Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants

"Green finance experts say Australia is out of step with World Bank, Europe and the US, which are using funding to combat global warming.

Australia is the only developed country that allows climate change funding to be used to upgrade coal-fired power plants, green finance experts say.

Experts say allowing Vales Point coal-fired power station to register with the Morrison government’s emissions reduction fund, rebadged this week as a “climate solutions” policy, puts Australia out of step with the World Bank, Europe and the US, which have all rejected using climate financing for coal power retrofits.

The World Bank has issued US$13bn in green bonds since

Criminal Countries

2008 to stimulate spending to combat global warming.

China has used green bonds to help build new coal-fired plants to replace older, dirtier stations on the grounds it reduces nitrogen-based emissions causing the country’s oppressive air pollution. But it announced in December it would no longer consider “clean coal” plants – which still emit significant amounts of greenhouse gas – investments in green technology.

Sean Kidney, chief executive of the London-based Climate Bonds Initiative, says China’s shift leaves Australia out on its own."

Read the complete article

Related: The worst-case scenario
 

The worst-case scenario

Vote for my future climate

"Stephen Schneider explores what a world with 1,000 parts per million of CO 2 in its atmosphere might look like."

.... "Fairness must also be taken into account, given that some people would be at much greater risk than others: poor people in hot countries with little adaptive capacity, for instance, indigenous peoples and those exposed to hurricanes or wildfires, or living in low-lying areas. The elderly and children with asthma or other lung ailments would be particularly affected by urban air pollution or wildfire smoke plumes exacerbated by the extreme warming.

The economic outlook is no better. With warming of just 1–3 °C, projections show a mixture of benefit and loss. More than a few degrees of warming, however, and aggregate monetary impacts become negative virtually everywhere; and in a 1,000 p.p.m. scenario current literature suggests the outcomes would be almost universally negative and could amount to a substantial loss of gross domestic product. Millions of people at risk from flooding and

water supply problems would provide further economic challenges." ...

Read Stephen Schneider's essay

See also:

Climate Hackers - 'last ditch solutions to slow global warming': ABC 

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The (Australian) government thinks we’re idiots and is not serious about reducing emissions : The Guardian

Australia's gas comparative emissions 2016- Click to enlarge

"Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult"

"This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.

Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart 
 

Vote for my future climate

the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required."

Read the excellent, original The Guardian article 

Related: California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030

#carbon emissions  #carbon   #Australia   #scottmorrison   #climate action   #2degreesC

UK MPs debate climate after school strike – but only a handful turn up: The Guardian

 

A handful of MPs debate climate change in the House of Commons. Photograph: parliamentlive.tv

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 Read The Guardian article

Related: Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants

California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030

Greenhouse gas pollution

 "California is challenging Mr Trump's decision to scrap his predecessor's environmental policies" July 2017

 

"California legislators have voted to extend a law to cut carbon emissions, weeks after President Donald Trump said the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accord. 

The policy, which requires firms to purchase permits to release pollutants, will be extended to the year 2030.

California Governor Jerry Brown said Republicans and Democrats had taken "courageous action" with the move.
The US state aims to cut greenhouse gases by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030."


"California is the second-biggest producer of carbon dioxide through fossil fuels among US states."

Read the BBC article

Related:

BBC: climate-change-next-generation-will-bear-the-cost

Aussie rodent becomes first 'climate change extinction': EWN

The rat-like Bramble Cay melomys -- whose only known habitat was a small sandy island in far northern Australia -- has not been spotted in a decade. 

SYDNEY - Australia officially declared a Great Barrier Reef rodent extinct on Tuesday, making it the first mammal believed to have been killed off by human-induced climate change.

Climate Hackers - 'last ditch solutions to slow global warming': ABC

'Climate Hackers' on  ABC February 26, 2019

For years scientists have been quietly working on extreme, last ditch solutions to slow global warming - just in case governments worldwide don’t get their acts together.

Climate Hackers: The full episode