India, France come together to reiterate their climate commitment

NEW DELHI: India and France came together to reiterate their commitment to provide leadership to slow down global warming and transition to a sustainable and low carbon development pathway to economic growth and development. As the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance got underway in New Delhi, co-hosts Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron left little room for doubt that concrete action would be the defining principle of the alliance. 

India and France have emerged as proactive leaders on climate
action, even as United States has retreated from global action.

“Now let’s get to work”, French President Macron told leaders at the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance. Macron called on the leaders from the ISA member countries to use the opportunity of the summit make concrete announcements that would pave the way for rapid deployment of solar energy. 

Read The Economic Times story by Urmi Goswami - “India, France come together to reiterate their climate commitment.”

(France and India appear intent on powering their respective countries with renewable energy sources, therefore removing fossil fuel powered generators from their energy infrastructure, leaving the proposed massive Adani Queensland coal mine as a stranded asset and as such  a financial catastrophe for the Indian Adani company, as it will be for Australia, along with being an ethical, moral, and environmental embarrassment - Robert McLean)

A step back': Emissions rise as world economy gathers pace

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry have renewed their climb after a three-year pause, driven higher by quickening economic growth and the failure to find alternatives particularly to oil, international researchers say.

Carbon emissions will rise 2 percent in 2017 to almost 37 billion tonnes as the world economy heads for 3.6 percent annual growth. Total emissions, including from land clearing, push that tally to 41 billion tonnes.

A slightly faster pace of GDP expansion in 2018 will also send emissions from industry and fossil fuel combustion higher for at least another year, according to the 2017 Global Carbon Budget.

"This year's carbon budget news is a step back for humankind," said Amy Luers, executive director of Future Earth, a sponsor of the report.

Read the story by Peter Hannam in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘A step back': Emissions rise as world economy gathers pace.”

Our Most Pressing Problem

Economic growth– we hear about it all the time, so often that most of us probably don’t notice it any more than we’d notice someone saying that things are going well, or that everything is on track. 

In the world of economic reporting–the sort you might hear every hour or so throughout the day on NPR, or as highlighted in press-releases from the Federal Reserve–economic growth is the measure against which everything else in its orbit is judged; and it has a large orbit.  It has become a synonym for “good,” for “well-functioning ”or“ basic progress.”  And, in the reverse, an economy that is not growing is described as facing some sort of temporary “headwinds,” and we can be sure that economists, industry leaders, and the government are fast at work on the “recovery” that will bring things back to “normal.”

But if you listen to the words of politicians and policy-makers a bit more closely, you might notice that all this talk indicates something more like a preoccupation or obsession, and hear the urgency and anxiety surrounding it.  This is not surprising, as elections are usually won or lost over the issue or economic growth, or who has the best-sounding plan to keep the economy growing.  If you are anything like I was before I started looking into these issues, you probably take this preoccupation with economic growth and the sense that it is a necessary part of our national well-being in unquestioning stride.  After all, there is rarely anyone out there suggesting that something other than economic growth should be our number one priority.  Democrats and Republicans are in equal agreement over its importance, arguing only about how we might achieve the best, fastest, and most sustainable kind of economic growth.  And during times when the economy is not growing as fast as all the economists say it should be, people do lose jobs, houses go into foreclosure, and our political system starts appearing a little rougher around the edges.  Maybe economic growth is a justifiable synonym for the common good.

Read the resilience.org story - “Our Most Pressing Problem.”

The global road-building explosion is shattering nature

Road making is man's biggest threat to nature.

If you asked a friend to name the worst human threat to nature, what would they say? Global warming? Overhunting? Habitat fragmentation?

A new study suggests it is in fact road-building.

“Road-building” might sound innocuous, like “house maintenance” – or even positive, conjuring images of promoting economic growth. Many of us have been trained to think so.

But an unprecedented spate of road building is happening now, with around 25 million kilometres of new paved roads expected by 2050. And that’s causing many environmental researchers to perceive roads about as positively as a butterfly might see a spider web that’s just fatally trapped it.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a distinguished research professor and Australian Laureate at the James Cook University, Bill Laurance - “The global road-building explosion is shattering nature.”

Waiting for catastrophe means we are too late: Ian Dunlop

Ian Dunlop.

(Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a member of the Club of Rome)

Why is nobody in authority talking about the issues which are really defining the future of this country? Politicians and corporations create much sound and fury around tax reform, industrial relations and, ad nauseam, the election – all important but essentially second-order issues. Beyond the Australian goldfish bowl, the greatest structural change in human history is rapidly unfolding bringing unprecedented risks and opportunities. Yet our leaders are oblivious, intent upon minimising our opportunities and maximising our risks.

In the 1970s, the combined effect of population growth and consumption began to exceed the capacity of planetary ecosystems to meet human demands. To the point where today we need the annual biophysical capacity of 1.6 planets to survive. This unsustainable pressure is now hitting global limits which we can no longer circumvent, manifesting itself in two immediate pressure points.

First, increasing energy costs. Economic growth and wealth created since the Industrial Revolution totally depended on the availability of cheap energy in the shape of fossil fuels, first coal, then oil, then gas. But cheap fossil fuels have dried up. Their cost has increased steadily as we used up the "low-hanging fruit" and now rely on more expensive sources such as deepwater oil, tar sands, shale and coal seam fracking.

Read what he has to say in this comment piece in the Melbourne Age - “Climate change: waiting for catastrophe means we will be too late to act.”

'Safe' growth depends on embracing new technology and policies

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ew modelling by the CSIRO has found Australia can enjoy strong economic growth without damaging the environment, provided new technology and policies are embraced.

The research, published in the journal Nature on Thursday, presented 20 scenarios involving economic growth and environmental change in Australia.

Lead researcher Steve Hatfield-Dodds said Australia could make "great progress towards sustainable prosperity" without a shift in societal values if it decided to.

Read more in The Sydney Morning Herald story - “Australia can prosper and protect the environment at the same time, CSIRO.”

Naomi Klein introduces People and Planet first to the Vatican

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aomi Klein spoke at the Vatican yesterday introducing People and Planet First: the Imperative to Change Course at a high-level meeting to explore Pope Francis’ encyclical, which was released on June 18.

This is how Ms Klein’s comments began:

“Thank you. I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and to CIDSE for hosting us here, and for convening this remarkable 2-day gathering that I’m very much looking forward to.

“It’s also a real honour to be here supporting and indeed celebrating the historic publication of the Pope’s encyclical.”

Her speech is published here by EcoWatch - “Naomi Klein: People and Planet First”.

During her address she said:

“The truth is that we have arrived at this dangerous place partly because many of those economic experts have failed us badly, wielding their powerful technocratic skills without wisdom. They produced models that placed scandalously little value on human life, particularly on the lives of the poor, and placed outsized value on protecting corporate profits and economic growth.”

A U.S. disconnect between energy and growth attributed to technology and government policy

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 disconnect between energy and growth in the U.S. has been articulated by Climate Spectator’s Tristan Edis.

Edis, the Editor at Climate Spector, attributes the disconnect to technology and government policy.

He writes: “The report projects that U.S. energy use will grow at an insipid 0.3% per year from 2013 through to 2040 far below expected rates of economic growth (2.4%/year) and population growth (0.7%/year).”

His story - “Energy demand disconnects from economic growth” – is illustrated with graphs and charts.

'Shorthand' confuses Australia Prime Minister

Tony Abbott is confused about many things, among them what growth is really “shorthand” for.

According to Australia’s PM, “…. economic growth is really just economists' shorthand for more jobs, higher pay, new industries, and the better life that only greater wealth can provide."

It’s not. It’s actually shorthand for a worsening of what he has called “darkening times”.

Economic growth, despite his optimism, is simply about inequality and the strengthening of a social malaise that favours less than one per cent of the world’s population and, critically, further disrupts the world’s deteriorating climate.

In today’s Mark Kenny story in The Age, Mr Abbott said, "Our G20 goal is to boost output by an extra 2 per cent over the next five years to create millions of jobs and to generate trillions in wealth right around the world.”

"Likewise the post-2015 Development Agenda should focus on economic growth because growth makes every other social goal, even tackling climate change, easier to accomplish,” he said.

Climate change conversation becomes irretrievably lost

The climate change conversation become irretrievably lost, or at least mired in an impenetrable swamp, when it became politicized and so swept into ideological debates.

Ian Berryman.

Writing in the Sunday Age in a story headed: “Back to the dark ages”, Ian Berryman lambasts the Tony Abbott led Coalition Government for its lack of vision and inability to accept and understand the fundamental science of climate change.

Berryman argues that the government’s present stance “will cripple economic growth”.

He said the government’s attacks on renewable energy had been “performed without mandate”.

The government it seems is welded to “Randian Philosophy”, when the mitigation needed to slow the accelerating impacts of climate change is something quite different.

No longer can the conversation be political or ideological, for this is a discussion about humanity’s survival, something that is well beyond those artificial constraints.

Study finds emissions stable, but much needs to be done to avoid catastrophic changes

Commercial growth is frequently maligned as the cause of the world’s worsening carbon dioxide emissions, but a released recently study seems to contravene that argument.

A story by The Conversation editor, Sunanda Creagh, headed: “Greenhouse emissions stable over a decade as GDP grew 31%”, said the economic growth did not equate a worsening of emissions.

“The findings show that conversion to green economy need not be painful and is already underway in Australian industry.” Ms Creagh wrote.

According to the report, released by the Monash University research unit, ClimateWorks, the stable emissions, despite economic growth, were achieved through reduced deforestation, tree planting, a big boost in industry energy efficiency and sharp drops in power emissions.

However, much more needs to be done, the study found, if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.