"So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency, now what?" > Exeter University > Thursday 23rd May

A 'Climate Emergency' has been declared - by the County Council and by central government:
Futures Forum: Climate change > County Council declares 'climate emergency' but fails to commit to becoming carbon neutral by 2030

On Tuesday, Extinction Rebellion will be meeting:
Futures Forum: Climate Emergency > What could government be doing? > talk and discussion with Exeter Extinction Rebellion > Tuesday 21st May

And on Thursday, Transition Exeter and the University will also be considering where to go next:

So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency, now what?

Thursday 23 May 2019, 6.00 - 9.00 pm

Alumni Auditorium, The Forum, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4SZ

Both Devon County Council and the UK Parliament have declared a Climate Emergency. Transition Exeter has partnered with the Exeter University's Global Systems Institute to run a free public event:  Now what?  

The panel will include Youth Striker Sophie Sleeman, climate scientist Richard Betts, newly elected Exeter Green councillor Diana Moore and Alice Mosely speaking on Citizens Assemblies.  

Book your place now, and bring questions and comments to the meeting on Thursday 

Transition Exeter - Home | Facebook 

With more on the Eventbrite site:

So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency, now what?

Date: Thursday 23 May 2019

Time: 18.00 - 20.00

Venue: Alumni Auditorium, The Forum, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4SZ

Video link: Exchange Lecture Theatre, Penryn Campus

This public event is hosted by the University of Exeter Global Systems Institute in Partnership with Transition Exeter and Exeter Community Energy.

Event Information

On 1 May 2019 UK MPs approved a motion to declare an environment and climate emergency.

More than 60 towns and cities across the UK have already declared "a climate emergency" including Devon and Cornwall County Councils.

Last month the University of Bristol became the first UK university to make a similar declaration. There is no single definition of what "a climate emergency" means but many local authorities state they want to be carbon-neutral by 2030. This will only be achievable through dramatic cuts in emissions which requires social transformation.

What steps are required to achieve rapid and extensive change?

Deep cuts in emissions will involve far-reaching changes to everyday lives, physical infrastructures, patterns of investment and divestment. How can we ensure such change is rapid and extensive, yet also socially acceptable, fair and leaves no-one behind? Research suggests most people are not willing to voluntarily give up consuming meat and dairy products, driving a car and taking overseas holidays.

Is this likely to change? If so, how? What is the potential for a Citizens Assembly to enable social transformation?

This public meeting will explore these issues with a diverse panel and questions from the audience. Join us for some lively discussion and distraction from the European elections!

Panel members

• Event chair: Patrick Devine-Wright, Professor in Human Geography
• Richard Betts, Chair in Climate Impacts
• Alice Moseley, Lecturer in Politics
• A Fridays for Future (Exeter) representative
• Glenn Woodcock, Exeter City Futures
• Local authority / public sector representative (tbc)

A public event hosted by the Global Systems Institute

The Global Systems Institute is applying Earth system science to generating networked solutions. Our aim is to work with others to secure a flourishing future for humanity as an integral part of a life-sustaining Earth system. We are uniting a trans-disciplinary group of researchers, educators and partners to look beyond single ‘environmental’ issues to a truly systemic view of coupled global changes in the human social and economic sphere and the biosphere.

www.exeter.ac.uk/gsi

Venue

Main venue: Alumni Auditorium, The Forum, Streatham Campus, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4SZ. Building number 3 on the Streatham Campus map.

For Streatham maps and directions, please visit this page.

Video link: Exchange Lecture Theatre, The Exchange, Penryn Campus, TR10 9FE.

For Penryn maps and directions, please visit this page.

Registration

To register for the event please click the 'register' link at the top of this page.

If you have any enquiries regarding the event, please email research-events@exeter.ac.uk

Please note filming, recording and photography may take place at this event.

So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency, now what? Registration, Thu 23 May 2019 at 18:00 | Eventbrite
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Biosolar panels

An interesting technology has been developed:
First bio-solar panel to run on bacteria creates clean and sustainable energy - YouTube

This has been developed even further: 

These “biosolar panels” suck CO2 from the air to grow edible algae

05.01.19
WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

In London, scientists are testing the “BioSolar Leaf,” which uses carbon-hungry organisms to help clean the air better than trees can

– all while providing an excellent source of protein.


BY ADELE PETERS

At Imperial College London’s new campus in West London, some rooftops will soon hold bright green “biosolar” panels covered with algae. The plants suck carbon dioxide out of the air and produce fresh oxygen at a rate 100 times faster than trees covering the same amount of land–and then the microscopic organisms can be harvested to be used in food.

“We call it a ‘BioSolar Leaf,'” says Julian Melchiorri, CEO of Arborea, the company that designed the new technology. “It uses solar energy, but instead of converting solar energy into electricity [like a solar panel], we convert solar energy into food.”

Melchiorri, who graduated from a joint masters program at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art in 2014, is primarily focused on using the technology at a larger scale to produce ingredients. It’s a way to produce more protein in a given area than any other type of food production; the algae are also a source of antioxidants and other nutrients. In pasta, for example, the algae can be used to add protein. The algae can also create natural food coloring. “Let’s say you have blue M&Ms,” he says. “The blue [algae], instead of being synthetic and having all of the issues related to colorants, actually has more antioxidants than you can find in an apple.”

Microalgae are already used in food, but the new panels use a proprietary production process that makes growing them less expensive, more scalable, and results in a higher quality product, Melchiorri says. “We reinvented how we can grow cells by radically changing culturing techniques,” he says. The company, which recently launched a Series A round of financing, plans to soon open a demo plant in San Diego. But Imperial College London saw an opportunity to pilot a rooftop system that would take advantage of the algae’s ability to clean the air.

“Our new campus is a brownfield site, and that means that it’s going to be difficult to grow trees to green it,” says Neil Alford, associate provost at Imperial College London. “But what we can do is use this technology to supplant the trees. We’ll have the ability to create oxygen within London, which isn’t a bad idea, but we can do something which per area will produce maybe 100 times more oxygen than trees will.” Algae naturally absorb CO2 and release oxygen faster than other photosynthetic organisms, and the panel growing system makes it possible to perform this process anywhere. “You can put them on the sides of buildings or the roofs of buildings, and that is something that is interesting for us.”

A city could potentially have a network of sites with the biosolar panels, beginning on buildings with sprawling roofs, such as supermarkets or warehouses, or next to industrial plants emitting carbon dioxide. The pilot plant at Imperial College London, which is now under construction, will test how well the system works to clean the air. Arborea will also continue to move forward with the panels at larger production plants. Because the panels can be used on infertile land, the process can avoid some of the sustainability challenges inherent in other food production–like the deforestation often caused when land is cleared to raise cattle or grow soy. The climate pollution avoided by producing protein with algae is even more significant than the algae’s ability to suck CO2 from the air, Melchiorri says. “[Our] primary function is to produce the most sustainable protein.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.

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These "biosolar panels" suck up CO2 to grow edible algae
F&FF - Technical and Business Information
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"Britain is now on course to generate electricity with zero carbon by 2025"

National and County media have been reporting on a break-through moment:
British power grid notches up first week of coal-free operation | Carbon Brief
Britain's power grid notches up first coal-free week since Victorian times - Devon Live

CNN covers the story too: 

The UK just went one week without coal power for the first time in 137 years

By Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN

Updated 1325 GMT (2125 HKT) May 9, 2019

(CNN)For the first time since 1882, when the first coal-fired power plant started running in the UK, the country has gone coal-free for a full week, according to the National Grid's Electricity System Operator (ESO). And Britain is now on course to generate electricity with zero carbon by 2025, the operator said.

The milestone was reached as the country's Environment Agency issued a stark warning about coastal communities under rising threat of floods due to climate change.

'New normal'?

The coal generator was off between around 1.30pm on May 1, 2019 and the same time on May 8, according to ESO.

"While this is the first time this has happened, I predict it will become the 'new normal,'" Fintan Slye, Director of ESO said in a statement. "As more and more renewables come onto our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to be a regular occurrence. We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain's electricity system with zero carbon."

The landmark target of a week without coal was achieved thanks to a long-term strategy aimed at increasing the use of renewable energies, from offshore wind to domestic scale solar panels, Emma Pinchbeck, deputy CEO at RenewableUK, told CNN.

"Wind has become a mainstream power source for the UK, providing up to 35% of our electricity over the weekend. Renewables have been crucial to phasing out dirty coal," she said. "The coal phase out is just the beginning of a move away from fossil fuels to low carbon living, to avoid the enormous risks of climate disruption. Last week, the Committee on Climate Change said we can only achieve net-zero emissions with a massive increase in renewables."

Regulation and profitability have played a role: under European Emissions Performance standards, old plants would have had to fit expensive new kit by the end of this year, and the economic conditions for coal are poor, Pinchbeck said. Carbon pricing has also had an impact.

Then, there's the Climate Change Act. which mandated country a near zero carbon power sector by 2032, and which drove major investment in low carbon technologies such as renewables from 2008, she added. The UK government has also committed to phase out all coal plants by 2025.

ESO data from the coal-free week shows that renewables (wind, solar, hydro, and biomass) accounted for around 23% of the total power, with natural gas and nuclear providing 46% and 21%. That means coal has been displaced by renewables, not gas, Pinchbeck said, explaining that there was more current and planned investment in the former.

Threat to coastal communities

The news came as the Environment Agency's chairwoman Emma Howard Boyd warned that entire coastal communities might need help to move "out of harm's way in the longer term," as global temperatures rise by an expected 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.

"We can't win a war against water by building away climate change with infinitely high flood defenses," Boyd said in a statement, adding that £1 billion ($1.3 billion) a year needed to be invested in flood management to combat the emergency.

On May 2, the country's Committee on Climate Change (CCC) urged the government to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Currently the UK has a target of curbing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. Emissions fell by 42% in 2016.

The CCC said the new target is "necessary, feasible and cost-effective." But it will require drastic action, including phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles completely by 2035, planting 30,000 hectares of trees each year and cutting beef, lamb and dairy consumption by 20% by 2050.

CNN's Isabelle Gerretsen contributed reporting

The UK just went one week without coal for the first time in 137 years. - CNN
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Climate change: the key to Australia's general election

Climate change is really hitting Australia:
Futures Forum: Tasmania is burning: "It's extremely inconvenient for any government that does not have a cogent answer for what they’ll do about climate change, to see the effects of climate change putting more and more people and homes at risk."

And to many, this is the land of dystopia:
Futures Forum: "The real-life Mad Max will be about water"

Unfortunately, the debate has become highly politicised across the Anglo-Saxon world:
Futures Forum: "Climate science has been dragged into the American-style culture wars that are turning British intellectual life into a battlefield."
Futures Forum: Climate change: denialism in a country on the brink of ecological collapse.

However, student climate strikes have been gathering momentum:
Futures Forum: Climate change: "there is a sense of a new consciousness abroad concerning the future of our planet"

And so the debate hots up ahead of the general election on 18th May: 

Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate

By Somini Sengupta
May 7, 2019

HARDEN, Australia — It’s been a year of extremes for this country. The hottest summer ever. Torrential rains in the north. A crippling drought in its southeastern farm belt. Now, with national elections scheduled for May 18, a vital question looms: To what degree will climate change sway the way Australians vote? The answer could provide important lessons for other democracies in the age of climate change.

Australia is acutely vulnerable to climate change, just as it is also a culprit. The continent has warmed faster than the global average; its cherished Great Barrier Reef has been devastated by marine heat waves; and heat and drought this year took a bite out of the country’s economy, according to a top official of the country’s central bank. At the same time, central to its prosperity is the extraction of the dirtiest fossil fuel: Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal for power generation.

Against that backdrop, the governing conservative coalition, led by the Liberal Party, is under pressure in key districts as independents assail longstanding members of Parliament like Tony Abbott, a former Liberal leader and prime minister, over their climate positions.

Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate - The New York Times 

Tony Abbott bet me $100 the climate will not change in 10 years

Cassie Flanagan Willanski
Wed 8 May 2019 

Tony Abbott has bet me $100 that in 10 years’ time the climate will not have changed. When I found myself in a Manly coffee shop last week being offered the bet, I was incredulous. Abbott was smiling, charmingly dismissive. This person with the power to help steer the world away from anthropogenic disaster wasn’t having a bar of my concerns about climate change. He wasn’t going to help; he was going to wield his status and wealth to show how confident he was in his position of not doing anything.

Tony Abbott bet me $100 the climate will not change in 10 years | Cassie Flanagan Willanski | Opinion | The Guardian 

Climate change a bigger threat to Australia's interests than terrorism, Lowy Institute poll suggests

By national science, technology and environment reporter Michael Slezak
Updated Wed at 5:14am

Climate change is a "critical threat" to Australia's interests according to almost two-thirds of Australians — ranked as a more serious concern than international terrorism, North Korea's nuclear program or cyber attacks from other countries. This is the first time climate change has led the list of potential threats in the long-running Lowy Institute poll since the question was first included in 2006. The poll also confirmed Australians were more concerned about climate change this election than at any time since Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007 — when both major parties proposed an emissions trading scheme.

Climate change a bigger threat to Australia's interests than terrorism, Lowy Institute poll suggests - Australia Votes - Federal Election 2019 - Politics - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 

Climate change takes centre stage in Australia's election

Two contenders for PM have very different messages about how to address environmental emergency

Kate Lyons
Wed 8 May 2019

As political leaders travel across Australia to deliver their election talking points in farms, factories and sports fields, they are criss-crossing a country in the grip of a rolling climate emergency.

In the year leading up to the election on 18 May, huge swathes of eastern Australia have endured their worst droughts in a century. There have been apocalyptic scenes along the Murray Darling river system in which up to 1 million fish have died. In Queensland, floods have wiped out half a million cattle and bushfires have burned close to pristine rainforests. In the usually cool southern state of Tasmania more bushfires have raged across 190,000 hectares of land and devastated old-growth forests.

Last year was Australia’s hottest year on record and as winter begins many of the country’s major cities are staring down the barrel of water restrictionswith Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin and Brisbane all facing the prospect of dams at just 50% capacity.

But on the campaign trail, through warming cities, blackened bush and scorched outback, the two contenders for prime minister are trumpeting starkly different messages about what, if anything, should be done to address the crisis.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, represents the ruling conservative Liberal party. The slogan-loving former head of Tourism Australia came to power after toppling his more moderate predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, in 2018. Morrison’s stance on climate change can be summed up by an address to parliament in 2017 while brandishing a lump of coal. In a speech supporting fossil fuels, he goaded the opposition: “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt you. It’s coal.” Scott Morrison brings a chunk of coal into parliament

The idea that many in Morrison’s party consider climate change and its effects to be something to be laughed at is not hyperbole from the left. In 2015, the former prime minister Tony Abbott – who once called climate change “crap” – was caught on camera laughing at a joke about rising sea levels in the Pacific.

In this election, the ruling Liberal and rural National Coalition – or “COALition” as they have been dubbed in attack ads – are pushing for a “climate solutions” fund that pays polluters to lower their emissions, with the aim of meeting Paris commitments of lowering emissions by 28%.

The country’s environment minister, Melissa Price, has been labelled the “invisible minister”, notable for her absence at the sites of environmental calamities, and her refusal to meet environmental groups. The party is also embroiled in a scandal dubbed “Watergate” involving the $80m purchase of water from a company with links to the Cayman Islands that was co-founded by the energy minister.

Morrison himself kickstarted a scare campaign based on the opposition’s ambitious electric car policy as a “war on the weekend”, suggesting that pick-up trucks, which are beloved by Australians, will become unaffordable.

But in rural areas a number of high-profile Liberal and National party MPs are facing independent and minor party challenges on the climate, the conflict between farming and mining, and sheer anger at being ignored on water management, as well as integrity issues. Independents are also chipping away at the Liberal vote in cities.

Meanwhile, the Labor party, which is leading in the polls by 52-48%, has promised significant action on climate change.

In his speech launching Labor’s official campaign, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, a former union man who has struggled with the perception that he is uncharismatic, said: “If we have the privilege to serve as the next government of Australia, I will not bring lumps of coal to parliament for a laugh while temperatures soar and bushfires rage and flood and drought batter our land.”

Labor has made itself a “big target” in this election campaign, laying out a suite of policies including controversial tax reforms and the target of reducing emissions by 45% by 2030. Despite this, the party can’t bring itself to fully commit on climate change, and is refusing to say whether it would stop a highly controversial proposed coalmine that environmentalists say will threaten the Great Barrier Reef. Labor’s equivocation on the Adani project led the Australian Conservation Foundation to give the party a score of 56% on its environmental policies ahead of the election. The Liberal party scored just 4%.

Meanwhile, the Greens, the fourth-largest party after the Liberals, Labor and the Nationals, was given a score of 99% by the ACF. The Greens have just one federal MP but are a force in the Australian Senate, with nine out of 76 senators. They are pushing for much more serious action on climate change, but have been accused of strategic blunders after they voted down Labor’s carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2009 on the grounds it did not go far enough, which helped hamstring Australian climate policy for a decade.

...

This is not the first Australian election in which climate change has been a defining issue, but last time did not work out well for those demanding action. Abbott rode to power in 2013 on a campaign of three-word slogans, promising to “Stop the boats” (of refugee arrivals) and “Scrap the tax” (repealing Australia’s cutting-edge carbon pricing scheme).

Labor is hoping that Australia – burned from that experience – has moved on.

Climate change takes centre stage in Australia's election | Australia news | The Guardian
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Climate change: are new UK targets too tough or not tough enough?

Last week, MPs were urged to show they could act on climate change:
Futures Forum: Calls for the UK parliament to declare a 'climate emergency'

And so they did, with a resulting impressive coverage from the world's media:
British Parliament declares ′climate change emergency′ | News | DW | 01.05.2019
After protests, U.K. Parliament becomes first legislature to declare 'climate change emergency' | The Japan Times
After Protests, UK Parliament Declares a Symbolic Climate Change 'Emergency' - The Wire
British Parliament declares symbolic climate change ‘emergency’ - The Globe and Mail
After protests, Britain's parliament declares climate change 'emergency', Europe News & Top Stories - The Straits Times
UK becomes 1st nation to declare climate emergency; Opposition' Jeremy Corbyn calls for 'real action' - The Indian Wire
UK becomes first country to declare a 'climate emergency' - phys.org

Meanwhile, away from the public declarations, the government's advisers on climate change were also busy this week:
Net-Zero-The-UKs-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming.pdf
UK Declares "Climate Emergency" As Committee On Climate Change Urges Net-Zero | CleanTechnica
Climate change: UK 'can cut emissions to nearly zero' by 2050 - BBC News

Are these targets too difficult, though?
Reaching net-zero emissions will not be easy | Financial Times

Or actually not serious enough?
Ashden calls for "further and faster" climate action - Smart Cities World

This is from a helpful overview from Vox: 

The UK could achieve the most aggressive climate goal in the world
Lawmakers also declared a “climate emergency” this week.

By Umair Irfan May 4, 2019, 7:00am EDT

The UK government’s official climate adviser this week said that the country can zero out its contributions to climate change by the middle of the century.

If the target recommended by the Committee on Climate Change was officially adopted, it would put the UK on a more aggressive timetable than its current target of cutting emissions 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, a goal enshrined in the 2008 Climate Change Act. The CCC’s target is “net-zero,” which doesn’t mean “no emissions at all” but that any carbon dioxide emitted has to be offset or removed.

“Ten years after the Climate Change Act became law, now is the right moment to set a more ambitious goal,” the CCC said in a statement. “The CCC’s recommended targets, which cover all sectors of the UK, Scottish and Welsh economies, are achievable with known technologies, alongside improvements in people’s lives, and should be put into law as soon as possible.”

It means that by 2035, all new cars must be electric. Forests must expand from covering 13 percent of land today to 17 percent by 2050. All buildings must be retrofitted and decarbonized. People must consume less meat. Thermostats in the winter should be set no higher than 19 degrees Celsius.

If the UK government adopts the recommendations, it would become the first G7 country to make such an ambitious commitment. It would also likely be the most comprehensive and ambitious climate target in the world, since the CCC’s recommendation encompasses the entire economy, and the country is starting from an inefficient, fossil fuel-heavy baseline.

It’s a much bigger shift than, say, Costa Rica, another country that’s committed to carbon neutrality. Costa Rica is a much smaller economy and already gets a much larger share of its energy from clean sources. The climate committee’s recommendation also reaches further than the net-zero by 2045 law in Sweden, which excludes international shipping and aviation totals.

The UK, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, also has a long history of greenhouse gases to take into account. It ranks seventh in the world in cumulative emissions since 1750.

The committee report came out just as a massive weeks-long climate protest in London by the activist group Extinction Rebellion was wind down. Protestors achieved one of their main objectives on Wednesday when the UK parliament declared a climate change emergency.

However, activists are still not satisfied and have said the recommendation is not aggressive enough.

Here are some things to know about the report.

The United Kingdom has already made significant progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions

Carbon dioxide emissions in the UK have been trending downward since the 1970s as the country shifted away from burning coal. In 2017, UK greenhouse gas emissions fell to levels not seen since 1890:

Annual UK emissions have fallen below levels not seen since 1890. Carbon Brief

But the UK still has a long route to zero. Fossil fuels still provide the bulk of energy in the country, so there needs to be vastly more deployment of clean energy and wider electrification across the economy.

The United Kingdom still gets most of its energy from fossil fuels. Carbon Brief

Hitting zero net-emissions wouldn’t be any more expensive than the current target

The climate committee estimated that drawing down emissions in the United Kingdom would cost between 1 to 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product each year until 2050. That’s the same cost bracket as the current UK goal.

“Falls in cost for some of the key zero-carbon technologies mean that achieving net-zero is now possible within the economic cost that Parliament originally accepted when it passed the Climate Change Act in 2008,” according to the report.

And the UK has experienced a growing divergence between its economy and its emissions over the past two decades, which likely means the UK economy will continue to grow even as it cuts its emissions.

The UK has experienced a divergence between its economy and its emissions over the past two decades. Committee on Climate Change

Activists think the new target still doesn’t go far enough

Extinction Rebellion activists described the recommendation as a “betrayal.”

Extinction Rebellion @ExtinctionR

The advice of @theCCCuk to the UK government is a betrayal of current & future generations made all the more shocking coming just hours after UK MPs passed a motion to declare an environment & climate emergency. #RebelForLife: https://rebellion.earth/ https://www.theccc.org.uk/2019/05/02/phase-out-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050-to-end-uk-contribution-to-global-warming/ …

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2:00 AM - May 2, 2019

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Phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to end UK contribution to global warming - Committee on...

Phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to end UK contribution to global warming. The UK can end its contribution to global warming within 30 years by setting an ambitious new target to reduce its...

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“2050 condemns us to a bleak future,” said Lorna Greenwood of Extinction Rebellion, in a statement. “We may as well not have a target at all. Others are already dying around the world thanks to inaction and far off target setting.”

The group argues that the committee’s recommendation would only give the world a 50 percent chance of limiting temperature increases this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The fight over when to reach net-zero emissions mirrors a similar objections environmental groups raised in the United States this week when presidential contender Beto O’Rourke unveiled his plan to drawdown US emissions to zero by 2050.

Some researchers said the UK climate committee was too optimistic in its recommendation, presuming that many aspects of a modern energy-intensive lifestyle would go unchanged. The report also avoided tackling thorny questions, like who is justly required to pay for the transition to a cleaner economy.

“This generational transfer of responsibility enables the CCC to maintain a thriving aviation sector and leave unquestioned the huge inequality in who is responsible for most of UK emissions,” wrote Kevin Anderson, a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester. “What’s not to like – business as usual, albeit with a sizeable green twist, and influential high-emitting groups left unencumbered by policies tailored towards their carbon-intensive lifestyles.”

The committee did call for electrifying transportation, one of the largest sources of emissions, as a critical tactic to fight climate change, but air travel has proved to be an extremely difficult sector to decarbonize and shows no signs of slowing down.
Climate change: UK committee recommends net-zero emissions by 2050 - Vox
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Have the public gone bonkers about plastics? Julia Hailes, author of The Green Consumer Guide, to talk in Lyme Regis: Friday 3rd May

Are plastics a bad thing?
Futures Forum: Is 'plastic free' a stretch too far?... There are clever ways to use and deal with plastic waste.
Futures Forum: Plastic: can you live without it?
Futures Forum: "Plastic's bad reputation is not always borne out by the facts. Just because a brown cardboard box looks greener than plastic, that doesn't mean it is."

A veteran campaigner and writer is speaking next week on the issues: should be interesting: 

HAVE THE PUBLIC GONE BONKERS ABOUT PLASTICS?


Friday, 3rd May      
Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, Dorset      
7.00 – 8.45pm
Tickets £8 (concessions available)  Book online

Julia Hailes MBE  will give a very thought-provoking talk.   

Pictures of turtles with straws up their nostrils and an albatross chick regurgitating a toothbrush have been key in galvanising public attention to the very real problem of ocean plastics. 

So, you may be surprised to hear that plastics are often the best environmental option, in particular by saving energy and tackling climate change. 

Julia Hailes is a sustainability pioneer with over 30 years in the green sector. She’s a campaigner, writer, speaker and consultant, who has written nine environmental books, including The Green Consumer Guide, which sold over 1 million copies. 

She will talk about how humans have become the most wasteful species on the planet and what we should be doing about it. Some of her conclusions may surprise you.


Plastic Pollution  Turn Lyme Green |
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Climate change: the book 'Losing Earth' ends with a full-throated, fire-and-brimstone indictment of the carbon lobby and its ongoing denial and delaying tactics

Today saw the last instalment of the book 'Losing Earth' on Radio 4:
Futures Forum: Climate change: 'Losing Earth' @ Radio 4's Book of the Week

It really is quite a significant read:
Futures Forum: Climate change: The book 'Losing Earth' explores how the oil industry played politics

Here's a review from the Baffler: 

True Crimes

Why it’s important to name names when discussing the climate catastrophe  

Wen Stephenson, April 22

IT APPEARS THAT I OWE Nathaniel Rich an apology. No, really, I mean this (brace yourselves) sincerely. I’ve never met or exchanged so much as a word with the novelist and New York Times contributor, author of the slim yet important new volume Losing Earth: A Recent History, but I have wronged him nonetheless.

The offense occurred last summer, amid the furious response to Rich’s full issue-length cover story for The New York Times Magazine, also titled “Losing Earth” and hyped as the magazine’s longest piece ever, a veritable epic, in which he argued that “we” came close to “solving” climate change in 1989 and that “our” failure to do so rests primarily on something called “human nature” rather than the actions of a rich and powerful few. This framing conveniently waved away the decades-long record of deceit and obstruction by the carbon lobby and the politicians (mainly but by no means exclusively Republicans) who do its bidding. At the height of the controversy—which, admittedly, seems to have raged mainly on “climate Twitter”—I came across a tweet that caused me to lose my shit. In said tweet, HuffPost reporter Alexander Kaufman, who was generously inclined to cut Rich some slack, wrote this:

FWIW, when asked about that critique [i.e., that his piece lets the industry and Republicans off easy] at a private dinner last night, @NathanielRich said these words: “I think the fossil fuel industry is guilty of crimes against humanity.”

I took the bait and retweeted that bit of gossip with the following comment:

WTF? Then WRITE THAT. Coward.

Not my most eloquent utterance, and yet quite a few people on Twitter and elsewhere—most of them, unsurprisingly, climate experts and advocates—agreed with my snap judgment of Rich’s character.

However, now that I’ve read Losing Earth, the book, which differs in subtle and not-subtle ways from the magazine article, I have to say I’m sorry for leaping to the conclusion that its author lacks a moral spine. Because far from letting the industry and its political servants off the hook, the book—which deemphasizes the sketchy “human nature” bit—ends with a full-throated, fire-and-brimstone indictment of the carbon lobby and its ongoing denial and delaying tactics (what Alex Steffen has termed “predatory delay”), even calling them by their proper name. “The morality of these tactics can only be described as sociopathic,” he writes. “It is not yet widely understood, though it will be, that when a government relaxes regulations on coal-fired plants or erases scientific data from a federal website, it is guilty of more than merely bowing to corporate interests; it commits crimes against humanity.”

In other words, he does in fact write that. Who knows why the magazine article lacked this particular form of clarity, but it looks like Rich got religion (so to speak) on this matter, if he didn’t have it all along, repeatedly quoting Pope Francis and going all jeremiad-like, writing something you’d expect more from such scourges of the industry as Naomi Klein or Bill McKibben, or, for that matter, me.

And for taking this stance, no doubt, Rich will face from some quarters the typical, boring charge of “hypocrisy” or “preaching righteously” to the choir. (Trust me, I’ve been there.) But that’s the risk one takes when mounting a moral argument about climate change, or any number of other issues, within the precincts of elite mainstream media.

So, to be clear, I have much respect for Rich and his project here. Losing Earth is an important, useful, and commendable little book. But it still has, to my eye, certain puzzling gaps or blind spots in the way it’s framed and in some of the conclusions it reaches.

For those who missed the magazine epic, Losing Earth is a brief narrative history of the climate issue’s early years, focusing on the decade 1979 to 1989, when it appeared there would be a serious U.S.-led effort to tackle the problem, but which turned out to be (surprise!) not so serious after all. Like the novelist he is (Odds Against Tomorrow), Rich comes in close on a pair of key players who become his protagonists: the environmentalist and lobbyist Rafe Pomerance and the leading NASA climatologist James Hansen, whose historic congressional testimony in 1988 helped put carbon dioxide emissions on the national and global agenda. With much diligent digging and reporting, Rich shows how they and others (including a young Senator Al Gore) came tantalizingly close to convincing powerful figures in the U.S. government to push through a binding international treaty in 1989 to freeze and then reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2005. Rich claims this would have held warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (the current United Nations aspiration), thus averting catastrophe. (Global emissions today are at record levels, and warming of 1.5 degrees and beyond is all but guaranteed.)

It’s not clear why Rich concludes (he cites no source) that reducing emissions a mere 20 percent by 2005 would have been sufficient to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, or why he believes that one international treaty, even if “binding,” would have accomplished that reduction—as though the treaty’s seamless and punctual implementation by scores of governments were simply a given. Nor is it clear why he thinks that limiting warming to 1.5C would have meant saving Earth instead of “losing” it. As we now know, even 1C (roughly our current level of warming over the average temperature of the late nineteenth century) is melting the Arctic at an accelerating rate and bringing devastating impacts around the world, suffered first and foremost by the global poor. From whose perspective, exactly, would another half degree mean “solving” climate change?

Also central to Rich’s framing, significantly, is his observation that as of the late-1980s, the fossil-fuel industry, and by extension the Republican Party, had yet to embark on its coordinated strategy of disinformation and obstruction (though he duly documents the fact that Big Oil was well aware of its business model’s climate consequences much earlier), and thus can’t be blamed for the Bush administration’s decision to torpedo negotiations for a binding global treaty in 1989. Instead, he explains, it was due to the staunch opposition of Bush chief of staff John Sununu and White House economic advisers, unwilling to risk slowing near-term economic growth for the sake of future generations. Left unsaid is that the White House opposition was of a piece with the free-market ideology that had triumphed with Reagan and has remained largely unchallenged for the past thirty years—an ideology shared and promoted by central players within the fossil-fuel lobby, most prominently the billionaire Koch brothers and their network. In other words, the climate denialism of ensuing years can’t be so easily separated from the neoliberal ideology it has always served. To treat denial and predatory delay in isolation, as some sort of aberration, the strategy of one rogue corporate lobby, is to overlook the role of our prevailing form of capitalism and its antidemocratic political system.

Rich is right that the Earth is “lost,” if one means the planetary conditions under which human civilization has existed. Indeed, any climate narrative written from this vantage point is bound to be a losers’ history. (For the winners’ version, see the annual reports and other propaganda efforts of ExxonMobil and its fellow carbon giants.) But it wasn’t “lost” at that moment in 1989, as the result of one failed treaty. Yes, a large amount of climate damage was guaranteed by the world’s failure to act decisively thirty years ago, but at every step since there has always been the opportunity to take the actions necessary to limit the damage and avoid the worst-case scenarios. The carbon lobby and its allies, who have slowed and obstructed action ever since 1989—not only in the United States but globally—must bear the bulk of responsibility for the situation we’re now in, where even the best-case scenarios are extremely grim.

Establishing this culpability, holding the carbon lobby and its co-conspirators accountable for unprecedented crimes against humanity, is no mere exercise in self-righteousness or moral purity, as cynics across the political spectrum would have us believe. (The charge of murder doesn’t depend upon the righteousness of the accuser; one can be a hypocrite—as many, perhaps all, of us are to some degree—and still be right.) The point is that moral accountability for climate catastrophe matters not just morally but politically. Rich understands this. In his new conclusion, he writes, “When popular movements have managed to transform public opinion in a brief amount of time, forcing the passage of major legislation, they have done so on the strength of a moral claim” that helps people see the human stakes.

Another writer unafraid of moral clarity about denial and obstruction is New York magazine’s David Wallace-Wells, who doesn’t balk at calling climate catastrophe genocidal. In his recently published The Uninhabitable Earth, a major contribution to the climate literature and a surprise best seller to boot, he cites research showing that at least 150 million additional lives, and quite possibly far more, could be lost in a world 2 degrees Celsius warmer (rather than 1.5 degrees) —“the equivalent of twenty-five Holocausts.” Of the fossil-fuel industry’s “disinformation-and-denial campaigns” he writes, “a generation from now, oil-backed denial will likely be seen as among the most heinous conspiracies against human health and well-being as have been perpetrated in the modern world.”

Wallace-Wells, too, sees a connection between the moral and the political, though he’s skeptical that pinning blame on industry-backed “villains” will yield much in the way of tangible results, arguing that “climate denialism has captured just one political party in one country in the world.” I’m afraid this defines “denialism” a bit too narrowly—plenty of Democrats (and a few remaining moderate Republicans) claim to accept climate science while continuing to support energy policies that make a mockery of that same science—and it says nothing about predatory delay. The carbon lobby’s reach extends far beyond the United States, deep into the heart of the UN negotiating process that gave us the farcical Paris Agreement, a codification of genocidal corporate-backed magical thinking.

It’s impossible to imagine the sort of radical economic and political transformation necessary at this late date—something like a comprehensive, global Green New Deal, putting the fossil-fuel industry out of business within the next couple of decades—without breaking the carbon lobby’s death-grip on the U.S. (and not only the U.S.) political system. Weakening that grip has been among the central goals of the American and global climate-justice movement since at least 2011 and 2012, when it launched the Keystone XL fight (galvanizing grassroots “Keep It in the Ground” resistance to fossil-fuel infrastructure projects everywhere) and the global fossil-fuel divestment campaign that has successfully undermined the industry’s credibility and business model with an explicitly moral argument.

So it’s odd that Rich essentially ignores the existence of the climate movement. Rich even calls for a popular campaign, fueled by moral outrage, to hold deniers and obstructionists accountable—as though the actually existing climate movement hasn’t already brought hundreds of thousands into the streets, organized thousands of acts of civil disobedience, inspired a new generation of young activists, and fundamentally shifted the debate around climate and the fossil-fuel industry in precisely the kind of moral terms Rich is advocating. Where does he think the Green New Deal, which he cites approvingly, came from? Contrary to popular myth, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the youth-led Sunrise Movement did not emerge fully formed from the head of a god in the fall of 2018. They emerged from the climate-justice movement that has been building for more than a decade.

But the truth, it’s increasingly clear, is that a climate movement will never be enough on its own. What the situation now requires (as I’ve recently argued) is something larger and more fundamental: a nonviolent revolutionary movement for democracy and human rights that is powerful enough to overthrow a political system owned and controlled by corporations and private wealth. Otherwise, the only histories to be read will be the so-called winners’—however short-lived their “victory” may be.

Wen Stephenson is the author of What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Climate Justice and writes now and then for The Nation. A former editor at The Atlantic and The Boston Globe, he has written about climate, politics, and culture for publications such as Slate, The New York Times Book Review, Grist, The Boston Phoenix (RIP), and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Find him on Twitter: @wenstephenson

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True Crimes | Wen Stephenson
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