Around The Web
Aerial footage of the split in the Larsen C ice shelf
Footage taken at the beginning of the year shows the split in an Antarctic ice shelf. A giant section is hanging by a thread and is due to break off at any moment
Continue reading...Need climate hope? Imagine the promise of green left-wing victories in Canada | Martin Lukacs
A NDP-Green coalition in BC, a $15 minimum wage in Ontario, and a surging Quebec Solidaire point toward a winning agenda in the age of climate crisis
For progressive-minded people in Canada, the last few days have presented a rare, strange scenario: almost too much to celebrate.
Months might pass without victories, but this week has given us three. In British Columbia, a coalition struck by the Greens and New Democratic Party is set to replace a Liberal government that has mismanaged the province for a generation. In Quebec, the election of a young ex-student leader has galvanized the Quebec Solidaire party and begun a left-ward shift in popular opinion. And in Ontario, a grassroots campaign has won a $15 minimum wage that will vastly improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of families.
Continue reading...Coral reefs, lead levels and US quits Paris accord – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A Sumatran tiger cub, giant panda and a ‘faceless’ deep-sea fish are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Faces recreated from monkey brain signals
Paris climate deal: Dismay as Trump signals exit from accord
Corbyn accuses May of subservience to Trump over Paris climate deal
Labour leader says PM should have condemned decision to pull US out of climate agreement in stronger terms
Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of a “dereliction of duty to our country and our planet” for failing to give a stronger condemnation of Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate change agreement.
The Labour leader said the prime minister was showing herself to be subservient to the US president and claimed he would take a very different approach to relations with Washington.
Continue reading...World reacts to Trump's decision to reject Paris climate accord – in pictures
Politicians, governments and newspapers across the world react with dismay and frustration over US president’s decision to pull the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases out of the agreement
Continue reading...Paris agreement: Europe and China vow to keep fighting global warming
Beijing and Brussels join leaders around world in show of solidarity after Trump’s announces US pullout from climate accord
European and Chinese leaders have pledged to continue in combatting global warming as widespread condemnation met Donald Trump’s announcement he was pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord.
The US president “can’t and won’t stop all those of us who feel obliged to protect the planet.” She said the move was “extremely regrettable and that’s putting it very mildly”, said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor
Continue reading...Reflections on the politics of climate change | John Abraham
Ideology and tribalism blind many people to the consequences of their climate denial and obstructionism
The science of climate change is clear. Scientists know that the Earth is warming and that humans are the reason. We also know that the Earth will continue to warm in the future; however, we can do something about it. We can dramatically change the trajectory.
If the science is so clear, why are there still so many people that don’t accept it? Why are there so many people who try to deny the evidence? Well, the why is something I will try handling in my next post. Here, I want to describe where things are, as I see them. Mind you, this is only my perspective, living in the USA, working on climate science and climate communication on a daily basis.
Continue reading...Abandoning Paris climate deal marks Trump's return to angry populism
In Trump’s darkest speech since the ‘American carnage’ inaugural address, the world was presented as something to fear rather than aspire to lead
Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris climate change treaty is the most emphatic answer to date the question the rest of the world has been asking since January: What does “America First” mean?
“I am elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the president declared in the Rose Garden, after a jazz group had entertained the invited audience.
Continue reading...Friday panel: Craig Kelly and Anne Aly
City halls and landmarks turn green in support of Paris climate deal
Local government buildings in New York, Boston, Washington DC, Montreal and Paris lit up after US withdrawal from accord
Landmarks in cities across the world have been lit up green in support of the Paris climate accord after Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the US would withdraw from the agreement.
In New York, the spire of the One World Trade Centre was illuminated. The New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, tweeted:
Continue reading...China's ivory ban sparks dramatic drop in prices across Asia
Prices of raw ivory in Vietnam have fallen, which traders are linking to China’s announcement of its domestic ivory ban, according to new research
The price of raw ivory in Asia has fallen dramatically since the Chinese government announced plans to ban its domestic legal ivory trade, according to new research seen by the Guardian. Poaching, however, is not dropping in parallel.
Undercover investigators from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) have been visiting traders in Hanoi over the last three years. In 2015 they were being offered raw ivory for an average of US$1322/kg in 2015, but by October 2016 that price had dropped to $750/kg, and by February this year prices were as much as 50% lower overall, at $660/kg.
Continue reading...‘Kill them, kill them, kill them’: the volunteer army plotting to wipe out Britain’s grey squirrels
The red squirrel is under threat of extinction across Britain. Their supporters believe the only way to save them is to exterminate their enemy: the greys. But are they just prejudiced against non-native species? By Patrick Barkham
One snowy dawn in March, I went hunting for squirrels in the Lake District. In the silent and empty woods beneath the Aira Force waterfall, the only thing moving was a solitary red squirrel, balanced on a nut-filled feeder hanging from a tree. If you grew up, as I did, with the grey squirrel, seeing a red squirrel is a shock. We’re used to the grey – a sleek, North American import, swaggering across parks, raiding bird tables, all fat haunches and bulbous black eyes. In contrast, the red squirrel, although native to Britain, looks exotic: so dainty and alertly pretty, with fine tufts of hair above its ears as extravagant as the eyebrows of Denis Healey. Here, in the snow, this forest sprite quivered with improbable, balletic grace and then – clang – slipped on the icy lid of the feeder and fell to the ground. It landed on its feet.
Julie Bailey, a former gymnast with a cascade of red hair, had picked me up from the nearby town of Penrith and driven her black 4x4 along slushy roads to admire this natural acrobat. At Aira Force, she stepped out of the car and, leaning on a stick, walked carefully across the snow. She and her husband, Phil, used to enjoy watching red squirrels at their feeders in the garden; these animals were still a common sight across northern Cumbria a decade or so ago. Bailey worked in pharmaceuticals and coached boys in gymnastics, including her son. But in 2005, she broke her back. She couldn’t walk for four years. Seventeen spinal operations later, she only walks thanks to a spinal cord stimulator, powered by a battery in her stomach. When it malfunctions, she collapses. She doesn’t make a fuss, but she is in pain 24 hours a day and is intolerant to painkillers. “Because I was stuck at home,” she said, “I started taking more notice of my squirrels. They really gave me a purpose.”
Continue reading...CSIRO report doctored to pretend gas cheaper than wind and solar
Highland ponies in their element
Inverlael, Highlands The bog is dirt-black and soupy, threatening to mire us at every step. All we can do is give the horses free rein to seek a safe route
At the weir at Glenbeg, we abandon the path and head west, using the river as a guide. The bog is dirt-black and soupy, threatening to mire us at every step; all we can do is give the horses free rein to seek a safe route through the morass. They lower their heads, ears pricked as they inspect the ground, and veer off along sheep-trodden detours, leaping sloughs and streamlets. Highland ponies in their element.
Where the river branches, we follow the tributary high onto a plateau to the east of Eididh nan Clach Geala, a Munro whose Gaelic name suggests it to be “clothed” in white rock: gleaming, boulders of quartz that glimmer, unnervingly clean and sharp as bared teeth. On a good day, one can see the Summer Isles or the stark lines of Assynt, where lone mountains rear up from the flats. But, today, low clouds have closed around us, brushing past damply, and the steady, relentless rain hasn’t faltered since we woke.
Continue reading...We should be excited about Endeavour Energy’s shift to local networks
Trump’s argument for quitting Paris deal contains multi-trillion dollar math error
15th-century Chinese sailors have a lesson for Trump about climate policy
Disruptive technology, Ming Dynasty-style. Vmenkov/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SAIn the early 15th century the Ming Dynasty in China undertook a series of expensive oceangoing expeditions called the Treasure Voyages. Despite the voyages’ success, elements of the elite opposed them. “These voyages are bad, very bad,” we can imagine them tweeting. “They are a bad deal for China.” Eventually these inward-looking, isolationist leaders gained enough power to prevent future voyages.
But this was an own goal. The parochial elites who killed off the Treasure Voyages could stop Chinese maritime innovation, but they could do nothing to prevent it elsewhere. Decades later, European sailors mastered the art of sailing vast distances across the ocean, and created fortunes and empires on the back of that technology (for better or worse). It is hard to see how China’s strategic interests were served by abandoning a field in which they led.
There are some striking parallels in the Trump administration’s decision to renege on the Paris climate agreement. It has been cast as a move to protect America, but in the long run it won’t derail the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and instead the US will find itself lagging, not leading.
Trump’s repudiation of the Paris deal is regrettable for at least three reasons. First, because the US is a technological leader whose entrepreneurs are extremely well placed to lead the global low-carbon transition; second, because America’s abdication of climate leadership weakens the global order and sends a wink and a nod to other fossil-fuelled recalcitrants like Saudi Arabia and Russia; and finally because having the world’s second-highest emitter outside the agreement is a clear negative.
That said, US flip-flopping on climate is nothing new. The nation played a strong role in shaping the Kyoto Protocol, only to fail to ratify it. And while that did not help matters, it did not derail international efforts to combat climate change. In fact, the momentum behind climate-friendly initiatives has grown several-fold since the early 2000s.
Viewed in the long run, the latest US defection changes little. Any conceivable future Democrat administration will rejoin the Paris Agreement. But more importantly, the transition to a low-carbon future is not dependent on the actions of a single player.
The criteria for successful climate change policy are hard to achieve but easy to describe: success will come when non-emitting technologies economically outcompete fossil fuels, pretty much everywhere in the world, in the main half-dozen or so sectors that matter.
Beating the ‘free-rider’ issueA stable climate is what we call a “public good”, similar to fresh air or clean water. The US political scientist Scott Barrett has pointed out that climate change is an “aggregate efforts public good”, in the sense that everybody has to chip in to solve the problem of safeguarding the climate for everyone.
“Aggregate efforts” public goods are especially hard to preserve, because there is a strong incentive to free-ride on the efforts of others, as the US now seeks to do.
But technology can transform this situation, turning an aggregate efforts public good into a “best-shot public good”. This is a situation in which one player playing well can determine the whole outcome, and as such is a much easier problem to solve.
We have seen technology play this role before, in other global environmental issues. The ozone hole looked like a hard problem, but became an easy one once an inexpensive, effective technological fix became available in the form of other gases to use in place of ozone-harming CFCs (ironically, however, the solution exacerbated global warming).
Something similar happened with acid rain, caused by a handful of industrial pollutants. Dealing with carbon dioxide emissions is harder in view of the number of sources, but breakthroughs in five or six sectors could make a massive dent in emissions.
Technology trumps politicsThis suggests that solving climate change relies far more heavily on technological innovation and successful entrepreneurship than it does on any single government. Policies in specific jurisdictions can speed climate policy up or slow it down, but as long as no single government can kill the spirit of entrepreneurship, then no country’s actions can alter the long-run outcome.
This is why German climatologist John Schellnhuber is right to say that “if the US really chooses to leave the Paris agreement, the world will move on with building a clean and secure future”.
The low-carbon race is still on, and the main effect of Trump’s decision is to put US innovators at a disadvantage relative to their international competitors.
We have seen these technological races before, and we have seen what recalcitrance and isolationism can do. Just ask the Ming Dynasty, who ceded their maritime leadership and in doing so let Europe reap the spoils of colonialism for half a millennium.
Similarly, the Trump administration can ignore basic physics if it likes, although this is electorally unsustainable – young Americans can see that it is in their own interest to support climate policy. Democracies are imperfect, but over time they have the ability to self-correct.
Developing polices that regulate the release of environmentally damaging gases is important. Pricing carbon is important. But government policy is not everything. Ultimately, this problem will be solved mainly by technology, because the way out of the jam is by finding new, inexpensive ways for humans to flourish without harming the planet.
Dave Frame does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Pages
