17/12/2018

‘1,000 Little Steps’: Global Climate Talks End In Progress But Fail To Address The Galloping Pace Of Climate Change

Washington Post - Brady Dennis | Griff Witte | Chris Mooney

“In the climate emergency we’re in, slow success is no success."
Participants leave town on Friday, even as negotiations drag on at the end of the two-week United Nations summit on climate change in Katowice, Poland. (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)
KATOWICE, Poland — Weary climate negotiators limped across the finish line Saturday night after days of round-the-clock talks, striking a deal that keeps the world moving forward with plans to curb carbon emissions. But the agreement fell well short of the breakthrough that scientists — and many of the conference’s own participants — say is needed to avoid the cataclysmic impacts of a warming planet.
The deal struck Saturday at a global conference in the heart of Polish coal country, where some 25,000 delegates had gathered, adds legal flesh to the bones of the 2015 Paris agreement, setting the rules of the road for nearly 200 countries to cut their production of greenhouse gases and monitor one another’s progress.
While President Trump announced his intentions to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, the Obama administration had already joined, and the text of the agreement doesn’t allow for formal withdrawal until late 2020. In the meantime, the U.S. remains involved in the negotiations and sends an annual delegation.
Trump has rejected the science behind climate change, and his administration has adopted policies that will roll back efforts to cut emissions. If Trump does not win reelection in 2020, a subsequent president could rejoin the Paris agreement.
The agreement reached in Poland prods countries to step up their ambition in fighting climate change, a recognition of the fact that the world’s efforts have not gone nearly far enough. But, like the landmark 2015 agreement in Paris, it does not bind countries to hit their targets. And observers questioned whether it was sufficient given the extraordinary stakes.
“We are driven by our sense of humanity and commitment to the well-being of the earth that sustains us and those generations that will replace us,” Michal Kurtyka, the Polish environmental official who presided over the two-week international summit, said late Saturday as the marathon talks drew to a close.
Kurtyka noted the difficulty of finding global consensus on issues so technical and, in many ways, politically fraught. “Under these circumstances, every single step forward is a big achievement,” he said. “And through this package, you have made 1,000 little steps forward together.”
The agreement from the COP24 climate talks in Katowice, Poland, falls short of what many scientists believe is necessary. Credit: AP
Approval of the agreement prompted a standing ovation from the delegates. But even as they cheered, the outcome raised immediate questions about whether the steps taken in Katowice were big enough as global emissions continue to rise.
“In the climate emergency we’re in, slow success is no success,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “In an emergency, if the ambulance doesn’t get you to the hospital in time, you die. If the firetruck doesn’t get to your house in time, it burns down.”
Negotiators said the agreement was the best that could have been expected given the limited agenda for the talks and the need for a global consensus. Virtually every nation on Earth was represented at Katowice, ranging from small island countries that threaten to be swallowed by rising seas — and that pushed for a crisis-level response — to the United States.
The world’s largest economy and its second-largest polluter played an at-times contentious role in the negotiations, with its officials rankling fellow delegates by initially refusing to accept a landmark climate report and later putting on a presentation touting the virtues of fossil fuels.
But fellow negotiators said the United States was mostly notable for its absence.
“The U.S. was the driving force in the run-up to Paris. Once they decide to no longer be a part of the agreement, they can’t be a driver,” said Jochen Flasbarth, a top German delegate.
Flasbarth said the minimized U.S. role was particularly apparent in negotiations with China, which did not feel as much pressure to ramp up its commitment in fighting climate change as it otherwise might have. China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases.
“The U.S. role here is somewhat schizophrenic — pushing coal and dissing science on the one hand, but also working hard in the room for strong transparency rules,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a nonprofit based in Virginia. “Over the long haul, making the agreement operational will do more to strengthen climate ambition than any immediate political signals.”
In a statement, the U.S. State Department said that while the administration’s position on the Paris agreement — the U.S. is leaving — remains unchanged, the latest meeting helped the U.S. with “holding our economic competitors accountable” when it comes to adequately reporting their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The United States is not taking on any burdens or financial pledges in support of the Paris Agreement and will not allow climate agreements to be used as a vehicle to redistribute wealth,” the statement said. “We will work with our many partner countries to innovate and deploy a broad array of technologies that promote economic growth, improve energy security, and protect the environment.”
In another sign of a more difficult environment for climate negotiations this year, text establishing a large part of a planned carbon trading system was scuttled after Brazil, one of the world’s leading greenhouse gas producers, blocked proposals for counting certain emissions.
Brazil led a push for lenient rules that other nations said would weaken the system, which is intended to incentivize emissions cuts by creating a market price. With negotiators unable to reach a deal, the issue was punted until next year — a move that Boston College environmental law professor David Wirth said could “delay or undermine confidence among the private sector in undertaking climate-friendly investments — one of the most important purposes of the Paris Rulebook.”
This year’s conference — an annual U.N.-sponsored exercise now in its 24th year — came against the backdrop of increasingly dire assessments by scientists.
An October report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world was far off-track in its efforts to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from warming temperatures. It concluded that a “rapid and far-reaching” transformation of the world’s energy, transportation and other sectors will be necessary over the next dozen years to avoid warming the globe more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
But rather than lighting a fire under the world to move with more urgency, the report became a source of political friction during the talks in Poland.
Early in the summit, the Trump administration joined Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait in blocking official acceptance of the report’s findings, arguing that any agreement should merely “note” its existence rather than “welcome” its warnings.
The final text of the agreement says that the world “recognizes” the role of the IPCC, “expresses appreciation and gratitude” to the scientists who produced it, “welcomes” its timely completion and “invites” nations to “make use of the information” it contained.
This treatment is “one of the clearest illustrations that any sense of urgency is lacking in the [conference] outcome,” said Joeri Rogelj, a scientist with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria who led the key second chapter of the IPCC report. “After the initial failure … to welcome the IPCC report which they had asked for, the final text now expressed its appreciation and gratitude to the IPCC and the scientific community for delivering the report on time, but then fails to acknowledge any of the report’s findings.”
The fight over how to address the report encapsulated the U.S. shift under Trump, from pushing fellow countries to act more aggressively to refusing to acknowledge the conclusion of the world’s top scientists.
A chorus of activists, diplomats and national delegates — none more vocal than the coalition of small island states suffering rising sea levels — had implored leaders of the summit to recognize the content of the IPCC report. The issue continued to be debated into the conference’s closing hours, along with a bevy of more technical disagreements.
The conference was scheduled to end Friday, but repeated deadlines for closing out the talks came and went, with negotiators haggling through Friday night and again on Saturday. By then, some negotiators had nearly lost their voices. Bleary-eyed journalists slept on chairs or FaceTimed with their loved ones from afar. U.N. staffers, security officials and the rest of the dwindling crowd at the cavernous conference center — built on the site of a former coal waste dump — speculated over when the talks would finally reach their end.
A worker dismantles the exhibition pavilion of Austria after the UN Climate conference ended, but negotiators from almost 200 countries continued haggling over the fine print of the Paris climate accord in Katowice, Poland, Saturday. Credit: AP
The once-busy pavilions — which had pulsated with a seemingly endless stream of lectures and demonstrations of new technologies — were being broken apart. A group of Pacific Islanders sat in a small circle, playing a guitar and drums. A group of Austrians seemed determined to clear out any remaining wine, beer and sweets in their corner of the conference center and to invite passersby to join in.
After two weeks under the cold, unremittingly gray skies of December in Poland, negotiators are due to meet in the sun and warmth of Santiago, Chile, next winter. In between, the U.N. is hosting a climate summit in September that observers say now takes on crucial importance as a measure of whether countries are serious about raising their carbon emissions targets.
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who led a previous round of U.N. climate talks and is now leader of the World Wildlife Fund’s global climate and energy practice, said world leaders will need to come through in New York on the promises they have made in Katowice.
“Anything less,” he said, “is a failure in political and moral leadership.”

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Climate Change: Five Things We've Learnt From COP24

BBC - Matt McGrath

Kiara Worth/IISD/ENB
Delegates to the UN climate conference in Poland have reached agreement on how to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which comes into force in 2020. What are the key points to come out of the meeting?

1. The rules are key to the game
However dull it may be, the operational rules for the 2015 Paris climate agreement will govern the way the world tackles climate change for decades to come.
The key thing was not to unravel the carefully negotiated Paris agreement by having one set of rules for the rich countries and another one for the poor.
EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete explained how the new rules would work.
"We have a system of transparency, we have a system of reporting, we have rules to measure our emissions, we have a system to measure the impacts of our policies compared to what science recommends."
To keep everyone in check, the rules will also contain a compliance mechanism, which means that countries that don't submit their reports on time will face an inquiry.
The new regulations are "flexible" for developing countries, meaning they can sign up to the rules at a later date.

 2. Science is worth fighting for
One of the biggest rows at this meeting was over a key scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A group of countries including Saudi Arabia, US, Kuwait and Russia refused to "welcome" the IPCC study.
They merely wanted to "note" the contents.
Efforts to find a compromise ended in failure.
However that was not the end of the matter.
The vast majority of countries felt that acknowledging the science was critical at this conference.
Their efforts did finally ensure that the IPCC was recognised - but many felt it was a token effort.
"That science is unsettling and it doesn't connect it to the need to do more," said Camilla Born from the environmental think tank E3G.
"The deal looks at it in isolation, it's an elegant compromise but it's not really enough."

3. Multilateralism is not dead
Many countries had worried that with the rise of nationalism in many countries and the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil's president, the international co-operation needed to tackle climate change might be in danger.
For many getting agreement here in Katowice was less about technical rules and more about showing that the international spirit is still alive and has teeth.
"I think the beauty of multilateralism is that it is the effort of everybody," said Spanish Ecology Minister Teresa Ribera.
"And what we have seen is that everybody has supported the package, no single country has decided to step down.
"It is very difficult. It is like organising a party for 200 friends, and there's a single menu that everybody has to eat. It is not so easy but we have got it. That's fantastic!"

4. Actions speak louder than words
While negotiators have been congratulating themselves on a job well done in landing the rulebook, there are many voices here who feel that the agreement does not go far enough.
They point to the strength of the science, and the public recognition of the impacts of climate change seen this year in heatwaves and wildfires.

How years compare with the 20th Century average

Source: NOAA

Many environmental campaigners believe that Katowice was a missed opportunity for radical action.
"We have ended up here with more of a coal trade fair than a climate convention," said Mohamed Adow from Christian Aid, referring to the efforts to promote coal by Poland and the US at this conference.
"We haven't acted in good faith, particularly for the young, that we takes seriously what science is telling us and we are responding to it. That message didn't come through.
"If people think the rulebook is the way to get the world on that path, it is not robust or ambitious enough."

5. New voices are emerging
One of the most striking things about this conference of the parties was the presence of energised young people in far greater numbers than I have ever seen them at a COP before.
Climate change chimes with young people in a way that is sometimes missing with older people, who make up the bulk of negotiators here.
The sense that perhaps this UN process doesn't quite connect with the modern world was summed up best by Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives and now their lead climate negotiator.
"Almost 10 years since I was last at these climate negotiations, I must say, nothing much seems to have changed.
"We are still using the same old, dinosaur language. Still saying the same old words.
"Still making the same tedious points."

Matt McGrath explains why we should care about climate change


It would be hard to argue with this view given the shenanigans that played out at the end, when one country, Brazil, held up progress at the talks on one issue for a couple of days.
Perhaps the most memorable image of this meeting was that of 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg.
This young woman who has organised school strikes in Sweden held daily press conferences here to drive home her message that platitudes and warm words just aren't enough anymore.
Her message was sharp and succinct.
"We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis."



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Progress And Problems As UN Climate Change Talks End With A Deal

The Guardian - 

Nations agree on implementing 2015 Paris agreement, but put trickiest issues on back burner
The Brazilian delegation was at the centre of negotiations at the UN climate change talks. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters
The UN climate change talks ended late on Saturday night in Poland with a deal agreed on how to put the 2015 Paris agreement into action, but with other contentious problems left to be resolved next year.
Countries thrashed out the complex details of how to account for and record their greenhouse gas emissions, which will form the basis of a “rulebook” on putting the Paris goals into action. But difficult questions such as how to scale up existing commitments on cutting emissions, in line with stark scientific advice, and how to provide finance for poor countries to do the same, were put off for future years.
In the final hours, agreement was held up by a debate over the market in carbon credits, awarded to countries for their emissions-cutting efforts and for their carbon sinks, such as forests, which absorb carbon dioxide.
Brazil wanted an amendment that would benefit the country for its large rainforest cover, but this was opposed by others as it could allow the double-counting of carbon credits, undermining the integrity of the system.
This question has now been pushed back to next year’s annual conference. Brazil’s stance, however, under incoming president Jair Bolsonaro, who also rescinded the country’s offer to host next year’s talks, presages troubles to come.
Brazil has been a reliable supporter of the annual talks in the past, and has worked to broker deals between the developed and developing world. Without that support in future, the talks are only likely to grow more fractious.
Even when Brazil’s carbon-credits issue was postponed, a further obstacle was opened up by Turkey, which wants to be counted as a developing country rather than a developed one. Weary delegates finally filed into the closing session at nearly 10pm to hail the compromise agreement.
Despite these hitches, the two-week conference – the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP24 – finally ended in clarity, at least on some of the key building blocks for putting the Paris agreement into action.
David Waskow, of the World Resources Institute, said the final deal was “a good foundation for countries to go about implementing the Paris agreement”. He added: “It sets the direction of travel and will spur countries to take action. Now countries need to go home and do their homework, by increasing their commitments [on emissions].”
A man sits on the stairs of the event centre during the COP24 UN climate change conference. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters 
But the key question of whether countries are doing enough to cut their emissions, in the light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that predicted dire consequences if temperatures were allowed to rise more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, was left out.
The IPCC’s report in October showed that the world must change course drastically in the next decade to avoid the consequences of a 1.5C rise, including the die-off of coral reefs, droughts and floods, and a decline in agricultural productivity over many areas.
This year has seen extreme weather across many parts of the globe, and the fourth highest global average temperatures on record, while the IPCC warning is the starkest yet to come from scientists.
António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, praised countries for coming to an agreement, but demanded more. “The approval of the Paris agreement work programme is the basis for a transformative process which will require strengthened ambition from the international community,” he said.
“Science has clearly shown that we need enhanced ambition to defeat climate change. From now on, my five priorities will be: ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition.” He cited the need for countries to toughen their emissions-cutting targets and to adapt their infrastructure to cope with the effects of climate change.
Jennifer Morgan of Greenpeace said: “A year of climate disasters and a dire warning from the world’s top scientists should have led to so much more. Instead, governments let people down again as they ignored the science and the plight of the vulnerable.
“Without immediate action, even the strongest rules will not get us anywhere. People expected action, and that is what governments did not deliver. This is morally unacceptable.”
Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said: “[There has been] some positive progress, but we have not yet done enough. The world is in a state of climate emergency and yet some of our leaders prefer to stay in a state of denial.
“Everyone’s future is at stake. We need all countries to get much more serious about climate ambition."

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16/12/2018

Global Warming Should Be Called Global Heating, Says Key Scientist

The Guardian - 

UK Met Office professor tells UN summit Earth’s ‘energy balance’ is changing
The heatwave that hit the UK this summer was made 30 times more likely by human-caused climate change, according to the Met Office. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images 
“Global heating” is a more accurate term than “global warming” to describe the changes taking place to the world’s climate, according to a key scientist at the UK Met Office.
Prof Richard Betts, who leads the climate research arm of Britain’s meteorological monitoring organisation, made the comments amid growing evidence that rising temperatures have passed the comfort zone and are now bringing increased threats to humanity.
“Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet,” the scientist said at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland. “We should be talking about risk rather than uncertainty.”
Earlier this month, the Met Office produced a new report that showed the searing heatwave that hit the UK this summer – along with other parts of the northern hemisphere – was made 30 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
Betts said the shifting climate was pushing some natural processes – such as the blossoming of trees and laying of eggs – out of sync. “That’s already happening. We are also seeing higher temperatures of heatwaves. The kind of thing we saw this year will happen more often.
“The risks are compounding all the time. It stands to reason that the sooner we can take action, the quicker we can rein them in.”
His views were echoed by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a professor of theoretical physics and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He said his recent Hothouse Earth report , which was one of the most widely quoted and downloaded studies of this year, had helped to change the language used to describe the climate crisis.
“Global warming doesn’t capture the scale of destruction. Speaking of hothouse Earth is legitimate,” he said.
The scientists expressed frustration at the slow pace of action by political leaders. In signing the 2015 Paris agreement, governments around the world aimed to keep global warming to within 1.5C to 2C above pre-industrial levels. But current commitments are far off track.
The Met Office upgraded its forecasts this week to show the planet is on track to warm by between 2.5C and 4.5C. “We have broadened out the range of possibilities,” said Betts, who is conducting a risk assessment based on the new projections. In the UK, he said the trend was towards wetter winters with more floods, hotter summers with more droughts interspersed with increasingly intense rain.
At 3C of change, Schellnhuber said southern Spain would become part of the Sahara. Even 2C, he said, could not be guaranteed as safe.
Water lines on the step banks of Algeciras reservoir in Librilla, Spain. Photograph: David Ramos/Getty Images 
The Paris pact was a firewall, he said. “It’s not helping us to keep the world as it is now. We’ve lost this opportunity already. It’s a firewall against climate chaos.”Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said “cracks” were starting to appear in the climate system that were pushing nature from being a friend that absorbs carbon dioxide to an enemy that releases carbon dioxide. These concerns are fuelled by the growing intensity of forest fires, the effect of melting ice-sheets on the jet stream, and the rising risk of permafrost thaw, which would release trapped methane.
Although he stressed it might not yet have passed a tipping point, he said the warnings were getting louder. “This shift from friend to foe is no doubt a scientific nightmare. That is the biggest worry that we have,” he said. “It does terrify me. The only reason we sit here without being completely depressed is that we see we have policy measures and technology to move in the right direction.
“We need to have a diagnosis just like a patient who comes to a doctor and gets a really bad diagnosis. But if the science is right, the technology is right, and the policy is right you can cure that very dire situation. There is no scientific suggestion that the door is shut.”
This week’s climate talks have crept forward with only small progress towards a new global rulebook, but emissions continue to rise and the planet continues to heat.
“Things are obviously proceeding very slowly,” said Betts. “As a scientist, it’s frustrating to see we’re still at the point when temperatures are going up and emissions are going up. I’ve been in this for 25 years. I hoped we’d be beyond here by now.”
Schellnhuber concurred. “I’ve worked on this for 30 years and I’ve never been as worried as I am today.”

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Pacific Nations Under Climate Threat Urge Australia To Abandon Coal Within 12 Years

The Guardian - 

Frustrated leaders appeal to ‘all OECD countries’ to phase out use as Australia signals support for new plants
Tuvalu, under acute threat from climate change, joins other Pacific nations to call on Australia to end coal-powered energy generation. Photograph: Warming Images/REX/Shutterstock 
Pacific countries vulnerable to climate change have urged Australia to abandon coal power generation within 12 years, and to prohibit new coal plants or expansion of existing plants.
The call from 15 small Pacific island states came one day after the Australian government called for expressions of interest in new power generation projects, indicating it would be prepared to use taxpayer money to underwrite new coal plants.
Leaders warned Australia’s relations in the Pacific were being eroded by a perceived intransigence in Canberra over coalmining.
As the COP24 UN climate talks in Poland remained stalled over an unwillingness from major emitters to commit to further carbon emissions cuts, frustrated Pacific states, traditional allies of Australia, said the world must abandon coal-powered energy generation.
The Fijian prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, the outgoing president of COP23, said: “We call on all OECD countries to quickly phase out their use of coal by 2030 and for all other countries to phase out their use of coal by 2040. There must be no expansion of existing coal mines or the creation of new mines.”
Australia and the US have both this week said publicly they have no plans to begin phasing out coal-generated power.
“The United States has an abundance of natural resources and is not going to keep them in the ground,” Donald Trump’s international energy and climate adviser, Wells Griffith, told a US-government-run panel discussion on fossil fuels at the UN climate talks.
Australia’s ambassador for the environment, Patrick Suckling, told the same panel: “Fossil fuels are projected to be a major source of energy for a significant time to come.”
Asked whether the Pacific declaration on abandoning coal was directed specifically at Australia and the US, Bainimarama was curt but diplomatic: “We request that everybody increases their ambition – that goes for everyone, all countries.”
The prime minister of the Cook Islands, Henry Puna, told the Guardian the phase-out of coal was critical to the survival of Pacific island states.
“We have made that call,” he said. “It is not directed at any one country, but it applies to all. We know that coal power plants are a significant cause of the climate change we see affecting the whole world.”
The Tuvalu prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, cited the Boe Declaration, which Australia signed in Nauru in September, stating that climate change was the single greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of Pacific peoples.
“It is unfortunate that we are hearing that Australia might continue to go on coalmining, opening up new mines, [such as] the Adani project [for the Carmichael mine in Queensland],” Sopoaga said.
“I was in Canberra last week. I spoke to PM Scott Morrison, and the understanding I got from him was that, yes, they are seriously looking into coal efficiency … and also relooking at the proposal for the Adani project. I said, ‘Prime minister, our partnership onwards, bilateral or regional, in this period of the Boe Declaration, will be centrally influenced by coalmining in Australia and I hope you set a pathway to move away from coalmining and focusing on renewable energy’.”
Sopoaga told the Guardian he proposed an annual high-level meeting between Australia and Pacific partners, specifically focused on countering climate change in the region.
Fijian PM Frank Bainimarama and Cooks Islands counterpart Henry Puna at Katowice. Photograph: Czarek Sokołowski/AP
Bill Hare, director of climate analytics and former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report lead author, said the Pacific states were right to be concerned about coal.
“Their call for an end to coal by 2030 – including new mines – is highly relevant to Australia – their regional neighbour,” Hare said. “The timing is important, just as the government announces plans to underwrite a new coal-fired power station. I hope Australians will listen, even if their government won’t.”
The Pacific island states also called for the establishment of an international protection regime to protect people displaced by climate change.
While Australia has publicly positioned itself with the United States, representatives from several countries say it has played a constructive role inside the negotiating rooms at the climate talks, where the “rule book” for the implementation of the 2015 Paris agreement is being hammered out.
The environment minister, Melissa Price, met the UN secretary general, António Guterres, after the secretary general flew back to Poland, concerned the talks had reached an impasse.
A spokesman for the minister said, as a courtesy, she would not be discussing details of her meetings at the COP.
Price told the Guardian: “Australia takes a technology-neutral approach to our electricity generation. We are focused on reducing emissions through a range of technologies while maintaining the stability and reliability of our grid and keeping electricity prices down.”
But Australia’s schism with the Pacific islands over climate change is a diplomatic discomfort. As China has rapidly increased its involvement and influence across the Pacific through massive infrastructure projects and loans, Australia has sought to buttress its position as the regional hegemon, with a new commitment of $2bn for infrastructure.
But its perceived political intransigence on climate, particular its commitment to maintaining, and even expanding, coal power generation, is alienating it from Pacific neighbours – historic allies, many of which are low-lying atoll nations experiencing the effects of climate change most acutely.

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15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Speaks Truth To Power In Katowice

CleanTechnica - 

 15-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden took the stage at the COP 24 climate conference in Katowice, Poland this week to castigate world leaders for their lack of concerted action to prevent an existential crisis as the world gets hotter.
Much like the apocryphal tale of the small child who dared point out the king was wearing no clothes, Thumberg stripped away all the artifice and pretense that lies at the heart of the climate denial meme and challenged her elders to act rather than extemporize.


Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. plenary last night in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inaction in the face of catastrophic climate change.

Her remarks may have been prompted in part by the disgraceful actions of the United States delegation, which had the effrontery to conduct a seminar about why burning more coal and fossil fuels is actually a smart thing to do.
That tawdry stunt perfectly illustrated the monumental ignorance and self interest that underlies the Trump maladministration from the Oval Office — which might be better described as the Offal Office — on down to every member of the government installed since this alleged president took office.
Thunberg told her audience, “Our civilization is being sacrificed to the opportunity for a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that. It’s so obvious even a child can see it! “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to your children.” Ouch.
So who is this impudent upstart? Thunberg attracted international attention earlier this year when she elected to skip school and protest in front of the Swedish parliament for a month after her country experienced unprecedented heat waves and wildfires over the course of the summer.
In her vigil, she demanded her government implement the promises it made at the Paris climate summit in 2015.
Her example has led many other school children around the world to create their own protests on Fridays to demand their governments do the same.
“You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. What I hope we achieve at this conference is that we realize that we are facing an existential threat. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. First we have to realize this and then as fast as possible do something to stop the emissions and try to save what we can save.”
Greta Thunberg

Watch the video. Share it with your friends. Invite people to watch it with you — again and again.
This is the message that has to be internalized by every living person.
Time is short. We can’t wait for new elections, new technology, new attitudes. We have to act. Now. We are not parts of discrete clans with scores to settle. We are one people and we are destroying our home.
If we can’t agree on that one simple concept, there truly is no hope for humanity.

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15/12/2018

Coalition Signals It Will Provide Taxpayer Support For New And Existing Coal Plants

The Guardian - 

Morrison government specifies generation projects will need to be coal, gas, batteries or pumped hydro to be eligible for underwriting
Labor and the Greens are opposed to any taxpayer support for coal projects and will continue to try and frustrate the Coalition’s power generation underwriting program. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP
The Morrison government has sent a clear signal that it is prepared to provide taxpayer support for both new and existing coal plants, opening registrations of interest in its controversial new power generation underwriting program.
With the government accelerating to cover off major announcements before the Christmas break, the energy minister, Angus Taylor, will on Thursday use an event at a hydro power station in Tasmania to outline the terms of the new program and urge proponents to get their bids in over the summer break – before 23 January.
As well as finalising the criteria for the underwriting program, and calling for expressions of interest, the government is also expected to outline its response to the Ruddock review into religious freedom, and unveil its decision on Australian diplomatic facilities in Israel, before the end of the week.
Angus Taylor, left, will confirm the underwriting program will potentially fund generation projects including new builds and brownfield projects. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Taylor will confirm on Thursday that the underwriting program – which has been criticised by business groups and energy stakeholders – will potentially fund generation projects including new builds and brownfield projects, like upgrades or life extensions of existing coal generators.
Taxpayer support will be made available to projects through a range of financing options such as underwriting floor prices, underwriting cap prices, grants and loans – although the finalised program guidelines makes it clear that the amount of support available under each phase of the program, and the extent of taxpayer liability, will be capped.
The government has not published an upper limit on the size of eligible projects but the minimum eligible project size will be 30MW.
The criteria makes it clear that the program is technology neutral but it also specifies that generation projects will need to be coal, gas, batteries or pumped hydro to be eligible for the government underwriting.
The document calling for expressions of interest does not supply any specific guidance on the emissions intensity of the projects. It says only that projects delivering an electricity product at a lower emissions intensity “will be deemed higher merit.”
It also makes clear the program will also be open to foreign investors in the event the proposal can clear Foreign Investment Review Board processes.
As to timing, the document suggests phase one is anticipated to commence in the first quarter of 2019 – which puts some of the decision making pre-election in the event the government goes to the polls in April.
Labor and the Greens are opposed to any taxpayer support for coal projects, and will continue efforts once parliament resumes next year to try and frustrate the Coalition’s program, potentially by attempting to amend the government’s “big stick” divestiture bill, which stalled in the final sitting week, to include a prohibition on power companies receiving commonwealth support.
As well as the underwriting, Taylor has also flagged the possible indemnification of projects from the future risk of a carbon price.
There is speculation around the energy sector that the government underwriting proposal could facilitate an extension of the Vales Point power station near Lake Macquarie in New South Wales. It is owned by Trevor St Baker, who was vocal during a stakeholder session last month convened to discuss the underwriting program.
Ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Taylor said: “This program will drive down electricity prices for householders by increasing competition and increasing supply in the market.”
He said the objective was to produce a pipeline of projects “that will allow us to bring targeted generation into the system in the right place at the right time”.

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