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TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 19.10.2018
Diesel and petrol ban should come much faster, say MPs

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News.

Diesel and petrol ban should come much faster, say MPs
BBC News Read Article

A ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars should be brought forward by eight years to 2032, MPs have said. The report by Parliament’s business select committee criticises the government’s Road to Zero Strategy – which aims to ensure all new cars are “effectively zero emission” by 2040 – as “vague and unambitious”. Citing the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on 1.5C of warming, the committee says the government needed to encourage changes in consumer behaviour to decarbonise the economy and tackle climate change, says the Independent. The current targets give “little clarity or incentive to industry or the consumer to invest in electric cars,” said committee chair and Labour MP Rachel Reeves. The report says the government should improve incentives for the uptake of electric vehicles and criticises a recent decision to cut grants for new plug-in hybrid electric vehicles from November, reports Reuters. It also says the country’s infrastructure, to allow for the charging of electric vehicles, was not fit for purpose. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) criticised the report, calling the target “nigh on impossible”, says Financial Times. Chief executive Mike Hawes said: “This is unrealistic and rejects the evidence put forward by SMMT on behalf of the industry, which is investing billions into these technologies but which recognises consumers need greater confidence and support if they are to buy these vehicles in the numbers we all want”. Meanwhile, in Europe, EU lawmakers backed a 35% cut in carbon dioxide emissions from new trucks by 2030, reports Reuters. The move comes after EU nations last week agreed to seek a similar cut in car emissions by the same year. And in the US, Environmental Protection Agency acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has said the agency has the authority to allow sales of higher-ethanol blends of gasoline year-round without an act of Congress, reports Reuters. He added that he “hopes” the oil industry would join the EPA in helping make biofuel policy “function better for the American public, rather than taking it to court [to block it]”.

Trump administration asks high court to halt climate change case
Reuters Read Article

President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the US Supreme Court for a second time to halt a lawsuit filed by young activists who have accused the government of ignoring the urgency of tackling climate change. In the lawsuit, 21 activists aged 11 to 22 said federal officials violated their rights to due process under the US Constitution by failing to adequately address carbon emissions. Justice Department attorneys yesterday asked the the high court for a rare “writ of mandamus” to stop the proceedings, reports the Hill, less than two weeks before a landmark trial is set to begin in federal court in Oregon. The Supreme Court previously rejected a similar plea in July. Another piece in the Hill reports that Environmental Protection Agency acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the agency is taking a recent IPCC report on 1.5C report “very seriously” while touting a number of new EPA rule changes that critics say will only worsen emissions. And also on the topic of 1.5C, the South China Morning Post reports on a new study from the University of Oxford that finds 84% of southeast Asia’s planned and existing fossil fuel power plants are incompatible with meeting the 1.5C limit.

Oil under Surrey? Scepticism raised as Gatwick drillers gush over oil flows
Daily Telegraph Read Article

The Daily Telegraph reports that fresh testing of wells in Surrey suggest up to 1,000 barrels of oil a day could be recovered – three times the previously expected rate. UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) said it will be applying to Surrey County Council for permission to begin commercial drilling in 2019. However, other experts described the announcement as “spurious” and said it was “extremely unlikely” that UKOG would be able to recover as much of the oil reserves as it claims. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the chief executive and chairman of Lundin Petroleum are set to be charged with aggravated crimes against human rights over the Swedish oil company’s role in causing thousands of deaths in South Sudan. After the Swedish government approved a request to indict by prosecutors, the justice minister warned that the duo could face potential lifetime prison sentences if found guilty. Human rights organisations claim that oil exploration in South Sudan at the end of the 1990s by a consortium led by Lundin sparked a war that led to the deaths of thousands of people and the forced displacement of almost 200,000 more. Both Alex Schneiter and Ian Lundin have strongly denied the allegations, describing the ministry of justice’s decision “totally unacceptable”.

Energy firms, green groups call for strong UK carbon price to keep coal at bay
Reuters Read Article

Energy companies and green groups have written separate letters this week to UK chancellor Philip Hammond asking for a strong carbon price to be maintained to prevent a rise in coal-fired power generation and greenhouse gas emissions. The letters come ahead of the forthcoming budget and after the government said it was considering four carbon pricing options for Britain when it leaves the EU next year. Energy companies SSE, Drax and Orsted urged the minister to maintain a strong carbon price to provide a fundamental “economic incentive for lower carbon and renewable generation to replace coal-fired generation”. A separate letter from green groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF says that “given recent gas price rises, a higher total carbon price is now required to maintain this status quo”.

Russian town besieged by polar bears forced off melting Arctic ice
The Daily Telegraph Read Article

A coastal town in the Russian Arctic has been “besieged by hungry polar bears” who are spending more time on land as sea ice melts due to climate change, reports the Daily Telegraph. At least six polar bears were roaming the streets of Dikson – the most northern inhabited place in Russia – during late September when sea ice is at its smallest extent for the year. “Polar bears still haven’t adapted to the rapidly changing variations in the condition of the ice, so a large number of the animals are staying on islands and the coast,” Russian polar bear expert Ilya Mordvintsev said. The town will “remain at risk” until the bears go back out on the sea ice, which is not expected to form until mid-November.

Comment.

I was jailed for my fracking protest. But others face much worse
Simon Roscoe Blevins, The Guardian Read Article

In a piece for the Guardian, anti-fracking protestor Simon Roscoe Blevins – recently freed from prison after his sentence was quashed on appeal – writes that “the ‘justice’ of releasing three white middle-class men from prison does represent a minor victory, but this is dwarfed by the injustices that motivated our protest to begin with”. “Around the world, the planet’s poorest, most vulnerable people, who have done the least to cause climate change, are those most affected by it,” says Blevins. He and his fellow protestors took action against the fracking industry “because the fossil fuel industry represents a further injustice,” he says, with the most vulnerable people in the UK worst affected by fuel poverty. “We need to build an energy system that is clean, affordable and publicly owned – and that meets our need for warm, safe houses,” he concludes. In a separate piece, the Guardian‘s North of England reporter Frances Perraudin speaks to all three of the newly-freed protesters. Elsewhere, the Independent reports that Energy minister Claire Perry has been accused of making a “muddled” case for fracking in the UK. Perry spoke in support of fracking, claiming shale gas extraction was needed to ensure the country is not dependent on gas from Russia. “However, this appears to contradict previous statements she made, which saw her claim that Britain was ‘in no way reliant’ on Russian gas”, notes the Indy.

Opinion: President Trump's failure to fight climate change is a crime against humanity
Jeffrey Sachs, CNN Read Article

“President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Rick Scott, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and others who oppose action to address human-induced climate change should be held accountable for climate crimes against humanity,” writes Jeffrey Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, for CNN. Focusing particularly on Trump, Sachs criticises his response to recent hurricanes hitting the US and his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. He also argues that politicians are “depriv[ing] the people of their lives and property out of profound cynicism, greed, and wilful scientific ignorance”. “The American people are paying a heavy cost for the cynicism and cruelty of politicians in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry,” concludes Sachs: “It is time to hold these reckless politicians to account”. Elsewhere, Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press factchecks comments from Trump on climate change during a recent AP interview. Trump was “wrong to suggest the scientific community is substantially split” on climate change, for example, and that the Paris Agreement puts the US “at an economic disadvantage”.

The Bad News We Need
Multiple authors, Scientific American Read Article

In a blog for Scientific American, a group of six scientists – including Dr Katharine Hayhoe and Prof Marshall Shepherd – write that the IPCC’s new special report on 1.5C of warming might be “a blessing in disguise”. “Perhaps a seemingly insurmountable challenge is exactly what we need,” they say: “Rather than resign ourselves to a dystopian path, or deflect reality through cycles of denial, we need a fundamental attitude shift: we must instead see climate change as one of the greatest opportunities we have ever faced”. “We need to see the incredible possibilities that lie within a world we actively choose to transform, and the healing power of a challenge that requires us to unite as never before,” they continue: “We have a rare opportunity: to purposefully build a just, fair, equitable civilisation on a healthy, diverse and thriving planet”.

Science.

Striking divergences in Earth Observation products may limit their use for REDD+
Environmental Research Letters Read Article

Countries are required to generate baselines of carbon emissions from deforestation for implementing strategies to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and to access results-based payments. Developing these baselines requires accurate maps of carbon stocks and historical deforestation. Global remote sensing products provide low-cost solutions for this information, but there has been little validation of these products at national scales. This study compares available products obtained from remote sensing data, using Guinea-Bissau as a test case. They show that disagreements in estimates of deforestation are striking, and this variation leads to high uncertainty in derived emissions. Higher temporal resolution of remote sensing products is required to reduce this uncertainty.

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