Prime Minister Scott Morrison has inched closer to committing Australia to an emissions target of net zero by 2050, though he has done so by also distancing himself from "inner city" residents who have long demanded he adopt an ambitious climate goal.

• Scott Morrison concedes Australia's energy mix needs to change over the next 30 years "on the road to net zero emissions."
• It comes days before he participates in US President Joe Biden's virtual greenhouse gas summit
• A net zero target by 2050 is a deeply divisive proposal within the Coalition

Just days before the Prime Minister participates in US President Joe Biden's virtual greenhouse gas summit, he conceded Australia's energy mix needs to change over the next 30 years "on the road to net zero emissions."

In a speech to business leaders in Sydney, he declared the nation would chart its "own course" and achieve its aims through "the best technology and the animal spirits of capitalism", not "taxes", like a carbon price.

"The key to meeting our climate change ambitions is the commercialisation of low emissions technology," Mr Morrison said.

A net zero target by 2050 is a deeply divisive proposal within the Coalition.

Some members of the Nationals, like Queensland Senator Matt Canavan, have vowed to vote against it, claiming it will kill coal mining jobs and manufacturing in regional areas.

Meanwhile, Liberal MPs representing wealthy Sydney and Melbourne seats fear they will face an electoral backlash, if their party isn't seen to be taking the issue seriously.

As a result, the PM has been pivoting towards the target slowly in an attempt to avoid too much infighting.

In his speech, Mr Morrison even appeared to mock those inner-city voters who have long campaigned for climate action, stating, "we will not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities."

He said that net zero will be "won" by the energy, industrial, agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors, pointing to work BHP, Andrew Forrest and AGL are doing to reduce emissions as examples.

"It will be won in places like the Pilbara, the Hunter, Gladstone, Portland, Whyalla, Bell Bay and the Riverina," he added.

"In the factories of our regional towns and outer suburbs. In the labs of our best research institutes and scientists."

"This is where the road to net zero is being paved in Australia."

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-20/scott-morrison-australia-inner-city-net-zero-emissions-biden/100080402

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Scomo is travelling like a somnambulist or a sleep-walker. He has no idea — or yes he has — apart from more platitudes ("The key to meeting our climate change ambitions is the commercialisation of low emissions technology — we have know this for the last 30 effin' years! You've just discovered this yesterday by asking Jen at breakfast!)... Scummo's latest venture being to denigrate the café latte society of the Inner West for not demanding greener pastures... Hey effin' moron PM, the inner west crowds have invested in solar panels and water tanks for yonks — as well as work their electricity usage down so much, by using LED lighting and more efficient white goods, that electricity companies are going broke. Not quite, but that's the gist. Even on the balconies of apartment blocks, people are growing their own tomatoes and "herbs".  Yes the rest of the country has to pull in the bulk of the emissions saving — but, god bless the crazy Gladys' government for approving more fucking coal mines that will destroy the net zero target ten times over before sunset, to suit a bulldozing demographic in the Hunter Valley... Mad as hell is not even close to what this crap should generate in the maddening crowds of the chardonnay swilling dudes... And about 30 per cent of us WALK while about 50 per cent of us CYCLE...

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When the German cabinet reaches a decision about a piece of draft legislation, it’s usually little more than a formality. The ministers generally only have to raise their hands, since objections and concerns have been cleared in advance by their staff.

A bit more than a week ago, though, the vote on amendments to Germany’s climate protection act was on the agenda. And those amendments are far-reaching. They are a roadmap for Germany’s phaseout of coal, oil and gas – the fuels that drove the country’s rise to the world’s fourth-largest industrial power.

One cabinet member, though, was clearly uncomfortable with the package of amendments: Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He mentioned how "difficult” the process was going to be.

The other members of the cabinet, though, said nothing in response – and raised their hands. And with that, the German climate revolution had been decided.

For decades, the German government barely moved at all when it came to climate protection, juggling concerns with objections from lobbyists and getting bogged down in the details. Suddenly, though, things are moving very quickly indeed. In one fell swoop, the governing coalition has decided the country must be climate-neutral by 2045.

The impetus ultimately came from Germany Constitutional Court. In late April, the court ruled that the Paris climate agreement’s commitment to limiting the global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius amounted to a legal obligation to the next generation. Ignoring that obligation, the court found, would amount to depriving future generations their most fundamental right: freedom.

"Two weeks ago, I didn’t think it would be possible that I would be sitting here,” said a visibly overwhelmed Environment Minister Svenja Schulze of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) following the cabinet’s decision. On the day of the high court ruling, Schulze had instructed her ministry to write a new version of the climate protection law. By 2030, greenhouse gas emissions are now to fall by 65 percent relative to 1990 levels, 10 percentage points more than previously agreed. By 2040, they are to fall by 88 percent and be at net zero five years after that.

The industrial sector, energy companies and consumers now face a major challenge. Can they meet it? Will there be social conflict? If the incoming government fails to find an affordable path into the new age of sustainability, not only could the economy suffer irreparable damage, so too could democracy. The question as to who will bear the burden of climate change will determine the battles over political distribution in the coming years.

In the best-case scenario, the climate protection act will become the biggest modernization program since the postwar period and secure prosperity for future generations. "Many political actors probably don’t fully understand the ramifications of the task ahead,” says Felix Matthes, research coordinator in the Berlin office of the Öko Institut, an environmental research institute.

According to his calculations, Germany has an emissions budget of 6.1 billion tons of CO2 left. If things continue as they are now, there will hardly be anything left for the years after 2030. For this reason, more needs to be saved sooner. "The technologies for change are available,” Matthes believes. In a study for the Climate Neutrality Foundation, he and his research team calculated the path Germany must take to achieve its targets.

The most important instrument is the price of CO2 emissions. The more expensive it is, the greater the incentive becomes to cut them. Matthes, though, believes that won’t be enough and argues that more incentivizing instruments are required to drive the shift to sustainable technologies. "Now it’s a matter of cleverly combining the mechanisms,” Matthes says, "as quickly as possible but also in a way that doesn’t leave anybody behind.” The engineer was commissioned by the German government to calculate what burdens would emerge for citizens and how these can be fairly distributed. Three areas stand out that affect everyone in the country.

• Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in Germany amounted to around 120 million metric tons in 2020. They are set to go down by 43 percent, to 67 million tons of CO2 equivalent, by 2030.

Almost one third of greenhouse gases in Germany are from building energy usage. Nevertheless, every year only 1 percent of the building stock is renovated to increase energy efficiency. In 2018, the rate was only 0.8 percent. DENA, the German energy agency, has stated that the pace is "far from sufficient.”

In its study, "Climate-neutral Germany 2045,” the think tank Agora Energiewende wrote that the renovation rate must now increase significantly, to 1.75 percent per year. They envision a future in which oil and gas heating systems are only used "in a few, rare cases” after 2025, with a growing focus on heat pumps. The think tank calls for 6 million of these to be in use by 2030, and 8 million more by 2045. The government already provides financial subsidies for the replacement of windows, the insulation of facades and the renewal of heating systems. When heat pumps are installed, the state covers up to 50 percent of the investment to a maximum of 30,000 euros. Nevertheless, Germany was already failing to meet its previous climate goals in the building sector.

State funding will therefore no longer suffice. More support is required – but from whom? On this issue, a social conflict is developing, primarily between tenants and landlords. Since January, the buildings sector has been included in national emissions trading, with the price of emitting one ton of CO2 standing at 25 euros, making heating oil 7.9 percent more expensive per liter and raising the cost of natural gas by 0.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Previously, landlords had been able to pass the full cost onto their tenants.

The cabinet, though, has decided that in the future, those costs are to be shared. According to a sample calculation by the Environment Ministry, a family with one child that rents their accommodation, for example, will only have to pay half of their previous fee of 86.60 euros, which is to say, 43.30 euros. But the price is set to go up quickly, increasing the burden on tenants and owners. And the owners are unhappy. Andreas Ibel, the president of the German Association for Private Real-Estate and Housing Companies, argue that owners have no influence on tenants’ electricity and heat consumption. "Someone who has the window tilted open all day in the winter while having the heating turned up to full power is literally blowing CO2 out the window.”

The Öko Institut has already calculated what owners will face when they have to pay 50 percent of the costs. Per average tenant household, it will result in an average extra cost of 100 euros per year for heating oil and 70 euros for natural gas in 2025. According to the study, the level of additional costs would initially offer homeowners little incentive to carry out additional renovations. With a higher CO2 price, however, things look different. If the price in 2030 reaches 125 euros per ton, owners would pay an additional 210 euros per year for heating oil and 160 euros for natural gas. If the price climbs to 180 euros, landlords would pay an additional 304 euros a year for heating oil and 230 euros for natural gas.

According to the study, a climate levy based on a building’s energy standard would have an additional effect: the greater the energy usage, the greater the fee. According to the authors, the owner alone should have to pay it and not be allowed to pass it onto the tenants.

• In 2020, 221 million tons of CO2 were emitted for energy production in Germany. By 2030, that total is to sink by 61 percent to 108 million tons of CO2 equivalent, with the help of renewable technologies such as wind power.

The key to climate neutrality lies in producing electricity from renewable sources like solar or wind – in huge quantities at affordable prices. Much more green electricity will be necessary in the future, after all. Electric cars will have to be powered. Airplanes will rely on synthetic fuels produced with the help of renewable energies. Steel mills and chemical factories will be powered by hydrogen from green energy instead of by coal or natural gas.

Germany’s electricity needs will climb by 9 percent by 2030, according to calculations from the Öko Institut. At the same time, lignite- and bituminous coal-fired power plants are to be taken offline – plants that have supplied Germany with a significant portion of its energy mix. Initially, the phase out of coal was to be completed by 2038. "But with the new targets, we need to be done by 2030,” says Matthes. The consequence could be an enormous supply gap, with correspondingly high prices.

Current trends on the energy market intensify those developments. The price that power-plant operators have to pay for every ton of CO2 emitted has been climbing quickly for months. Emissions certificates are now going for 50 euros each, more than twice the price of just six months ago.

One might think that would be an incentive for operators to close down their fossil-fuel plants and switch to renewable energies. But bituminous coal, natural gas and even the dirtiest lignite plants have been supplying a huge share of Germany’s energy mix in recent weeks. And that is only tangentially a function of the cooler than average spring weather the country has been experiencing. The phase out of coal and nuclear limit supply, leading to lignite plants remaining online and, because of the cost of CO2 emission certificates, further driving up the already high electricity prices in the country, potentially by 50 percent by 2030, according to a study by the consulting firm Prognos.

The government has made plans to use CO2 tax revenues to lower electricity prices. But whether and when that might happen is completely unclear. Thus far, Berlin hasn’t even managed to introduce subsidies to help low-income citizens, as social organizations have been demanding for years.

The problem can only really be solved with a massive push to expand wind and solar power production. The opposite, though, is the case: Instead of the planned increase of 3 gigawatts of wind power per year, Germany has only managed 1 gigawatt. The primary reasons for the snail’s pace are incredibly long approval procedures, resistance from environmentalists and neighbors, and excessive bureaucracy.

To set up a wind park, companies like EnBW need an average of six years. That means that even the old expansion goals, calling for 65 percent of Germany’s power mix to be supplied by renewable energy sources by 2030, would not have been met. The new climate protection act calls for the share of renewable energies to be at least 70 percent, according to Matthes’ calculations.

It is hoped that a new program that the coalition government intends to pass by the end of this legislative period will alleviate that situation. But in both North Rhine-Westphalia, where CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet is governor, and in Bavaria, there are strict rules in place for how close wind turbines can be built to residential buildings. The state governments have thus far been wary of changing those rules for fear of protest from both residents and environmentalists. A future government including the Green Party wouldn’t be likely to change that situation. "The fronts run right through the middle of all political parties,” Matthes says.

• In 2020, 146 million tons of CO2 were emitted. The goal: A decrease of 43 percent to 85 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

When it comes to the climate, no sector needs to catch up as much as transportation. Had there been no coronavirus lockdowns, the sector would have overshot the current emissions limit this past year by 15 million tons of CO2. The federal government’s tightened goals are now putting additional pressure on automakers. After spending years sleepwalking through calls for change, Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW have recently begun racing to outdo each other with their announcements about electrical cars. Volkswagen has been the most ambitious: By 2030, 70 percent of the VW cars sold in Europe are to be purely electric.

If the sector needs to be climate neutral as early as 2045, it will essentially mean that no more internal combustion vehicles could be sold after 2030, according to the consulting firm BCG. More than 90 percent of newly registered cars would have to be fully electric.

A national ban on combustion engines, as the Green Party is calling for, wouldn’t even be necessary for that to happen. Christian Hochfeld, director of the think tank Agora Verkehrswende, is calling for a drastic tightening of the fleet limit, which refers to the overall emission average across all vehicle models produced by a company. It currently stands at 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer. "By 2030, because of the new climate goals, we will need to be up to 75 percent below that,” he says. That, he adds, would be a clear signal to carmakers that they could no longer sell more that a tiny number of vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Customers also need an incentive to switch to e-mobility. The vehicle tax for combustion engines and a penalty for purchasing gas-guzzlers could have a coercive effect. But a significantly higher CO2 price on fuels would be more important. Since January, there has been a price increase of 6.9 cents per liter of gasoline and 7.8 cents per liter of diesel. If the CO2 price goes up next year from 25 euros per ton to 45 euros, as the CDU has indicated, then gasoline would become another 5.5 cents more expensive, and diesel another 6.2 cents.

The SPD rejects this plan out of concern for low-income drivers, and has managed to remove the increase from the immediate plan. But that could change if the CDU and the Greens form the next government. Still, for as long as low-income drivers do not yet own an electric car, the social costs of high CO2 prices need to be offset. This is currently being done through a commuter allowance, which would have to go up as CO2 prices rise.

Hochfeld argues that electricity costs should be lowered or a climate premium should be paid out as compensation. "We will need to continue relying on the very successful purchasing bonuses and tax rebates for purely electric company cars.” It’s true that these currently disproportionately benefit higher earners, but those cars will end up on the used vehicle market in just a few years, making them affordable for more people.

Read more:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/quiet-energy-revolution-germany-s-stricter-new-emissions-goals-present-huge-challenge-a-2acf3de0-66a0-433e-8d40-1338e9cc209b

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In the old days, we could escape the summer heat by heading north — to the Adirondacks in the East or to the cool, forested Pacific Northwest in the West.

But this is not your grandparents’ climate.

And though we’re only one week into official summer, the characteristically cool Pacific Northwest has turned into a caldron of triple-digit temperatures, with Portland, Ore., and Seattle reaching record highs of 115 and 108 degrees, respectively. That’s unseasonably hot — for Phoenix.

The western United States is currently under the influence of an epic heat dome, an expansive region of high atmospheric pressure characterized by heat, drought and heightened fire danger. It’s being called a once-in-a-millennium event, which means you might have expected to witness it once during your lifetime — if you happen to be Methuselah of biblical fame.

All bets are off when one accounts for human-caused warming. It no longer makes sense to talk about a once-in-a-century or once-in-a-millennium event as if we’re just rolling an ordinary pair of dice, because we’ve loaded the dice through fossil fuel burning and other human activities that generate carbon pollution and warm the planet. It’s as if snake eyes, which should occur randomly only once every 36 times you rolled a pair of dice, were coming up once every four times.

Might a heat dome have developed out West this past week without climate change? Sure.

Might it have been as extreme as what we’re witnessing without climate change? Almost surely not.

If we step back a bit, we see a disturbing pattern. With this latest heat wave, Canada observed its hottest day on record: 116 degrees in British Columbia. Less than a year ago, the United States set its own record — the highest temperature reliably recorded on the entire planet, in fact — with a 130 degree reading in Death Valley in Southern California.

Yes, the dice have been loaded, and not in our favor. If climate change were a casino, we’d be hemorrhaging cash. Wildfires, heat waves, floods and superstorms, many exacerbated by climate change, collectively cost the United States nearly $100 billion in 2020. As the climate advocate Greta Thunberg so poignantly put it, “Our house is on fire.”

We’ve long known that a warming climate would yield more extremely hot weather. The science is clear on how human-caused climate change is already affecting heat waves: Global warming has caused them to be hotter, larger, longer and more frequent. What were once very rare events are becoming more common.

Heat waves now occur three times as often as they did in the 1960s — on average at least six times a year in the United States in the 2010s. Record-breaking hot months are occurring five times more often than would be expected without global warming. And heat waves have become larger, affecting 25 percent more land area in the Northern Hemisphere than they did in 1980; including ocean areas, heat waves grew 50 percent.

These changes matter because extreme heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the United States, causing more deaths on average than hurricanes and floods, combined, over the past 30 years. Recent research projects that heat stress will triple in the Pacific Northwest by 2100 unless aggressive action is taken to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

Some still refuse to acknowledge the dire warning that Mother Nature is sending us. They say the science is too unsettled to take action. But uncertainty, if anything, is a reason for taking even more dramatic action to reduce carbon emissions. Uncertainty is not our friend. And the current heat dome is an excellent example of why.

The heat wave afflicting the Pacific Northwest is characterized by what is known as an omega block pattern, because of the shape the sharply curving jet stream makes, like the Greek letter omega (Ω). This omega curve is part of a pattern of pronounced north-south wiggles made by the jet stream as it traverses the Northern Hemisphere. It is an example of a phenomenon known as wave resonance, which scientists (including one of us) have shown is increasingly favored by the dramatic warming of the Arctic.

By decreasing the contrast in temperature between the cold pole and warm subtropics, the amplified warming of the Arctic causes the jet stream to slow down and, under the right circumstances, like the ones prevailing now, settle into a very wiggly and rather stable configuration. That, in turn, allows very deep high pressure centers, like the current heat dome, to remain locked in place over a region, as it is over the Pacific Northwest.

Those climate models that the critics claim are alarmist do a poor job of reproducing this phenomenon. That means that the models do not account for this critical factor behind many of the persistent and damaging weather extremes we’ve seen in recent years, including the heat dome.

But there is a way out of this nightmare of ever-worsening weather extremes, and it’s one that will serve us well in many other ways, too. A rapid transition to clean energy can stabilize the climate, improve our health, provide good-paying jobs, grow the economy and ensure our children’s future. The choice is ours.

Read more: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/opinion/heat-dome-climate-change.html

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Rising sea levels have put 267 million people in danger, a groundbreaking report has revealed – and that number is only going to increase.

Climate change has caused sea levels to rise and more frequent and severe storms to occur, both of which increase the flood risk in coastal environments.

Previous estimates suggested 80 million people would be affected, but now research has revealed 267 million people are currently living less than two metres above sea level – the critical risk point.

It comes as one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, Michael E Mann, slams the federal government for falling behind on action in climate change, saying the government has “failed to protect” Australians from the interests of the fossil fuel lobby.

Using satellite imagery the authors of the sea-level report found that 62 per cent of the most at-risk land is concentrated in the tropics, with Indonesia home to the largest extent of at-risk land worldwide.

These impacts are already apparent: The Indonesian government announced in 2019 that it would move the capital city out of Jakarta because of the flooding risk.

With a projection of a one-metre sea-level rise, and assuming zero population growth, the authors suggest that by 2100, 410 million people worldwide may live in areas less than two metres above sea level.

These areas will be subjected to floods at least once a year, the report said.

Projections showed 72 per cent of the at-risk population in the tropics, and 59 per cent in tropical Asia alone.

The question is no longer whether sea-level rise will exceed 0.8 metres, but rather if this will happen by 2100 or beyond, and what impact it will have, the report revealed.

“Importantly for flood risk projections, [The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] also states with a high level of confidence that extreme sea-level events have increased substantially in recent decades, especially in tropical regions, and predicts that events that historically occurred once per century are highly likely to occur annually by 2100,” it reads.

Greenpeace released a comprehensive report tracking the impact of burning fossil fuels on the weather systems, human health and the economy on Wednesday.

“None of the world’s 15 largest-emitting nations are on track to meet an emission reduction goal that would limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the report found.

“This includes Australia, the largest per capita emitter in the OECD, which is a global policy forum with 38 member countries including China, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom.”

Professor Mann said burning fossil fuels had created and accelerated the climate crisis, from extreme heat, epic floods, coastal inundation, and Australia’s severe bushfires.

“Groundwater supplies, so precious and scarce in a famously arid land like Australia, are being contaminated by a rapacious fossil gas industry,” Professor Mann said.

The world’s food security has been put at risk, as farmers struggle to adapt to the warming climate, he said.

Like most impacts of a warming planet, the cost of the sea level rising is expensive.

In 2014 a groundbreaking report from the Climate Council found sea level rising will cost the Australian economy $200 billion each year by the end of the century.

The report’s lead author, Professor Will Steffen, warned national income would suffer huge losses if action was not taken to protect against rising sea levels.

Since the report was released Australia’s role in global warming has continued.

“You’re looking at anywhere from three-tenths of a per cent of the loss of GDP per year, all the way up to 9 per cent loss of GDP per year,” Professor Steffen said at the time.

“That upper scenario is higher than the growth rate of GDP per year, so you’re looking basically at staggering economic costs if we don’t get this under control.”

The states hit hardest are going to be Victoria, the south-east corner of Queensland and Sydney.

“If you look at a 1.1-metre sea level rise – which is the high-end scenario for 2100 but that’s what we’re tracking towards – you’re looking at more than $200 billion worth of infrastructure that’s at risk,” Professor Steffen said.

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/06/30/sea-level-rise/

Note: I used Woy Woy, on the beautiful magic middle coast area, north of Sydney, because this was the place Spike Milligan ("A town called Woy Woy: Australia's' above ground cemetery" ...) came to stay at the end of his life... We have to note that Woy Woy is at an elevation/altitude/height of 4.43 m above sea level, and is earmarked for the big sea level rise flooding, only by 2157... but some of its housings are near present sea level, with views on the inlet beaches...

A wave of searing heat has plagued Canada’s western provinces since Friday, resulting in an overwhelming number of 911 calls to emergency services and police responding to a dramatically increased number of deaths. In Vancouver, police reported 65 sudden deaths between last Friday and Tuesday afternoon. On Tuesday alone, some 20 sudden deaths were reported just after noon – roughly five times the number typically reported in a day, CBC Canada reported.

Elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, the situation is no less dire. In Surrey, British Colombia's second largest city by population, police responded to a total of 28 sudden deaths from Monday till Tuesday afternoon – a five-fold increase from the standard five alerts per day.

In Burnaby, the seat of Metro Vancouver's regional government, police reported 25 deaths since Monday, the majority of which are being blamed on the freak weather.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/527946-canada-heat-wave-deaths/

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