Keeping a check on the climate with ‘Climate Watch”.

Climate Watch is an online platform designed to empower policymakers, researchers, media and other stakeholders with the open climate data, visualizations and resources they need to gather insights on national and global progress on climate change.

Climate Watch brings together dozens of datasets for the first time to let users analyze and compare the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, access historical emissions data, discover how countries can leverage their climate goals to achieve their sustainable development objectives, and use models to map new pathways to a lower carbon, prosperous future.

This free platform enables users to create and share custom data visualizations and comparisons of national climate commitments. It contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement by using open data to increase transparency and accountability, and provide actionable analysis on how countries can enhance their efforts to combat climate change.

Check out the website here.

Sorry, Matt Canavan, no one believes coal magic means everyone wins

Matt Canavan has an economics degree, graduating from the University of Queensland with first class honours. The Nationals senator and federal minister for resources worked at the Productivity Commission before he entered politics, first as a staffer for his colleague and friend Barnaby Joyce, before being elected to the Senate himself.

 Matt Canavan at the National Press Club on Wednesday. 

The economic pointy head backstory makes Canavan an unconventional National, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed among his party room colleagues. It also makes some of his public commentary this week just that bit harder to get your head around.

In a busy week, where the government prosecuted but lost an attempt to steer its big business tax cut through the Senate, where Tony Abbott was so desperate for a “look at me” moment he launched Pauline Hanson’s new book, where the nation roiled inconsolably about the behaviour of our cricketers – Canavan fronted the National Press Club to try and generate a couple of headlines of his own.

Read Katherine Murphy’s story from The Guardian - “Sorry, Matt Canavan, no one believes coal magic means everyone wins.”

Joining forces to accelerate low-carbon technology

Here is a copy of the webinar “Redefining the role of business and sport: How they can join forces to accelerate low-carbon technology resources across different sectors” the appeared to step around the elephant in the room - our proclivity to criss, cross the world, often taking tonnes of equipment with us, in pursuit of various sports.

The observations made on an earlier post, concluded that if we are serious about mitigating and adapting to the rigours of climate change, then a victim of that adaptation will be international sport, at least as it is presently played.

Watch the webinar here.

Big Australia's rubbish future does not have to go to waste.

Would the concept of waste become obsolete if our garbage had value?

Veena Sahajwalla, who spoke at a Slap Tomorrow forum
 in Shepparton in 2013, says being able to create your own
 materials is "the ultimate empowerment".

Imagine if you could get paid for the things you put in your rubbish, and countries competed to import waste.

Waste is an environmental issue as well as a resource issue, and as Australia approaches 2050 and a population of 40 million, resources will be more valuable than ever.

Will we look back on single-use products as 21st century madness?

That depends on the policy decisions we put in place today, and whether we can transition to a circular economy.

Read the ABC News story by Nick Kilvert - “Big Australia's rubbish future does not have to go to waste.”

13 top universities form ‘Climate Change Coalition’

Leading universities across North America have launched the ‘University Climate Change Coalition’ to leverage their research and resources to spur local climate action.

Universities band together to spur local climate action.

The coalition, also known as UC3, was announced by Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California and former Homeland Security secretary under the Obama administration.

With universities from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the new initiative will aim to fill the rising gap in local climate action, especially after the US government is making deep cuts to numerous science agencies and rolling back environmental regulations aimed at mitigating climate change. 

Read the ClimateAction story - “13 top universities form ‘Climate Change Coalition’.”

Morocco’s clean energy, clear advantage: lessons on energy access

Clean energy lessons from Morocco.

Africa has tremendous energy resources, yet 600 million people across the continent lack energy access. We take a look at clean energy in Morocco for lessons on reducing energy poverty in Africa.

Providing reliable, affordable, and sustainable access to energy has become a core focus of the international development community and is the seventh goal of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

‘Roughly 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of the global population, are energy poor’

Roughly 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of the global population, are energy poor, meaning that they have no access to electricity. Meanwhile, more than 2.7 billion people, primarily in developing Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, rely on fuelwood and other traditional biomass sources for cooking.

Morocco’s experience with solar power offers key lessons for policymakers elsewhere in Africa who are seeking a robust pathway for addressing energy access challenges.

Read the WorldWatch Institute story - “Morocco’s clean energy, clear advantage: lessons on energy access.”

Clandestine approch to Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) should concern libertarians

W

hat little is publicly known about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) should be of immediate concern for those in the world with libertarian views.

Also, those of us concerned for the state of the world’s environment should be pressing for immediate disclosure of what the agreement really means and how its implementation will impact on the world’s resources and so its environment.

At bottom, the TPP appears to be unashamedly about profit; profit for the world’s corporations ahead of the vastly more important wellbeing of people, wherever they might be.

The TPP is not about the transparency that libertarians love, rather the secrecy upon which profits depend.

Alternet has argued that everything from increased fracking to tainted fish, the TPP could severely threaten environmental and climate policy.

The story - “5 Ways the Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Ruin the Environment” – gives us five reasons why we need to view the TPP with suspicion.

Caring for our resources, building a better bicycle

T

he traditional bicycle will remain a method of transport if we husband our resources with care.

Building a bicycle obviously consumes resources, but miniscule amounts compared to the massively complex and resource expensive forms of private transport many presently prefer.

Treehugger tells its readers about a new part-electric bike: “It had all the looks of a classic European delivery bike; you can hardly tell that it is wired, with the batteries hidden in the downtube. It's a pedelec rather than a full e-bike, giving you a boost when you need it.”

The story - “A tale of two bikes: A very pretty Faraday Porteur and a story that's not so pretty” – tells us about having the “wind at your back” as you ride.

Climate and Health Alliance needs our support

Most individuals, groups and organizations alerting the world to the dangers of climate change do so with limited resources.

The “business as usual” brigade is, by comparison well equipped and equally well resourced and beyond that, importantly, seemingly broadly socially accepted.

The success of corporations, to which most of us contribute in one way or another, can be attributed to the fact that they are usually financially sound and so have regular full-time workers whose prime role is to ensure they maintain a socially acceptable profile and so continue uninhibited to pollute our atmosphere.

Those individuals, groups and organizations attempting to change the status quo are not normally in the same position.

The Climate and Health Alliance is one of those groups in need of broader and deeper public support.

The argument explaining the group’s position and needs is outlined here: “Healthy Climate Appeal".

Attention, rather than distraction makes for a civil society

A good life brought on by a civil society arises from paying attention rather than distraction.

The unfolding dilemma of climate change is perverse inverted example of just that.

Seduced by the idea of growth emanating from consumerism, we have been paying attention, but sadly to the wrong things.

Our attention should have been on the husbandry of the earth and its resources, but that attention has always been distracted by the flim-flam of answering our wants, fulfilling our aspirations and inflating egos.

America’s National Journal reports: “House Republicans Just Agreed Climate Change Is Real. But They Don’t Care” again illustrating that we, Americans in this instance, are not yet mature enough to see and understand that the damage we do to our atmosphere threatens the wellbeing of all humanity.

Gray seeks national discussion about nuclear power

The climate change conversation is complex in the extreme, but is little more than a friendly neighbourhood chat compared to the emotion-charged discussion about nuclear power.

Federal Resources Minister,
 Gary Gray, he wants a
national discussion about
nuclear power.

Discussion devoid of logic and driven by argument pining for fact herds reason into a cul-de-sac leaving the nuclear power advocates on an isthmus that a flood a disapproval is about to cut loose from the mainland.

Traditional power sources, primarily coal, are clearly responsible for many thousands of deaths, maybe even millions, while deaths nuclear power faults on a comparative basis, relatively few.

The discovery of coal and the subsequent realization that it’s energy could be accessed by humans and used for many purposes freeing them from a paradigm in which the prime sources of energy were sun, wind, water, human and animal to open a new vista in which fossil-fuel energy freed them from their daily drudgeries and without those natural limitations, humans flourished.

As with everything, however, there are unintended consequences and so after more than two centuries of gouging on reserves nature had put aside, the party, to use Richard Heinberg’s words, is over for we have damaged the climate (at least in human terms) to such an extent, that the only exist open to us is a return to sun, wind, water, human and animal power.

There is, however, still another fossil energy that humanity has until now only, in the greater scheme of things, really simply fiddled with. That is a suggestion that the French would unquestionably take umbrage with for some seventy per cent of their power come from this source.

Uranium, an energy-rich fossil fuel, allows for nuclear power and being effectively free of carbon-dioxide emissions, it stands as a genuine alternative to meet the world’s energy needs and when considered in isolation it would be a major step in mitigating global warming.

Federal Government Resources Minister, Gary Gray, wants Australian’s to objectively and honestly discuss and although he didn’t say so much, such a discussion would only produce an effective result if each of us were able to enter it in a non-ideological manner.

Mr Gray talked about the need for a national discussion about nuclear power at the recent Australian Uranium and Rare Earths conference in Perth.

The ABC report on the matter in a story headed: “Federal Resources Minister Gary Gray wants nuclear Australia debate”.

 

Food security talks take on increased relevance, importance

Intended discussions Beneath the Wisteria on Saturday, February 25, about food security have taken on an increased importance and relevance in the light of new report from the United Nations.

Although those who gather for the February 25 chat will undoubtedly consider local responses to food security, the conversation will unquestionably expand to consider world affairs.

The ABC today had some basic detail about emerging food, water and fuel challenges and the story can be accessed here – World running out of resources: UN