A post from guest blogger Reg Platt
As regular readers will know Political Climate thinks the focus of climate policy should be on innovation to reduce the cost of low-carbon technology rather than on forcing up the cost of carbon intensive energy. But, innovation is not straightforward and more money does not necessarily mean the right results. This is lesson coming out of two recent events I attended Keep reading →
As we said a couple of weeks ago, the Gulf oil spill is having an impact on American thinking about energy in a way that climate change has simply failed to do so far. Now Obama has declared the Deepwater Horizon disaster an “environmental 9/11″, and called for a “new future” based on clean energy. The pollution from the Gulf spill is visible, its impacts are directly attributable and immediate, and it is understood by all to be affecting livelihoods across a swathe of Southern states. In all of these ways it is different from climate change, and shows how energy policy remains dominated by energy security and pollution considerations.
For many commentators in the wake of Copenhagen, China became the scapegoat for the failure to secure a meaningful and binding agreement. But one reason for China’s resistance to international climate treaties is that they measure emissions (and therefore required emissions cuts) on a national production basis, not consumption, and so ignore the carbon imbedded in the huge imports of goods from China to the West (especially the US).
On this issue they have a point – Keep reading →
Before we start, it’s important to make two things very clear. First, Political Climate thinks that building new coal-fired power stations without emissions abatement is unwise on climate grounds. Second, we think subsidies for the capital costs of new electricity generation should now be focussed on renewables. But, as the unfolding debate concerning the building by Eskom of a massive coal power plant at Lephalale in South Africa’s Limpopo Province illustrates, simply holding such views is not enough.
The plant (the above picture is its construction site) has been named ‘Medupi’ by state-owned Eskom. This apparently means ‘rain that soaks parched lands’ – perhaps unfortunate given the climate impacts of coal. At 4,788 MW of installed generating capacity, Medupi will be an absolute monster; reportedly the fourth largest coal plant in the world. Keep reading →
Six months on and commentators continue to pick the last morsels of analysis off the carcass of the 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen. The UK’s Guardian, for instance, has had a couple of goes at this piece, which pins the blame on the Danes and their cursed text.
Per Meilstrup, a Danish journalist, has written a whole book on COP 15 – largely the source of the Guardian piece – and reveals the ‘real’ Danish text on his blog.
Mistakes were clearly made – by the Danes and the UNFCCC’s secretariat – but the key question that the climate coroners need to ask is arguably this one: Had Lars Lokke Rasmussen not botched the high-level diplomacy, would Copenhagen have concluded with a more substantive outcome? The answer is almost certainly still no.
Why? The reasons are fundamentally to do with politics at the national level, which is where the politics mostly are. China and the US had already made announcements before Copenhagen and because of their respective domestic decision making processes, neither were in a position to increase their offers. So the conventional logic of diplomacy – that governments always arrive at summits with something extra tucked in their back pockets – did not hold. Keep reading →
2-3 million litres of oil a day are now gushing out of the ruptured pipe at the base of the BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and it could get worse before a solution is found. Attempts so far to stem the flow have failed, and oil slicks are now threatening beaches in Louisiana. The volume far exceeds the US’s worst previous oil spill – the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, but the impact of the Gulf spill will not be just about how much hits the beaches. For this disaster is not in a distant state beyond Canada, but very visibly right in America’s backyard. The Gulf fishing industry is already hit hard – if storms push the spill towards Florida’s coast, a $60 billion a year tourism industry is not going to be happy.
But what is really striking about the Gulf disaster is Keep reading →
So EC climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard today finally published a paper backing away from a proposal that Europe commit itself to a 30% reduction in emissions by 2020 (despite rumours to the contary on the front page of The Times, subsequently taken to task by George Monbiot!).
The economic slump since 2008 means that the existing 20% target now looks a lot easier and cheaper to achieve. The financial crisis also took the steam out of the EU ETS carbon market. With Greece in fiscal meltdown and austerity measures under way in Spain, Portugal and now the UK, Europe may well see a serious double dip recession, making even a 30% target much less scary than it seems. A shift up to 30% would also have resuscitated the carbon market. But of course there has been resistance, not least from Germany and eastern Europe, but also the Confederation of British Industry here in the UK. All of this is a reminder of how politically difficult a direct target-led approach is.
On the face of it, this looks like a real blow for those who think Europe should try to rescue its global climate leadership in the wake of the Copehagen fiasco. However, Keep reading →
Hi all – we went away for a little while there, due to various pressures at work and home. But expect to see postings much more frequently on Political Climate from now on. Coming up:
We’ll also start looking more seriously at what the new coalition government is going to do. Later today we’ll blog on the will-they-won’t-they story of the European 30% emissions reduction target.
US and Australian shelves are suddenly straining under the weight of planned climate change policies. In the space of a few days, American Democrats appear to have put climate and energy legislation on hold in favour of a Senate bill on immigration and Rudd’s government down under has unequivocally placed its proposed cap and trade scheme in political storage.
Behind both of these decisions is a complex set of national, political circumstances. In the case of the US it’s clear that Democrats have spotted electoral gain in forcing the Republicans’ hand on immigration and also significant risk in not doing so. As a result, climate and energy may have to wait; the political cost being the probable loss of the support of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
The case of Australia is perhaps more complex still but also all about the politics. Keep reading →
A few days ago Duncan Green from Oxfam posted a thoughtful review of a thoughtful book – Why We Disagree About Climate Change published last year by Mike Hulme, a climate modeller from the University of East Anglia. At the core of the book is the idea that climate change will bring about a transformation in human life that is far more profound than most people realise, certainly those with their eyes down on the immediacy of policy. Duncan’s review picks up on a quote from the book and goes to on interpret that quote: Keep reading →
Matthew Lockwood
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