The Two Sides to Canada’s Post Pandemic Recovery: by Rolly Montpellier @Below2C

There are two sides to Canada’s post pandemic recovery. On the bright side there’s massive public support for a recovery that puts people before profits and tackles both the climate crisis and the coronavirus crisis simultaneously. Hundreds of organizations all across the land have endorsed these Just Recovery Principles. But there is also a dark side.

Canada's commitment to different energy types since beginning od Covid 19 pandemic

 

1. The Dark Side

“The last time we had a financial meltdown (the 2008-09 recession) it was followed by a record surge in fossil fuel burning,” wrote Barry Saxifrage and Chris Hatch recently in the National Observer. 
 “At the time there was hope that governments would use their huge, future-shaping stimulus to transition to a climate-safe economy.”

Fossil Fuel Burning Annual Totals

Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, the burning of fossils soared in 2010 and continued its upward trajectory every single year since. That is, until the pandemic as the Global Fossil Fuel Burning chart illustrates. The blue dotted line on the chart shows the projection for an 8% decline in CO² for 2020.

The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian

"Thirty years ago we were warned. Now is our last chance to listen

 

Climate Catastrophe

Thirty years ago this week, the population of Earth was given official notification that it faced a threat of unprecedented magnitude. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, spewed into the atmosphere from factories and vehicles burning fossil fuels, were pinpointed, definitively, as triggers of future climate change. 

Melting icecaps, rising sea levels and increasing numbers of extreme weather events would be the norm for the 21st century unless action were taken, warned the authors of the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists had been charged by the IPCC, which had been set

When Arctic Ice Melts

up two years earlier, with establishing whether climate change was a real prospect and, if it was, to look at the main drivers of that threat. They concluded, in a report released in August 1990, that the menace was real and that coal, gas and oil would be the principal causes of global heating. Unless controls were imposed on their consumption, temperature rises of 0.3C a decade would be occurring in the 21st century, bringing havoc in their wake."
 Observer editorial

Go to complete story of The Guardian 

 Related: There is an answer to post Covid-19 economic chaos.

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Brazil slashes budget to fight climate change as deforestation spikes: Reuters

Climate change driving Brazil's drought; Climate Change News.com

BRASILIA 

"Efforts to keep the Amazon rainforest standing and reduce Brazil’s planet-warming emissions are being hampered by budget cuts for the country’s environmental watchdog and its main climate change programme, researchers have said. 

Brazil has seen a sharp spike in deforestation under the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro, with less than half the forest inspectors it had a decade ago and the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly across the Amazon region. 

Compared with 2019, the first five months of 2020 registered a

Amazon deforestration: Climate Change News com

substantial drop in government spending on forest inspection activities carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama). 

For January to May 2019, the amount allocated was R$17.4 million ($3.24 million), against R$5.3 million so far in 2020, according to figures provided by the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC), a non-profit organisation that has analysed Brazil’s public budget for more than 30 years. 

Sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into gas would make Australia an international pariah (excerpt) : The Guardian

"The world price for gas continues to dive."

"If environmentalists proposed a comparable
 guarantee to windfarms or industrial-scale
 solar or hydrogen they would be hounded
 for blatant rent seeking."

The Morrison government’s post-Covid recovery commission has called for an astonishing level of support for a declining carbon fuel.

"Gas in our own national electricity market has declined by 29% since 2014 and renewables sprung up by 70%, according to data from OpenNEM. The official market operator believes by 2040 the role of gas is going to be smaller. The gas glut on the world market will last the decade.

A decision by Canberra to rescue a declining carbon fuel by sinking billions into gas would mean Australia having to say officially it was abandoning its Paris targets. Given that our 2019-20 fire season is the most recent image the world has of us, this would brand us an international pariah.

Liveris admitted he “tingled with pride” being recruited as an adviser by the US president, Donald Trump. But a Biden-Harris presidency will elevate climate diplomacy and have little regard for an Australia turning its back on climate action as flamboyantly as Brazil’s president Jay Bolsonaro who allows fires to denude the Amazon."
Bob Carr

Read the complete (Aug 21) The Guardian story 

Related: There is an answer to post Covid-19 economic chaos.

#climatecriminals, #methanegas, #climate crisis, #jailclimatecriminals, #corporations, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #climateaction, Paris Targets, 

Climate change is an economic issue (excerpt from Labor would have to be politically insane to follow Fitzgibbon's fossil fuel folly ): The Guardian

"Climate change is an economic issue, not a matter of religious observance, or inner city high fashion. All the ridiculous language of “belief” and “scepticism” – as if climate science was astrology, or a cult, or a wellness guru – has been entirely unhelpful to progress. 

Labor is fully capable of putting workers at the centre of a plan for economic transformation which will see carbon-intensive industries scale back and other more sustainable industries prosper in a low carbon world. 

That’s how Bob Hawke would have framed climate and energy policy in the 2020s, and Hawke presided over one of the most successful Labor governments in the party’s history."

Read complete The Guardian article 

 Related: There is an answer to post Covid-19 economic chaos.

#Australia, Labor Party, economic impact, jobs, #jailclimatecriminals, 

The Green Recovery: how Australia can close the recycling loop: The Guardian - Video

Remember when you would take your TV to get repaired if it was broken? 

Now, most people just buy a new one. 

When a new phone comes out, we ditch the old one. Each time we do this we're eating into a finite supply of resources and creating mountains of waste. 

A circular economy – also known as closing the loop – is when used items don't end up in landfill, but instead become the building blocks for new products. 

There's a whole industry waiting to be developed in Australia, if governments would get on board. 

This man turns discarded coffee cups into roads.

Related: There is an answer to post Covid-19 economic chaos.

Draining the nation's energy: how Canberra lags industry on green power (excerpt): SMH

BHP seeks buyers for coal mines, oil fields in portfolio shake-up

"Australia is host to a stranded asset. That is, something once valuable that is now worthless as events have moved on.

 

We call it Canberra. Specifically, Parliament House. Even more specifically, the federal energy and climate debate.

The rest of the country has moved on. The Coalition government and the Labor opposition are both policy anachronisms stuck in a cul de sac of dead arguments.

"The Minister for Energy and the Environment in the Liberal government of NSW, Matt Kean, has a message for Canberra:

'The community has moved on, the market has moved on, capital

Carbon tariffs will soon impact on trade.

has moved on," he tells me. "The only people standing in the way are those defending vested interests, the beneficiaries of the fossil fuel industry. Those MPs are defending Blockbuster in a Netflix world.' "

"As Kean's comments demonstrate, Australia's state governments are moving on, too. Including Liberal ones. Consider four of the developments in the real world – the digital world of Kean's metaphor, as opposed to the vintage-model videotape – in Australia in just the past four days.

Our Renewable Future

On Tuesday, the world's biggest mining company, BHP Billiton, announced its plans to sell off all its thermal coal mines, the type of coal burned to make electricity, within two years. It's also selling down some of its other carbon-intensive assets and has committed to net-zero carbon emissions from its operations by 2050. Executive pay is now linked to meeting the firm's emissions targets.

Climate Criminals

"On Thursday, the National Farmers Federation announced its members had voted to adopt an economy-wide policy of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The peak farm industry body has long been one of the most politically conservative lobbies in the land. "There is a huge potential for Australia to be a global leader in low-emissions agriculture," said the NFF president, Fiona Simson. Some farm sectors are well ahead in cutting their own emissions – the red meat industry has committed to net zero by 2030.

On Friday, the big Australian insurance firm Suncorp announced it would no longer invest in, finance or insure any new oil and gas ventures. That's on top of its policy banning dealings with new thermal coal. It has pledged to phase out all its thermal coal exposures within five years.

Climate Criminals

Also on Friday, it was reported that Australia's biggest electricity generator, AGL, had lodged planning documents disclosing its first concrete steps towards shutting its coal-fired Liddell power station in 2022. The big Liddell generators in NSW's Hunter Valley are almost 50 years old. The plant is past its useful life. AGL, Australia's No. 1 emitter, has committed itself to net-zero emissions by 2050. It, too, will link executive pay to meeting its emissions target."

Read the original August 21, 2020, SMH article 

Related: Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action (excerpt) : The Guardian

#climatechange, carbon addiction, #carbonstorage, #climatecriminals, #corporations, #farming, #economy, #fossilfuelcompanies, #trade-tariffs-on carbon-offenders