely tied to ALEC—a Koch Brothers-funded organization that promotes climate change denialism and subverts efforts to incentivize renewable energy.
Next up at bat, Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller, which later that day pushed the egregiously false headline Famed Climate Scientist Claims Data Now 'Unnecessary' To Measure Global Warming.
Understand that we have now gone all the way from what I actually said (that climate change impacts have become so profound now that we often don't need fancy techniques to see them) to something so patently absurd I couldn't possibly have said it (that we don't need data to measure global warming).
The Daily Caller, incidentally, is so fully immersed in Koch cash that is is listed as a "partner organization" of the Charles Koch Institute.
Witness now, after a two week hiatus, the hand-off from the Koch Brothers to the Scaife Foundations, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, to be specific, which was founded by the now-deceased Richard Mellon Scaife. On July 13, the Tribune-Review perpetuated the smear with a climate change-denying editorial containing the farcical howler "[Mann] says facts no longer are necessary to substantiate the climate change story line." Just when you thought the distortion couldn't get more egregious ...
One day later, on July 14, the execrable Tribune op-ed was republished on the right wing website GOPUSA, a website connected to—you guessed it—Richard Mellon Scaife (though a bit of detective work is required to connect the dots).
Oil baron Richard Mellon Scaife and his empire were behind what Hillary Clinton famously referred to as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to take down her husband, President Bill Clinton (for the record, she was correct).
Certainly, you're thinking, it must be a coincidence that nearly every player in this latest episode seems to be tied in some way to either the Koch Brothers or Scaife Foundations.
Or maybe not so much ...
Richard Mellon Scaife and the Scaife Family Foundations are, along with the Koch Brothers, the greatest private funders of climate change denialism, having stepped up their funding in recent years as fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil have come under increased scrutiny for their funding of climate change denial.
As I discuss in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars about the attacks against me by climate change deniers looking to discredit the iconic "Hockey Stick" graph my co-authors and I published in the late 1990s (p. 64):

Wealthy privately held corporations and foundations with close interests in, or ties to, the fossil fuel industry, such as Koch Industries and the Scaife Foundations, have become increasingly active funders of the climate change denial campaign in recent years. Unlike publicly traded companies such as ExxonMobil, these private outfits can hide their finances from public view, and they remain largely invulnerable to outside pressure. In recent years, as ExxonMobil has been pressured by politicians on both sides of the aisle to withdraw from funding the climate change denial movement, Koch and Scaife have stepped up, contributing millions of dollars to the effort.

Koch funding played a major role in the faux scandal known as "climategate" which involved the misrepresentation of scientists based on out-of-context quotes (sound familiar?) taken from emails of theirs that had been stolen off a university computer server in the UK (p. 220):

One report showed that twenty or so organizations funded at least in part by Koch Industries had "repeatedly rebroadcast, referenced and appeared as media spokespeople" in stories about climategate.

Meanwhile, the Scaifes funded many of the personal attacks intended to discredit me and the "Hockey Stick" (p. 228):

In mid-January 2010, a group known as the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), which receives funding from the Scaife Foundations, led a campaign to have my NSF grants revoked. The perverse premise was that I was somehow pocketing millions of dollars of "Obama" stimulus money simply because I was a coinvestigator on several recently funded NSF grants. These absurd distortions were--no surprise--promoted by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others of similar persuasion.

and (p. 229):

Two Scaife-funded groups.. the Southeastern Legal Foundation and the Landmark Legal Foundation, had swung into action. The latter had already sued the University of Massachusetts and University of Arizona to obtain copies of my personal e-mails with my two hockey stick coauthors, while in May 2010 the former demanded extensive information from the NSF regarding grants that had been made to me as well as to several of my colleagues at Penn State, the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, and Columbia University.
It began to strike me as curious that so many of the demands that I be investigated could be traced back to organizations with ties to the Scaife Foundations. The Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania organization that is the recipient of considerable Scaife largess, for example, had been pressuring Penn State University to fire me since climategate broke in late November 2009. It managed to get the sympathetic Republican chair of the Pennsylvania state senate education committee to threaten to hold Penn State's funding hostage until "appropriate action is taken by the university against associate [sic] professor Michael Mann." Indeed, it was the Commonwealth Foundation attacks that essentially forced Penn State to launch its initial inquiry into the various allegations against me in December 2009 (similar inquiries and investigations of CRU scientists were initiated in the United Kingdom). The Commonwealth Foundation kept the pressure on for months through a barrage of press conferences and press releases attacking me personally and criticizing Penn State for its supposed "whitewash" treatment of any number of supposed offenses. It also ran daily attack ads against me in our university newspaper The Collegian for an entire week in January and helped organize a protest rally against me on campus. It is likely that these attacks forced Penn State's hand yet again, leading it, following the completion of the initial inquiry in February 2010, to move to a formal investigation, despite having found no evidence of misconduct in the initial inquiry phase.

What is the take-home message here?
As we head into the 2016 presidential election, it is clear that polluting interests and other bad actors are mobilized. They are doing their best to continue the attacks on science and scientists whose findings threaten their bottom line, to distract the public, to promote climate change denial propaganda and to support politicians who will support their agenda of denial and inaction.
The best defense is to study the positions of the candidates and make sure that climate action is at the top of your agenda when you go to the voting booth this fall.

Links

• 19 Senators Expose 'Web of Denial' Blocking Action on Climate Change
• The Link Between Climate Change and Drought
• Climate Change Puts Squeeze on Cuddly Koalas
• Climate Change to Devastate Adélie Penguin Population in Antarctica by Up to 60%

Murdoch, Coalition Go In Guns Blazing Against Wind And Solar

Renew Economy - Giles Parkinson

The Murdoch media and conservative Coalition parties have ramped up their attacks on renewable energy in light of the big spike in electricity prices in South Australia this week, saying that wind and solar are solely to blame for the state’s electricity problems.
Power prices spiked sharply again this week, but energy analysts say that wind and solar are not at fault, pointing out that gas prices have jumped to record highs, and the interconnector to Victoria was constrained due to delayed work on network upgrades.

Pelican Point gas plant

But this has cut no mustard with the Murdoch media and the Coalition, who have used the incidents of the past week to renew their usually skewed attacks against the high levels of wind and solar in the state.
“SA’s reliance on wind and solar power is responsible for these absurd prices,” thundered The Advertiser, Murdoch’s monopoly daily newspaper in Adelaide, in an editorial entitled “SA power prices threaten future of economy.”
“The state’s electricity supply cannot be left at the mercy of the weather gods and erratic spot prices. Labor’s great green energy experiment will cost it ultimate power in 2018,” it threatened. The editorial makes absolutely no mention of the record gas prices, or the energy cartel that it is defending.
Murdoch’s position has been eagerly supported by the local state Opposition, which like all Coalition parties across the country – at both the state and federal level – is pushing back against any moves to increase the amount of renewable energy in the electricity system.
“The (South Australian) government’s complete and utter obsession with renewable energy has left us in a very vulnerable state without a workable energy strategy,” Opposition leader Steven Marshall said. Marshall also failed to mention the cost of gas.
“I mean continuity of energy supply is absolutely critical, and what we’ve done is we’ve driven out base load power in South Australia because of this obsession that the Labor government has had with renewable energy and we haven’t been able to put that certainty, that continuity into the equation.”
Actually, the state’s largest base load generator, Pelican Point, a 485MW gas-fired plant, has not been operating because gas prices are too high and it cannot make any money out of it, although it did agree to a government request to restart for a short period while the interconnector was repaired.
A similar situation exists in Queensland, where the Swanbank E gas-fired generator – like Pelican Point, one of the most efficient in the country – has also been mothballed because of soaring gas prices. Queensland, it should be noted, has virtually no large-scale wind or solar.
As RenewEconomy has pointed out on numerous occasions in the past week, the huge spikes in electricity prices are a direct result of increased gas prices, which have hit record highs across the country and in South Australia have been more than twice the price of other states, on occasions.
This is blamed on increased demand from the current cold snap, the need to supply the big LNG export terminals, and unexplained blockages in supply elsewhere in the network.
For more information on how the gas cartel works in a market with virtually no transparency, see this excellent report on MichaelWest.com.au, or this story How the gas market is holding the country to ransom from one of the same authors.
Indeed, even if there was little renewable energy in the system, South Australia would still be experiencing high electricity prices because it would still be reliant on gas – as it experienced for more than a decade before wind and solar was built into the system.

South Australia has always had higher electricity prices than the rest of the market, due to its historic (and pre-renewable) reliance on gas, and one of the reasons it has sought to increase renewables is to try to reduce its exposure to the volatile price of commodity-based fossil fuel generation.
The Clean Energy Council this week reinforced the point that the high prices in South Australia have been caused by the high gas prices, the cold snap and the network interruptions.
“Because renewable energy effectively has no fuel cost, it helps to keep power prices lower during periods of high wind and sunshine. Wind power provided a large part of South Australia’s power over the weekend and early this week, but with the price of gas so high, wholesale prices have jumped,” CEC’s Tom Butler said.
The ACT appears to have successfully hedged against the volatile nature of fossil fuel prices by using renewables, and targeting 100 per cent of its supply from wind and solar by 2020. It may, in fact, make windfall gains from its cleverly calibrated investment.
But the past week has seen an extraordinary sequence of events, starting with high gas prices, unusual bidding patterns, the loss of capacity on the interconnector, the continued sidelining of two of the most efficient gas plants in the country and, as if on cue, the announcement of a review by the Australian Energy Market Commission of “system security” in the country.
Many suspect this review will be used by fossil fuel generators for new subsidies known as “capacity payments”, or at least for a new “inertia” market, increasing the revenue that can be sourced by their gas generators. AGL Energy filed an application for a rule change on these inertia markets in late June.
At the same time, these very same companies are arguing against rule changes that could encourage cleaner, faster and cheaper alternatives, such as battery storage, to provide the same services.
That’s one of the big questions for regulators in Australia and around the world: the National Electricity Market rules clearly need changing, as the South Australian government has pointed out.
But will these rules be changed to reinforce the power of the energy incumbents, or will they be changed to facilitate and accelerate the inevitable and much-needed energy transition? As a new study released through Cambridge University this week highlights that the obsession, until now, has been with keeping business as usual.
“Business-as-usual carries on with incremental decisions, made in narrow frames of reference, that continue to build, and lock investments into the conventional fossil fuel infrastructure,” it says.
The major issue, it notes, is profiteering in the wholesale markets. In Australia, various studies have suggested that at different times, the big fossil fuel generators have gamed the market to the extent that more than $400 million was added to prices in Queensland alone in two separate examples in 2015.
Market operators suspect the same thing is happening now, despite the introduction of bidding in “good faith” rules that were introduced two weeks ago. As one energy market participant said: “It was as though everyone decided to bid higher at the same time.”
This is not just an Australian phenomenon. Last year, according to the Cambridge study, the US General Accounting Office noted that excessive profiteering in the regional markets had led to unfair electricity prices. It said consumers may have paid an excess $US12 billion in 2011 to generating companies that do not face genuine market competition.
The problem is not wind and solar, it is the absolute power of the incumbents and their high fossil fuel prices. That’s the true cost of a restricted market, where the regulators have been too slow to act.

Links

• Mystery as South Australia pleads with gas generator to switch back on 
• Solar Impulse: We'll see solar-powered passenger planes within 10 years 
• Coalition's myth about renewables and high electricity prices 
• New Zealand Electricity Authority rules in favour of controversial solar 'tax'

Pacific ​​Islands Nations Consider World's First Treaty To Ban Fossil Fuels

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Treaty under consideration by 14 countries would ban new coalmines and embraces 1.5C target set at Paris climate talks 

The Solomon Islands and other Pacific island nations are under threat from climate change. Photograph: Oliver Forstner/Alamy Stock Photo 

The world's first international treaty that bans or phases out fossil fuels is being considered by leaders of developing Pacific islands nations after a summit in the Solomon Islands this week.
The leaders of 14 countries agreed to consider a proposed Pacific climate treaty, which would bind signatories to targets for renewable energy and ban new or the expansion of coalmines, at the annual leaders' summit of the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).
Mahendra Kumar, climate change advisor to PIDF, told the Guardian the treaty proposal was received very positively by the national leaders. "They seemed convinced that this is an avenue where the Pacific could again show or build on the moral and political leadership that they've shown earlier in their efforts to tackle climate change," he said.
The PIDF was formed in 2013, spearheaded by Fiji, and excludes Australia and New Zealand, which are members of the older Pacific Islands Forum. There were claims at the time that Australia and New Zealand attempted to sabotage the group's first meeting.
Then in 2015 Australia and New Zealand foiled an attempt by the developing countries in the older forum to take a 1.5C target to last year's Paris climate change conference.
But the treaty being considered by the newer group embraces the aspirational 1.5C target set at Paris, setting mitigation targets that are in line with it, as well as establishing adaptation mechanisms to cope with the effects of that warming.
Written by a coalition of non-governmental organisations called the Pacific Island Climate Action Network (PICAN), the model treaty will be the subject of consultations, which will result in a report to the summit next year.
Kumar said it is unlikely to be adopted within one year, but it was possible it could be adopted the following year, in 2018.
Joeteshna Gurdayal Zenos, acting head of Pacfic Net, which is Greenpeace Australia Pacific's climate justice project, said: "Pacific island leaders are among the most proactive in the world on global warming because their countries are bearing the brunt of climate changes.
"Their willingness to consider a Pacific climate treaty shows much-needed leadership on the world's most pressing environmental challenge," she said.
In a report that presents the model treaty, PICAN said: "The rationale is that potential Parties to the Treaty already possess the political courage and commitment needed to adopt a flagship legal instrument that is sufficiently ambitious to prevent catastrophic changes in the global climate system.
"Such a treaty, when implemented in collaboration with PIDF and civil society, would send a powerful signal to markets, governments and civil society around the world that the end of fossil fuels is near, with Pacific Islanders acting not as victims of climate change but as agents of change.
"As there is currently no treaty that bans or phases out fossil fuels, the Treaty would set a pioneering example to the rest of the world."
The treaty itself would bind parties to not approve any new coal or fossil fuel mines and not provide any subsidy for fossil fuel mining or consumption.
It says parties will ensure "universal access" to clean energy by 2030, and would establish a "Pacific framework for renewable energy" to achieve that goal.
The treaty would establish a fund, which would provide compensation for communities that have suffered climate change-related losses.
The proposed treaty also has sections on climate-related migration and adaptation.

Links

• Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits
• Paris climate change agreement: the world's greatest diplomatic success
• Analysis Headlines 'exaggerated' climate link to sinking of Pacific islands
• Fiji becomes first country in the world to ratify Paris agreement

Dear Prime Minister, Our Kids Are Trusting Us On Climate Change

Huffington Post - David Ritter*

We must not let them down. 

"Anyone who seeks a position of public responsibility is a trustee for their grandkids -- indeed for all the children of the future." Roger Wright

Dear Prime Minister,
Sincere congratulations on your re-election.
I am writing to you today, though, not as a voter addressing Australia's leader, but as a father to a grandfather.
It was delightful to see you with your grandchildren, Jack and Isla, during the election campaign. They look like lovely, bouncy little kids who are no doubt a source of enormous pride and joy to their families.
I've got two daughters, Josie and Rachel, who are seven and almost four. My father got to meet a very young Josie before he died, but he never got to meet Rachel, which is something I feel enduring sadness about. I wish you and your family all the best in cherishing the opportunities to be together.
I was genuinely moved by your public comments earlier this week when you said: "I know many people probably think I am an unduly sentimental fellow, sentimental bloke perhaps... But I was touched, deeply touched by the fact that when Bill [Shorten] rang [to concede the election] I literally had my, our little granddaughter on my hip... It is a beautiful reminder that we are trustees... for future generations. We're trustees for our little grandchildren and of course their grandchildren."
I agree with you. Anyone who seeks a position of public responsibility is a trustee for their grandkids -- indeed for all the children of the future. It is a solemn but beautiful duty to build and nurture a world that will enable the descendants of the Jacks, the Islas, the Rachels and the Josies, and all of their generation, to flourish long after we are gone. It is the greatest gift we can give.
I have only met you personally on one occasion, but you were generous with your time, which I greatly appreciated. Predictably, we talked mainly of global warming. I believe we share the understanding that global warming poses the single greatest threat to the future health, safety and happiness of my children and your grandchildren; indeed, of all the children of our country.
Like many Australians, I rejoiced when you took the prime ministership from Mr Abbott because I know you understand the need for a proportionate response to global warming. For whatever reason, your predecessor did not. But I won't lie -- I was badly disappointed in the first Turnbull Government for failing to do what is needed on global warming, and I've been publicly critical of that failure. Nothing personal of course, and nothing partisan either -- I've had a go at plenty of ALP politicians in the past too, because my organisation is an independent watchdog in our democracy.
The beauty of an election is that every new prime minister gets a fresh chance. Like many Australians, I continue to believe that you want something different.
As you know, at law the distinguishing obligation of a trustee is single-minded loyalty -- which is what future generations are entitled to from us. In your unique case and adopting your test, I respectfully suggest that your trusteeship entails undertaking the political contest with Coalition members who do not understand the scale of the threat posed by global warming.
I do hope you think about what you have described as trusteeship every single day, since the current parliament may well be the most crucial in Australian history. I hope this duty guides you in all you do. This year we have seen our reefs bleaching, our mangroves dying and our forests burning. But as the saying goes, the future is not yet written.
All over Australia, individuals, local communities and the entrepreneurs of the renewables industry are ready to put a hand out to work with you. Emissions targets that reflect the best science, fostering rapid innovation in the renewables sector, commitment to global best practice and removing industry subsidies and protection for the fossil fuel industry could become the hallmarks of your government.
The Australian prime minister who secures our country with a swift, fair and just transition away from fossil fuels will take their place as one of the giants of our national story. Any such leader will be able to look a child of our country in the eye and say with honour that they did all they could; that they did what was right in the face of the evidence; that they fully discharged their trusteeship.
My seven-year-old daughter, Josie, asked me recently what would happen if the grown-ups didn't find a solution to global warming. I looked her in the eye and promised her that the grown-ups would sort it out; that we would not let her down.
From a father to a grandfather, I wish you the best of good fortune in leading our nation well.

*David Ritter is CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific. 

Links

• Children young people and climate change
• NASA's Climate Kids :: What is "global climate change"?
• A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change | US EPA
• Introduction to Climate change