08/05/2020

(AU) 6,000 Years Of Climate History: An Ancient Lake In The Murray-Darling Has Yielded Its Secrets

The Conversation - Hannah Power | Anna Helfensdorfer | Tom Hubble

Tom Hubble

Authors
For millions of years, the Murray River has flowed from the Australian Alps across the inland plains, winding through South Australia before emptying into the ocean. But the final leg of its journey once looked vastly different.

Our research released today conclusively shows what has long been suspected: 6,000 years ago, water levels in the Lower Murray River were so high that much of the system in South Australia comprised a huge lake.

We also uncovered an invaluable long-term record of floods and droughts in the Murray Darling Basin, by drilling deep into layers of silt and clay built up over 12,000 years.

Our findings point to how Australia’s most important river system might be altered by future sea level rise. What’s more, a better record of past floods and drought will help manage water use in Australia’s most important river system.

The Lower Murray River today and a computer-generated image of what Lake Mannum may have looked like between 5,000 and 8,500 years ago when sea levels were 2 metres higher than they are today. Original photo: Tom Hubble. Modified image: Kathirine Sentas.

 Probing the past

Our climate is changing and sea levels are rising. Scientists are working hard to forecast what environments such as rivers and estuaries will look like under higher sea levels and, in Australia, more intense droughts and floods.

One way to do this is to look back to a period 5,000-8,000 years ago, to a point in the sea level cycle known as the Holocene highstand. The Holocene refers to the past 11,700 years or so of Earth’s history. The highstand is the point at which sea levels were highest.

Today, the Murray River crosses into South Australia and flows within a narrow valley, then gradually widens towards Lake Alexandrina where it empties into the sea.

But it wasn’t always this way. After the peak of the last glacial period 18,000 years ago, melting ice caused sea levels to rise from about 120 metres below today’s level. About 6,000 years ago, sea level peaked at two metres above today’s level.

Researchers have previously hypothesised that over several thousand years, the high sea level at the mouth of the Murray acted like a dam, causing water to back up in the river, creating a saltwater lake known as Lake Mannum.

Our research confirms that the lake existed, and that it was enormous - stretching from the mouth of the Murray to about 200 kilometres upstream near Swan Reach.

We used high resolution two- and three-dimensional modelling modelling of water levels and flows to confirm the presence of the lake, and how it formed.

Layers of history

The naturally still waters of Lake Mannum acted as a enormous trap for clay and silt discharged upstream. Under various conditions, such as floods, the sediment travelled downstream and settled to the lake’s floor.

Today, the climate history for the Murray-Darling Basin is written in these sediment layers.

We collected a 30 metre-long sediment core from the present day floodplain of the Lower Murray River.

The core contains an 11-metre section of sediment deposited on the floor of Lake Mannum between 8,500 and 5,000 years ago. Each metre took roughly 315 years to accumulate - about three millimetres a year.

We believe each layer in the core probably represents an episode of increased or decreased river flow.

Most layers were probably produced when snow melt from the Australian Alps in spring and summer transported mud along the river system. Some layers will represent large floods that came down the Murray River, while others will represent floods that flowed down the Darling.

Longer-term variations in the thickness of the layers may correspond to extended periods of wetter and drier weather.

The next phase of our research will involve a close analysis of the sediment layers to obtain a reliable, detailed, high resolution record of flood and drought in the Murray Darling Basin.

What can we learn?

As sea level dropped to modern levels over the last 5,000 years, the lake slowly drained and turned back into a river.

These days, the lower Murray River is intensively managed. Five barrages, or barriers, have been erected near the river mouth to keep the water fresh by preventing seawater from creeping in, and to maintain water levels. Significant volumes of water have been extracted for irrigation and domestic use.

Some people argue the barrages should be removed to restore the natural tidal estuary and allow sea water to influence lake levels. Their removal is unlikely in the near future. But our research gives insight into what could happen if the barrages were removed, and sea levels rise under climate change.

The Lower Murray River near Mannum confined within the Lower Murray Gorge. Photo: Tom Hubble

We expect the next step in our research, analysing the sediment cores, to provide valuable data on long-term river flows and indicate whether intense droughts, such as the Millenium drought, are more or less frequent than the once-in-a-century figure often suggested.

In future, water managers deciding on water allocations may benefit from knowing how much water has historically come down the system, and how often.

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Climate Change And Coronavirus: Five Charts About The Biggest Carbon Crash

BBC Science & Environment - Matt McGrath

Traffic has almost disappeared in many cities around the world, such as LA. Getty Images

We're living through the biggest carbon crash ever recorded.

No war, no recession, no previous pandemic has had such a dramatic impact on emissions of CO2 over the past century as Covid-19 has in a few short months.

Multiple sources indicate we are now living through an unrivalled drop in carbon output.

But even though we will see a massive fall this year, the concentrations of CO2 that are in the atmosphere and warming our planet won't stabilise until the world reaches net-zero.

As our chart shows, since the Spanish flu killed millions over 100 years ago, the global expansion of emissions of CO2, from the use of oil, gas and coal has risen massively.



While these energy sources have transformed the world, the carbon seeping into our atmosphere has driven up global temperatures by just over 1C since the mid-1850s.

They could rise by 3-4C by the end of this century if CO2 levels aren't savagely reduced.

Over the past 100 years, as indicated on the graphic, a number of events have shown that dramatic falls in carbon are possible.

Much is made of the financial crash in 2008-2009, but in reality, carbon emissions only fell by around 450 million tonnes between 2008 and 2009.

This is much smaller than the fall in CO2 in the aftermath of World War II, which saw a drop of around 800 million tonnes.


Coronavirus and climate change a "double crisis", say activists

It is also smaller than the global recession in the early 1980s that followed the oil crisis of the late 1970s.

During this period, CO2 went down by around one billion tonnes.

But the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 dwarves all of these previous shocks by some distance.

In a few months, demand for energy globally has fallen off a cliff.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that the world will use 6% less this year - equivalent to losing the entire energy demand of India.

This will feed through to large falls in CO2.

Getty Images

 A number of different analyses, including this one from Carbon Brief, show that emissions this year will fall by 4-8%, somewhere between 2 and 3 billion tonnes of the warming gas.

That's between six and ten times larger than during the last global recession.

We're travelling less

By air and on roads, the world has cut back heavily on travel.

Full lockdowns have also pushed global electricity demand down by 20% or more, says the IEA.

Across the full year, the need for electricity will fall by 5% - the biggest drop since the Great Depression of the 1930s.



"This is an historic shock to the entire energy world," says Dr Fatih Birol, IEA executive director.

The changes in energy demand will have a knock-on effect on global coal demand, which is set to fall 8% this year.

With China the first country to stall its economy in response to the virus, coal use dropped sharply at first, though it is now rebounding and the expectation among energy analysts is that production this year will be down by just over 1%.

Researchers say the biggest thing hitting CO2 emissions right now is the reduction in road transport.

Air travel has fallen by half in the US. Getty Images

According to the IEA global average road transport activity fell to 50% of the 2019 level by the end of March 2020.

As can be seen in our chart, almost every country has seen a huge drop in road use. This has resulted in a massive fall in the use of oil.

"Back in the 2009 recession, average oil demand dropped by 1.3 million barrels per day versus 2008. And now 2020 is set to average 10 million barrels per day less than 2019." said Erik Holm Reiso, from Rystad Energy, an independent research firm.

"It's a much more severe cycle."

Similarly, air travel has dropped hugely, but by different amounts in different regions.



In Europe, the number of flights is down around 90%, whereas in the US it has been more resilient with around half the number of planes taking off compared to last year.

Globally, though, the demand for jet fuel is down 65% year-on-year to April.

"What we're seeing is that the largest relative reduction is in air traffic," said Robbie Andrew, a senior researcher at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (Cicero).

"But air emissions are only about 3% of global total. So while the relative reductions in land transport are lower than air transport, the absolute reductions there are much more significant."

It's not the same everywhere

While the lockdown might feel rather uniform across the world, there have been huge variations in emissions reductions from different cities.

If we take Paris and New York as examples, the contrast, as shown on our chart, is huge.

Paris saw a CO2 drop of 72% (+/-15%) in the month of March compared to normal.

New York in the same period, saw a CO2 fall of around 10%.

Paris has seen a dramatic fall in CO2 since the lockdown began. Getty Images

So why the big difference?

"In the Paris area, there are no large fossil fuel power plants, or industrial sites," said Philippe Ciais, from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris.

"Another difference is whether buildings are heated with fuels or with electricity. In France, around 70% of electricity comes from nuclear."

Much of New York's CO2 comes from emissions related to the heating of buildings. But significant emissions come from fossil fuel plants based within the city limits. Cars make up a much smaller proportion of overall energy use.



"I guess something to think about is that we shut down the entire city and got a reduction of 10% in the CO2 emissions," said Prof Róisín Commane from Columbia University in New York.

"We are still emitting more than 80% of our previous CO2 emissions. That is a massive number. So personal behaviour really isn't going to fix the carbon emission problem. We need a systematic change in how energy is generated and transmitted."


Our Planet Matters: Climate change explained

Have CO2 emissions already peaked?

Back in 2008, the European electricity industry was hit badly by the global financial recession and demand for power fell sharply.

But when that demand picked up again, it was solar and wind that were by then large enough to supply all the growth.

Europe's use of fossil fuels to produce electricity never returned to the level it had been at before the crash.

Experts now believe something similar could happen with the coronavirus pandemic.

"In about half of the world, we've already seen peak demand for fossil fuels," said Kingsmill Bond, from independent financial think tank Carbon Tracker.

Air pollution has cleared in some parts of Nepal due to restrictions there. Getty Images

"In Europe it was 2005, in the USA 2007."

This means that the trend in demand has been downhill ever since.

He added: "There has been a global coal demand peak in 2013. If you look at car demand, it is increasingly accepted that you saw peak conventional car demand in 2017."

So will the pandemic's big hit on carbon mean that last year, 2019, becomes the year the world reached a turning point?

Not so fast.

The carbon emissions drop that followed the recession in 2009 was followed by a sharp rise of almost 6% in 2010.

Something similar could happen over the next couple of years.

"At this point, we do not see any clear signs that the pandemic and our societal response to it will lead to significant and permanent changes in the path of future global emissions," said Robbie Andrew from Cicero.

"Right at the moment what we're seeing are immediate emissions responses, and following most previous crises, global emissions have returned to their pre-crisis trajectory."

The oil industry has ground to a halt as demand has slumped. Getty Images

What if CO2 was cut like this each year?

To keep the world on track to stay under 1.5C this century, the world needs similar cuts for the foreseeable future to keep this target in view.

"If Covid-19 leads to a drop in emissions of around 5% in 2020, then that is the sort of reduction we need every year until net-zero emissions are reached around 2050," said Glen Peters, also from Cicero.

"Such emissions reductions will not happen via lockdowns and restrictions, but by climate policies that lead to the deployment of clean technologies and reductions in demand for energy."

Energy experts believe there will be a bounce back next year, but that, long term, the world will move to greener fuels.



But it may not be enough to keep temperatures down to safer levels.

"That downward slope will accelerate over time beyond peak fossil energy," said Erik Holm Reiso, from Rystad Energy.

"That doesn't chime with 1.5C, but maybe 1.8-1.9C degrees could be within reach and this situation right now could help achieve that, I think."

Lessons learnt?

Many climate researchers are optimistic that this deadly pandemic has taught governments some critical lessons that they can apply to the problem of rising temperatures.

The big challenge is to ensure the recovery has a green focus.

According to Prof Gail Whiteman from Lancaster University, UK, it was almost impossible to believe that governments around the world, when faced with a health emergency, would put humanity ahead of the economy. But they did.

"We can recover from an existential, complex threat and emerge much stronger and more resilient," she says.

"Which strengthens the idea that we can do things differently on climate, that we can tackle this one.

"I think it gives us huge energy."

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(AU) It’s Time Coalition Listened To Experts On Climate And Energy, And Plotted A Green New Deal

RenewEconomy - Giles Parkinson

AAP Image/Lukas Coch

 is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of The Driven. 
Giles has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
Here’s a story you may have missed: Morrison and Co have announced the creation of new platform for investment in renewable energy power plants, with a particular focus on large-scale wind, solar PV and storage.

True story. It was announced here, just a few weeks ago.

It didn’t get a mention in Australian media because – sadly and predictably – it’s not the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and his cohort in charge of the Australian government making such a move, it’s the New Zealand investment firm by the same name, albeit with an ampersand – Morrison & Co. And it’s about Europe rather than Australia.

But it does invite a question. As Australia emerges from its economic “hibernation” imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the government looks to re-boot economic and investment activity, and deliver both short- and long-term benefits, what are the chances that the federal Coalition government will listen as closely and respectfully to climate scientists and energy experts as it has to its health professionals?

These are some of the topics we will be investigating in this week’s Stimulus Summit, an online webinar jointly hosted by RenewEconomy and the Smart Energy Council that will feature Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk , four state energy ministers (both Liberal and Labor), and a cast of energy experts and analysts including Ross Garnaut, Anna Skarbek, Oliver Yates, Maria Atkinson and Simon Holmes à Court.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has often said that he is yet to see the evidence that lowering emissions at the pace needed to avert a climate crisis can be achieved in a way that doesn’t create an economic crisis too. He must either be blind, or cocooned by an advisory group made up of many former coal lobbyists. Or a bit of both.

The evidence has been in abundance, and available for years. It can be found in the works of the International Energy Agency, the UN, from the CSIRO, the networks lobby, the Australian Energy Market Operator, the big utilities and any number of private and public think tanks and universities, both here and overseas.

And this past week has delivered more evidence that directly addresses the two most critical questions asked about the clean energy transition. Do renewables really offer an avenue for a cheaper energy supply? And can the grid, and therefore the economy, cope with a supply of electricity that comes predominantly, if not entirely, from wind and solar?

The answer was unequivocal to both questions. Yes, they do, and yes, it can.

Bloomberg NEF got the ball rolling with its latest update pointing to the plunging cost of wind and solar, which is now the cheapest option for new generation for 85 per cent of the world’s power supply, and most obviously in Australia.



The global average cost of wind has plunged another 9 per cent in the last six months alone, and solar by 5 per cent (and 90 per cent in less than a decade). Battery storage costs are falling even faster.

“In Australia, renewables are by far the cheapest new source of bulk generation,” says the Sydney-based BNEF analyst Lara Panjkov.

The Australian Energy Market Operator then delivered the news that there is no technical reason why the grid can’t have a very high level of renewables in the main grid. It has already outlined, in its Integrated System Plan, a pathway to 90 per cent renewables by 2040, and last week it looked at what is needed to ensure that up to 75 per cent of the grid can be powered by wind and solar at any one time, by 2025.

“Australia already has the technical capability to safely operate a power system where three-quarters of our energy at times comes from wind and solar energy generation,” says AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman, whose responsibility it is to keep the lights on.

Zibelman agrees that wind and solar are clearly the lowest-cost way of providing electricity, but to harness that power source to its potential requires a change in market design and regulatory requirements.



This graph above shows the levels of wind and solar that can be easily accommodated now, and how much can be accommodated if the market rules and regulations are adjusted for the new technology. The “step change” scenario has a 100 per cent wind and solar on occasions by 2025. Just think, a decade ago many were arguing that 10 per cent wind and solar penetration was the limit.

Some experts now argue that Australian can go a lot quicker. And gain even more benefits. Ross Garnaut thinks 100 per cent renewables is achievable in the early 2030s, ClimateWorks’ Anna Skarbek says a rapid uptake of renewables 75 per cent annualised, not just instant by 2030) is key to also lower emissions in buildings and transport. Many major utilities think AEMO is too conservative on some of its technology costs.

But the biggest failure of Australia’s energy market in the last six years has been the glacial pace of market and regulatory reform, and infrastructure investment. And you can blame that on the lack of federal government leadership.

Morrison and Co, the Australian political mob, like to boast that Australia has installed more wind and solar than any other country on a per capita basis over the last couple of years. The bitter irony is that they have spent much of the last six years trying to stop that very thing from happening, and now there is no short, medium, or long-term vision, to focus the minds of the regulatory bodies who have been so slow to move.

The situation has so enraged and frustrated state ministers that they have gone their own way. Victoria and NSW have announced they are by-passing the federal regulatory framework because it is too slow to keep pace with their renewable energy targets.

Nearly every state has emissions and renewable energy targets far more ambitious than the federal government, and the two states with the most ambition – Tasmania (200 per cent renewables by 2040) and South Australia (net 100 per cent renewables by 2030) – are both conservative governments.

Which shows that this is not simply an ideological issue, unless there is the coal lobby involved. And it is no coincidence that these two states, along with the ACT (already at 100 per cent equivalent renewable supply in 2020) are three jurisdictions that have no coal industry.

Alas, there is no indication – yet – that the Morrison government is about to change its tune. In fact, all the signs are pointing the other way. “I like to think of the other side of Covid-19 as being a gas-fired recovery,” energy minister Angus Taylor, a determined anti-wind campaigner before and after he came into parliament, told the Murdoch media’s Daily Telegraph last week.

Resources minister Keith Pitt says that coal and gas are the key to Australia’s economic recovery, and Neville Power, the so-called Post Covid business co-ordination Tsar appointed by Morrison, is on the same page, saying he sees natural gas as the solution for a clean and cheap energy future for Australia.

Surprise, surprise, Power is also a director of aspiring gas company Strike Energy. The committee Power heads is full of gas and coal industry people. 

And Taylor couldn’t help himself last week when he leapt on the AEMO report to highlight what he suggested were the overwhelming complexities of having more wind and solar, a prospect he has been fighting since before he entered parliament and has continued well into his tenure as the country’s energy minister.

The answer, he seemed to suggest, was more gas. And to try and deflect attention from the obvious solutions at hand – wind, solar, storage, and new market designs and regulatory changes – Taylor has been pushing a “technology roadmap”, pretending that the solutions for reducing emissions are not readily available.

New technologies may be needed for complicated areas such as agriculture and manufacturing (steel, for example), but in the main grid, the solutions are already here.

New data last week pointed to the fact that wind and solar had helped slash Australia’s electricity emissions by 20 per cent over the last few years. AEMO says a near 90 per cent reduction in emissions is possible by 2040. Analysts Reputex say not only that, but it will deliver lower prices and a reliable grid

The Morrison government appears to be convinced that the world will continue to want an expanded menu of fossil fuels – coal and gas. But the signs indicate otherwise, particularly after Covid-19. The conservative International Energy Agency notes that renewables have been the most resilient energy sector player as prices and investment in gas and coal crash. Even Shell says it could accelerate the transition to clean energy.

“Demand for fossil fuels is falling across the board for coal, oil and natural gas. At the same time, we’re seeing a major shift towards low-carbon sources of electricity including wind, solar PV, hydropower and nuclear,” the IEA said.

“Low-carbon technologies are now set to extend their lead as the largest source of global electricity generation, reaching 40% of the power mix in 2020.”

On Monday, Taylor made one important step forward by announcing the creation of a new $300 million fund to be managed by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to pursue renewable hydrogen, one of the valid technologies that needs support, and which has the potential of replacing Australia’s fossil fuel experts.

But the Morrison government can still barely bring itself to mention the words “wind” and “solar”, or even electric vehicles. Perhaps out of fear of being shouted down by the ultra-conservative commentators on talkback radio and in the Murdoch media.

Imagine, though, if they had the same attitude to the Covid-19 pandemic, and held the same disregard for the health experts. The outcome would be appalling. The US and Brazil show us just how bad.

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07/05/2020

‘We’re Worried.’ Scientists Predict Nearly Unlivable Heat For Billions Of People In 2070

TIME - Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

A camel herder guides his flock in the desert near Dakhla in Morocco-administered Western Sahara on October 13, 2019. Fadel Senna—AFP/ Getty Images

KENSINGTON, Maryland — In just 50 years, 2 billion to 3.5 billion people, mostly the poor who can’t afford air conditioning, will be living in a climate that historically has been too hot to handle, a new study said.

With every 1.8 degree (1 degree Celsius) increase in global average annual temperature from man-made climate change, about a billion or so people will end up in areas too warm day-in, day-out to be habitable without cooling technology, according to ecologist Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, co-author of the study.

How many people will end up at risk depends on how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions are reduced and how fast the world population grows.

Under the worst-case scenarios for population growth and for carbon pollution — which many climate scientists say is looking less likely these days — the study in Monday’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts about 3.5 billion people will live in extremely hot areas. That’s a third of the projected 2070 population.



But even scenarios considered more likely and less severe project that in 50 years a couple of billion people will be living in places too hot without air conditioning, the study said.

“It’s a huge amount and it’s a short-time. This is why we’re worried,’’ said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the study. She and other outside scientists said the new study makes sense and conveys the urgency of the man-made climate change differently than past research.

In an unusual way to look at climate change, a team of international scientists studied humans like they do bears, birds and bees to find the “climate niche” where people and civilizations flourish. They looked back 6,000 years to come up with a sweet spot of temperatures for humanity: Average annual temperatures between 52 and 59 degrees (11 to 15 degrees Celsius).

We can — and do — live in warmer and colder places than that, but the farther from the sweet spot, the harder it gets.

The scientists looked at places projected to get uncomfortably and considerably hotter than the sweet spot and calculated at least 2 billion people will be living in those conditions by 2070.

Currently about 20 million people live in places with an annual average temperature greater than 84 degrees (29 degrees Celsius) — far beyond the temperature sweet spot. That area is less than 1% of the Earth’s land, and it is mostly near the Sahara Desert and includes Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

But as the world gets more crowded and warmer, the study concluded large swaths of Africa, Asia, South America and Australia will likely be in this same temperature range. Well over 1 billion people, and up to 3.5 billion people, will be affected depending on the climate altering choices humanity makes over the next half century, according to lead author Chi Xu of Nanjing University in China.

With enough money, “you can actually live on the moon,” Scheffer said. But these projections are “unlivable for the ordinary, for poor people, for the average world citizen.”

Places like impoverished Nigeria — with a population expected to triple by the end of he century — would be less able to cope, said study co-author Tim Lenton, a climate scientist and director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in England.

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COVID-19 Is A Dress Rehearsal For Entrepreneurial Approaches To Climate Change

The Conversation - 

Business closures and recent rain contribute to Los Angeles’ recent uptick in air quality. AP Photo/Chris Pizzello

Jeffrey York is Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Boulder.
As the U.S. struggles to control the COVID-19 pandemic, some experts have suggested that we can learn something about how to address climate change from this crisis.

Climate and social policy experts are recommending green stimulus packages to restart the economy.

As a professor of sustainability and entrepreneurship, I see COVID-19 bringing the predicted future human health implications of climate change to horrifying life. Like COVID-19, climate change could increase respiratory illness and strain infrastructure.

However, just as with COVID-19, entrepreneurship can offer solutions to these challenges.

Searching for a solution

Saving small businesses is a central part of recovering from the pandemic. At the same time, entrepreneurs are innovating to preserve their business and help address the challenges of COVID-19.

The same thing is already happening with climate change. When entrepreneurs offer solutions that create simultaneous ecological and economic benefits, it is called “environmental entrepreneurship.” My research shows that such entrepreneurship happens in three ways.

First, successful environmental entrepreneurs tend to see themselves as both environmentalists and businesspeople. Because of this, they often recruit investors, employees and customers from a broader group than traditional startups. Some offer a hope of reducing carbon emissions through new technologies. Others are small business heroes, creating jobs and building new industries.

Second, environmental entrepreneurs are attuned to different signals than large firms are.
While they are encouraged by environmentalist beliefs, we have also found that the importance of family can predict the number of environmental entrepreneurs in a state. Our research shows that solar energy companies are more likely to form in states that value not only the environment, but also family relationships.

Further, while large firms tend to respond to government-driven policy and economic indicators, environmental entrepreneurs respond to more subtle signals, such as local values. In the green building industry, environmental entrepreneurs ignore economic indicators, but are encouraged by local beliefs and activism. In short, they move first, taking on risk before the evidence is in.

Third, environmental entrepreneurs make a difference. We looked at the effect of various policies, activism and business practices on the adoption of new technologies like green building and renewable energy. We then divided the U.S. into more politically conservative and liberal regions to see whether policies, activism or business practices mattered more under different norms.

We found that the only consistent factor that increased green building adoption in both types of political environments was the number of environmental entrepreneurs. These findings suggest that when a critical mass of entrepreneurship occurs, the political divide on climate change fades away, and we see a rapid uptick in adoption of environmentally beneficial practices.

Solar entrepreneurship thrives in states that value the environment and families. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan











Climate conclusions

 A variety of proposals before Congress would encourage a green recovery by focusing on policy to simultaneously address climate change and the recession, but these plans will likely become mired in the political debate that entangled the Green New Deal.

Here’s what I’d suggest. Laser-focus on the creation of new small businesses as a way to rebuild, offering consulting, technical training and tax incentives.

By focusing on new ventures, those on both sides of the political aisle can rebuild an economy focused on long-term environmental sustainability and economic stability.

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Why Tackling Global Warming Is A Challenge Without Precedent

The Economist




IN JUNE 1988 scientists, environmental activists and politicians gathered in Toronto for a “World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere”.

The aspect of its changing that alarmed them most was the build-up of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. In the late 1950s, when systematic monitoring of the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide level began, it stood at around 315 parts per million (ppm). By that summer, it had reached 350ppm—and a heatwave was bringing record temperatures to much of North America.

The week before the Toronto conference James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, had pointed to the heatwave when telling the US Senate that it was time “to stop waffling…and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here”. The Toronto conference took a similar view, calling for an international effort to reduce global carbon-dioxide emissions by 20% by 2005.

A mere four years later a global compact against climate change had been signed. Even with a boost from the end of the cold war, which made global action on shared concerns seem newly possible and provided an opening for a new eschatology to replace that of nuclear Armageddon, that seemed like a remarkable political success on the part of those pressing for action.

Unfortunately, a global agreement to act is not the same thing as global action. Fossil fuels are the bedrock of industrial society. Even though the alternative of renewable energy has, since 1988, become far more plausible, a decisive move away from fossil carbon still means a wrenching and unprecedented shift.

To many convinced environmentalists that shift seems self-evidently worthwhile. It fits with an ideology that commits them to lives that have less impact on the natural world. But in the face of climate change, individual willingness to sacrifice the fruits of a high-energy lifestyle is not enough. People, and countries, that do not share such motivations must act, too.

The challenge of climate politics is to overcome these differences by negotiating ways forward that can gain general assent. It is a challenge that, despite those remarkable four years, has not been met. Instead of emissions in 2005 being 20% lower than they were in 1988, they were 34% higher. By 2017 they were 22% higher still.

Think global, act global

The Toronto attendees’ belief that an international agreement could bring down carbon-dioxide emissions rested in part on an agreement reached a year before to limit the production of ozone-destroying chemicals, most notable among them the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in fridges and spray-cans. That Montreal protocol looked like a template in two ways.

The first was that it was global. Since the 1960s the environmental movement had increasingly taken “saving the planet” as its rhetorical focus. But practical environmental protections, such as clean-air regulations, almost all worked on a national, or at most regional, basis. Because the world’s CFCs are thoroughly mixed together before they reach the stratosphere’s ozone layer, the Montreal protocol had to be genuinely global, and thus balance the needs of developed and developing countries.

The second was that the Montreal protocol required remarkable faith in science. Unlike most pollution controls, which try to reduce harm already being done, it called for expensive action to deal with a problem that, despite the dramatic discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985, was not yet hurting people. It was based instead on the likelihood of future catastrophe.

Climate scientists realised that an emissions-reduction agreement on greenhouse gases would need a similarly strong consensus on their dangers. This led to the creation in late 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Including researchers from governments, academia, industry and non-governmental organisations, the processes of the IPCC required governments to sign off on its conclusions, so reducing their ability to ignore them.

The IPCC’s first assessment of climate-change science, published in 1990, predicted that if greenhouse-gas emissions continued to rise unchecked, the world would warm by 0.2-0.5°C (0.4-0.9°F) every decade over the course of the 21st century, and that sea-level would rise 3-10cm a decade. Changes in the three decades since fit with the low end of both predictions.

Two years later, at an “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, the UN’s members agreed on a framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) which committed them to the “stabilisation of greenhouse-gas concentrations…at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

Despite the fact that such stabilisation implied impressive cuts in emissions, the treaty set no targets along the lines of Toronto’s 20% by 2005. They were to be worked out later. In years to come those negotiations on emission cuts came to dominate discussions between the parties to the treaty, sidelining the vital question of how to help countries, especially poor ones, adapt to the now inevitable changes. To talk of such adaptation was equated with capitulating on emission cuts.

Specific emission cuts were agreed upon five years after Rio, in Kyoto. They were not global in extent, applying only to developed countries, which were responsible for most of the emissions. They were not ambitious either. And the Kyoto protocol was never ratified by America, then the largest global emitter.

The UN imprimatur gave the UNFCCC universal legitimacy. But fashioning a treaty that all could accept had meant producing one with little practical power. The UNFCCC lacked any mechanism for making countries commit to ambitious action, let alone binding them to such commitments.

LARGE IMAGE

If all countries had shared an urgent interest in action, those shortcomings would not have mattered. But they did not. The costs of environmental improvements tend to fall on a few groups—typically, those doing the polluting. In domestic environmental politics, progress typically relies on going some way to placate those groups while increasing the enthusiasm for action among others and the public.

If emissions had been down to just a few companies, as with CFCs, or sectors of the economy, as with the smogs tackled by clean-air acts, such trade-offs might have been possible internationally. But fossil-fuel use permeated rich economies. Those countries knew the cost of reducing them could be severe—and that the benefits would accrue mostly to people in other countries and future times.

These difficulties were exacerbated by attempts to weaken public support for climate action. Fossil-fuel companies and their political allies, understood how important a scientific consensus on future damage was to the case for action. The result was a campaign to make the science look at best dubious, and at worst fraudulent, which went beyond noting that many environmental scientists were committed environmentalists and pointing out truly open questions (the wide range of the uncertainties in the first IPCC report has been slow to narrow). In doing so it helped produce an environment in which some right-wing politicians felt able to oppose all cuts to emissions, with notable successes in America and Australia.

Future targets beat present action

Another source of resistance to emissions reduction was the rise of China. Its GDP, measured at purchasing-power parity and in real terms, increased sevenfold in the 20 years after Rio. Its carbon-dioxide emissions more than tripled, from 2.7bn to 9.6bn tonnes. China showed no real interest in curbing this world-changing side effect, and because it was a developing country it was not even notionally obliged to do so by the Kyoto protocol—despite the fact that, before that protocol was ten years old, China was a bigger emitter than America. Resentment over this was one of the reasons some developed countries became increasingly unhappy with their commitments. China’s unwillingness to offer real action contributed to the near collapse of attempts to move beyond Kyoto at the Copenhagen summit of 2009.

Six years after Copenhagen, though, the UN process made its biggest step forward since Rio: the Paris agreement. This, at last, set a specific global target. Atmospheric greenhouse-gas levels were to be stabilised by the second half of this century at a level that would see an increase of the average global temperature over its preindustrial level well below 2°C, with strenuous efforts made to keep it down to 1.5°C. All the countries, developed and developing, that signed were required to commit to domestic actions towards that aim.

There were several reasons for the success: prior talks between America and China; skilful French diplomacy; canny negotiation by developing countries. Perhaps the most important one, though, was that the cost of renewable energy was tumbling and investments in the field booming. Reducing emissions while continuing high-energy lifestyles felt newly possible.

Perhaps it will be. But the reductions the countries offered in Paris were too small to meet the 2°C target. That insufficiency has seen a new generation of climate activists demand greater ambition at the next big UNFCCC meeting, originally to be held this year in Glasgow but now postponed because of the covid-19 pandemic. There remains no way for them to force action on people and countries who do not share their passion and commitment.

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06/05/2020

(AU) Australian Businesses Call For Climate Crisis And Virus Economic Recovery To Be Tackled Together

The Guardian - 

Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australia Industry Group, says Covid-19 and climate are ‘urgent’ challenges that overlap

Chief executive of industry group representing more than 60,000 businesses says ‘Covid-19 and climate are bigger than any economic challenge we’ve faced in the last century’. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Getty Images

A leading Australian business group is calling for the two biggest economic challenges in memory – recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and cutting greenhouse gas emissions – to be addressed together, saying it would boost growth and put the country on a firm long-term footing.

Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, representing more than 60,000 businesses, says economic recovery from the virus and the transition required to meet net-zero emissions by 2050 are overlapping issues that should be taken on together.

“There’s a lot that we can do to rebuild stronger and cleaner,” Willox planned to say on Tuesday, according to a speech released in advance.

“The need is urgent. Covid-19 and climate are bigger than any economic challenge we’ve faced in the last century.”

Willox is among a band of community leaders and industry groups urging governments to back climate solutions in the pandemic recovery rather than projects that entrench or increase emissions.

They include the Investor Agenda, a global group of institutional investors and managers with members responsible for more than US$55tn worth of assets.

In a statement released on Monday, it said governments should avoid prioritising “risky, short-term emissions intensive projects”, and that accelerating the shift to net-zero emissions could create significant employment and economic growth while improving energy security and clean air.

“The path we choose in the coming months will have significant ramifications for our global economy and generations to come,” the group, which includes Australia’s Investor Group on Climate Change, said.

In Australia, visions for a “clean recovery” or “renewables stimulus” will be the focus of two online industry summits this week. Speakers include the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, and energy ministers from four states.

The emphasis of the summits differs from that of the energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, who has backed gas, a fossil fuel, as key to driving the recovery after a slump in global oil and gas prices.

John Grimes, chief executive of the Smart Energy Council, which is hosting a summit on Wednesday, said the country needed to tackle the current economic crisis and the climate crisis at the same time or it would “lurch from one major problem to another”.

“This is Australia’s moment to modernise and grow the economy, create hundreds of thousands of new future-proof jobs and position Australia as a global renewable energy superpower,” Grimes said.

Willox planned to tell a separate forum hosted by the Clean Energy Council on Tuesday that last summer’s bushfires had been a preview of what lay ahead due to climate change. His speech notes said a successful energy transition must leave no-one behind and extend beyond electricity generation to include heavy industry, transport, agriculture, buildings “and more”.

“There is immense scope for reform and investment to support that transition, and getting started during the crisis will contribute to faster recovery,” he said.

He said the industry group had consulted widely on “the most constructive directions for recovery and transition”. Opportunities raised included:
  • improving energy management in homes and buildings by plugging drafts, modernising equipment and backing local electricity generation and storage; 
  • boosting electricity networks by rolling out smart meters and moving edge-of-grid customers on to mini-grids; 
  • helping shift heavy industry to run on clean electricity and hydrogen; and 
  • supporting large and small energy storage.
On transport, Willox said it was an excellent time to prepare cities and major corridors for mass take up of electric vehicles by installing or preparing for charging points at service stations, in public and government car parks, and at apartment blocks.

He said governments would have different preferences on whether to use regulatory reform, tax incentives, grants or other approaches. Giving the example of electricity, he said settling on a sound long-term design for market rules and climate policy could do as much to boost investment as direct public financial support.

A report by the Clean Energy Council, also released on Tuesday, estimated that 50,000 construction and 4,000 ongoing jobs could be created, and $50bn worth of renewable electricity and storage projects built, if governments backed green policies and regulatory reform to “jumpstart” the economy.

It said it would require help to overcome policy and grid transmission roadblocks that led to large-scale wind and solar investments falling 50% last year, changes to electricity market rules so the full benefits of energy storage were reflected and support for renewable hydrogen.

On a smaller scale, it would mean governments removing barriers for renters, low-income households and community groups installing solar and supporting home batteries by either reducing costs or offering low-interest loans.

Kane Thornton, the Clean Energy Council’s chief executive, said there were hundreds of large-scale wind and solar projects with planning approval that could proceed quickly, create jobs and bring down prices.

“This isn’t about a handout for industry when government is directing scarce taxpayer funding to other essential services and areas,” Thornton said.

“There is an enormous appetite for private investment in clean energy that can be unlocked through smart regulatory reform, sensible energy policy and investment in the grid and energy storage.”

The International Energy Agency last week reported a “staggering” plunge in global demand for coal, oil and gas during the pandemic, with only renewable electricity proving resilient.

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