Call to limit global warming to 1.5°C

Sophie Vorrath.

An independent review into the Victoria’s Climate Change Act has found the current legislation to be “inadequate” in its response to the threat of global warming, and has made 33 recommendations on how it can be strengthened.

The most striking recommendation for the state that hosts Australia’s fleet of highly polluting brown coal-fired power generators is the introduction of a long-term state emissions reduction target based on restricting global warming to 1.5°C, as well as five-yearly interim targets.

Read the Sophie Vorrath’s story on RenewEconomy - “Victorian climate review calls for 1.5°C long-term emissions target.”

Cost of subsidising fossil fuels is $US5.3 trillion a year

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ow large are global energy subsidies? The answer: quite a lot larger than we thought, according to new estimates from the International Monetary Fund, which puts the cost of subsidising fossil fuels at an enormous $US5.3 trillion a year, or around $US10 million a minute every day.

The eye-watering figure, based on calculations the IMF describes as “extremely robust,” is more than double the projected 2014 estimate the IMF released around this time last year, and amounts to more than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

It is somewhat of an irony, then, that the IMF’s new figure of $5.3 trillion is largely attributed to polluters not paying the costs – social welfare, health, environmental and broader economic – imposed on governments for the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Read Sophie Vorrath’s story on Renew-economy - “Fossil fuels subsidies cost world $5.3 trillion a year – $10m a minute.”

(Money will always trump morality – the idea that the fossil fuels industry should see a moral need to step back from its assault on the planet appears simple and unequivocally the right thing to do, but then the picture becomes obscured and the clarity of the decision sullied when it can be seen that the industry has duped the world and presently wallows in money willingly handed over by the public, that’s you and me – yes, morally they should hand back the cash and pay for the damage they are causing to the commons, but that is about forgoing the comforts we are paying for – Robert McLean.)

Considering Abbott's contempt for climate - Parkinson and Vorrath

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iles Parkinson and Sophie Vorrath have written on RenewEconomy about the “10 things we learned …about Abbott’s contempt for climate”.

“April has been an extraordinary month for climate and clean energy policy in Australia. Even more extraordinary than the previous months. As the rest of the world accelerates their individual and collective push towards globally agreed climate targets, Australia is stubbornly refusing to budge, or even to acknowledge that there is an issue at all.

“In the Orwellian world of the Abbott government, coal is good and has a great future, even when analysts call for nearly all reserves to be left in the ground; a cut in the renewable energy target is not a cut at all, it is actually an increase; and spending one-quarter of its carbon budget on just 15 per cent of its target is not so much a failure as a resounding success and a blueprint for the world to follow,” they write.