Tag: targets

Europe looks to bolder targets

No doubt the New Zealand climate change minister will point out that the New Zealand’s emissions profile is different from that of the EU and that the exchanges about reduction targets that have been taking place in Europe in recent days therefore have little relevance for us. Nevertheless I have taken heart from reading about them in their own right, whether they have relevance to us or not, though I think they do have at least some.

Currently the EU has a target of a 20% cut in emissions by 2020. The Guardian reported last week that the UK’s climate change secretary Chris Huhne (pictured) wants to see that target toughened to 30%. Gunther Oettinger, the EU’s energy commissioner, disagreed on the kind of cautious grounds that we are all too familiar with in New Zealand. “If we go alone to 30%, you will only have a faster process of de-industrialisation in Europe. We need industry in Europe, and industry means CO2 emissions.”

Continue reading “Europe looks to bolder targets”

An immediate halt to CO2 emissions is an absolute necessity…

…if we are to maintain the health of ocean ecosystems, says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in this video presentation, given to a symposium at the recent Our Changing Oceans conference in Washington DC. It’s sobering viewing. Here are the primary messages from the symposium:

  • There is a large body of empirical evidence indicating that anthropogenic climate change is substantially impacting ocean ecosystems. The evidence comes from many taxa, locations and habitats.
  • Changes in biological function in the ocean caused by anthropogenic climate change go far beyond death, extinctions and habitat loss: fundamental processes are being altered, community assemblages are being reorganized and ecological surprises are likely.
  • These changes will have significant consequences for people.

Perhaps even more importantly, Ove suggests that 450 ppm atmospheric CO2 is not a comfortable target. Hat tip to Ove’s co-author John Bruno for posting this at Skeptical Science earlier today. See also Ove’s excellent climateshifts.org blog.

Copenhagen Accord puts world on pathway to 3ºC

German scientists have added up the emissions reductions pledged in the Copenhagen Accord and calculate that they put the planet on a pathway that misses the Accord’s stated 2ºC target, and only delivers a 50/50 chance of coming in under 3ºC by the end of the century. In an opinion article in this week’s Nature, Copenhagen Accord pledges are paltry, Joeri Roelgj et al show how the current emissions commitments amount to little better than “business as usual”, and effectively mean that global emissions will have increased by 20% by 2020. The key points in the article are:

  • Nations will probably meet only the lower ends of their emissions pledges in the absence of a binding international agreement
  • Nations can bank an estimated 12 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalents surplus allowances for use after 2012
  • Land-use rules are likely to result in further allowance increases of 0.5 GtCO2-eq per year
  • Global emissions in 2020 could thus be up to 20% higher than today
  • Current pledges mean a greater than 50% chance that warming will exceed 3°C by 2100
  • If nations agree to halve emissions by 2050, there is still a 50% chance that warming will exceed 2°C and will almost certainly exceed 1.5°C

A lack of ambition now means that countries will face steep emissions cuts in future. Co-author Malte Meinshausen told the BBC:

In an ideal world, if you pull off every possible emission reduction from the year 2021 onwards, you can still get to get to 2C if you’re lucky. But it is like racing towards the cliff and hoping you stop just before it.

Commenting on the article, Andy Reisinger of VUW’s Climate Change Research Institute told the SMC:

“This analysis shows that it is imperative to substantially strengthen the emissions targets for 2020 as part of a strong international agreement if the world is to have a realistic chance of limiting warming to 2°C. We are no longer gambling the future of the planet — if we stick with current emissions targets we are folding our cards entirely and leaving it to our (and other people’s) kids to pay our accumulated debts.”

VUW’s Martin Manning points out that politicians need to be given the mandate to act decisively:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that dealing with climate change is something that needs to become driven by society more broadly. People need to consider how much of a problem we want to pass on to our grandchildren and tell politics and industry to act accordingly.

The BBC coverage is excellent, dramatically illustrating the lack of ambition in European targets. Reports also at the Herald & Stuff

As you sow… (aka the “bugger” moment)

And so it begins: the rest of the world is starting to notice the major disconnect between New Zealand’s much advertised “clean and green” image and the National-led government’s piecemeal demolition of sensible climate policy. In yesterday’s Guardian, one of Britain’s leading quality newspapers, Fred Pearce devotes his “greenwash” column to New Zealand:

…my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as “clean and green. […] To rub our noses in it, last year New Zealand signed up to the UN’s Climate Neutral Network, a list of nations that are “laying out strategies to become carbon neutral”. But if you read the small print of what New Zealand has actually promised, it is a measly 50% in emissions by 2050 – something even the US can trump.

Pearce fails to draw the distinction between the policies of the last government — which were for carbon neutrality — and the stance of the current government — which has stopped all work on plans for carbon neutrality — but is spot on about the marketing problem NZ now faces:

Check the UNEP website and you will find an excruciating hagiography about a “climate neutral journey to Middle Earth”, in which everything from the local wines to air conditioning and Air New Zealand get the greenwash treatment.

After extolling the country’s green credentials, it asks: “Have you landed in a dreamland?” Well, UNEP’s reporter certainly has. He cheers New Zealand’s “global leadership in tackling climate change”, when the country’s minister in charge of climate negotiations, Tim Groser, has been busy reassuring his compatriots that “we would not try to be ‘leaders’ in climate change.”

This is not just political spin. It is also commercial greenwash. New Zealand trades on its greenness to promote its two big industries: tourism and dairy exports.

And there’s the crunch. Pearce goes on to point to research that suggests tourism would be badly hit by a loss of the clean green image. To make matters worse, environmental tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the market. Our agricultural exports also depend on that image — but Tim Groser and the audience of farmers he was addressing seem to have been blissfully unaware of the pit they were digging for themselves.

It takes years to build a good image and establish what marketing people call positive brand attributes, but it can take only a few newspaper articles to damage or destroy it. Tourism NZ’s British campaign just took a major blow. How long before the news spreads, tourist numbers fall and exports are hit? Will our Minister of Tourism rush to defend our brand? And just how are you going to do that, John? It’s your systematic demolition of sensible climate policies that is doing the damage.

[See also: Bernard Hickey this morning.]

[Hat tip: Sam Tobin]

Take a giant step

The UK’s Committee on Climate Change, established to advise the British government on emissions targets and to report to Parliament on the progress being made towards achieving those targets, has just published its first annual report: Meeting Carbon Budgets – the need for a step change. It warns that the current rate of emissions reductions, running at about 1% per year, needs to be increased to 2% and perhaps 3% if the UK is to hit its relatively ambitious 34% emissions cut by 2020. Here’s how the Guardian reports it:

A green and pleasant land, with millions of electric cars powered from wind turbines and travelling between super-cosy homes and offices: that is the vision for Britain in 2020 set out today by the government’s climate watchdog.

That cleaner, greener country, playing its full part in averting disastrous global warming, is both possible and affordable, says the Climate Change Committee – but only if the government acts immediately to implement radical policies on energy efficiency and low carbon technologies, as well as dealing with the threat of the recession to carbon trading schemes.

The Times is more concerned with the suggestion that motoring taxes could be increased, but Richard Black at the BBC provides a good overview.

The report is well worth a read, not because the policy suggestions are directly relevant to NZ’s position (though encouraging household energy efficiency, electric vehicles and boosting renewables should be part of what we do), but because the Committee itself is a policy body that New Zealand sorely needs. Instead of arguing in parliamentary committee rooms about the existence of warming, this body takes the best scientific advice and applies it to determine credible policy objectives. That’s one reason why Britain’s current targets are amongst the most aggressive in the developed world. But the committee does much more: it reports on the progress being made, and establishes a “reporting to budget” process that would be familiar to anyone who has managed anything other than the smallest of businesses. And as this first report shows, if it looks like the budget forecasts are going to be missed, they are not afraid to recommend policy initiatives.

To me, that looks like a rational way to approach the issue. What a pity that instead NZ has leaders who are unwilling to lead, no effective mechanism for emissions reductions, and a government in thrall to big emitters. Climate policy needs to be made on the basis of rational analysis, not National’s paralysis.

[Taj Mahal]