The fifth section of the Copenhagen congress synthesis report  asserts that inaction is inexcusable. It calls for a combination of mitigation and adaptation strategies.  There is little that will not be already familiar to those who follow such matters, but the importance of the report is that it articulates a consensus of many professionals and carries a consequent authority. The intention is to give policy makers an up-to-date picture of the means open to us to deal with the reality ahead and to declare them adequate when properly integrated.
Category: Climate politics
Time to worry: NBR editor lacks insight on climate change
Relax everybody, NBR editor Nevil Gibson has conducted extensive research (read the Wall Street Journal), and discovered that we really don’t need to worry about climate change any more. In an astonishing “editor’s insight” this week, headed No worries: Climate change debate goes nowhere fast, he writes:
In the past year or so since you last worried about it, the climate change debate has moved on. In fact, it is in danger of extinction as the scientific “consensus†disappears and international agencies and governments backpedal on draconian measures to stamp out use of carbon.
Gibson repeats some of the arguments used by a WSJ columnist to support this view, including mention of the shonky (and repeatedly debunked) “700 scientist” list promoted by Senate denier James Inhofe, and then quotes the WSJ verbatim:
Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
Oh really? This is counterfactual, an invention, an ideologically-inspired attempt to mislead, misdirect and misinform, and I’m being polite. The peer-reviewed research, as handily summarised in the Copenhagen synthesis report so extensively covered at Hot Topic (and see also RealClimate), shows that far from being debunked, “doomsday scenarios” are looking more likely than ever. Worse, if the business world that Gibson seeks to inform believes what he writes, then doomsday scenarios will be assured.
New Zealand’s business community does not need ideologically-inspired excuses for inaction, it needs clear-sighted assessment of the real risks (and opportunities) that climate change brings. Sadly, Nevil Gibson prefers to repeat nonsense from US ideologues. If that’s the quality of the “insight” he offers, then perhaps the NBR needs a new editor.
“The irresponsibility and immorality of climate change denial”
When does opposition to action on climate change cross the line between legitimate political debate and enter the realms of irresponsible, immoral and dangerous inaction? Paul Krugman, professor of economics at Princeton, Nobel prize winner and New York Times columnist is in no doubt: most of those who voted against the Waxman-Markey emissions reduction bill in Washington earlier this week breached all the principles of good governance.
…most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.
Krugman mentions MIT’s revised projections, and the Copenhagen synthesis report analysed in recent posts by Bryan Walker conveys the same message. But it was the quality of the debate in Congress that really upset him…
Continue reading ““The irresponsibility and immorality of climate change denial””
Copenhagen 4: equity issues
The fourth section of the Copenhagen congress synthesis report is firmly in the realm of policy. Addressing climate change involves ethics.  Unequivocally the report asserts that serious equity issues should inform the fight to restrain global warming and enters into detail in identifying them.  For one thing the climate is not changing uniformly around the world and the human effects are unequal. Profoundly unequal, for example, in the impacts of climate change on health. The poor, the marginal, the uneducated and the geographically vulnerable are at greatest risk of injury and death. In general, developed countries are most responsible for climate change up to now while developing countries suffer the majority of the impacts. Any lasting and widely accepted solution to the climate change challenge should recognise and account for these equity dimensions in negotiations and agreements.
Hit the road, Nick
Climate minister Nick Smith and international negotiator Tim Groser have published the schedule for their recently announced consultation exercise on a 2020 emissions target for New Zealand. The hastily arranged exercise (announced only last month, and a surprise to many) has already drawn calls for an interim target of 40% by 2020 from the recently-formed NZ Climate Action Partnership and Greenpeace. In an interesting development, Carbon News is reporting that Green Party climate change spokeswoman Jeanette Fitzsimons has floated the idea that NZ could adopt a split target — setting separate 2020 targets for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane:
Fitzsimons says that with the technology not yet available to reduce methane emissions from farmed animals – responsible for half of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions – this country should be thinking about setting separate targets for carbon, nitrous oxide and methane for 2020.
“If we set an overall target that is mainly determined by the difficulty of reducing agricultural emissions, it looks to the rest of the world like we are doing nothing,†she said.
It’s an interesting concept, at the very least, though I have to say I’m not keen on giving agriculture a wholly free ride. Federated Farmers like to insist that the “technology is not available”, but there are a range of options farms can use to reduce emissions, from the use of nitrification inhibitors to better handling of manure (not to mention shifting to low-carbon crops or carbon farming).
Full details of the public meetings below the fold. I’ll be making an effort to attend the Christchurch meeting next Wednesday evening.