EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • US Climate change bill faces fresh delays

     

    However, that vote now looks set to face further delays after Senate Democrats announced yesterday that the latest version of the legislation would not be unveiled until “later in September”.

    A Senate vote on the bill, which had originally been passed by the House of Representatives back in June, was originally expected back in July only to see it delayed until early September.

    The latest delays were attributed to the on-going row over President Obama’s healthcare reforms and continued opposition to the bill from some Democrat Senators who have demanded concessions designed to support carbon intensive US industries.

    Critics said that any further delays would seriously undermine the US position at forthcoming international climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

    A spokesman for Senate majority leader Harry Reid said that he fully expected the Senate to have “ample time to consider this comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation before the end of the year”.

    There was better news, however, for the proposed bill after a Washington-Post ABC news poll of over 1,000 adults which found that 57% support the president’s handling of energy policy.

    Moreover, 58% of respondents said they would support an emissions cap-and-trade scheme if it only results in modest increases in energy bills of $10 a month, while only 15% agreed with repeated Republican claims that the bill would kill off jobs.

    There was also a ringing endorsement for the president’s energy efficiency measures, with over 80% supporting legal requirements for car manufacturers to improve vehicle fuel efficiency and over 70% supporting federal requirements to conserve commercial and domestic energy use.

    The results will be welcomed by supporters of the bill who have been engaged in an increasingly fraught battle with lobby groups opposed to the legislation, several of whom have been accused of engaging in underhand tactics designed to exaggerate the scale of opposition to the bill.

  • Climate Camp protesters blockade Royal Bank of Scotland building

     

    The activists on the trading floor were taken out of the building after police medics used solvents to remove the glue, said Elly Robson, one of the protesters blockading the entrance.

    “RBS is a publicy owned bank which is taking environmental action which is not in the public interest,” she said. “The people on the trading floor managed to get this message right to the bank’s bosses.”

    There had been no arrests, and police had made no attempt to remove those blockading the entrance, she said.

    Also today, another group of activists from the Climate Camp, which set up on Wednesday on common land at Blackheath, south-east London, protested at the office building occupied by Edelman, an international PR company that has among its clients the energy firm E.ON.

    A group of naked demonstrators stood in a window of the building on Victoria Street, in central London, covering themselves in a banner saying “Climate lies uncovered”.

    A member of the camp’s media team, Richard Howlett, said there were two other actions taking place. One was a march around the City, in which indigenous Canadian activists were protesting at environmental damage caused by the exploitation of tar sands in the country.

    Another group was marching from the Climate Camp towards the Bank of England, he said, adding: “Whether or not that turns into another direct action, we’ll have to wait and see.”

    The Climate Camp at Blackheath is the fourth annual incarnation of the temporary environmental protest site. In previous years, it has set up at two coal-fired power stations and Heathrow airport.

    Over the last five days, 1,000 or more people have stayed at the site, which has been fitted out with marquees, communal kitchens and compost toilets. The camp has also been used as a base from which to launch protests against organisations perceived to be harming the environment.

    Unlike in previous years, the camp is not ending with a mass demonstration. Instead, those attending are being encouraged to go to E.ON’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fuelled power station in Nottinghamshire on 17 and 18 October.

    In April, police arrested 114 people on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage and aggravated trespass in an apparent attempt to pre-empt a protest at the plant.

    The arrests, and the policing of the G20 protests earlier in April, which included a Climate Camp action, prompted widespread criticism and claims of brutality. The Metropolitan police promised a “community-style” approach to the Blackheath camp, and have thus far kept a low profile.

    “With the relative lack of pressure from police, we have been able to spend a lot of time at Climate Camp preparing people for the direct action in October,” Howlett said.

  • UN Chief ‘alarmed’ at glacier melt

     

    Mr Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, is on a two-day trip to the Arctic to see first-hand the effects of climate change ahead of international climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

    He is the first UN chief to visit the Ny-Alesund research station.

    World leaders will gather at a UN climate summit in December to try to seal a new international accord on fighting climate change after the Kyoto Protocol requirements expire in 2012.

    Mr Ban, who visited the Polar Ice Rim aboard a Norwegian coastguard vessel, said politicians must act now.

    “We have a moral political responsibility for our future and for the whole of humanity, for even the future of our planet,” he said.

    “This Arctic is the place where this global warming is happening much faster than any other region in the world.

    “It looks like it’s seemingly moving in slow motion but it’s moving faster and faster. Much faster than expected.”

    The UN chief visited the Zeppelin atmospheric measuring station on Ny-Alesund which records the level of carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases and pollutants in the air.

    “Over the past two years, we’ve suddenly seen a very big increase in methane gas,” Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, told Mr Ban.

    Methane is one of the greenhouse gases that contributes to global warming.

    Mr Holmen warned that glaciers were melting at an increasing rate, releasing massive amounts of fresh water in the oceans and disrupting the Gulf stream – a flow of water in the Atlantic that has a major impact on the planet’s weather system.

    Mr Ban hopes to use his experience in Svalbard to convince the international community about the dangers of climate change at the Copenhagen summit, a meeting he has described as “crucial”.

    Mr Ban is also due to travel to Longyearbyen, the main town in the archipelago, to tour a vault carved into the Arctic permafrost and filled with samples of the world’s most important seeds.

    Dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of food, the vault can hold up to 4.5 million samples that can provide food crops in the event of a global catastrophe.

     

  • Men- not the only greens


    Men – not the only greens


    When it comes to climate change talks, women are an endangered species. But our input is crucial





    I am always amazed when I walk into meetings with the prime minister and groups campaigning on climate change to find that I suddenly appear to be an endangered species. As a woman involved in climate change campaigning on a national and international level, I am often left stunned to think that over half the world’s population is being represented in meetings across the world by a tiny number of female voices.


    From Britain’s environment ministers, past and present, to prominent campaigners such as Jonathan Porritt or George Monbiot, global converts such as Al Gore, and the panoply of climate change negotiators from Kyoto to Copenhagen, men are dominating this debate.


     


    What is it about the issue of climate change that means women do not get involved? Undoubtedly, in the realm of decision-making, it is a failure of politics to catch up with 21st-century equality. In terms of campaigning, environmental journalism and grassroots activism, I suspect the reasons may be more complex, and stem from women themselves feeling shut out from a lot of very male-dominated debates.


    I am privileged to represent more than 205,000 women across England and Wales, many of whom have spent the last few years raising awareness about the threat of climate change in their communities. Building on this, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes recently launched a national campaign to get the government to recognise the unique role that women can play. Our members are sending postcards to urge Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, to do more than pay lip service and to recognise the role of women in agreements at the December climate conference in Copenhagen.


    Women remain particularly influential consumers of domestic products and utilities, and could choose greener energy suppliers and appliances. Britain’s women control over £400m more expenditure every week than men do. The consequences of even a tiny proportion of that total being spent with the environment in mind would be huge, and would create demand for more sustainable goods. Think of that the next time you’re standing in the cleaning product aisle in the supermarket.


    Women are also still the primary educators of the next generation and so have huge power to change the way children think about their coexistence with the planet. In developing countries, women are the guardians of natural resources – collecting food, water and fuel for their families. They also make up over 70% of the world’s poorest citizens, and because of this they will be hit the hardest when the impacts of climate change are felt, as their position in society in many countries makes them less well equipped to deal with emergencies.


    Projects and examples from all around the world have demonstrated that women can be powerful agents of change when they are provided with the right tools, helping to make a better life for themselves, their families and their communities. Individual women can make a difference to the future of our planet. Our members have demonstrated this by building eco-homes, reducing their car use, switching to green suppliers or reducing the energy they use in their homes.


    If we want our children and grandchildren to have a world worth enjoying, now is the time for women to stand up and be counted. Forget being indifferent to climate change – make some noise, be an environmental consumer, find out more about the issues, get interested, get involved. Rise up and make your voices known. The status quo is not good enough: women have a powerful and important place in tackling climate change, and know more than anyone the direct impact on families and communities across the world.

  • AGL to develop renewable energy projects.


    AGL to develop renewable energy projects


    Updated: 14:52, Sunday August 23, 2009


    AGL to develop renewable energy projects


    AGL Energy says it will develop $6 billion to $7 billion in renewable energy projects over the next decade.


    AGL Energy chief executive Michael Fraser said the recent passage of renewable energy target (RET) legislation through parliament was ‘very significant’ for AGL.


    The passage of the RET means that from January there will be a target requiring 20 per cent of electricity to be generated from renewable energy sources by 2020.


    ‘We are the largest developer of renewable assets in the country, and this really means that we are going to be able to accelerate our development program,’ Mr Fraser told the ABC’s Inside Business program on Sunday.


    Mr Fraser said that in total, about $25 billion to $30 billion of renewable projects would have to be built over the next decade to meet the RET target.


     


    ‘We intend to develop a pipeline of our projects so when we look over the next decade that’s probably six to seven billion dollars worth of projects on our own,’ he said.


    ‘We’ve already got over two billion dollars worth of projects on our books, so over the longer term, it’s a very significant value-creation opportunity for the company.’


    Mr Fraser said that under the RET, about 4,500 wind turbines would have to be built to supply about 9,000 megawatts of power.


    He agreed that the RET legislation would ‘crowd out’ gas-fired power generation.


    ‘Yes, that is definitely what will happen,’ Mr Fraser said.


    He said renewable power-generation technologies were dominated by wind power.


    Mr Fraser rejected a suggestion that AGL, which also has interests in the gas and brown coal sectors, would be happy about delays in the passage through federal parliament of the government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).


    ‘Around the ETS, we want that in place. We think that’s a very important component,’ Mr Fraser said.


    He said the ETS would result in additional costs to the energy industry and to the economy.


    ‘(But) what we really want is that legislation in place. We want certainty about what the business environment is going forward.’


    Mr Fraser said companies would find it hard to make investment decisions unless there was certainty.


    He said that, ultimately, sensible legislation would be put in place around a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), but it would require transition arrangements to ‘make sure that the lights stay on’.


    Mr Fraser acknowledged that under the legislation coal-fired power stations using brown coal would eventually have to shut down unless they become cleaner.


    ‘When we look forward, ultimately, if there are no advances in carbon capture and storage, then ultimately, yes, the objective of the legislation is that those generators will be shut down and other generation will take its place,’ he said.

  • Coalition vows to fight emissions scheme.

    Coalition vows to fight emissions scheme


    NB (Could lead to a Double Dissolution)


    Posted 42 minutes ago


    The Coalition says if it wins the next election, it would consider changing the Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme, should it be passed by Parliament.


    The Government is hoping its emissions trading scheme will pass the Senate the second time around by negotiating changes with the Coalition.


    Even if they reach an agreement that would see the scheme passed into law, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says he would consider changing it if the Coalition is returned to Government.


     


    “We may well go to the election wth proposals to amend it or change it,” he said.


    Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce goes much further, saying the Nationals will not accept the emissions trading scheme at all.


    “That system has to be dismantled, you can’t go forward with a system that sends you broke,” he said.


    The second Senate vote is expected to be in November.


    At their annual conference on Saturday, the Nationals vowed to vote against the Government’s emissions trading scheme regardless of what the Liberals decide.


    Tags: federal-government, federal-parliament, labor-party, liberal-party, nationals, australia