Tag Archives: Emissions

PLEA Network

30 October 2015, Renew Economy, With latest fires crisis, Indonesia surpasses Russia as world’s fourth-largest emitter. New analysis reveals even more troubling news about Indonesia’s fires crisis. Emissions from this year’s fires have reached 1.62 billion metric tons of CO2—bumping Indonesia from the sixth-largest emitter in the world up to the fourth-largest in just six weeks. The analysis from Guido van der Werf with the Global Fire Emissions Database also reveals that:

  • Emissions from Indonesia’s fires alone are approaching the total annual emissions of Brazil.
  • Indonesia’s current total emissions hover around 760 Mt CO2 (excluding land-use change), meaning the fires alone have tripled Indonesia’s entire annual emissions.
  • Indonesian fires during 38 of the past 56 days (as of October 26) have released more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire U.S. economy on those days.

While the country may finally be getting some relief as heavy rainfall interruptsmonths of record-breaking fires and toxic smog in South Sumatra and Kalimantan, the damage to human health, the economy and the global climate has already been done. Read More here

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28 October 2015, Climate Home, Australia PM Turnbull stands by coal amid moratorium calls. Recently annointed prime minister is defending mine expansion plans, to the ire of Pacific neighbours and climate campaigners. When Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister last month, climate watchers were hopeful he would reverse Australia’s coal-friendly stance. There was some sign of that this week, as newly appointed chief science advisor Alan Finkelenvisioned a world free of fossil fuels. Yet it has been business as usual for the country’s bullish mine expansion plans, which threaten international climate goals. That is despite 61 prominent Australians, from rugby player David Pocock to Nobel laureate Peter Doherty, backing Pacific islanders’ calls for a moratorium. Dismissing the idea, Turnbull told national journalists: “Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part in fact, of the global energy mix… and likely to remain that way for a very long time.” He variously argued that coal-fired power would reduce poverty in developing countries and that if Australia stopped exporting the black stuff, others would. “It would make not the blindest bit of difference to global emissions,” the Guardian reported him saying. Read More here

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24 September 2015, Hot Air, Dutch government to re-open Urgenda climate change case, The Dutch government has said it wants to re-open the groundbreaking climate change case in which a judge ruled it must cut emissions by at least 25% compared to 1990 levels by 2020. The case was brought by campaign group the Urgenda Foundation and judges ruled in their favour on 24 June 2015, saying the government must do more to protect people from climate change. The government said it would appeal the ruling, but has today raised the stakes by saying it wants to re-open the case entirely. This would give the government and Urgenda the chance to present new arguments, and could take up to three years to complete. In the meantime, the government is legally obliged to comply with the original ruling (to cut emissions by 25% by 2020). Read More here

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18 September 2015, The Guardian, Is new Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull already a climate change turncoat? Malcolm Turnbull once endorsed common sense positions on climate change. Then he became prime minister. During the first few days of being prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull seems to be doing his best to argue about climate change with a former version of himself. I know I might have already given the game away here, but who do you think said this only five years ago? “We are as humans conducting a massive science experiment with this planet. It’s the only planet we’ve got…. We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic. We know that extreme weather events are occurring with greater and greater frequency and while it is never possible to point to one drought or one storm or one flood and say that particular incident is caused by global warming, we know that these trends are entirely consistent with the climate change forecasts with the climate models that the scientists are relying on…. We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us.” Stirring stuff eh? That was Turnbull in August 2010, speaking at the launch of a report demonstrating the technical feasibility of moving Australia to a 100% renewable energy nation. During his first question time as PM earlier this week, Turnbull was asked if he would join Labor in its aspiration (and that’s about the extent of Labor’s policy on this right now) that Australia should be generating 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. Turnbull’s response? “[Opposition leader Bill Shorten] is highlighting one of the most reckless proposals the Labor party has made. Fancy proposing, without any idea of the cost of the abatement, the cost of proposing that 50% of energy had to come from renewables! What if that reduction in emissions you needed could come more cost-effectively from carbon storage, by planting trees, by soil carbon, by using gas, by using clean coal, by energy efficiency?” What did the Turnbull of 2010 make of a plan to move away from fossil fuels that was twice as ambitious as Labor’s, that actually explained how it could be done and that proposed doing it faster? Read More here