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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. 

  • nations divided over US carbon summit

    Green groups have received the announcement with scepticism and claim it will sideline Prime Minister John Howard’s wish to make September’s APEC meeting in Sydney a platform for discussing strategies on climate change.

    "I warmly welcome the announcement by the US that it will convene a meeting of major economies, including Australia, to determine a common approach towards climate change, in Washington DC on September 27 and 28," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.

    "Australia will join 13 leading economies and the UN at the meeting, which will take forward President Bush’s initiative to address the environmental, energy security, and economic aspects of climate change.

    "With Australia’s emissions less than two per cent of global emissions, climate change demands an effective global response.

    "Australian action to reduce emissions, while important, will have little meaningful impact if not part of wider international action."

    Mr Downer said an effective international framework was one that included all major emitters, took account of differing national circumstances and goals for sustainable development, and allowed countries to adopt a range of policies to reduce their emissions.

    "This is why climate change is the key focus for the Asian-Pacific leaders at the APEC summit in September in Sydney. Climate change is much more than an environmental issue – it’s an economic one," he said.

    Greens leader Bob Brown said Mr Bush’s announcement gazumped the prime minister’s plan for APEC to be a global climate change breakthrough.

    "While the Bush summit is belated recognition of the reality of climate change and the threat it poses to our Earth, there will be scepticism that President Bush, who spurned the Kyoto Protocol, will now be claiming leadership on climate change," he said in a statement.

    "And Bush’s move leaves Howard and his APEC plans sidelined.

    "At best, APEC will now be seen as preparation for the main event.

    "Clearly President Bush doesn’t know that his friend John Howard, Australia’s man of steel, is facing an election in November."

    But Mr Howard said both meetings were part of the same process.

    "I see this, which will come a few weeks after the APEC meeting here in Sydney, as another step along the road to developing a practical, commonsense international arrangement to follow the Kyoto Protocol which, for very good national interest reasons, Australia has not signed," Mr Howard told reporters.

  • GE releases carbon credit cart

    Reporting by Roddy Scheer

    Industrial giant General Electric (GE) last week introduced a new credit card that encourages consumers to offset the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their spending through the purchase of carbon offsets with reward points. The GE Money Earth Rewards Platinum MasterCard allows cardholders to put a one percent cash rebate on purchases towards projects that help mitigate global warming.

    While GE has prioritized pro-environment projects since 2005, it is also known as one of the world’s worst polluters historically. As such, environmentalists have mixed feelings about the new credit card.

    “It’s ironic,” says Michael J. Brune of the nonprofit Rainforest Action Network. “GE supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.”

    But others welcome the move as a step in the right direction. “Using a credit card is a frequent activity and anything that raises awareness of carbon offsetting is a good idea,” says Mark Armitage of the Carbon Neutral Company, an organization that helps companies and individuals offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

    But whether analysts like it or not, they had better get used to the concept. Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest bank, has announced plans to launch a similar carbon offset credit card later this year, and it’s only a matter of time before other financial institutions follow suit.

  • Melbourne Carbon Trading Opens

    "The clean technologies are actually looking for that extra piece of value that actually makes their product competitive," he said.

    "So by these organisations buying the credits or buying the offsets, what they’re doing is virtually sponsoring clean technology."

    Greenpeace has welcomed the opening of the trading scheme but says a government target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is still needed.

    Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham says without a target, the reductions will take too long.

    "We know that you can make a difference with voluntary measures," he said.

    "But you won’t make a difference anywhere near as quickly as you will if a government makes a decision that something will happen and sets a target for reducing our greenhouse pollution."

  • Aust economists call for Kyoto action

    Climate call: 271 economists say major economic damage could be done to Australia.

    Climate call: 271 economists say major economic damage could be done to Australia. (Getty Images)

    Seventy-five professors of economics have called on the Federal Government to stop undermining international efforts to tackle climate change and ratify the Kyoto Protocol without delay.

    They are among 271 Australian university economists who have signed a statement drawing attention to the economic damage that could be done to Australia for failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Professor Peter Dixon says the Government’s efforts on climate change have been marginal.

    "We’ve been most concerned to protect our sales of coal," he said.

    "Of course, we will lose a considerable amount of sales of coal whether we sign or whether we don’t in the end because in fact, the main part of the solution to the greenhouse gas problem will be reductions in worldwide use of coal."

    Meanwhile, state and territory leaders have written a joint letter to Prime Minister John Howard saying they would like to be included in a national emissions trading scheme.

    The Federal Government is due to receive a report on climate change at the end of the month and will make a decision on a scheme.

    The letter re-states the premiers’ and chief ministers’ position that they have committed to starting a carbon trading scheme by 2010.

  • US Floats Carbon Tax

    “I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” said Mr. Dingell, whose committee will be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall.

    “I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.”

    The idea behind a carbon tax is to provide an incentive to reduce the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which are loaded with carbon, and increase the use of cleaner, renewable fuels like solar power, wind and fuels made from plants and plant waste.

    Many economists like the idea of a carbon tax, saying that it would be simple to administer and could profoundly affect energy choices.

    But most Democrats are staunchly opposed, saying that a tax would raise the costs of travel, commuting and heating and cooling homes, and that it would be wildly unpopular at a time when voters are already angry about high energy costs. Republicans, they said, would seize on any such proposal as proof that Democrats were bent on raising taxes and increasing the size of government.

    Indeed, many Democrats still cringe at the memory of President Bill Clinton’s trying to pass a broad “B.T.U. tax” in 1993 on most forms of energy. The measure passed the House but not the Senate, and more than a few Democrats believe the effort was one reason they lost their majority in the House in 1994.

    Now, House and Senate Democrats are writing bills that would require factories and power plants to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases through a so-called cap-and-trade system of mandatory requirements and tradeable pollution credits.

    Most of the proposals would impose mandatory limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that companies would be allowed to produce each year, and those limits would become steadily more rigorous over time. A factory or a power plant that is already below the limit could sell its unused allocations to companies that were over the limit.

    The United States already uses a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that cause acid rain.

    The European Union has adopted a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, though the system has come under considerable criticism for letting companies game the rules and for failing to reduce emissions in line with European goals.


  • Carbon costs make gas cheaper than coal

    Wholesale gas price-rise likely: This increased demand for gas is likely to result in increases in the wholesale gas price. [But] if the price of the permits rises to very high levels, the economics of renewable generation will improve more than gas-fired, reducing the demand for gas over the longer term."

    Clean coal expensive & undeveloped: Clean coal technologies – such as so-called super-critical and ultra-supercritical coal with post-combustion capture (PSS), which can cut CO2 emissions by a fifth – are still at the pilot stage. They are also expensive, with PSS at $64-$108 per MWh.

    Commercial ‘clean’ coal ten years away: They are not expected to be commercial for at least five to 10 years, but could eventually drop into the $40-$45 MWh price range, making them competitive at a carbon price of around $20-$30 per tonne.

    Coal needs $25-$30/tonne carbon price: Other carbon capture and storage technologies for use with coal-fired generation will take 10 to 15 years to fully develop and will probably need a carbon price of at least $25-$30 per tonne – and more if they are to be retro-fitted to existing coal power stations. Venture capital opportunities to develop these new technologies will also spring up in Australia.

    Nuclear needs $15-$40/tonne carbon price: Nuclear power, at $40-$65 per MWh, is likely to be between 20 and 50 per cent more costly to produce than power from a new coal-fired plant at current fossil fuel prices. It would need a carbon price of $15-$40 per tonne to be competitive and require 10 to 15 years before the first plants could be operating, even assuming coalition governments are in place to approve them.

    The Sydney Morning Herald, 9/6/2007, p. 42