The Covid-19 crisis creates a chance to reset economies on a sustainable footing : The Guardian

New Zealand climate minister says governments must not just return to the way things were, and instead plot a new course to ease climate change

James Shaw

Thu 23 Apr 2020 10.18 AEST

James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister, has asked the country’s independent climate change commission to check whether its emissions targets under the Paris agreement are enough to limit global heating to 1.5C. He explains why he’s prioritising the issue during a strict national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19, which could send New Zealand’s unemployment rate soaring.

To say that we find ourselves in an unprecedented moment is so obvious and has been so often repeated it’s almost become white noise. What is less obvious, however, is where we go from here.

In any significant crisis, let alone one as catastrophic as the Covid-19 pandemic, it is an entirely understandable human reflex to want things to “return to normal”, to “go back to the way they were before”.

And, when faced with economic headwinds – in recent decades, the Asian financial crisis, the global financial crisis and, in our own case, the Christchurch earthquakes) successive governments the world over have directed their efforts to meeting public expectation and getting back to business as usual.

Unfortunately, one of the features of business as usual was a highly polluting and ecologically unsustainable economy on a pathway that was locking in catastrophic climate change.

Successive responses to economic crises have seen climate change and the natural environment we depend on for life on Earth as a nice-to-have, something to think about once we’ve got the economy back on track and there’s a bit more money to go round.

Read the complete The Guardian article

South Korea to implement Green New Deal after ruling party election win: Climate Home News

Published on 16/04/2020, 10:25am
 

Seoul is to set a 2050 net zero emissions goal and end coal financing, after the Democratic Party’s landslide victory in one of the world’s first Covid-19 elections 

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's landslide victory in the country's parliamentary election gives his party a clear mandate to implement its Green New Deal (Photo: Republic of Korea/Jeon Han/Flickr)

By Chloé Farand

South Korea is on track to set a 2050 carbon neutrality goal and end coal financing after its ruling Democratic Party won an absolute majority in the country’s parliamentary elections on Wednesday.

President Moon Jae-in’s party won a landslide 180 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, up from 120 previously, in a huge show of faith in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Democratic Party’s decisive victory will enable President Moon to press ahead with its newly adopted Green New Deal agenda during the last two years of his mandate.

Under the plan, South Korea has become the first country in East Asia to pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to submit updated climate plans to 2030 and long-term decarbonisation strategies to the UN before the end of the year.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

In its climate manifesto published last month, the Democratic Party promised to pass a “Green New Deal” law that would steer the country’s transformation into a low-carbon economy.


Read the original complete article

Coronavirus doubters follow climate denial playbook: Yale Climate Connections

Whether denying coronavirus or climate change, many deploy the same unfounded strategies and messages.

 

For the climate community, observing U.S. national political leaders’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic has been like watching the climate crisis unfold on fast-forward. Many – particularly on the political right – have progressed through the same five stages of science denial in the face of both threats.


 
For climate change, the denial process began decades ago. NASA climate scientist

James Hansen testified to Congress in 1988 about the dangers posed by global warming; the fossil fuel industry formed the Global Climate Coalition the very next year to launch a campaign casting doubt on mainstream climate science. In November 1989, President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, climate denier John Sununu, sabotaged efforts to develop the first international climate change treaty. Exxon in particular spent the following decades and tens of millions of dollars funding a network of think tanks to propagate climate science denial. In a memo leaked in 2003, Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised G.O.P. politicians, “You need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

Analysis

The same denial process has unfolded with coronavirus, but over a far more compressed time frame. In both crises, early warnings from scientific experts went unheeded and were often discouraged or suppressed. As a result, the American government began responding only after each threat’s impacts had become widespread and undeniable. At that point, due to the missed opportunity to prevent the outbreak of impacts, much of the response came in the form of damage control. America’s efforts to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus cases, like its efforts to bend the carbon emissions curve, were deployed too slowly.

The five stages of denial

In 2013, as the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was due to be released, the five stages of climate denial were on display in many conservative media outlets. Watching the reactions to the unfolding coronavirus crisis in early 2020 created a sense of déjà vu, as many leaders exhibited the same stages of denial. In fact, many of the same actors who deny the climate crisis also were (or still are) denying coronavirus threats. Some observers have remarked that the Venn diagram of coronavirus and climate deniers is nearly a circle.

Stage 1: Deny the problem exists. This is denial at its most basic, as there is no need to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. If the issue is a hoax, as the president repeatedly has asserted about both global warming and coronavirus, the status quo can be maintained. But denying a problem doesn’t change its physical or epidemiological properties, so in the face of real scientifically quantified threats, Stage 1 denial cannot last very long.

Stage 2: Deny responsibility. Upon accepting the threat posed by coronavirus outbreaks, numerous conservative politicians and pundits have tried to shift the blame to China, with many including the president labeling it “the Chinese virus,” echoed over 100 times on Fox News. Similarly, after accepting that climate change is happening, many have tried to blame it on natural cycles, or, if they accept humanity’s responsibility, to likewise blame it on China. But here again denial falls short; shifting blame does not slow a physical or viral crisis.

Stage 3: Downplay the threat. President Trump spent weeks downplaying the threat of coronavirus, early maintaining that it had only infected one person in America, that “one day like a miracle it will disappear,” that “within a couple of days [the number of infected Americans] is going to be down to close to zero,” and so on. Fox News and other conservative media outlets followed his lead in downplaying the risks. Similarly, Trump has said the climate “will change back,” and conservative media outlets have spent decades arguing that climate change is no big deal. Yet, as the devastation of coronavirus and climate change impacts has become a reality, doubters have been increasingly forced to move beyond Stage 3 denial.

Stage 4: Attack the solutions as too costly. Trump has claimed that coronavirus curve-flattening measures recommended by experts – like long-term social distancing – are too costly. He instead suggested preemptively loosening social distancing measures to reopen the national economy “sooner rather than later” (an approach Fox News has also championed), as well as various unproven drug treatments, with Fox News again following suit. A number of ideologues have argued that older Americans would rather die than cause the economic disruption associated with extended social distancing. Some partisan policymakers and pundits similarly oppose virtually all large-scale climate solutions as too expensive, instead proposing worthwhile but inadequate steps like simply planting trees or capturing carbon from power plants to inexplicably use for extracting yet more fossil fuels.

Stage 5: It’s too late. Some have proposed, once it became obvious that the coronavirus outbreak had become widespread, that governments should just maintain the status quo, try to build herd immunity, and cope with the consequences (such as overwhelmed health care systems that could result in millions of deaths). Climate justice essayist Mary Heglar coined the term “de-nihilist” to describe those who have similarly succumbed to the fear that it’s too late to stop climate change. Such attitudes only hamper efforts to constructively address both problems.

Coronavirus is a learning opportunity for climate change

Because American leadership proceeded through these stages of denial, it wasted valuable months that could have been spent preparing for and curbing the spread of coronavirus. For comparison, South Korea diagnosed its first case of COVID-19 on January 20 – the same day as the U.S. – but almost immediately launched an aggressive program of testing, tracing, and quarantining.

By March, South Korea was conducting over 10,000 coronavirus tests per day, and its new cases fell below 150 per day by mid-March. Despite a population six times larger, the U.S. had reached the threshold of 10,000 new tests per day only on March 16, and has consistently lagged in testing on a per capita basis. As testing in the U.S. finally began to catch up to the viral spread, the number of new coronavirus cases in America accelerated past 10,000 per day by March 23, reaching 580,000, by April 14 compared to 10,564 South Korean cases (222 deaths) as of that date.

After this late start, Trump has regularly argued that the U.S. “cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” Those who oppose climate solutions similarly argue that making investments to bend the carbon emissions curve would be worse than the consequences of climate change – consequences that include increased food insecurity; intensified hurricanes, wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, and floods; and more species extinctions, violent conflicts, and death.

Both arguments run counter to expert advice, misunderstand the problem, and present a false choice. In reality, failing to make the necessary early investments to head off each threat will result in economy-crippling consequences, whether in the form of overwhelmed health care systems in the case of coronavirus or more deadly extreme weather events in the case of climate change.
Experts agree that to protect both the economy and public health, government responses must focus on flattening the coronavirus curve and making investments to rapidly curb carbon pollution. In fact, a new study on the 1918 flu pandemic found that measures like social distancing “not only lower mortality, they also mitigate the adverse economic consequences of a pandemic.” Nipping the problem quickly and aggressively yields the best outcome for both the economy and public health. Put simply, suffering and death are costly.

Observing the damage resulting from denial of both the coronavirus and climate crises raises the question, how did humans evolve this apparent psychological flaw? Physician-scientist Ajit Varki has hypothesized that comprehending one’s own mortality is a psychological evolutionary barrier for most species, because this realization would amplify the fear of death and thus “would have then reduced the reproductive fitness of such isolated individuals.” 
 Varki posits that humans may have overcome this barrier by developing denial as a coping mechanism, but that “If this theory turns out to be the correct explanation for the origin of the species, it might ironically also be now sowing the seeds of our demise,” since denial now obstructs efforts to address threats like climate change and coronavirus.

As climate activist and author Bill McKibben put it, “You can’t negotiate with physics and chemistry, you can’t compromise with them or spin them away … coronavirus is teaching us precisely this lesson about biology as well. Reality is real and sometimes it bites pretty hard.” Or, as Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said more bluntly, “Denial is not likely to be a successful strategy for survival.”

But because of its compressed time frame, coronavirus has provided humanity an opportunity to learn this lesson and apply it to curbing the worst of the climate crisis. Contrary to Stage 5 denial, it’s not yet too late to avoid the most severe climate change impacts.

By Dana Nuccitelli

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

From Yale Climate Connections

The world's top climate negotiator is feeling optimistic. She says you should too: CNN

(CNN)At first glance, Christiana Figueres doesn't have that many reasons to be optimistic.The Costa Rican diplomat played a pivotal role in negotiating the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. But while the deal was widely praised as a landmark achievement, it has since begun to crumble. 

 

The United States left the pact under President Donald Trump, and negotiations over key aspects of the deal's implementation have repeatedly failed.

 

Yet Figueres says she still feels upbeat about fighting climate change.

 

"It's a deliberate choice," she told CNN in a video call. "This is not about subjecting ourselves to huge sacrifices that lead us to feeling that we're having a worse life, it's actually exactly the opposite," she said.

 

"This is about moving toward a much better life, a life that has better health conditions, that has better urban conditions, that has better transport conditions, that has safer investment conditions."

A slight woman with short hair, Figueres has the sort of no-nonsense attitude that's called for when the future of the world is at stake and it's up to you to find a solution. 

 

She took over as the UN's top climate official in 2010, following the failed Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. 

 

When the Paris Agreement was signed five years later, Figueres was widely credited with making it happen. She also made the radical decision to bring the private sector and NGOs into the negotiations.

 

The idea that fighting climate change will make people's lives better is a key theme in Figueres' upcoming book "The Future We Choose."

 

Figueres and the book's co-author Tom Rivett-Carnac, who were both speaking from the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum in January, told CNN their "stubborn optimism" is inspired by changes they have witnessed first hand. 

 

"We are in a different world than we were two years ago, the level of civil disobedience that has emerged all around the world, we haven't seen for a generation, it's incredibly positive," Rivett-Carnac said. 

 

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

 

The problem, she said, is that there isn't much time to take this control: A decade, at best. 

 

"Ten years from now, in 2030, we will either have written a very positive story, or we will really be condemned to an endless destruction. So for these 10 years we're holding the pen," Figueres said.

 

Read the original CNN article

The Guardian view on the climate and coronavirus: global warnings

Steep falls in emissions have been the pandemic’s immediate effect. But what’s needed is a green recovery

So far, discussions of a coronavirus exit strategy have mainly focused on the steps that could bring an end to the lockdown. In the short term, both in the UK and elsewhere, there is nothing more desirable than letting people resume their lives, once it is safe to do so.

But the speed of the “return to normal” is not the only thing that matters. The manner in which the world’s leaders manage the colossal economic and political shocks caused by the virus is also of the utmost importance. And at the top of their list of priorities, alongside human welfare, must be the biosphere and its future.

Sorry to disappoint climate deniers, but coronavirus makes the low-carbon transition more urgent: The Conversation

"Deniers argue that further disruption to economies and societies will be avoided at all costs. 

Sorry to be the harbinger of denier disappointment, but there is every reason to expect that the virus crisis will strengthen and accelerate the imperative to transition to a low-carbon world by mid-century."

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"Time is of the essence

As Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, states in her recent book:

“We are in the critical decade. It is no exaggeration to say that what we do regarding emissions reductions between now and 2030 will determine the quality of human life on this planet for hundreds of years to come, if not more.”

This will require about a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 – way more than is contemplated in the Paris agreement – to achieve even net zero emissions by 2050.

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Read more: Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics

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There are a few “pluses” from the experience of coronavirus. Emissions are falling (although clearly no one would advocate a global recession as a climate strategy). And the response of governments to the crisis has seen decisive domestic action – working individually, but together, in meeting what is a global challenge.

Individual governments have demonstrated how quickly they can move once they accept the reality of a crisis. We’ve also seen just how far they’re prepared to go in terms of policy responses – lockdowns, social distancing, testing, rapid and historically significant fiscal expansions, and massive liquidity injections.

It’s noteworthy that issues that in “normal times” could not have been ignored – such as civil liberties and concerns about intrusive governments and effective competition – have so easily been set aside as part of emergency responses."

Read The complete The Conversation story 

#jail climate criminals

New research puts myth to bed: EVs will lower emissions: The DriveIn

New research has busted the myths around electric vehicles and emissions – confirming that in virtually every part of the world, including still coal-dominated Australia, switching to an electric vehicle will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, confirmed that in 95 per cent of the world, switching to an electric vehicle from a petrol equivalent would lead to an overall reduction in greenhouse emissions, even when the full life-cycle of a vehicle is taken into account.

There has been some conjecture over the emissions savings that could be achieved by a switch to an electric vehicle, with myths being pushed by the likes of climate contrarion Bjorn Lomborg in the Murdoch media that electric vehicles have no environmental benefits as they still may still source their electricity from fossil fuel power stations.

But the study, led by researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands, working with the universities of Exeter and Cambridge, found that electric vehicles did indeed lead to lower emissions, even in regions where a large portion of electricity generation is sourced from fossil fuels.

Read more in the original article