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The nuclear industry and the impact of coronavirus

April 2, 2020 Posted by | health, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Trump repeatedly reverses his decisions – but if he pressed the nuclear button, there’s no reversing

The Coronavirus Teaches Us Not to Let Trump Press the Nuclear Button  BY TOM Z. COLLINA, DEFENSE ONE, POLICY DIRECTOR, PLOUGHSHARES FUND  1 Apr 20, Some of the president’s poor decisions on COVID-19, like proposing to reopen the nation by Easter, have been reversed. But a presidential decision to start nuclear war cannot be.

President Trump has swung from calling the coronavirus pandemic “totally under control” to a “national emergency” and back. Trump’s latest idea that the nation could be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter” did not stand up to scrutiny. Amazingly, we are months into this crisis and the president is still struggling to get it right.

But what if the president needs to get a decision right the very first time, no do-overs? And what if the wrong decision could lead to a disaster even worse than COVID-19?

Chillingly, that is where we find ourselves on another underappreciated but even more catastrophic threat: —nuclear war. Instead of a relatively slow-moving pandemic, this crisis could have involved strategic warning of a massive Russian nuclear attack. The president would have not weeks but just minutes to decide if the attack was real and, if so, whether to launch U.S. nuclear weapons before the attack arrives. If he decides to launch, there is no going back. No mulligans.

What would the president do? Judging by the coronavirus experience, Trump would likely be uninformed about the specifics of the threat and so would fall back on his gut instincts, assume he knows best, and proceed with dangerous over-confidence. But unlike the current crisis, he would only have time to consult with a few advisors, under intense time pressure, and only if he chooses to. The president has the sole authority to order the launch of U.S. nuclear weapons with no oversight from Congress, the Secretary of Defense, or anyone else …….

It is a deeply troubling reality that if early warning systems show a massive nuclear attack on the way, the president might decide to launch an immediate retaliation and has the absolute authority to do so. This would be a catastrophically bad decision for a number of important reasons, none of which may be obvious to an uninformed president.

First and foremost, the president might not know that the attack is probably a false alarm. There have been multiple false alarms like this in the United States and Russia, and the rise of sophisticated cyberattacks make this danger even worse…..

We need to limit the president’s unchecked and unnecessary authority to launch. Trump’s reckless mistakes on COVID-19 are a call to action: we cannot allow the president to make a unilateral decision to start nuclear war.https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/04/coronavirus-teaches-us-not-let-trump-press-nuclear-button/164280/

April 2, 2020 Posted by | Trump - personality, USA | Leave a comment

Pandemic is distracting the world from an even bigger emergency – global heating

Beneath the virus lurks a bigger emergency, but the world is distracted from the climate threat, SMH, Bob Carr  2 Apr 20, What did our battered old planet do to bring this run of wretchedly bad luck? Just before the 2008 Wall Street disaster, Washington was about to force emitters to pay for the privilege of dumping carbon waste in the upper atmosphere. Congress approved a cap and trade scheme so its economy could trade its way to a low carbon future. In a similar spirit the Rudd government was legislating its own carbon trading model.

Then the financial crisis knocked everyone sideways. The carbon lobby in both countries was able to talk job losses and higher taxes. The propaganda was a pushover. Legislation died in the US and Australian senates. And the world kept warming.

Last month the temperature on the Antarctic peninsular hit 65 degrees Fahrenheit, beating all previous records. For the globe, 2019 was the second hottest year on record, and the hottest without the contribution of a big El Nino.

The coming decade may be our last chance to contain the chaos driven by humankind’s craziest experiment: the idea that carbon can be stored in the thin filigree of air around the planet. The Paris Agreement provides a road map and the falling price of renewables a market impulse. ….

In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, to their credit, still find space to record the conclusion of leading reef scientist, Terry Hughes, that there is a third major bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef now under way. This follows the bleachings of 2016 and 2017. This is every bit a climate event as were the mega fires over Christmas.

Yet the irrevocable loss of healthy coral may not galvanise the way fires did…..

Meanwhile,  the pandemic emergency may kill off the Glasgow conference on climate planned for November. The UN event is aimed at averting runaway climate change by keeping the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.  ……

if the breaking up of permafrost in the Arctic circle assumes an extra ferocity. That would release plumes of methane, 30 times more lethal at trapping heat than carbon, but on a scale to blow apart every calibration of how fast climate is shifting.

For Australia, Black Swan climate events could include a cyclone beyond what we have seen before, hitting the Queensland coast. Experts say there is still enough unburnt bush to give us a fire season as bad as the last, even next season – if we suffer the same malevolent mix of heat, low humidity and strong wind……

Beneath news of virus and slump there simmers an even bigger story. The planet keeps warming. And there’s no guarantee the rate may not pick up alarmingly. ……https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/beneath-the-virus-lurks-a-bigger-emergency-but-the-world-is-distracted-from-the-climate-threat-20200328-p54et4.html

April 2, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

Trump doesn’t ‘get it’ -climate change as the next great engine for the next pandemic

With the Coronavirus, It’s Again Trump vs. Mother Nature, The president’s failure to understand his limits is very costly. NYT, By Thomas L. Friedman, March 31, 2020

  • Today’s news quiz: What do these data points have in common?Jan. 22: President Trump is asked by CNBC: “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” Trump answers: “No. Not at all. And we’re, we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. … It’s — going to be just fine.”

    Jan. 31: Moving to counter the spreading coronavirus outbreak, Trump bars entry by most foreign nationals who had recently visited China…….

Nov. 26, 2018: CNN reports that Trump “dismissed a study produced by his own administration … and more than 300 leading climate scientists, warning of the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change.” Asked why, Trump told reporters, “I don’t believe it.” Asked if he read it, Trump said, “some.”

March 30, 2020: This newspaper reports that Trump completed plans to scrap Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency standards that limited climate-warming tailpipe pollution — a move that will “allow cars on

American roads to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the vehicles.”

What’s the common theme? We have a president who is enamored with markets but ignorant of Mother Nature, and we have paid a steep, steep price for that — and will pay an even bigger price when it comes to climate change, if Trump remains in charge……..

 there is one huge difference between the coronavirus and climate change: Climate change doesn’t “peak” — and then flatten out and then maybe dissipate or be permanently prevented by vaccine — so normal life resumes.

No, when the Greenland and Antarctic ice melts, it’s gone, and we humans will have to contend with the implications of sea level rise, mass movements of populations and various kinds of extreme weather — wetter wets, hotter hots and drier dries — forever.

There is no herd immunity to climate change. There are only endless impacts on the herd.

Thinking about climate change, even in the middle of this pandemic, is actually useful in a number of ways. For starters, they follow similar natural laws and have common mitigation strategies………

Finally, epidemiologists will tell you that climate change may well be the next great engine for the next pandemic — only this virus could easily be carried by mosquitoes, which, because of warmer temperatures in the global north, are able to migrate up from places they’ve never migrated from before.

For all these reasons, as we invest in infrastructure to stimulate our economy out of this corona crisis, we should be doing it to make our society more resilient against both pandemics and climate change. ……

Now that we have tasted Mother Nature’s wrath in the form of both Covid-19 and climate change, let’s get her on our side. She’s as happy to help as to destroy. Let’s use chemistry, biology and physics, not to mention sun and wind, to create the vaccines and power systems that immunize us from viruses and weather extremes — and not double down on bad habits that will only make us sick again. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/opinion/covid-trump-climate-change.html

April 2, 2020 Posted by | climate change, Trump - personality, USA | Leave a comment

Sweden’s Vattenfall AB’s 44-year-old Ringhals-1 shut down, as energy prices fall

Cheap Energy Just Shut Down a Nuclear Reactor  (Bloomberg) 1 April 20, — The latest victim of the global slump in energy prices is an old Swedish nuclear reactor that will stay offline until at least the end of summer. Electricity prices in the Nordic market were plunging even before the coronavirus began to cripple economies and hurt demand worldwide. That’s because of the build-up of a huge surplus of future supply in the form of water in the r eservoirs and snow-pack in the mountains. Vattenfall AB’s 44-year-old Ringhals-1 facility will be switched off until at least the end of September, the operator said in a statement with the Nord Pool exchange. It was already down for maintenance since March 13.

Vattenfall AB’s 44-year-old Ringhals-1 facility will be switched off until at least the end of September……
As European prices slump, weighed down by lower demand and the slide in fuel and carbon costs, more plants will struggle to make enough profit. In the U.K., margins at some gas-fired plants could drop as much as 30% year-on-year if demand recovers slowly, according to Aurora Energy Research.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/energy-price-slump-claims-new-victim-as-swedish-reactor-shuts

April 2, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, Sweden | Leave a comment

The Russian point of view on nuclear arms control

April 2, 2020 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Different federal laws complicate legal case about radiation exposure and teenager’s brain cancer

Clock Ticking for Florida Family Alleging Radiation Exposure Caused Teen’s Cancer

The appellate panel must decide how two different federal laws should intersect. Law.com By Raychel Lean | April 01, 2020 A federal wrongful death lawsuit alleging exposure to radiation from nuclear materials caused a South Florida teenager’s brain cancer had its moment before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday as attorneys debated whether Florida’s four-year statute of limitations should apply.

The appellate panel must decide how two different federal laws should intersect. While 42 U.S.C. § 9658 preempts state time limits for lawsuits involving nuclear incidents, the Price-Anderson Act adopts state law as “the rules for decision.”

The question arose after Palm Beach County resident Cynthia Santiago sued in the Southern District of Florida in 2014, five years after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at 13. When she died about two years later, her parents Joselyn and Steve Santiago became personal representatives.

The complaint blamed Connecticut-based aircraft maker United Technologies Corp., alleging its Palm Beach County engineering facility released radioactive materials, heavy metals and semi-volatiles in The Acreage, where several children were also reportedly diagnosed with brain tumors. …… https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2020/04/01/clock-ticking-for-florida-family-alleging-radiation-exposure-caused-teens-cancer/?slreturn=20200301190656

The court has yet to rule.

April 2, 2020 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

New hypersonic weaponry complicates Nuclear Arms Control Regime

Fitting Hypersonic Weapons into the Nuclear Arms Control Regime, Union of Concerned Scientists, CAMERON TRACY, | APRIL 1, 2020, “……. hypersonic weapons could be a game-changer when it comes to nuclear arms control policy. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the only active treaty limiting the deployment of US and Russian nuclear weapons, does not explicitly restrict hypersonic missiles—an omission that turns out to be intentional (see below). Either nation could conceivably take advantage of this gap in the treaty’s coverage to expand their nuclear-capable missile forces, unfettered by the carefully constructed arms control regime that protects global nuclear stability.Fortunately, this perilous scenario can be easily averted, so long as the United States and Russia take steps to ensure that arms control policy keeps pace with emerging missile technologies………

The advent of hypersonic weaponry introduces a new complication to the arms control landscape. Fortunately, New START is a flexible treaty. It includes specific provisions for dealing with emerging weapon systems via its Bilateral Consultative Commission. And, as Russia has demonstrated, hypersonic weapons can be incorporated into existing arms control protocols.

With the United States and Russia suddenly in agreement on the need to limit the deployment of hypersonic missiles, now is an ideal time to explicitly and transparently address these weapons under the New START framework. Doing so would ensure that nuclear arms limitations remain robust, even as tensions flare. With the clock ticking on renewal, neither nation can afford to let a hypersonic arms race get in the way of a proven instrument of global security. https://allthingsnuclear.org/ctracy/fitting-hypersonic-weapons-into-the-nuclear-arms-control-regime

New START’s hypersonic gap

New START sets limits on the deployment of US and Russian nuclear forces. Because these nations possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, it constitutes the bedrock of modern nuclear arms control.

The treaty’s core provisions were carefully crafted to address the complexities of nuclear weapons technology. It does not directly limit the number of nuclear warheads either nation may possess, as these are difficult to track and account for. Rather, it focuses on the nuclear warhead delivery systems—ground-launched missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and heavy bomber aircraft—by which these destructive payloads can be carried intercontinental distances. New START limits the number of these systems each nation may possess (up to 800) and deploy (up to 700), as well as the number of warheads that can be mounted on them (up to 1,550).

April 2, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Regulatory Commissions plans for lengthy lifetimes for U.S. nuclear power plants

April 2, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Montgomery County officials not happy with Exelon’s Limerick Nuclear Power Plant plans for addressing Covid19

Montgomery County officials question social distancing at Limerick nuclear plant, abc Action News, By Bob Brooks,  April 1, 2020 

LIMERICK TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — There’s a major dispute brewing between Montgomery County and the Exelon Corporation, and it all has to do with the coronavirus and the Limerick nuclear power plant.

A parking lot has been designated for the new contractors that have been hired as the annual refuel of the reactor maintenance project is underway.

But according to Montgomery County there’s a big problem.

Dr. Valerie A. Arkoosh, chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, says back on March 16, Exelon, the company that runs the Limerick nuclear plant, gave them a lackluster social distancing plan.

She said, “We learned of plans to bring approximately 1,800 workers into our region from around the United States. We asked Exelon to postpone this refuel until a time when the disease burden from COVID-19 was lower.” …….. https://6abc.com/limerick-plant-exelon-corporation-covid19-cases/6067085/

April 2, 2020 Posted by | health, safety, USA | Leave a comment

The Climate Crisis Will Be Just as Shockingly Abrupt as the Coronavirus Pandemic

The Climate Crisis Will Be Just as Shockingly Abrupt   https://newrepublic.com/article/157078/climate-crisis-will-just-shockingly-abrupt     The coronavirus isn’t a reason to put climate policy on hold. It’s a warning of the calamities ahead., By MELODY SCHREIBER, March 27, 2020  

As governments around the globe debate how to respond both to the coronavirus itself and the economic chaos it has unleashed, a theme that’s come up over and over is how to prioritize what makes it into spending packages. In the United States, right-left fault lines have emerged over the question of bailing out emissions-heavy industries versus a greener stimulus. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a large-scale rollback of environmental regulations as a response to the pandemic—allowing many emitters to police themselves when it comes to pollution.
While some argue that the oxygen in the climate debate should be taken up by the pandemic instead, the two issues aren’t mutually exclusive, experts say. In a warming climate, more diseases are likely to emerge and spread, making climate change action an important part of addressing future health crises. Moreover, the perception that climate change isn’t as urgent as other crises may rely on misunderstandings about how climate-related changes will happen.
The rate isn’t constant: Instead, there’s reason to believe everything from Arctic melt to Amazon deforestation might experience what’s known as “tipping points,” where small changes in nature shift into rapid and irreversible damage.
Greenland and Antarctica are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Between 1992 and 2017, Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice. This falls under the worst-case scenario projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the effects are already being felt in many parts of the world. The IPCC predicts that by the end of the century, 400 million people around the globe could be at risk of coastal flooding every year from sea-level rise alone.
Ice sheets “may already be in an irreversible retreat,” going past their tipping point, Timothy M. Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told me. “The more we warm things up, the faster the ice melts and the sea rises.” Even if we take aggressive action to curb emissions and halt rapid change, he said, some of these effects are already locked in. And once ice begins to melt, it’s hard to re-form it without another Ice Age. Lenton recently sounded the alarm in Nature on how close we’re getting to altering the planet permanently—and how the timeline on saving lives on climate change may be tighter than many people realize.
Other tipping points include rain forest loss in places like the Amazon, monsoon shifts in Africa and Asia, changes to ocean circulation patterns, and coral reef die-offs. For example, the Amazon is, for now, a major source of carbon sequestration—it pulls carbon from the air and stores it in the soil. Burning or cutting down trees to convert the land into agricultural fields, which comes with its own emissions, can turn it from a carbon sink to a carbon emitter. What may seem like a manageable rate of deforestation could suddenly trigger a mass die-off within the rain forest’s ecosystem. The atmosphere above the rain forest has already become drier in the past 20 years, NASA has found, “increasing the demand for water and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought.” With all of these changes, much of the Amazon could look more like a savannah in a few decades, another recent study concluded. Many ecosystems around the globe could be vulnerable to this kind of phenomenon, passing an invisible inflection point that suddenly and irreversibly accelerates the rate of change, as a system is thrown off balance.
However, Lenton and others point out that positive tipping points exist as well—for instance, when society organizes into action in order to avert crises.
Rapid decarbonization, as Ilona M. Otto, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and other researchers recently wrote in a research article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will mean “activating contagious and fast-spreading processes of social and technological change within the next few years.” Coincidentally, the coronavirus response, she told me, shows that this kind of rapid government action is possible. “All the things that we were writing in the article, it’s actually happening right now,” Otto said. “If there is a real crisis situation, people do expect government to be strong and somehow take quick decisions, and also change the law or introduce new laws.”
Unfortunately, with the associated economic fallout of the pandemic, some governments seem to be enacting the exact opposite of the “social tipping interventions” Otto’s group identified—for example, “removing fossil fuel subsidies.” The Trump administration, instead of removing the long-standing support system for the unprofitable fracking industry, has moved to prop it up further. But the pandemic, Otto argues, still represents proof of concept for swift government action, if people are able to accurately perceive the crisis in front of them.
As with the pandemic, responses to climate change have often emphasized individual action—traveling less, eating more sustainably, switching to more efficient energy sources. But both crises require the kind of large-scale structural interventions produced by national and international policies, like designing more sustainable infrastructure and transportation and alternate work arrangements, as well as creating emergency responses and strengthening social safety nets for the most vulnerable. That’s not to mention government’s regulatory role. “We need stronger regulations,” Otto said.
 With national governments and the European Union rolling out subsidy programs for industries hit hard by the virus, Otto proposes attaching sustainable strings to this aid. For instance, the aviation industry is strongly dependent on fossil fuels, she said. “Why not ask them for plans [on] how to decrease the emissions within, like, 50 percent within the next 10 years and maybe become carbon neutral by 2050 or so? I think this could be used as an incentive to encourage companies to make plans [for] how they want to achieve carbon neutrality.” Otto argues against re-creating the systems countries had before the pandemic. “If we don’t build a more resilient system right now, we will, in a way, lose this opportunity,” she said. In addition, investments in green initiatives, like renewable energy, could boost nthe economy.

The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped the way we live, work, and interact in a matter of weeks. It has also shown that governments are able—and in many cases are expected—to take swift, significant action on crises. “Under these extraordinary circumstances, there can be quite decisive action from governance and policy that changes the way we’re all living day to day,” Lenton said. “It is possible to change large-scale patterns of human behavior, pretty quickly.”

The question is whether governments, and voters, can appreciate the true urgency of the task. In reality, the climate crisis cannot be solved incrementally, Lenton said, because it’s taken too long to spur action: Many warming-related changes are already underway. Global greenhouse gas emissions must be dramatically reduced and eventually eliminated. “If we’re going to avoid the worst of bad climate tipping points, then we’re going to need to find some positive tipping points in society and ourselves to transform the way we live—in a generation—to a more sustainable but also perhaps a more flourishing kind of future,” Lenton said.

Pandemics like this are expected to rise as the climate changes. The SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the disease known as Covid-19, scientists suspect, may have originated in a wild animal, like a bat, and transferred through an intermediate animal to people. Zoonotic spillovers like these, as well as illnesses carried by mosquitoes, ticks, and other animals, will likely increase on a hotter planet. It’s not just because more people are pressing into areas where wildlife lives; as their habitats change in new climate conditions, more animals are adapting to new environments and seeking relief in places where people live, thus increasing the chance of contact between people and animals.

“We are really messing up with the natural world, and with the climate system, and things like this can be expected to happen more often,” Otto said. “It’s one reason to think that climate change is actually a permanent threat and we have to think of fixing the whole system, not only the economy.”

The coronavirus is a real and urgent threat. But there’s also a pressing danger in failing to address climate change in policies and funding, both now and in the future. What’s happening to the planet, experts agree, isn’t going to stop just because we’re dealing with another crisis, and this is no time to ease up on the climate fight. In fact, because of the ways climate change contributes to poor health, it makes action even more urgent.

Melody Schreiber is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.  @m_scribe

March 31, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

A creeping catastrophe: the world’s nuclear reactors are getting dangerously old.

March 31, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, safety | Leave a comment

Our war against the environment is bringing pandemics upon us

Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics,  The Conversation, Fiona Armstrong Executive Director, Climate and Health Alliance, Occasional Lecturer, School of Public Health and Human Biosciences, La Trobe University, Anthony Capon, Director, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, Ro McFarlane, Assistant Professor in Ecological Public Health, University of Canberra, March 31, 202  The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the world is a crisis of our own making.

That’s the message from infectious disease and environmental health experts, and from those in planetary health – an emerging field connecting human health, civilisation and the natural systems on which they depend.

They might sound unrelated, but the COVID-19 crisis and the climate and biodiversity crises are deeply connected.

Each arises from our seeming unwillingness to respect the interdependence between ourselves, other animal species and the natural world more generally.

To put this into perspective, the vast majority (three out of every four) of new infectious diseases in people come from animals – from wildlife and from the livestock we keep in ever-larger numbers.

To understand and effectively respond to COVID-19, and other novel infectious diseases we’ll likely encounter in the future, policymakers need to acknowledge and respond with “planetary consciousness”. This means taking a holistic view of public health that includes the health of the natural environment.

Risking animal-borne diseases

Biodiversity (all biological diversity from genes, to species, to ecosystems) is declining faster than at any time in human history.

We clear forests and remove habitat, bringing wild animals closer to human settlements. And we hunt and sell wildlife, often endangered, increasing the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans.

The list of diseases that have jumped from animals to humans (“zoonotic diseases”) includes HIV, Ebola, Zika, Hendra, SARS, MERS and bird flu.

Like its precursor SARS, COVID-19 is thought to have originated in bats and subsequently transmitted to humans via another animal host, possibly at a wet market trading live animals.

Ebola virus emerged in central Africa when land use changes and altered climatic conditions forced bats and chimpanzees together around concentrated areas of food resources. And Hendra virus is associated with urbanisation of fruit bats following habitat loss. Such changes are occurring worldwide.

What’s more, human-caused climate change is making this worse. Along with habitat loss, shifting climate zones are causing wildlife to migrate to new places, where they interact with other species they haven’t previously encountered. This increases the risk of new diseases emerging.

COVID-19 is just the latest new infectious disease arising from our collision with nature……. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-a-wake-up-call-our-war-with-the-environment-is-leading-to-pandemics-135023

March 31, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, environment, health | Leave a comment

Countries may use coronavirus crisis to rein in climate commitments: Japan a case in point

Campaigners attack Japan’s ‘shameful’ climate plans release

Proposals criticised amid fears countries may use coronavirus crisis to rein in commitments, Guardian,  Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent 30 Mar 20,  Japan has laid out its plans to tackle greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement in the run-up to UN climate talks this year, becoming the first large economy to do so.

But its proposals were criticised by campaigners as grossly inadequate, amid fears the Covid-19 crisis could prompt countries to try to water down their climate commitments.

The UK, which will host the talks, hopes every country will produce renewed targets on curbing emissions and achieving net zero carbon by 2050.

New commitments are needed to achieve the Paris goals of holding temperature rises to no more than 2C, and ideally 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels, as on current national targets the world would far exceed those limits.

Japan’s carbon targets – known as its nationally determined contribution (NDC) in the UN jargon – as announced on Monday morning are almost unchanged from its commitments made in 2015 towards the Paris accord, however.

The country’s target of a 26% reduction in emissions by 2030, based on 2013 levels, is rated as “highly insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker analysis, meaning that if all targets were at this level, temperature rises would exceed 3C.

The country, the world’s fifth biggest emitter and third biggest economy, is one of the only developed countries still building new coal-fired power stations, although there are signs it may hold back……

Campaigners fear the coronavirus pandemic will be seen by some countries as a way to weaken their commitment to the Paris accord and present less stringent targets instead of the strong cuts needed.

“Japan should not slow down climate actions even amid the Covid-19 global fights, and must revisit and strengthen this plan swiftly in order to be in line with the Paris agreement,” said Kimiko Hirata, the international director of the Kiko Network, a climate group in Japan……

Environmental regulations and climate commitments have come under attack in the context of the coronavirus crisis. Under Donald Trump’s administration in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back key regulations including car efficiency standards. In the EU, carmakers wrote to the European commission last week to demand a loosening of requirements on them to cut carbon.

There is still scope for Japan to revise its targets. Other countries have yet to submit their detailed NDCs, but several – including the UK and the EU, and more than 70 smaller economies – made public their intention to reach net zero carbon by 2050, at last year’s UN climate talks in Madrid……. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/30/campaigners-attack-japan-shameful-climate-plans-release

 

March 31, 2020 Posted by | climate change, Japan | Leave a comment

Some politicians realising that climate change needs dramatic action, too

FT 30th March 2020  As the coronavirus pandemic has sent governments scrambling to respond, many politicians have drawn a parallel with another global threat: climate change. “We have to act dramatically, boldly, if we’re going to save lives in this country and around the world,” Bernie Sanders, one of the Democratic presidential contenders, said recently. “I look at climate
change in the exact same way.”

Yet while the principles may be the same, the politics of the two pressing challenges are very different. The analogies between the coronavirus and climate change are easy to understand. The radical measures adopted to fight the pandemic look like precedents for addressing the potentially greater danger from climate change.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, has suggested that the need for widespread intervention by governments to
prevent economic collapse should be seen as a “historic opportunity” to
direct energy investment into technologies that reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. Large-scale investment to support solar and wind power,
batteries, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage would “bring the twin
benefits of stimulating economies and accelerating clean energy
transitions,” he wrote earlier this month.

https://www.ft.com/content/13ce469c-68fa-11ea-a6ac-9122541af204

March 31, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, politics | Leave a comment

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