The world's coal reserves hold some 3500 gigatonnes of carbon, compared to the atmosphere currently holding around 800 gigatonnes (600 gigatonnes before the industrial revolution). Burning this coal [search] will single-handedly destroy the Earth's atmosphere. Australia holds some 8.6% of global coal reserves, that they sell to some 35 countries Their coal industry virtually runs the Australian government. Recently Ecological Internet launched a campaign calling upon the Australian government to leave their coal in the ground which is still active. There has been some progress in this regard, as the New South Wales state judiciary has issued a landmark environmental judgment [more] in relation to coal mine approval processes - that the state government must now "take account of the greenhouse gas emissions from burning the mine's output - even though 80 per cent will be exported." The need to account for climate change in coal project's environmental impact statements could prove significant in keeping more of it in the ground and less in the air.
November 2006 Archives
TAKE ACTION: With a decade at most to avert global warming catastrophe, let the U.S. Supreme Court know carbon dioxide is clearly a pollutant, causing climate change mayhem, and as such must be regulated by the U.S. EPA
In one of the most important environmental cases ever to come before the U.S. Supreme Court, climate change and the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will be ruled upon by the nation's highest court for the first time. In essence, the case will put the evidence for climate change "on trial" to determine whether the available data are enough to say that CO2 emissions pose a threat to the public's wellbeing. The case is Massachusetts vs. EPA, 05-1120. Essentially two questions are at issue: can the U.S. government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulate CO2, and if it can, is it required to. The court's decision which is expected in June 2007, with oral arguments scheduled as soon as late November or early December of this year, could hasten U.S. mitigation of greenhouse-gas emissions - or bring action to a disappointing halt.
Climate change caused extinction has commenced in earnest, yet another indication of the urgency of implementing rigorous policy now. A review of hundreds of scientific studies has concluded that "animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming... These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly." Cold dependent species and species unable to move further north or to higher elevations are dying. Just five years ago it was thought this would take many years to occur, but the new report indicates it is happening much more quickly than had been expected. The sheer mass of humanity's impacts upon the Earth has lead to global heating and numerous other instances of global ecosystem collapse [search] including eroding soils [search], water scarcity [search], desertification [search] and forest loss and simplification [search]. Human industrial and personal consumption activities are making the Earth uninhabitable, and humanity is just one of many animals losing their habitat and in danger of imminent extinction. If you haven't yet, see Al Gore's movie on DVD, it makes it crystal clear.
The French government has come up with an intriguing and long overdue policy proposal of taxing countries' goods whose government has not ratified Kyoto [more] - namely Annex I countries Australia and the United States. This presumably would compensate for their free rider economic behavior. Australia has signaled they are moving closer to ratifying Kyoto in practice if not in name [more]. Meanwhile the Swiss are pushing the golden bullet of climate change policy - a broad based international tax on carbon emissions. They propose that revenue be used for measures mitigating the effects of global warming. This is very similar to Ecological Internet's own Lincoln Plan which further proposes tax increases are offset by tax reductions on employment. UK is to tax gas guzzling SUVs. And there is growing concensus in Nairobi that a Kyoto successor must come soone and include mandatory emission caps for all nations [more | more2] while being more flexible and taking into account historical emissions levels and allowing developing nations some allowance to reduce poverty. Clearly China is feeling the pressure to justify their policy as Chinese emissions are soaring.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) [search] chief scientist Rajendra K. Pachauri, their much anticipated Fourth Assessment report "will offer much stronger evidence of how man is changing Earth's climate [more], and should prompt balky governments into action against global warming." The IPCC is a global network of some 2,000 climate and other scientists that regularly assesses the state of research into how carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced by industry and other human activities are affecting the climate. The Fourth Assessment is expected to be released in installments beginning next February, and "there's much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place" since the Third Assessment in 2001. The report "will offer significantly more evidence on sea-level rise [search], the melting of glaciers [search] and the growing scarcity of water [search]." The 2001 assessment projected temperatures would rise this century between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit), depending on factors such as how quickly governments rein in emissions. The upcoming report is expected to narrow this range as "some of the uncertainties are being reduced."
"Evidence emerging in the past five years or so suggests the presence of many previously unknown tipping points that could trigger dangerous climate change." There are indications that the speed and severity of climate change is approaching or exceeding the worst case scenarios as given in ranges of possibilities by scientists. Throughout the years of international climate negotations worst case scientific scenarios of abrupt [search], run-away [search] climate collapse were consistently downplayed and watered down. Old ideas of gradual smooth change are giving way to cataclysmic shifts of state in atmospheric processes and patterns. It was thought that Greenland and Antarctica ice sheet melting [search] would take hundreds if not thousands of years to appreciably rise sea levels, allowing plenty of time for adaptation. Science has now become aware of crevices in the ice sheets which allow melting water to enter oceans in as little as 10 seconds! "These flows completely change our understanding of the dynamics of ice sheet destruction."
The journal Nature reports "Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year... That's four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99... We are not on any of the stabilization paths." [more | more2] We are well beyond Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of the emissions levels needed to prevent damaging climate change. International negotiations are lagging. China currently contributes some 16% to global emissions, but accounts for 40% of the growth in world emissions. What in the hell is going on here? Clearly humanity as a whole must start acting soon -- it's urgent. It's beyond urgent. It is life threatening. The greatest test of humanity ever. Without immediately placing all intellectual, financial and societal resources at the disposal of those studying climate change science, developing sufficient policy responses, and those advocating for the necessary social change; the Earth is going to burn. All countries must in earnest participate in negotiations to set mandatory carbon emission caps for each nation based upon many factors including each country's wealth, past emissions, and potential to grow uncontrollably. We need to start yesterday, and the U.S. and Australia must end their criminal defense of fossil fuels.
At Nairobi, governments are debating the future of the Kyoto Protocol and action to prevent the most serious impacts of climate change. So far, they appear to have ignored pleas to address one of the greatest single sources of carbon emissions: the destruction of South-east Asia’s peatlands and forests. The annual emissions from annual peat and forest fires are about five times as great as the total annual emission cuts which the Kyoto Protocol aims to make by 2012, from 1990 levels.
Indonesia alone holds 60% of all tropical peat, containing some 50 billion tonnes of carbon. This is equivalent to 7-8 years of global fossil fuel emissions. Timber and oil palm plantations are draining the peatlands and also pushing local communities and small-holders into peat areas and rainforests. Once this peat is drained, all this carbon will eventually be released into the atmosphere, unless the peat is subsequently re-flooded and restored. Annual fires, many of them set deliberately by plantation owners, speed up the process. This year’s fire season has been one of the worst on record. Wetlands International warned earlier this week that the boom in biofuels is speeding up the destruction, and further that one tonne of palm oil grown on peat is linked to the release of around 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide released from that peat. Due to its low cost, palm oil is set to become the prime feedstock for biodiesel.
As the international community meets this week in Nairobi, Kenya to formulate international climate policy, you can depend upon Climate Ark for extensive news coverage. Not without criticism, Climate Ark continues to support the Kyoto process [search] as an established mechanism to reduce emissions that can be tightened and expanded, rather than restarting international negotiations from scratch. Clearly India and China must enter the emissions caps, though just as clearly they and other developing countries should be allowed to emit more per capita then rich countries. Climate change will be averted or minimized only by dramatic emissions reductions, rapid embrace of renewable energy, an end to ancient forest deforestation and diminishment, and an embrace of energy conservation and efficiency. As individuals we must do what we can to achieve these goals, while leading our leaders to establish societal constraints that make living green more easy. Meanwhile, lets hope for enlightened global governance from Nairobi.
One immediate partial climate crisis remedy whose time has come is the idea of "avoided deforestation" [more | more2] whereby countries are compensated for maintaining intact ancient forest ecosystems. This win/win/win/win/lose strategy would maintain critical global ecosystem services, preserve biodiversity and genetic resources, keep existing carbon locked into terrestrial ecosystems, and provide a major source of sustainable development income to forest dwellers. It is only the timber merchants of death that lose, and given their poorly shared benefits from years of ancient forest ecosystem liquidation, frankly they do not count. They will be lucky to get out of the business of forest ecocide alive and not be strung from the few remaining trees for their ecological crimes against humanity.
