Category Archives: Greenhouse gas emissions

Climate chief Alok Sharma warns: I may quit if new PM dumps net zero pledge

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The cabinet minister and Cop26 president could resign if the new Tory leader fails to commit to a strong green agenda

The cabinet minister who led last year’s landmark Cop26 UN climate summit has made a dramatic intervention in the Tory leadership race, suggesting he could resign if the incoming prime minister fails to commit to a strong agenda on the climate crisis.

In an interview with the Observer, Alok Sharma said a total commitment to the net zero agenda from whoever is to lead the country would be essential to avoid “incredible damage” to Britain’s global standing, as well as irreversible harm to the UK and international economies.

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Energy use from US cryptomining firms is contributing to rising utility bills

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An investigation revealed that companies use enough energy to power Houston, and contribute to growing carbon emissions

The largest US cryptomining companies have the capacity to use as much electricity as nearly every home in Houston, Texas; energy use that is contributing to rising utility bills, according to an investigation by Democratic lawmakers.

Cryptomining is a highly energy intensive process involving the use of specialized computers running constantly to solve complex math problems in order to create new virtual coins.

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Labor to reshape carbon credit committee as Coalition-appointed members resign

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Climate change minister Chris Bowen has accepted the resignation of three members of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee

Labor will make substantial changes to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of the national carbon credit system after the departure of three members appointed by the Coalition, including the chair.

A spokesperson for the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, confirmed he had accepted the resignation of three members of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee.

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Chris Bowen shares draft climate bill as independents and Greens turn up heat for more ambitious action

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Greens call for moratorium on new oil and gas projects as some independents urge Labor not to rush major policy for political reasons

The minister for climate change, Chris Bowen, is under intensifying pressure to beef up the government’s proposed legislation enshrining emissions reduction targets, with the Greens and some independents declaring the current commitments inadequate.

Bowen met on Thursday with climate focused independent MPs and representatives from the Greens to share a draft of the bill he will introduce during the first sitting week of the new parliament. He has invited MPs and senators to suggest amendments or ideas over the coming days.

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Labor backing fossil fuel projects could scupper Greens support for 43% target

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Adam Bandt vows to push Albanese government ‘further and faster’ on emissions reduction

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, says the party’s support for the government’s climate legislation may hinge on whether it continues to back new fossil fuel projects, vowing to push Labor to go “further and faster” on its emission reduction goals.

Hitting back at the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, after he suggested the government would not negotiate with the Greens to pass the legislation through the Senate, Bandt accused Labor of being the “only obstacle” to greater climate ambition in the new parliament.

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Cop27 summit must focus on how world will adapt to climate change, says UN envoy

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Mahmoud Mohieldin tells Sydney audience Egypt talks will need to get from ‘summits to solutions’ amid increasing wild weather

Mahmoud Mohieldin, the United Nations climate change high-level champion for Egypt, says November’s Cop27 summit must focus on adapting to life in a changing climate and grapple with finance for loss and damage given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

Mohieldin told the Sydney Energy Forum on Wednesday adaptation had been “forgotten for many years” at UN climate conferences “because of a generous assumption that we are going to be doing fantastically well on mitigation, so nobody should worry about adaptation”.

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‘Far from adequate’: former Pacific leaders group urges Australia to increase 43% emissions cut

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Pacific Elders Voice also called for Australia to end gas and coal developments ahead of Pacific Islands Forum

Former Pacific leaders have called for “urgent actions” to reduce global carbon emissions, including a commitment to no new coal or gas projects as Anthony Albanese prepares to travel to Fiji for the most important diplomatic regional meeting in the Pacific.

A group of former leaders of Pacific island nations, called Pacific Elders Voice, have called for accelerated efforts to move beyond coal and gas, and for new finance to be made available for loss and damage caused by the climate crisis, in the foreword to a new report released today by the Australia-based Climate Council.

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‘Industrial revolution’: Australia’s decarbonisation needs rigorous management, thinktank warns

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Grattan Institute paper recommends allowing trading of carbon credits and a firm limit on emissions for country’s largest polluters

Australia’s biggest polluters need a rigorous emissions reduction regime that avoids exemptions for trade-exposed industries, according to the Grattan Institute, which says decarbonising Australian industry is an “Industrial Revolution against a deadline”.

In a new policy paper released on Monday, Tony Wood, the paper’s lead author, says that the “next Industrial Revolution” for the sector will require the government to implement a range of policies to work towards the net zero by 2050 target while avoiding political opposition and social friction.

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Nation records 33 Covid deaths as Victoria reports fifth monkeypox case – as it happened

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Mark Butler urges Australians to get boosters as new subvariant circulates; nation records 33 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Australia ‘deeply concerned by continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s rights’

Penny Wong, minister for foreign affairs, released a statement last night saying Australia remains “deeply concerned” by the continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s rights.

Australia remains deeply concerned by the continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy, two years since the imposition of the National Security Law.

The National Security Law has been applied broadly to arrest or pressure pro-democracy figures, opposition groups, the media, trade unions and civil society. The electoral reforms imposed by Beijing in 2021 have further eroded Hong Kong’s democratic governance.

This will be the fourth time the government has offered to make the changes, announced the changes, and then backtracked as a result of internal politics.

I’m just not sure where we go from here but our members are resolute. We are going to continue fighting to get these trains made safe, and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

It’s going to be a very messy day. It’ll be a weekend timetable with other trains taken out of it.

The families of the railway workers right now could be having $3,000 deposited in their account, instead of having that money spent on modifying perfectly good trains.

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Former Australian chief scientist to head review of carbon credit scheme after whistleblower revelations

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Climate change minister to announce Prof Ian Chubb will lead six-month probe of scheme labelled ‘largely a sham’ by one expert

The former Australian chief scientist and senior academic, Prof Ian Chubb, has been appointed to head a thorough review of Australia’s carbon credit scheme as experts escalate calls for a complete overhaul of the system.

Chris Bowen, the climate change minister, will announce on Friday that Chubb, a neuroscientist and former vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, will lead the six-month review of the scheme, after a respected whistleblower described it as a fraud and waste of taxpayer money.

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Foetus fronts legal challenge over emissions in South Korea

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Lawyers representing 20-week-old foetus allege state is breaching rights of future generations

A 20-week-old foetus is fronting a legal challenge in South Korea that argues the state is breaching the rights of future generations by not doing enough to cut national emissions.

Parents and lawyers representing the foetus, as well as 61 babies and children under 11, claim national carbon targets do not go far enough to stop runaway climate change and that this is unconstitutional.

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Climate impact of food miles three times greater than previously believed, study finds

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Researchers estimate that carbon emissions from transporting food are about 6% of the global total, with fruit and vegetables the largest contributor

Transporting food from where it is produced to our dinner plates creates at least triple the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as previously estimated, a new study suggests.

So called “food miles” are likely responsible for about 6% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the authors of the study found after calculating that 3bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent was produced in transporting food for human consumption each year.

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Greenhouse gases must be legally phased out, US scientists argue

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A petition calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions under the Toxic Substances Control Act

Greenhouse gas emissions should be subject to legal controls in the US and phased out under the Toxic Substances Control Act, according to a group of scientists and former public officials, in a novel approach to the climate crisis.

“Using the TSCA would be one small step for [the US president] Joe Biden, but potentially a giant leap for humankind – as a first step towards making the polluters pay,” said James Hansen, a former Nasa scientist, who is a member of the group alongside Donn Viviani, a retired 35-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Shortfall warnings cancelled as units come back online – as it happened

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Foreign minister says Australia ‘has ground to make up’ in Pacific region; jobless rate steady at 3.9%; nation records at least 73 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

So the below comes as both the NSW and Victorian government move to introduce an extra, free year of preschool in the next decade.

Both the NSW and Victorian premiers, Dominic Perrottet and Daniel Andrews, want to introduce a new year for four- and five-year-olds.

It will mean that, in the next 10 years, every child in Victoria and NSW will experience the benefits of a full year of play-based learning before their first year of school. At the same time, it will benefit hundreds of thousands of working families.

We want to expand our existing preschools. It’s a game changer and it’s exciting and there is big money behind it, because we have to do well for our kids.

They do an amazing job, our early childhood workforce, so this is our chance to invest in them and grow and set children up for that best start of life.

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MEPs reject key EU climate proposal after aims watered down

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European parliament defeats centre-right lawmakers’ attempts to weaken climate target

The European parliament has voted to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035, defeating attempts by centre-right lawmakers to weaken the target.

Lawmakers hailed a major victory for the climate after an intense day of votes on a set of laws that make up the EU green deal, the bloc’s main response to the climate crisis.

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Let Africa exploit its natural gas reserves, says Mary Robinson

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Ex-UN climate envoy says continent’s need for energy is so great it should be able to widely use the fossil fuel

African countries should be able to exploit their vast natural gas reserves despite the urgent need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, the former UN climate envoy Mary Robinson has said.

Robinson, the chair of the Elders group of former world statespeople and business leaders, said African countries’ need for energy was so great that they should use gas widely, in contrast to developed countries that must halt their gas use as quickly as possible to stave off climate breakdown.

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Ban on new gas connections will help transition Victoria away from fossil fuels, inquiry finds

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Parliamentary committee also recommends cut-off date for sale of diesel and petrol cars

A Victorian parliamentary committee has recommended the Andrews government consider a ban on gas connections in new homes to help accelerate the state’s transition to renewables.

It also urged Victoria to commit to a cut-off date for the sale of new petrol, diesel and gas-fuelled vehicles.

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The election revealed a shift in climate sentiment – but what will it mean for policy?

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Labor’s climate plan is designed to limit the political risk of a scare campaign – but there are already calls for it to go beyond its headline commitments

It will take a while to untangle all the threads that led to Saturday’s extraordinary result, but there is little doubt this was the climate election Australians have long been told was coming.

A surge of Greens and Climate 200-backed teal independents turfed heartland Liberal MPs who were part of a government that claimed to be acting on emissions but wasn’t, pumped vast sums into fossil fuels and was considered a global blocker on addressing global heating.

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Australian federal election 2022 live: Plibersek says Albanese has a ‘tough job’ as polls tighten

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AEC concedes some Covid-positive Australians ‘may not be able to vote’: prime minister responds after Labor announces policy costings; Covid and illness lead to drop in working hours; nation records at least 52 Covid deaths. Follow all the day’s developments live

Scott and Jenny Morrison are visiting Whitemore in the Labor-held electorate of Lyons in Tasmania this morning.

Brian Mitchell holds Lyons on a margin of 5.2%, although his buffer was inflated by the disendorsement of his Liberal opponent mid-campaign in 2019 for anti-Islamic social media posts. Morrison is still on the offence, seeking gains to offset expected losses elsewhere.

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John Kerry warns a long Ukraine war would threaten climate efforts

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Exclusive: US presidential envoy says limiting global heating to 1.5C could be made harder by conflict

The longer the war in Ukraine carries on, the worse the consequences will be for the climate, the US presidential envoy John Kerry has warned.

Many countries are struggling with an energy crisis while also urgently needing to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C, he said.

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