Nearly 30 megacities announce massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in defiance of Trump at California summit

Some of the world’s largest cities, including London, Paris and New York, have revealed they are no longer increasing their climate-harming carbon emissions — and pledged to cut them further.

Protesters gathering outside the Global
Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.

Greenhouse gas pollution from 27 of the world’s largest cities has been on a downward trajectory for five years thanks to a switch to renewable energy and cleaner transportation systems, it emerged at the Global Climate Action Summit, an event being held in San Francisco to encourage “deeper worldwide commitments” to save the environment.

Read the story by Josh Gabbatiss from the Independent - “Nearly 30 megacities announce massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in defiance of Trump at California summit.”

Quantifying our Faustian bargain with fossil fuels

The climate system will heat well past 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) and perhaps up to 2°C without any further fossil fuel emissions. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from new research which should also help demystify the rhetoric from the 2015 Paris climate talks of keeping warming to below 1.5°C .

Our Faustian bargain: the byproduct of burning dirty
fossil fuels are short-lived atmospheric aerosols
which provide temporary cooling

It’s not that 1.5°C isn’t dangerous: in fact, at just 1–1.1°C of warming to date, climate change is already dangerous. A safe climate would be well below the present level of warming, unless you think it is OK to destroy the Arctic ecosystem, tip West West Antarctic glaciers into a self-accelerating melt, and lose the world’s coral reefs, just for starters.

The new research quantifies the effect of losing the very temporary planetary cooling provided by atmospheric aerosols.

Aerosols (including black-carbon soot, organic carbon, sulphates and nitrates and dust) are very short-lived particles in the atmosphere that have a cooling impact that lasts around a week. Most of these aerosols are anthropogenic, that is produced by human activity, and most of the anthropogenic aerosols are a byproduct of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Perhaps best known are the polluting sulphates and nitrates from coal-fired power stations, that combine with water molecules in the atmosphere to produce what is popularly known as “acid rain”.

Read the Climate Code Red story by David Spratt -“Quantifying our Faustian bargain with fossil fuels.”

Josh Frydenberg hints the government could back away from clean energy target

The Turnbull government is hinting that the rapidly declining cost of renewable energy is undermining the case for further clean-energy subsidies, as it maintains it will make a decision on a clean energy target in coming months.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with Minister
Josh Frydenberg at Parliament House in Canberra.

In a speech to the Australian Financial Review's National Energy Summit in Sydney on Monday, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has emphasised the "declining cost curve" for wind, solar and renewables storage.

"Globally in the past seven years, the cost of wind-powered generation has more than halved. Domestically, solar PV costs have dropped more than 50 per cent," he said.

"By 2020, costs of battery technologies are expected to fall 40 to 60 per cent and over 70 per cent to 2030.

Read Adam Gartrell’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Josh Frydenberg hints the government could back away from clean energy target.”