Thinking creatively about phasing out coal

At the landmark Paris climate change conference just three years ago, countries agreed to phase out global greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of this century. Despite that noble aspiration, two recent UN-level events have highlighted the mounting urgency of the challenge and underscored the need for new thinking.

It isn’t so much the global climate negotiations that
 immediately threaten coal workers in the Hunter Valley.
 It’s the opening of mega-coalmines in Queensland’s Galilee basin.

First, in October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the effects and feasibility of holding warming to within 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. 

That figure was enshrined as an aspiration in the Paris Agreement, and the report shows why it is a better benchmark for mitigating catastrophic climate change than the 2°C goal that has long been the focal point of international negotiations. To meet the 1.5°C goal, says the IPCC, net global greenhouse gas emissions need to be phased out by around 2050.

Read the story from The Monthly by Fergus Green and Richard Denniss - “Thinking creatively about phasing out coal.”

Labor states clash with federal government over national emissions scheme

Labor states say they will withhold final support for a landmark national plan to merge climate and energy policy until the federal Coalition guarantees a future government will not be blocked from ratcheting up carbon savings.

ACT Climate Change Minister Shane Rattenbury has
been the most vocal opponent of the policy.

The nation's energy ministers converged in Melbourne on Friday for an eagerly anticipated meeting to decide the future of the package, known as the national energy guarantee, which promises to end a decade-long political deadlock on energy policy.

Read the story from The Age by Nicole Hasham and Peter Hannam - “Labor states clash with federal government over national emissions scheme.”

Exclusive: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows

In a landmark public health finding, a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making. These impacts have been observed at CO2 levels that most Americans — and their children — are routinely exposed to today inside classrooms, offices, homes, planes, and cars.

Carbon dioxide levels are inevitably higher indoors than the baseline set by the outdoor air used for ventilation, a baseline that is rising at an accelerating rate thanks to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels. So this seminal research has equally great importance for climate policy, providing an entirely new public health impetus for keeping global CO2 levels as low as possible.

Read Joe Romm’s ThinkProgress story - “Exclusive: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows.

Government denies claims it knocked back Chinese climate change offer and reveals ‘joint action plan’

The Turnbull government rejected a landmark Chinese invitation to issue a formal joint statement on climate change earlier this year, Greenpeace has claimed, saying Australia vetoed an unprecedented step in the Asian power's emerging international role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Premier Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in March.

But the Australian government has denied the claim and revealed the two countries' energy departments were working on a "joint action plan" on climate change as part of their commitments under the Paris agreement.

According to Greenpeace East Asia senior climate policy adviser Li Shuo, the government quietly knocked back an offer – perhaps the first time the Chinese government had proactively sought such an arrangement – during Premier Li Keqiang's state visit to Australia in March.

Mr Li said the offer was "very, very significant" because it suggested China had become "diplomatically proactive" after previously being on the receiving end of invitations from the European Union and United States to outline mutual commitments on climate change.

Read Fergus Hunter’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Government denies claims it knocked back Chinese climate change offer and reveals ‘joint action plan’.”

China to announce a landmark emissions trading scheme

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eijing: China, the world's biggest polluter, is about to announce a landmark emissions trading scheme to tackle climate change.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will on Friday (US time) announce the start of a nationwide cap-and-trade program to curtail carbon emissions in an important commitment to tackle global climate change, Obama administration officials in Washington said.

Mr Xi, who is on a week-long state visit in the United States, will also pledge a "significant financial commitment" to help poorer nations move away from fossil fuels in a joint announcement with his US counterpart Barack Obama.

Read The Age story - “China to introduce nation wide emissions trading scheme”.

Paris talks vastly more successful than Copenhagen catastrophe

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limate talks this year in Paris should be vastly more successful than those that fell apart on Copenhagen in 2009.

Executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, said countries were ahead of schedule in negotiating a landmark global agreement on curbing greenhouse gases that can be adopted at a Paris summit in December.

Christina Figueres.

“We’re in a very, very different position to Copenhagen, not just from a procedural point of view, but from many other points of view,” Figueres told reporters during a visit to Australia.

Rod McGuirk, of Associated Press, writing on TheStar.com, quoted Figueres during a recent visit to Australia, who said, “We’re in a very, very different position to Copenhagen, not just from a procedural point of view, but from many other points of view.”

McGirk’s story is headed: “Paris summit on climate change should be much smoother than Copenhagen, U.N. climate chief predicts."