Are you keeping up with a greener Singapore? #auspol #qldpol #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike demand #ClimateAction #StopAdani #VicVotes2018 #TheDrum #QandA #Insiders #SDGs

Growing awareness around the carbon footprint of the built environment is creating a demand for greener, smarter buildings.

Is your organisation keeping up with the green wave, or will it be left behind, asks Johnson Controls’ Ken Lim.

In many Asian cities, including Singapore, the interest in sustainable living is growing as the effects of global warming—intense extreme weather events and rising sea levels—leave their mark across the region.

Without radical change, Asia Pacific will account for 48 per cent of global carbon emissions by 2030.

The race to build green cities across Asia is on.

An estimated US$6 billion is expected to go into financing projects to counter climate change by 2020, focusing on renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transport, resilient infrastructure, and better preparation for climate-related disasters.

Singapore: A fast-growing green city

Green buildings, which have a lower carbon footprint compared to regular buildings, are key to sustainable urban planning since the built environment contributes 33 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

It has been estimated that urban residents could save as much as US$16 billion annually through the use of intelligent, energy efficient technologies. To date, Singapore has “greened” more than a third of the building stock (by gross floor area). In fact, we rank second among global cities for green buildings, according to a 2016 report.

But to reach the government’s aim of having 80 per cent of Singapore’s buildings certified under the Building and Construction Authority Green Mark scheme by 2030, we need to green an additional 50 per cent of our buildings within the next 12 years.

More than 80 per cent of local organisations and 70 per cent of global organisations today than in 2016, according to the 2017 Johnson Controls Energy Efficiency Indicator survey, which polled more than 1,500 facility and management executives worldwide.

With 2018 designated as the Year of Climate Action for Singapore, close to a quarter of a million citizens, business corporations and civil have pledged to take climate action and reduce their carbon footprint. The nation has also committed under the Paris Agreement to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 36 per cent compared to 2005 levels by 2030.

Singapore’s artificial natural paradise.

Are you focusing on energy efficiency?

Given the importance of energy efficiency in sustainable living, how are local companies addressing the issue?

Our survey findings revealed a strong positive outlook for green investments among local respondents. Eighty-three per cent of Singapore companies have said they are expecting to increase investments on energy efficiency projects, a strong lead over the global average of nearly 60 per cent.

Outfitting buildings to be more energy efficient is a key component of creating sustainable buildings. Some possible solutions include energy-efficient cooling devices and systems that streamline energy use. In fact, improvements to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning ranked as the top energy efficiency measure adopted by nearly 80 per cent of local companies in the survey.

Are you actively integrating your building systems?

Smart technologies are an integral part of green buildings. As built environments become greener and smarter, there will be more demand for agile products and systems that are smart, cyber-secure and future ready.

In the last year, about 43 per cent of local organisations have reported investing in systems integration. Heading the list is integration with external data sources, such as weather and utility information with other building technology systems, followed by integration with energy management, life safety systems, and lighting systems.

Smart buildings are responsive to the needs of the occupants in real time, leveraging building data to optimise energy usage, lower facility costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring safety and sustainability. These green buildings often connect internal systems—such as heating, ventilation, cooling, data networks, power management and surveillance—with external networks to manage building operations more efficiently.

Do you have net zero built environments in the pipeline?

Building net zero energy building and further reducing greenhouse gas footprint should also be on organisations’ radars as we move toward green, sustainable urban living.

The increase in local demand for green buildings is expected to pump up demand for net zero energy buildings as well, according to our survey. It showed that 66 per cent of organisations in Singapore are very likely to plan to achieve near zero, net zero or energy positive status for at least one building within the next 10 years. In comparison, about 54 per cent of organisations globally are committed to the same goal.

Effective carbon reduction in the built environment is a concerted effort that depends on a combination of planning, design, construction and use. New buildings offer the largest potential savings of 75 per cent or higher in energy use; although it would require an approach that combines technological and behavioural change. Building owners should thus consider energy savings from the beginning of the project as part of construction and design.

However, nearly 30 per cent of local companies lack the technical expertise to evaluate or execute projects as the primary barrier to pursuing energy efficiency. Other obstacles included the lack of funding to pay for improvements, as well as the uncertainty regarding savings and performance.

Green up to keep up

It will take active involvement, close cooperation and mindset change of organisations and communities to achieve environmental sustainability.

Joining the growing ranks of organisations that have integrated myriad systems such as life safety, lighting, water management with advanced building technology would be a good start. Gaining insights and new ideas from regional collaborative platforms, such as the World Green Building Council, to jump-start your green building projects could be another.

Leveraging performance benchmarking and certifications can be effective in driving energy efficiency improvements. More than 80 per cent of local respondents ranked benchmarking and certification as very important. Other effective policies included government leadership in leasing, building design, and retrofits; as well as public and private sector building efficiency targets.

Experts have singled out a clearly defined governance structure and effective leadership as the bedrock to the success of any enterprise-wide strategy. Without exception, a successful climate change strategy necessitates a holistic approach that requires competence that cuts across functions, operations and geographies.

Ken Lim is General Manager and Managing Director, BT&S Singapore at Johnson Controls. This article was written for Eco-Business. 

Press link for more: Eco Business

We need to talk about meat. #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #auspol #qldpol #VicVotes2018 #ClimateChange #Airpollution #StopAdani #ClimateEmergency #Vegan #TheDrum #QandA

Humans and the livestock they consume is a tale that impacts lives in a deep and meaningful sense.

Human history is interwoven with production of meat for consumption, and its availability and nutritional value as a source of protein has played a major part in diet as far back as we can imagine, shaping regional identities and global movements.

The emotionally charged debate over the ethical suitability of meat consumption may never reach a conclusion, but it is only comparatively recently that the climate impact of livestock rearing, and the nutritional and health issues caused by meat have become a pressing concern.

Achieving a healthy diet from a sustainable source is a struggle new enough to countries with an abundance of food that it has proven difficult to enact meaningful change.

Government efforts to curb consumption and thus curb weight gain in high-income countries are yet to display a meaningful effect, and most of these efforts are focused on sugar or fat.

Similarly, the global ecological sustainability of farming habits has not been a major topic of conversation until the last few decades.

It’s only now that we’re beginning to have a conversation about the role of meat in both of these debates, and the evidence suggests a reckoning with our habits is long overdue.

Meat production doesn’t just affect the ecosystem by production of gases, and studies now question the system of production’s direct effect on global freshwater use, change in land use, and ocean acidification. 

A recent paper in Science claims that even the lowest-impact meat causes “much more” environmental impact than the least sustainable forms of plant and vegetable production.

Population pressures, with global population predicted to increase by a third between 2010 and 2050, will push us past these breaking points.

Another important addition to the conversation around meat is the PLoS One paper discussing health-related taxes for red meat.

The paper offers up some compelling claims as justification, including the suggestion that the health-related costs directly attributable to the consumption of red and processed meat will be US$285 billion in 2020, or 0·3% of worldwide gross GDP.

4·4% of all deaths worldwide would be caused by red or processed meat.

Of course, this causal mathematical model should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it does follow on from the 2015 WHO classification of some meats as proven carcinogens, based on the International Agency For Research On Cancer assessment of a “strong” link between red meat and the mechanistic evidence for carcinogenicity.

Politicians aren’t listening it’s time to join the revolution.

The question of what can be done is more challenging than the question of what should be done.

Countries, and their citizens, should look to limit their consumption of intensively farmed meats, both for health and environmental reasons.

The issue of how this change comes about is part of a wider conversation that we all need to start having about meat.

Will a simple tax on red and processed meat change habits to the extent required?

A simple measure enacted alone runs the risk of unfairly targeting those whose budgets only stretched to the cheaper processed meats. Stating that those who can suddenly not afford meat should just switch to a vegetarian diet anyway is not a balanced addition to the debate over meat’s role in society.

However, targeted taxation has shown positive results in areas of strong health concern such as tobacco, although these successes are similarly accompanied by discussions of the regressive nature of such a tax.

The likelihood is that action will need to take a wider systems approach, with a very public conversation about meat informing a host of measures from deciding the appropriate application of government farming subsidies and finding a way to ameliorate the true costs to humans and the planet of certain processing methods, all the way through to slowly changing consumer habits over time, possibly through use of targeted taxation but certainly through an engaging, balanced conversation. No one system fits every country. Meat might be common to almost every society but its role in each is different and deeply culturally engrained.

So what is a healthy amount of red or processed meat?

It’s looking increasingly like the answer, for both the planet and the individual, is very little.

Saying this is one thing.

Getting the world to a place where we have the ability to balance the desire to eat whatever we want with our need to preserve the ecosystem we rely on to sustain ourselves is quite another.

The conversation has to start soon.

Press link for more: The Lancet

Shorten’s new course on climate, boosting renewables and subsidising batteries. Not quite the #GreenNewDeal we need. A step in the right direction. #auspol #ClimateChange #ExtinctionRebellion #StopAdani

Labor is vowing to underwrite a series of mammoth new energy projects that ramp up the supply of renewable power, in a long-awaited plan that sidelines a bipartisan agreement in Parliament out of concern the Coalition cannot agree on a united policy.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will pledge direct financial support for new projects to offer reliable electricity supply, leaving the door open to gas-fired power but ruling out any help for coal.

The new stance means Labor would go to the next election with plans to sign commercial contracts with new power projects if it wins government, showing it is ready to abandon the National Energy Guarantee championed by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, pictured at the Mt Majura Solar Farm, says the Labor plan will increase investment in renewable energy.

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Shorten will outline the plan on Thursday alongside a $200 million policy to subsidise the installation of batteries in 100,000 homes so more Australians can store electricity from their solar panels, improving reliability.

The crucial pledge is to proceed with the commercial contracts under existing law rather than wait for an agreement with the Coalition, which has stepped back from NEG because it included cuts to carbon emissions.

“The Parliament could debate and vote on this before Christmas, if the Liberals were so inclined,” Mr Shorten says of the NEG in a speech he will deliver on Thursday.

“If I am elected as Prime Minister, I will sit down with the new opposition leader and the crossbench to talk about a way we can move forward with this framework.

“But let’s be clear: we will work with the Coalition – but we will not wait for them.”

The policy is central to achieving Labor’s stated ambition of reducing emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, based on a 2005 baseline, and doing so without a price on carbon or a carbon tax.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor is warning of the cost to consumers from the Labor target, given the Coalition promises to reduce emissions by 26 per cent.

The Greens have a target of 90 per cent and are calling for the restoration of a price on carbon, such as an emissions trading scheme, to achieve this objective.

Mr Shorten’s draft speech shows a Labor government would proceed with an investment framework recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to fix shortages that have driven up prices.

The leading option is to use the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, already set up in law and backed with Commonwealth loans, to underwrite debt finance for new power projects and possibly make direct investments.

The ACCC idea, called Recommendation 4 in the Retail Electricity Pricing Inquiry, would lead to an auction so the government could select the projects that deliver reliable electricity at the lowest cost.

“If I’m elected prime minister, I will not sit around and wait for the Liberals and Nationals to stop arguing about whether climate change is real,” Mr Shorten says.

“I will act to lower prices, to cut pollution, to boost renewables and create jobs.

“A Labor government I lead will be prepared to directly underwrite and invest in cleaner, cheaper power for Australia.”

The investments could be in new power generation projects as well as transmission networks – a big issue for projects such as the expansion of the Snowy Hydro scheme, which requires more power lines to connect to the electricity grid.

Labor is yet to commit to the commercial mechanisms for its policy, such as an auction or “contracts for difference” where it would underwrite the price a project could receive for its power.

Using the Clean Energy Finance Corporation would enable it to fund new projects without needing approval in Parliament for a new law, avoiding negotiations with the Coalition or the Greens.

The corporation was established by Labor and the Greens when Julia Gillard was prime minister and is already backed with $10 billion in Commonwealth finance, with an investment mandate that prioritises energy efficient technologies, low-emission projects and renewable energy.

This leaves room for gas-fired power projects to lodge bids for the Labor scheme, but it rules out coal-fired electricity.

The Morrison government is also promising to underwrite new projects but it wants to allow coal-fired power, satisfying demands from former prime minister Tony Abbott, former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and others.

Labor believes it does not need to amend the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s investment mandate to pursue its plan but that the Coalition would have to gain approval in Parliament to amend the legislation if it wanted the agency to invest in coal power.

The new scheme to install more batteries in homes is expected to cost $200 million by 2025 by giving a $2000 rebate to households that buy the residential power systems.

Labor estimates that subsidising 100,000 homes would triple the number of battery installations in Australia today.

Press link for more: SMH

California is on fire and Democrats control the House — it’s time to get serious about #climatechange #GreenNewDeal #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #StopAdani #auspol #qldpol #springst #nswpol

By Kate Aronoff

Kate Aronoff

California is on fire, and the Democrats just won back the House. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — whose district sits not far from the flames — took this historic opportunity to propose a bold solution: reviving a toothless, decade-old committee to, as the New York Times reported, “educate the public about the impact of more frequent extreme weather events.”

Do Californians need a committee for that?

Several dozen millennials from the groups Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats don’t think so.

On November 13, they crowded into Pelosi’s office for a sit-in and to ask the aspiring speaker of the House, “What’s your plan?”

Demonstrators and incoming Democratic Congress members Rashida Tlaib, Deb Haaland, Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who joined protesters in Pelosi’s chambers — are calling for something else: a Green New Deal.

More specifically, they want to create a committee tasked with finding a way to transition America off of fossil fuels over the next 10 years and empowered with the authority to set that plan into motion with legislation.

Politicians who accept campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry would be barred from participating.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

What would such a Green New Deal actually entail, and why should Democrats back it — aside from the fact that the alternative could condemn hundreds of millions of people to death?

Ironically, while it was Pelosi who called for the Democratic House to embrace a “bipartisan marketplace of ideas” after election day, those pushing her on the climate may have a better plan for reaching across the aisle. After all, Green New Deal-style policies enjoy majority support in states ranging from deep blue to dark red.

So what would such a Green New Deal actually entail, and why should Democrats back it — aside from the fact that the alternative could condemn hundreds of millions of people to death?

For one, it’s the only proposal on the table in line with the scientific reality of climate change.

President Donald Trump and a majority of the GOP Congresspeople deny that significant climate change policies are needed. But besides paying lip service to the science and standing by the Paris Agreement, even the Democratic Party has largely not pushed for the sweeping changes scientists say are needed: cutting emissions by around half by 2030 and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the absolute latest.

Getting there, says the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will require “unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society” and what other scientists have likened in scale to the U.S. mobilization around World War II.

About four-fifths of all known coal reserves, a third of oil reserves and half of gas reserves will have to be kept underground, unburned and out of energy markets.

Like the first New Deal, then, the Green New Deal isn’t a specific set of policies so much as a values framework under which any number of policies can fit. 

Electrifying everything, constraining the power of the world’s most powerful industry and preparing for what will almost certainly be the largest mass migration in human history don’t slot neatly into a single Medicare for All-style policy or slogan.

On the other hand, neither did clawing our way out of the Great Depression.

After 40 years of neoliberal economics espousing the idea that, per Margaret Thatcher, there is “no such thing as society,” the Green New Deal asserts the now apparently radical idea that the government has a responsibility to provide society with a decent quality of life, including a planet that isn’t actively hostile to human life.

Smartly, calls for a Green New Deal help tie solutions to the climate crisis to the promise of a stronger and more equitable economy, upending the false “jobs versus environment” dichotomy that conservatives and the fossil fuel industry have worked so hard to cultivate.

Thanks to their success on that front, climate change has been framed as an issue of collective sacrifice, requiring all of us to give up everything from plastic straws to jobs to hamburgers.

Even favored Democratic proposals like cap-and-trade and carbon taxes feed the notion that everyone will have to pay up. (This narrative was exploited successfully in November in Washington state, where the oil and gas industry spent some $30 million to defeat what would have been the country’s first statewide carbon pricing mechanism.)

Calls for a Green New Deal help tie solutions to the climate crisis to the promise of a stronger and more equitable economy, upending the false jobs-vs.-environment dichotomy.

The fossil fuel industry loves the idea that all of us are to blame for our warming planet, because it allows them to rhetorically align themselves with everyman oil workers and against jet-setting billionaires like Tom Steyer or Michael Bloomberg.

In the process, they shift both the conversation and the responsibility away from the 100 fossil fuel producers that have been responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

The really inconvenient truth about climate change — the thing that could build popular momentum around doing something about it, at the expense of fossil fuel industry profits — is that the solutions for it stand to dramatically improve the lives of millions of people, especially compared to the collective but unequally distributed ruin we face otherwise. A job guarantee — a centerpiece of several Green New Deal proposals endorsed by politicians from New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to Ocasio-Cortez — could end involuntary unemployment as we know it, providing a well-paid job to everyone who needs one.

New York could finally fix the MTA, as cities around the country get robust public transit networks and beautiful, no-carbon public housing of the sort found in locales from Vienna to Chile. And from Appalachia to Alaska, communities whose livelihoods have been bound up in fossil fuels could receive the investments needed to diversify their economies, as coal miners and rig operators are re-trained by their unions to help build the clean-energy future.

Spain recently helped show what this future could look like.

The country’s new social democratic government plans to shutter its last coal mines by year’s end.

With the support of Spanish trade unions, they’ll also invest the relatively small sum of $282 million to put the country’s already-shrinking fleet of coal workers to work restoring former mines and learning new skills in the renewables sector.

Lest this transition be all about work, though, refocusing the economy around producing more of what we need — renewable power, care work, education — and less of what we don’t — fossil fuels and cheap junk — also could shorten America’s outrageously inflated work week.

View this graphic on nbcnews.com

For these and other reasons, a Green New Deal would be wildly popular. Polling from the upstart progressive think tank Data for Progress suggests that a majority of Americans in every state support calls for a federal job guarantee, even more so if those jobs help push us toward a low-carbon future. Newer polling has also found that 66 percent of Americans overall support a green jobs program, and that only 12 percent would oppose such a plan. Support is stronger still among people under 45, who are on the cusp of becoming the country’s largest voting bloc.

While it’s hard to imagine Democrats pushing even popular legislation through while Republicans control the Senate and the White House, they can still put the ruling party in a tough spot as the 2020 election looms. A national debate over a Green New Deal would force the GOP to openly side with their fossil fuel executive donors instead of the American public, and argue against what could potentially become the biggest job creation program in American history. If the GOP is willing to spend $3.8 trillion on tax cuts for the wealthy, why won’t it invest even a fraction of that sum providing a dignified quality of life for the country’s less than 80,000 remaining coal workers as their mines continue closing? Whether they believe in climate change or not, it would be hard for lawmakers to justify rejecting a plan to lift millions of Americans out of poverty and bring the nation’s crumbling infrastructure fully into the 21st century. Why hold the future of today’s children hostage for the profits of a few multinational corporations?

“Little groups of earnest men and women have told us of this havoc… the evils that we have brought upon ourselves today and the even greater evils that will attend our children unless we act,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Congress in 1935, requesting $4 billion for public works projects. “Such is the condition that attends the exploitation of our natural resources if we continue our planless course.”

Eight decades later, the Democratic Party’s Congressional leadership can listen to today’s little earnest groups and commit to planning for a Green New Deal. Or they can join Republicans on their planless course toward even greater evils.

Kate Aronoff

Kate Aronoff is a Brooklyn-based writer covering climate and American politics, and a regular contributor to In These Times. She is the co-editor, with Michael Kazin and Peter Dreier, of a forthcoming anthology about democratic socialism in the United States.

Press link for more: NBC News

HopeLess Realism #GreenNewDeal @Ocasio2018 #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #StopAdani #auspol #qldpol #TheDrum #QandA #ClimateChange

No effective means of stopping climate breakdown is deemed “politically realistic”. So we must change political realities.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14 November 2018

It was a moment of the kind that changes lives.

At a press conference held by Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the activists on whether their aims were realistic.

They have called, for example, for carbon emissions in the UK to be reduced to net zero by 2025.

Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward.

She hadn’t spoken before, and I hadn’t really noticed her, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … this is an emergency – we are facing extinction.

When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?”.

We had no answer.

Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic.

Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them.

Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess.

It will not get us out.

Public figures talk and act as if environmental change will be linear and gradual. But the Earth’s systems are highly complex, and complex systems do not respond to pressure in linear ways.

When these systems interact (because the world’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface and lifeforms do not sit placidly within the boxes that make study more convenient) their reactions to change become highly unpredictable. Small perturbations can ramify wildly.

Tipping points are likely to remain invisible until we have passed them.

We could see changes of state so abrupt and profound that no continuity can be safely assumed.

Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide.

For example, when Arctic sea ice melts beyond a certain point, the positive feedbacks this triggers (such as darker water absorbing more heat, melting permafrost releasing methane, shifts in the polar vortex) could render runaway climate breakdown unstoppable.

When the Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, Greenland ice cores reveal temperatures rising 10°C within a decade.

I don’t believe that such a collapse is yet inevitable, or that a commensurate response is either technically or economically impossible.

When the US joined the Second World War in 1941, it replaced a civilian economy with a military economy within months. As Jack Doyle records in his book Taken for a Ride, “In one year, General Motors developed, tooled, and completely built from scratch 1000 Avenger and 1000 Wildcat aircraft … Barely a year after Pontiac received a Navy contract to build antishipping missiles, the company began delivering the completed product to carrier squadrons around the world.” And this was before advanced information technology made everything faster.

The problem is political.

A fascinating analysis by the social science professor Kevin Mackay contends that oligarchy has been a more fundamental cause of the collapse of civilisations than social complexity or energy demand.

Oligarchic control, he argues, thwarts rational decision-making, because the short-term interests of the elite are radically different to the long-term interests of society. This explains why past civilizations have collapsed “despite possessing the cultural and technological know-how needed to resolve their crises.” Economic elites, that benefit from social dysfunction, block the necessary solutions.

The oligarchic control of wealth, politics, media and public discourse explains the comprehensive institutional failure now pushing us towards disaster.

Think of Trump and his cabinet of multi-millionaires, the influence of the Koch brothers, the Murdoch empire and its massive contribution to climate science denial, the oil and motor companies whose lobbying prevents a faster shift to new technologies.

It is not just governments that have failed to respond, though they have failed spectacularly. Public sector broadcasters have deliberately and systematically shut down environmental coverage, while allowing the opaquely-funded lobbyists that masquerade as thinktanks to shape public discourse and deny what we face. Academics, afraid to upset their funders and colleagues, have bitten their lips. Even the bodies that claim to be addressing our predicament remain locked within destructive frameworks.

For example, last Wednesday I attended a meeting about environmental breakdown at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Many of the people in the room seemed to understand that continued economic growth is incompatible with sustaining the Earth’s systems. As the author Jason Hickel points out, a decoupling of rising GDP from global resource use has not happened and will not happen. While 50 billion tonnes of resources used per year is roughly the limit the Earth’s systems can tolerate, the world is already consuming 70 billion tonnes. Business as usual, at current rates of economic growth, will ensure that this rises to 180 billion tonnes by 2050. Maximum resource efficiency, coupled with massive carbon taxes and some pretty optimistic assumptions, would reduce this to 95 billion tonnes: still way beyond environmental limits. A study taking account of the rebound effect (efficiency leads to further resource use) raises the estimate to 132 billion tonnes. Green growth, as members of the Institute appear to accept, is physically impossible.

On the same day, the same Institute announced a major new economics prize for “ambitious proposals to achieve a step-change improvement in the growth rate.” It wants ideas that will enable economic growth rates in the UK at least to double. The announcement was accompanied by the usual blah about sustainability, but none of the judges of the prize has a discernible record of environmental interest.

Those to whom we look for solutions trundle on as if nothing has changed. They continue to behave as if the accumulating evidence has no purchase on their minds. Decades of institutional failure ensures that only “unrealistic” proposals – the repurposing of economic life, with immediate effect – now have a realistic chance of stopping the planetary death spiral. And only those who stand outside the failed institutions can lead this effort.

Two tasks need to be performed simultaneously: throwing ourselves at the possibility of averting collapse, as Extinction Rebellion is doing, slight though this possibility may appear. And preparing ourselves for the likely failure of these efforts, terrifying as this prospect is. Both tasks require a complete revision of our relationship with the living planet. Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are one and the same. Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done.

http://www.monbiot.com

Press link for more: Monbiot.com

Stepped up Global #ClimateAction Can Close the Emissions Gap | UNFCCC #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #GreenNewDeal @Ocasio2018 #StopAdani #auspol #qldpol #TheDrum #QandA

UN Climate Change News, 20 November 2018 – Two key UNFCCC milestone publications released today  highlight that success in tackling the global climate crisis can be achieved, but only if public and private sector actions are urgently stepped up.

The reports:

The Talanoa Dialogue Synthesis Report and Yearbook for Global Climate Action 2018 – take the pulse of where the world stands on its journey towards full carbon neutrality by mid-century.

The Synthesis Report was prepared using submissions to the Talanoa Portal – launched on 10 January 2018 – which received a total of 471 inputs throughout the year, including notably the IPCC’s special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also drew from stories that were presented by government and non-government representatives during the intersessional climate change session held  in May 2018.

The Yearbook for Global Climate Action takes account of some 9,000 commitments – spanning cities, regions, businesses, investors and civil society – incorporating 128 countries (16 per cent of the global population), around 240 states and regions and more than 6,000 businesses in 120 countries representing USD 36 trillion in economic activity.

This image is from the Yearbook – drawing on data from the Global Climate Action portal (NAZCA) – and depicts the number of stakeholders taking action in all regions of the world. Whilst Europe is the region that has seen the greatest increase in stakeholders between 2016 and October 2018, the number of stakeholders in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean also shows clear growth, increasing by approximately 30, 20 and 20 per cent respectively.

Tomasz Chruszczow, Special Envoy for Climate Change and Poland’s High Level Climate Champion said, “Global Climate Action remains the best response to the challenges of changing climate. 2018’s Yearbook documents how the action can deliver on existing NDCs, on adaptation, mitigation, capacity building, etc.

Every climate related initiative, programme or action contributes to laying a solid foundation for the climate neutral, peaceful, climate resilient and sustainable future for all.

Parties and non-Party stakeholders act together and prove that cooperation may lead to more emission reductions, faster delivering on existing NDCs and strengthening of biosystems’ capacity to store atmospheric carbon, while life standards get improved, economies grow and the nations approach all the goals of the Paris Agreement in an accelerated manner.

The examples from this year’s Yearbook will surely inspire more ambitious action by the governments and the stakeholders.

Responding to climate change related threats is an opportunity that no one can afford missing.”

Together the publications illustrate  that global climate action can close the gap to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement: to limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and to strive for the safer 1.5-degree limit.

However, what the reports  also make clear is that all actors – government and non-governmental, public and private – need to urgently step up the pace of  action if the world is to achieve the Paris targets and to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

According to key findings in the Synthesis Report, the reality is that, despite current efforts, greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are still on the rise.

The Report also describes how these atmospheric changes are already having devastating impacts, citing a total of 11,000 extreme weather events between 1997 and 2016, which have resulted in approximately 524,000 deaths and trillions of dollars of opportunity lost in economic development

The publications are sober reading, but they do signpost the solutions that can exponentially drive the transition towards a low carbon economy.

That is, if global actors adhere strictly to the Paris Agreement process and its principles.

This theme of exponentiality is a major focus of the Yearbook for Global Climate Action, which states that if countries were to fully implement their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, and if cooperative initiatives were to meet their commitments, global emissions in 2030 would be in a range consistent with the long-term trajectory to meet the Paris Agreement goal of well below 2°C.

Similarly, the Synthesis Report, which emphasizes ways of increasing ambition, points to ‘untapped potential’ that, if properly fulfilled, could yield economic gains of US$26 trillion and 65 million jobs in clean energy.

Inia Seruiratu, Minister for Agriculture, Rural & Maritime Development, National Disaster Management and Meteorological Services, and Fiji High-Level Climate Champion said, “This year, the entire Talanoa process – as reflected in the Synthesis Report – shows how we can put in place holistic approaches and policy frameworks across all sectors of the economy and the natural environment.

With the right policy frameworks, NDCs could address not only mitigation but also adaptation, disaster resilience and efficient use of resources.

Crucially, non-Party engagement will be essential in delivering on all these objectives.”

Significantly, these reports are published  just two weeks before governments gather for the global  climate summit in Poland (COP 24), where they are set to complete the implementation guidelines for the Paris Agreement, known as its Work Programme. A finalized Paris Agreement Work Programme has the potential to  unleash practical actions from the whole global climate action community commensurate with a 1.5 pathway.

For any media enquires, please contact mphillips(at)unfccc.int

More information on the Talanoa Dialogue

The Talanoa Dialogue’s Synthesis Report was issued by the Polish and Fijian COP Presidencies.

The fulll Report can be read here

More information on Global Climate Action

The Yearbook for Global Climate Action 2018 was issued by the two High-Level Climate Champions, Inia Seruiratu Fijian Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management, and Tomasz Chruszczow, Special Envoy for Climate Change from the Ministry of Environment in Poland

The full Yearbook can be viewed here

Press link for more: UNFCCC

What exactly is the ‘Green New Deal’? @QandA #auspol #qldpol Australia needs to join a Global #GreenNewDeal #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike Real innovation for jobs. #StopAdani #ClimateChange

By Hannah Northey

Hannah is an enterprise reporter for E&E News focusing on high-profile stories from across the energy sector.

She has also covered Congress and leadership changes at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with a focus on the policy and politics of oil and gas pipelines and exports.

She was previously a political and regulatory reporter at Argus Media in Washington, D.C., and worked as a reporter for several news outlets in Virginia and Michigan, including The Ann Arbor News, Lansing State Journal and Michigan Public Radio. Hannah recently completed fellowships in Japan and Detroit and has a master’s degree in environmental journalism from Michigan State University’s Knight Center.

In a Democratic clash on Capitol Hill, progressives are pushing an ambitious plan to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels, boost renewables and build a “smart” grid.

Meet the “Green New Deal.”

The proposal, drawing inspiration from President Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal, is one that progressives — led by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a rising star on the left — want Democratic leaders to embrace.

The thinking is that a newly revived Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in the House would produce a draft of the plan by Jan., 1, 2020, and finalized legislation no later than March 1, 2020.

The scope of the plan, laid out on Cortez’s campaign website, is cast as a work in progress. House leaders would be able to review the results of investigations and studies, along with detailed findings and interim recommendations. And there’s time for collaboration.

Pushing the proposal is the youth-driven Sunrise Movement, a growing grassroots movement that’s taken over the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California this week and Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey today.

Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the group, told E&E News earlier this week that progressives are calling on Pelosi to start building consensus around the ideas. That way, Democrats can move quickly if they regain power in 2021 and beyond (Climatewire, Nov. 14).

And yet disagreement is brewing, even among those eager to tackle climate change policy. Also outstanding are specifics on what programs would be included in a Green New Deal and how Congress and the federal government would pay for the plan.

“Democrats are united in decarbonizing our economy and addressing climate change in stark contrast to Republicans. But House leaders have to be strategic in how they approach climate change,” said Paul Bledsoe, an energy fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute who worked on climate change in the Clinton White House. “Impossible-to-reach targets will only disappoint.”

Here’s a look at what the plan calls for — so far — within a decade of being enacted:

100 percent renewables

The plan calls for the United States to shift to all renewable energy within a decade.

Such a move has been at the heart of ongoing debates within the energy sector for years. Experts have clashed on whether such a move is possible and on the definition of “100 percent renewables” (Greenwire, April 20).

Some researchers have suggested that moving to all renewables isn’t the best way to address climbing temperatures (Climatewire, June 20, 2017).

Build a ‘smart’ grid

The plan also calls for the creation of a national, energy-efficient “smart” grid.

Billions of dollars around the world has been invested in clean energy technologies, and grid experts for decades have been innovating ways to link them together, from solar arrays and wind turbines to electric cars.

Upgrade homes and businesses

Boosting efficiency is also on the menu. The plan calls for “upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety.”

That push could directly confront the Trump administration’s decision to leave energy efficiency on the back burner.

Multiple efficiency standards do not have set timelines for release, despite deadlines by Congress, and regulations for portable air conditioners, commercial packaged boilers and uninterruptible power supplies remain among the administration’s long-term goals (Greenwire, Oct. 17).

Decarbonize, decarbonize, decarbonize

Progressives are also calling for deep decarbonization across the nation.

The plan includes language that would reduce emissions from manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, as well as decarbonizing, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure.

The plan would also call for “funding massive investment” in the drawdown and capture of greenhouse gases, but the proposal hasn’t outlined the specifics of how to do that.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

In addition to boosting clean energy and exports, the plan would also lay out a national jobs program.

Specifically, the plan calls for “training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a national “job guarantee program” to “assure every person who wants one, a living wage job.”

Press link for more: EENews

For more on the Green New Deal

Watch this video

https://youtu.be/fT8gW8o3Sxo

Mind-blowing’: Hazards to multiply and accumulate with #climatechange Join #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #StopAdani demand #ClimateAction #TheDrum #QandA j

By Peter Hannam

Humanity is already enduring cumulative effects from climate change and damages will continue to mount along with carbon emissions, a new study has found. Tropical coastal regions will be the most exposed to multiple hazards.

The research – which involved analysis of 3280 research papers and was published on Tuesday by Nature Climate Change – identified 467 pathways that populations were already being hit by a warmer climate. Those impacts will likely increase and intensify unless aggressive efforts are taken to curb greenhouse gas pollution.

California burning: Tim Billow, 62, tries to save his plantings in his backyard as the Woolsey Fire burns in Malibu earlier this month.

Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu

“We never stopped being surprised by how many impacts had already happened to us,” said Camilo Mora, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of the paper. (An interactive can be seen here.)

“It was also mind-blowing that we just refuse to wake up about how serious this is,” he said.

Examples of impacts cited ranged from famine deaths triggered by droughts and the increased spread of diseases in a warming world, to worsening heavy metal contamination in lakes after wild fires and a poor Russian wheat harvest amid heatwaves in 2010 that led to a doubling of world prices for the commodity.

The tendency towards more extreme weather includes accelerated evaporation rates as temperatures rise, worsening droughts and contributing to more severe wildfires – a combination currently being played out in California, Professor Mora said.

Similarly, with the atmosphere holding about 7 per cent more moisture for each degree of warming, the potential for more intense rain events increases.

About 20-40 per cent of the rainfall from the record wet Hurricane Harvey that soaked Houston in 2017 has been attributed to climate change, Professor Mora said.

Coastal regions were already being exposed to overlapping hazards from both the land and the ocean, making them particularly vulnerable locations now and in the future.

If carbon emissions continued to rise unabated at their current rate, tropical coastal areas such as in Southeast Asia could face as many as six climate hazards concurrently, the paper said.

These included rising sea level and the increased acidity of oceans as they absorb more carbon from the atmosphere.

Top-down limitations

While societies often relied on top-down approaches to dealing with emissions, the result was often a fragile policy set-up.

Climate change and rising sea levels are affecting the Kiribati Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Photo: Justin McManus

“One person can come along and reverse the whole thing,” Professor Mora said.

“We need to build the solution for climate change from the bottom up,” he said, citing a project currently being tested in Hawaii to make the US state fully carbon neutral by tree planting and other efforts.

Press link for more: SMH

The Extinction Rebellion

Day One

https://youtu.be/poZV4OfieAA

#Climatechange activists arrested in London #ExtinctionRebellion protest released. #ClimateStrike #StopAdani #auspol #qldpol #TheDrum #QandA Ecological Emergency

Campaign group warns of ‘ecological emergency’ as it calls for government action

All 82 activists arrested during a mass environmental demonstration in London have been released under investigation, the Metropolitan Police said. 

6,000 people descended on the English capital on Saturday for the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest. 

Scotland Yard said on Sunday that protesters were predominantly detained for breaches of the Highways Act, following staged sit-ins on five bridges crossing the Thames.

Other arrests were made for offences under the Bail Act.

A previously reported figure of 85 arrests was revised down due to duplicating reports made by officers. 

Saturday’s action saw bands and speakers address crowds on Lambeth, Westminster, Waterloo, Blackfriars and Southwark bridges as part of a “rebellion day”. Campaign group Extinction Rebellion warns that the planet is facing an “ecological emergency” and wants government action to reduce carbon emissions. 

Starvation

One organiser on Saturday warned of starvation in the UK if there is no change to environmental policy. Gail Bradbrook said: “We could easily be facing starvation in the UK if the weather effect continues as it is. We need to be building resilience in our communities.” 

Dr Bradbrook said: “We’ve basically got three demands – one is that the government have to tell the truth. People think that climate change is something happening to somebody else at some other time but it’s coming home. We need to go to net zero carbon really quickly. And we’re also asking for a people’s assembly so people can decide how the change happens. 

“We’ll know when governments are doing different things, it could feel like a war, a beautiful war. It’s going to be huge.” 

The bridges event followed on from a series of protests carried out by activists in the past week. On Monday, 22 people were arrested after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to entry gates at the department for business, energy and industrial strategy. On Wednesday, more activists were detained following action near Downing Street and at the department for environment, food and rural affairs in Westminster. A “swarming roadblock” is also planned for Parliament Square from 7am between November 21st and 23rd.

Press link for more: Irish Times

Protecting The Future. Time for Australia to recommit to the environment. New Report from the Chifley Research Centre #auspol #TheDrum #QandA #StopAdani #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike j

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report calls for Australia to recommit to protection of the environment.

Australia needs to reinvigorate its political commitment to protecting our natural heritage by creating powerful instruments that are fit for purpose in addressing the serious challenges presented this century.

Environmental degradation is accelerating in Australia.

We have one of the highest rates of extinctions in the world; globally significant rates of deforestation; plastics clogging our waterways and in many regions diminishing air, water and soil quality threaten human wellbeing and productivity.

Environmental policy innovation in the past 20 years has failed to keep pace with environmental challenges.

Climate change and population growth are putting unprecedented pressure on our environment.

With the threats facing this country so much bigger than the site-by-site battles that first animated environmental concern, the need for better systems- based approaches is now critical.

The current federal environment regime and its key legal instrument, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) 1999, are not fit for purpose in the 21st century.

A new approach must be delivered where the federal government takes a strategic leadership role, setting legally binding standards to be applied by other governments and industry, and backed by a reanimated commitment to protecting Australia’s natural assets.

Critiques of the current federal environment laws (the EPBC) include:

They are too focused on development approvals and not on proactive protection of the environment. They are toothless, delivering very little change in environmental outcomes – all major indicators of environmental health and sustainability are in decline.

They fail to deliver business certainty, with long delays and lack of clarity in approval processesand little evidence of significantly improved environmental outcomes.

They have no institutional backing to deliver innovation or lead visionary, system-wide policy solutions.

They don’t even mention climate change.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1:

Scrap the EPBC and create a new Act and supporting institutions

A new Commonwealth Environment Act and new institutions to deliver its aims, should be delivered within the first year of any new government.

Armed with the insights of the Hawke Review, the work of the Australian Panel of Experts in Environmental Law (APEEL) and the Productivity Commission’s Major Project Development Assessment Processes report, there is no need for a long process of consultation as there are clear principles with which to act.

Recommendation 2:

Commonwealth leadership on the environment

The new Act should enshrine federal leadership in issues of national and international importance. It is an anomaly of the Constitution that for too long no level of government has been responsible for arresting the decline of Australia’s natural environment.

The Act should legally obligate the Commonwealth to deliver the following:

Protect Australia’s natural environment and its biodiversity.

End deforestation and restore native vegetation cover to protect nature and store carbon. Improve fresh water quality and flows in our river systems to provide clean water.

Expand the protected area estate in line with international obligations including improved management across protected area tenures and a central role for traditional owners and local communities.

Arrest and reverse species loss and decline.

Ensure invasive species do not undermine environmental and economic assets.

Improve the health of our oceans by addressing both terrestrial and marine threats.

Prepare Australia and its planning and infrastructure systems to adapt to climate change.

Ensure climate change considerations are central in making major development decisions.

Ensure air quality protects human health and that Australians are protected from toxic pollution and contaminants.

Deliver Australia’s treaty obligations that relate to the environment, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Reduce waste – including plastics and the environmental problems created by them.

Respect Indigenous Australians’ environmental rights and ensure improved social and economic benefits for Indigenous Australians in environmental protection is prioritised in public policy and funding.

Recommendation 3:

New institutions – Policy leadership and innovation

The laws should set out simply and clearly the legal and administrative pathway to delivery of the objectives.

The laws would establish a new empowered independent institutional structure to deliver its aims.

The first function that an independent institutional structure must deliver is that of policy leadership to create legally binding national plans and standards as dictated by the Act, to be delivered together with the states.

The Minister would set priorities for this process.

The federal environment department would deliver its programs.

This new policy institution would also build a database of knowledge to inform better decision-making, it would be empowered to investigate innovations in both policy and delivery, it will conduct inquiries into major environmental issues (modelled on the Productivity Commission’s approaches and lessons of the Resource Assessment Commission) and, be an advocate for the environment in the national debate. These tasks and powers would be enshrined in the Act.

It would be the powerhouse to reignite policy ambition for protection of Australia’s environment.

Recommendation 4:

New Institutions – Effective regulation

The new laws would set out the pathway to a stronger, clearer, development approvals process.

Development approvals would sit within the proactive national plans and standards, which over time will deliver harmonisation between state and federal laws, removing duplication by clarifying decision making standards.

The current lack of certainty and transparency in development approval processes will be removed, delivering streamlining so that business will know where it stands and will be able to get on with things.

A new independent institutional structure would test for compliance with national standards and lead the development approvals process and other regulatory functions, delivering better outcomes for the environment, communities and business.

The final decision maker for development approvals could be either the independent regulator or may remain with the Minister.

This is an issue for further debate.

Either way, the decision making process would be public, transparent and clear.

By removing the Minister’s role as decision maker in development approvals, the Minister would be free to be an advocate for the environment both publicly and around the cabinet table.

However, others argue that the Minister should retain democratic accountability by being the final decision maker.

By clarifying the decision-making standards and making publicly transparent decisions based on them, greater community confidence would be engendered.

The independent regulatory agency would lead the Commonwealth development approvals process making decisions within legislated timeframes, aided by greater clarity of expectations and design of the approvals process at the outset. It will also deliver effective compliance.

Recommendation 5:

National Environment Commission

These two functions – policy leadership and effective regulation – could be delivered either through one

or two institutions. It is the view of this report that one institution would make more sense, a National Environment Commission delivering both the policy and regulatory functions to underpin the Act.

The National Environment Commission would be an expert institution, trusted by Australians.

Recommendation 6:

Adequate and effective funding

Protecting the environment does not come for free.

The Australian Conservation Foundation estimates that environment spending has been reduced by 37 per cent since 2013–14, while the overall federal budget has increased by 18 per cent.

The decline must be addressed and funding increased over time to ensure that the objectives of the new Act are realised.

However, these legal and institutional reforms will ensure every dollar is maximised.

Over the past 25 years, public funding has delivered too little in terms of improved environmental outcomes.

The reforms will provide much greater accountability and more focused outcomes for spending.

Press link for full report: Chifley Research Centre