Tag: carbon

I don’t like Mondays

Lady Young, head of the UK’s Environment Agency, thinks that coping with climate change demands wartime urgency, as the Telegraph [UK] reports:

“This is World War Three – this is the biggest challenge to face the globe for many, many years. We need the sorts of concerted, fast, integrated and above all huge efforts that went into many actions in times of war. We’re dealing with this as if it is peacetime, but the time for peace on climate change is gone – we need to be seeing this as a crisis and emergency,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Observer covers a new report from a peace group:

This stark warning will be outlined by the peace group International Alert in a report, A Climate of Conflict, this week. Much of Africa, Asia and South America will suffer outbreaks of war and social disruption as climate change erodes land, raises seas, melts glaciers and increases storms, it concludes. Even Europe is at risk.

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, and the International Energy Agency sees “inexorable”growth in energy demand over the next 30 years with a risk of more coal being burned. It does suggests a 450ppm CO2 limit might be achievable, but:

“Exceptionally quick and vigourous policy action by all countries, and unprecedented technological advances, entailing substantial costs, would be needed to make this case a reality.”

Not much hope of that. And the China Post says EU officials reckon that China will reject binding limits on emissions in any post-Kyoto deal. The words “hell” and “handbasket” spring to mind…On the upside? Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times [UK] looks at options for “fixing” climate through technology (well worth a read), scientists at Harvard and Penn State reckon they’ve found a way to speed up a natural weathering process to neutralise ocean acidity and remove carbon from the atmosphere, and Technology Review reports on a Dutch biofuel company working with a California-based venture capital outfit to develop catalysts that can turn organic matter such as waste wood into biocrude – chemicals that can be processed to make biofuels. If you’ve got money to invest, the Observer [UK] reckons that one of a new breed of green investment funds might be a good place to put it.

They would say that, wouldn’t they…

This week it’s the turn of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition to trumpet a report urging a go-slow on emissions trading. The GPC, of course, are the nation’s big emitters (NZ Aluminium Smelters, Holcim, Solid Energy, Fonterra etc), and they are lobbying hard on behalf of their members. The usual suspects (Business Roundtable, Business NZ) weighed in behind the report, while Greenpeace and the Business Council For Sustainable Development took the opposite view. Brian Fallow at the Herald provides an overview – but not much in the way of substantive criticism.

The report, The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme: How do we make it work? [PDF], by Alex Sundakov at Castalia, is pretty obviously a bit of special pleading on behalf of big emitters – primarily agriculture – and in that respect its conclusions are hardly surprising. These are the key suggestions (from the press release):

Continue reading “They would say that, wouldn’t they…”

Towards credible offsets

Carbon offsets are often criticised as no better than medieval “papal indulgences” – pay a few dollars and have your sins forgiven, then feel free to sin again – but they have a valuable role to play in the transition to a low carbon economy. Provided, of course, that the offsets – the emissions reductions or carbon sequestration that someone undertakes on your behalf – are real. There are substantial moves afoot to develop credible international standards for offsets, and a seminar at the Institute of Policy Studies in Wellington last week (Carbon Neutrality and the Voluntary Carbon Market in New Zealand) looked at the issue in the NZ context.

Rod Oram’s column in the Sunday Star Times this week drew on his experience at the seminar, and paints a picture of what’s going on in the voluntary sector.

…if we leave climate change to mandated government actions such as treaties, caps, emissions trading and standards we will never achieve the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions needed to stabilise the global climate, argues Michael Molitor of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Australian practice. Even if you take all the existing mandatory national and international programmes in place and add in something of similar scope for the US on the assumption that the next president will act, “you do not get a reduction in timing and scale of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020,” he told a Victoria University Institute of Policy Studies seminar last week. “So, you have to engage everybody.” And that means developing voluntary carbon markets to incentivise people to change their behaviour and adopt better technology.

Many of the presentations given at the seminar are available at the IPS web site, and one well worth reading in detail is a paper (Carbon Neutrality, Carbon Footprints, Offsets… and Credibility [PDF]) by Murray Ward, Melanie Hutton and Jim Renwick. It provides an excellent overview.

Also worth noting: on November 19th, The Climate Group (a British NGO), the World Economic Forum, and the International Emissions Trading Association will launch a new global Voluntary Carbon Standard. No popes involved.

Formerly the weekend roundup

Saturday’s promised omnibus extension never arrived, in part because of the arrival of a big cat on my computer, so here’s a Tuesday update.

Continue reading “Formerly the weekend roundup”

Let’s not blow the chance to lead change

More feedback on the NZ Insitute’s “fast follower” proposal, this time from business commentator Rod Oram in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times. Rod’s take is very similar to mine, though from a different perspective, and so I’m very pleased to welcome Rod as our third guest blogger – and reproduce that SST column in full. It’s a very good read…

Continue reading “Let’s not blow the chance to lead change”