Category Archives: Global Action Inaction

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7 December 2015, Washington Post, Economists: Climate change is going to cost a lot more than previously thought. When it comes to climate change, there’s broad consensus among economists that the potential economic impacts will be serious, widespread and more severe than previous estimates have indicated. At least, this is the conclusion of a new survey, published Monday by the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity — and experts say we should be listening to their warnings. The report, which was authored by the Institute’s Derek Sylvan and Peter Howard, compiled answers from more than 300 experts on the economics of climate change in response to a set of 15 questions regarding climate change risks, policies and potential damages. “We figured if you want to understand how climate change will affect our daily lives, it makes sense to ask the economists who study issues like food production, climate adaptation, energy economics,” said Sylvan, strategy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity. “And so essentially our survey helps clarify the wisdom of the crowd among this group of experts.” Sylvan and Howard compiled their pool of experts by creating a list of all the people who had published a climate change-related article in a leading economics or environmental economics journal since 1994. The survey questioned the economists on how serious a problem they felt climate change will be in the future, what economic sectors are likely to be negatively affected, how soon they expect the effects to begin manifesting and how seriously these impacts will affect global output. Read more here

 

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7 December 2015, The Conversation, Australia’s climate diplomacy is like a doughnut: empty in the middle. There is a profound disconnect between Australia’s international climate diplomacy and its national climate and energy policies. The diplomacy could be cast in positive terms, on the surface at least. During the first week of the climate negotiations in Paris, Australia displayed a preparedness to be flexible and serve as a broker of compromises in the negotiations over the draft Paris Agreement. Australia has also agreed to support the inclusion of a temperature goal to limit global warming to 1.5℃, which is a matter very dear to the hearts of Pacific Island nations for whom climate change is a fundamental existential threat. Australia will serve as co-chair (with South Africa) of the Green Climate Fund in 2016, which will be channelling money to the most vulnerable countries in the Pacific and elsewhere to enhance their preparedness for the harmful impacts arising from a much warmer world. …. Yet appearances can be deceiving. The A$200 million in annual climate finance comes from the aid budget and is not new or additional. Nor does it represent an enhanced commitment relative to previous contributions. And it is widely acknowledged that an enhanced commitment to climate finance by rich countries to assist poor countries to develop clean energy and adapt to climate change will be central to garnering the support of developing countries to a Paris agreement. Australia had every reason to ratify Kyoto II, since it had one of the lowest emissions targets in the developed world for 2020 (5% below 2000 levels). Australia has also been able to benefit from greenhouse gas accounting rules (including a carry over of surplus emissions allowances from the first commitment period) that will enable achievement of this target at the same time as greenhouse emissions outside the land sector are set to increase by around 11% by 2020. Read More here

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7 December 2015, The Conversation. Draft deal emerges midway through Paris climate talks, but leaves plenty to do. A huge piece of street art with the words “Fluctuat nec mergitur” – Paris’ official motto since 1853 – has just appeared on a building near the city’s Canal Saint Martin. It refers to a ship at sea and translates as “tossed but not sunk”. The slogan is cropping up around the city as a sign of resistance to the recent terror attacks. But it is perhaps also a comment on the Paris climate negotiations. The Paris Conference of the Parties (COP) aims to land a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2020. Progress during this first week has been grindingly slow. Nevertheless, the initial 54-page document has been whittled down to a slightly more focused 48-page text, now handed to the COP president Laurent Fabius. The new draft, released on Saturday, is still dense with contested phrases and bracketed options and landmines of coded language, both substantive and tactical. These will be the focus of this week’s high-level negotiations as ministers arrive for the second half of the summit. Mind the gaps The cluster of issues being considered include collective ambition on climate mitigation and adaptation, the level and nature of climate finance, technology transfer and capacity building, and processes for measuring and reviewing progress. It is hard to predict where the final deal might land, but at this stage negotiators are struggling to bridge two critical gaps – a mitigation gap and a climate finance gap. Deeply entrenched positions over which countries should do what, how much, and when, have dominated these negotiations. Longstanding disputes between developed and developing countries over the equitable sharing of responsibility and effort for mitigation, and who should bear the costs of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, stand in the way of bridging either gap. The mitigation gap lies between the current level of global fossil fuel use and the much lesser amount required to keep global warming below 1.5℃ or 2℃ – the two goals being considered here in Paris. Read More here

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7 December 2015, Renew Economy, Paris, COP21: Australia ignoring energy transition as emissions soar. Australia is being put on the spot at the Paris climate talks about its treatment of surplus credits from the Kyoto Protocol, and the fact that it will more than likely meet its short- and mid-term targets without actually reducing its industrial emissions. Indeed, it seems that the Turnbull government – like those before it since the Kyoto Treaty was first signed in 1997 – is insisting that its focus remain on accounting and ticking boxes, rather than reducing industrial and energy emissions and preparing the country to decarbonise its economy. That rise in industrial emissions is one reason why Australia will not be following the example of five European countries and cancelling their Kyoto surplus. On Friday, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain announced that they will cancel 634.6 million excess Kyoto credits that they could have counted towards their Kyoto targets for 202. They decided to do this as part of a bid to remove what has been described as a giant “hot air” loophole that has favoured some countries. “By cancelling surplus units we hope to send a strong positive signal of support for an ambitious global climate agreement here in Paris,” the European nations said in a joint statement. But don’t expect Australia to follow suit. Australia is still intent on using its surplus of 128 million units to meet its modest 2020 targets, which it will do despite it becoming increasingly clear that its industrial emissions, and its power sector emissions in particular, will continue to rise. That doesn’t appear to faze the Turnbull government. When RenewEconomy asked environment minister Greg Hunt on Friday if the government was worried that its approach would not position Australia to decarbonise its economy and compete with other countries committed to doing so, Hunt simply said that the critical thing for Australia was to meet its targets. Its Direct Action program is buying emissions abatement through its emissions reduction fund, and $2.55 billion of taxpayer money – but as quickly as it is doing this, emissions are rising in the electricity sector and elsewhere. A new report from Pitt & Sherry says electricity emissions alone are rising 10 per cent, and estimates by Reputex put the increase in industrial emissions at 6 per cent by 2020. Read More here