This is actually an extremely urgent matter!!!!!

From an Article by Ted Halstead — Climate Leadership Council, New York Times, January 10, 2020

There is a real danger that the climate debate is deteriorating into a game of name-calling, with oil and gas companies all too often portrayed as opponents of climate progress. But polarizing the debate in this fashion will not get us any closer to solving the problem. We can achieve far greater and faster emissions reductions if environmentalists and energy companies work together.

Most oil and gas companies recognize the threat of climate change and want to be part of the solution. As a sign of their seriousness, five of the largest — BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total — have joined a broad coalition, convened by the Climate Leadership Council, which I run, in backing a concrete plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the United States by half by 2035. These oil and gas companies are not only lending their names to this environmentally ambitious solution; they are putting their money and lobbying muscle behind it.

This marks a turning point for American climate policy and the politics surrounding the issue, because the energy majors are an indispensable part of any successful clean-energy transition. It is important to understand why the industry’s technological, economic and political support is so essential in achieving climate progress.

For starters, oil and gas companies have the scale, research and development budgets, expertise and infrastructures needed to expand low-carbon energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels and hydro, and to pioneer new technological breakthroughs. Their research and development budgets are many times larger than those of companies focusing only on renewables, and their venture capital divisions help finance many of the nation’s clean tech start-ups.

For example, 13 of the largest oil and gas companies have joined forces to launch the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative, which has committed $1 billion to an investment fund to finance the development of technologies to reduce their emissions. Several of the companies in this group have invested considerably more on their own in a range of clean tech ventures.

Active participation from the energy majors is also essential in ensuring a smooth transition to a low-carbon future that avoids major supply disruptions or price spikes. The majors cannot — and should not — abandon their core oil and gas business overnight, when nearly 60 percent of current world energy use comes from oil and gas. Nothing would be more harmful in the drive to reduce emissions — or create a faster public backlash — than blackouts, gas station lines or price spikes in electricity and transportation fuels. The public wants a green future, but not one that disrupts their lives or puts their economic well-being at risk.

Oil and gas companies cannot move faster than technology, the market and public policy permit. Markets are driven as much by demand as by supply, and it is not as if the industry’s products are sitting on the shelves. In fact, global energy demand is still increasing, up 2.3 percent in 2018.

Most importantly, producers and consumers can only do so much in the absence of supportive government policy. Energy majors need stable public policies and predictable pricing signals to accelerate long-term investments in low-carbon products and technologies. That is why a number of executives in the industry have advocated for carbon pricing, some for more than a decade.

Last year, the C.E.O.s of 10 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies issued a joint statement — following a meeting organized by the Vatican — calling for meaningful carbon pricing. The five companies mentioned above, as founding members of the Climate Leadership Council, have worked with us over the last two years to refine the details of our bipartisan carbon pricing plan.

This coalition includes corporate sector leaders from a wide range of industries, top environmental organizations and opinion leaders from across the political spectrum. The framework of the council’s plan for carbon dividends is also supported by a large and prominent group of economists. To date, more than 3,500 economists have signed a statement endorsing the outlines of our proposal, including 27 Nobel laureates in economics.

The council’s bipartisan carbon dividends plan calls for a national carbon fee starting at $40 per ton and increasing at 5 percent per year above inflation. This would establish the highest carbon price of any major emitting country. If enacted by Congress and signed by the president in 2021, it would enable the United States to exceed its 2025 commitment under the Paris Climate Agreement by a wide margin.

The plan’s environmental ambition is matched by equally strong pro-consumer, pro-business and pro-competitiveness provisions.

Specifically, its other pillars include returning all the revenue directly to the American people (a family of four would receive about $2,000 a year), adjustments for carbon-intensive imports and exports to level the economic playing field, and regulatory simplification. By the latter, we mean that in the majority of cases where a carbon fee offers a more cost-effective solution, the fee would replace regulations. For example, all current and future federal stationary source carbon regulations would be displaced or pre-empted.

The corporate financial backers of an advocacy campaign to promote this plan range from oil, gas and nuclear interests to solar, wind and geothermal businesses to prominent auto and tech companies. If such a diverse group can agree on a breakthrough solution, political leaders on both sides of the aisle should be able to as well.

Movements for positive change often fail not just because of the resistance of entrenched interests but also because of divisions within the movement itself. It is time to overcome unnecessary divisions and work together in promoting an ambitious and politically viable climate solution.

>>> Ted Halstead is chairman and C.E.O. of the Climate Leadership Council and C.E.O. of Americans for Carbon Dividends, the lobbying arm of C.L.C.

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And the outdoor fire season is just beginning in Australia!!!!!

SPECIAL REPORT of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, October 8, 2018

CURWOOD: Steve Curwood, the host of LOE on Public Radio International (PRI)

At the beginning of December UN negotiators will move to advance the Paris Climate Agreement in a meeting that was hastily shifted to Madrid, Spain in the face of civil unrest in its originally planned site, Santiago, Chile. Earlier this month President Trump officially set in motion the withdrawal of the United States from the accord, though it won’t take effect until the day after the 2020 US presidential elections. And though every other nation is still in the Paris agreement, less than a handful have made pledges that would have a chance of keeping the planet from catastrophically overheating. Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, is here to explain. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Alden!

MEYER: Good to be with you again, Steve.

CURWOOD: In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Its dire warnings drew the world’s attention.

Alden, I keep hearing that the Paris process is far behind what’s needed. What exactly are the numbers at this point, what have nations committed to and what’s the gap for what many would say is necessary?

MEYER: Well, basically, you’ll recall that leaders set a goal of keeping the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels well below two degrees Celsius, that’s 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit for those keeping score at home, and trying to get as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. Analyses vary a little bit, but they tend to say that we’re on track for around three degrees Celsius or more. That may not seem like a huge difference, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last year on 1.5 degrees show that there’s a huge difference even between 1.5 and two degrees Celsius. Every 10th of a degree matters.

And to get on track to stay below two degrees analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme and others show that we would need to basically triple the level of ambition of commitments that countries have made under Paris. To have a chance of getting anywhere close to limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, we would need to quintuple, in other words increase by five fold, the level of ambition in Paris. So what’s needed here is not incremental changes around the margins. It’s really a wholesale transformation, getting on the path to cutting emissions nearly in half by 2030 globally, and to net zero emissions no later than 2050. It basically involves remaking almost every sector of the modern economy.

CURWOOD: And, of course, the process, the UN negotiation process continues; the Conference of the Parties, the UN umbrella for the Paris accord, on December 2, the annual meeting of that starts in Madrid, what needs to be done at that session?

MEYER: Well, there’s a few issues on the formal negotiating table that have to be resolved. The one unfinished piece of business from the last climate summit in Poland last fall was completing the part of the Paris Agreement calling for collaborative approaches to emission reductions: emissions trading, cooperation between developed and developing countries. It’s the so-called Article Six of the Paris Agreement. It’s both a very political issue and very technical, and you put those two factors together, it makes it difficult for countries to resolve their differences.

The other major issue on the table is what’s known as loss and damage, which is the unavoidable impacts now of climate change on vulnerable countries around the world. After they’ve done everything they can to reduce their emissions, everything they can to build in resilience measures to their economy, there are still going to be sudden impacts such as typhoons and hurricanes and floods and what’s called slow-onset impacts such as sea level rise, desertification, drought, etc. They need help dealing with that. And the deal in Paris was to set up a program to help countries cope with those now unavoidable impacts. The missing piece so far has been any substantially ramped up finance and capacity-building support for those countries, that will be the issue debated in Madrid, whether there should be an effort to look at innovative sources of finance above and beyond the famous $100 billion pledge the developed countries made a decade ago in Copenhagen for developing country action.

Those are the two big negotiating issues. There’s some other ones on the table. But looming over it all is this gap that we talked about earlier between the commitments that countries have made under Paris to constrain their emissions, and what’s needed to meet the science-based temperature limitation targets. And that will be permeating the conversation; there will be a number of high level ministerial meetings, not just the usual environment ministers that come together at these things, but the Chileans are also convening meetings of science ministers, energy ministers, finance ministers, agriculture ministers, because this is going to take everyone in every sector of the economy pulling together. And they want to stimulate a race to the top and in terms of increasing ambition.

So that’ll be the sort of subtext of this meeting. And all of this is laying the groundwork for the climate summit next November, just after the US elections that the United Kingdom will be hosting in Glasgow, Scotland, which is the real deadline under Paris for countries to say, Is this your final answer? What you put forward five years ago in Paris and in terms of your level of ambition, or can you do more? That’s the real political deadline for countries to decide what to do on the ambition front. So in a sense, this COP in Madrid will just be sort of setting the table for that much deeper, more intense conversation over the course of 2020.

CURWOOD: So to what extent is the upcoming meeting providing a reality check to the world about the amount of money that is going to be required to make the kind of transformations that will, you know, keep the planet from becoming relatively uninhabitable?

MEYER: Well, that’s definitely part of the conversation. And as you know, huge sums of money are involved here, not only the public sector money, such as the hundred billion dollar commitment that was made, starting in 2020 per year from developed to developing countries, but the much larger trillions of dollars of investment per year that are being made in the private sector.

And there’s a whole movement called Shifting the Trillions, which says we have to redirect the money that’s now going into fossil fuel investments and coal and oil and natural gas infrastructure around the world, redirect that into efficiency, into renewable energy, into nature-based solutions like agriculture and wetlands and forest solutions if we’re going to have any hope of getting ahead of this curve.

The good news, of course, is that it’s much less costly to do that, than to sit by idly and watch climate impacts mount. I think it’s coming home to people that the cost of climate inaction is really the threat to well-being and global prosperity, not the cost of climate action.

CURWOOD: And remind us, Alden, of the We’re Still In movement in the United States that the governors, leaders of cities, and a number of companies have come together to come to the international meeting to say that, despite the reluctance of the White House to engage, that there are many other jurisdictions in the US that are.

MEYER: Well, this is a movement that was launched in the wake of the elections in 2016, actually had its origins in the Marrakech Climate Summit, which took place during the US elections. And as you said, a number of governors, mayors, business leaders, university presidents, investment leaders and others have come together to say to the world that President Trump does not equal America when it comes to climate change. That there are substantial elements of the US political system, US economy, that are committed to Paris, committed to do our share of reducing emissions.

With the election of a number of new governors last November, there are now, I believe, 25 or 26 states in the US climate Alliance, which is the state-based component of We Are Still In. And collectively the states and cities that are in the We Are Still In movement represent about two thirds of the American economy and the American population. So this is a big coalition of folks; they will have a presence in Madrid, there will be a US Climate Action Center, which will feature side events and press briefings, and exhibitions and talks by these leaders from around the United States, trying to show the rest of the world that despite what President Trump is doing, formally starting the withdrawal process from Paris, that most Americans and most sub-national leaders remain committed.

And of course they have the public behind their back, because all the public opinion polling shows a very substantial majority, not just of all Americans, but of Republicans as well support the US staying in Paris, support us being a leader on climate. So in a sense, they’re just trying to demonstrate that President Trump is an aberration.

CURWOOD: Alden Meyer is Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thanks so much, Alden.

MEYER: I enjoyed being with you, Steve.

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U. S. Forest Service: Trees are the answer

From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, May 3, 2019

The U.S. House of Representatives approved its first major climate change legislation in a decade on Thursday, Reuters reported. The Climate Action Now Act would require President Donald Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris agreement, mandating that he outlines steps to reduce greenhouse emissions and prohibiting him from using federal funds to withdraw from the agreement.

The bill passed 231 to 190, with three Republicans crossing the aisle to approve it with the Democrats. It is unlikely to pass the Senate, but the Democrats see it as a way to stake out a climate position ahead of the 2020 election and to signal to the international community that a future Democratic president would stay in the agreement, The Washington Post reported.

“Passing this bill is an important signal to our allies, and my expectation is that when we act, we’ll see increased ambition from them, too,” Democratic Florida Representative Kathy Castor, who sponsored the legislation and chairs the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, told the press before the vote, as The Washington Post reported.

While Trump promised to withdraw from the Paris accord in June 2017, he cannot legally do so until November 2020. “That’s an interesting date, isn’t it?” Castor said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the bill would “go nowhere” in the Senate and called it a “futile gesture to handcuff the U.S. economy,” The New York Times reported.

The Obama administration had promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025; China promised to slow its emissions growth and reach peak carbon in 2030, and India said it would reduce the carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product while still allowing overall emissions to rise.

“Environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive,” Florida Republican Representative Vern Buchanan, one of three Republicans who voted for the act, said, as The Washington Post reported.

Some green groups applauded Thursday’s vote. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune called the bill “an important opportunity for every member of Congress to affirm on the record that the U.S. must be a leader in addressing the climate crisis.” Others argued that it did not go far enough.

“The latest science is clear: In order to adequately address deepening climate chaos, we must transition completely to clean, renewable energy generation in little more than a decade,” Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said ahead of the vote. “The terms of the Paris accord aren’t low-hanging fruit, they’re fruit that has fallen to the ground and begun to rot.”

Scientists have said that if all the world’s countries met their pledges under the Paris agreement, it would not be enough to prevent a dangerous rise in temperature.

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has championed a more ambitious Green New Deal that would transition the U.S. to net zero emissions within 10 years, said Thursday’s act needed to be the precursor to more legislation. “The idea that we can just reintroduce 2009 policies is not reflective of action that is necessary for now in the world of today,” she said.

Actually, 2009 was the last year that the House passed major climate change legislation, according to The New York Times. That bill would have put a cap on U.S. emissions and let businesses and utilities trade permits to emit, but it failed to advance in the Senate.

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See also: These Scientists Are Radically Changing How They Live To Cope With Climate Change, Zahra Hirji, BuzzFeed News Reporter, April 23, 2019

When the US government is doing nothing to stop climate change, do your personal choices even matter? Here’s how climate scientists are — and aren’t — changing their lives.

A Global Deal For Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets

Authors are E. Dinerstein1,*, C. Vynne1, E. Sala2, A. R. Joshi3, S. Fernando1, T. E. Lovejoy4, J. Mayorga2,5, D. Olson6, G. P. Asner7, J. E. M. Baillie2, N. D. Burgess8, K. Burkart9, R. F. Noss10, Y. P. Zhang11, A. Baccini12, T. Birch13, N. Hahn1,14, L. N. Joppa15 and E. Wikramanayake16

* – 1RESOLVE, Washington, DC, USA, 2National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, USA, 3University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 4George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA, 5University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 6Zoological Society of London, London, UK, 7Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, 8UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK, 9Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 10Florida Institute for Conservation Science, Chuluota, FL, USA, 11State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China, 12Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, MA, USA, 13Google, Mountain View, CA, USA, 14Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA, 15Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA, 16Environmental Foundation Ltd., Colombo, Sri Lanka

SOURCE: Science Advances, April 19, 2019: Vol. 5, no. 4, eaaw2869, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2869

ABSTRACT for The Global Deal for Nature

The Global Deal for Nature (GDN) is a time-bound, science-driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth. Pairing the GDN and the Paris Climate Agreement would avoid catastrophic climate change, conserve species, and secure essential ecosystem services. New findings give urgency to this union: Less than half of the terrestrial realm is intact, yet conserving all native ecosystems—coupled with energy transition measures—will be required to remain below a 1.5°C rise in average global temperature.

The GDN targets 30% of Earth to be formally protected and an additional 20% designated as climate stabilization areas, by 2030, to stay below 1.5°C. We highlight the 67% of terrestrial ecoregions that can meet 30% protection, thereby reducing extinction threats and carbon emissions from natural reservoirs. Freshwater and marine targets included here extend the GDN to all realms and provide a pathway to ensuring a more livable biosphere.

INTRODUCTION to The Global Deal for Nature

Nature conservation efforts, like climate change policies, are being reassessed in the midst of a planetary emergency. Climate concerns rightly prompted the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has facilitated coordinated global action not only among governments but also among companies, cities, and citizens. Research since then suggests that efforts to stabilize the climate and avoid the undesirable outcomes of >1.5°C warming will require a rapid reduction in land conversion and a moratorium by about 2035.

The most logical path to avoid the approaching crisis is maintaining and restoring at least 50% of the Earth’s land area as intact natural ecosystems, in combination with energy transition measures. Those measures by themselves will likely be insufficient and must be augmented by restoration to create negative emissions to offset the likely clearing and release of greenhouse gases that will occur until a 2035 moratorium can be reached.

Natural ecosystems are key to maintaining human prosperity in a warming world and 65% of Paris Agreement signatories have committed to restoring or conserving ecosystems. Intact forests, and especially tropical forests, sequester twice as much carbon as planted monocultures. These findings make forest conservation a critical approach to combat global warming. Because about two-thirds of all species on Earth are found in natural forests, maintaining intact forest is vital to prevent mass extinction.

However, carbon sequestration and storage extends far beyond rainforests: Peatlands, tundra, mangroves, and ancient grasslands are also important carbon storehouses and conserve distinct assemblages of plants and animals. Further, the importance of intact habitats extends to the freshwater and marine realms, with studies pointing to least disturbed wetlands and coastal habitats being superior in their ability to store carbon when compared with more disturbed sites.

Opportunities to address both climate change and the extinction crisis are time bound. Climate models show that we are approaching a tipping point: If current trends in habitat conversion and emissions do not peak by 2030, then it will become impossible to remain below 1.5°C. Similarly, if current land conversion rates, poaching of large animals, and other threats are not markedly slowed or halted in the next 10 years, “points of no return” will be reached for multiple ecosystems and species.

It has become clear that beyond 1.5°C, the biology of the planet becomes gravely threatened because ecosystems literally begin to unravel. Degradation of the natural environment also diminishes quality of life, threatens public health, and triggers human displacement because of lost access to clean drinking water, reduced irrigation of important subsistence crops, and exacerbation of climate-related storm and drought events. These occurrences will become increasingly worse without substantial action over the next few years. Additionally, human migrations, triggered by climate change–induced droughts and sea-level rise in combination with extreme weather events, could displace more than 100 million people by 2050, mostly in the southern hemisphere.

A companion pact to the Paris Agreement—a Global Deal for Nature (GDN)—could help ensure that climate targets are met while preventing species extinctions and the rapid erosion of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine realms. The concept of a GDN as a policy mechanism emerged from an earlier study restricted to protecting biodiversity in the terrestrial realm. We expand that perspective to the freshwater and marine realms while simultaneously lending support to an alternative pathway to remaining below 1.5°C that relies heavily on aggressive conservation of remaining habitats.

This approach not only safeguards biodiversity but also is the cheapest and fastest alternative for addressing climate change and is not beholden to developing carbon removal technologies unlikely to be effective or to scale in the time-bound nature of the current twin crises. Here, we offer a policy framework based on scientific guidelines that could pair nature and climate deals, be mutually reinforcing, and recommend time-bound milestones and targets. We identify specific threats and drivers of biodiversity loss, and discuss costs of implementation of a GDN. Finally, we introduce breakthrough technologies for monitoring progress.

DISCUSSION of The Global Deal for Nature

The Paris Agreement offers a useful template for a GDN because it sets global targets, provides a model for financial support, and supports bottom-up efforts. All nations have signed on to this agreement. But the Paris Agreement is only a half-deal; it will not alone save the diversity of life on Earth or conserve ecosystem services upon which humanity depends. It is also reliant on natural climate solutions that require bolstering outside of the Paris Agreement to ensure that these natural approaches can contribute to its success. Yet, land-based sequestration efforts receive only about 2.5% of climate mitigation dollars.

At the same time that climate scientists were arriving at a single numerical target for maintaining Earth’s atmosphere at safe limits, biodiversity scientists identified multiple targets for the required habitats to conserve the rest of life on Earth. But to communicate effectively, as in the Paris Agreement, these many needs could be encompassed within a single target: protect at least half of Earth by 2050 and ensure that these areas are connected. The evidence arising since these calls were made clearly demonstrate that while we may be able to afford to wait to formally designate 50% protected in nature reserves, we need to fast-track the protection and restoration of all natural habitat by 2030.

A GDN that will ensure that we have at least 50% intact natural habitats by 2030 is the only path that will enable a climate-resilient future and is one that will offer a myriad of other benefits. Since the crucial role of intact, diverse systems has also been demonstrated to be essential for carbon storage the GDN will need to emphasize mechanisms for protecting intactness both inside and outside of protected areas (e.g. in CSAs/OECMs) well before 2050.

Tallis and colleagues demonstrated that with existing technologies and large-scale adoption of common conservation approaches (e.g., protected areas, renewable energy, sustainable fisheries management, and regenerative agriculture), it would be possible to advance a desired future of multiple economic and environmental objectives (including 50% of each biome intact, with the exception of temperate grasslands). This spatial coexistence is possible even with the prospects of feeding and supporting the material needs of a growing human population. The success of proposals to boost food production while protecting biodiversity will likely depend on our success in addressing human population growth, however, and our willingness to marshal financial resources accordingly.

Gross costs for nature conservation measures across half the Earth could be $100 billion per year, but the international community currently spends $4 billion to $10 billion per year on conservation. Extending the area-based targets in the post-2020 strategic plan for biodiversity to 30% by 2030 will likely require direct involvement of the private sector. In key sectors—fishing, forestry, agriculture, and insurance—corporations may be able to align their financial returns directly to reaching targets recommended by the GDN. However, the typical approach to conservation planning does not involve the real (net) costs because the direct benefits of conservation and the averted costs of inaction are not included in the calculations. Barbier and colleagues showed that potential direct benefits from biodiversity conservation for various sectors range from increasing annual profits by $53 billion in the seafood industry to $4300 billion in the insurance industry.

In addition, marine reserves can provide more economic benefits from tourism than fishing in many locations worldwide. Financial investments of even 10 to 20% of potential benefits from biodiversity conservation from three key industries could make up as much of one-third of the commitment needed to implement a GDN. A GDN may appeal to a broader set of nonstate actors, including corporations and local government entities. The solutions could be implemented in ways that have direct positive benefits to local or regional communities and especially indigenous peoples. Land-based jobs, food security, green space, access to wilderness, and ecosystem services are benefits that deliver advantages to rural and urban dwellers alike.

Complex life has existed on Earth for about 550 million years, and it is now threatened with the sixth mass extinction. If we fail to change course, it will take millions of years for Earth to recover an equivalent spectrum of biodiversity. Future generations of people will live in a biologically impoverished world. Adopting a GDN and the milestones and targets presented here would better allow humanity to develop a vibrant, low-impact economy and conserve intact ecosystems, all while leaving space for nature. Linking the GDN and the Paris Agreement could solve the two major challenges facing the biosphere and all the species within it and result in a return to safe operating space for humanity.

The Paris Accord is needed to protect our Earth

From an Article by Brian Bienkowski, The Daily Climate, December 11, 2017

A new United Nations report from the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction released today finds that in order to keep the Paris Climate Agreement goals on track, the construction industry needs to improve energy efficiency per square meter (about 10 square feet) by 30 percent by 2030.

Why it matters

The doubling of buildings over the next 40 years would be like adding the floor area of all of Japan’s buildings to the planet every single year to 2060, or a new Paris every five days over the same amount of time.

This means much more climate warming gases. The building industry of course isn’t the only cause of climate change but it does account for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 emissions from buildings and construction increased by about 1 percent annually between 2010 and 2016.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. If the agreement falls apart, at current emission levels the planet would warm roughly 4.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. This would make some places uninhabitable, trigger sea level rise that would inundate some major cities, and would create real challenges in trying to feed a growing population.

Is there any hope?

Maybe—in order to reach the 30 percent energy efficiency increase, “near-zero energy, zero-emissions buildings need to become the construction standard globally within the next decade,” the report found. Also the rate of retrofitting older buildings to become more energy efficient would have to improve from the current 1 to 2 percent per year to more than 3 percent per year.

There’s reason for optimism: 132 countries mention the buildings industry in their greenhouse gas reduction plans submitted to the UN. And the new report found that investments in current energy efficiency and low-carbon health and cooling technology could reduce buildings’ energy demand by 25 percent.

What experts are saying:

“Similar to many areas linked to the Paris Agreement, the building sector is seeing some progress in cutting its emissions, but it is too little, too slowly. Realizing the potential of the buildings and construction sector needs all hands on deck – in particular to address rapid growth in inefficient and carbon-intensive building investments.” -Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment

See the full report, which was led by the International Energy Agency.

Solar Cost Below $1 per Watt

Solar Is Booming … Costs Keep Falling

News Article from the Climate Reality Project, EcoWatch.com, December 2, 2016

Today, solar power is everywhere. It’s on your neighbor’s roof and in tiny portable cellphone chargers. There are even solar powered roads. And as solar power heats up, prices are going down. In fact, over the past 40 years, the cost of solar has decreased by more than 99 percent!

But how did we get here? Ready for a quick history lesson on one of the world’s fastest growing sources of energy?

You might find this hard to believe, but we can trace the idea of harnessing the power of the sun back to 1839. A bright (pun intended!) young French physicist named Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect—the creation of an electric current in a material after being exposed to light—while experimenting in his father’s laboratory. Over the following hundred-plus years, scientists continued exploring this phenomenon, creating and patenting solar cells, using them to heat water and doing extensive research to increase the efficiency of solar energy.

The 1970s brought a period of change not only in the form of political and cultural upheaval, but also saw the rise of solar as a viable way to produce electricity. The first solar-powered calculator was commercialized, the Solar Energy Research Institute (now called the National Renewable Energy Laboratory) was established, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House for the first time. But it was also quite expensive, costing an average of $76 per watt in 1977.

But as advancements in the industry continued, the costs began to fall. Over the next 10 years, the price would drop sevenfold to less than $10 per watt, hitting a plateau in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Fast-forward to a few years later and solar technology was really hitting its stride as huge cost reductions were made in recent years, causing world leaders, governments, and the private sector to get on board and moving solar from a niche technology into the mainstream. Soon, regular people in communities all over the world were installing panels on their roofs and in numerous other applications thanks to the technology’s improving economics and innovative incentives and financing models.

Which brings us to today, when solar power can cost a minuscule61 cents per watt.

In a relatively short period of time, it’s become clear that an incredible future is ahead for this renewable source of energy. And as you might expect, the more the price falls, the more attractive it becomes. Forty years ago, the total global installation of solar was around 2 megawatts. Today, total global installation is closer to 224,000 megawatts.

And as we start down the road forward after the historic Paris agreement, we’re noticing just how many countries are working to meet their carbon emissions reduction goals by going solar.

That’s why we’re hoping you will join us December 5-6 for 24 Hours of Reality: The Road Forward as we travel the world for a look at how solar power is revolutionizing access to electricity in Mexico, Malaysia and Venezuela. We’ll visit southeast Asia to meet a “solar monk” in Thailand and to South Africa, where sheep and solar live together on one solar PV farm. We’ll even hear from oil-rich countries in the Middle East that are starting to prepare for a future beyond fossil fuels—and renewables like solar are becoming more and more cost effective.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

John Kerry is the US Secretary of State

US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers a speech at the COP22 climate change conference on November 16, 2016, in Marrakesh. 

MARRAKECH, Morocco—The Obama administration fulfilled what is probably its final major contribution to the Paris Agreement yesterday, releasing an outline for how the United States can act in the long term to help the world keep warming to a safe level.

The midcentury deep decarbonization strategy, developed in collaboration with Canada and Mexico, envisions a future where the world’s largest economy transitions almost entirely to non-fossil-fuel energy sources for transportation and electricity, expands forests and continues to phase down non-carbon-dioxide greenhouse gases.

“This midcentury strategy is a demonstration of the United States’ commitment to the long-term goals and the long-term ambition embodied in the Paris Agreement,” said White House climate adviser Brian Deese.

The deal nearly 200 countries agreed to outside the French capital last year set a long-term goal of keeping warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with efforts toward a 1.5 C limit—targets that require the world’s emissions to reach net zero in the second half of this century. The agreement also mandated that by 2020 countries produce a vision for how they intend to get there.

The Obama administration has said it accelerated that process to provide other countries with a template for how to craft their own long-term pathways.

But another driver was almost certainly the possibility—and now the certainty—that Republican Donald Trump would succeed President Obama in the Oval Office. The president-elect has promised to cancel the Paris deal and would be unlikely to spend resources complying with it.

With Trump now headed for the White House, the sketch Deese introduced at a well-attended gathering at the U.S. Center in Marrakech appears fanciful. It imagines how the United States can make good on Obama’s pledge at the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009 to slash U.S. emissions by more than 80 percent by midcentury through a suite of actions that would rely, at least in part, on policy signals the new administration seems very unlikely to support.

“By 2050, nearly all fossil fuel electricity production can be replaced by low carbon technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels or bioenergy combined with carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS),” the blueprint boldly states.

It also assumes advances in energy efficiency, a shift to non-fossil-fuel transportation technologies through policy and “rapidly scaling investment in low-carbon innovation,” the development of decarbonization technologies like carbon capture and storage that would depend upon public-sector support both in funding and regulation, and other measures. The document also suggests that the United States could roll back a third of the deforestation that has occurred in the last 160 years, though Deese said that trend is already in progress.

Mexico the Star at the U. S. Show

Deese released the paper at an event that also featured Stephen Lucas, Canada’s senior associate deputy minister for environment and climate change, and Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, Mexico’s undersecretary for environmental policy and planning.

The three North American countries pledged to collaborate on their long-term strategies during the “Three Amigos” summit in Ottawa in June. While yesterday’s event still echoed the spirit of camaraderie that pervaded that meeting of the three heads of state, it was clear that the U.S. election result has had an impact.

Tamayo received some of the biggest applause reactions, as when he noted that Mexico’s legislature approved both Paris and its domestic climate legislation along broad bipartisan lines—a clear contrast to the situation in Washington, D.C.

And he took aim at Trump’s statements against his own country, especially Trump’s continued support for a barrier along the Mexican border. He noted that North America’s subnational governments can continue to make progress toward a continental carbon market in the coming years even though the United States will continue to lack a federal carbon price.

“It is feasible to build bridges and not walls, so let’s do it,” Tamayo told an appreciative audience.

The United States received kudos from advocates and delegates here for releasing its strategy despite the changing political landscape. But diplomats and activists alike emphasized that more action will be needed from the world’s second-largest emitter.

“The U.S. is showing important leadership by putting its midcentury deep decarbonization strategy on the table now,” said Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But she said that “policies and actions” would be needed immediately to place the United States on a low-carbon trajectory toward 2050 and ensure that a costly course correction isn’t required in later years.

“For example, an overreliance on natural gas could leave us at risk of constructing expensive infrastructure that will quickly become obsolete,” she said.

The Sierra Club’s Steve Herz said environmentalists could make progress during the Trump years by pressing state and local governments to block fossil fuel projects that would lock in high-carbon infrastructure for decades to come. But he said market forces will help tilt the playing field toward renewables and efficiency over gas.

But Thoriq Ibrahim, environment minister for the Maldives and chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States negotiating group, said that while the document is appreciated, “what we need immediately are concrete actions.”

“Without them, some of us may be underwater by midcentury,” he added.

Scientific American has reprinted this article from ClimateWire with permission from E&E News.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

CERES Roadmap for Sustainability

Some 365+ Businesses Call on Trump to Support Paris Climate Accords

Article from CERES,  EcoWatch.com, November 16, 2016

More than 365 businesses and investors, from more than a dozen Fortune 500 firms to small, family-owned businesses across more than 35 states, sent a strong message today to President Barack Obama, President-elect Donald Trump and other elected U.S. and global leaders, reaffirming their support for the historic Paris climate agreement and the need to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy at home and around the world.

“Implementing the Paris climate agreement will enable and encourage businesses and investors to turn the billions of dollars in existing low-carbon investments into the trillions of dollars the world needs to bring clean energy prosperity to all,” wrote the powerful business group, in a statement of support at a press conference at the COP22 climate negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco. “Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk.”

Among the diverse and iconic large and small U.S. businesses signing the statement are DuPont, Gap Inc., General Mills, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hilton, HP Inc., Kellogg Company, Levi Strauss & Co., L’Oreal USA, NIKE, Mars Incorporated, Schneider Electric, Starbucks, VF Corporation and Unilever.

“Now more than ever, Levi Strauss & Co. believes it is important to reaffirm our commitment to address climate change by supporting the Paris climate agreement,” Michael Kobori, vice president of sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co., said. “Building an energy-efficient economy in the U.S., powered by low-carbon energy will ensure our nation’s competitiveness and position U.S. companies as leaders in the global market—all while doing the right thing for our planet.”

The U.S., China, India, Brazil, European Union and more than 100 other nations representing more than three-fourths of global emissions formally ratified or joined the agreement, and it entered into legal force on Nov. 4. The agreement is the first-ever global, legally binding framework to tackle climate change.

In the statement, the large and small businesses pledged to do their part, in their own operations and beyond, to realize the Paris climate agreement’s commitment of a global economy that limits global temperature rise to well below two-degrees Celsius.

They are calling on elected U.S. leaders to strongly support:

• Continuation of low-carbon policies in order to allow the U.S. to meet or exceed its promised national commitments.

• Investment in the low-carbon economy at home and abroad in order to give financial decision-makers clarity and boost investor confidence.

• Continued U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement in order to provide the long-term direction needed to limit global warming.

“The enormous momentum generated by the business and investment community to address climate change cannot be reversed and cannot be ignored by the Trump administration. That train has left the station and to stand in its way is folly,” Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management, said.

“Nevertheless, we know that now is the time to remind the incoming administration that virtually every company in the Fortune 500 and over $100 trillion in investor assets has acknowledged the reality of climate change and the need to address it head on,” Patsky concluded.

NOTE: Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful network of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Our mission is to mobilize investor and business leadership to build a thriving, sustainable global economy.