5 September 2016, The Conversation, US-China ratification of Paris Agreement ramps up the pressure on Australia. When President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping announced their countries’ ratification of the Paris climate agreement ahead of last weekend’s G20 meeting in Hangzhou, they boosted its chances of coming into force by the end of this year, some 12 months after the deal was brokered last December. To enter into force, the Paris Agreement requires ratification by at least 55 nations which together account for at least 55% of global greenhouse emissions. It will then become legally binding on those parties that have both signed and ratified it. These thresholds ensure that the deal has broad legitimacy among states, but are also low enough to limit the opportunities for blocking by states that may oppose its progress. Aside from China and the United States – the world’s two largest emitters, which together produce 39% of the world’s emissions – another 24 countries have ratified the agreement. To get over the threshold, it now only needs the support of a handful of major emitters like the European Union (a bloc of 27 countries producing some 10% of global emissions), India, Russia or Brazil. Ratification by countries such as Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom (each of which contributes about 1.5% of emissions) would also contribute significantly to this momentum. Read more here
Category Archives: Global Action Inaction
29 August 2016, Reuters, Insurers call on G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020. Insurers with $1.2 trillion under management called on Tuesday for the Group of 20 to set a timetable to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels by 2020 when they meet at a summit in China this weekend. Aviva, Aegon NV and MS Amlin said fossil fuel subsidies were at odds with commitments by G20 nations to combat global warming agreed by almost 200 countries last year at a Paris summit. “Climate change in particular represents the mother of all risks,” Aviva CEO Mark Wilson said in a statement. The companies called on the G20 leaders, who meet in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept. 4-5, to set “a clear timeline for the full and equitable phase-out by all G20 members of all fossil fuel subsidies by 2020”. A phase-out should start with the elimination of all subsidies for fossil fuel exploration and coal production, they said. Their statement was also signed by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and UK-based energy firm Open Energi. G20 leaders have repeatedly promised to phase out fossil fuels, the main man-made source of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, since a meeting in 2009 in Pittsburgh. The British-based Overseas Development Institute think-tank estimated that average annual subsidies for fossil fuel production were $444 billion in 2013 and 2014, roughly four times the subsidies for renewable energy in 2013. Last week, investors managing more than $13 trillion of assets urged the G20 to ratify the Paris climate deal by the end of 2016 to help avert droughts, floods, mudslides and rising sea levels. No G20 nations have yet completed the ratification process, according to a U.N. tracker. China and the United States, the top two emitters, are widely expected to join up around the time of the G20 summit. Read more here
24 August 2016,Climate Home, Adaptation takes centre stage as IPCC prepares 1.5C study. Tackling climate change is no longer simply about cutting greenhouse gas emissions: flood defences, heat resilient crops and weather warning systems are set to take centre stage. That’s the message from scientists fresh from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Geneva last week. The UN science body has started work on a new and potentially devastating report on ways to avoid warming the earth to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – and the consequences of failure. Due in September 2018, it will set the political tenor for global talks on climate change through to 2020, by which time the new Paris Agreement on climate change is slated to become operational. Critically, it will underpin a UN-led review the same year into how countries are delivering on the Paris deal, and perhaps offer the basis for those national goals to be increased. …… The trouble is it’s effectively too late for that, said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC’s last major study and a colleague of Mach’s at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Read More here
18 August 2016, Reuters, Scientists to probe ways of meeting tough global warming goal. Scientists on Thursday set the outlines of a report on how to restrict global warming to a limit agreed last year by world leaders – even though the temperature threshold is at risk of being breached already. The U.N.-led study, due to be published in 2018 as a guide for governments, will look into ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to cap the rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It will examine impacts of a 1.5C rise on vulnerable parts of the world including Greenland’s ice sheet and coral reefs. Thelma Krug, a Brazilian scientist who led the four-day meeting in Geneva, said it will also cast the fight against climate change as part of a wider struggle to end poverty and ensure sustainable growth. “Rapid changes are needed for (no rise above) 1.5C,” she told Reuters.World leaders agreed to work towards that target at a meeting in Paris in December, also requesting the report as part of a global agreement to phase out greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, in the second half the century. The global rise reached 1.3C in the first half of 2016, which is almost certain to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015. Some studies indicate emissions could breach levels consistent with 1.5C within about five years. Many show temperatures overshooting that limit and then being reduced later by extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere with yet-to-be developed technology. “It will be difficult, but there are also opportunities,” said Sabine Fuss, a delegate at the Geneva meeting from the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. Costly action now could help avert even more expensive damage from floods, heat waves, extinctions and rising ocean levels, she said. Read More here