19 December 2017, Renew Economy, Turnbull’s big climate fail, and no positive change in policy. The Turnbull government has declared its climate policies a success, in a self-generated review released alongside data revealing yet another rise in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions – and no plans to do anything to reverse the “shameful and embarrassing” trend. In a statement on Tuesday accompanying the federal government’s 2017 Review of Climate Change Policies, environment minister Josh Frydenberg said the report showed the Coalition’s “economically responsible” approach to meeting its international climate commitments was working as planned. “The climate review found that …Australia is playing its part on the world stage through bilateral and multi‑lateral initiatives and the ratification of the Paris Agreement to reduce our emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030,” he said. And indeed it does; declaring on page 6 that “we will meet our 2030 target and we will do so without compromising economic growth or jobs. Our current policy suite can deliver this outcome.” Read More here
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19 December 2017, Renew Economy, The further unravelling of Adani’s Carmichael coal project. While the Adani Group has bounced back many times from adverse developments with respect to it’s Carmichael coal proposal, the run of negative news has continued at a rapid clip of late, putting the project in real doubt. This week started badly for Adani, with the Downer Group announcing it had relinquished a proposed A$2bn non-binding Letter of Award received in December 2014. This follows on from the Queensland government delivering its veto of the proposed A$1bn loan subsidy last week and a multitude of leading Chinese banks announcing a decision to avoid this controversial project the week before. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) would suggest there is a common point of linkage: the building momentum of the Paris Climate Agreement combines with the unprecedented rate of renewable energy deflation evident globally in the last two years to make increasingly clear stranded asset risks for greenfield thermal coal export proposals. As aptly highlighted by Geoff Summerhayes, Executive Director of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the entry into force of the Paris Climate Agreement ‘brings the horizon forward’ for action on climate change. Read More here
19 December 2017, DeSmog, Pruitt’s Plan to Debate Climate Science Paused as Science Confirms Human Link to Extreme Weather. The same week that a slew of new scientific reports confirmed just how much humans are changing the climate, and in turn, the rest of the planet, Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt’s plans for a “Red Team, Blue Team” debate of this very same science were put on hold. The military-style exercise that would falsely pit the overwhelming majority of climate scientists against a handful of non-experts is an eight-year-old talking point of the notorious climate-denying think tank the Heartland Institute (which is likely not surprised by this development). Meanwhile, last week in New Orleans, several groups of prominent climate scientists shared their latest findings at the world’s largest gathering of Earth and planetary scientists. The roughly 25,000 attendees of the American Geophysical Union annual meeting included scientific leaders from academia, government, and the private sector. Clear and Present Climate Science These peer-reviewed reports make it clear that any meaningful climate debate in the future should not be over the degree of humanity’s role in climate change, but to what degree the climate has changed already and what can be done to stop it. The American Meteorological Society’s 2016 “State of the Climate” report offers the first examples of extreme weather events not possible in a preindustrial climate. “Climate change was a necessary condition for some of these events in 2016, in order for them to happen,” Jeff Rosenfeld, editor in chief of the Bulletin of the American Metrological Society, said at a press conference. “These are new weather extremes made possible by a new climate. They were impossible in the old climate.” Read more here
18 December 2017, Inman, The coastal mortgage time bomb. Experts worry that if insurers start to pull out of flood-prone seaside communities, it could cause a crisis worse than 2008. 2017 will be remembered as the year the water came. Hurricane Harvey dropped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of Houston, shattering American meteorological records. Hurricane Irma was the strongest tropical storm ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and plowed through Florida in early September, turning Miami’s main drag into a raging river. And Category 4 Hurricane Maria pulverized Puerto Rico with 150-mph winds, leaving the island in darkness and ruin. Altogether, the three storms will cost the U.S. more than $200 billion, which would make 2017 the most expensive hurricane season on record.Yet there is every reason to expect that the towns and the cities hit by the hurricanes of 2017 will be rebuilt — even, eventually, devastated Puerto Rico. Thank the federal government — when a storm or flood strikes a community, Washington is there with generous disaster relief, either through billions of dollars in direct aid or through the cushion of federally-subsidized flood insurance plans. The confidence in the federal government’s backing keeps lenders sending money to disaster-hit communities, which encourages residents to stay put and rebuild, rather than flee for safer areas. This in turn ensures that tax money keeps flowing to local governments. That’s why New Orleans, more than 10 years after suffering through one of the worst hurricanes on record, now has a tax base twice as large as it did before Katrina, and why the South Florida city of Homestead is nearly three times as populous as it was before Hurricane Andrew flattened it in 1992. Read More here