UOW Lecturer Says NSW Has 'Dropped The Ball' On Climate Change

Illawarra Mercury - Aidan Green

Picture: Michele Mossop

As our planet heats up, the politics is only getting stranger.
In this world of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternate facts’, getting impartial expert information on major global issues like climate change, has never been so important.
This is a view senior University of Wollongong lecturer in Science and Technology Studies, Dr Adam Lucus totally agrees with.
And he believes the NSW Government has “dropped the ball” on climate change.
“Recent April records have been higher than average and even recorded it’s hottest day ever,” he said.
Dr Lucus is an expert in the field of climate change and also a former policy analyst for the NSW Government.  He worked primarily with former NSW Premier, Bob Carr.
Dr Lucus isn’t happy with the environmental stance of the current state government.
“The NSW Government has been dragging its’ heels on the renewable energy target,” he said.
“If roughly 35 percent of Australia’s emissions are coming from the energy sector and another 15 percent from transport then clearly those two areas are what the government should be focusing on.”
But he believes that hasn’t been the case, adding that ‘eight of the 10 hottest years on record in Australia have occurred within the past two decades.”
His research on energy policy responses to anthropogenic climate change led him to state – “the abandonment of the carbon tax has led to increased emissions in the electricity sector and now we are going through this ridiculous argument about whether we should be keeping coal fired power stations open when the owners want to shut them down and can see the economic benefit of renewables and storage.”
The climate change advocate has chaired the non-partisan, volunteer-led climate change solutions education and research organisation, Beyond Zero Emissions.
However, Dr Lucas noted just how hard achieving zero emissions is, highlight that the Kyoto reporting period in 2012 “saw a significant increase in emissions at 55 percent for electricity and 45 percent for transport.”
He said the state government’s priorities were out of sync. “There are so many things they could be focusing on which would drive emissions down such as agriculture production, issues around manufacturing, energy, reliance on gas, waste recycling and waste processing.”
Dr Lucus’s current research is focused on drivers for, and obstacles to, the complete decarbonation of the world's energy sector.
2017 was the 41^st consecutive year with an above-average global temperature.

Links

• UOW students tell us how they would tackle climate change?
• Science Can't Solve Climate Change — Better Politics Can, Former IPCC Scientist Says
• Sydney Smashes April Records With A Month Of Summer-Like Heat
• Recent Australian Droughts May Be The Worst In 800 Years
• April 2018 Australia’s Hottest On Record Courtesy Of “Exceptional Heat”

California Sues Trump Administration Over Car Emissions Rules

New York Times - Hiroko Tabuchi | Coral Davenport

A freeway in Los Angeles. “This is about health, it’s about life and death,” Gov. Jerry Brown of California said of the state’s lawsuit. Credit Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

A coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s auto market.
In a lawsuit filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act.
“States representing 140 million Americans are getting together to sue Outlaw Pruitt — not Administrator Pruitt, but Outlaw Pruitt,” Gov. Jerry Brown of California said at a news conference, referring to Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“This is about health, it’s about life and death,” Governor Brown said. “I’m going to fight it with everything I can.”
Tuesday’s lawsuit represents an important step in a brewing battle between the state and the Trump administration over climate change regulations. That battle could break into war in the coming weeks if the E.P.A. moves to substantially weaken the nation’s current greenhouse gas rules for tailpipe emissions or challenges a legal waiver that allows California to set its own greenhouse gas emissions regulations.
It is not yet clear if the E.P.A. will take those steps, but Tuesday’s lawsuit could strengthen California’s legal hand if that were to happen.
“This is a preliminary challenge. It’s a shot across the bow,” said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University who advised the Obama administration. “It sets the table to challenge the agency’s reasons for rolling back the rule, if they go ahead and do it.”
California has long been authorized under the 1970 Clean Air Act to write its own stricter air pollution rules, and a dozen other states have traditionally followed those standards, which are designed to curb earth-warming emissions from cars and light trucks.

California Is Ready for a Fight Over Tailpipe Emissions. Here’s Why.

California officials have said they will fight in court any attempt by the Trump administration to revoke or bypass their power to set their own auto emissions standards. Here are three big issues for the state.

In 2012, when the Obama administration set a comprehensive set of standards on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy for cars and light trucks — aiming to roughly double the average fuel economy of new cars, S.U.V.s and light trucks by 2025 — California agreed to harmonize its regulations with the new federal standards.
But last spring, executives from the Big Three automakers went to the White House to ask for more lenient emissions rules, kicking off an effort by the administration to roll back those standards.


Why Trump Is Taking On Car Emission Rules

Last month, the Trump administration moved forward legally with a plan to reopen the Obama administration’s standards, saying they were too stringent. The E.P.A. has not yet put forth a proposed set of new standards to replace the Obama rules, but it has drafted a new set of regulations that would drastically weaken the Obama-era rules after 2020.
Tuesday’s suit contends that the Trump administration’s justification for revisiting the Obama rules was shoddy and lacked a strong scientific rationale. However, even if California and the other states win the case, it would not prevent the Trump administration from taking the next step and revoking California’s right to tougher clean air standards.
California had said it would stick with the tougher regulations and threatened to sue should Washington try to challenge its authority to follow its own air pollution rules.
“This is California saying: You really want war? We’ll give you war,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, an advocate for stronger emissions rules. “It’s a signal to the administration that they’re not going to get away with anything in this space.”
A legal battle with California brings the nation’s auto industry closer to a split into two markets as its legal challenge plays out in court: one that continues to follow stricter rules requiring cars to be more efficient and less polluting than the other.
The 18 jurisdictions joining in Tuesday’s lawsuit represent more than 40 percent of the United States auto market, California said. According to its news release, they are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
Automakers are scrambling to avoid that outcome, urging continued talks for a unified national program. They have asked for a direct meeting with President Trump to try to avert an all-out weakening of regulations that they fear will now go well beyond what they themselves initially sought, according to two people with knowledge of the automakers’ plans.
Separately, Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to the secretary of the Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao, and Mr. Pruitt asking that they abandon the rollback.
“Such a proposal, if finalized, would harm U.S. national and economic security, undermine efforts to combat global warming pollution, create regulatory and manufacturing uncertainty for the automobile industry and unnecessary litigation, increase the amount of gasoline consumers would have to buy, and runs counter to statements that both of you have made,” Senator Carper wrote. “I urge you to immediately disavow this proposal.”

*Hiroko Tabuchi is a climate reporter. She joined The Times in 2008, and was part of the team awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
*Coral Davenport covers energy and environmental policy, with a focus on climate change, from the Washington bureau. She joined The Times in 2013 and previously worked at Congressional Quarterly.

Links

• The Fighting Has Begun Over Who Owns Land Drowned By Climate Change
• From Australia To El Salvador To Vietnam, The Environment Is Finally Getting Its Day In Court
• The Case For Climate Reparations
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• Will Courts Hold Oil Companies Accountable For Climate Change Disasters?

Author Jeff Goodell On His New Book And Why He Wishes Climate Change Was A Hoax

AFR - Lisa Murray

Jeff Goodell: "The Adani coal mine is arguably the stupidest energy project in the world right now." Peter Braig

Jeff Goodell strolls into Kensington Street Social looking tanned and relaxed in a black T-shirt and matching blazer, with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
I am less relaxed having just finished his latest book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking cities, and the Remaking of the Civilised World.
The tan, I discover, comes straight from the Great Barrier Reef where Goodell, who has written six books and is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, has been diving with his 15-year-old daughter, Grace, ahead of the Sydney Writers Festival this weekend.
We order wine as I ask what he thinks about the government's recently announced half-billion-dollar rescue package for the reef that will be part of next week's federal budget.

"Places like Sydney have a lot of money so they're going to be able to adapt in interesting ways," says Goodell. Peter Braig

"It's like giving someone a band-aid for cancer. It's not addressing the problem. The problem is burning coal," he says.
"No one is complaining about taking care of some of these secondary causes and there needs to be investment in that stuff but to the degree that it's political cover for the real action, that's a big problem."
Goodell has been writing about the coal industry and climate change for over a decade and this is his fourth trip to Australia. On one of the most memorable trips in 2011, he recalls being holed up in a "shack of a hotel" in Proserpine just as Cyclone Yasi hit the north Queensland coast.
His latest book, which was included in The Washington Post's 50 best non-fiction books of 2017, tackles the issue of rising sea levels. Goodell travelled to 12 countries speaking with scientists, politicians, real estate developers and those living in flood-prone areas in Miami, Venice, Rotterdam and Lagos about how they were preparing and adapting for the changes. It is estimated that as ice sheets feel the heat from global warming, sea levels could rise up to 2.4 metres by 2100 after an increase of just 15cm in the 20th century.
"Australia is behind the curve in a pretty profound way," Goodell warns. "I don't think there's much thinking going on about seriously mitigating the risk of sea level rise."

Jeff Goodell says the government's rescue package is "like giving someone a band-aid for cancer". Alamy

He points to government support for Adani's plans to invest in a large coal mine in Queensland's Galilee basin.
"The Adani coal mine is arguably the stupidest energy project in the world right now. Mining coal in Australia to ship to India to power Bangladesh, which is one of the most at-risk nations in the world from climate change and the government is supporting this. If you're going to put your finger on why we humans are in trouble, it's stuff like that."

Creative solutions
Goodell says he was walking along Manly Beach and found himself contemplating that a sea level rise of one metre could wipe out the Sydney landmark.

"I remember sitting at Apple and thinking this is so boring," says Goodell. Peter Braig

While places like Manly Beach or Circular Quay would probably be defended, Goodell says cities around the world will have to operate "a kind of triage".
"What are we going to try and save and what are we going to let go? Where are we going to spend the money?
"Places like Sydney have a lot of money so they're going to be able to adapt in interesting ways and find creative solutions," he says in an effort to lighten the mood.
But the moment is fleeting.

"We deal with uncertainty about risk all the time," Goodell says. Wolter Peeters

"It's not like everything's OK and then there's sharks in the Sydney Opera House. It's a slow-motion disaster. The real concern is the accumulating economic costs over the next decade or two."
Outside, the sun is shining ominously on a warmer-than-average day for May after Sydney's hottest April on record. But diners inside the Chippendale restaurant are oblivious. There is a noisy, social atmosphere to this warehouse-style bistro with the clatter of the open kitchen, slightly too loud background music and energetic table conversation bouncing off the concrete walls.
As our tartare of kingfish arrives, I ask Goodell, who is staying in the Old Clare Hotel upstairs, whether he considers himself an environmental activist.
"Not at all," he says quickly.

"We're really going to have to change the way we live with water," says Goodell. Peter Braig

"I write about it because I think it's a great story. How we're going to reinvent our energy system and how we're going to deal with this rapidly changing climate that we're creating for ourselves is the great story of our time."

Apple manuals
Goodell grew up in Sunnyvale, California, but goes out of his way to downplay his green credentials. He says far from being a tree-hugger, he raced motorcycles as a kid and was a member of the National Rifle Association.
Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of his first jobs was writing technical manuals for a little-known computer company called Apple.
"At that time it was a company of 50 people with Steve Jobs running around barefoot and it was a mile from my house.
"I remember sitting at Apple and thinking this is so boring," he says with a wry smile. "I thought I've got to go somewhere where there's something happening."
That ended up being a casino in Lake Tahoe, where he dealt blackjack at night and skied all day, until he tired of the decadent lifestyle and headed off to Berkeley and later Columbia to study fiction writing.
He worked as a journalist in New York writing about cops, AIDS and politics. And after working on a story for the New York Times Magazine about the American coal industry's rebirth under George W Bush, Goodell says he never looked back and has been writing in and around the topic ever since.
For Goodell, the Great Barrier Reef encapsulates the global problem.
"I came off Heron Island and had just had a dive in this amazing underwater world of sharks and manta rays and I visited the research centre which is looking at how coral reefs are adapting to increasing heat stress. We spent the day there and then we get in the boat and we go right by these giant coal transport stations. It was mind-boggling and heartbreaking simultaneously."

Economic impact
Goodell says his latest book has sold much better than expected for two reasons. The first is its release at the end of last year came against the backdrop of three of the most devastating and expensive hurricanes in the US – Harvey, Irma and Maria.
The second reason is that people have started to become more interested in the economic impact of climate change and sea level rises.
"It's really the economics that's driving the interest in my book. People are thinking about real estate values and rising insurance premiums."
"When I look at Miami Beach right now, or other places that are very vulnerable, I see a landscape of stranded assets. I think about the subprime mortgage crisis where you had a lot of risk in these mortgage loans that was not priced in the market. It's the same thing.
"What's going to happen is that risk will get priced in and that will be well before the water comes. The value of real estate on the water is going to go down. My goal is to make these risks transparent."
I suggest that because the water is rising gradually, and the size of the increase is up for debate, people are less clear how and when to respond. But Goodell is annoyed by this suggestion.
"We deal with uncertainty about risk all the time. We had 9/11 which was a devastating event and no one knows how big the risk is of another terrorist attack but we take actions to reduce those risks even in that uncertainty. It's the same thing here. It might be two feet by 2100. It might be two feet by 2030. If you look at the science, the risk is becoming greater. It's all in one direction. The book is called The Water Will Come because it's going to happen.
"Doing things like still building real estate right on the water, that's really dumb."
The main meal is being placed in front of us by a chirpy waitress and my fried chicken sandwich turns out to be a burger stacked high and surrounded by a mountain of fries.
"Wow. Good luck with that," is Goodell's advice as he tucks into his moderately sized plate of mushroom and spinach pasta.

Warming and rising
Goodell is not interested in converting climate deniers. He says his book is aimed at helping people who do understand the basic fundamentals to realise the urgency of the risk.
Up to now, Goodell has been very pragmatic, almost detached, in laying out the challenges associated with global warming and rising sea levels so I'm surprised when he becomes quite emotional talking about his recent trip to the reef with his daughter.
"How do you talk to a 15-year-old girl about the amazing place that she's seen and explain to her that by the time she's able to bring her kids there, it won't be there."
Goodell says he was conflicted about dwelling on the gravity of the situation because he didn't want to turn the trip into "some kind of a death watch". However, he says being aware of the potential environmental damage has enriched his own experiences.
"I pay attention to stuff. I look at the reef and it almost brings me to tears. Not what we're doing to it, even though that bothers me, but it's the beauty of it. I get to see that and show my daughter. I'm really grateful for that.
"We're really going to have to change the way we live with water," he says. "We're going to have to retreat from the coastlines and reinvent urban life in coastal cities and I think that can be really wonderful. But it's also going to be really messy and there's going to be a lot of economic loss.
"Risk is basically a function of money and elevation. If a city has both you're in good shape. If you have one or the other you're OK. If you have neither you're really in trouble."
Over coffee, Goodell says he has been accused by some climate sceptics of being hysterical to sell books.
"Are you kidding? If I was trying to sell books I would love to write this is all a hoax. I would sell gazillions of books. But the deeper you get into this you realise that not only is it not a hoax, the real truth is we don't know how bad it is."

Links

• Federal Government To Lend Money To Adani Business Associates
• Labor Pushes For Federal Investigation Into Adani
• Adani Coalmine Won't Get Federal Rail Funding, Liberal Minister Says
• Big Surge In Opposition To Adani, New Polling Reveals
• Another Blow For Adani As Chinese Backers Pull Out
• Climate Change: Australia's Position Is Unconscionable For A Wealthy Country
• Voters Split On Whether Coalition Should Build New Coal Plants Or Stop Closures
• Turnbull’s Brown Coal Hydrogen Horror Show: $500m For 3 Tonnes
• Coal Has No Place In Australia’s Energy Future
• What Is It About Coal That Makes Old White Men So Crazy?

Recent Australian Droughts May Be The Worst In 800 Years

The Conversation - Mandy Freund | Ben Henley | Kathryn Allen | Patrick Baker   

Places such as Berri were affected by Millennium Drought, caused by low cool-season rain. New materials and techniques are now being used to observe drought causes and water patterns in Australia’s history to help the future. Gary Sauer-Thompson/flickr, CC BY-NC

Australia is a continent defined by extremes, and recent decades have seen some extraordinary climate events. But droughts, floods, heatwaves, and fires have battered Australia for millennia. Are recent extreme events really worse than those in the past?
In a recent paper, we reconstructed 800 years of seasonal rainfall patterns across the Australian continent. Our new records show that parts of Northern Australia are wetter than ever before, and that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years.
This new knowledge gives us a clearer understanding of how droughts and flooding rains may be changing in the context of a rapidly warming world.

A history of drought
Australia has been shaped by floods, droughts, and blistering heat. How big and how intense these events were is poorly understood due to the limited historical and observational records.
Historical records provide rough estimates of the extent and intensity of droughts in parts of Australia since the late 1700s. For example, captains’ logbooks from ships anchored off of Sydney describe the Settlement Drought (1790-1793), which threatened the tenuous foothold of early European settlers in Australia. And farmers’ records describe the Goyder Line Drought (1861–1866) that occurred in areas north of the known arable lands of South Australia.
Observational weather records provide more detailed descriptions of climatic variability. However, systematic recording of weather in Australia only began in the late 19th century. Since then many parts of the continent have experienced prolonged wet periods and droughts. The most well known of these are the Federation drought (1895-1903), the World War II drought (1939-45), and the recent Millennium drought (1997-2009).
All three droughts were devastating to agriculture and the broader economy, but each was distinct in its spatial footprint, duration, and intensity. Importantly, these droughts also differed in seasonality.

Recent and historical droughts in Australia for the different natural resource management (NRM) regions. Provided by M.Freund

For example, the Millennium drought, which was most severe in southwestern and southeastern Australia, was caused by poor rainfall during the cool season. In contrast, the Federation drought, which affected almost the entire continent, was predominantly due to rainfall declines during the warm season.
Although the historical and observational records provide a wealth of information about the frequency of wet and dry extremes, they provide only part of the picture.

Lancelot that became a ghost town following the Federation Drought. denisben/flickr, CC BY-ND

Looking back
To understand possible trends in rainfall and assess the likelihood of prolonged droughts, we need to understand the long-term climatic context. For this, we need records that are much longer than existing observational and historical records.
Our new study used an extensive network of tree rings, ice cores, corals, and sediment records from across Australia and the adjacent Indian and Pacific Oceans to extend rainfall records across all of the major regions of Australia by between 400 and 800 years. Importantly, we did this for two seasons, the cool (April–September) season and warm (October–March) season, over eight large natural resource management regions spanning the Australian continent. This allows us to place recent observations of rainfall variability into a much longer context across the entire continent for the first time.

Australian seasonal rainfall for the past 400 years

Climate Energy College

We found that recent shifts in rainfall variability are either unprecedented or very rare over the reconstructed period. The two most striking patterns were in tropical northern Australia, which as been unusually wet over the past century, and southern Australia, which has been unusually dry.
Our reconstructions also highlight differences between recent extreme drought events and those in earlier centuries. For example, the Millennium Drought was larger in area and longer than any other drought in southern Australia over the last 400 years.
Our reconstruction also shows that the most intense droughts described in the historical records – the Settlement Drought (1790-93), Sturt’s Drought (1809–30), and the Goyder Line Drought (1861–66) – were limited to specific regions. The Settlement Drought appears to have affected only Australia’s eastern regions, whereas the Goyder Line Drought, which occurred north of the northernmost limit of arable lands in Southern Australia, primarily impacted central Australia and the far north.
These historical droughts varied widely in the area they covered, highlighting at a continental scale the spatial diversity of drought. This spatial variability has also recently been demonstrated for eastern Australia.
Our multi-century rainfall reconstruction complements the recent Climate Change in Australia report on future climate. By providing a clearer window into climates of the past online, we can better see how extremes of rainfall may affect Australia in the future.

Links

• Antarctic ice shows Australia's drought and flood risk is worse than thought
• Friday essay: recovering a narrative of place - stories in the time of climate change
• Rio Tinto’s climate change resolution marks a significant shift in investor culture
• What might appear to be common sense is not always based on scientific evidence 
• The shipping sector is finally on board in the fight against climate change
• Why blaming conflicts in Africa on climate change is misguided
• What Australians really think about climate change
• People around the world will act on climate change to create a better society: study
• Materials that make heat worse for our kids demand a rethink by designers
• What does ‘belief’ in climate change really mean?
• Climate of doubt: what Australians think about climate change

Powerful Investors Push Big Companies To Plan For Climate Change

Scientific American - David S. Rauf

This spring, Wall Street seems more accepting of climate science as shareholders demand plans to reduce risks

Energy companies are being pushed by investors to change business models and account for climate science. Credit: Eric Kulin Getty Images

Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron and Kinder Morgan are facing renewed pressure from climate-focused activist investors. This year some of the most powerful shareholders, which include giant mutual funds, are supporting the push for businesses to respond to climate change. And the prodding has had more effect than ever before.
The coming weeks are dubbed “proxy season” by corporate governance experts. Most publicly traded companies hold annual meetings in which shareholders, via nonbinding resolutions, signal their approval or dislike of proposed company policies. This year initiatives on climate change are among the most popular ballot items: Of the more than 420 shareholder resolutions initially proposed, about 20 percent focused on climate, tied for the largest of any proposal category, according to a report by the group Proxy Impact. Some reolutions ask companies to adopt greenhouse gas emission targets whereas others ask for reports on ways businesses could be affected by the Paris climate agreement’s global temperature goals.
Already, several companies have bowed to investor demands before votes are held. Why? Several major asset managers—like BlackRock and Vanguard Group—are now putting their heft behind climate resolutions, says Aaron Ziulkowski, a manager at Boston-based Walden Asset Management who works on shareholder engagement initiatives. It is a signal, he says, that Wall Street’s skepticism of climate science has dwindled: “It’s now widely recognized that climate change is a legitimate risk.” Still, some observers caution corporate reports do not equal policy changes.
Shareholder proposals are part of the process at publicly traded companies where activist investors jockey annually to exert pressure on everything from board oversight to policies dealing with guns, cybersecurity and gender discrimination. For years investors at these  meetings have offered proposals based on climate change but lost when votes were tallied. Last year, however, momentum started to shift. Investors at Occidental Petroleum and ExxonMobil rebuked their respective corporate boards and voted to demand the companies produce reports on the business impacts of climate change. It marked the first time shareholders at major U.S. oil and gas producers backed such proposals, and corporate governance experts say the moves were game changers.
This year many companies are not waiting for ballot counts. So far about 20 climate-related resolutions have been withdrawn before a vote because agreements have been reached, according to a database compiled by Ceres, a nonprofit that tracks shareholder engagement and works with investors on sustainability issues. Nearly a dozen companies, Dominion Energy and Devon Energy among them, have agreed to produce reports on climate-related financial risks. Last year only one company, Xcel Energy, did anything like that. “The fact that there’s fewer proposals going to a vote and more agreements shows how serious the investor momentum is,” says Andrew Logan, director of oil and gas at Ceres.
Yet simple reports may not amount to much. Months after shareholders voted last year, Exxon released the asked-for document. Then some Exxon shareholders publicly criticized the oil and gas giant for concluding it faced no financial risk from the Paris accord. Others said the report was overly broad, relied on optimistic assumptions and failed to provide details on emissions.
But continued shareholder pressure can lead to actual changes in how a company does business, Logan says. He points to British-Dutch oil-and-gas giant Shell. In recent years growing investor alarm about climate change risks have led the company to sell off carbon-heavy oil sands assets. Last year shareholders voted—and the company agreed—to tie 10 percent of executive bonuses to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
In the U.S., Logan says, investors are  pushing for disclosures, for the most part, but that push still has an effect. The reports create competition within an industry, as companies vie with one another for investor dollars that go with the more aggressive climate-related plans. “Disclosure has real implications that these companies are going to have to follow through to actually mitigate risks,” Logan says. Investors at Chevron, for instance, are trying to get the company to address future changes to its portfolio, including expansion of renewable energy holdings. That proposal failed last year, but is up for a vote again at the end of May.
The follow-through may take longer than Logan envisions, however, says David Webber, a corporate governance expert and law professor at Boston University. It could take years and will require a sustained shareholder effort. “In the happiest version of the story companies will see the writing on the wall and take action on their own, but shareholders should be prepared to keep up the pressure,” he says. “These are long-term goals that may seem distant, and there’s no assurance they might be obtained. But people said that a few years ago about steps that have recently been accomplished with climate proposals. It’s important to take stock of the progress made so far.”

Links

• Mosquito-and Tick-Borne Diseases Are Rising in the U.S.
• Bill Gates in Search of Nuclear Nirvana
• Shock and Thaw--Alaskan Sea Ice Just Took a Steep, Unprecedented Dive
• Key Climate Satellite to Launch Later This Month
• Our Planet, Ourselves: How Climate Change Results in Emerging Diseases
• How Climate Change Is Making It Harder to Predict Outbreaks
• Can You Explain Climate to an 11-Year-Old?

Rocks Could Have A Role In Combatting Climate Change

The Guardian - Kate Ravilious

German scientists propose using basalt and dunite to soak up carbon from the atmosphere

Basalt core containing carbonates. Photograph: Sandra O Snaebjornsdottir/Climeworks / Zev Starr-Tambor 

They might seem solid, but rocks gradually erode. Wind, rain, ice and snow all contribute to weathering; nibbling away at mountains, sea cliffs, limestone pavements and even solid granite tors.
Freshly exposed rock surfaces react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to make bicarbonate ions, which flow down to the ocean (hitching a ride on rivulets of rainwater) and are used by ocean critters to make limestone. This natural process helps to keep the Earth cool by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it up in rocks underground for a few million years.
So could we speed up this cooling process by smashing up more rocks? German scientists have been investigating the cooling potential of two types of rock: dunite and basalt. Their results, published in Environmental Research Letters, show that, if done on a large scale (comparable with today’s coal industry), crushed basalt could mop up nearly 10% of mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions every year, while dunite could absorb double that. Basalt could also have the co-benefit of adding nutrients to soil in tropical regions.
Pricewise, the technique would cost about 10 times as much as afforestation and about two to four times as much as carbon capture and storage.

Links

• How Oman’s Rocks Could Help Save The Planet
• Congo basin’s peaty swamps are new front in climate change battle
• Direct Air Capture
• Capturing CO2 from air
• Center for Carbon Removal
• Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Rock, and Burying It
• Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path
• De Beers Pioneers Research Programme To Make Carbon-Neutral Mining A Reality

California, 17 Other States Sue Trump Administration To Defend Obama-Era Climate Rules For Vehicles

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

A customer pumps gas into his dual-tank pickup in 2012 at a gas station in Los Angeles. (Grant Hindsley/AP)

Eighteen states on Tuesday sued President Trump’s administration over its push to “reconsider” greenhouse gas emission rules for the nation’s auto fleet, launching a legal battle over one of President Barack Obama’s most significant efforts to address climate change.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt in April said he would revisit the Obama-era rules, which aim to raise efficiency requirements to about 50 miles per gallon by 2025. Pruitt’s agency said that the standards are “based on outdated information” and that new data suggests “the current standards may be too stringent.”
But in the lawsuit, the states contend that the EPA acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in changing course on the greenhouse gas regulations.
“This phalanx of states will defend the nation’s clean car standards to boost gas mileage and curb toxic air pollution,” California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The lawsuit comes amid a larger struggle over climate policy regarding U.S. cars and light trucks. The Trump administration has drafted a proposal that would freeze the federal standards at 2021 levels, leaving them well below levels targeted under Obama.


Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Obama-era EPA standards set on the automobile industry "should be revised." (The Washington Post)
The Trump administration plan, which is not final, would also challenge California’s ability to set its own fuel-efficiency rules.
California has a separate set of standards that, because of the state’s huge car market, have pushed automakers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. According to figures from the California New Car Dealers Association, California’s 2,048,000 new car sales in 2017 represented about 12 percent of the 17 million-plus cars sold in the United States last year.
Twelve other states participating in the lawsuit — including New York — have followed California in setting more stringent emission standards. The total market involved is 36 percent of sales in the United States, according to Margo Oge, a former EPA official who helped the agency set auto regulations during the Obama years.
“If you are a car company, that is a pretty big deal. You have uncertainty how this thing is going to work out, and today you have to be investing in cars you’re going to build five years from now,” she said.
The current standards were created under a 2011 agreement reached among the Obama administration, California officials and automakers. If enacted, they would avert 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles sold between 2012 and 2025, according to the EPA.
Since the rules were issued, the transportation sector has outstripped electric power to become the top source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Congressional Democrats are mobilizing against the administration’s draft plan to weaken the rules.
“I urge you in the strongest possible terms to abandon this extreme and reckless approach, and to put the administration on a more responsible path,” wrote Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) in a letter to Pruitt and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
California has been given multiple waivers to set its own, more strict auto emissions standards, including one in 1967.
But the Trump administration is poised to argue that the state’s current efforts conflict with a 1975 law setting up federal fuel-economy standards — a contention California has vowed to fight in court.
Automakers could wind up caught in the middle of a massive legal battle, and they are divided over the Trump administration’s latest actions.
The Auto Alliance, an industry consortium, has said it backs the EPA’s moves, but executives at major automakers have balked at the plans.
“We support increasing clean car standards through 2025 and are not asking for a rollback,” Ford’s executive chairman, Bill Ford, and president and chief executive Jim Hackett, wrote last week. A top executive at Honda has also voiced concerns about where EPA is heading.
The auto industry is itself shifting toward selling cars that generate far less emissions. A report last year by Moody’s listed 18 planned or actual battery electric vehicle launches, by 11 manufacturers, between 2016 and 2020.
GM, the nation’s largest automaker, said last October that it planned to launch two new electric vehicles in the coming year and a half and 20 different models by the year 2023.
“General Motors believes in an all-electric future,” said Mark Reuss, an executive vice president with the company.
But even as the industry begins to electrify and sales for other types of green cars, like hybrids, have grown, there’s another current. Passenger cars as a whole are losing out to bigger luxury SUVs in sales trends, according to Edmunds, which collects information on automobile markets.

Links

• The Fighting Has Begun Over Who Owns Land Drowned By Climate Change
• From Australia To El Salvador To Vietnam, The Environment Is Finally Getting Its Day In Court
• The Case For Climate Reparations
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• Will Courts Hold Oil Companies Accountable For Climate Change Disasters?