Climate Change Action

CRC produce a monthly review of all topics related to climate change policy.n This newsletter is know as e-Carbon News. My 10 highlights from this issue are:

1. The Asia-Pacific partnership has agreed on a plan of Action...Great!

The strategy outlined in the Asia-Pacific Partnership Communiqué contained no targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, no timetable to deploy so-called clean technologies, no carrots to encourage business and industry to cut emissions, no stick to penalise them if they failed to reduce, or worse, increased their emissions, and only a small amount of new government money to
research and develop clean power.

2. Carbon dioxide concentrations continue to rise steeply.

"unpublished measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Mauna Loa station show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to have increased by 2.2 parts per million in just 10 months, continuing a trend of increasingly abrupt increases over the past four years. The Independent quotes unnamed scientists as believing this may be the first evidence that climate
change is starting to produce itself(posotive feedback), as rising temperatures
so alter natural systems that the Earth itself releases more gas, driving the
thermometer ever higher."

3. Dealing with climate change from the bottom up. (continued...)

"States in the US, many Democratic-leaning but also some Republican states,
increasingly are regulating energy use and emissions, working around a
Republican-controlled federal government that state officials say has not done
enough."

4.Is Blair trying to lead the world on climate change mitigation or just look like a Bliar?

"Britain's greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2004, the second consecutive annual
increase. Britain is still on target to meet its Kyoto target of 2008-2012
annual emissions being 12.5 per cent lower than 1990 emissions, but is not
expected to meet its self-imposed target of a 20 per cent reduction by 2010."

( This is a disgrace given Blair's words in the past, but, there has recently been a lot of cross-party action on climate change, so although the govornment isnt currently on-track i believe this will be sorted out, as a political nessecity)

5.More Business action on climate change.

"Goldman Sachs concedes there are real financial costs to ignoring the
environment: through its new environmental policy it undertakes to disclose
greenhouse gas emissions of all its operations, make $1 billion available for
investments in renewable energy, set up a think tank to identify other green
markets, work on public policy measures relating to climate change, conduct more rigorous assessments of new projects' impacts on the environment and on
indigenous peoples, and refuse to finance extractive projects in World Heritage
sites. "

6. Sweden plans to free itself of oil dependency BY 2020

"Sweden's Minister for Sustainability has outlined a policy program intended to
free Sweden from dependence on oil by 2020. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would
give us enormous advantages," wrote Minister Mona Sahlin in an article outlining
the program."

7. Carbon sequestration proto-type launched in Australia.

"Australia's first carbon dioxide geosequestration project is planned for the
Otway Basin in western Victoria. The $30 million project is expected to begin
storing the greenhouse gas deep underground by the end of the year."

8. African drought deepens as a result of climate change.

"The relentless drought across East Africa is deepening because of global
climate change as well as the continuing destruction of forests, grasslands,
wetlands and other critical ecosystems"

9. 2005 the hottest year on record.

2005 was the hottest recorded on the earth's surface, and it was
particularly hot in the Arctic, according to NASA. Some other research groups
that study climate change rank 2005 as the second warmest year, based on
comparisons through November. The primary difference among the analyses,
according to the NASA scientists, is the inclusion of the Arctic in the NASA
analysis. Although there are few weather stations in the Arctic, the available
data indicate that 2005 was unusually warm in the Arctic.

10. US threaten to sue EU for climate change mitigation.[most absurd story of the week ed.]

"Arguing that in relation to climate change “there are fundamental issues of
science that still remain unresolved” and suggesting that Europe's plan to
include aviation in its emissions trading scheme would contravene the 1944
Chicago Convention, the US Federal Aviation Administration is threatening to
take legal action unless the European Union backs down and confines its
inclusions of aviation emissions to flights which both depart and land within
Europe"

Postscript; InternationalA, RenewablesA, NewslettersA