Rooted

Nourishing the environmental debate

Dr Rajendra Pachauri endorses 350 ppm target

August 26, 2009 – 12:12 pm, by Anna Rose

pachauri-350Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Dr Rajendra Rachauri, said today in an interview with Agence France Presse reporter Marlowe Hood:

“As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations,” said Rajendra Pachauri when asked if he supported calls to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 350 parts per million (ppm).

“But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.”

To see the article click here.


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Cairnsgate

August 10, 2009 – 10:25 pm, by John Hepburn

Ok, sorry about the tabloid title, but this is a pretty disturbing story. Following my earlier post about the Pacific Island Forum, here is the analysis of the PIF from Shirley Atatagi – climate political advisor for Greenpeace in the Pacific.

International climate negotiations just got dirty, even if the final stage hasn’t started. Australia and New Zealand’s corrupt and underhanded means of getting their way inside the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) carries the stench of colonialism. It is no secret that in this fora they continue to use their small contributions to our poor countries as a means of ensuring absolute power in the region. I am reminded of the phrase Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely

I knew from the moment we started talking to delegates in Cairns that something nasty was about to go down. What I underestimated was Australia’s ability to pull the rug from under our feet for its own gain.

The structure of the meetings changed this year. Usually a Forum Officials Committee (FOC) is held a day before the Leaders Retreat, so that the experts can thrash out all the issues and meeting papers and Leaders are briefed accordingly and given draft conclusions. This year, there was no FOC meeting, everything was just dumped on the Leaders plates (Trade, Climate Change etc)

Meeting papers for Cairns arrived in delegates email inboxes on Sunday night and Monday morning. Some didn’t get them at all. The meeting papers were for the Leaders only and contained draft declarations on technical issues like climate change. There were no climate change experts from the Pacific in Cairns.

We were told by an official that at the Small Islands States (SIS) caucus meeting on Tuesday a suggestion was made by a senior member of the Secretariat to ‘tone down the language’ when the delegates were discussing emission reduction targets. The member of the Secretariat who made the suggestion was a Pacific Islander. Absurd? Not if you consider that two thirds of the Secretariat is funded by Australia and NZ.

The SIS meeting concluded at lunchtime on Tuesday and the outcomes were announced at a press conference. The SIS reiterated the call to industrialised countries for a global reduction average of 45% below 1990 levels by 2020. The SIS Communiqué, as per tradition, was expected to come out that same day. To date, it still has not been released. Why is this a big deal? Every year, the SIS communiqué is the first outcome of these meetings and is released before the main PIF communiqué is compiled. The SIS caucus consist of the world’s most vulnerable countries (Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands etc) so the SIS communiqué is traditionally more ambitious, sounds more urgent and is more genuine in its climate change resolutions.

Every year it sets a benchmark for climate change resolutions that the PIF communiqué usually fails to achieve. There was no way the Rudd Government were going to allow this year on their soil, for fear it would give ammunition to the many Australians who want their government to take a stronger position on climate change.

A Climate Change side event was organised and slots were offered to Greenpeace and AOSIS Chairwoman Ambassador Dr. Dessima Williams among others. It was bad enough that the side event was deliberately scheduled to happen on the morning that the Leaders were away on their retreat (so that they wont hear the messages) but media were also banned. The explanation given by the Secretariat was that they wanted to prevent “mixed messages” being sent out. And what is that mixed message you might ask: AOSIS calling strongly for global efforts to ensure any temperature rise is kept well below 1.5 degrees C. Greenpeace supporting the call by AOSIS for more than 45% reductions in global emissions by 2020, Australia pours more money to increase its coal production. (Yes, coal! Get the picture?) The positions of AOSIS (Pacific are a part of AOSIS) are far more ambitious that what Australia and New Zealand are prepared to do so it seems the strategy was control what gets out and hoodwink Pacific Prime Minister into endorsing 2 degrees C as a way of undermining their own negotiators in AOSIS. Well done Australia and NZ!

The PIF Communiqué 2009 contains a document (now attached as Annex A) that was only given to the Leaders in Cairns. Our Leaders should have been given time to seek the advice of their Environment Ministries/Climate Change experts. The Australia and New Zealand governments are well aware of the Pacific’s negotiating positions on climate change. As part of AOSIS, the Pacific is calling for temperature rise to be limited to 1.5 degrees C (NOT 2 degrees C), aggregate emission reductions from industrialised nations of 95% by 2050 (NOT 50% by 2050)

Due to the lack of capacity in these countries, not all arms of government are thoroughly briefed on the negotiations all the time. Often Prime Ministers only have a limited knowledge of these issues due to having too much to deal with. The Australian government as the host country who introduced the “Pacific Call for Action on Climate Change” (yes the Annex A document was all them!) at the Leaders level, should have suggested in good faith, that Leaders bring with them Climate Change experts to advise on this document. But it was too convenient to be courteous and fair!

The world should know that the Pacific Islands Forum has today ceased to become relevant to the people of the Pacific and to the issues that really matter. Climate Change is the biggest security threat facing the region right now and the scientific projections are dire. Yet the former colonial powers have succeeded in manipulating the science-based positions of our government while exploiting the low level of technical understanding that our Leaders have on this issue. This is scandalous at most. Getting our Leaders to endorse 2 degrees as the limit in global temperature increases is a death sentence for small island countries like Tuvalu and Kiribati that the PIF supposedly serves.

Cairnsgate is a sign that neo-colonialism is an uglier and indiscriminate form of domination.

Shirley Atatagi is from Samoa and is Greenpeace’s Pacific Political Advisor.

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Rudd’s dilemma at PIF

August 6, 2009 – 7:47 am, by John Hepburn

Pacific leaders are meeting in Cairns today for the Pacific Island Forum. In recent years the agenda has been dominated by issues of regional stability including the intervention in the Solomons and more recently the troubling political events in Fiji. But with the forum happening in Australia for the first time in over a decade, and climate change at the top of the international political agenda, other issues are set to dominate.

Pacific Islands are literally on the front line of climate change. The Prime Minister of Tuvalu has raised the prospect of having to relocate their entire country because of rising sea levels and other climate impacts. The Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), which includes the Pacific Islands, has become the moral conscience of the international climate negotiations, set to conclude in Copenhagen in December. Their calls for developed countries such as Australia to cut emissions by over 40% within the next decade put Australia’s low and highly conditional target (5-25%) into stark relief.

Australia too is vulnerable to climate change, but it is expected that Kevin Rudd will carefully manage relations during the Forum to keep any strong climate statements out of the Forum Communiqué. There will be some heavy diplomatic manoeuvrings going on behind the scenes to keep climate of the agenda and real emission cuts off the table.

Australia’s growing coal exports coupled with low emissions targets and the relentless push for loopholes and exemptions in the international climate negotiations put the Rudd Government’s climate position on a collision course with the Pacific. While our neighbours are fighting for their survival, Australia is rapidly doubling our coal export capacity and entrenching our position as the world’s biggest coal pusher.

Despite all of the wrangling and economic fear mongering over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, any reductions in greenhouse pollution through even a 25% target (the very top end of the Government’s proposal) will be undone many times over by the increased coal exports from NSW and Queensland.

Climate change remains confusing so long as the debate continues to be fixed on numbers, statistics and complex economic instruments. But when you come back to the bottom line, it’s really quite simple. We need to stop putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. To do this we need to stop digging up and burning fossil fuels – and coal is the biggest problem. If we are burning more coal (regardless of where it is burnt), we are making climate change worse.

Having grown up in Central Queensland, I understand the role that coal plays in Queensland and indeed in the national psyche. My father spent his entire working life in the coal industry and as a graduate engineer I spent my first few years out of university building equipment for coal mines. But time moves on. Computers replaced the abacus, mobile phones replaced carrier pidgeons, and renewable energy will replace coal.

It will take a serious effort to make the transition from coal to clean energy in a way that supports coal dependent communities and workers, but the economic impact of moving away from coal will be far less than most people imagine. In Queensland, tourism employs far more people than the entire mining sector and will be hard hit by climate change. But perhaps the biggest surprise is the royalty payments.

This year, the Queensland Government received around $1.5 billion in royalty payments from the coal industry. In the same breath, $1.3 billion of public money was spent on coal infrastructure – 90% of the total royalty payments. So much for private enterprise. And if you factor in the costs of the negative health and environmental impacts of coal mining the net economic contribution of the industry starts to look even less appealing.

We need to choose whether we want to continue to be a quarry economy, or if we are ready to move into the twenty first century and embrace the renewable energy revolution that is slowly but surely building momentum. At the moment, Rudd and Bligh are still backing the coal industry, with only a token hedge on renewables.

Climate politics in Australia is a struggle over vested interests. For their part, Pacific countries do not have a domestic fossil fuel lobby running full-page ads in national newspapers threatening job losses if we take serious action on climate change. They don’t have a greenhouse mafia whose web of influence entraps politicians at all levels of Government. It means that they can speak the truth about climate change, and call for what is actually required to protect both their future and ours.

In the absence of real honesty or leadership from our own political leaders, the Pacific are our moral conscience on climate change.

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Dear Mr Ferguson,

July 24, 2009 – 9:39 am, by John Hepburn

Dear Martin,

Thanks for your brilliant treatise in the Australian this morning. It is inspiring to see that one with so much responsibility is blessed with such vision.

The rigour with which you swept away ideology and ‘green faith’ with cold hard facts revealed your own unswerving commitment to rational analysis and objectivity. It was a shame that you didn’t mention anything about the costs or impracticality of carbon capture and storage, but perhaps you hadn’t yet seen the new study from Harvard that shows just how expensive CCS is likely to be.

But is great that you are so practical and understand the cold hard reality of CCS.

And I loved it how you subtly revealed your profound humanity through your concern for the most vulnerable communities in developing countries. No doubt your compassions for the poor in Bangladesh will continue to be on display when they are seeking asylum here in Australia as a result of rising sea levels (although perhaps you will no longer be in Government then?).

Thanks Martin, you are an inspiration to us all.

John

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Keep Pedalling

July 23, 2009 – 10:11 am, by Ruth Brown

This may be a little too obnoxiously Melbourne, but hopefully it’s one the whole pedal-pushing, hemp pants crowd can still enjoy:

This new film clip from Melbourne hip-hop artist(s?) Hugo and Treats for a song called ‘Keep Pedalling’ features a cast comprised entirely of members of the Brunswick Free Ride, a group of inner-northern Melbourne types who hit the streets on two wheels en masse with the slogan “No politics, just bicycles:

[vie TreeHugger]

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Power Shift 2009 Flash Mob Dance

July 17, 2009 – 1:01 pm, by Anna Rose

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They’re starting to laugh at us already

July 16, 2009 – 11:46 am, by John Hepburn

Australia is becoming a laughing stock. The country blessed with some of the most abundant renewable energy resources on earth is rapidly squandering our poll position in the race to a clean energy future.

A friend of mine just returned from the PV Japan conference where he said people were asking if it is true that Australia just closed the only Solar PV manufacturing plant – while other countries are building turnkey solar PV manufacturing plants in record time. He guessed that it was only the politeness of Japanese culture that stopped people from laughing out loud.

We have developed a lot of the technologies that are underpinning a renewable energy boom in other countries.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports this week that China is putting up the great green wall to make sure that domestic renewable energy companies get the support they need to dominate the rapidly expanding market for renewable energy.

It’s embarrassing. Australia is stuck in a quarry mentality. We still don’t have decent renewable energy legislation and the CPRS will do nothing to drive renewables.

If we are to get serious about renewable energy industry development, we need the renewable energy target in place, and we need is a strong, national feed-in tarrif to drive investment in all renewable technologies – not just household PV. And we need it soon. Otherwise we’ll just be buying it all in from China, Japan, the US and Germany. Sound familiar?

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Do you love takeaway coffee more than the planet? Try this cup

July 13, 2009 – 3:09 pm, by Sophie Black

Here in the Crikey bunker, there’s a manilla folder labelled “Intern Survival Kit.”

Inside, each starry eyed work experience kid will find the door code scribbled on a Post It note, a half chewed pencil, some instructions written by an anonymous helper with tips such as

“don’t look the editor in the eye”

“there are no toilets” and

“First Dog is the only one in here who knows what he’s doing”

and a detailed map pointing to the five closest coffee joints in town.

The first lesson for every intern: caffeine. Not to get too dramatic about it, but coffee is, in fact, more necessary than air, water and protein to some members of this office.

Offer to go on a coffee run and we’re yours forever. If you don’t offer, we’ll ask. Then tell. Don’t judge us, we don’t care.

Now all this is all very well and good until you do the cup count. The equivalent of three paddocks’ worth of foliage is consumed each week in order for the Crikey office to keep functioning like normal humans.

Enter KeepCup. Love coffee? Love the planet? Love coffee more than the planet?

Then this plastic vessel is for you.

keepcup-6-small

Created with the aide of development grants from Design Victoria and City of Melbourne, KeepCups have been designed, tooled, owned and manufactured in Australia and they’re made from food grade polypropylene. At the end of life (approximately four years) KeepCup can be recycled or the components can be replaced.

Sure, it’s not very cool to carry your own plastic cup to the counter, but at least it’s a pretty colour. And what’s cool compared to all those extra trees? Try telling the dead Amazon you’re too cool.

Wean yourself off the taste of coffee filtered through the corpses of trees and say hello to a reusable cup that keeps the beverage hot and doesn’t smell plasticky to boot.

The Crikey team all chose a natty colour combination each and then dutifully selected their beverage of choice by penning in the corresponding coffee menu item on the rubber band that encircles the cup (two uses: ensures the cup is not too hot to hold and means you can personalise your cup.)

At Crikey we review without fear or favour, so here are the (mixed) responses. Negative reviewers shall henceforth be labelled baby killers:

Ruth Brown — Strong skinny latte: The cup has all the features of a regular paper cup, but with the added sense of smugness and self-satisfaction that comes from not going through a tree’s worth of cardboard every month. I’m a big fan.

Eleri Harris — Latte: Mmmm… difficult to clean if left for some time.

Leigh ‘Global Warming Sceptic’ Josey — Latte with one: I’d prefer to drink out of a whale’s tusk.

Jane Nethercote — Strong latte with half: Guilt was affecting my morning coffee; now the virtue enhances the taste. I like that the KC simulates a normal takeaway coffee cup so that baristas don’t get too snippy about having to use it. Good thing is, even if they don’t like me using it, no-one will arc up because they would look like they hated the environment.

Jonathan Green — Large skinny latte: I’m tremendously impressed with my new KeepCup. I feel like I’m saving the planet, one paper cup at a time. All of this in a range of natty decorator colours.

First ‘I hate democracy’ Dog — Large skinny flat white: I think I’d rather use environmentally sound recycled paper cups than this cancer causing toxic garbage destined for land fill with a half life of 100,000 years.*

Sophie Black — Long macchiato: I like the font. And I for one will not be telling my tiny, big eyed future child that the reason there are no trees to build a cubby in is because mummy really secretly preferred the feel of a corregated cardboard cup to a rubber band.

Test it out for yourself.

*note: this wildly inaccurate assertion does not reflect this website’s views nor those of the author. As noted above, KeepCup is completely recyclable and does not cause cancer.

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Ooops. The nuclear ’solution’ just melted down.

July 7, 2009 – 10:37 am, by Tim Hollo

For all those who suggest that nuclear power is the only solution to climate change, there’s a little spanner in the works – nukes don’t deal with the heat…

The Times of London is reporting that:

France is being forced to import electricity from Britain to cope with a summer heatwave that has helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action.

As temperatures in France head up over 30C (not hot for us, sure, but it is for them!), the cooling water gets too hot and the plants need to be ramped way down or even shut down to avoid breaching safe operational temperatures. Coinciding with increased demand for electricity in hotter weather, this ain’t good news for the world’s only power sector heavily reliant on nukes.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. But, as Paris sizzles in the summer more frequently, it is happening more often. And the trend is only due to increase.

On the other hand, some forms of renewables do well in a climate changing world. Solar thermal obviously will be helped by greater heat, and wind and ocean power will benefit from greater turbulence in both systems. Geothermal won’t be impacted at all. Only bioenergy, the least attractive renewable source to many anyway, stands to be negatively impacted by climate scenarios.

This is, of course, only one more reason on top of several others why nuclear is no solution. The massive cost blowouts in every nuclear development for decades is one, the very long lead times is another, and the intractable waste issue – linked to nuclear weapons proliferation – is the most critical. But heat shutting down existing plant is a killer from a base PR point of view ;-)

As they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

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Fielding doesn’t buy man made global warming

June 25, 2009 – 12:42 pm, by Sophie Black

We tried.

“I need to hear an explanation of why carbon emissions have been going up over the last decade and temperatures haven’t been going up,” said Senator Steve Fielding.

Crikey heeded the call. We asked climate science researcher Ian McHugh to spell it out. He explained:

Over any time scale you choose, there are multiple influences on climate, and these influences in turn vary on different time scales. For example, the sunspot cycle (which affects the sun’s solar output) varies across about 11 years. The southern oscillation (ie. El Nino/La Nina cycles)  - the dynamics of which are not particularly well understood or predicted  - has a quasi-decadal cycle (three to seven years).

And this is just one of a number of such regional oscillations internal to the climate system that have global consequences for climate. Other events such as volcanic eruptions also have transient effects.

Given that the climate state over a given period is the result of the combination of these effects, you are bound to see a fair bit of noise in the time series. Steve Fielding’s HadCRU data shows this noise, and it should be clear that over shorter periods – say, of much less than a decade - it would be dangerous to draw conclusions about trends in climate.

Read the rest here.

But Fielding is not buying man made global warming.

As The Age reports,

Senator Fielding yesterday released a response to chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, saying they had failed to explain why air temperatures had not risen at the same rate as carbon emissions, and had in fact cooled since 1998.

“Global temperature isn’t rising,” said his response, which was written by four scientists noted for being climate sceptics, including researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Professor Bob Carter.

Said Fielding:

“Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven’t been going up and, therefore, there hasn’t been in the last 15 years a period of global warming.

“I think that global warming is real, and climate change is real, but on average global temperatures have stayed steady while carbon emissions have increased over the last 15 years. Man-made carbon emissions don’t appear to be causing it.”

Meanwhile, as Senator Fielding did his bit to “blow apart the great global warming scare” , Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama discussed the issue of global warming with US President Barack Obama during a phone call yesterday.

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