12 November 2015, Australian fossil fuel subsidies put at $5.6bn a year in new report. As Malcolm Turnbull heads to Turkey to attend this weekend’s G20 Summit in Antalya, a new international report has revealed that Australia is still subsidising fossil fuel production to the tune of a massive $A5.6 billion a year. The report, ‘Empty promises: G20 subsidies to oil, gas and coal production’, also highlights how Australian companies have received billions of dollars from other G20 governments to develop liquefied natural gas sites. And it notes that Australia also funds the industry with a further $A292 million ($US262 million) a year in public finance, as it expands fossil fuel production on multiple fronts. The findings come during a week where the Turnbull is coming under increasing pressure – domestically and internationally – to agree to a OECD proposal that would rein in export credit agency financing for new coal plant. Although the Turnbull government is being cagey about its response to the proposal, it has been widely reported that Canberra has joined with South Korea to propose a much-watered down version of the US-Japan deal. Considering the modesty of the OECD proposal – which has been years in the making and needs unanimous support to be adopted – it’s not a good start to global climate negotiations. And it’s not a good look for Australia as it heads to Turkey, and then Paris. But of course, Australia is not the only offender. According to the new report – put together by the UK-based Overseas Development Institute and USA-based Oil Change International – governments from the Group of 20 nations are propping up fossil fuel production with $US452 billion a year. This is almost four times the entire global subsidies for renewable energy ($US121 billion). And it is despite pledges to phase out fossil fuels – and subsidies to the industry – as one of the key measures to prevent catastrophic climate change. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2015
12 November 2015, The Conversation, The Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a grave threat to sustainable development. This month’s long-awaited release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)text was the result of years of negotiations on trade ties between nations around the Pacific Rim. Some six weeks earlier, another set of deliberations came to an end as the United Nations unveiled its 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), which aim to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality by addressing critical issues such as food security, health care, access to education, clean and affordable water, clean energy, and climate action. Unfortunately, the two documents are incompatible. Several chapters of the TPP impinge upon the SDGs, potentially undermining the UN’s efforts to promote sustainable development and equality throughout the Pacific region. Moreover, many developing countries, least-developed countries, and small island states in the Pacific region are excluded from the preferential trade deal. What does the TPP say on development? The US Trade Representative has boasted that the TPP’s chapter on development will be a boon for developing Pacific nations, and that it will “focus attention on major development goals including inclusion of women, micro-enterprise, poverty reduction, and education, science, and technology”. But while the chapter is laden with aspiration, it lacks firm commitments or hard obligations. Here’s how it opens: “The Parties affirm their commitment to promote and strengthen an open trade and investment environment that seeks to improve welfare, reduce poverty, raise living standards and create new employment opportunities in support of development.” Read More here
11 November 2015, Other Words, Who Can Follow This Climate Leader? President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline while backing increased oil, gas, and coal production. Remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy hits a fork in the Yellow Brick Road? As she stands there stumped, a friendly character who will accompany her to the Emerald Palace pipes up. “Pardon me, that way is a very nice way,” the Scarecrow advises as he points in one direction. “It’s pleasant down that way too,” he adds, now pointing in the other. Then the Scarecrow crosses his straw-stuffed arms and unhelpfully declares, “Of course people do go both ways.” President Barack Obama’s climate leadership is as hard to follow as the Scarecrow’s directions. After seven years of waffling, Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, this conduit would have moved more than 800,000 barrels a day of filthy oil mined from the Canadian tar sands through Nebraska and five other states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Rejecting the $8 billion pipeline early in his first term would have been bold. But Obama dallied. He only stopped it once the thing made no financial sense because of low oil prices and similar infrastructure that rendered the project unnecessary. Making this move now, on the eve of global climate talks in Paris, was merely expedient. He made his choice sound like a bigger deal than it was anyway. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” he asserted. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” So, what’s the state of that leadership? On the one hand, the Obama administration has taken steps to reduce the nation’s reliance on oil, gas, and coal. Its Clean Power Plan will step up the ongoing retirement of coal-fired power plants as it cuts carbon pollution. The federal government is also phasing in higher fuel-efficiency standards while throwing some weight behind renewable-energy initiatives. All the while, this White House has also leased a growing amount of federal land to coal-mining companies and encouraged the nation’s spiking oil and natural gas production. Obama’s inherently contradictory “all-of-the-above” energy policy supports the dangerous practice of hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — that pumps vast amounts of toxic chemicals underground, imperiling drinking water. Read More here
11 November 2015, Climate News Network, West Antarctic ice cascades towards crisis. Scientists warn that continued ocean warming will lead to ice loss in the Amundsen Sea region that could raise sea levels by three metres. It wouldn’t take much to precipitate the complete collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, according to new research. Just a few more decades of ocean warming would be enough to destabilise the relatively small region of ice by the Amundsen Sea − starting a cascade of slipping and sliding that would tip enough ice into the ocean to raise sea levels by three metres. The loss of ice would continue for centuries. Two scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they wanted to take a look at the long-term future of the mass of south polar ice that has been worrying researchers for decades. Planetary temperatures The West Antarctic ice sheet has already been pronounced as being at the point of no return. Scientists have calculated that, were the world ever to burn all its fossil fuels, thus increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and stoking up planetary temperatures, that would be enough to melt the entire Antarctic continent and raise sea levels by 60 metres. But one of those studies focused on what is happening now; the second looked thousands of years ahead. Read More here