09/11/2017

Fight Climate Change By Suing Polluters, Says Scientist

National Geographic - Stephen Leahy

 Prominent climate scientist James Hansen has a message for world leaders gathering in Germany for the United Nations conference on global warming.
A supercell thunderstorm strikes in South Dakota. Among the most severe storms, supercells can bring strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes. (See more extreme weather pictures.) Photograph by Jim Reed, National Geographic
Countries should sue the world’s biggest oil, coal and gas, and cement companies for damages resulting from climate change—says well-known climate scientist James Hansen.
Hansen, a former NASA scientist who warned Congress about the dangers of climate change in 1988, says global warming of 2°C, or even 1.5°C, is dangerous, risking sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. That would put major parts of coastal cities like New York underwater. He believes major impacts of climate change are happening faster than what is reported in even the latest science reports, including the U.S. government’s Climate Science Special Report released last Friday.
An enormous amount of money is urgently needed to dramatically slash emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), take existing CO2 out of the atmosphere, and for countries to cope with the impacts of climate change, Hansen argues. And that money should come from the companies that profited most from burning fossil fuels, Hansen will tell world leaders Tuesday in Bonn, Germany, at the annual United Nations climate negotiations.
Known as COP 23, negotiators from 197 countries are meeting this week to finalize details around the Paris Climate Change Agreement, including a process to increase emission reductions. The current reductions promised by countries under the Paris Agreement are only a third of what is needed to stay below 2C, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
“I tried to get an opportunity to address the negotiators but did not succeed. I will give my talk at a press conference,” Hansen told National Geographic in advance of the meeting.

Targeting “Carbon Majors”?
The companies that could be sued are known as the “carbon majors,” Hansen says. These are the 100 companies who have been the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron are listed as among the highest carbon-emitting, investor-owned companies.
“The judicial system is the only way to get the funds needed to deal with climate change,” Hansen says. “Legislation won’t work because that’s where lobbyists rule.”
This legal action is comparable to the successful tobacco industry lawsuits that resulted in billions of dollars in settlements, he adds.

Legal Precedents
In fact, climate lawsuits are already happening. Last year, a Filipino government body called the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines accused 47 carbon majors of human rights violations because of their role in climate change. Three California coastal communities sued 31 fossil-fuel companies in July. Last month, four municipalities on Canada’s west coast asked Chevron, Exxon, Shell, and others to pay their share of the climate costs those communities are facing. There is now even a nascent movement called Climate Law in our Hands that helps communities go after these carbon-emitting companies.


Causes and Effects of Climate Change

Governments are also being sued. A Dutch citizens’ group won the first-ever climate lawsuit against a government in 2015. The courts agreed that the Netherlands government wasn’t doing enough to protect its citizens and made the unprecedented ruling that the country’s annual CO2 emission reduction target had to increase from 17 percent to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.
For comparison, 2015 (most recent available) annual U.S. emissions are four percent higher than 1990.
Hansen is involved in a 2015 lawsuit against the U.S. federal government, brought by 21 kids under the age of 21, including his own granddaughter. The case argues that the government’s failure to curb CO2 emissions has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. A trial will be held February 5, 2018 in the U.S. District Court of Oregon.
Another group of youth just filed a lawsuit against Governor Bill Walker of Alaska alleging that “the state is violating their constitutional rights by putting fossil-fuel production above the safety of their lives.”
Could Puerto Rico sue the carbon majors for the billions in damages caused by Hurricane Maria? Legal experts say this is a difficult question.
“You need to establish a sufficiently direct relationship between an act or omission by the entity sued and a significant impact,” says Jorge Vinuales, Professor of Law and Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge.
However, some cases along these lines are starting at the UN Human Rights Committee, says Vinuales, who said he couldn’t yet provide further details because they aren’t public. For low-lying, small island nations whose existence is threatened by rising seas, a better approach might be to bring an action against some major polluters before either the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, Vinuales says. “I'm quite confident that such a suit could be formulated in terms that could work,” he says.
A group of citizens could also try to sue carbon majors using transnational tort litigation. However, this approach may have been made more difficult by the fact that the U.S. climate delegation made sure the Paris Agreement included a paragraph that reduces the risk of litigation.

Future Solutions?
It has long been recognized that large amounts of funding is needed to help poorer nations cope with impacts of climate change and ramp up cleaner energy. In 2009, the U.S. and other developed nations agreed to step up financial support for developing nations to $100 billion a year by 2020.
In 2016 this support amounted to just $2.78 billion. For comparison, a recent report estimated that extreme weather—made worse by climate change—and the health impacts of burning fossil fuels cost the U.S. economy at least $240 billion a year the last ten years.
The World Meteorological Organization also announced that 2017 is very likely to be one of the top three warmest years on record, and likely the hottest year in the absence of the El Niño phenomenon.
As COP 23 in Bonn began this week, Malaysia and Vietnam were just beginning to assess the damage from last weekend’s powerful Typhoon Damrey that killed at least 60 people.
Global warming is already at 1C and there is much worse extreme weather to come unless carbon emissions are eliminated, says Hansen. To protect low-lying island nations and global shorelines, global warming needs to be less than 1C.
That means removing at least 100 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere through afforestation and changes in land management, he says. That alone will cost at least a trillion dollars.
Lawsuits against governments and carbon majors could force what Hansen and many climate activists have long advocated: a carbon fee or tariff system on fossil fuels to raise their cost and provide funding. “As long as we allow fossil fuels to be cheap energy, and not required to pay their costs to society, we cannot kick our fossil fuel addiction,” he says.

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08/11/2017

Here’s How Far The World Is From Meeting Its Climate Goals

New York Times - Brad Plumer | Nadja Popovich

Two years after countries signed a landmark climate agreement in Paris, the world remains far off course from preventing drastic global warming in the decades ahead. On Monday, the latest round of post-Paris international climate talks begin in Bonn, Germany, to discuss how to step up efforts.

Under the Paris deal, each country put forward a proposal to curtail its greenhouse-gas emissions between now and 2030. But no major industrialized country is currently on track to fulfill its pledge, according to new data from the Climate Action Tracker. Not the European Union. Not Canada. Not Japan. And not the United States, which under President Trump is still planning to leave the Paris agreement by 2020.
Worse, even if governments do take further steps to meet their individual pledges, the world will still be on pace to warm well in excess of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold that world leaders vowed to avoid in Paris because they deemed it unacceptably risky.
“One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future,” said Erik Solheim, head of the United Nations Environment Program.


Even before the election of Mr. Trump, the goal set by former President Barack Obama of slashing United States emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 would have been difficult to hit. While emissions from the United States power sector are falling rapidly — as hundreds of coal plants retire in favor of cleaner natural gas, wind and solar — other sectors, like transportation and heavy industry, have proven harder to clean up.
Mr. Trump, for his part, has disavowed his predecessor’s pledge and is dismantling Obama-era regulations designed to push down emissions further, such as the Clean Power Plan. And while states like New York and California are still pursuing their own policies on renewable energy and electric vehicles, they may not prove sufficient to close the gap.
For now, analysts think the United States will fall well short of its Paris pledge. That, in turn, could make it harder for future administrations to pursue the deeper emissions cuts by mid-century needed to help keep the world below 2 degrees of global warming.
Climate Action Tracker provides a rough estimate of the cuts each country would need to make to avoid 2ºC of warming, with wealthier nations expected to do more. How to divide up the burden remains a major debate within climate talks.


The E.U. may fall slightly short of its promise to cut emissions 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. While European officials have created a continent-wide cap-and-trade system to curb emissions from electricity and heavy industry, that regulation leaves out sectors like transportation and agriculture.
Progress among individual European countries has been mixed: Over the past two years, Britain has been rapidly phasing out coal power, aided by a national carbon tax and cheap natural gas. But Germany is expected to miss its near-term emissions goals, as recent rapid growth in renewables has been partly offset by the closure of nuclear power plants.


Outside experts say that China crafted a Paris pledge that was relatively easy to meet: overall emissions would peak around 2030 and the country would get 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil sources.
Several recent studies suggest that China’s emissions could now peak years ahead of schedule as the country’s once-insatiable demand for energy has slowed (though other analysts have questioned the accuracy of China’s emissions reporting). The central government has already canceled plans for a hundred coal plants and is investing heavily in cleaner sources like solar, wind, and nuclear. The country also plans to sell millions of electric vehicles in the years ahead.
Yet keeping the world below 2 degrees of warming would likely require China’s coal emissions not just to flatten, but to fall sharply by 2030.


Because India is still relatively poor, with 240 million of its citizens lacking access to electricity, the nation has long argued that wealthier countries should take the lead on cutting emissions.
As such, India’s pledge was less restrictive than pledges from Europe or the United States. The country vowed to install more clean energy and improve its carbon intensity — the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product — while still allowing total emissions to rise between now and 2030. India’s per capita emissions would likely remain below those of China or the United States.
Some recent studies have suggested that India can achieve those modest goals, as the falling cost of renewables and shifting market conditions have allowed the country to scale back its plans for new coal plants after 2022. A recent report from the U.N. Environment Program argued that India had “ample room” to strengthen its emission pledges — as would likely be necessary to help keep the world below 2 degrees of warming. But the Indian government has asked for aid from wealthier countries to do so.

What happens next in climate talks?
Negotiators will meet in Bonn this month to discuss guidelines for making national pledges and policies more transparent, so that outsiders can gauge individual countries’ progress (or lack thereof) more precisely.
In 2018, climate negotiators plan to embark on a major effort to assess the world’s progress on climate change to date and measure it against the 2 degree goal. Countries can then revise their individual climate pledges accordingly — and will do so every five years thereafter.
Right now, many of the Paris pledges remain fairly opaque, and most nations have been vague on what specific policies they will take to meet them. There is no official mechanism for quantifying progress. As a result, groups like Climate Action Tracker have had to make rough estimates as to whether nations are on pace to meet their pledges — and how much further each country would need to go for the world to stay below 2 degrees of global warming.
Increasing the transparency of pledges would make it easier for countries to pressure each other do more, which is how the Paris Agreement was designed, said David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
“Countries could come back and say, ‘Here’s what has worked, what didn’t, what our progress is and what other countries can learn,’” Dr. Victor said. “We know from other areas of international cooperation that that dynamic actually works pretty well.”

Source: Climate Action Tracker. Additional development by Adam Pearce.

Notes: Charts show the carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions. Chart data comes from Climate Action Tracker’s November 2017 update, with the exception of the global Paris projections, which are the most recent available, from November 2016. Climate Action Tracker’s analysis is based on emissions reported to the United Nations by each country. The global data accounts for greenhouse gas emissions and sinks from land-use and forestry, but individual country data does not include land-use and forestry adjustments due to uncertainty in accounting.
Required emissions for Paris and 2°C scenarios are drawn directly from the latest available year of historical data to the final projected year under Paris agreement goals (*2025 for the United States, and 2030 for other countries). The global two-degree scenario reflects a greater than 66 percent chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. For individual countries, the two-degree range is defined by Climate Action Tracker based on a “Fair Share” calculation.
India has made several pledges under the Paris Agreement. The chart above reflects the goal of lowering emissions intensity of G.D.P. by 33 to 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030

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Climate-Change Lawsuits

The Economist

Global warming is increasingly being fought in the courtroom

IN FEBRUARY a tribunal in Kirkenes, in Norway’s far north, ruled that oil extraction in the Barents Sea was illegal. The courtroom—an auditorium sculpted from 190 tonnes of ice, pictured above—and the verdict were fictitious, staged as part of a festival. But the legal question is real.
On November 14th a district court in Oslo, Norway’s capital, will begin hearing the case that inspired the theatrics. Greenpeace and another pressure group, Nature and Youth, allege that by issuing licences to explore for oil in the Arctic, Norway’s government has breached its constitutional obligation to preserve an environment that is “conducive to health” and to maintain environmental “productivity and diversity”. Their case rests not on local harms, for example to wildlife or water quality, but on the contribution any oil extracted will make to global warming which, under the Paris accord of 2015, Norway and 195 other countries have pledged to keep to “well below” 2°C compared with pre-industrial times.
As policymakers prepare for the annual UN climate pow-wow in Germany, starting on November 6th, activists who think too little is being done to meet that goal are turning to the courts. Cases where the negative effects of carbon emissions are central, not tagged on to more direct environmental damage, such as oil spills or the release of noxious chemicals, are on the rise.
Joana Setzer of the Grantham Institute, a think-tank in London, has found 64 such cases in countries other than America in the past 15 years. Twenty-one were lodged since 2015 (see first chart). In litigious America around 20 are now filed each year, up from a couple in 2002.
The targets are governments, which campaigners argue are doing too little to avert climate change, and big energy firms, which they hold responsible for most greenhouse-gas emissions. A day before the Oslo hearings, for instance, a German tribunal will consider an appeal by Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian who sued RWE, a big German electricity producer. He argues that it is partly liable for melting Andean glaciers that have raised the level of water in a lake that threatens to flood Huaraz, his home town.

Making it stick
The legal obstacles are formidable. Like the lower court in Lliuya v RWE, many courts have peremptorily dismissed climate lawsuits as groundless. Climatologists deal in probabilities, so it is hard to establish a causal link between a country’s or company’s emissions and the damage wrought by greenhouse gases. Singling out one among countless emitters is a stretch.
Even so, the occasional case succeeds. Two years ago a court in the Netherlands agreed with Urgenda, an environmental group, that the Dutch government’s target of a 17% cut in carbon emissions by 2020, compared with the level in 1990, fell short of its constitutional “duty of care” towards Dutch society. It ordered a cut of at least 25%. The same year a high court in Pakistan upheld an earlier decision in a case brought by Ashgar Leghari, a farmer, that “the delay and lethargy of the State in implementing [its climate policies] offend the fundamental rights of the citizens”. It directed the government to make a list of priorities and create an independent commission to monitor progress.
The prospect for climate-friendly verdicts is improving, says Sophie Marjanac of ClientEarth, an advocacy group, for two reasons. The first is the growing volume of climate-related commitments for which governments can be held to account. The second is advances in climate science.
Globally, the number of national climate-change laws and policies has swelled from around 60 in 1997 to nearly 1,400 (see second chart). A survey in 2012 found that 177 countries had laws, regulations or court rulings guaranteeing the right to a clean or healthy environment.
In at least 92 that right was constitutional. Greenpeace v Norway was made possible by a change to the country’s basic charter in 2014, which in effect converted preserving a healthy, productive and diverse environment from a suggestion into an obligation. It would have been harder for Mr Leghari to win had the Pakistani government not spelled out 734 “action points”, 232 of which deserved priority.
The Paris accord is playing a role. Like many environmental treaties, it does not bind signatories to fulfil their obligations, merely enjoins them to do so. But plaintiffs can assess governments’ and firms’ actions against the 2°C goal.
Such assessments are aided by a growing understanding of Earth’s climate and humanity’s effects on it. Scientists are increasingly confident that they know roughly what shares of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were emitted by individual countries, and even by the biggest corporate polluters. The Carbon Majors Database, compiled by Richard Heede, a geographer, tallies historical emissions by fossil-fuel firms and other heavy carbon emitters such as cement-makers. He finds that just 90 belched out 63% of all greenhouse gases between 1751 and 2010. Campaigners seek to argue that these deep-pocketed firms, and not their customers, are ultimately responsible for the emissions, just as cigarette-makers were held liable for their products whereas retailers who sold them on to consumers were not.

Splitting the bill
Mr Heede’s calculations, which most scientists accept, mean that responsibility for past and future warming can be apportioned—at least in principle. Mr Lliuya’s claim of €17,000 ($19,800) against RWE corresponds to 0.5% of the cost of protecting his town against the glacial melt. That 0.5% is the utility’s estimated share of cumulative global greenhouse-gas emissions, chiefly from all the coal it has mined. Likewise San Francisco, Oakland and three other Californian counties have sued dozens of carbon majors, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, for damages proportional to their share.
Scientists are also becoming more willing to blame carbon emissions, not just for global warming, but for specific natural disasters such as heatwaves, floods and superstorms. But so far no plaintiff has been awarded damages on the basis of such attribution arguments. After a legal battle that lasted from 2005 to 2012, an American federal court threw out a case brought by residents of Mississippi against 34 big carbon emitters for damages suffered as a result of Hurricane Katrina, which they argued had been made more devastating by climate change. The court decided that the plaintiffs lacked “standing”, in other words that they could not prove that they had suffered an injury, that the injury could be traced back to the defendant, and that the court could redress it (for instance by ordering damages to be paid).
But “attribution research” has made strides in the 14 years since Myles Allen of Oxford University introduced the notion of “climate liability” for calamities. The first Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society devoted to attribution studies, in 2012, contained just six papers. Last year’s edition contained 26, and many more were turned down for lack of space.
Researchers are even beginning to combine individual emitters’ climate impacts with event attribution. In a paper just published in Nature Climate Change, for instance, Friederike Otto of Oxford University and colleagues (including Professor Allen) conclude that carbon emissions from America and the European Union each raised the frequency of a particularly devastating heatwave in Argentina by roughly a third. This increased chance, the scientists argued, could be interpreted as their share of responsibility for a scorcher four years ago. Many courts already accept probabilistic arguments, for example in cases of occupational hazards. In Britain and America judges have ruled that firms “caused” workers to be exposed to toxic substances if the risk of exposure doubled.
Ms Marjanac expects attribution suits on similar grounds as the science develops. In the meantime most plaintiffs are sticking to settled science. In Norway, Greenpeace is relying on the widely accepted findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says that, to meet the Paris goal, oil production should be wound down, not ramped up. The Californian counties have taken care to sue only those carbon majors with operations in the state.
Plaintiffs are also using established legal arguments, albeit in novel ways—alleging, for instance, that rising sea levels caused by companies’ carbon emissions constitute trespass on county land. They are learning from one another. A lawsuit modelled on Urgenda’s is under way in Belgium. On October 23rd an Irish court agreed to hear another. A court in Oregon will hear a similar one in February. A group of Brazilian NGOs hopes to file its own by April. Following successful lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers, courts are putting new stress on the fact that energy firms have long known about the harm caused by carbon emissions but have done nothing about it.
Defendants, for their part, usually argue that, whatever the climate science or the harms caused by greenhouse gases, they are simply not liable. Climate treaties presume that each country is responsible for its own emissions, says Fredrik Sejersted, Norway’s attorney-general, who will argue the case against Greenpeace. “So Norway does not have a legal responsibility for emissions from oil and gas it exports.” No one denies that the Netherlands emits carbon dioxide, says Edward Brans, an environmental lawyer who is representing the Dutch government in its appeal against the Urgenda ruling. The question is: “Are the government’s actions unlawful?”
America’s Supreme Court is highly unlikely to discover “a constitutional right to a stable climate” any time soon, says Michael Burger of Columbia University’s Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law. Its courts hesitate to rule on issues generally regarded as the preserve of the legislature or the executive branch. Federal courts often decline to consider lawsuits regarding negligence, nuisance, trespass and the like stemming from carbon-dioxide emissions, arguing that these are already regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under a federal law, the Clean Air Act of 1963, which prevails over common law in its remit.
For now, plaintiffs approach state courts because federal statutes do not displace common law at the state level. In climate-friendly jurisdictions such as California, a jury could conceivably find in their favour, says Tracy Hester of the University of Houston. But he adds that, if President Donald Trump or Republicans in Congress relieved the EPA of its obligation to regulate greenhouse gases, the way may be opened for lawsuits in federal courts.

Courting the public
In Norway an opinion poll in August found for the first time that more people would prefer to leave some oil in the ground in order to limit emissions than to extract it all. This may not influence the Oslo court’s decision. But as citizens’ concerns about climate change grow, so will the prospect of real-life verdicts that resemble Kirkenes’s fictional one.

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The Climate Risks We Face

New York Times - Radley Horton | Katharine Hayhoe | Robert Kopp | Sarah Doherty

David Goldman/Associated Press
Since the dawn of the industrial age, humans have been pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas. Researchers at the Mauna Loa Observatory, perched on the side of a volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island, have measured atmospheric levels of this greenhouse gas since 1958. That first year, carbon dioxide averaged 316 parts per million. In May, it reached 410 p.p.m. — an amount never before experienced in the history of our species. This atmospheric carbon dioxide — as well as other heat-trapping gases and other air pollutants emitted by humans — is affecting our planet profoundly.
We helped write the “Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I,” released on Friday by the United States Global Change Research Program. This comprehensive report — the most up-to-date climate science report in the world — is an outstanding example of federal science in action, and is especially noteworthy given the current political climate.
The majority of the report’s 51 authors were drawn from federal agencies, like NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy. Much of the foundational data and modeling that underpin the report rely on government investments in observational data and high-performance computing. The report was strengthened by an extensive review process involving the public, the National Academy of Sciences, and all relevant federal agencies, spanning two administrations.
The report concludes that “global climate continues to change rapidly compared to the pace of the natural variations in climate that have occurred throughout Earth’s history.” It finds that “human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” The bottom line is that this report confirms and strengthens what the vast majority of climate scientists have known for decades: that climate is changing and humans are primarily responsible.
Recent observations and investment in modeling and research have only strengthened the quality and amount of evidence collected. As the report documents, each of the last three years has successively been the warmest on record based on observational data going back to the late 19th century, and 16 of the last 17 years have been among the 17 warmest years on record globally. Global sea level has risen by about 7 to 8 inches since 1900, with nearly half this rise occurring since 1993. A substantial component of this rise, which is accelerating the increased frequency of disruptive “nuisance” flooding in dozens of coastal American cities, is because of human activity. At the same time, the area of ocean covered by Arctic sea ice in September (the typical annual minimum) has decreased by about 50 percent, while its volume has decreased even more dramatically as the remaining ice thins.
The report also highlights growing reasons for concern. For example, ocean acidification, which occurs when atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater, is taking place at what is thought to be the fastest rate in at least 66 million years. Coupled with reductions in oxygen content in near-coastal American waters, this poses a significant threat to coastal fisheries and ecosystems. Much of the western United States is facing a growing threat of more severe drought and larger wildfires as higher temperatures, reduced snow pack and earlier spring snow melt reduce water availability during the warm season.
To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate — so every reduction in emissions helps.
While climate models incorporate many important processes, they cannot include all aspects of the climate system and all of the possible interactions within that system. Vicious cycles between these climate components may push the Earth into states much different from the past: for example, one with a much smaller West Antarctic Ice Sheet and much higher sea level, or one without coral reefs and with greatly reduced marine biodiversity. Surprises can also come from compound extreme events like droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes and wildfires that may occur in multiple places at the same time, or sequentially in one place. What is clear is that, even though we cannot quantify all of the possible changes to every element of the climate system, the risks to things we care about — from the health of our children, to the future economic viability of our low-lying coastal cities and infrastructure — are real and growing.
And yet, there is also reason for optimism. The report documents how global carbon emissions may be leveling out, despite continued global economic growth. News reports in just this past year show how the cost of clean energy sources such as wind and solar have decreased dramatically both here and in emerging economies such as China, India and even the Middle East, sending powerful signals to long-term investors and businesses about which way things are trending. And more and more businesses, whether by choice or in response to investor demand, are asking: What risks do we face, if we do not plan for a changing climate?
All humans share this planet. We depend on it for the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the natural resources it provides and the places where we live. For that reason, all Americans need to understand the risks we face, and the impact our choices will have on our future.

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07/11/2017

Children Sue Trump Over Climate Change

Washington Examiner - 

Although President Trump has sought to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the move is in the proposed rule stage and has not been been implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Until it is a final regulation, courts may not have room to rule on the litigation. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Two children sued President Trump and members of his Cabinet on Monday for rolling back federal regulations meant to curb the effects of climate change.
The lawsuit was filed on the behalf of two Pennsylvania children in federal district court by a group called the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia.
“We will not stand idly by while President Trump and his agencies raze crucial environmental protections, ignore climate science, dispute well-documented facts and force future generations of Americans to suffer the consequences of this administration’s reckless choices and ignorant policies,” said Joseph Minott, the Clean Air Council's executive director and counsel.
The lawsuit says the administration's reasons for rolling back the climate rules are baseless and that the court should rule immediately to stop the administration's efforts.
The "rollbacks" of the regulations would "increase the frequency and/or intensity of the life-threatening effects of climate change,” including hurricanes such as Irene and Sandy, according to Minott and the Clean Air Council. One of the two children in the suit says he or she was harmed by Sandy. The other child is affected by asthma.
“We must hold the federal government accountable for the long-term environmental harm that is propagating under its direction," Minott said. "It’s time to fight back.”
The primary climate regulation that Trump is rolling back is the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama's climate change agenda.
The lawsuit is similar to another one filed by Our Children's Trust this year representing 21 young people against Trump for "perpetuating climate chaos."
Although the president has sought to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the move is in the proposed rule stage and has not been been implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Until it is a final regulation, the federal court may not have room to rule on the litigation.
Nevertheless, the earlier case with Our Children's Trust is scheduled to go to court Feb. 5.
Monday's lawsuit is part a number of actions planned this week to protest the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change deal as U.N. climate negotiations opened in Bonn, Germany on Monday.
Groups of protesters called the U.S. People's Delegation will arrive in Bonn beginning Saturday "to counter the Trump Administration’s fossil fuel agenda and to hold U.S. states, cities, businesses and the public accountable to commitments to climate action."
Groups of states and cities are participating in the COP23 U.N. climate change talks now that the federal government plans to leave the deal.
The talks in Bonn extend from Nov. 5 to Nov. 17.

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Fiji Brings First-Hand Experience With Effects Of Climate Change To UN Summit

Toronto Star - Associated Press)

 Fiji and other Pacific island nations are vulnerable to rising seas that have flooded villages and forced residents to abandon their homes.
Sailosi Ramatu looks over the sea at his old village Vunidogoloa in Fiji. In 2014, the entire village moved inland in what the government described as a pioneering relocation project driven by global warming.  (Eroni Valili / The Associated Press)
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND—Each time the ocean surged through their coastal Fijian village, residents would use rafts to move from house to house. They watched crops die as saltwater contaminated the soil. Finally, in 2014, the entire village of Vunidogoloa moved inland in what the government described as a pioneering relocation project driven by global warming.
Starting Monday, Fiji will preside over a UN climate change summit in Bonn, Germany. Fiji and other Pacific island nations are particularly vulnerable to rising seas and changing weather and want the world to understand their plight. While Fiji doesn’t face an existential threat like some of its Pacific neighbours, it is already battling the effects of climate change.
Sailosi Ramatu, the 57-year-old headman of Vunidogoloa village on Vanua Levu island, said he felt deep sadness the day the 130 villagers had to leave their homes. Most were subsistence fishermen. Some, in their 80s and 90s, had lived there their entire lives.
“I can’t explain those last moments,” Ramatu said. “There were people living in their old houses, crying, alone. They looked back at their homes; they looked back at the village. It was the last time they’d see the village before moving to their new homes.”
Three years later, Ramatu said moving was their only option. He said their new location means they can now grow crops without fearing they will be destroyed. He said the new village has given the children hope and a chance at a future. The headman said the 30-minute walk to the old village and the ocean beyond hasn’t stopped villagers from continuing their tradition of fishing.
Government information officer Nemani Turagaiviu said the old village occasionally flooded throughout its history, but the problem got progressively worse after about the year 2000.
He said the village began flooding once a month on every full moon, and would get swamped in storms. He said the government formed a partnership with locals to build the new village, and that other vulnerable villages in Fiji have been moved since.
“All throughout their lives, people had been born and brought up in the old village, and for some people, the move was very difficult to accept,” Turagaiviu said. “Since then, life has moved on, and they have adapted.”
Ramatu said he now understands the destructive force of climate change. He said he has a simple message for the leaders in Bonn: “We all need help.”
The governments, scientists and industry groups gathering in Germany are trying to hammer out technical rules on monitoring emissions, after the historic Paris climate accord to mitigate global warming came into effect last year.
But the accord was dealt a blow this year when U.S President Donald Trump said he’d withdraw from the agreement. Other countries have pledged to press on regardless.
Fiji’s government says it has recorded sea-level rises larger than the global average, making portions of the nation uninhabitable. It says warmer weather is also increasing the susceptibility of its people to outbreaks of viral diseases.
Fijian authorities also expect storms to become more frequent and powerful as the climate changes. Last year, Cyclone Winston ripped through Fiji with winds of up to 285 km/h, killing 44 people and destroying thousands of homes.
Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who will preside over the Bonn summit, has offered to take in the entire populations of neighbouring Pacific nations Kiribati and Tuvalu if climate change makes those low-lying countries uninhabitable.
In an address to Fiji’s people last week, Bainimarama said he was taking a team of 50 to Bonn and would make sure to stamp the famous Fijian “Bula Spirit” on those attending. Germany says it expects up to 25,000 people at the summit.
Bula is a ubiquitous greeting in Fiji that is often accompanied by a smile. For many, it symbolizes the friendliness of the island nation.
Bainimarama said his team was leaving the Pacific “to embark on the most important mission we have ever undertaken as a nation for the entire world.”

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2017 Is Set To Be Among The Three Hottest Years On Record

The Conversation -  | 

A fireman tackles one of the wildfires that swept through parts of California in October. Jim Urquhart/Reuters
The year isn’t over yet, but we can already be sure that 2017 will be among the hottest years on record for the globe. While the global average surface temperature won’t match what we saw in 2016, it is now very likely that it will be one of the three warmest years on record, according to a statement issued by the World Meteorological Organization.
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What is more remarkable is that this year’s warmth comes without a boost from El Niño. When an El Niño brings warm waters to the tropical east Pacific, we see a transfer of heat from the ocean to the lower atmosphere, which can raise the global average temperatures recorded at the surface by an extra 0.1-0.2℃. But this year’s temperatures have been high even in the absence of this phenomenon.
We can already say with confidence that 2017 will end up being the warmest non-El Niño year on record, and that it will be warmer than any year before 2015. The average global temperature between January to September this year was roughly 1.1℃ warmer than the pre-industrial average.
This trend is associated with increased greenhouse gas concentrations, and this year we have seen record high global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the biggest recorded surge in CO₂ levels.

A year of extremes
Of course, none of us experiences the global average temperature, so we also care about local extreme weather. This year has already seen plenty of extremes.
Global sea ice extent continues to decline. NASA Earth Observatory
At the poles we’ve seen a continuation of the global trend towards reduced sea ice extent. On February 13, global sea ice extent reached its lowest point on record, amid a record low winter for Arctic ice. Since then the Arctic sea ice extent has become less unusual but it still remains well below the satellite-era average. Antarctic sea ice extent also remains low but is no longer at record low levels as it was in February and March of this year.
East Africa saw continued drought with failure of the long rains, coupled with political instability, leading to food insecurity and population displacement, particularly in Somalia.

Storms and fires
This year also saw a very active North Atlantic hurricane season. Parts of the southern United States and the Caribbean were struck by major hurricanes such as Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and are still recovering from the effects.
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Other parts of the globe have seen a quieter year for tropical cyclones.
There have also been several notable wildfire outbreaks around the world this year. In Western Europe, record June heat and very dry conditions gave rise to severe fires in Portugal. This was followed by more severe fires across Spain and Portugal in October.
Parts of California also experienced severe fires following a wet winter, which promoted plant growth, and then a hot dry summer.
Australia is now gearing up for what is forecast to be a worse-than-average fire season after record winter daytime temperatures. A potential La Niña forming in the Pacific and recent rains in eastern Australia may reduce some of the bushfire risk.

The overall message
So what conclusions can we draw from this year’s extreme weather? It’s certainly clear that humans are warming the climate and increasing the chances of some of the extreme weather we’ve seem in 2017. In particular, many of this year’s heatwaves and hot spells have already been linked to human-caused climate change.
For other events the human influence is harder to determine. For example, the human fingerprint on East Africa’s drought is uncertain. It is also hard to say exactly how climate change is influencing tropical cyclones, beyond the fact that their impact is likely to be made worse by rising sea levels.
For much of 2017’s extreme weather, however, we can say that it is an indicator of what’s to come.

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