Category Archives: Greenhouse gas emissions

Joe Biden’s move to net zero emissions will leave Australia in the (coal) dust | Bill Hare

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Australia will be increasingly isolated as the US joins the club of countries, including China, with ambitious mid-century goals

The election of Joe Biden to the White House is likely to see Australia increasingly isolated as the world heads to net zero emissions, with quite fundamental implications for our economy.

Let’s have a look at what has happened in the last two months.

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Fate of climate crisis hangs on election as US exits Paris agreement

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Trump administration set US withdrawal in motion a year ago but it didn’t take effect until 4 November

The United States on Wednesday officially became the only country in the world refusing to participate in global climate efforts, with the fate of the crisis hanging on the still uncalled presidential election.

Donald Trump as of Wednesday has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement, an international pact to try to avert dangerous temperature increases that are already leading to more extreme weather and threaten to shrink world food supplies, force millions to flee their homes and deprive many of basic human rights. Trump’s administration set the US exit in motion a year ago, but it didn’t automatically take effect until 4 November.

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Russia rules out cutting fossil fuel production in next few decades

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Energy minister says Moscow will also focus on clean-burning hydrogen and carbon capture

Russia has no plans to rein in its production of fossil fuels in the coming decades despite the global efforts to shift towards low-carbon energy, according to its energy minister.

Alexander Novak told the Guardian that Russia did “not see that we will achieve a peak in [gas] production anytime soon” because the world’s appetite for gas would continue to grow in the decades ahead despite its growing number of climate targets.

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‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

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Exclusive: expedition discovers new source of greenhouse gas off East Siberian coast has been triggered

Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle” – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal.

High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating.

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‘Old and unsafe’ cars sent to developing world fuelling air pollution, report finds

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Poor quality of used vehicles exported from the US, Europe and Japan are hindering efforts to mitigate climate breakdown, says UN

Millions of used motor vehicles exported from the US, Europe and Japan to developing countries are of poor quality and are contributing significantly to air pollution, according a new UN report.

About 80% of the 14m used light-duty vehicles – saloon cars, SUVs and minibuses – exported between 2015 and 2018 went to low and middle-income countries. About 40% went to Africa, found the report, published by the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

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Climate at a crossroads as Trump and Biden point in different directions

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The two US presidential contenders offer starkly different approaches as the world tries to avoid catastrophic global heating

Among the myriad reasons world leaders will closely watch the outcome of a fraught US presidential election, the climate crisis looms perhaps largest of all.

The international effort to constrain dangerous global heating will hinge, in large part, on which of the dichotomous approaches of Donald Trump or Joe Biden prevails.

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Net zero emissions target for Australia could launch $63bn investment boom

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Modelling shows moving towards a net zero emissions economy would unlock financial prospects in sectors including renewables and manufacturing

Australia could unlock an investment boom of $63bn over the next five years if it aligns its climate policies with a target of net zero emissions by 2050, according to new economic modelling.

The analysis, by the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), finds the investment opportunity created by an orderly transition to a net zero emissions economy would reach hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050 across sectors including renewable energy, manufacturing, carbon sequestration and transport.

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Singapore launches Covid-secure luxury cruises … to nowhere

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City state follows Qantas in offering jaunts with no destination with ships half full and masks mandatory

Singapore is launching Covid-secure cruise holidays to nowhere, in the latest attempt to offer a long-distance travel experience with no stops.

Australian airline Qantas drew criticism from environmental groups last month after advertising a seven-hour round trip from Sydney including fly-pasts of famous sights including Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef.

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EU parliament votes for 60% greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2030

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Backing for law demanding 60% reduction from 1990 levels puts capitals under pressure

EU capitals have been put under pressure to agree to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 compared with 1990, after the European parliament voted in favour of an “ambitious” climate law that would also oblige each member state to be carbon neutral by 2050.

The vote, which sets the chamber’s position as it goes into negotiations with the 27 member states and the European commission, won the backing of 392 MEPs, with 161 voting against and 142 abstaining.

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Britain’s oil and gas rigs most polluting in North Sea, says report

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Release of CO2 from UKCS rigs was much greater than Norwegian and Danish regions

Britain’s oil and gas rigs are the most polluting in the North Sea oil basin, according to industry data, with enough unwanted gas burned off every year to heat a million homes.

Oil rigs in the UK continental shelf (UKCS) released 13.1m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere last year, according to data from Rystad Energy, significantly more than those from the Norwegian and Danish regions of the North Sea, which produced 10.4m tonnes and 1.4m tonnes of CO2 respectively in the same year.

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Young people resume global climate strikes calling for urgent action

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Greta Thunberg leads protests as Covid rules restrict numbers compared with last year

School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe.

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A third of my country was just underwater. The world must act on climate | Sheikh Hasina

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The climate crisis and Covid-19 are crying out for international cooperation, writes the prime minister of Bangladesh

One-third of my country was underwater last month. The heaviest rains in almost a decade began and have still not abated. More than 1.5 million Bangladeshis are displaced; tens of thousands of hectares of paddy fields have been washed away. Millions of my compatriots will need food aid this year.

Calamities, alas, never strike alone. The floods, which come in the wake of widespread destruction caused by Cyclone Amphan in May, are making it more difficult to contain the coronavirus. More than 2.4 million people had already been moved from the destructive path of the storm without delivering them into the even greater danger of Covid-19. Yet while the infection and death rates have been contained, concerns remain until a foolproof safeguard is acquired. Economic lockdowns have hit our textile industry and exports and forced hundreds of thousands of our international migrant workers to return home, with the vast majority remaining unemployed.

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World’s richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam

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Charity says world’s fast-shrinking carbon budget should be used to improve lot of poorest

The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research.

Carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60% over the 25-year period, but the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase in emissions from the poorest half.

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My country may be swept away by the climate crisis if the rest of the world fails to uphold its promises | President David Kabua

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Now is a time for courage. It will take sacrifices from everyone for us all to survive, the president of the Marshall Islands writes

My country joined the United Nations nearly 30 years ago, in September 1991. But unless my fellow member states take action, we may also be forced from it: the first country to see our land swept away by climate change.

As the UN general assembly meets in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of its formation, we must ask: how many of the 193 nations that it brings together will survive to reach its centenary?

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Device to curb microplastic emissions wins James Dyson award

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Tyre attachment designed by four students aims to reduce road transport pollution

A device that captures microplastic particles from tyres as they are emitted – and could help reduce the devastating pollution they cause – has won its designers a James Dyson award.

The Tyre Collective, a group of masters students from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, scooped the UK prize of the international competition with their solution for the growing environmental scourge of tyre wear caused by road transport.

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France’s ‘big green recovery plan’ not big enough for campaigners

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A third of €100bn post-Covid package to be used for greener future, but critics say it falls short

Billed by the economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, as a “big green recovery plan”, one-third of France’s €100bn (£90bn) post-Covid economic stimulus package will be spent, in the government’s words, on “ecological transition” and “greening the economy”.

Environmental groups said the plan, presented on Thursday by the prime minister, Jean Castex, and other cabinet members, marked a welcome first step – but criticised a missed opportunity to break decisively with a growth-driven, high-carbon economy.

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India plans to fell ancient forest to create 40 new coalfields

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Narendra Modi’s dream of a ‘self-reliant India’ comes at a terrible price for its indigenous population

Over the past decade, Umeshwar Singh Amra has witnessed his homeland descend into a battleground. The war being waged in Hasdeo Arand, a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, has pitted indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal.

Yet under a new “self-reliant India” plan by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.

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Extreme droughts in central Europe likely to increase sevenfold

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Researchers say moderate reductions in CO2 emissions could halve their likelihood

Extreme droughts are likely to become much more frequent across central Europe, and if global greenhouse gas emissions rise strongly they could happen seven times more often, new research has shown.

The area of crops likely to be affected by drought is also set to increase, and under sharply rising CO2 levels would nearly double in central Europe in the second half of this century, to more than 40m hectares (154,440 sq miles) of farmland.

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First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica

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Researchers say potent climate-heating gas almost certainly escaping into atmosphere

The first active leak of methane from the sea floor in Antarctica has been revealed by scientists.

The researchers also found microbes that normally consume the potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only arrived in small numbers after five years, allowing the gas to escape.

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Most polar bears to disappear by 2100, study predicts

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Melting Arctic sea ice could cause starvation and reproductive failure for many as early as 2040, scientists warn

Scientists have predicted for the first time when, where and how polar bears are likely to disappear, warning that if greenhouse gas emissions stay on their current trajectory all but a few polar bear populations in the Arctic will probably be gone by 2100.

By as early as 2040, it is very likely that many polar bears will begin to experience reproductive failure, leading to local extinctions, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.

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