It’s gettin’ hot in here | ‘Climate change: how a warming world is a threat to our food supplies’ (Infographic)

Source: The Guardian

Related:

• ‘Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Climate change and rising food prices heightened Arab Spring’ (Scientific American)
• ‘World Bank chief says global warming threatens the planet and the poorest’ (Washington Post)

In a week where Arctic ice has reached a new low and food prices have spiked due to severe droughts in Europe and the United States it feels strange to think that progress is being made in the fight against global climate change. However, over the last couple of weeks four big initiatives have been announced that have potential to make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.

Last week, China announced it will spend some $372 billion on clean energy, energy efficiency, and reducing its use of the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Its announcement also made clear that:

Seven Chinese cities and provinces will launch CO2 emissions trading schemes over the next two years ahead of a national scheme later in the decade. (Reuters)

The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union announced a partnership to create the world’s largest carbon market, which will begin trading by 2015. Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins encouragingly described the move in an interview:

Given the relatively primitive state of climate change policy around the world, especially considering the scope of the problem, this is a very significant step forward. (Atlantic Cities)

For those keeping score at home, when California’s carbon trading system opens in November it will be the world’s second largest.

Finally, this week the United States stepped up and delivered a big one-two punch:

Report Card: Who is the Most Energy Efficient of Them All? (Map)

From ACEEE:

The ACEEE 2012 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard will rank 12 of the world’s largest economies representing over 78 percent of global gross domestic product, 63 percent of global energy consumption, and 62 percent of the global carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions.

The rankings will include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Over 25 different energy efficiency indicators or “metrics” have been analyzed for each economy ranked in the report. The rankings are determined by a total score out of 100 possible points.

Points can be earned in four difference categories including buildings, industry, and transportation, as well as metrics that track cross-cutting aspects of energy use at the national level. 

Check out the ACEEE’s report here.

Related:

• ‘UK ranked most energy efficient of world’s largest economies’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Of the world’s 12 largest economies, the U.S. is the ninth most energy efficient’ (Grist)
• ‘Canada scores 2nd last on energy efficiency study’ (CBC) 
• Video: ‘Energy efficiency vital for businesses’ (video) (ABC - Australia)
• ‘The Objectives: Energy Efficiency’ (Sustainable Energy for All)

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: Conservatives & Climate Change

(Source: Post Carbon Institute)

Related:

• ‘The Science of Truthiness: Why Conservatives Deny Global Warming’ (DeSmogBlog)
• Interview: Naomi Oreskes - ‘Neoliberalism and the Denial of Global Warming’ (Point of Inquiry)
• ‘Conservative think tanks step up attacks against Obama’s clean energy strategy’ (The Guardian)

Getting Around: ‘Children Cycling to School’ (Infographic)

Related:

• ‘Charter of Vancouver – Children have the right to cycle’ (ECF)

(Source: ECF)

From The Washington Post:

Countries or regions that have already passed cap-and-trade: This includes the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, California, and Quebec. They’ve all set hard limits on a significant portion of their carbon emissions. (Different countries have different targets and exemptions for various sectors.) This is a sizeable chunk of the planet: By my calculations, these countries and regions represented roughly 19 percent of the world’s carbon emissions in 2008.

Countries that could shift to cap-and-trade this decade. Mexico and Brazil have both recently passed laws to significantly slow their rate of emissions growth by 2020. (Brazil’s target is voluntary.) They’ve both set up task forces to study various ways to achieve this, with cap-and-trade as an option. Japan, for its part, has set up a limited cap-and-trade scheme for Tokyo and has a voluntary carbon-trading scheme at the national level that has slightly curbed emissions.

Meanwhile, China is setting up its own regional cap-and-trade systems in several of its provinces and is looking to set up a national program by the end of the decade. Jennifer Morgan says that her organization, WRI, recently hosted a Chinese delegation in the United States to study California’s climate program, as well as the small cap-and-trade system for electric utilities in the Northeast. While China’s program likely wouldn’t shrink the country’s overall level of emissions, it would at least slow the country’s ferocious growth in greenhouse gases.

Countries that are still pondering the idea. According to the World Bank report, there are at least 14 developing countries that are in various stages of study. Chile, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Thailand, and Jordan are all developing some sort of “crediting mechanism.” South Africa has a carbon tax that could well be converted to a cap-and-trade program.

Add these programs all up, and it’s potentially quite significant. Right now, about 6 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas sources are capped and traded. By the end of the decade, according to some estimates, that could rise to as much as one-third of all emissions.

Many of these countries could eventually link together — Australia’s climate-change minister, Greg Combet, has suggested that eventually South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and China could cooperate on some sort of pan-Asian carbon-trading system. And, the World Bank notes, there’s still plenty of demand for carbon-offset projects in the developing world under the U.N. program. All told, the global carbon-trading market rose to a record $176 billion in 2011.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: Climatepedia)

From Sustainable Business:

South Korea passed legislation to begin a national cap-and-trade program with a near unanimous vote of 148-0, with three abstentions. 

The fourth largest economy in Asia, South Korea is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among industrialized countries, doubling since 1990. It is the 8th biggest source of GHG emissions in the world and has a national target of cutting them 30% by 2020.

POSCO, the world’s third largest steelmaker, and Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics manufacturer, are among South Korea’s biggest polluters.

Emissions trading is scheduled to begin in Korea in 2015, the same year as those in Australia and China. New Zealand started emissions trading in 2009, and the EU’s went into effect in 2005. South Africa has plans for a program. In the US, the northeastern states have a cap-and-trade program, California’s begins in 2013. 

In April, both Mexico and Peru passed national climate change legislation.

This opens the possibility of linking country cap-and-trade programs - allowing participants to trade regionallly and eventually worldwide - which would raise the value of carbon markets substantially.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Energy Korea)

Climate change denial explained… in three short minutes

In this video clip science historian Naomi Oreskes talks with skeptic Nick Minchin about the driving force behind climate denial:

aversion to the political and economic implications of climate change leading to a rejection of the science. 

Oreskes is co-author of the must-read book ‘Merchants of Doubt’ and recipient of the 2011 Climate Change Communicators Award.* Minchin served as a cabinet minister and senator in Australia from 1993 to 2011.

(*H/T Climate Adaptation) 

(Source: Skeptical Science via YouTube)

From Rolling Stone:

In the past year – one of the hottest on record – extreme weather has battered almost every corner of the planet. There have been devastating droughts in China and India, unprecedented floods and wildfires in the United States, and near-record ice melts in the Arctic. Yet the prosperous nations of the world have failed to take action to reduce the risk of climate change, in part because people in prosperous nations think they’re invulnerable. They’re under the misapprehension that, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Tom Schelling puts it, “Global warming is a problem that is going to primarily affect future generations of poor people.” To see how foolish this reasoning is, one need only look at Australia, a prosperous nation that also happens to be right in the cross hairs of global warming. “Sadly, it’s probably too late to save much of it,” says Joe Romm, a leading climate advocate who served as assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration.

This is not to say that the entire continent will sink beneath the waves anytime soon. What is likely to vanish – or be transformed beyond recognition – are many of the things we think of when we think of Australia: the barrier reef, the koalas, the sense of the country as a land of almost limitless natural resources. Instead, Australia is likely to become hotter, drier and poorer, fractured by increasing tensions over access to water, food and energy as its major cities are engulfed by the rising seas.

To climate scientists, it’s no surprise that Australia would feel the effects of climate change so strongly, in part because it has one of the world’s most variable climates. “One effect of increasing greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere is to amplify existing climate signals,” says Karoly. “Regions that are dry get drier, and regions that are wet get wetter. If you have a place like Australia that is already extreme, those extremes just get more pronounced.” Adding to Australia’s vulnerability is its close connection with the sea. Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution – warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain – are even more deadly here.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: National Geographic)