16/04/2021

(AU Climate Council) Aim High, Go Fast: Why Emissions Need To Plummet This Decade

Climate Council -  |  |  |  | 


Climate scientists have observed with mounting concern the continuing emissions and the rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

For decades, they have issued dire warnings about what is at stake and what is required to curb global warming.

Yet global temperatures continue to rise, along with damages from extreme weather.

This report “Aim High, Go Fast: Why Emissions Need to Plummet this Decade” is the Climate Council’s science-backed vision for what Australia’s best effort could look like. Australia is a nation of currently high emissions but rich renewable energy resources.

The country has been ravaged by unprecedented bushfires, droughts, and floods in recent years, and decision makers should not ignore these warnings.

LARGE IMAGE

“Australia, as an advanced economy and major emitter, and one with unrivalled potential for renewable energy and other climate solutions, should be a leader not a laggard, and reduce its emissions even faster than the required global average. Every tonne of emissions avoided matters, and every delay has an escalating cost. We urge you all to take this report seriously and respond accordingly.” — Professor Christopher Field and Dr Kevin Trenberth


Key Findings

1. Climate change is accelerating with deadly consequences. The ecological systems that have sustained human life and societies for generations are being severely damaged by increasing heat and worsening extreme weather events.

  • There is no safe level of global warming. Already, at a global average temperature rise of 1.1°C, we’re experiencing more powerful storms, destructive marine and land heatwaves, and a new age of megafires.
  • Multiple lines of evidence strongly suggest the global average temperature rise will exceed 1.5°C during the 2030s.
  • Should temperatures spike above 1.5°C for a significant period of time, critical ecosystems on which we depend (such as the Great Barrier Reef) would be even more severely damaged, or destroyed.
  • Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters, and will be measured in lives, species and ecosystems lost or saved. We must do everything possible to deeply and rapidly cut our emissions, while also preparing for climate impacts that can no longer be avoided.
  • There’s little time left to limit global warming below catastrophic temperature rises. Breaching 1.5°C of warming significantly increases the risk of triggering abrupt, dangerous and irreversible changes to the climate system.

2. Our response must match the scale and urgency of this worsening situation. Action to deeply reduce emissions this decade will determine whether the climate system can or cannot be stabilised at warming of well below 2°C.

  • While action is increasing in Australia and world-wide, it remains too slow and not enough. Protecting Australians from the worsening effects of climate change requires all governments, businesses, industries and communities to strongly step up their activities to deeply reduce emissions during the 2020s.
  • The lion’s share of the effort to get to net zero emissions needs to happen this decade. Delaying further than we have already would mean that even more rapid and disruptive action to reduce emissions is required later.
  • Governments, business and industry are committing increasingly to net zero targets. However, timeframes for these commitments are generally too long. The world achieving net zero by 2050 is at least a decade too late and carries a strong risk of irreversible global climate disruption at levels inconsistent with maintaining well-functioning human societies.
  • Australian governments, businesses, industries and communities can and must cut emissions deeply. Given the scale of the global emissions reduction task, and taking into account Australia’s very high level of emissions and our huge renewable energy resources, Australia should aim to reduce emissions by 75% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2035. This is a fair and achievable contribution to the global task and an imperative given our high vulnerability to escalating extreme weather.

3. As momentum for climate action gathers speed around the world, all efforts must now focus on steps that can be taken this decade.

  • The change in US government has ushered in a new era of international cooperation on climate change. All commitments must be scaled up, and the pace of action must accelerate if we are to avoid the worst climate consequences.
  • Australian state and local governments as well as many leading business and community groups are already providing vital leadership in implementing climate solutions.
  • Many of Australia’s strategic allies and major trading partners (including the US, EU, UK, Canada) have strengthened their climate commitments for this decade, or intend to do so. The Australian Federal Government is standing still, and alone.
  • Australia, as a major emitter in its own right and a giant of the global fossil fuel economy, has a major role to play in the global effort to stabilise the climate. Bold and decisive climate action ultimately protects us and is in our national interest.

4. Australia has everything it needs to act swiftly and decisively to help avert climate catastrophe, and prosper in a global clean economy.

  • Australia has unrivalled potential for renewable energy, new clean industries, and clean jobs. We need to rapidly scale up the energy transition and advance solutions in other sectors including transport and agriculture.
  • Climate leadership from states and territories has shown what works, and the benefits that decarbonising our economy can bring, such as regional jobs, cleaner cities and cheaper power. It’s time for a concerted national push, and for the federal government to work with other tiers of government, along with industry and communities, to rapidly step up this work and deliver much deeper cuts in emissions.
  • Despite our natural advantages, we are being left behind in the new, clean economy race. Urgently ramping up our ambition is fundamental both to Australia’s economic future, and to ensure our children and grandchildren can not only survive but thrive.
  • The change will not always be smooth. There are political, technical and other challenges ahead because action has been delayed. However, the alternative – a decision to not do enough, or to delay – will lead to massive climate disruption. Catastrophic outcomes for humanity cannot be ruled out if we fail to meet the climate challenge this decade.



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(AU ABC) Bold Challenge To Decarbonise Australia In 15 Years Laid Down By Climate Council

ABC Science - Nick Kilvert

Renewables need to dominate our energy mix within the next decade, according to the report. (Supplied: Tadgh Cullen DP Energy)

A new report from the Climate Council lays out an ambitious challenge to Australian governments and industry: get carbon emissions to net zero by 2035. 

Failure to do so could see us become increasingly economically isolated from our trading partners and at greater risk of climate-related disasters, according to the report authors.

The US Biden presidency has "ushered in a new era of climate cooperation" that Australia will be left out of if we don't radically increase our emissions reduction efforts, they say in today's report, Aim high, go fast: Why emissions need to plummet this decade.

They've warned if Australia continues to have targets that lag behind those of our trading partners, we could cop a de facto carbon tax from them.

"The EU and others may slap import tariffs [on our exports]," said Will Steffen from the ANU's Climate Change Institute, and the report's lead author.

He said there would be increasing pressure on Australia to take tougher emissions reduction targets to COP26, the UN climate conference to be held in Glasgow in November, where many countries are expected to do the same.

A tariff on our exports by importing countries would make it harder for Australia to compete with less polluting economies, said the Climate Council's Nicki Hutley, who was not an author of this report.

Countries who have shouldered the cost of transitioning to cleaner infrastructure are likely going to attempt to "level the playing field", she said.
"We were very much always focused on the costs of action and now it's about the costs of inaction and missed opportunities.
"It's mainly the EU that has come up with the proposed scheme — they call it a 'carbon border adjustment mechanism'.

"It's effectively [saying], 'why should European manufacturers be punished when others aren't pulling their weight [on emissions reduction]?'."

Professor Steffen said he expected the US to significantly ramp up its own emissions reduction target this year, which would in turn put further pressure on countries like Australia to do more.

"I would be surprised if it was any weaker than 40 per cent and it might go to 50 per cent [emissions reduction] by 2030," he said.

"I don't have any inside information, but that's my speculation.

"In being such an important ally, what [the US] does is going to have a big impact on what happens here."

US President Joe Biden is expected to announce new 2030 targets next week, as 40 countries including Australia attend a virtual leaders' summit on climate on April 22 and 23.

Mr Biden announced plans for the summit in his first few days in office.

"In his invitation, the President urged leaders to use the summit as an opportunity to outline how their countries also will contribute to stronger climate ambition," a White House statement said.

Government concerned about 'carbon tariffs'

 Australia's current targets are a reduction of between 26 and 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor said they welcomed the Biden administration's return to the Paris Agreement and "increasing global focus on the practical solutions" for achieving net zero.

"We have a strong 2030 target," they said.

"We are developing a long-term emissions reduction strategy which will be released ahead of COP26."

However, they said carbon tariffs "aren't a solution to rising global emissions".

"We are concerned about the EU's proposal for a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM)," the spokesperson said.

"Such a mechanism risks becoming a new form of protectionism and undermining international cooperation on climate change."

How do we get to net zero?
Getting to 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030 is achievable, according to Climate Works modelling. (Getty Images: acilo)
Today's Climate Council report outlines the need to reduce Australia's emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, on the way to achieving net zero by 2035.

Several scenarios have been modelled to achieve this using existing technology, including by Climate Works — a climate policy research group working within Monash University's Sustainable Development Institute.

Given the scale of the reductions required, emissions cuts need to come from all sectors with a focus on energy efficiency, decarbonising the grid, switching to renewable fuels and carbon offsetting, Climate Works' Amandine Denis-Ryan said.

"It's achievable to have 80 per cent renewables by 2030," she said.

"[We also need] a reasonably fast electrification of transport. So 75 per cent of new car sales by 2030 and 60 per cent of new truck sales [need to be electric]."

Electric vehicles and machinery, and cleaning the grid, will allow industry to achieve significant emissions savings.

But the key is for government investment to leverage the private sector, she said.

At least 75 per cent of new car sales need to be electric by 2030 to help us achieve net zero emissions by 2035, according to modelling. (AP: Ben Margot/File)

Using public money to reduce the cost of clean energy and infrastructure, such as electric vehicle and truck fleets, could allow investment at a scale that will in turn reduce costs.

"What we need to see is large-scale mechanisms that are going to create that pull, not only by government, but also by the private sectors," Ms Denis-Ryan said.

"For instance, there's a lot of interest globally at the moment in hydrogen. If capital is deployed at scale in this technology, we could see very strong cost reductions and accelerated deployment by 2030.
"The clean hydrogen export industry in Australia could be as big, or bigger, than coal exports."
Economic opportunities are already presenting themselves for countries that are making rapid transitions to renewables, according to Professor Steffen.

Singapore, for instance, is looking for opportunities to get to net zero carbon emissions.

However, being a large city on a small island, it will have to import clean energy and invest in offshore offsets to do this, he said.

"That’s an open invitation to Australia. This is a huge opportunity that we shouldn’t miss," Professor Steffen said.

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The federal government's "Technology Investment Roadmap" will drive $70 billion in new investment by 2030, according to Mr Taylor's spokesperson.

"It's a plan to accelerate new and emerging technologies like hydrogen, batteries and soil carbon," they said.

"The Morrison government is already supporting the uptake of future fuels technologies, such as electric vehicles."

But Professor Steffen says the government is lagging behind global momentum.

"They're really way behind what's happening in technology and what's happening in other countries," he said.

"I would be surprised if they took [this report] seriously. But I think a lot of people will take it seriously; certainly people in the private sector will take it seriously."

1.5C target already gone without drawdown?
Mass reforestation is one of the few proven methods of carbon capture, but is limited in how much carbon can be captured and for how long. (ABC Newcastle: Robert Virtue)

The ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was to limit warming above pre-industrial levels to "well below" 2C, and preferably 1.5C. But that 1.5C target is now unachievable without overshoot and drawdown, according to today's report.

This means we will overshoot 1.5C of warming, and then use technologies to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere, eventually returning average warming back to 1.5C or below.

But the problem with relying on drawdown is that no technology to do this has so far been proven to work, or to be feasible at scale.

Instead, we are limited to things like soil carbon capture and mass tree planting.

However, there is not a scientific consensus that we can no longer keep warming to within 1.5C; indeed, many climate scientists still think we can.

Adjunct Professor Bill Hare from Murdoch University and Dr Carl-Freidrich Schleussner from Humboldt University say they have been trying to raise issues with this claim with the Climate Council for the past six months, "to no avail".

"The big challenge their report reinforces is the need for urgent action to get on that 1.5C pathway, [so] it's very paradoxical to me that they've chosen to attack that target," Dr Hare said.

In a rebuttal to the 1.5C overshoot claim, Dr Hare and Dr Schleussner argue that the science still very much supports 1.5C as an achievable target.

"This bold claim is in contradiction with a range of other recent high-level scientific reports, including the UNEP Gap Reports and the recent IPCC Special Report on 1.5˚C (IPCC SR15)," they said.

"It is clear that the evidence presented in the Climate Council of Australia report itself does not support their claim that 1.5C will be exceeded. Nor that 'significant overshoot and subsequent drawdown' would be the consequence."

Maintaining the 1.5C limit will be on the agenda at next week's summit.

“A key goal of both the leaders' summit and COP26 will be to catalyse efforts that keep that 1.5-degree goal within reach,” a White House statement said.

The modelling done by Climate Works included significant investment in tree planting to reach net zero emissions in Australia by 2035.

But there are limits to the amount of carbon that forestry can capture, and the length of time it can be stored.

Avoiding warming in the first place is still our best option, according to Professor Steffen.

Without drawdown, our best hope is now to aim to limit warming to 1.8C. On our current trajectory, we will overshoot 1.5C around the mid-2030s, he said.

"Basically we can still hold temperature rise to well below 2C and do that without overshoot and drawdown.

"Every tenth of a degree actually does matter — 1.8C is better than 1.9C, and is much better than 2C."

At 2C, tropical reef-building corals are expected to "mostly disappear", and about 10.4 million more people will be exposed to impacts from coastal weather and sea-level rise at 2C compared to 1.5C, according to the IPCC.

Australia is also expected to experience much more intense bushfires, floods, droughts and other severe weather and climate events at 2C, compared to 1.5C.

"Adaptation is going to become more important, challenging and costly," Professor Steffen said.

"But this reinforces the mantra that every tenth of a degree matters.

"Despite the scale of losses at 1.5C, there remains much that can be protected."

While transitioning to a net zero economy over the next 15 years will be difficult, Professor Steffen said not moving as quickly as possible to get emissions down will be more costly in the long run.

"The targets we’ve proposed for Australia … take into account our technological capability and what I think are our moral and ethical obligations," he said.

"Instead of doing the minimum, we should do our best. Doing our best will actually have a lot of benefits for us, not just in stabilising the climate, but [for] our society and economy."

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(AU The Guardian) Report Claiming Global Temperature Rise Will Top 1.5c By 2030s Divides Scientists

The Guardian - 

Climate Council report says most emissions cuts need to occur in the next decade to keep global heating below 2C
A report by the Climate Council has claimed that the global average temperature rise will likely breach 1.5C by the 2030s. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

A report by the Climate Council claiming that the global average temperature rise will likely breach 1.5C by the 2030s has caused division in the scientific community.

The report, published on Thursday, follows controversy over similar arguments made in a review by the Australian Academy of Science, which said global aspiration of limiting global heating to 1.5C was now “virtually impossible” to achieve.

In its report, the Climate Council says the majority of emissions cuts need to occur within the next decade to keep global heating to well below 2C and avoid major, irreversible tipping points.

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It says Australia, to do its fair share, needs to effectively triple its emissions reduction target to 75% on 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2035.

The report does not argue that the long-term Paris goal is lost but says the global average temperature rise will likely overshoot 1.5C and will require drawdown – the removal of carbon from the atmosphere – to bring temperatures back down below this level.

“The science is telling us that global average temperature rise will likely exceed 1.5C during the 2030s, and that long-term stabilisation and warming at or below 1.5C will be extremely challenging,” the report says.

It says if temperatures spike above 1.5C for a significant period of time, ecosystems already affected by existing warming of 1.1C will become even more severely damaged.

“Climate-related damages will be widespread and could, in some settings, be an existential threat,” the report says.

Will Steffen, one of the report’s authors, said despite the fact that countries were already experiencing severe effects of climate change, every fraction of a degree by which further temperature rises could be limited mattered.

“Every 10th of a degree of avoided warming is very important for us,” he said.

He said keeping global heating well beneath 2C was achievable, particularly when major economies such as the US, China, the EU, the UK and Japan were strengthening their emissions reduction commitments.

Australia, by comparison, was being “rapidly left behind” as one of few countries without a net-zero emissions target.

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The report’s analysis of the feasibility of limiting warming to 1.5C argues that multiple lines of evidence – including future warming that is locked into the system from emissions that have already occurred, current climate trajectories and the available global carbon budget – suggest this will be exceeded, at least temporarily.

The Climate Council said the report was peer-reviewed by Australian and international scientists.

“It is a case of putting these different lines together,” said Simon Bradshaw, another of the report’s authors and the Climate Council’s head of research.

“The whole point of pointing this out is to drive home the message of how urgent these emissions reductions are.”

It is the conclusion about 1.5C that has caused concern in some quarters of the scientific community.

The Climate Council made its report available to journalists under a strict embargo that included the condition that reporters not share the report with any external experts prior to publication.

Environmental groups were also asked to sign non-disclosure agreements before they received an advance copy of the report.

But climate scientists Carl-Friedrich Schleussner and Bill Hare obtained a leaked copy and have written an 11-page rebuttal to the report’s conclusions about the 1.5C goal.

Hare, who also questioned the Australian Academy of Science report that drew on Steffen’s work to make a similar finding, said the council’s overall conclusion about the urgency of rapid action on climate change in the next decade was correct.

But he said the council’s claim that countries can no longer limit global heating to 1.5C contradicted recent scientific reports, including by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The claim that we can no longer limit warming to 1.5C is based on some fundamental scientific errors,” Hare said.

“Essentially, it is clear that the evidence presented in the Climate Council of Australia report does not support their claim that 1.5C will be exceeded.”

He said the report’s conclusion that carbon budgets showed countries couldn’t limit warming to 1.5C was especially problematic because there were uncertainties around the numbers.

“A recent paper by leading experts concluded there was 50% margin of error around carbon budget estimates,” Hare said.

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However, Andy Pitman, a scientist at the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of New South Wales, said it was “a statement of fact” that temperatures would overshoot 1.5C and require technology to bring them back down.

“It’s simply not possible to limit warming to 1.5C now,” he said.

“There’s too much inertia in the system and even if you stopped greenhouse gas emissions today, you would still reach 1.5C [of heating].”

Monica Richter, of WWF Australia, said the feasibility of the 1.5C from a scientific point of view could not be a discussion that was “decoupled from the political and moral consequences of breaching 1.5C”.

“At its core, the possibility of limiting warming to below 1.5C remains an issue of politics rather than of science,” she said.

Bradshaw said while there was ongoing discussion in the scientific community, there was “absolute fundamental agreement on the task at hand, which is to get emissions to plummet”.

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15/04/2021

(AU) Racked With Guilt And Grief And Climate Despair – How Do We Go On!?

The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

We are not surrendering! Just the opposite in fact, we are getting on with it despite everything

Cartoon by First Dog on the Moon
LARGE IMAGE

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(The Guardian USA) Sea Levels Are Going To Rise By At Least 20ft. We Can Do Something About It

The Guardian - Harold R Wanless

To avoid the grimmest outlook posed by warming oceans, we need to extract heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere

The US army corps of engineers distributes sand along the beach in Miami Beach, Florida. The project is part of a $16m scheme to widen the beaches in an effort to fight erosion and protect properties from storm surges. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Author
Harold R Wanless is professor of geography and regional studies at University of Miami.
The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize.

Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather – that much is widely understood.

The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.

As oceans heat up the water rises in part because warm water expands but also because the warmer waters have initiated major melt of polar ice sheets.

As a result, average sea levels around the world are now all but certain to rise by at least 20 to 30 feet. That’s enough to put large parts of many coastal cities, home to hundreds of millions of people, under water.

The key questions are how soon this sea level rise will happen and whether humans can cool the atmosphere and oceans quickly enough to prevent part of this.

If seas rise 20 feet over the next 2,000 years, our children and their descendants may find ways to adapt. But if seas rise 20 feet or more over the next 100 to 200 years — which is our current trajectory – the outlook is grim.

In that scenario, there could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050, and much more to come.

Two to three feet of sea level rise may not sound like much, but it will transform human societies the world over. In south Florida, where I live, residents will lose access to fresh water. Sewage treatment plants will fail, large areas will persistently flood, and Miami Beach and other barrier islands will be largely abandoned.

In China, India, Egypt and other countries with major river deltas, two to three feet of sea level rise will force the evacuation of tens of millions of people and the loss of vast agricultural lands.

Attempting to limit sea level rise therefore must become an urgent priority, including for the world leaders Joe Biden is inviting to a climate summit on Earth Day, 22 April. We must reframe how the climate emergency is understood and what it means to combat it.

Certainly, it is essential to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 to 2C – but that will not be sufficient.

The solution to rapidly rising sea levels is twofold: humans must stop putting more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, and we must extract much of what we’ve already put up there.

Since the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has soared due to human activities, principally the burning of carbon-based fossil fuels.

To minimize future sea level rise, we need to lower that amount from today’s 417 parts per million towards the 280 ppm that prevailed before industrialization.

Halting heat-trapping emissions requires rapidly moving the economy off fossil fuels to renewable energy as well as ending deforestation, shifting to climate-friendly agriculture, planting soil-building forests, and more. But even if we succeed on this front — and so far, we are falling well short — only the atmosphere would stop getting hotter.

Cooling the oceans will be harder. This requires pulling massive amounts of CO2 from both the atmosphere and the oceans and storing it where it cannot leak.

There are prototypes of such “carbon negative” technologies. Methods like incorporating pulverized basaltic lava into fertilizers can lead to CO2 removal and other approaches must be aggressively developed.

It is crucial that both strategies – halting further emissions of CO2 and extracting CO2 that’s already been emitted – be pursued. Doing one cannot be an excuse for not doing the other or we will fail.

Our dilemma is rooted in basic physics. Once CO2 is emitted, it remains in the atmosphere for millennia, trapping heat and warming the planet like a blanket warms a human body.

 What’s insufficiently appreciated is that most of this warming – over 93% – has transferred to the oceans and significantly warmed the upper 2,000 feet. This is accelerating polar ice melt and global sea level rise and will continue to do so for centuries.

And sea level rise is accelerating at a dangerous pace. In 1900, global sea levels were rising 0.6 millimeters a year. After 1930, as ocean warming and water expansion kicked in, the rate of sea level rise doubled and doubled again, reaching 3.1mm a year by 1990.

Since then, as ever-warmer oceans have driven polar ice melt, the rate of sea level rise has quickened further. Today, oceans are rising 6 mm a year (over two inches a decade), and this pace will continue to dramatically accelerate.

Two inches a decade may seem a trifle but remember: we are just at the beginning of this acceleration. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected in 2017 that global mean sea level could rise five to 8.2ft by 2100.

 Four years later, it’s clear that 8ft is in fact a moderate projection. And regional influences – subsidence, changing ocean currents, and redistribution of Earth’s mass as ice melts – will cause some local sea level rise to be 20-70% higher than global.

Sea level rise of 8ft would be catastrophic. Absent extensive and very expensive adaptation measures, it would put much of New York and Washington DC, Shanghai and Bangkok, Lagos, Alexandria and countless other coastal cities underwater.

It would submerge south Florida. And building sea walls won’t help in south Florida: the land rests on porous limestone, so rising seas will simply seep under. Even the levee-protected Netherlands and New Orleans will be in deep trouble.

Worse, on current trends, we will be lucky for seas to rise “only” 8ft by 2100. The reason is that the computer models used by Noaa and others do not reflect what we know about how seas have risen in the past.

These models assume that sea level rise unfolds gradually, but the geological record shows that in fact it can occur in rapid pulses.

Warmer temperatures following the previous ice age caused disintegration of one polar ice sector after another, causing seas to rise in pulses of three to 30ft per century. Today, accelerating ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica are almost certainly the beginning of a new pulse of rapid sea level rise.

It is urgent that humanity transition to renewable energy, stop burning fossil fuels, and develop and deploy technologies to extract CO2 from the skies and seas. We must also get realistic about adapting to the sea level rise that can no longer be prevented.

Rather than building more in low-lying regions and spending public money on coastal defenses that are bound to fail, we should prepare to assist the eventual relocation of people and infrastructure from the most threatened areas (and clean the land before inundation).

Without such measures, there will come a point, sooner than many people realize, when civilization as we know it will greatly weaken or outright collapse. We can only prevent this scenario with serious planning, funding, and effort. Our children, and their children, deserve much better than we are doing now.

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(Common Dreams) Media Coalition Declares That Journalism Should Reflect 'Climate Emergency Is Here'

Common Dreams - Jessica Corbett

"Why 'emergency'? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately."

An on-air journalist makes a report as flames flare up behind him from the Santa Ana wind-driven Bond fire burning near a hill-side residence along Santiago Canyon Road in Silverado, California on December 3, 2020. (Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Lead partners of a global consortium of news outlets that aims to improve reporting on the climate emergency released a statement on Monday urging journalists everywhere to treat their coverage of the rapidly heating planet with the same same level of urgency and intensity as they have the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Signing the Climate Emergency Statement is a way for journalists and news outlets to alert their audiences that they will do justice to that story."
—Mark Hertsgaard, CCNow
Since Covering Climate Now (CCNow) was co-founded in 2019 by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation in association with The Guardian and WNYC, over 460 media outlets—including Common Dreams—with a combined reach of two billion people have become partner organizations.

CCNow and eight of those partners are now inviting media outlets to sign on to the Climate Emergency Statement, which begins: "It's time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here. This is a statement of science, not politics."

The statement notes that a growing number of scientists are warning of the "climate emergency," from James Hansen, formerly of NASA, to the nearly 14,000 scientists from over 150 countries who have endorsed an emergency declaration.

"Why 'emergency'? Because words matter," the CCNow statement explains. "To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires, and ice melt of 2020 routine and could 'render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable,' warned a recent Scientific American article."

CCNow's initiative comes after U.S. government scientists said last week that "carbon dioxide levels are now higher than at anytime in the past 3.6 million years," with 2020 featuring a global surface average for CO2 of 412.5 parts per million (PPM)—which very likely would have been higher if not for the pandemic.

As Common Dreams reported last week, amid rising atmospheric carbon and inadequate emissions reduction plans, an international coalition of 70 health professional and civil society groups called on world leaders to learn from the pandemic and "make health a central focus of national climate policies."

"The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that health must be part and parcel of every government policy—and as recovery plans are drawn up this must apply to climate policy," said Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

CCNow also points to the public health crisis as a learning opportunity, describing the media's handling of it as "a useful model," considering that "guided by science, journalists have described the pandemic as an emergency, chronicled its devastating impacts, called out disinformation, and told audiences how to protect themselves (with masks, for example)."

"We need the same commitment to the climate story," the statement emphasizes.
CCNow executive director Mark Hertsgaard echoed that message Monday in The Nation, for which he serves as environment correspondent. He also addressed reservations that some reporters may have about supporting such a statement:
As journalists ourselves, we understand why some of our colleagues are cautious about initiatives like this Climate Emergency Statement, but we ask that they hear us out. Journalists rightly treasure our editorial independence, regarding it as essential to our credibility. To some of us, the term "climate emergency" may sound like advocacy or even activism—as if we're taking sides in a public dispute rather than simply reporting on it.

But the only side we're taking here is the side of science. As journalists, we must ground our coverage in facts. We must describe reality as accurately as we can, undeterred by how our reporting may appear to partisans of any stripe and unintimidated by efforts to deny science or otherwise spin facts.
According to Hertsgaard, "Signing the Climate Emergency Statement is a way for journalists and news outlets to alert their audiences that they will do justice to that story."

"But whether a given news outlet makes a public declaration by signing the statement," he added, "is less important than whether the outlet's coverage treats climate change like the emergency that scientists say it is."

Covering Climate Now
Statement On The Climate Emergency

Journalism should reflect what the science says: the climate emergency is here. It's time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here.

This is a statement of science, not politics.

Thousands of scientists—including James Hansen, the NASA scientist who put the problem on the public agenda in 1988, and David King and Hans Schellnhuber, former science advisers to the British and German governments, respectively—have said humanity faces a "climate emergency."

Why "emergency"? Because words matter. To preserve a livable planet, humanity must take action immediately. Failure to slash the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will make the extraordinary heat, storms, wildfires, and ice melt of 2020 routine and could "render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable," warned a recent Scientific American article.

The media's response to Covid-19 provides a useful model. Guided by science, journalists have described the pandemic as an emergency, chronicled its devastating impacts, called out disinformation, and told audiences how to protect themselves (with masks, for example).

We need the same commitment to the climate story.

We, the undersigned, invite journalists and news organizations everywhere to add your name to this Covering Climate Now statement on the climate emergency.

Signed,
 
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14/04/2021

(AU) First Australian Scorecard Of Vehicle CO2 Emissions Reveals Best And Worst Brands

The Guardian - 

Automotive sector is working on voluntary emissions reductions but the industry says government inaction is slowing progress 

Australia’s peak automotive industry body has set an ambitious target to reduce CO2 emissions as the government drags its heels on policy. Photograph: kokkai/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Australia’s peak automotive industry body has released its first “scorecard” of CO2 emissions from cars imported into the country in 2020.

The report from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) breaks down average CO2 emissions by carmaker and the number of sales in order to show the difference between average CO2 emissions and the target set under the industry’s voluntary standard.

Among the best-performing brands on CO2 emissions were Toyota, Lexus and Jaguar while the worst-performing were luxury brands Lamborghini and Ferrari which massively overshot their voluntary emissions reductions target.

FCAI chief Tony Weber said the release formed the “baseline” for a long-term plan by carmakers to compensate for a lack of government action in Australia by voluntarily working to reduce vehicle emissions by 4% a year until 2030.

“It’s an ambitious target,” Weber said. “This puts a line in the sand. We put that out for transparency. What we’re doing is saying here is a target in 2030 that we’re going to aim for.

“We have two issues in Australia. We don’t have a [CO2 emissions] target and we have the lowest quality fuel in the OECD. Marry those together and it’s really hard to get the best quality drive-train technology into the market.”

Details
Monitoring CO2 emissions from passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in 2020 (pdf)

Weber said the 10-year timeframe was chosen to give manufacturers a chance to make adjustments over the model cycle of different vehicles.

While most car models are built on a five-year cycle, some are produced on a 10-year cycle.

Australia 'risks being dumping ground' for cars with greenhouse gas 1,400 times more potent than CO2.  Read more
The problem was exacerbated as other major economies have set ambitious mandatory targets, which is seeing global carmakers direct cars with newer technologies everywhere else first.

“You can’t just change your CO2 output overnight. You can’t just put a new engine in,” he said.

“We’re about 1m cars in a 100m market. It’s about directing limited supply of these technologies around the world to markets with targets. Supply will meet demand.”

Adjunct Associate Prof Robin Smit from the University of Technology Sydney and director transport energy/emission research said he it was good to see the industry “taking the lead”.

“Previous research has shown that new Australian passenger vehicles have not reduced CO2 emission rates as fast as the other major jurisdictions,” Smit said.

“It is good to see action from the FCAI with the aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“There is nothing new about this test though.”

Smit said the initiative could be further improved with the adoption of the newer Worldwide Harmonized Light-duty Test Procedure (WLTP) standard that has been used overseas since 2017 to more accurately measure real-world CO2 emissions.

The FCAI’s current methodology relies on a legislated test called the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC) that was developed in the early 1970s and does not accurately capture real-world emissions. In 2015, the difference between the result obtained in the lab using the NEDC and real-world on-road emissions was as high as 40%.

Leading the charge: how the hospitality sector is building Australia's EV network. Read more
“The NEDC test doesn’t capture real-world emissions, basically,” Smit said.

“Purely from a climate change perspective where we want to reduce emissions quickly, it is really important to know the real-world emissions levels. 

"The NEDC test previously used in the EU and that is still used in Australia is increasingly underestimating on-road emissions.

“It is important that we get a handle on real-world emissions reductions.”

Another concern was the use of different weight standards for cars, light SUVs and heavy SUVs. Smit said where this occurs it creates a risk that sales of large SUVs will continue to grow and some manufacturers will attempt to reclassify smaller cars as heavy SUVs in order to continue selling underperforming vehicles.

In one example from the early 2000s, Chrysler sought to evade fuel efficiency standards that were limiting sales of the popular Dodge Ram pickup by building the PT Cruiser. The vehicle looked like a car but was built on a “truck” platform which had worse fuel economy but was also subject to more lenient regulations that applied to heavy vehicles in the US.

Similar problems have also emerged in Europe where weight-dependent standards boosted sales of larger and heavier vehicles – which have increased real-world CO2 emissions. Many of these were then exported to vehicle fleets around the world.

“It is clear that other policy measures are needed to complement the voluntary standards and achieve real on-the-road reductions in CO2 emissions from the on-road fleet,” Smit said.

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