15/06/2017

Don't Ignore Young People – We're Key To Fighting Climate Change

The Guardian - Daisy Kendrick*

Young people are consumers, employees, employers and future leaders but few NGOs take full advantage of the best space to reach us – social media
Only 11% of the globe’s NGOs employ a designated part-time or full-time social media manager. Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters
For the world leaders, negotiators and advisers who gathered in Paris in November 2015, the news that the US is withdrawing from the COP 21 climate accord must have felt like a body blow.
For my generation? There’s a chance the story got scrolled past, filtered out, buried on a newsfeed, or missed altogether.
For those of us that did read it, it’s easy to feel a sort of detached but familiar disappointment. In some ways it’s just another amendment to a non-legally binding agreement that’s been written and re-written in the background for most of our childhoods, from 1995 in Berlin to 2015 in Paris.
That’s not how it should be. The news should be a starting gun for a new wave of activism, action and change. Because, while the world leaders signing accords in conference halls are important, the real change is going to come from us. Call us millennials or Gen Z or Net Gen, we’re the consumers, employees, employers and future leaders who will see the devastating effects of climate change.
We are also the most connected generation in history, with the capacity to arrange coordinated global protests like the Women’s March in a matter of days, to create a $2.5m Love Army for the Somali drought in a few weeks, or to commit to calling out #everydaysexism for half a decade.
And yet, many of the NGOs, charities and global campaigns are failing to mobilise us.
It’s easy to understand why they aren’t getting through to us – recent research shows that only 11% of the globe’s NGOs employ a designated full-time or part-time social media manager.
That means they’re losing the 28% of young people that use social media as their primary news source. It means they’re missing out on the 43% of millennials that are driven to make financial donations through social channels, the one in two who’ll share ideas with their friends online, or most importantly the one in three willing to donate their time.
Young people aren’t a “nice to have” when it comes to sustainability action and climate change. We’re 27% of the global population – how we choose to work, eat, drink and spend our money will change the whole ballgame.
Take the United Nations Ocean Conference. It’s the UN’s first ocean-focused conference, and it has come at the right time.
Henderson Island, a tiny landmass in the eastern South Pacific was found by marine scientists to have the highest density of anthropogenic debris recorded anywhere in the world.
Videos of the 18 tonnes of plastic piling up on an island otherwise untouched by humans, shared millions of time across social media, are a visceral reminder of the consequences of our one-use throw-away attitude to plastic consumption.
Plastic is deadly for fish and marine life, threatening the food supply of the 1 billion people who depend on it as their principle food source and damaging the global food chain for us all.
Yet, across the US, 500m plastic, non-biodegradable straws are used every day – for only a few minutes. In the UK, households throw out 40kg of recyclable plastic every year.
If we don’t act soon the World Economic Forum predicts that plastic will outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050.
Henderson Island has put the issue of plastics pollution on the global agenda – now it’s time for systematic behaviour change.
The key to success of the UN Ocean Conference won’t lie in agreements made or accords signed. What we need are innovative solutions – that will capture the attention and imagination of my generation.
The only way to seriously cut plastic consumption is by activating young people to bring about change. That’s change, not just as consumers, but as the people now entering management roles at the big businesses, manufacturers and retailers with the power to innovate supply chains and start evolving the world’s relationship with plastics and fossil fuels.
It might sound like an unachievable feat, but there’s good news. As the likes of Pepsi and Heineken have noticed (however controversial or limited their outputs) this generation wants to make change.
Recent research demonstrates that one in seven millennials around the world identify as “activists” and half of those recognise their activism as an important part of who they are. It’s one of the many reasons the likes of Apple, Facebook and Goldman Sachs are prioritising their environmental focus despite Trump’s actions – they know it matters to their future customers and workforce.
While many headlines have been written about the eight-second attention span of the social media-obsessed, there is another way of looking at it – it’s also a highly developed eight-second filter.
This generation has more information thrown at them in a day than people living a hundred years ago would come across in a month. We’ve become highly adept at prioritising content, and when content is important, we engage and act.
Throwing budget at social media channels isn’t a fix-all – this campaign will also be led by the brands, businesses and communities that tackle the issue with creativity and innovation.
It’s vital that we update and rethink our approach to climate and conservation, to make it the issue that mobilises this new tide of activists.
We’re probably locked into a planet that’s on track to warm by 2 degrees; temperature fluctuations are already causing widespread food shortages, unprecedented heatwaves and unpredictable weather.
The populations of small islands and developing states are faced with the prospect of becoming climate refugees, as rising seawater levels are threatening widespread flooding, contaminating drinking water supplies and destroying arable land.
My generation was born into a world where climate change is an immutable fact, not a theory to deny or accept, but a global threat, the effects of which we can see. We’ve got to make this the issue we tackle and overcome.

*Daisy Kendrick is a 23-year old environmental campaigner and founder of We Are The Oceans

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Clean Energy Turned Australian Politics Into A Simpsons Gag

Huffington Post - Josh Butler

The Finkel report has sent Canberra into a crazy timewarp back to 2009.
"I was elected to lead not to read!" Getty/The Simpsons
The Australian Financial Review reported 'Coalition MPs revolt against Clean Energy Target'. In the Sydney Morning Herald, the headline read: 'Tensions erupt in Turnbull government over climate and energy policy'. And News Corp headlines said, 'Backbenchers challenge Turnbull over Clean Energy Target'.
Every report on the Coalition's Tuesday afternoon party room meeting to discuss the energy report from government chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel, cast Tony Abbott as the headline act in opposition to plans for a clean energy target, with Fairfax even reporting that a Coalition MP warned: "Malcolm could lose his leadership over this".
No, we're not back in 2009, when then-opposition leader Turnbull committed to action on climate and renewable energy, and was rolled by a vocal crowd of opponents led by Abbott -- but it sure feels like it. Back then, it was Turnbull's support for an emissions trading scheme which was his downfall.
In 2017, the drama is coming from the Finkel report, which urges the government to commit to a clean energy target -- possibly up to 42 per cent of electricity production from renewable sources by 2030 -- and outlines that taking action in this area would actually be cheaper, and lead to lower power prices, than doing nothing.
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On Tuesday, Turnbull canvassed the opinions of his party room with a special meeting running for several hours. A long afternoon and evening meeting stretched on, with reports of up to 30 MPs addressing their colleagues on the report -- most opposed to, or at least harbouring concerns about, the Finkel report, according to reports.

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While energy minister Josh Frydenberg had been confidently asserting that the report would be supported roundly by his colleagues, it seems more than a few hold deep reservations about the Finkel report, driving another wedge into a Coalition party room already splintered on a handful of deep ideological issues.
An interesting point, however, is a small detail deep in the AFR's report. While Abbott has already been publicly vocal and critical of the Finkel report in media interviews, the AFR reported:
Mr Abbott, who had not read the Finkel report, slammed the CET on Monday as a "magic pudding" and "a tax on coal".Australian Financial Review
Abbott, the star attraction of the anti-Finkel crowd, has reportedly not even read the report he has been opposing. It smacks of the immortal line from 'The Simpsons Movie', as President Arnold Schwarzenegger confidently says "I was elected to lead, not to read!"


The chances of Abbott unseating Turnbull in another climate-fuelled coup seem infinitesimal -- Abbott is not thought to have anywhere close to the strength of numbers or party room popularity he enjoyed while prime minister, so Tony 2.0 is unlikely.
However, the schism in the Coalition over climate and energy policy cannot be underestimated.
There remains a hard core of MPs and senators resolutely opposed to phasing out coal and gas in favour of solar, wind or other renewable sources of energy, and they have support from the likes of key Senate crossbenchers One Nation and Cory Bernardi.
But while the Coalition tears itself apart again over climate and energy, one guy happy to sit back and watch it all go down is Labor leader Bill Shorten. The opposition leader spoke on Tuesday night of a new "civil war" in the government over the Finkel report.
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"It would appear that chaos is the order of the day," Shorten said.
"Just when Australians thought that the climate change wars were over, it looks like a new civil war in the Liberal Party has taken it up to a new level."
On Tuesday, following the meeting, Frydenberg told ABC's 7.30 program it was "too early to say" whether the Coalition could agree to a clean energy target. No doubt more will unfold in coming days and weeks.

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Tensions Erupt In Turnbull Government Over Climate And Energy Policy

Fairfax - 

Climate-change policy has ignited tensions within the federal government, with a group of backbench MPs led by Tony Abbott confronting Malcolm Turnbull over the proposed Clean Energy Target in a special party room meeting.
As one MP in the room put it afterwards: "Malcolm could lose his leadership over this if he doesn't listen to us."

Climate policy debate intensifies
Politicians from all sides have been very willing to share their thoughts on climate policy and the government's plan for a clean energy target.

The disquiet means that Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is likely to have little choice but to significantly modify the CET, as proposed in chief scientist Alan Finkel's review, to keep the backbench on-side as he finalises the Coalition's policy response, which is expected as soon as the end of July.
If he does, Mr Frydenberg runs the risk of putting Labor offside - particularly if the policy is too coal-friendly - and dashing the chance of the major parties striking compromise and ending the climate policy wars.
According to several MPs in the room, at least 21 backbench MPs raised concerns about the CET, while five spoke in favour of it and five were said to be non-committal.
Another senior MP in the room said while 32 people had spoken, one third of the speakers had been in favour of the Finkel review's recommendations, one third opposed them outright and one third expressed concerns but were non-committal.The special meeting to discuss the Finkel review of the electricity sector, which proposed the contentious clean energy target (CET), got underway just after 4.15pm on Tuesday and wrapped up three hours later.
Special party room meetings are rare. The last one was held under Mr Abbott and focused on a similarly fractious issue - the Coalition's policy on same-sex marriage.
The Coalition held a special meeting on climate change policy on Tuesday. Photo: AP
The length of the meeting and depth of feeling is likely to cause a re-think by the Turnbull government as it looks to implement a CET, with coal and gas likely to be given more favourable treatment.
One of the chief concerns of Coalition MPs was the declining role of coal in Australia's energy mix under a CET, while several MPs also warned that the CET - if implemented - could make things worse by further driving up energy prices.
The Finkel review found that doing nothing would drive prices up more than a CET or an emissions intensity scheme.
There were also calls in the meeting for stronger intervention in the gas market to put downward pressure on prices, despite the steps already taken by the Turnbull government.
The debate over climate change is a proxy, in some sections of the Coalition, for concerns about Mr Turnbull's leadership just as it was back in 2009 when he was replaced by Mr Abbott.
At various times in the meeting, Coalition MPs questioned the 42 per cent renewable energy target projected by Finkel, Australia's commitment to the Paris climate targets and the estimated $90 a year reduction in power bills under a CET versus business as usual.
Mr Abbott told the meeting that Australia had a huge natural energy advantage and that it should make the most of it.
The Prime Minister, who has the backing of senior conservative ministers such as Barnaby Joyce and Mathias Cormann, carefully left the door open to coal remaining in the nation's energy mix during question time.
"A clean energy target does not penalise coal, it does not prohibit the construction of a coal-fired power station or indeed a gas-fired power station," Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Joyce, who helped lead the campaign against Labor's carbon tax, said business-as-usual wasn't working and Australia needed to abide by its international obligations, which are to reduce emissions by 26-28 per cent against 2005 levels by 2030.
Mr Joyce later criticised Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, predicting the Labor leader would say no to whatever compromise policy position the government proposed.
" We are all moving to make sure we try and land this, even the National party. We are doing our bit, the Labor party should do their bit," he said.
Labor has questioned how a CET could include coal any type of coal fired power.
Senator Cormann said "the biggest cost . . . we could impose on consumers and taxpayers will be to do nothing".
The CET would provide incentives for generators to produce electricity below a certain emissions intensity baseline. The Finkel review modelled a scenario in which low emissions would be defined as below 0.6 tonnes of pollution per megawatt hour.
Generators would receive certificates for the proportion of electricity produced below that emissions level, which could then be traded.
Labor has indicated it will likely not support a government-proposed CET that sets the baseline too high, such as at or above 0.7 tonnes per megawatt hour, which would mean some forms of coal could earn partial certificates.

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14/06/2017

It's Hug A Climate Scientist Day. Just Remember: No Surprise Hugs!

The Guardian - First Dog on the Moon

Every 12 June a grateful planet pauses to give thanks to those brave souls who bear the burden of knowing what the rest of us can’t stand to think about 

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Food Shortages Due To Climate Change Could Fuel Violence, Unrest - Research

Thomson Reuters Foundation - Lin Taylor

"We've already started to see climate change as an issue that could cause food riots in some parts of the world" - study co-author Bear Braumoeller

Food shortages caused by climate shocks like drought or floods could exacerbate violence and riots in politically unstable countries, researchers say.
Fragile states that are poor and depend heavily on agriculture are most at risk of violent uprisings since they struggle to cope with climate change, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Peace Research.
"We've already started to see climate change as an issue that won't just put the coasts under water, but as something that could cause food riots in some parts of the world," said study co-author Bear Braumoeller from The Ohio State University.
The last time the world saw a severe food crisis was in 2007 and 2008, when extreme weather events hit major grain producing regions the year earlier, causing spikes in the demand and cost of food.
The higher prices led to social and political unrest in Morocco, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Indonesia, according to a 2016 report by Global Footprint Network and United Nations Environment Programme.
Drought is becoming more frequent and severe in places like eastern and southern Africa, and that – combined with the recent El Nino phenomenon – is taking a heavy toll on rural lives and economies.
Last April, a rice farmer in the Philippines was killed during protests demanding government assistance after drought linked by some to El Nino hit hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland.
El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, is linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods.
Moreover, the US-based Center for Climate and Security on Friday said factors like global water shortages, displacement or migration caused by climate change, and rising sea levels also posed serious threats to international security.
Braumoeller said having a stable government was key to placating growing civil unrest and violence in the face of food shortages caused by climate change.
"A capable government is even more important to keeping the peace than good weather," he said in a statement. "Less vulnerable countries can better handle the problems that droughts or food price fluctuations create."
Braumoeller said fragile states needed to address instability and invest in sustainable, "greener" industries to increase their economic growth, in order to cope with food shortages due to climate change.
"Development aid is important now and it is likely to be even more important in the future as we look for ways to increase climate resilience," he said.

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The Three-Minute Story Of 800,000 Years Of Climate Change With A Sting In The Tail

The Conversation -  | 

Ice cores are a window into the past hundreds of thousands of years. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Ludovic Brucker
There are those who say the climate has always changed, and that carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated. That’s true. But it’s also true that since the industrial revolution, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have climbed to levels that are unprecedented over hundreds of millennia.
So here’s a short video we made, to put recent climate change and carbon dioxide emissions into the context of the past 800,000 years.


The temperature-CO₂ connection
Earth has a natural greenhouse effect, and it is really important. Without it, the average temperature on the surface of the planet would be about -18℃ and human life would not exist. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the gases in our atmosphere that traps heat and makes the planet habitable.
We have known about the greenhouse effect for well over a century. About 150 years ago, a physicist called John Tyndall used laboratory experiments to demonstrate the greenhouse properties of CO₂ gas. Then, in the late 1800s, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first calculated the greenhouse effect of CO₂ in our atmosphere and linked it to past ice ages on our planet.
Modern scientists and engineers have explored these links in intricate detail in recent decades, by drilling into the ice sheets that cover Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of years of snow have compressed into thick slabs of ice. The resulting ice cores can be more than 3km long and extend back a staggering 800,000 years.
Scientists use the chemistry of the water molecules in the ice layers to see how the temperature has varied through the millennia. These ice layers also trap tiny bubbles from the ancient atmosphere, allowing us to measure prehistoric CO₂ levels directly.
Antarctic temperature changes across the ice ages were very similar to globally-averaged temperatures, except that ice age temperature changes over Antarctica were roughly twice that of the global average. Scientists refer to this as polar amplification (data from Parrenin et al. 2013; Snyder et al. 2016; Bereiter et al. 2015). Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram
Temperature and CO₂
The ice cores reveal an incredibly tight connection between temperature and greenhouse gas levels through the ice age cycles, thus proving the concepts put forward by Arrhenius more than a century ago.
In previous warm periods, it was not a CO₂ spike that kickstarted the warming, but small and predictable wobbles in Earth’s rotation and orbit around the Sun. CO₂ played a big role as a natural amplifier of the small climate shifts initiated by these wobbles. As the planet began to cool, more CO₂ dissolved into the oceans, reducing the greenhouse effect and causing more cooling. Similarly, CO₂ was released from the oceans to the atmosphere when the planet warmed, driving further warming.
But things are very different this time around. Humans are responsible for adding huge quantities of extra CO₂ to the atmosphere – and fast.
The speed at which CO₂ is rising has no comparison in the recorded past. The fastest natural shifts out of ice ages saw CO₂ levels increase by around 35 parts per million (ppm) in 1,000 years. It might be hard to believe, but humans have emitted the equivalent amount in just the last 17 years.

How fast are CO₂ levels rising? Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram
Before the industrial revolution, the natural level of atmospheric CO₂ during warm interglacials was around 280 ppm. The frigid ice ages, which caused kilometre-thick ice sheets to build up over much of North America and Eurasia, had CO₂ levels of around 180 ppm.Burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, takes ancient carbon that was locked within the Earth and puts it into the atmosphere as CO₂. Since the industrial revolution humans have burned an enormous amount of fossil fuel, causing atmospheric CO₂ and other greenhouse gases to skyrocket.
In mid-2017, atmospheric CO₂ now stands at 409 ppm. This is completely unprecedented in the past 800,000 years.
Global Temperature and CO₂ since 1850. Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram
The massive blast of CO₂ is causing the climate to warm rapidly. The last IPCC report concluded that by the end of this century we will get to more than 4℃ above pre-industrial levels (1850-99) if we continue on a high-emissions pathway.
If we work towards the goals of the Paris Agreement, by rapidly curbing our CO₂ emissions and developing new technologies to remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere, then we stand a chance of limiting warming to around 2℃.
Observed and projected global temperature on high (RCP8.5) and low (RCP2.6) CO₂ emission futures. Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram
The fundamental science is very well understood. The evidence that climate change is happening is abundant and clear. The difficult part is: what do we do next? More than ever, we need strong, cooperative and accountable leadership from politicians of all nations. Only then will we avoid the worst of climate change and adapt to the impacts we can’t halt.

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13/06/2017

White House Effort To Stop Youth Climate Lawsuit Is 'Drastic And Extraordinary'

Mashable - Maria Gallucci

Demonstrators protest President Donald Trump's June 1 decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement. Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to quash a climate change lawsuit brought by 21 young people.
Trump's legal team on Friday took an unusual step that shows just how determined the Justice Department is to keep Juliana v. United States from going to trial.
Lawyers filed a "writ of mandamus" petition with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review a federal judge's decision from November, which denied the government's motion to dismiss the precedent-setting lawsuit.
SEE ALSO: Hawaii to Trump: Sorry, we're sticking with the Paris Climate Agreement
A mandamus is considered a "drastic and extraordinary" remedy reserved for "really extraordinary causes," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the Supreme Court's 2004 majority opinion Cheney v. U.S. The administration essentially wants to leapfrog over a lower court in hopes of finding a more favorable ruling in a higher court.
Steam and exhaust rise from a power station in Germany. Image: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
The youth lawsuit uses a novel legal approach that's also being tested in India, the Netherlands, and other countries around the world. Juliana v. United States relies on a version of the public trust doctrine, which holds that the government is responsible for preserving certain natural resources for public use. In this instance, the resource is the country's "life-sustaining climate system," including the "atmosphere, waters, oceans, and biosphere."
"The U.S. government is running from some of its youngest constituents, and all we're asking for is a plan to preserve our future," Victoria Barrett, an 18-year-old plaintiff from White Plains, New York, said in a statement provided by Our Children's Trust, the organization behind the lawsuit.
To understand why the Trump administration is going to such lengths, let's review some recent history.
In 2015, a group of citizens, now ages 9 to 21, filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government and energy companies of failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and curb fossil fuel use, despite mounting evidence on human-caused global warming. Plaintiffs claim that failure violates their "constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

While President Trump continues to reject science, these young people are fighting for the future of the planet. — Bernie Sanders

The Obama administration and industry groups filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, and in April 2016, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin denied those motions. After reviewing Coffin's decision, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken in Oregon also rejected the motions — setting a landmark precedent for climate issues as legal rights.
"I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society," Aiken said in her Nov. 10, 2016, opinion.
In February, after Trump was sworn in, the young plaintiffs filed a legal notice saying they were replacing Obama with Trump as the main defendant. Weeks later, the Trump administration and fossil fuel companies filed separate motions to the District Court seeking review of Aiken's decision to the Ninth Circuit.
That was an unexpected step; it's unusual for the government to try to appeal a case to a higher court before a lower court has ruled on the lawsuit. Trump's team also filed a motion to delay trial preparations until after its appeal is considered.
That brings us to the present.
Demonstrators protest Trump's June 1 decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement. Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Last week, the Trump administration filed a notice to the District Court of Oregon, giving the court until June 9 to issue a decision on its appeal to the Ninth Circuit. If the court didn't issue a decision, defendants said they would seek a ruling directly from the Ninth Circuit.
On June 8, a day before the so-called deadline, Aiken denied the Trump administration's request, arguing that involving the higher appeals court at this point in the legal proceedings is "not warranted."
The decision was a big blow to Justice Department efforts to avoid going to trial. In response, the administration filed the rare "writ of mandamus" petition asking the Ninth Circuit to review Aiken's decision.
Trump at the White House, after announcing his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The petition accuses the Oregon district court of committing "multiple and clear errors of law in refusing to dismiss an action that seeks wholesale changes in federal government policy based on utterly unprecedented legal theories."
Douglas Kysar, a law professor at Yale Law School who is not involved in the litigation, called the writ "offensive to Judge Aiken, the entire federal judiciary, and, indeed, to the rule of law itself."
"We should all question why the Trump administration's lawyers are willing to try such a trick rather than forthrightly defend the case," he said in a statement provided by Our Children's Trust.
The Ninth Circuit's decision will have important implications for the future of the lawsuit, and whether it goes to trial.
If the latter happens, we can already guess what Trump will tweet in response: "See you in court."

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Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative