11/05/2017

More Countries Are Backing Their Paris Pledges With National Laws

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment


Summary Climate Change Laws
  • There are now over 1,200 climate change or climate change-relevant laws worldwide, a twentyfold increase over 20 years: in 1997 there were about 60 climate laws in place.
  • The rate at which new laws are passed has decreased from over 100 new laws per year in 2009– 13 to around 40 new laws in 2016. This reflects the large amount of ground that existing climate laws already cover.
  • The challenge for the future lies in strengthening existing laws and filling gaps, rather than devising new frameworks. Most (but not all) countries have the legal basis on which further action can build.
  • Low-income countries are progressively active on climate change legislation. Reflecting their circumstances, the focus of low-income countries is on climate resilience rather than emissions.
  • Climate change needs to be integrated better into mainstream development strategies. Only four in 10 countries have factored climate change explicitly into their development plans.
  • The courts are complementing the actions of legislators, ruling on the implementation of existing climate laws or providing a basis for the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Outside the United States, there have been over 250 court cases in which climate change is a relevant factor.
  • Two-thirds of court cases challenging regulation have either strengthened or maintained climate change regulation. In one-third of cases, policies have been weakened. However, the evidence base on court cases is less complete than that on climate change legislation. 
A rise in the number of countries that have introduced legislation to support their 'nationally determined contributions' (NDCs) to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, is unveiled in a new analysis presented today by experts and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Analysis by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science shows that 14 new laws and 33 new executive policies related to climate change have been introduced since the Paris climate change summit in December 2015. 18 of the new laws and policies mainly focus on climate change and 4 specifically relate to NDCs. The analysis relies on a new online database of global climate change legislation developed by the Grantham Research Institute and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. The database is available at http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/legislation/.
The new laws add to the over 1,200 climate-related laws that have been enacted globally since 1997, now in 164 countries and including 93 of the top 100 emitters—up from 99 countries in 2015.
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, said:
"We are witnessing serious and significant support for the Paris Agreement from across countries and Continents and from cities and businesses to civil society. Some point to new, green investment flows and others to the growing penetration of clean energies as evidence of remarkable positive change. Today we present further evidence from the world of policy-making that shows how countries are starting to add and to tailor existing legislative framework to respond to the aims and ambitions of the new Agreement—clearly there is a lot more to do, but it is a further encouraging development."
A previous analysis showed that 7 G20 nations, including the EU as a whole, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Mexico and South Africa, have emission reduction targets in domestic legislation or policy which are entirely consistent with their Paris pledges.
However the 2016 study also pointed out that in the 13 other G20 countries there was a gap between the emissions reductions signatories' pledged to the Paris Agreement and the legal frameworks they have in place to make those cuts.
Those G20 countries will need to make some adjustments to their existing legislation and policies to bring the level and timeframe of targets in consistency with the NDCs, or make more significant changes to translate the level and scope of their pledged emissions cuts into domestic frameworks, for example by upgrading targets from sectoral to economy-wide.
The new analysis released today provides an update on the progress some G20 countries have already made since November when the Paris Agreement came into force.
In Canada the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change has been introduced and Argentina has decreed on the Creation of the National Climate Change Cabinet, whose main tasks will be to prepare a National Plan for Response to Climate Change and Sectoral Action Plans at ministerial level for mitigation and adaptation in key and most vulnerable sectors. China has announced a new 5 year plan which sets emission peak targets and energy efficiency targets. It is not yet clear how new developments in the United States might affect its NDC.
Professor Samuel Fankhauser, Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said:
"These developments in climate legislation and policies since Paris should be taken in context. The 14 news laws and 33 policies add to a stock of more than 1,200 climate change or climate change-relevant laws worldwide: a twentyfold increase in the number of climate laws and policies over 20 years when compared with 1997 when there were just 60 such laws in place. This reflects the large amount of ground that existing climate laws already cover. Most countries now have the legal basis on which further action can build."
Since the Paris Agreement came into force many Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have also taken their first steps to consolidate their approach to climate change. For example, Malawi has passed its National Climate Change Management Policy, which makes explicit connection to its NDC and to the Paris Agreement.
However, legislative gaps remain. The analysis shows that only 42% (20 LDCs) have factored climate change into their development plans and that as a group LDCs have fewer laws and policies compared to the global average (5.5 per country compared to 7.7).
The analysis will be formally launched at an official side event at the UNFCCC intersessional in Bonn today on the Implementation of the Paris Agreement and NDCs – new tools for developing climate legislation. Experts will highlight that it is vital that legislation and policies not only embed NDCs as targets but also create the means by which to achieve those targets. For example by creating institutions, incentives and ratchet mechanisms.
Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union said:
"The database of global climate legislation is a very valuable resource for parliamentarians. It enables them to know what types of laws exist in the world and to look for ways to translate them into the realities of their countries. In other words, this tool facilitates the law-making process which is a first critical element for ensuring that the Paris Agreement translates into national legislation."
Professor Michael Gerrard, Faculty Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law said:
"This new resource brings together important databases related to climate change legislation and will help lawyers, judges and advocates around the world navigate the complex emerging legal regimes that govern this vitally important issue, and envision new ones."
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10/05/2017

Australian Push May Open More Doors For Batteries On Power Grids

Reuters - Sonali Paul

Battery makers worldwide are watching to see whether Australia's most wind power-dependent state can keep the lights on by installing grid-scale batteries by December, which could help drive the growth of renewable energy across Australia and Asia.
A decade-long political stalemate in Australia over energy and climate policy has effectively led to power and gas shortages and soaring energy prices threatening industry and households.
If batteries help solve Australia's problems by storing surplus electricity generated by wind and solar power, countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile, could follow suit.
"I call South Australia the 'perfect storm' opportunity for energy storage," said Ismario Gonzalez, global sales director for AES Energy Storage, an arm of U.S. firm AES Corp, which has installed or is working on battery projects in seven countries, including Australia.

South Australia's ambitious energy plan
Premier Jay Weatherill announces a six-point plan to ensure South Australia's energy future. (Courtesy ABC News 24)

The more dependent the grid is on intermittent sources like wind and solar, the more flexible the back-up sources need to be. That's the appeal of battery storage. It can be switched on and off easily, responding faster than a gas peaking plant.
The state of South Australia, where wind and rooftop solar make up 44 percent of power sources, urgently needs to install big batteries after suffering blackouts over the past year.
It has little back-up as coal-fired power plants in the state have shut due to the rapid expansion of renewable energy. That has made it more dependent on power from neighboring Victoria, its only link to Australia's national electricity market.
The state government plans to spend A$150 million ($115 million) supporting the installation of 100 megawatt hours of battery capacity this year, which would be the world's second-largest battery system behind one installed by AES for California's San Diego Gas & Electric Co [SDGE.UL] in February.
South Australia has yet to name a shortlist of bidders, after having received 90 expressions of interest from more than 10 countries. So by the time it signs contracts, the winner or winners will have only six months to meet a December deadline.
At the same time, the state of Victoria is tendering to support construction of 100 MWh of battery capacity to be delivered in two stages by 2018.
AES says lessons learned in South Australia could be applied in Victoria, which is facing the loss some coal-fired power, and elsewhere, like Chile, where solar power is growing rapidly and will need to be combined with energy storage to avoid outages.

Costs dropping fast
Stiff competition for the two state battery projects, with all the big makers like South Korea's Samsung SDI and LG Chem, Elon Musk's Tesla Inc and U.S. firm Greensmith Energy in the running, will help drive down prices for energy storage, another factor that should speed the spread of batteries along with wind and utility-scale solar.
Elon Musk is in the running for the SA project. Photo: TED.com
"Combined renewable energy generation and storage solutions are becoming genuine competitors with fossil fuel base load generation. This will be the real game changer," said Josh Carmody, head of Australia for Equis Energy.
Equis Energy, a fund set up by former Macquarie bankers to invest in renewable energy projects around Asia, is building a large-scale solar farm in South Australia and is seeking state funding for batteries at the project.
Carmody said safety and performance problems as well as cost had limited the use of batteries in the energy supply system to date, but those challenges were being overcome rapidly.
For battery providers, the money making opportunity will come not only from energy storage but crucial extra services to manage voltage and frequency on grids, several energy storage executives said.
"Projects such as those in South Australia and California demonstrate that there is now significant growth to come in the grid support sector," said Bruce Cole, East Penn's senior vice president, industrial sales.
Costs have come down 90 percent over the past 10 years, AES Energy Storage vice president Brian Perusse said. Industry officials estimated 100 MWh of battery capacity could be supplied for $700 to $1,000 per kilowatt hour.
That's much higher than an offer made by Elon Musk on social media to supply batteries to South Australia for $250 per kilowatt hour. However that figure probably didn't include costs of equipment needed to hook the system up, like transformers, said AES's Gonzalez.
"The analogy I like to use is: that's a Tesla car with no wheels and no battery, no interconnection," Gonzalez said.
Asked for a response, a Tesla spokesman in Australia referred to the cost estimate tweeted by Musk and had nothing to add.

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Global Warming Could Accelerate Towards 1.5℃ If The Pacific Gets Cranky

The Conversation - Ben Henley | Andrew King | Malte Meinshausen

The tropical Pacific has a large say in how fast the world warms. GTS Productions/Shutterstock.com
Global warming is rapidly approaching 1.5℃, but according to our new research, conditions in the Pacific Ocean over the coming decades will determine how fast we get there.
In a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, we use climate model simulations to quantify how fast global average temperatures will reach 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial average – one of the crucial benchmarks of the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Paris deal calls for governments to pursue the aim of keeping global warming below 1.5℃. But our results suggest that we could hit that level before the end of the next decade if the Pacific Ocean moves into a state we have nicknamed the “cranky uncle” for its effects on global temperatures.

Faster warming
Global temperature records have tumbled in recent years: 2016 was the world’s hottest year on record, the third record-breaking year in a row.
Although human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of these rising temperatures, there are other factors at play. The climate system is an unwieldy beast, containing a variety of erratic feedbacks and complex mechanisms.
One mechanism with which many people are familiar is El Niño and La Niña, a see-sawing of warm waters across the tropical Pacific every two to seven years. Climate scientists were not at all surprised to see record global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, because of the large El Niño that ended last year.
Another, lesser-known cycle in the Pacific Ocean is the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Since El Niño and La Niña are Spanish for the “the boy” and “the girl”, we have nicknamed their slower-moving relatives the “cranky uncle”, El Tío, and the “kind auntie”, La Tía.
Like El Niño, warm phases of the IPO provoke a temporary acceleration in global temperature, but over much longer periods, lasting between 10 and 30 years.
The cool La Tía phase of the IPO since around 2000, and its associated slowdown in the rate of global warming, may have lulled us into a false sense of security.
Scientists are now concerned that the next El Tío phase could be on its way, which might sustain the relatively rapid global warming seen over the past few years.

Our research
With this in mind, we decided to investigate how soon we are likely to surpass the 1.5℃ level, both with and without the influence of the IPO.
We used climate model simulations to project global temperatures. The models show temperatures varying significantly from year-to-year and decade-to-decade, as we see in the real world. The centre point of the model projections indicates that the 1.5℃ level would be reached just before 2030, with 75% of the model projections crossing 1.5℃ before 2032.
With the recent slowdown period in mind, we wondered how the next IPO phase, El Tío or La Tía, would influence global temperature. We found that the rate at which global average temperature approaches the 1.5℃ level is influenced significantly by the IPO.
The influence of the IPO on global temperatures towards 1.5°C. Author supplied
El Tío phases are responsible for an acceleration in global temperature. The centre point of the El Tío projections passes the 1.5℃ level in around 2027, and a quarter of our projections pass 1.5℃ as early as 2024.
For La Tía, the projected rate of warming is reduced, and the centre year is 2031 – the kind auntie gives us a little more breathing space.

So, is the Paris agreement a failure?
No. The Paris agreement is a critically important step in the right direction.
Although we will soon surpass the 1.5℃ warming benchmark, we still have a chance to turn around and head back down the hill. But to reduce global temperatures, we need not only to reduce our net emissions to zero, but to move swiftly into net negative carbon emissions territory. That means that overall we will need to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, not add more.
But we are a very long way from that point. There is a lot of work to do.
The implications of swiftly rising global temperature are many and varied. Our group and other scientists have quantified the changing likelihood of extreme events such as heatwaves, coral bleaching, droughts and floods.
For the next few decades we have to accept that we are likely to see more extreme events as the effect of continued rising global temperatures takes its toll.
We can’t hide from our cranky uncle, but we can limit climate change and its impacts. Although the political will for evidence-based climate policy seems to be waning in some quarters, the message from climate scientists has not changed:
We need swift global cooperation to dramatically reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

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Planet Could Breach 1.5c Warming Limit Within 10 Years, But Be Aware Of Caveats

The Guardian - 

A new study shows how a switch in a major climate system could accelerate global temperatures to a 1.5C limit, but some scientists are challenging the assumptions
The 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris delivered a historic climate agreement. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP 
In the Brazilian city of São Paulo, more than 80 experts, including dozens of climate scientists, gathered back in March for a giant planning meeting
As part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group from 39 different countries were starting their work on a major report that will tell governments and policy makers what kind of impacts they can expect when global warming reaches 1.5C.
That report is scheduled to be ready in late September 2018 and will assess in detail what’s known about the impacts 1.5C of global warming could have on societies, ecosystems and how it will affect efforts to reduce poverty.
But new research just published in a leading scientific journal is suggesting that just eight years after that report is published, the world might have already reached that 1.5C target – or at least one definition of it (some senior scientists disagree with some of the assumptions in the paper - read on for those important caveats).
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the research looks closely at the influence of a mechanism in the climate known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).
“The IPO is like the long-term version of El Nino – it’s like El Nino’s uncle,” says Dr Ben Henley, of the University of Melbourne and the lead author of the research.
When heat gets trapped in deeper layers of the Pacific Ocean, this is known as a negative phase of the IPO.
Since about the year 2000, the IPO hit this negative phase, which tends to slow down the rise in global temperatures that’s being caused by humans burning too many fossil fuels and cutting down forests.
But around 2014, scientists say that this IPO started to shift, possibly towards a positive phase that would act like an accelerator on global warming.
Henley and his colleague Dr Andrew King, also at the University of Melbourne, wanted to know how quick global temperatures might reach 1.5C, relative to where they were between 1850 and 1900.
According to the paper, the “rate that global temperatures approach the 1.5C level is likely to be significantly quicker, or slower, depending on the IPO.”
After using the latest computer models of the climate and allowing for the added greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Henley and King looked to see what the coming decades have in store depending on the phase of the IPO.
If the IPO turns positive, then the average across the models shows that global temperatures hit 1.5C in around 2026. If the IPO was to turn negative, then this delays the 1.5C threshold by five years or so.
Henley told me: “Policy makers have to aware of just how quickly we are approaching this level. But that doesn’t mean that the target is not a sensible thing to have.
“While we might overshoot 1.5C, stabilising global temperatures at that level still remains a worthwhile goal.”
Past inaction means we will exceed 1.5C no matter what we do. The key issue, however, is what we do next.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
The paper also gives other projections for breaching 1.5C based on different assumptions and different models.
For example, if you wait until global temperatures go above 1.5C over a five-year average period, then some models suggest that if the IPO stays negative for longer, the 1.5C breach doesn’t happen until around the year 2040 (but this is an outlier in the paper).
Associate Professor Julie Arblaster, a climate scientist at Monash University, and who was not involved in the research, told me the research “highlights the role of natural or internal variability in the climate system in hitting climate targets.”
Arblaster pointed to one study published last year in the journal Nature Communications that suggested the switch to a positive phase of the IPO might have already happened.
She added: “Other things also may also impact the timing of course, such as a large volcanic eruption, but this study helps by providing an estimate of the contribution of the climate system’s internal variability in hitting that target.”
Henley told me a key motivation for doing the sums on the 1.5C target was to help policymakers understand what kind of timeframe they have to work with.
When countries were negotiating for a new global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow the impacts of climate change, many smaller and less developed countries were worried that a 2C global warming target was setting the bar way too high. Some scientists also shared this concern.
So, there was a push to have a 1.5C target included in the text of the deal.
Article 2 of the Paris Agreement states that countries agree to keep global warming “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” but to also pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C… recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”

Wrong assumptions?
Dr Bill Hare is an Australian climate scientist and founder of scientific consultancy group Climate Analytics. Hare is a veteran of the United Nations climate talks.
In an email, Hare said the paper showed “that very ambitious near-term mitigation is required to limit warming to 1.5°C and this analysis underscores this.”
But Hare and his colleagues also had some reservations about the paper’s conclusions.
Hare said the IPCC’s interpretation of when you can say that 1.5C target is breached was based on much longer time periods than the Henley and King paper.
He also said the assumption in the paper that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise under a “business as usual” scenario didn’t reflect how countries were taking action under the Paris agreement. Using more optimistic scenarios could bring temperatures down by as much as 0.2C by 2030.
Dr Joeri Rogelj, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, also pointed out that the convention in UN climate negotiations was to refer to targets in terms of longer time frames of 20 or 30 years.
He thought the paper’s assumptions that emissions would remain high were “not compatible” with the agreements countries had made in Paris, but he did agree that the paper demonstrated how urgent the issue was.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, is a senior lead author on a chapter of the special report that will look at the impacts of 1.5C global warming on humans and natural environments.
Hoegh-Guldberg, who was not speaking from an IPCC perspective, told me the research would “wake some people up to the fact that exceeding 1.5C will happen within the next decade, give or take a couple of years.”
“One unknown that’s associated with the study is the effect that anthropogenic climate change might be having on these long-term climate patterns themselves. Some research groups have provided compelling evidence that patterns associated with El Nino, for example, may actually be amplified by warming.”
He added: “Many scientists have increasingly pointed to the unmanageable ecological and human impacts as average global surface temperatures exceed 1.5°C, and great economic and environmental costs that are likely to be associated.
“Unfortunately, past inaction means that we will exceed 1.5C no matter what we do. The key issue, however, is what we do next.
“People speak of overshoots as being one of the scenarios that we are likely to face. This is not an escape clause as the overshoot is likely to be catastrophic.”

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09/05/2017

Investors Worth $20 Trillion Call For Climate Change Action

Fairfax - 

Some of the world's biggest investors have pleaded with governments of the world's largest economies, including Australia, to stick with their commitments to tackle climate change and to introduce carbon pricing to help achieve them.
There is strong speculation that American President Donald Trump could renege on his country's commitments under the Paris Accord signed in 2015, which aimed to hold temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Donald Trump meets with Malcolm Turnbull
Agreeing that reports of their phone call earlier this year were 'fake news', the US President and the Australian Prime Minister hold a press conference in New York.

Now a group of investor organisations, committed to encouraging action on climate change has written to member nations of the G7 and G20 calling on all participants to move to implement the Paris agreement. The G7 is due to meet in Italy later this month and includes America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain.
Current signatories to the letter manage $20 trillion and in their letter also call for measures to encourage investments that will reduce climate change including carbon pricing, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and introduce standardised international reporting rules for companies to disclose their climate risks.
It is expected that more investors will sign up the letter ahead of the G20 meeting in July.
"While the private sector can provide the investment required to build a secure, affordable and low emissions global energy system, we urge the G7 to set strong policy signals which provide the investment certainty needed to drive trillions of dollars into new clean energy investment opportunities," Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) in Australia said.
Despite the vexed history of carbon pricing in Australia, Ms Herd said investors believed it would need to be part of the future policy response.
"Like it or not some form of carbon pricing need to be part of the policies that governments need to institute," she told Fairfax Media.
Investors want the governments of the world's largest economies to introduce clear plans to implement the Paris Accord. Photo: Jonathan Carroll
Ms Herd said the letter was a "clear and unambiguous" statement of support for the Paris agreement and their desire to invest in solutions.
"It also shows investors are prepared to participate in what is required to tackle climate change. They are prepared to be part of that response themselves," she said.
Barack Obama in Paris in 2015 with other leaders who signed onto the Paris climate accord. Photo: AP
The investors also call for the governments to introduce clear plans to implement the Paris agreements.
Investment managers that belong to the Australian group include AMP, AustralianSuper, BT Investment Management, Mercer and Cbus.
International investors that have supported the push include massive American pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS as well as several large European investors.
The group argues that it is important other governments push on even if America pulls out of the Paris agreement.
"Regardless of what the US administration does, it's vital that every signatory across the G7 and G20 adopts policies that drive better disclosure of climate risk, curb fossil fuel subsidies and put in place strong pricing signals sufficient to catalyse the significant private sector investment in low carbon solutions," ​Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change chief executive Stephanie Pfeifer said.

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How To Fix Climate Change: Put Cities, Not Countries, In Charge

The Guardian - 

It can’t be left to dysfunctional nation states to tackle – but as Oslo and Seoul have shown, metropolitan centres can rise to the challenge of global warming
Illustration by Jasper Rietman
Climate change is the most urgent challenge facing humankind. Other issues make headlines: terrorism kills; inequality affects everyday life for billions around the globe. But climate is paramount, because in sustainability human survival itself is at stake. Why then have the nations governing the planet been so hopelessly ineffective in addressing the grave environmental crisis?
Is it because the consequences of carbon emissions seem hypothetical, or too far off? Politicians pay few costs for doing nothing, and receive little credit for acting aggressively. In the US, a nation that contributes one-fifth of all global greenhouse emissions (China is responsible for another fifth), Donald Trump has promised to reopen coal mines and free up oil drilling.
The problem isn’t the science. The merchants of doubt who claim there is a climate science that is open to scientific debate are not scientific adversaries at all. They are political adversaries, mostly bought and paid for. It is in the realm of politics that the struggle for sustainability must be fought and won.
Politics is hardly at its best right now, and that is perhaps the greatest challenge facing us. The weakness of politics undermines democracy – the faith behind politics. But democracy is crucial because climate change is also about justice: how to distribute the costs of decarbonisation and the transition to renewable energy fairly among rich and poor, developed and developing, large and small, north and south.
This politics can’t be found in increasingly dysfunctional nation states. The good news about the attempt to address climate change through government action is that it’s happening. The bad news is that it’s happening far too slowly. For every new hydroelectric plant built in the global north, some enormous lake dries up in the global south – Poopó, Bolivia’s second largest, has literally vanished over the last few years.
The US state of California is a leader in green public policies, but farmers there also grow pecans in semi-desert conditions where each nut harvested uses up to 300 gallons of water. For every urban fracking ban enacted, there is a move to block it in the courts. Coal is shut down, but fracked natural gas is accepted as a “transition” fuel – however pernicious its effect on decarbonisation.
The best-case scenario for what is likely to be done through nation-based environmental programmes hardly dents the worst-case scenario for the catastrophic consequences of all that is not being done.
However, there is an ample menu of sustainable options available to cities wishing to address climate change aggressively – and they can amplify their impact by coordinating their policies. The list includes divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies; regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.
Oslo has been in the forefront of sustainable urban development. With Norway’s energy needs almost completely met by hydroelectric power, and its lion’s share of North Sea oil and gas going almost entirely to exports, almost all of the income goes to Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund. Oslo has thus had the luxury of pursuing a zero-emission campaign, and appears likely to achieve that goal by 2025.
The city is applying the goal with particular efficiency to transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations are plentiful. The plan is to make Oslo the most electric vehicle-friendly city in the world – one in four new cars sold in Norway are electric – and a champion of green housing and architecture: its new opera house is set in a neighbourhood that gleams with green infrastructure.
Asia also has exemplary green-leaning cities, including Hong Kong and Seoul. The greater Seoul region has a population of almost 25 million, and in 2015 it was ranked the continent’s most sustainable city. Seoul has made a massive investment in electric-powered buses. It already has the world’s third largest subway system, but its carbon fuel bus fleet of 120,000 vehicles has been a massive source of pollution. Current plans are to convert half this fleet to electric by 2020, which would be the world’s most ambitious achievement of this kind.
Such approaches can be undertaken to great effect one city at a time, but they are also mutually reinforcing: networks of collaborating cities can amplify their global impact. They can also make it more difficult for courts or governments to oppose environmental initiatives, standing firm on common approaches to sustainability and decarbonisation
Medellín’s public cable-car system. Photograph: imagebroker/Rex/Shutterstock
The challenge facing cities and citizens is to summon the necessary political will to do the things we know how to do – but have not done – and then to do them democratically. That will not be easy because democracy is in trouble, because moneyed interests and global oligarchies are corrupting government. But the fate of the campaign against climate change and other existential threats depends on democratic politics within and among cities.
Cities are the coolest political institutions on Earth. The odds are two to one or better that you live in a town or city, and not just for economic reasons. Spend a few days in Singapore or Cape Town or Nashville. Witness Oslo’s Tesla taxicabs, or Seoul’s rehabilitated centre-city river or Medellín’s public cable-car system. Keen to confront global warming, but not yet fully empowered to do so, cities must not only accept their responsibility for assuring a sustainable world but assert their right to do so.
There are two formidable obstacles blocking a larger role for cities: a paucity of resources and the absence of autonomy and jurisdiction. The European Union favours regions over cities, and works more on agricultural subsidies than affordable urban housing. In the United States, the structure of congressional representation means a suburban and rural minority rules over the urban majority.
f cities are to get the power they need, they will have to demand the right of self-governance – as I argued in my book If Mayors Ruled the World. The Global Parliament of Mayors, an international grouping of city mayors and the “global city rights movement”, held its inaugural session in The Hague last year.
Because urban citizens are the planet’s majority, their natural rights are endowed with democratic urgency. They carry the noble name of “citizen”, associated with the word “city”. But the aim is not to set urban against rural: it is to restore a more judicious balance between them. Today it is cities that look forward, speaking to global common goods, while fearful nations look back.
The world is getting too hot. Science makes it clear that sustainability is both necessary and possible. Politics shows it is achievable. Cities are poised to make it happen.

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Five Graphics To Start A Conversation About Climate Change

Futurism - Christianna Reedy
shutterstock
Climate Communication
In Brief
While there has long been scientific consensus that humanity is influencing our environment for the worse, public consensus has yet to be attained. When it comes communicating climate change, sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words.
As we continue to see temperatures rise to record-breaking levels, climate change remains at the forefront of research, policy discussions, and private enterprises. However, discussions on the best solutions for climate change remain hampered by lingering debate over whether humanity's influence on climate is fact or fiction.
While there has long been scientific consensus that humanity is influencing our environment for the worse, especially through the increased emissions of greenhouse gases, public consensus has yet to be attained. In fact, a 2014 Gallup Poll revealed that about one in four Americans are solidly skeptical of climate change, believing that claims about it are exaggerated.
For those who are convinced by the science behind climate change, the questions persists: what is the best way to communicate the science in a clear way so that skeptics can draw conclusions based on the best data? Some believe that the simplest way to accomplish this is through the use of visual aids. And, fortunately or not, there are many figures to choose from.

Tracking Temperatures
Let's start with the elephant in the room: global temperatures. Scientists have observed an increase in global temperatures since the beginning of the 20th century. These increased temperatures are not in dispute. But what evidence is there that people are causing this warming?
Credit: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report
CO2 Sources
One indicator that the increasing temperature is linked to human activity is its correlation with our greenhouse gas emissions. While there are a number of greenhouse gases, perhaps the most famous is CO2, of the "carbon footprint" fame. Researchers have tracked CO2 emissions over time, and they, like the earth's temperature, have experienced a dramatic increase after 1900. The majority of the emissions originate from our use of fossil fuels.
Credit: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report
And where do these emissions go? In fact, CO2 "partitions" into several places — the land, the ocean, and the atmosphere. While CO2's greenhouse effect in the atmosphere is its most well known effect, the gas also changes the chemistry of the water it enters.

Water Woes
CO2 reacts with water molecules to generate carbonic acid. Not only does this acidify the ocean, negatively impacting many aquatic species, but this process also lowers the overall amount of carbonate ions in the water. This threatens shelled marine animals that require calcium carbonate, like coral. So, if the CO2 we are producing is harming our world today, is there evidence it will continue impacting the environment in the future?
Credit: The Climate Commission
Enduring Effects
For quite a long time, actually. Once a large amount of CO2 is dumped, or "pulsed," into the atmosphere, about 70 percent of it is still present after 100 years, and 40 percent remains even after 1,000 years. This is one reason why so many climate scientists urge immediate action. Researchers have made projections of what Earth will look like if we do not take action — and it's not pretty.
Credit: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report
Future Fallout
Then, in 100 years or so, our world may be unrecognizable.
Credit: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report
Changing the Conversation
Let's face facts, and, overwhelmingly, they support the reality of climate change. But that's not to say that there can't be legitimate discussion on how to combat it. New environmental regulations on the federal level often get pushback, but could we incentivize development of green technology in the private sector? Could we implement stronger environmental initiatives locally? There are even some out-of-the-box solutions we could consider.
Rather than denying that there is a problem, we should be focusing our energy on determining the best solution. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake here. Are we really willing to risk it on a hunch that 97 percent of climate scientists are wrong?

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