E.U. proposes to spend $375 billion a year to ‘decarbonize’ economy by 2050
The European Union will spend ‚¬270 billion ($375 billion) a year to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, the European Commission said yesterday in releasing its “road map” for moving to a low-carbon economy.
The commission, which is the European Union’s executive arm, for the first time also set targets for 2030 and 2040, envisioning emission cuts of 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively. It proposed increasing its target for 2020 to 25 percent from the current 20 percent, acknowledging opposition from Eastern European countries to proposals by France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark to raise that goal to 30 percent.
It also said that, if left unchanged, current policies are projected to only be enough to reduce emissions by 30 percent in 2030 and 40 percent in 2050.
“The longer we wait, the higher the cost will be,” Connie Hedegaard, the E.U. climate commissioner, said in a statement. “As oil prices keep rising, Europe is paying more every year for its energy bill and becoming more vulnerable to price shocks. So starting the transition now will pay off.”
The road map recommends that Europe should achieve its goals largely through domestic measures, since by midcentury, international credits to offset emissions will be less widely available than today. By 2050, any credits used would increase the overall emissions reduction beyond 80 percent.
The ‚¬270 billion equals 1.5 percent of E.U. gross domestic product.
“When you say the number out loud, it sounds like a fantasy, but you have to compare it with the oil savings we would achieve,” Hedegaard said in an interview with Danish daily Berlingske. “We’ll achieve savings of between ‚¬170 billion and ‚¬320 billion [$236 billion and $445 billion] in oil imports.”
This was calculated with the oil price at $88 per barrel, while today it traded above $104. “Instead of sending money to Saudi Arabia and Libya for oil, we should invest it here at home,” she said.
The European Union said its plan would save ‚¬40 billion ($56 billion) per year in costs to fight pollution and ‚¬27 billion per year ($37 billion) in medical costs due to the cleaner air.
Small-scale farms could abate world hunger: UN
Small-scale “eco-farming” could double food production in many of the world’s poorest regions and also help fight climate change, according to a United Nations report unveiled Tuesday.
The spectre of world hunger looms ever larger as the global population continues to balloon, especially in the least developed nations.
Today more than a billion of the planet’s nearly seven billion people live at the edge of subsistence on less than a dollar per day.
Food prices have flared in recent years due to climate-related natural disasters, with the cost of several staple foods reaching unprecedented levels last month, according to the UN’s food price index.
By mid-century, when the global population is expected to surpass nine billion, food shortages will become even more critical as will the need for additional output.
But the key to boosting output in poor countries is a shift from mono-crops doused with chemical fertilisers and pesticides to more sustainable techniques that can both increase yields and repair the environment, the report said.
“We are not in a situation in which agriculture can only be about increasing production,” said lead author Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
“It must also be about limiting the impact on ecosystems … and preserving agro-biodiversity. It must be about increasing the income of the farmers.”
Conventional farming degrades soils, fuels climate change, is vulnerable to weather shocks, and relies on expensive inputs, he pointed out.
“It is simply not the best choice anymore,” he told AFP by phone.
A crude idea: Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease gas prices
As the price of oil roars above $100 per barrel and gasoline nears $4 per gallon, a cry for solutions understandably goes up. Higher gas prices amount to a regressive tax increase on the American consumer, with all that implies for the ability of the U.S. and global economies to sustain their fragile recovery. Some in Congress, citing the disruption of production in Libya, are asking President Obama to uncork theStrategic Petroleum Reserve, the government-owned emergency supply – currently 727 million barrels – that Congress established 36 years ago. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) says tapping the strategic reserve would “mitigate the runaway increase in prices [like] that we saw in the summer of 2008.”
So far the Obama administration has resisted these calls, which is very much to its credit. Oil prices remain well below 2008 levels, and, despite the troubles in Libya, global supplies are still adequate, in part because Saudi Arabia and other producers have more than enough spare capacity to make up for whatever Libya can’t supply. Historically, presidents have tapped the reserve to cope with acts of God (hurricanes Ivan and Katrina) or major wars (Operation Desert Storm in 1991). The exceptions – a 23-million-barrel sale in 1996 to help pay down the deficit, and President Bill Clinton’s election-year use of 30 million barrels in 2000 – prove the rule: It’s best to interpret the 1975 law limiting use of the reserve to “severe energy supply interruption” strictly – lest global oil speculators start trading on U.S. gas-price politics along with all the other factors that roil the markets.
With gas prices as incentive, bipartisan energy bill ‘gang’ could be revived
Key senators said Tuesday they hope rising gasoline prices will serve as the impetus to reincarnate a bipartisan “gang” of lawmakers who worked in 2008 to develop a compromise energy bill.
The lawmakers hope to revive a now-disbanded group of senators who developed an energy plan in 2008 – when gas prices were at an all-time high – that would have expanded offshore drilling and provided incentives for alternative vehicles, among other things.
The group was at first known as the “gang of 10,” but that number grew to 20 as more lawmakers joined the coalition. But the gang ultimately fell apart as Republicans, under the banner of “drill, baby, drill,” pushed for more concessions from Democrats on offshore drilling.
With gas prices at a two-year high – the average gallon of gas in the United States is $3.51 – some lawmakers want to try again. The lawmakers are mulling a range of proposals that deal both with transportation fuels and power sources.
“We have a new situation here with Libya and gas prices going up to at least look at some type of ‘American Energy Standard’ to encourage more renewables, nuclear, clean coal, everything,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who was a member of the gang in 2008. “The only way we are going to do it is if we start in the Senate with a bipartisan group.”
Klobuchar said she has reached out to Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), two of the founding members of the group, about whether they would like to hold talks on a bipartisan energy bill. Klobuchar has also reached out to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.).
Impax, Hudson Clean Energy Join Investors Suing Spain on Solar Subsidy Cut
Impax Asset Management Group Plc (IPX), Hudson Clean Energy Partners and HGCapital are among at least 15 international investors suing the Spanish government over retroactive cuts to the country’s solar power subsidies.
The companies have invested more than 4 billion euros ($5.6 billion) in Spanish solar photovoltaic projects and are seeking reparations under the Energy Charter Treaty, the law firmAllen & Overy that’s representing the fund managers said today in an e-mailed statement. They didn’t specify how much damages they’re seeking. Two calls to Spain‘s industry ministry today weren’t answered.
The government on Dec. 23 issued a decree that cut subsidies for existing solar power plants, which industry executives and investors say should have been guaranteed for 25 years under a 2007 law. Today’s suit follows the Jan. 12 announcement by the Photovoltaic Business Association lobbying group that it would challenge the cuts in the Supreme Court.
“The changes that Spain has made to the PV sector will cause substantial harm to these investors,” Stephen Jagusch, international arbitration partner at Allen & Overy, said in the statement. “Spain’s actions appear clearly inconsistent with the investor protections afforded by the Energy Charter Treaty, which is why we and the investors believe there is very strong case for compensation.”
EPA tells Oklahoma utilities to clean coal plants
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants OG&E Corp and American Electric Power Co Inc (AEP) to reduce air pollution at three coal-fired power plants in Oklahoma or convert the facilities to natural gas.
The EPA acted because the state’s plan did not adequately reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions enough to meet the regional haze requirements under the Clean Air Act.
AEP spokesman Stan Whiteford said, “We’re disappointed the federal EPA did not go along with the state implementation plan, which was carefully designed to provide flexibility to develop reasonable and cost effective approaches that meet the objectives of the environmental rules.”
Whiteford said AEP has had lots of experience installing scrubbers at its eastern coal plants and estimated it could cost $700 million and take about five years to design, engineer, permit and install new SO2 scrubbers on the two units at its Northeastern plant.
The EPA however only gave the utilities three years to add the scrubbers, switch to natural gas or use a combination of these approaches.
The EPA wants OG&E Corp to clean up the 477-megawatt Unit 4 the 517-MW and 5 at the Muskogee plant and the 522-MW Unit 1 and 524-MW Unit 2 at the Sooner plant. American Electric Power Co Inc is to clean up the 460-MW Units 3 and 4 at its Northeastern plant.
The units provide enough low cost, baseload power for more than 2.3 million homes.
AEP’s Whiteford could not say whether AEP would install the scrubbers. He said AEP’s next move was to look at the EPA proposal and prepare for the public meeting on April 13 in Oklahoma City.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
we cannot survive *either* with large conventional farms, OR small scale plots.
The ONLY solution is to reverse population growth, especially in the poorest and fastest growing areas, like how China has. True, people say it is a terrible human rights violation, but wait a few more years and because of it China will have far, far fewer starvation deaths than elsewhere– we’ll see which is in fact the worse human rights violation.
Humans can’t just ignore mathematics of exponential functions and expect to continue to be all fed and happy. If individuals don’t do this, the governments must press it, but honestly, most places would seriously cut their birthrates if we just *allowed* them to without even using force.
It’s absolutely unconscionable that contraceptive aid isn’t seen as just as vital, if not more so, than food aid.
HEAVY rain will continue to pound cyclone-hit north Queensland in the next 24 hours as Cardwell remains marooned and Innisfail prepares for possible flash floods.
Falls of up to half a metre have been recorded in parts of the region over the past 36 hours and townships from Townsville to Cairns remain cut off as a monsoonal trough hovers over Innisfail dumping an average 150mm a day.
The tiny seaside community was cut-off after recording an incredible 441mm of rain since Saturday.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/weather/torrential-rain-floods-cardwell-threatens-innisfail-in-queenslands-far-north/story-e6frep3x-1226018666643
Shock as floods kill off reef
THE CONDITION of the coral reef at Point Vernon has shocked the Hervey Bay Bleachwatch group that monitors the health of the coral.
The group recently surveyed the coral and saw that silt and nutrients deposited after January’s flooding of the Mary River had caused significant damage to the fringing coral reef on the eastern shores of Point Vernon.
http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/story/2011/03/10/shock-as-floods-kill-off-coral-reef-point-vernon/
Welcome to the Extreme Ice Survey
http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/
Associated Press – March 9, 2011 12:54 PM ET
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A heavy storm system dumped five to seven inches of rain in areas of Mississippi, leaving officials concerned about flash flooding.
http://www.wxvt.com/Global/story.asp?S=14218063
The Fraser River is heating up because of climate change and an increasing number of salmon are dying in the warmer water from diseases or parasites or are simply dropping dead from cardiac collapse, a federal judicial inquiry has been told.
Scott Hinch, an expert witness on aquatic ecology, told the Commission of Inquiry Into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River that sometimes 50 per cent of the salmon that return to the river die before they reach the spawning beds.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/rising-temperature-in-fraser-river-affecting-salmon-population/article1934591/
Loss Of Plant Diversity Threatens Earth’s Life-Support Systems
Study co-author Jarrett Byrnes, of the National Center for Ecological Analyses and Synthesis, says “Species extinction is happening now, and it’s happening quickly. And unfortunately, our resources are limited. This means we’re going to have to prioritize our conservation efforts, and to do that, scientists have to start providing concrete answers about the numbers and types of species that are needed to sustain human life. If we don’t produce these estimates quickly, then we risk crossing a threshold that we can’t come back from.”
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Loss_Of_Plant_Diversity_Threatens_Earth_Life_Support_Systems_999.html
WASHINGTON — Global warming isn’t directly to blame for last summer’s deadly — and extraordinary — heat wave in Russia, researchers said in a report Wednesday that came with a climate warning.
“We may be on the cusp of a period in which the probability of such events increases rapidly, due primarily to the influence of projected increases in greenhouse gas concentrations,” said the team led by Randall Dole and Martin Hoerling of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/09/6228259-climate-researchers-russian-heat-wave-was-natural
Fraser River Salmon are dying because of warmer river water. Reports Colorado Bob at 6. Logging and development are no doubt contributing to that warming. However, one only needs to look at the devastation caused by the pine bark beetle thru out the interior of British Columbia, the head waters of the Fraser River and its tributaries, to grasp that we are just seeing the tip of the ice burg. There is a whole lot more river warming in store because such a large area of sheltering forest are going and gone. I fear that one of the largest salmon producing rivers on the NW coast will very soon be lost and there will be no mitigation possible.
Four consecutive years of no runs and that whole ecosystem will be lost. Bears, eagles, and more. Of course First Nations that depend on salmon will like wise be severely impacted. Very sad…
“The European Union will spend €270 billion ($375 billion) a year to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels”
They should plan on total elimination of the corrupt concept of fossil fuels and atomic fission. Several studies, such as that commissioned by Denmark, show that it is perfectly possible to have a fossil fuel and atomic fission free healthy economy at almost no total societal economic cost (no later than 2050). This is due to abundant opportunities and the concept of sustainable energy policy planning.
Conversely, our present so-called energy system, based on the poisonous and explosive materials of petrochemicals and uranium enrichment, will incur multiple costs which are unsustainable. In other words, we should stop cooking the planet by cooking the books, that is, from bad economics.
Melting Ice Sheets Now Largest Contributor to Sea Level Rise
ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011) — The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study — the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass — suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.
“What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110308150228.htm
[JR: Post on this tomorrow.]
@8: But not so for the European heatwave o 2003
Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003
“…we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7017/full/nature03089.html
EU! EU! EU! EU! EU! …
[JR: Post on this tomorrow.]
And this record Phenomenon …
A record-high ocean bottom pressure in the South Pacific observed by GRACE
(GRACE) satellite pair observed a record increase in ocean bottom pressure (OBP) over a large mid-latitude region of the South East Pacific. Its magnitude is substantially larger than other oceanic events in the Southern Hemisphere found in the entire GRACE data records (2003–2010) on multi-month time scales. The OBP data help to understand the nature of a similar signal in sea surface height (SSH) anomaly observed by altimetry: the SSH increase is mainly due to mass convergence. Analysis of the barotropic vorticity equation using scatterometer data, atmospheric reanalysis product, and GRACE and altimeter an atmospheric reanalysis product observations suggests that the observed OBP/SSH signal was primarily caused by wind stress curl associated with a strong and persistent anticyclone in late 2009 in combination with effects of planetary vorticity gradient, bottom topography, and friction.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL046013.shtml
This significantly adds up to SLR.
The rain machine is up and running now, and it’s spring time appearance in North America yesterday saw a large area of 5 to 7 inch rainfall across Al., and Miss.
New: 167 + Tied: 5 = Total: 172
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records.php?ts=daily&elem=prcp&month=3&day=9&year=2011&sts=US&submitted=Get+Records#recs
Re commment #1:
I don’t see reversing population growth as the “ONLY” solution. Reversing population growth has benefits and is an essential long term goal due to resource limitations but such a measure has limited outcomes. The US, with 5% of the global population consumes ~ 25% of global fossil fuel supply (~25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas). I won’t go in to figures on water, food, forests and what not as the information is readliy available online, but it paints a similar picture. Drastic reduction in consumption is needed no matter what we manage to achieve with population.
Anybody who thinks business as usual is going to save or create jobs has rocks in their head. They are contradicted by the latest employment figures from Oz where 22,000 jobs have been lost in Queensland, traced back mainly to the floods and TC Yasi. And the down pours just keep coming. [ABC radio]
Disasters aren’t good for the economy. Wow, who would have thought it!
But given the way our dominant economic systems work, I am sure that this produces a positive somewhere, mores the pity.
More seriously, isn’t this the time to work on an ‘misery’ or ‘disaster’ index that can be turned into a ratio with the ‘happiness’ index, the GDP, or just the normal monthly statistics. We know that you don’t get high productivity out of ‘unhappy’, not to mention shell shocked, devastated people.
If we could compile such an index, we could publish it every week or month showing that we are rapidly approaching the crisis point. Lets make it the focus of the news. e.g. “the misery index rose 2 points today after news of the floods in X. Experts expect…”
This bypasses the ‘debate’ about CC and gets to outcomes which is what really matters. Quite frankly, even giving time to the deniers or the ignorant or refuting them is a waste of time. A totally different strategy is required. What do you reckon? ME
Merrelyn: In short you appear to be saying factor true costs in to economic models and analysis. I don’t think a seperate index or system is required here, the current system is more than capable of accomplishing this task. That the costs still need to be factored in is the problem. Thoughtful comment – I’m glad you posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/science/earth/10coffee.html?_r=1&hp
Coffee harvest in Columbia suffers from global warming.