28/03/2019

Heavyweights Now Speaking With One Voice On Climate Change Risks

Fairfax - Sam Hurley*

Climate change is reshaping Australia's economy and financial system, and its consequences will be devastating without urgent action. If that message had not hit home, the Reserve Bank of Australia's intervention last week made it clear.

Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle focused on how climate change can complicate setting interest rates. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
In last week's address to a Centre for Policy Development public forum, RBA Deputy Governor Dr Guy Debelle said climate change will have "first order economic effects" and could have major consequences for financial stability if transitions are disorderly and abrupt.
Hot on Debelle's heels, APRA subsequently released its first climate risk stocktake, calling for banks, insurers and superannuation funds to step up their responses. Its survey of 38 large entities suggests many are dragging the chain on climate-related financial analysis and disclosure.
The laggards can expect pressure to mount. APRA, its international counterparts and investors have signalled they want a little less conversation and a lot more action.
Looking beyond the headlines, there are three takeaways from recent, co-ordinated interventions by the RBA and other regulators on climate change.
First, for the regulators, this is about economics and not politics. The Reserve Bank, ASIC and APRA now speak with one voice on the serious economic challenges climate change poses.
The RBA's statement built on equally powerful markers laid down by APRA's Geoff Summerhayes in 2017 and ASIC's John Price in 2018. Just as the RBA is considering how climate influences monetary policy, APRA and ASIC are examining the implications for financial stability and whether companies, investors and directors are doing enough to respond.
This clear public stance matters. In an era defined by a cautious (and often downright craven) approach to climate in politics and business, influential independent voices have stepped up in a way that is reverberating in boardrooms around the country.
This is no small thing. Summerhayes and Debelle were both appointed to their current positions by a federal treasurer (now Prime Minister) notorious for waving a lump of coal around in parliament. Their statements are reminders that, when we get it right, good governance and strong institutions trump politics.
The second key takeaway is that policy matters enormously. Dr Debelle emphasised that "the policy environment has a key effect as well as the climatic environment" when it comes to the economic impacts of climate change. He warned that decisions taken now could "limit or eliminate" our ability to manage future climate impacts.
APRA's Geoff Summerhayes has also warned that policy delay or inaction, rather than minimising risks for businesses and the economy, could simply make these risks "greater and more abrupt."
These are not partisan points. They are sober reminders that policy failures make climate risks even harder to manage for regulators and businesses alike.
Dr Debelle also made a subtler observation: policies to support a smooth economic transition must carefully balance impacts across society. He used the example of trade policy, where overall gains from trade could have been used to compensate those who lose out. As he flatly points out, "In practice, the compensation has generally not occurred."
Adjustment costs from reform have "fallen on groups that have not received their share of the benefits." Over time, this failure has not just undermined support for free trade – it has also contributed to a destabilising turn in politics.
Here the speech provides a crucial insight: managing the distributional aspects of climate policy will be critical to sustaining good outcomes.
The third key takeaway is that we ignore international developments at our peril. Dr Debelle cited policy-driven changes in China's demand for Australian resources as a present-day example of climate risk for Australia. There are many others.
Global finance is being reshaped by new standards, regulations, financial products and markets to support a zero-carbon transition. Australia needs to access these markets – for goods, for services and for capital – to power its economy. But it will get harder to do so on favourable terms unless we lift our game, and our ambitions, on climate and sustainability.
Our regulators are on the case: the RBA has joined the global central banks' Network for Greening the Financial System, while APRA is a prominent voice in the global Sustainable Insurance Forum.
It is time the government itself engaged seriously in the sustainable finance agenda, too, rather than sitting on the sidelines.

*Sam Hurley is Policy Director at the Centre for Policy Development, which hosted last week's speech by Dr Guy Debelle and earlier statements by ASIC and APRA. 

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'Coal To Blame' For Last Year's Record Emissions From Energy

AFR - Angela Macdonald-Smith

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy production rose at the fastest rate for five years in 2018,  increasing 1.7 per cent last year to a record 33.1 billion tonnes, with the use of coal for electricity generation the primary culprit, according to the International Energy Agency.
China, India and the US accounted for 85 per cent of the increase, with emissions declining in Japan and Mexico and in several European economies including Germany, France and the UK. The electricity sector was to blame for almost two-thirds of the growth, the IEA carbon report said.
Coal is still in high demand for electricity generation in Asia. Phil Hearne
The 560 million tonne rise in emissions was equivalent to the total emissions from international aviation and was driven by higher energy use from the robust global economy, as well as weather conditions in some regions that increased demand for heating and cooling.
Energy demand worldwide grew 2.3 per cent last year, its fastest pace this decade, with natural gas accounting for 45 per cent of the increase.
Coal-fired power plants drove a 2.9 per cent increase in CO2 emissions, up 280 million tonnes from 2017 to breach the 10 gigatonne threshold for the first time. Coal-fired electricity generation accounted for 30 per cent of global emissions, mostly from Asia,  where the average age of plants is only 12 years, leaving decades still to run on the average lifetime of about 40 years.
"Global emissions are still rising, demonstrating once again that more urgent action is needed on all fronts." — IEA executive director Fatih Birol
The IEA said although 2014-16 had seen a stagnation in CO2 emissions, even as the global economy expanded, the dynamics changed in 2017 and 2018 when higher energy productivity and lower-carbon options did not scale up fast enough to counteract the rise in demand.
That meant that despite the growth in renewables and the contribution of nuclear power, CO2 emissions rose almost 0.5 per cent for every 1 per cent gain in global economic output, faster than the average 0.3 per cent increase since 2010.
IEA executive director Fatih Birol described last year's increase in global energy demand as "extraordinary“, saying 2018 was "another golden year for gas".
But while the increased use of gas helped limit the growth in emissions, he said the trend underscores the urgency of emissions reductions.
"Despite major growth in renewables, global emissions are still rising, demonstrating once again that more urgent action is needed on all fronts — developing all clean energy solutions, curbing emissions, and spurring investments and innovation, including in carbon capture, utilisation and storage," Dr Birol said.
Coal use in power generation accounted for a third of the total increase in CO2 emissions last year (Photograph: Shutterstock)
Demand for fossil fuels met almost 70 per cent of the increased demand for all fuels for the second straight year. Although solar and wind generation expanded at double-digit pace – including a 31 per cent jump for solar – that was not enough to meet higher power demand that drove up the use of coal.
Global gas demand expanded at its fastest rate since 2010, up 4.6 per cent, driven by coal substitution, especially in China, where gas  use soared almost 18 per cent. Coal-to-gas switching avoided almost 60 million tonnes of coal demand, with the transition helping avert 95 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, the IEA said, calculating that without the switching, which was most significant in China and the US, emissions would have increased 15 per cent more.
Demand for oil increased 1.3 per cent, led by the expansion in petrochemicals in the US, while coal use was up 0.7 per cent and nuclear grew by 3.3 per cent thanks to new capacity in China and the restart of four reactors in Japan.
For the first time, the Paris-based IEA assessed the impact of fossil fuel use on global temperature increases and determined that CO2 emitted from burning coal was responsible for more than 0.3C of the 1C  increase in global average annual surface temperatures above pre-industrial levels.
This makes coal the single largest source of global temperature increase.
The global average annual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere averaged 407.4 parts per million last year, up 2.4 ppm since 2017. This compares with pre-industrial levels of 180 to 280ppm.
Electricity demand grew at 4 per cent, the fastest since 2010 and almost double the rate of total energy demand, as electricity positions itself as the fuel of the future.
Australia was one of the few regions that saw a decline in electricity demand.

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What Are Major Parties’ Climate Change Policies?

NEWS.com.au - Charis Chang


World leaders have been warned that civilisation could collapse

Climate change action is likely to feature prominently at the federal election and could decide the future of a number of politicians.
We’ve seen both major parties stumble over their policies amid warnings the world only has about 10 years to act on climate change and tussles over whether Australia’s emissions are actually going up or down.
Most recently former prime minister Tony Abbott, under pressure in his electorate from independent Zali Steggall, did a backflip on his view that Australia should withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
Meanwhile you’ve got Nationals leader Michael McCormack suggesting Labor’s proposed 45 per cent renewable energy target would mean night-time sport would be scrapped.
There’s a power play going on in the Nationals as some MPs, including Barnaby Joyce, push for a new taxpayer-backed coal-fired power plant, while others in the Coalition fear the move would alienate Liberal voters in southern states who are calling out for action on climate change.
Here’s what you need to know about the major parties’ climate change policies.

Are we building new coal-fired power stations?
If Labor wins the election, no.
If the Coalition is returned, maybe.
Basically the Morrison Government hasn’t ruled out supporting coal projects as part of its Underwriting New Generation Investments program.
The program involves the government (in other words: taxpayers) taking on the risk of building new electricity generators and covering any losses if the project became a white elephant because of changes to climate policy for example.
“About 10” coal projects are being considered for funding but overall there were more than 60 proposals submitted for new electricity generation.
Meanwhile, some Nationals, such as Mr Joyce, are going even further and calling for the government to fund a coal-fired power station in Queensland.
The Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley was closed in 2017. Picture: Paul Crock/ AFPSource:AFP
But Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pointed out there is one major sticking point when it comes to building a new coal-fired power station in Queensland.
“For such a (coal) project to proceed, it would require the approval of a Queensland state government. The Queensland state government has no intention of approving any such projects,” Mr Morrison said.
“So I tend to work in the area of the practical. The things that actually can happen. And what actually can happen is the investments that we are making in renewable projects and reliable projects.”

The goals
Labor continues to support a 45 per cent emissions target by 2030, and a 50 per cent renewable energy target.
The Liberal party has committed to a 26 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030.

Labor policies
Labor has a $15 billion energy plan and it includes reviving former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG).
Labor leader Bill Shorten has said he would adopt the energy policy, which has the support of business groups in Australia.
It involves retailers, such as gas, solar and wind farm owners, signing contracts to supply a minimum amount of energy that could be available at all times.
Electricity sold to consumers must produce an average emissions level that meets the 26 per cent reduction target in the Paris Agreement target.
Labor will also give 100,000 households (with incomes below $180,000) a $2000 rebate to buy and install a battery for their solar panels. It’s estimated this could allow them to save more than 60 per cent off their power bills.
Labor leader Bill Shorten. Picture: AAP/James Ross Source:AAP
Most significantly, it will double the amount of government financing available for clean energy projects through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, from $10 billion to $20 billion.
Mr Shorten has also promised $5 billion to modernise Australia’s transmission network — which transports power around the country — including a Basslink cable to connect Tasmania with the mainland.
A Clean Energy Training Fund will be established to train workers in the skills they need for clean energy industries and an independent Just Transition Authority will be established to oversee the closures of coal-fired power stations in the future including pooled redundancy schemes and economic diversification plans.
Labor will also require large generators to give at least three years notice if they plan to shut down.
An independent Energy Security and Modernisation Fund will be created to upgrade energy networks and build new ones. Businesses will also be encouraged to improve productivity and efficiency so they can get more out of the energy they consume through a new Energy Productivity Agenda.

Liberal policies
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has staked his environmental reputation on a new Climate Solutions Fund.
The 10-year fund is an extension of former PM Tony Abbott’s “direct action” Emissions Reduction Fund.
Mr Morrison has said the $2 billion fund will ensure Australia meets its 2030 emissions reduction targets without “taking a sledgehammer” to the economy.
The fund will partner with farmers, local government and businesses to deliver “practical” solutions to climate change.
Examples of projects include improving the energy efficiency of commercial and public lighting, planting trees and collecting gas that is generated in landfills from decaying organic material.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison famously took a lump of coal into the House of Representatives. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas Source:AAP
Mr Morrison has committed $1.4 billion in equity into making Snowy Hydro 2.0 — another Turnbull proposal — a reality. The huge pumped hydro project involves pumping water up a hill during times when electricity is cheap, storing it, and then releasing the water to generate power when it’s needed.
The government is also funding a feasibility study into Battery of the Nation, another pumped hydro project in Tasmania.
Some National MPs are calling for the government to fund new coal-fired power plants.
They also want to push through so-called “big stick” measures to stop energy companies ripping consumers off. The government has shelved its laws for “divestiture”, which would allow the government of force the breakup of large energy companies, until after the election.
PM Scott Morrison with Energy Minister Angus Taylor, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Environment Minister Melissa Price visiting the Snowy Hydro Tumut 3 Power Station in NSW. Picture: Kym Smith Source:News Corp Australia
 
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27/03/2019

The Rise Of Students Against Climate Change

Independent Australia -

Students striking against the lack of climate change policy are a strong voice against an ineffective government, writes Peter Henning.
A sea of placards were the voice of a generation wanting a better future (Screenshot via YouTube)
IT IS NOT OFTEN in Australian history that school students have been politicised to the extent of taking direct action on an issue. There have been other occasions, but they are fundamentally different from what is happening now in relation to the failure of the political system to address climate change.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, high school students who participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, against apartheid, on civil rights issues and against environmental destruction, for example, rallied in support behind a much broader movement without playing the key role in leadership.
The same is true of other public protests on a range of issues since then, such as saving the Franklin River, stopping old-growth logging, Aboriginal rights, gender equality — until now.
It is difficult to say at this point in time how this will play out because it is unprecedented for high school students to take the lead on an issue of such importance. The turnout on 15 March was clearly a shock to politicians and other authorities. In Melbourne, the police attempted for a brief period to keep the roads and tramlines clear at the top end of Collins Street but then gave up. They were simply overwhelmed by student numbers.


It was a sea of placards across the 20,000 people there and they dominated the space and told a story which is no flash in the pan.
People like Scott Morrison, Matthias Cormann, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, her Education Minister and other climate change deniers and delayers were variously “appalled”.  Take them back in time and they would have opposed the eight-hour day, the old-age pension and the abolition of slavery. As in the case of all organised attempts at reform from beyond the corridors of established political and economic power and influence extending back in time and place for generations, the age-old canard of people being manipulated by “professional activists/agitators” has been raised once again.
In the vacuous rhetoric of Morrison et al, we can hear the voices of Bjelke-Petersen with Reds under the bed, John Howard opposing Wik and Mabo and an apology to the stolen generations, Tony Abbott proclaiming that same-sex marriage will wreak havoc and Scott Morrison informing us that lumps of coal are lovely, divinely-created gifts.
When Greta Thunberg commented that the statement of the NSW Minister for Education “belongs in a museum”, she could have been saying the same thing about nearly every Liberal and National Party politician in Australia.
Such political opposition to students having a voice about their own future will only strengthen this generation’s view that the current political class are active agents against them, with little interest in anything except their own piece of cake.

IMAGE
The placards were unequivocal in their overt contempt for the current Federal Government —
‘Governments are supposed to help. So where the bloody hell are you?’; ‘It’s time to change politics like we change PMs’; ‘Fossils should be in the ground not parliament’; ‘I can’t believe I’m marching for facts’; ‘I bet the dinosaurs thought they had time, too’; ‘School taught me that dinosaurs were extinct’; ‘If climate was a bank it would have been saved’; ‘The water is rising. Get your budgie smugglers ready’.
Young Australians articulating a clear understanding that the Federal Government is essentially ignorant and contemptible is somewhat different to anything we’ve seen before.
One student, 17-year-old Manjot Kaur of Sydney said:
“The action of striking is so important. Students are so afraid, so upset, so worried about their future that they’re literally sacrificing their education to show how serious this problem is. Because right now we aren’t treating it as a crisis. The act of striking is us saying this needs to be treated as an emergency.”
In Melbourne on 15 March, it was obvious that many schools fully supported the strike and encouraged students to wear their school uniforms with pride. On the other hand, some school principals threatened that those who participated could jeopardise their assessment results.

IMAGE
Schools which threaten sanctions and punitive action in this way are contradicting one of their essential and fundamental educational purposes to develop democratic values, participation in public life and critical thinking in students.
Such schools are contributing to the development of a mindset which encourages silence, passivity and acquiescence in the face of overwhelming evidence that climate change is here with us now and that Australia is already being severely impacted.
Schools not actively promoting discussion of climate change are breaching their responsibilities as educational institutions, undermining educational standards, inhibiting access to vital knowledge and are engaged in the wilful promotion of ignorance.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has recently stated that government inaction “is rapidly moving beyond a purely partisan or moral issue — indeed, the threat is distinctly financial in nature”. The regulator predicts “economic and environmental disaster” to Australia under the current leadership vacuum.
As Greg Jericho wrote in The Guardian, the RBA is no longer equivocating about the threat to the economy, either, saying that:
“...the physical impact of climate change and the transition are likely to have first-order economic effects”.
IMAGE
 According to Jericho:
‘This week really should mark the end of the line for anyone within politics or the media being able to spout climate-change denialism without being met with scorn and jeers. It also should mark the time when boldness and verve becomes the norm for any climate-change policy’. 
Former corporate coal boss Ian Dunlop has come out swinging against proposals for new fossil fuel projects in Australia, labelling them as ‘crimes against humanity’ which must stop immediately:
‘To halt our suicidal rush to oblivion, the community must ensure no leader is elected or appointed in this country unless they are committed to emergency action.’
The three main goals of the student campaign are to stop the Adani coal mine, no new gas or coal projects and 100 per cent renewables by 2030. The majority of informed Australians, including students, are well ahead of the main political parties. Energy Minister Angus Taylor inanely claims that Labor’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target is ‘aggressively high’, when, in fact, it is too low. We are at the end of an era. Australia is at a crossroad it hasn’t faced since late 1941.
The students are right. Ian Dunlop is right. This is a crisis. People like Taylor belong in a museum. If the incoming Shorten administration displays the same flat-Earth blind stupidity, it will follow the current Morrison Government into irrelevance. We simply can’t afford any more gutless and ignorant Federal administrations. Time is too short.
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Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change

The Conversation - 

Cyclone Idai wreaks havoc in Mozambique. EPA-EFE/JOSH ESTEY
Not everyone cheered for the school children striking against climate change. In the US, democratic senator Dianne Feinstein accused them of “my way or the highway” thinking. German Liberal Democrats leader Christian Lindner said that the protesters don’t yet understand “what’s technically and economically possible”, and should leave that to experts instead. The UK’s prime minister, Theresa May, criticised the strikers for “wasting lesson time”.
These criticisms share a common accusation – that the striking children, while well-intentioned, are behaving counter-productively. Instead of having a rational response towards climate change, they let emotions like fear and anger cloud their judgement. In short, emotional responses to climate change are irrational and need to be tamed with reason.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – his moral philosophy had a lasting influence on how we view emotions and rationality. Johann Gottlieb Becker/Wikipedia
The view that emotions are intrusive and obscure rational thinking dates back to Aristotle and the Stoics – ancient Greek philosophers who believed that emotions stand in the way of finding happiness through virtue. Immanuel Kant – an 18th-century German philosopher – saw acting from emotions as not really agency at all.
Today, much of political debate is moderated with the understanding that emotions must be tamed for the sake of rational discourse. While this view stands in a long tradition of Western philosophy, it invites Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro to insist that “facts, reason and logic” can dismiss an emotional response to anything in debates.
However, the view that emotions aren’t part of rationality is false. There’s no clear way of separating emotions from rationality, and emotions can be rationally assessed just like beliefs and motivations.

Emotions can be rational
Imagine you’re walking in the woods, and a huge bear approaches you. Would it be rational for you to feel fear?
Emotions can be rational in the sense of being an appropriate response to a situation. It can be the correct kind of response to your environment to feel an emotion, an emotion might just fit a situation. Fear from a bear coming towards you is a rational response in this sense: you recognise the bear and the potential danger it represents to you, and you react with an appropriate emotional response. It could be said to be irrational not to feel fear as the bear walks towards you, as this wouldn’t be a correct emotional response to a dangerous situation.
Imagine you find out that a meteor will kill millions of people across the world, displace hundreds of millions more, and make life for the remainder of humanity much worse. The world’s governments neither put a defence system in place, nor do they evacuate the people threatened. Fear from the meteor, and anger at the inaction of governments, would be a rational response as they are an appropriate reaction to danger. And if you don’t feel fear and anger, you’re not appropriately responding to a dangerous situation.
As you’ve probably guessed, the meteor is climate change. The world’s governments aren’t addressing the causes of climate change or preparing to mitigate its impact. For the people of Mozambique, who are reeling from the devastation of Cyclone Idai, anger is entirely appropriate. Climate change is largely a product of economic development in richer countries, while the world’s poorest are bearing the brunt of its effects.
A woman and child take shelter in Beira City, Mozambique, after the passage of Cyclone Idai.
EPA-EFE/TIAGO PETINGA
Are emotions counter productive?
Regardless of how fitting an emotional response is, it may sometimes be unhelpful for what a person wants to achieve. Theresa May makes this point about the school strike: understandable, but young people missing valuable lessons makes it harder for them to solve climate change. As others have already pointed out, climate change demands rapid action – waiting until some vague point in the future when the children are old enough to do something is relinquishing responsibility instead of meaningful action.
It is, however, hard to deny that fear and anger sometimes lead people to choices they regret. However, dismissing emotional responses on this basis is too quick. There are many examples where fear and anger have triggered the correct response and created a motivational push for change. As Amia Srinivasan, an Oxford philosopher working on the role of anger in politics, puts it,
Anger can be a motivating force for organisation and resistance; the fear of collective wrath, in both democratic and authoritarian societies, can also motivate those in power to change their ways.
Young people take part in a climate strike in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lauren McGlynn, Author provided (No reuse)
 A lot of social change has happened because of anger against injustice, empowering the weak and oppressed, while causing those in power to fear they may be ousted leads to reforms and change. We do need scientific understanding of the climate crisis to solve it, but banning emotions from the debate and dismissing rational fear and anger about climate change may encourage people to do nothing.
So, not only are children, who are angry and scared about climate change, rational, they might be more so than the adults criticising them. Emotions play a bigger part in life beyond rationality – they mark values and indicate what people care about. Fear of the future and anger at inaction are ways young people can express their values. Their emotions are, in the words of feminist writer Audra Lorde, an invitation to the rest of society to speak.
Dismissing the emotions of school children not only invalidates their rational responses to a grave situation – it implicitly states that their values aren’t taken seriously, and that adults don’t want to reach out to them.

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These 8 Cities Are Taking Bold Steps To Get Rid Of Cars

Fast Company - Adele Peters

Cities around the world are starting to see that they’ll be cleaner, healthier, and just better overall if people–not cars–are the priority.
In downtown Cairo, it’s not uncommon to see streets clogged with cars. But in a proposed redesign for a central thoroughfare, they’re hard to spot. Instead, in the concept illustration for what looks like the Egyptian version of Amsterdam, a two-way bike lane, a sidewalk, and a plaza filled with palm trees replace the sea of street parking.
Similar changes are now happening in every part of the world. Some cities are going further, transforming larger swaths of space that were previously dedicated to cars and restricting when and where the most polluting vehicles can drive. For most cities, the primary reason for the change is air pollution, which now kills more people than smoking. It’s also a way for cities to tackle their climate change goals–and to deal with the fact that there just isn’t enough room on city streets for everyone to sit in a car of their own, especially as populations grow. Here are a few of the cities transforming fastest.

Oslo
Cyclists on Oslo City Bikes. Photo: Åsmund Holien Mo/Urban Sharing
In the city center of Oslo, former parking spaces on the street have been transformed into bike lanes, benches, and tiny parks. By the beginning of this year, the city had finished a process of removing 700 parking spaces as a way to incentivize people not to drive in the area, while adding some charging stations for electric cars and more parking for drivers who are disabled. At the same time, Oslo is improving public transit and making it easier to bike. The goal: to reduce pollution while making better use of limited public space. “Cities, like Oslo, have been built for cars for several decades, and it’s about time we change it,” Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s vice mayor of urban development, says in an email. “I think it is important that we all think about what kind of cities we want to live in. I am certain that when people imagine their ideal city, it would not be a dream of polluted air, cars jammed in endless traffic, or streets filled up with parked cars.”

Buenos Aires
Photo: ITDP/Fabrico Di Dio
On a massive boulevard in Buenos Aires that used to have 20 lanes of traffic, the center of the road is now dedicated to buses. When the city made the change a few years ago, commuting times shrank dramatically. Buses also no longer needed to use crowded side streets, which freed up around 100 blocks to become fully pedestrianized, or pedestrian-priority zones where cars are restricted and limited to six miles per hour. Since then, the city has continued to add new pedestrian zones in other areas, and is trying to keep people safe on all its streets. At busy intersections, paint and planters help reshape the street to make it safer for pedestrians, using the same kind of tactical urbanism that has also been used in cities like Boston to quickly test new changes. “It’s pretty inexpensive and it can be deployed quickly, so the public can judge if it actually improves the streets,” says Luc Nadal, technical director for urban development at the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, which worked with the city as it made its initial changes. “Usually, people adopt it fully. Local businesses find that foot traffic increases and that their business improves, and eventually permanent facilities can be implemented.”

London
Photo: Luke Stackpoole/Unsplash
As London grows over the next couple of decades, an extra 100,000-plus people will need to commute to the “Square Mile” in the heart of the city, and the area will also add an extra 3,000 residents. If all of those people drove, traffic wouldn’t move. To deal with the growth–and the air pollution problem it already has–the city is proposing a new plan that would eventually make half of the streets either completely car-free or “pedestrian priority,” meaning that cars (and bikes) would have to yield to people on foot. The city also wants to build protected bike lanes on most major streets. Where cars are allowed, the plan proposes a 15-mile-per-hour speed limit. It’s the latest in a long series of steps to reduce traffic. In 2003, the city pioneered a congestion charge, a fee that drivers pay if they enter central London during peak driving hours. In 2010, the city started opening its first “cycle superhighways” on busy routes. Since 1999, the volume of cars has dropped by about a quarter. The city will finalize its new transport strategy this spring.

Seoul
Photo: Flickr user Bryan
In the first year after the city of Seoul finished converting a highway overpass into a High Line-like pedestrian pathway in 2017, 10 million people used the path and business improved in the area, with sales increasing 42%. Now, the city plans to add new pedestrian zones. Some traffic lanes on major streets will be converted to bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes. The city is also starting to roll out new electric buses, and plans to have 3,000 by 2025, while it also improves bus routes to encourage more people to choose the bus over a car. A rating system for cars is designed to keep the most polluting vehicles out of the city center, and by 2020, only electric cars will be allowed.

Madrid
Photo: Flickr user Nicolas Vigier
Unless you happen to live in central Madrid, there’s a good chance you can’t drive there anymore. In November 2018, the city started rolling out sweeping restrictions across the city center to try to address its air pollution and traffic problems. Older, polluting vehicles are banned, but electric cars can still use the streets. There are exceptions: Residents of the neighborhood and disabled people can still drive more polluting cars, and emergency vehicles can still access the area. Taxis that run on gas or diesel can still drive in the area if they’re relatively new. But when the laws started taking effect, traffic quickly dropped 32%. The low-emissions zone is designed to be “a lung for the city in the heart of Madrid,” the city explains on its website. Inspired by the success, in late 2018 the Spanish government proposed banning any cars that aren’t zero-emissions vehicles from large city centers throughout the entire country.

Beijing
Photo: zhang kaiyv/Unsplash
To fight traffic congestion and cut pollution, Beijing has closed 23 major streets to non-resident cars, says Nelson Peng, an associate and director of the China practice at the urban planning firm Calthorpe Associates. Where drivers are allowed, they’re restricted based on license plates: If their license plate ends in a particular number, they won’t be allowed to drive on a particular day each week. The city also offers small financial incentives for people who choose not to drive an additional day. And because there is a lottery to get license plates in the first place,  most people who want cars can’t get them. Other Chinese cities also have restrictions on when and where people can drive. In a new district in Xiong’An, planners have considered banning private cars and only using self-driving cars that run on clean energy. Visitors to the area’s civic center currently leave their cars in a parking lot and take a bus to the center, where companies are testing new autonomous cars. “If China can successfully switch the [auto] industry to autonomous, clean vehicles, I can imagine permanent restrictions of old-style cars in large areas in the near future,” Peng says.

Paris
Photo: rabbit75_ist/iStock
In 2017, a busy highway next to the Seine River became a car-free pedestrian pathway and park. It’s one piece of the city’s ongoing work to cut pollution by reducing traffic. The city also restricts older, more polluting cars from entering the city on weekdays. By 2024, no diesel cars will be allowed, and by 2030, gas cars will be forbidden. Intersections are being redesigned to give people priority over cars, and bike lanes and public transit options are growing. “I was just there a few weeks ago, and it’s pretty impressive what they’re doing,” says Timothy Papandreou, founder of Emerging Transport Advisors, a consulting firm that works with cities. “You look at the hordes of people that are walking or riding a bicycle or taking a scooter down these riverbanks, and you quickly count the number of people–there’s no way you could move this number of people if they were all in their individual cars.”

Chennai
A bike share in Chennai. Photo: Flickr user ilugc in
Until recently, shopping on busy Thyagaraya Road in Chennai, India, meant navigating through throngs of cars and auto rickshaws. But the street is now transforming to a pedestrian plaza, which will be completed in the next few months. Before building the new plaza, the city ran two trials to block off traffic and give people the experience of a car-free pedestrian mall–something that is common in other parts of the world, but a new idea in Chennai. Nearby, the city also recently launched a new bike-sharing system. Chennai, like other cities in India, struggles with air pollution, in part from transportation. In 2017, the Indian government said that it wanted all new cars to be electric by 2030. Though it later scaled back that goal, it recently committed $1.4 billion in new incentives to help kick-start sales of electric and hybrid cars.

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26/03/2019

'Out Of Line': Top Australian Companies Accused Of Undermining Paris Deal

The Guardian - 

Action group Market Forces urges shareholders to divest holdings in 22 ‘uninvestables’
The companies reported to be ignoring the Paris climate deal are worth a combined $121bn and represent 7% of the ASX300 index. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters 
New analysis shows 22 of Australia’s largest companies are actively working to undermine the Paris agreement targets, betting shareholders’ money on strategies that assume global climate change action fails.
Investor action group Market Forces says those companies – worth a combined $121bn and representing 7% of the ASX300 – are “out of line and out of time” and has called on shareholders to divest their holdings.
Paris-alignment of ASX 300 companies by weight
The group’s legal analyst, Will van de Pol, said it was the first time Market Forces had “named names” and called out companies whose business strategies relied on the world failing to meet the Paris targets to restrict the global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
“A handful of Australian companies are undermining efforts to limit global warming by pursuing new fossil fuel projects, or basing their business plans on energy projection scenarios that would doom the Paris agreement to failure,” the report says.
“These companies have now been given more than three years to align their business with the Paris goals, but have dismissed the notion.”
The list of “uninvestables” includes mainly resource and energy companies, but also diversified investment vehicles including WH Soul Pattinson and Seven Group Holdings.
The Market Forces study found that 199 ASX300 companies, representing 64% of total market capitalisation, faced heightened transitional climate risk but had not yet demonstrated business strategies consistent with the Paris agreement.
There were 143 companies with policies “not overtly inconsistent with Paris”, and just eight had aligned their strategy with the agreement.
Three companies – AGL, Origin and BHP – earned a reprieve from the list of the worst offenders, despite acting in a similar manner, because Market Forces said they had shown some progress towards aligning their goals with Paris.
In recent years, the boardroom has become an increasingly important front for climate activism.
This month, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, announced it would divest from firms that explored for oil and gas. Last month, Glencore said it would no longer back new coalmines in response to investor calls for the company to act on climate change.
Pressure is also increasing on Australian companies, though many still refuse to even consider the financial risk posed to their businesses by climate change.
In September, a report from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said “the law requires” relevant companies to “include a discussion of climate risk” in their annual report.
In February, the Asic corporate governance council released new recommendations that directors and companies should make climate risk disclosures.
The Market Forces report singled out “coal cowboys” Whitehaven and New Hope, which it said had plans to establish new coalmines, or expand existing ones, based on forecasts that assume the failure of Paris.
Oil and gas companies Woodside, Santos and Oil Search had each “faced increased investor engagement over climate change in recent years, but this has done nothing to dissuade their plans to increase fossil fuel production”, the report said.
“Investors determined to play their part in the fight against runaway climate change must immediately reallocate capital away from these companies.”

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