Resistance in the Anthropocene

People in the UK just experienced a weird, time-shifted summer — in the final two weeks of February.

In west London the temperature peaked at 21.2C. That’s the hottest February day ever recorded in the UK, and the first time a temperature above 20C has been seen in winter.

The February summer wasn’t limited to Britain. Amsterdam also recorded its hottest ever February day, with a peak temperature of 18.4C.

The sudden shift in temperatures was so extreme that climate scientists struggled to analyse it. Dutch scientist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh said that according to current models the probability of a 21C February day in London was close to zero:

‘This is an incredible jump in record temperatures. If you asked me a few months ago, I would have said it is ridiculous…It’s at least a one-in 200-year event, but it could be more because my statistical tools break down.’

Read the Medium story by David Mattin - “Resistance in the Anthropocene.”

Why the Climate Emergency needs a National Imagination Act

What a few weeks it’s been in terms of the sense of urgency and proportion in relation to climate change and the world’s unravelling ecological crisis. Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough, the Welsh and Scottish governments declaring a climate emergency, then the UK and Irish parliaments. There appears to be a new, and long-overdue, sense of ambition and momentum, of tectonic plates finally shifting deep below the surface.

A public meeting organised by Bologna’s ‘Civil Imagination Office’.

Last week, Caroline Lucas and other MPs argued that all new laws should need to pass a ‘compassion threshold’ before being enacted to ensure that they make society a more compassionate place, not less. It would ensure that legislation acts in the interests of future generations as well as present ones. It is a powerful and inspired idea. But I would like to propose something I believe could be even more impactful, a ‘National Imagination Act’.

As I argue in the book I’ve just finished writing, ‘From What Is to What If’: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want’, we are living in a time of increasing imaginative poverty, a time in which our ability to be imaginative seems to be under unprecedented pressure. We spend, on average, 65% of our waking hours in front of screens. Austerity has led to the closure of 478 libraries and has decimated community arts initiatives. Teaching hours for arts subjects fell 21% between 2010 and 2017, and entries for arts GCSEs fell by 35% in the same period.

One-third of adults, surveys show, feel as though they don’t use their imagination for work. We are living in a time that has been called the ‘Age of Anxiety’, and neuroscience shows how anxiety, fear and stress directly impact the parts of our brain vital to the imagination. As Aditya Chakrabortty puts it, “One of the great casualties of austerity is likely to be imagination, the sense that alternatives to this broken regime not only exist, but can be built by us”.

Read the story from Resilience by Rob Hopkins - “Why the Climate Emergency needs a National Imagination Act.”

G7 fossil fuel subsidies worth $100bn a year to industry, study find

The UK has been accused of trying to “fudge” how much it spends subsidising coal mining and fossil fuel use despite its pledge to phase out environmentally harmful subsidies by 2020. 

Britain has pledged to support the extraction of oil and gas in the North Sea .

The country ranked first on its commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies but last on transparency in a new study led by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) which ranks each G7 country on ending support for the production and use of oil, gas and coal ahead of a group meeting which starts in Canada on Friday.

The UK does not provide national reports on its fiscal support for fossil fuel production and consumption and the government has repeatedly denied providing fossil fuel subsidies. However, the report states the UK is providing subsidies in the form of tax breaks for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and the decommissioning of oil.

Read the ClimateHome News story by Chloé Farand -  “G7 fossil fuel subsidies worth $100bn a year to industry, study finds.”

UK runs without coal power for three days in a row

The UK has been powered without coal for three days in a row, setting a new record and underlining the polluting fuel’s rapid decline.

 Drax power station in North Yorkshire said it
expected to go without coal on Tuesday.

Coal has historically been at the cornerstone of the UK’s electricity mix, but last year saw the first 24-hour period that the country ran without the fuel since the 19th century.

New records were broken last week when zero power came from coal for nearly 55 consecutive hours.

Read Adam Vaughan’s story from The Guardian - “UK runs without coal power for three days in a row.”

Powering Past Coal Alliance Membership Blows Out Past 50

The Powering Past Coal Alliance, launched only last month by the UK and Canada at COP23, has seen its membership blow out past 50 countries, regions, and businesses, according to news revealed at the One Planet Summit held in France on Tuesday.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance membership has blown out past 50.

Among a raft of announcements from the One Planet Summit held in France on Tuesday, the UK and Canada announced that membership to their Powering Past Coal Alliance — which was only launched last month at COP23 in Bonn, Germany — has now blown past 50 countries, regions, and businesses, including the State of California, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy, and France, as well as high-profile corporations such as Unilever, Virgin Group, and EDF.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance wants to accelerate the transition away from coal and toward “low-carbon, climate-resilient economies” and is bringing together “a diverse range of governments, businesses and organisations that are united in taking action to accelerate clean growth and climate protection through the rapid phase-out of traditional coal power.”

Read the Joshua S. Hill story from CleanTechnica - “Powering Past Coal Alliance Membership Blows Out Past 50.”

UK carbon emissions at lowest level since 1890

Fresh analysis has highlighted the dramatic fall in carbon emissions within the UK, reaching a new low unseen in normal times for 128 years.

The UK’s carbon emissions are now the same as
when Vincent Van Gogh died, or Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Gray was first published.

The findings are based on figures from the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and analysed by the Carbon Brief website.

The data shows that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels declined by 2.6 percent in 2017, following a 5.8 percent drop in the previous year.

Read the ClimateAction story - “UK carbon emissions at lowest level since 1890.”

UK weather update: Temperatures plunge so low that sea freezes over

The sea in parts of the UK has frozen over as a prolonged spell of Arctic weather hammers the country with ice, snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Parts of the sea in the UK has frozen over because of
the prolonged spell of sub-zero temperatures.

Bembridge Harbour on the east coast of the Isle of Wight iced over on Wednesday as the water temperature dropped below -2C, leaving boats trapped.

Read the story by Josh Gabbatiss on the Independent - “UK weather update: Temperatures plunge so low that sea freezes over.”

Global warming will weaken wind power, study predicts

Wind farms are key to tackling climate change but warming will significantly cut the power of the wind across northern mid-latitudes, including the US, the UK and the Mediterranean, according to new research. However, some places, including eastern Australia, will see winds pick up.

 In central US, the power of the wind could fall by nearly a fifth. 

The research is the first global study to project the impact of temperature rises on wind energy and found big changes by the end of the century in many of the places hosting large numbers of turbines.

Wind farms have grown more than fivefold in the last decade and plunging costs have made them a key way of reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. But in the central US, for example, the power of the wind could fall by nearly a fifth.

“We found some substantial changes in wind energy,” said Kristopher Karnauskas at the University of Colorado Boulder, US. “But it does not mean we should not invest in wind power.” It does mean such changes need to be taken into account in planning future wind farms, he said, and also in assessing how much wind farms overall can cut global emissions.

Read The Guardian story by Damian Carrington - “Global warming will weaken wind power, study predicts.”

Offshore wind power cheaper than new nuclear

Energy from offshore wind in the UK will be cheaper than electricity from new nuclear power for the first time.

Energy from offshore wind in the UK will
be cheaper than electricity from new nuclear
 power for the first time.

The cost of subsidies for new offshore wind farms has halved since the last 2015 auction for clean energy projects.

Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a guaranteed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23.

This compares with the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant securing subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour.

Nuclear firms said the UK still needed a mix of low-carbon energy, especially for when wind power was not available.

Read the BBC story - “Offshore wind power cheaper than new nuclear.“

Australia failing world community with weak carbon emissions targets

A

Lord Deben - Australia
promising much less.

ustralia is failing the world community in its efforts to abate carbon dioxide emissions.

This rather poor effort by a country that is among the world’s worst per capita carbon dioxide emitters has not gone unnoticed by others in the world, including the Chair of the UK's independent committee on climate change, Lord Deben.

He says Australia is promising much less than most other western countries with its emissions reduction target.

Watch this intriguing interview with Lord Deben on the ABC’s The Drum -“Climate change isn't going to wait for Australia”.

Chance or coincidence puts Shepparton in step with international goals

S

hepparton people banded together on Thursday, well about 150 of them, to demand the State Government provided the city with better rail transport.

Some of those among the pyjama-clad train travellers would have been eager to see trains used as the easily outstrip private transport with regard carbon dioxide emissions, while others sought only travel convenience, being another marker in Shepparton’s maturation.

By coincidence or chance, this push for improved rail transport to and from the Goulburn Valley comes as there is an international initiative aimed at ensuring the creation of more low-carbon transport.

Transport Ministers participating in the International Transport Forum (ITF) Annual Summit agreed in their Declaration from Ministers on Transport, Trade and Tourism on the value of pursuing low-carbon transport towards COP21.

The summit’s declaration says the Ministers, “Recognize that the new international climate agreement, which is to be forged and agreed by COP21, should encourage mainstreaming of low carbon transport in global policies on climate change and sustainable development.”

A report from the summit - “Transport Ministers from 54 countries call for global policies to mainstream low-carbon transport” – said, “Company CEOs, transport initiative leaders and government representatives discussed strategies and innovations to mitigate transport-related climate change impacts related to trade and tourism during this session.

“Ministers from the EU, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and others shared detailed and ambitious plans on transport advancing climate action.”

Abbott stands on a lonely isthmus of climate change denial

Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has enjoyed strong support during his time at PM from conservative governments in both the UK and Canada.

Times, however, it seems are changing faster than our PM Chameleon can change his colours and now he stands on a lonely isthmus of climate change denial with both the Conservative Governments of UK and Canada quite different views.

Canada, who had stood with Abbott and his climate denial coalition, has now indicated its support for a United Nations climate fund to assist poor nations to cope with global warming; something Mr Abbott had rejected describing it as "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".

The Sydney Morning Herald discusses that in a story headed: “Red faces for Tony Abbott on Green Climate Fund”.

Along with that, the British conservative government has indicated its seriousness about tackling climate change, as reported in an Age story headed: “Why Britain's Tories are Earth's best friends”.

Australia's climate change stance alienates many

Many have predicted that Australia will be alienated by its international trading partners if it fails to join the world’s response to climate change.

Greg Barker - 'a lot of
concern about Australia'.

And already that pattern has begun to emerge.

A story in today’s Melbourne Age headed: “UK Tories slam Tony Abbott on climate policy” discusses the disenchantment of influential UK people who, among other things, have described the Australian Prime Minister’s attitude as “baffling”.

The story says: “In a series of wide-ranging, separate interviews on UK climate change policy with The Age, they warn that Australia is taking enormous risks investing in coal and will come under increasing market and political pressure to play its part in the global battle against climate change”.

'Exceptional' and 'weird' weather linked to climate change

Tierney Smith.

“Exceptional” and “weird” are terms used to describe opening gambits to the world’s weather in 2014.

Writing on EcoNews, Tierney Smith says in a story headed: “Extreme weather hits hard worldwide” that scientist are now linking unprecedented storms in the UK and droughts in California and Brazil with climate change.

In England, never before seen rainfall has left parts of the nation’s infrastructure in disarray, while across the globe in South America’s largest city, San Paulo, is facing the opposite problem, a distinct lake of water.

The city is facing its worst drought in 50 years and it has just emerged from it hottest January on record.

UK secretary warns about dependence on coal

Much of Australia’s electricity is sourced from the burning of coal; the export of coal is also significant to Australia economically.

Only yesterday, the UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Edward Davey, told the climate change talks in Warsaw, Poland, that his country was to join the U.S. in ending its support of public financing of more coal-fired power plants.

A press release from the U.K. government headed: “UK urges the world to prepare for action on climate change and puts brakes on coal firedpower plants”, Mr Davey said, “This week in Warsaw is absolutely critical to getting a deal in 2015”.

He said: “No one should leave this conference without the clear understanding and agreement that from here, we must make sure that when we arrive in Paris in 2015 were are ready to strike a deal”.