2 June 2015, Inside Climate News, Bonn Climate Talks Aim to Build a Springboard to Paris, Not a Sinkhole: Six months before what may be the last chance for a global climate agreement in Paris, negotiators get to work on the draft text. As climate talks begin this week in Bonn to work on the draft text of a global agreement, the task of delegates expands to include the twin UN objectives of alleviating poverty and combating global warming. Delegates were also met with a new warning that the widely accepted target of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius may not be enough. Six months from the start of a Paris conference where the United Nations hopes to complete a far-reaching deal on the climate crisis, negotiators meeting in Bonn, Germany this week and next are back to working on their unwieldy draft text even as the treaty’s goals slide over distant horizons. Read More here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
27 May 2015, Renew Economy, Garnaut: Cost of stranded assets already bigger than cost of climate action. This is one carbon budget that Australia has already blown. Economist and climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered a withering critique of Australia’s economic policies and investment patterns, saying the cost of misguided over-investment in the recent mining boom would likely outweigh the cost of climate action over the next few decades. Read More here See Prof. Ross Garnaut’s full submission here
18 May 2015, The Conversation: FactCheck: Are 95% of models linking human CO₂ emissions and global warming in error? In a recent newspaper column, Mr Newman said discrepancies between climate model forecasts and recorded temperatures begged the question: “Why then, with such little evidence, does the UN insist the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on futile climate change policies?” All scientists would agree with Mr Newman that critical analysis of mathematical modelling is a crucial part of science. But it is a logical fallacy to leap from that valuable topic to describing climate change policies as futile. Climate models: what they can and can’t do. Read More here
13 May 2015, Climate News Network, Green city offers clean alternative to tar sands boom: Canada has been called an international pariah for its climate change policies, but now one of its major cities is aiming to be the greenest in the world by 2020. In a country reckoned to have the worst climate policies in the industrialised world, one big city is setting out to defy central government and become 100% carbon neutral. Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada, wants to establish itself as “the greenest city in the world by 2020” by demonstrating that economic growth and the welfare of its citizens depends on developing renewables, rapid transit systems, and promoting cycling and walking to curb car use. It is one of dozens of cities worldwide working towards improving the life of their citizens while reducing fossil fuel use, but it claims to have the most ambitious targets. Read More here