China's zero emissions target puts Australia on notice (excerpts): The Age

 

Flag: Peoples Republic of China

"Australia's former top climate diplomat has warned China's net-zero emissions target will leave Australia behind, threatening future trade deals and its influence in the Pacific as the Morrison government becomes wedged between the US and China on climate action.

Howard Bamsey, who was Australia's special envoy on climate change during the Rudd government, said the announcement from President Xi Jinping last week had turned the politics of emissions reduction into a sharp economic and diplomatic issue.

Renewables consumption by region

Exajoules

*Commonwealth of Independent States

Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020

 

Professor Bamsey, who was also Australia's ambassador for the environment under the Howard government, said the new policy "pulls the rug out from under the argument" that Australia's domestic climate goals do not need to accelerate because China was yet to increase its ambitions.

"It's clear now China is accepting a leadership role," he said. "Xi made the announcement. That carries all the weight of the state and party.".."

..............

".. Professor Bamsey said the UK, European Union and a potential Biden presidency will pressure Australia to match their climate goals ahead of Glasgow.

"We are an internationally connected economy and we will have to adopt the policies of our trading partners, including our main partner in China," he said. "We won't be able to continue to provide goods and services and ignore the climate dimension.".."

.....................

".. The director of the European Union's Centre of Excellence at RMIT, Bruce Wilson, said China's pledge would increase pressure on Australia as it attempts to negotiate free trade deals with the EU and Britain.

"If anyone is trying to do a trade deal with the EU, the Paris deal is non-negotiable," he said.

Professor Wilson said it was still not clear if the EU would accept Australia's use of Kyoto carryover credits to meet its obligations and said a "carbon border tax" was on the agenda for countries not compliant with the EU's environmental standards.

"If you are exporting an emissions heavy product into Europe there will be a tax on that," he said.

"Chief negotiators from the EU and Australia were expected to brief stakeholders about progress on the trade deal on Wednesday afternoon. ..."

Go to The Age article  

 

 Related: Class action to stop planned coal mine extension filed by climate action-focused Australian teenagers (excerpt): ABC

 

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How climate change feeds off itself and gets even worse: Axios

(Pics by this blog)

We want climate action now.

Climate change is like a snowball effect, except, well, hot. 

Why it matters: Like a snowball begins small and grows larger by building upon itself, numerous feedback loops embedded in our atmosphere and society are exacerbating climate change.

Driving the news: Scientists are well acquainted with feedback loops, but the often wonky topic doesn’t break through into the mainstream despite its importance to how much the world warms and how much we respond to that warming.

• As we soak up the last of these hot summer days, and extreme weather hits parts of the country, today seems a fitting time to break this down for those of us without a Ph.D.

Here are seven feedback loops in science and beyond.

Air conditioning

How it works: Climate change is making our summers hotter, so we use more air conditioners, which emit greenhouse gases, which heats up our planet more, so we use even more AC, which heats up our planet even more ... You get the cycle.

* This is an easy-to-understand feedback loop, but it’s not going to

Heatwaves will kill.

have a big impact on our emissions, says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the research group Breakthrough Institute. 

* The bigger impact is likely to be population growth in developing countries in hot parts of the world, like India, getting AC to survive their ever-hotter weather.

Water evaporation

This one’s more technical but far more consequential for Earth’s temperature than the AC example.

How it works: The atmosphere heats up as we emit heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

* This warmer air leads to more water evaporation from water 
 “Those decomposition processes emit greenhouse gases,” Duffy said.

* Scientists estimate that there's twice as much carbon locked up in permafrost as is already in the atmosphere, Duffy says. "The potential to amplify warming is huge.”

Melting Land Icesheets

Albedo feedback

This is similar to permafrost. It’s why you feel hotter in black clothes compared to white clothes.
How it works: Lighter surfaces reflect heat more, so as ice and other cold places get warmer (i.e., the Arctic and other permafrost), their ability to reflect heat diminishes and they soak up more heat.

• “As the world warms, expect a lot of ice and snow to melt, which uncovers darker surfaces, which will result in more warming,” said Hausfather.

Between the lines: This phenomenon, combined with the permafrost one, helps explain why the planet's poles warm faster than the rest of the world.

Wildfires

How it works: Trees, by definition, embody carbon. So when

Californian Wildfires

wildfires burn them down, carbon dioxide is emitted. 

* As the world warms, temperatures get hotter and places get drier, creating tinderboxes for when wildfires do start.
* The hotter the world gets, the bigger wildfires will be (in some places like California), the more CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, which heats up the world more, which will exacerbate wildfires more ...

Policy and economic paralysis

Unlike most policy challenges, climate change gets worse the longer we take to address it.

How it works: The longer we wait to address climate change with major government action, the bigger the policy needed and the bigger economic impact that policy will have.

• But the bigger the policy and economic hit get, the harder the politics get.
• So we wait longer still, making the required policy and economic impact ever bigger, which makes the politics even more difficult.

Yes, but: Plausible future scenarios also exist where the impacts of a warming world grow so intense and/or clean-energy technologies become so cheap that eventually these aforementioned feedback loops are broken.

Geopolitics

Carbon tariffs require geopolitical agreements.

How it works: It takes global cooperation to address climate change, given its global nature. But climate change impacts different countries differently, so they're more likely to act on their own, and in their own self-interest.

• But if there's no global cooperation, climate change continues to get worse — prolonging the adverse impacts on different countries, and giving them even less incentive to cooperate with other countries and more incentive to act on their own.

The bottom line:

“The possible scenario that is a real nightmare is if we don’t control human emissions, nature takes over and we lose control of the warming, because of these emissions from natural systems.”

— Philip Duffy, climate scientist

By Amy Harder, author of Generate  

Go to Axios

Related: East Antarctic Melting Hotspot Identified by Japanese Expedition – Ice Melting at Surprisingly Fast Rate: SciTechDaily

airconditioning, carbon tariffs, feedback loops, tipping points, permafrost, polar ice melt, #jailclimatecriminals, 

Carbon tariffs: an instrument for tackling climate change?: AXA

Carbon Tariffs: Another Name for Green Protectionism?

A Carbon Tariff model that might be acceptable to developing countries

Carbon tariffs are a tax on carbon-intensive imports, which recently triggered heated international debates. Certain industrialized countries have been advocating the adoption of carbon tariffs on products imported from developing countries, such as China. 

According to Marco Springmann, a physicist turned economist, the main reason is that certain rich nations have implemented binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while poorer countries have so far resisted legal commitments. Additionally, because many of them simply do not set a price on carbon, they can produce cheaper carbon-intensive goods. Promoters of carbon tariffs thus think that taxing such goods at the border will make up for this difference in price and indirectly regulate the associated emissions.

However, almost a quarter of China’s CO2 emissions come from its

exports. So China and other nations view carbon tariffs as trade sanctions and protectionism. They even threatened to start a “trade war” if such schemes were to be put into place. They stress the role that carbon emissions have played in the industrialization of advanced economies and demand increased financial aid in order to reduce their emissions.

Carbon tariffs to finance clean development

To avoid this coming carbon war, Springmann proposes to recycle the tax revenues from carbon tariffs (claimed in the importing country) to the exporting country as investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. This coupled scheme addresses the concerns about competitiveness and reducing emissions in one part of the world and economic progress in the other. Since it acknowledges the demand for imports as an emissions-causing factor, it may therefore represent a consensus solution within a global climate policy. According to Springmann, a preliminary assessment has indicated that the revenue from this scheme would range between $8 and $50 billion per year, depending on the price of carbon. In comparison, at the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, it was agreed to create a “Fast Start Fund” to support climate adaptation and clean technology in developing countries. The pledged contribution is $30 billion over the next three years. Carbon tariffs would add significant revenue streams to this effort."

Go to original AXA article by Marco Springmann (3 years)


 Related: Young people’s burden: requirement of negative CO2 emissions: Hansen et al


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