Climate News Network 15th Nov 2017, By approaching 2100, a world set for 3.4˚C will, on present trends,
probably be the reality confronting our descendants – slightly less warm
than looked likely a year ago, analysts think. That’s the good news, you
could say.
But the bad news is twofold. First, this improvement in
planetary prospects will still leave the global temperature increase more
than twice as high as the internationally agreed target of 1.5˚C. And
secondly, it depends largely on the efforts of just two countries – China
and India. They have made significant progress in tackling climate change
in the last twelve months.
In contrast, a report by the analysts, from the
Climate Action Tracker(CAT), says that not only US climate policy has been
rolled back under President Trump. Most individual governments’ climate
commitments are going in the wrong direction. http://climatenewsnetwork.net/23422-2/
Times 15th Nov 2017, John McDonnell – Labour’s shadow chancellor: As the government continues to
flounder, it is essential that Labour begins to put in place the policies needed not just to rebuild our economy but to secure sound public finances for future generations.
The biggest single future challenge for our economy is in the steadily accumulating threat of climate change and environmental degradation. Already, this is costing us dearly: the Environmental Agency now puts the annual bill from floods at £2.2 billion a year, and, with credible forecasts showing worsening weather conditions, this has been
projected to rise as high as £12 billion.
But it is not just climate change, with all the evidence pointing to a clear link between human
activity and changes in the earth’s climate. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation now forecast that we have only 60 years of farming left globally due to soil erosion. In the UK, 85 per cent of top soil has been eroded since 1850. The Committee on Climate Change has warned that once-fertile land in the east of England could be lost “within a
generation”. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/labour-will-plan-for-fiscal-impact-of-climate-change-ksjgzwc3w
‘Political watershed’ as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal
New alliance launched at Bonn climate talks hopes to signal the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that kills 800,000 people a year with air pollution, Guardian, Damian Carrington A new alliance of 19 nations committed to quickly phasing out coal has been launched at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany. It was greeted as a “political watershed”, signalling the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that currently provides 40% of global electricity.
“The case against coal is unequivocal,” said UK climate minister Claire Perry, both on environmental and health grounds – air pollution from coal kills 800,000 people a year worldwide. “The alliance will signal to the world that the time of coal has passed.” The UK was the first nation to commit to ending coal use – by 2025 – but the electricity generated by coal has already fallen from 40% to 2% since 2012.
“There is a human cost and an environmental cost but we don’t need to pay that price when the price of renewables has plummeted,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s environment minister. “I’m thrilled to see so much global momentum for the transition to clean energy – and this is only the beginning.” The alliance aims to have 50 members by next year.
Asked about Donald Trump’s US administration, whose only event in Bonn was to promote coal, McKenna pointed out that renewable energy already employs 250,000 people in the US, compared to 50,000 in coal, and said this is the clean growth century: “The market has moved on coal.”…….
The Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt said the nation was “posing an existential threat to many of our neighbours” and that the countries backing coal phase outs came from across the political spectrum: “A door has been opened for the Australian government here.”
But Australia’s environment minister Josh Frydenberg, said coal was expected to remain the bedrock of Asia’s power supply, providing about a third of electricity in 2040. At the moment, coal generates about 75% of Australian power…..
The alliance will work by encouraging new commitments and using financing and shared technology and best practice to encourage others to phase out “unabated coal” – plants where carbon dioxide is not captured and buried below ground. Its national members are Angola, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Fiji, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/16/political-watershed-as-19-countries-pledge-to-phase-out-coal
Guardian 15th Nov 2017, A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the
consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and
refusing to underwrite their operations.
About £15bn has been divested in
the past two years, according to a new report that rates the world’s
leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel
industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.
Fifteen companies -almost all based in Europe – have fully or partially cut financial ties,
says the study by the Unfriend Coal campaign, which represents a coalition
of a dozen environmental groups incl uding Greenpeace, 350.org and the
Sierra Club.
Zurich, the world’s seventh biggest insurer, is the latest to
shift away from coal, announcing this week that it is pulling out of coal
to contribute to broader efforts to achieve the Paris accord goal of
keeping global warming below 2C. Allianz, Aviva and Axa have previously
made similar moves. Lloyd’s and Swiss Re are expected to follow in the
coming months. The campaign has a long way to go. The early movers
represent only 13% of all global insurance assets. None of the major US
insurers such as Berkshire Hathaway, AIG and Liberty Mutual have taken
action, according to the study. Despite this, the authors say the shift of
assets and coverage since 2015 is gaining momentum. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/growing-number-of-global-insurance-firms-divesting-from-fossil-fuels
Special Report: Revolt at Trump’s Pro-Coal, Pro-Nuclear & Pro-Gas Panel Rocks U.N. Climate Summit NOVEMBER 14, 2017, Democracy Now! was there when activists and Democratic lawmakers at the U.N. climate summit in Bonn, Germany, staged a full-fledged revolt Monday when the Trump administration made its official debut at this year’s conference with a forum pushing coal, gas and nuclear power. The presentation was entitled “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation.” The panel was the only official appearance by the U.S. delegation during this year’s U.N. climate summit. Of the four corporate representatives pushing nuclear, gas and coal, Lenka Kollar of NuScale Power and Amos Hochstein of Tellurian told Amy Goodman that they disagreed with Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the climate agreement.
Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’re broadcasting live from the U.N. climate summit here in Bonn, Germany. Close to 200 countries are gathered. The U.S. says that it is pulling out of the climate accord. Well, on Monday night, activists and Democratic lawmakers staged a full-fledged revolt as the Trump administration made its official debut at this year’s COP at a forum pushing coal, gas and nuclear power. The presentation was entitled “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation.” It included speakers from coal company Peabody Energy, the nuclear engineering firm NuScale Power and a gas exporter. The panel was the only official appearance by the U.S. delegation during this year’s U.N. climate summit.
Well, Democracy Now! was there Monday night as the U.S. delegation made its official debut. It didn’t go too well. At least, it didn’t begin well, with a White House consultant telling Democracy Now! we could not film him……..https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/14/special_report_revolt_at_trumps_pro
Image courtesy of Javier Zarracina, Graphics Editor, Vox
How climate change could lead to more wars in the 21st century, Vox, A new book offers a dark picture of humanity’s future. by Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com“My belief is that we will see a renaissance of violent conflict in the 21st century, and that many of these conflicts will spring from climate change.”
That’s what Harald Welzer, author of Climate Wars: Why People Will Be Killed in the 21st Century, told me in a recent interview. A professor at the University of Flensburg in Germany, Welzer studies the cultural and political implications of climate change. His book, first published in 2012, was rereleased in paperback in October.
After a new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation warning that climate change is likely to cause the largest refugee crisis in human history, I reached out to Welzer to discuss his book, which is a foreboding look at humanity’s future in a world shaped, increasingly, by climate change.
Twentieth-century wars were fought over land, religion, and economics. But Welzer argues that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over something quite different: climate change, and the shortages of water and food that will come from it.
“Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict,” he told me. “But if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.”
From the Everglades to Kilimanjaro, climate change is destroying world wonders
Number of natural world heritage sites at serious risk from global warming has doubled in three years, says the IUCN, including the Great Barrier Reef and spectacular karst caves in Europe, Guardian, Damian Carrington 14 Nov 17, From the Everglades in the US to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, climate change is destroying the many of the greatest wonders of the natural world.
Those at high risk include iconic places from the Galapagos Islands to the central Amazon and less well known but equally vibrant and unique sites such as the karst caves of Hungary and Slovakia and the monarch butterfly reserves in Mexico.
Coral reefs are particularly badly affected by rising ocean temperatures, from the Seychelles to Belize, where the northern hemisphere’s biggest reef is situated. Global heating is also causing mountain glaciers to rapidly shrink, from Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch – home to the largest Alpine glacier.
Other ecosystems being damaged are wetlands, such as the Everglades, where sea level is rising as the ocean warms and salt water is intruding. In the Sundarbans mangrove forest on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers on the Bay of Bengal, two islands have already been submerged and a dozen more are threatened. Fiercer storms are also increasing the risk of devastation.
Rising numbers of wildfires are damaging the beautiful Fynbos flowerscapes in the Cape region of South Africa and the Monarch butterfly site in Mexico. Elsewhere, warming is melting the permafrost in the newly declared Qinghai Hoh Xil heritage site, which is at 4,500m altitude in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.
Australia is especially exposed as it has 10 natural heritage sites where climate change damage is rated as high or very high risk, from its Gondwana rainforests to Shark Bay in western Australia and islands such as Fraser and Macquarie.
The new IUCN report was launched at the UN climate summit being held in Bonn, Germany, where the world’s nations are working to put the 2015 landmark Paris agreement into operation.
“Protection of world heritage sites is an international responsibility of the same governments that have signed up to the Paris agreement,” said Inger Andersen, IUCN director general. “This report sends them a clear message: climate change acts fast and is not sparing the finest treasures of our planet. This underlines the need for urgent and ambitious national commitments and actions to implement the Paris agreement.”
Climate Change and Water Woes Drove ISIS Recruiting in Iraq Battered by shifting resources, desperate farmers were driven into terror recruiters’ clutches. Can it happen again?, National Geographic, Peter Schwartzstein, 14 Nov 17, SHIRQAT, IRAQIt was a few weeks after the rains failed in the winter of 2009 that residents of Shirqat first noticed the strange bearded men.
Circling like vultures among the stalls of the town’s fertilizer market in Iraq’s northern Salahaddin governorate, they’d arrow in on the most shabbily dressed farmers, and tempt them with promises of easy riches. “Join us, and you’ll never have to worry about feeding your family,” Saleh Mohammed Al-Jabouri, a local tribal sheikh, remembers one recruiter saying.
With every flood or bout of extreme heat or cold, the jihadists would reappear, often supplementing their sales pitches with gifts. When a particularly vicious drought struck in 2010, the fifth in seven years, they doled out food baskets. When fierce winds eviscerated hundreds of eggplant fields near Kirkuk in the spring of 2012, they distributed cash. As farming communities limped from one debilitating crisis to another, the recruiters—all members of what soon became the Islamic State—began to see a return on their investment.
Two agricultural laborers in Azwai, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it farming community just south of Shirqat, ran off to join the jihadists in December 2013. Seven more from outlying villages followed a month later. By the time the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) seized this swath of Iraq—along with most of the country’s west and north—in a brutal summer-long blitzkrieg in 2014, few locals were surprised to see dozens of former fertilizer market regulars among its ranks.
“We said just wait until the next harvest, life will get better, life will become easier,” Jabouri said. “But things just weren’t getting better. There was always another disaster.”
Across rural Iraq and Syria, farmers, officials, and village elders tell similar stories of desperate farmhands swapping backhoes for assault rifles. Already battered by decades of shoddy environmental policies, which had hobbled agriculture and impoverished its dependents, these men were in no state to navigate the extra challenges of climate change. And so when ISIS came along, propelled in large part by sectarian grievances and religious fanaticism, many of the most environmentally damaged Sunni Arab villages quickly emerged as some of the deep-pocketed jihadists’ foremost recruiting grounds.
Around Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s northern Iraqi hometown, ISIS appears to have attracted much more support from water-deprived communities than from their better-resourced peers. In Tharthar subdistrict, a semi-arid expanse west of the Tigris, farmers with fields closest to the encroaching sands joined the jihadists in greater numbers than their counterparts near the river valley. Throughout 100 plus interviews conducted over three years, farmers and agricultural officials alike sometimes wondered aloud: if only we’d received a little more assistance, might this entire blood-soaked mess have been averted?
“This beast [ISIS] has many causes, but in the countryside these new problems just pushed people over the edge,” said Omar, a former agriculture ministry administrator from Mosul, who fled as the jihadists seized his city three years ago and who wished to withhold his surname for security reasons………
RIPE FOR RADICALIZATION
By 2011, much of the Iraqi countryside was in desperate financial straits. Some 39 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That’s two and a half times the country’s urban rate. Almost half lacked safe drinking water. The problems were so devastating in 2012-13 that tens of thousands of villagers ditched their fields altogether, preferring to try their luck in the slum districts of nearby cities instead………
Soaring temperatures also began playing into these [jihadists’] groups’ hands. Amid unprecedented heatwaves, farmers pumped more water in order to keep their crops alive, but in so doing merely added to the burden on the aquifers, many of which were already struggling to keep pace with demand that had previously been met by the rains and rivers. After several years of energetic groundwater extraction near the oil refining town of Baiji, Samir Saed’s two wells ran dry in early 2014, forcing him to lay off the two young men he employed as farm laborers. Jobless and angry, he suspects they soon joined ISIS.
“There are many stories like this; they were frustrated and just saw it as another type of work,” he says.
Summer temperatures in the Middle East are set to soar twice as fast as the global average, possibly threatening the inhabitability of the region by the end of the century, researchers say………
WHAT’S NEXT?
For the moment at least, ISIS is mostly defeated in Iraq. From a high of 40 percent of Iraq’s territory in late 2014, it now only controls a few isolated villages, and small chunks of largely featureless desert. But the conditions that contributed to its success in the countryside are, if anything, more pronounced than ever.
The jihadists adopted scorched earth tactics as they were beaten back, laying waste to hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland. And so for returning farmers, climate change and shoddy governance are now among the least of their worries. ISIS fighters ripped up buried irrigation pipes to mold makeshift mortars. They poisoned wells, blew up water canals, and carted off everything that was of any value, notably generators, tractors, and water pump parts……. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/climate-change-drought-drove-isis-terrorist-recruiting-iraq/
Pacific Island nations urge world leaders to act as islands expected to sink
AUSTRALIA’S tropical island neighbours may exist today, but their leaders have urged us to help them from sinking.news.com.au, Matt Young@MattYoung 14 Nov 17A LARGE swath of Pacific Island nations are slowly being eaten away until residents will be forced to evacuate and the islands eventually sink into the sea — and it’s coming sooner than we think.
This modern-day Atlantis is thanks to sea levels across small island nations that have seen a dramatic rise over the past few decades, a rate of up to 3-4 times larger than the global average. Tuvalu, in the western Pacific Ocean, will reportedly be uninhabitable by 2050, while its island neighbour Kiribati, is expected to be fully submerged by 2100.
The Maldives, which has the lowest elevation in the world and a population of 427,000, may also have sunk by the end of the century.
It has led experts — including Professor Tim Flannery, climate change expert and Professor at La Trobe University — to believe we are “on a trajectory that will see those nations compromised”.
Labour vows to factor climate change risk into economic forecasts
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell to say ‘overwhelming challenge of climate change’ must be addressed from very centre of government, Guardian, Jessica Elgot, 14 Nov 17, The risk posed by climate change would be factored into projections from the government’s independent economic forecaster if Labour took office, the shadow chancellor will announce on Tuesday.
John McDonnell will highlight the human and economic costs of manmade climate change, calling it the “greatest single public challenge” and say the government should include the fiscal risks posed by global warming in future forecasts.
The landmark change would, for the first time, put climate change on an equal footing with other complex challenges affecting the public finances such as demography.
Under a Labour government, the Office for Budget Responsibility would be given total independence, McDonnell will announce, saying the forecaster would report directly to parliament rather than the Treasury.
Speaking at the Institute for Public Policy Research on Tuesday, McDonnell will say that meeting the challenges of climate change will require “a transformation of our institutions and how our economies are run”.
McDonnell said that Labour “wants to ensure that the overwhelming challenge of climate change is addressed from the very centre of government. This includes the potential losses to the public finances.
Press-conference of the coalition Don’t nuke the climate: “Is nuclear a solution to climate change?”
Speaking: Speaking:Kerstin Rudek, BI Luchow-Dannenberg and Don’t Nuke The Climate campaign, Germany
Markus Atkinson, Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia
Vladimir Slivyak, Ecodefense, Russia
Nuclear industry and its supporters became very active inside the UN talks promoting outdated, expensive and dangerous nuclear energy as a climate friendly technology. Russia, USA and several other countries are organizing pro-nuclear side-events at COP-23 and trying to get developing world to believe in nuclear solution. The reality is that nuclear is not carbon free and far too expensive to be any kind of solution. Nuclear waste is another hot problem that doesn’t have a solution. Activists from various countries talk on why nuclear is part of problem and not part of solution. Also announcing the demonstration against false solutions for climate change on November 11 in Bonn.
Iran slams rich nations over climate talks http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/11/12/iran-slams-rich-nations-over-climate-talks Iran and its fellow developing countries have accused the world’s richest nations of eroding trust and trying to undermine talks about the Paris agreement. Iran has delivered a blistering assessment of the world’s richest countries’ performance during UN climate negotiations, accusing them of eroding trust and censoring developing nations.
In an unusually strong statement, Iran’s representative told talks in Bonn on Saturday the group of more than 20 like-minded developing countries it spoke for believed others were trying to rewrite the Paris agreement.
The agreement, like the UN climate convention, only worked when all parties had trust in each other and worked together in good faith, he said.
“So soon after the Paris agreement entered into force we are already seeing that trust and good faith being eroded by constant attempts to move away from prior agreements, solemn pledges and treaty obligations,” he said.
“This does not lay a good foundation for long-lasting, equitable and durable action on climate change.”
And in negotiations over finance, technology and building the capacity of nations to cut emissions, suggestions put forward by developing country blocs were “immediately rejected outright by developed countries”.
“What we are seeing now is a concerted effort by developed countries to drop G77 and LMDC proposals from the table in order to focus further negotiations only on developed countries’ positions,” Iran’s representative said.
“Censoring other parties’ views from being included into negotiating text as the basis of negotiations is clearly not in good faith.”
The Saturday evening session was designed as a mid-COP23 update on the various negotiation bodies that have been working on different aspects of implementing the Paris agreement.
While the chairs of each of the bodies generally gave the impression good progress was being made, almost all the country groups said they were disappointed or concerned about the slow pace.
Ecuador said its G77+China group – representing 134 developing countries – was especially worried about the lack of progress on all financial matters.
This concern was echoed by Mali on behalf of African countries.
Finance is important to developing countries, who cannot afford on their own to cut emissions or adapt to climate change.
“One component is still missing – not from (Fiji) but from our developed country parties – and that is the political will that is needed to engage constructively towards the highest priority of ensuring a balanced progress on all agenda items,” Ecuador official Walter Schuldt said.
And the Maldives, speaking for small island states, accused some countries of taking a “seemingly hard stance” by wanting to limit access to finance.
Australian environment ambassador Patrick Suckling said its Umbrella Group of non-EU developed countries – including the US, Canada and New Zealand – was generally heartened that everyone at the negotiations wanted to see progress.
But Australia’s bloc was disappointed by persistent efforts from some countries to work outside the mandates of the Paris agreement.
Tension has arisen over adding extra items to the official agenda, including a formal discussion about increasing pledges for action before the Paris deal starts in 2020.
“(This) is hampering the very progress we are seeking,” Mr Suckling said.
The European Union said it did not recognise any lack of political will during negotiations and there was no disagreement about the urgency of pre-2020 action – only what form discussions should take.
Morocco, which has been working with countries on a solution to this dispute, also reported there was a clearly unanimous view on the importance of early action on climate change.
It said there was no consensus yet but was convinced once could be reached.
Greenpeace’s Jens Mattias Clausen said giving space to constructive discussions about pre-2020 ambitions was a way developed countries could show good faith to their partners.
“These discussions need to take place now, not only on climate action but also on issues such as the adaptation fund, to build trust and ensure that vulnerable countries will get the help they need,” he told AAP.
Al Gore: Voting Trump out in 2020 could save Paris Climate Agreement
‘A new president could simply give 30 days notice and the United States is back in the agreement,’ says former US Vice President ,Independent, Maya Oppenheim@mayaoppenheimAl Gore has suggested America could stay in the Paris Climate Agreement if a new president gets into the White House in 2020.
President Donald Trump announced he would be withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement in June, making the US as the only country in the world not to get behind the framework deal to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement states that signatories cannot withdraw until 4 November 2019 but the actual departure would not become official until the following year.
“If there is a new president … a new president could simply give 30 days notice, and the United States is back in the agreement,” the former US Vice President told an audience at COP23, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
Mr Gore added: “The first date upon which the United States could actually leave the Paris Agreement happens to be the first day after the next presidential election in 2020 so that’s good news”……..
COP23: African youth fighting for climate action, DW, 12 Nov 17Africa is harnessing the power of its emerging youth demographic to spearhead efforts to tackle climate change. By 2050, UNICEF estimates that approximately two out of every five children on our planet will be African. Africa’s rapidly burgeoning young generation is viewed by some as a precursor to a range of serious problems across the continent, ranging from unemployment to further migration crises. But they could very well be the key to confronting one of the biggest challenges of our time: climate change.
As delegates from across Africa gather for the latest round of international climate talks in Bonn this week, young African leaders and experts are hosting their own side-events to draw attention to their own fight against climate change, while highlighting the importance of African youth getting involved in the process.
The African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) was established back in 2006 shortly before COP12 talks kicked off in Nairobi, Kenya. Since then, support for climate change action among the African youth has grown considerably, as they actively work to raise awareness in their communities and hold their governments to account for inaction.
Young generation best equipped to tackle climate change
Maureen Sigauke is the co-founder of the community-based organization, Green Active Citizens Trust in Zimbabwe and was a speaker at WWF’s COP23 Africa Day panel, Youth and Climate Change in Africa. She explained to DW why young Africans should act now to secure their futures, when the effects of climate change will be more clearly felt across the continent.
“I think that it is important to know that climate change is a threat to development; it is a threat to job security – if floods happen it can threaten your job – it’s a threat to human rights, it’s a threat to economic development, it’s a threat to sustainable access to basic human rights such as food, shelter and poverty alleviation, particularly in the African case. So that’s why people should care, because everything that we know could change if climate change continues unabated.”…….http://www.dw.com/en/cop23-african-youth-fighting-for-climate-action/a-41333083
DeSmog Blog, By Graham Readfearn • Wednesday, November 8, 2017 We’re at that time of year when delegations from countries around the world gather for the latest round of United Nations climate negotiations — this time in Bonn, Germany.
For climate science deniers, this is also the time of year to polish up their dodgy climate science talking points and those mythical conspiracy theories about the UN, new world orders, secretive global government plans, and other such illuminati activities.
One recurring feature of these efforts is what’s known as quote mining, where lines are taken out of context to try and discredit people associated with climate science or the UN. If that doesn’t work, then just make up words that people never said.
Here’s how it usually works. The “source” for a particular quote will invariably lead you down a rabbit hole, echoing with the sounds of other climate science deniers quoting the same material. If a misrepresentation occurs in two different places, this does not suddenly make it real.
Rarely, if ever, will the quote be linked to a primary source that might give you some idea of the context, relevance, or the actual date when the quote was supposedly delivered.
At other times, the claimed “quote” turns out not to have been a quote at all, but a piece of reported speech or a headline that someone stuck quote marks around to turn it into a quote. This is not how quoting people works.
nuclear-news 