Carbon calculator reveals Labour and Tory policy as science fiction
Carbon calculator reveals Labour and Tory policy as science fiction
Economic growth is incompatible with cutting carbon emissions, most of which are produced by manufacturing and consumption
• National Carbon Calculator: Can you cut UK emissions?
• See how the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and Labour would cut emissions
The Guardian’s carbon calculator – the Lib Dems were the only major party to fill it out. Photograph: David Levene
It’s not surprising that neither Labour nor the Tories wanted to run the Guardian’s National Carbon Calculator. Had they done so, they would have had to acknowledge that the figures on which they base their climate change policies are a work of science fiction. The government claims that our total emissions amount to 627 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e). The Tories have never disputed this figure. It’s convenient for both sides to accept this falsehood, and to pretend that the challenge is far smaller than it is.
Climateologist Ellen Mosely-Thompson on warming in Antarctica
Climatologist Ellen Mosley-Thompson on warming in Antarctica
Earlier this year, climatologist Ellen Mosley-Thompson led an expedition to drill into glacial ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the world’s fastest-warming regions. Here, she describes what it’s like working in the world’s swiftly melting ice zone
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 May 2010 14.18 BST
larger | smaller - Article history
Several months ago, during the Antarctic summer, Mosley-Thompson — the director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University — returned to Antarctica for the ninth time to head a six-person expedition to the Bruce Plateau on the Antarctic Peninsula. The peninsula has warmed faster than almost any other place on Earth, with winter temperatures increasing by 11 degrees F over the past 60 years and year-round temperatures rising by 5 degrees F. As a result, sea ice now covers the western Antarctic Peninsula three months less a year than three decades ago, 90 percent of glaciers along the western Antarctic Peninsula are in retreat, and large floating ice shelves are crumbling.
Memo to Sir Kevin: a brave decision, Prime Minister
Memo to Sir Kevin: a brave decision, Prime Minister
When Sir Humphrey Appleby thought his minister was about to make a big error he would arch one eyebrow and say, “that would be a courageous decision, minister”. Courage in Sir Humphrey’s world was not a virtue. Nor, it would appear, is it in Sir Kevin’s.
After shelving the emissions trading scheme, the government’s response to the Henry tax review is another example of policy cowardice. Not only is it adopting hardly any of the recommendations, but the entire handling of the review speaks of political cowardice.
We were promised a “root and branch” review of the tax system. Ken Henry and his committee laboured long and hard and last December brought forward a comprehensive paper canvassing many reform options. Even a faintly courageous government would have made the report public immediately and allowed it to be subject to debate.
Eco Movement At The Crossroads
environment movement
4 May 2010
Eco Movement At The Crossroads
(AP Photo/Rob Griffith)
The current split in the Wilderness Society reflects the difficulty all Australian environment groups will face if they want to become a truly mass movement, writes Drew Hutton
The showdown that occurred in the Wilderness Society (TWS) at a meeting in Canberra on the weekend demonstrates one of the key challenges currently facing Australian environmental organisations.
While it’s not yet certain if this bitter internal struggle in one of Australia’s most influential conservation groups may turn into a fight between the factions in court, one thing is clear: for TWS to become once more an effective and charismatic organisation that fires the imaginations of Australians it will need to face certain realities, especially the retreat of all Australian governments on key environmental issues. And for that, they will have to re-learn how to campaign.
Almost all of the national environment groups, like TWS, are right now suffering a problem that all social movements have to go through. To be effective, non-government organisations (NGOs) must professionalise their operations and negotiate with government for outcomes, but, in doing this they almost invariably at some point lose connection with their base, become overly bureaucratic and, all too often, find themselves dancing to the tune of business and governments.
Ship-breaking exposes Bangladesh to climate change threat
Ship-breaking exposes Bangladesh to climate change threat AFP May 2, 2010, 3:46 pm AFP © Enlarge photo SITAKUNDU, Bangladesh (AFP) – When huge waves hit Bangladesh’s sleepy southeastern Sitakundu coastline after a cyclone in 1991, shopkeeper Abul Kalam survived by hanging on to a coconut tree. Kalam’s parents, brother, sister and Continue Reading →
Poor political skills doomed Rudd’s climate policy
Poor political skills doomed Rudd’s climate policy
- From: The Australian
- April 30, 2010
KEVIN Rudd’s principal answer to climate change, an emissions trading scheme, was doomed to failure because Labor’s approach put symbolism before substance and politics before policy.
At various stages in Labor’s policy development, flaws have been incorporated that ensured the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would not succeed practically or economically.
The scheme has not just failed politically but has cost the credibility of the Prime Minister and of his government.
Rudd has oversimplified the answer to climate change for public consumption and concentrated on empty symbols, short-term political gains and grand international accords. The decision to dump the CPRS – and that is what it is, despite talk of extending its implementation to 2013 – is the culmination of a series of tactical and strategic errors. These include exaggerating what could be done, playing down the economic cost, over-politicising the process, failing to systematically explain what was involved and then suddenly capitulating.
Senior Labor figures recognise that if the CPRS is revived the approach will have to be very different. For three years the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the introduction of a market-based ETS have been the foundation stones and political weapons in Rudd’s campaign against the Coalition and climate change sceptics.
His strategy has been to divide and defeat the Coalition on the issue, use it as a central re-election theme and demonstrate his commitment to real reform and the “greatest moral and economic challenge” we face.
Everything was on his side, including public opinion, media coverage, fears about climate catastrophes, environmentalists, climate change scientists, the UN, the international isolation of Australia and the US and even a large part of the Coalition.