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TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 04.11.2020
US formally exits global climate pact amid election uncertainty

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News.

US formally exits global climate pact amid election uncertainty
Reuters Read Article

With the results in the US election still uncertain, many outlets report the news that the country has formally withdrawn from the Paris Agreement today, with Reuters noting the move “fulfill[s] a years-long promise by president Donald Trump to withdraw the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter from the global pact to fight climate change”. The newswire adds that Democratic challenger Joe Biden has “promised to rejoin the agreement if elected”. Reuters quotes UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa saying: “The US withdrawal will leave a gap in our regime, and the global efforts to achieve the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement.” It says the US is the only one of 197 signatories to the Paris deal to have withdrawn. The Guardian reports the news under the headline: “Fate of climate crisis hangs on election as US exits Paris agreement.” The paper notes: “Pete Betts, the former lead climate negotiator for the EU and the UK, said global action will continue, albeit at a slower pace without the US…A re-engaged US, however, could pressure allies like Japan, Canada and Australia to step up, Betts said.” The Hill, the IndependentVox, the i newspaperBusinessGreen and Axios all report the US formally leaving the Paris Agreement today. The Hill quotes Kelley Kizzier of the NGO EDF Action saying another Trump term would be “essentially status quo” for US climate action. Reuters reports a call from investors with a collective $30tn in assets “urg[ing] the US to quickly rejoin” Paris. Nature has a “news explainer” on what the US exit from Paris means for the world. The New York Times has a look at “how it happened, what it means and what might happen next”. BBC News has a Q&A on the Paris withdrawal.

According to E&E News, the election will “test [the] climate movement’s durability”, while Bloomberg says “climate change is on the ballot”, given the candidates’ “starkly different plans for the future of energy and the planet”. InsideClimate News also says climate change was “on Americans’ minds” heading into the election. Axios looks back on “Trump’s energy era”, noting: “Natural gas and renewables have kept squeezing coal out of power markets, despite Trump’s pro-coal push, and don’t look for that to change.” Axios also notes how Trump “ramp[ed] up fossil fuel tweets ahead of election day”. E&E News via Scientific American looks back at how “climate change – and research – raced forward as Trump turned his back” over the past four years. Meanwhile, Reuters reports comments from Brazil’s vice president, saying his country’s rainforest policy will not change if Biden wins the election.

Category 4 Hurricane Eta expected to dump catastrophic rains in Central America
Yale Climate Connections Read Article

Several outlets report on the category 4 Hurricane Eta, which has made landfall in Nicaragua, bringing what Yale Climate Connections describes as “catastrophic rains of up to 35 inches [89cm]”. The piece notes that prior to Eta, only four category 4 or 5 hurricanes had ever been seen in November, including three since 1999. The Hill quotes the US National Hurricane Centre saying Eta is bringing “life-threatening storm surges, catastrophic winds and flash flooding” to parts of central America. Reuters reports that it has already caused “deadly mudslides” in Nicaragua. For the Independent, its new climate correspondent Daisy Dunne talks to a climate activist about Typhoon Goni, which hit the Philippines on Sunday and was “the world’s most powerful storm this year, according to some estimates”. The article quotes the activist saying Goni is “proof to our world leaders that climate change is real”.

New Vietnam law threatens to delay major coal projects – thinktank
Reuters Read Article

Four large coal-fired power stations worth a combined $9bn could be delayed by a new law in Vietnam, Reuters reports, citing a report by a US-based thinktank. Reuters adds: “The law, which comes into effect from January next year, will put particular pressure on Japanese and South Korean investors who are already pushing hard to close deals, as their governments and global financial institutions signal an accelerated exit from fossil fuel investments, the report said.” In other coal news, Reuters reports that the Philippines “has stopped accepting new proposals for coal-based power projects to encourage investment in other energy sources like natural gas and renewables, the government’s energy chief said on Wednesday”. Reuters also reports that millions have been left without power in Punjab after protestors blocked coal shipments “in protest at new farm laws passed by prime minister Narendra Modi’s government”. In South Africa, the country’s human rights commission has condemned the killing of an activist who opposed a coal mine, Reuters reports.

Shell’s climate poll on Twitter backfires spectacularly
The Guardian Read Article

A poll posted on Twitter by oil giant Shell has “backfired spectacularly”, reports the Guardian, adding that the firm stands “accused of gaslighting the public”. The poll asked users “what are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?”, the paper explains, drawing incredulous responses from climate scientists, activists, journalists and politicians. MailOnline also reports the story, saying Shell faces a “backlash on social media” after “seem[ing] to suggest that other people’s behaviour was to blame” for emissions.

Comment.

We can avert irreversible climate change
Martin Wolf, Financial Times Read Article

In a comment for the Financial Times, columnist Martin Wolf writes that “[climate] action is both essential and affordable – but it demands international leaders’ co-operation”. As a result, Wolf says that a win for Donald Trump in the US election would be “nowhere more consequential than for climate change”. When it comes to successfully avoiding dangerous warming, he says: “Without active US engagement, success seems inconceivable. Even with it, it would be unlikely. But, crucially, it would be conceivable.” Wolf points to recent analysis from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which he summarises as: “In brief, the IMF insists that humanity can have its cake and eat it: both higher incomes and a safe climate.” He says the IMF finds reaching net-zero would have only a “modest short-term cost” set against “far greater long-term costs of failure”, which makes the case for acting “overwhelming”. Wolf concludes: “If we want to prevent a dangerous shift in the planet’s climate, we need to act far more decisively than hitherto. We are drinking fossil fuels in the earth’s last-chance saloon. The time has come for humanity to sober up.”

More capital needs to flow to greener activities
Editorial, Financial Times Read Article

An editorial in the Financial Times reflects on the “important shift” of recent net-zero pledges from the “big east Asian economies” and says: “More private capital needs to flow to greener activities. Asset managers must play their part.” The piece adds: “The good news is there has been a surge in investment behind environmental, social and governance goals.” But it notes that a lack of consistent standards on what is an is not green “has opened the door to greenwashing”, raising the importance of “find[ing] ways to hold [companies] to account”. (The i newspaper says the UK’s competition regulator is to investigate consumer product “greenwashing”.) The FT editorial concludes: “[T]he EU has created a useful road map for the newer members of the 2050 net-zero club. Setting a 2050 target is an important first step but it must be backed up with more immediate goals for 2030, and policies that nudge financial flows in the right direction. Other countries are looking at following this path, which cannot happen too soon. There is still time to act but the window is closing fast.” Writing for Nikkei, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd says the net-zero pledges from China, Japan and South Korea are “good news for the planet” regardless of the outcome of the US election. Rudd writes: “Beyond the symbolism of these political commitments, they are first and foremost massive market signals. This is especially the case for China, Japan and Korea’s major trading partners, including their largest import markets for coal.” In the Sydney Morning Herald, economics editor Ross Gittins says: “The big question for Scott Morrison and his colleagues is whether they want to be a backward-looking or forward-looking government. Do they want to enshrine Australia as the last giant of the disappearing world of fossil fuels, and pay the price of declining relevance to the changing needs of our trading partners, with all the loss of jobs and growth that would entail?”

For the Times Red Box, former Conservative leader Lord Michael Howard writes under the headline: “China raises the diplomatic stakes on climate change.” He says that despite China recently “not be[ing] a good actor on the international stage”, there are “areas of common interest on which ways can be found to work together”, including climate change. Howard says in order to secure a successful COP26 in Glasgow next year, the UK’s Boris Johnson “must also have constructive engagement with China as a central plank”. He adds: “The government should waste no time in engaging seriously with China on climate change, not least because the European Union is already doing so.” Separately, a piece from Financial Times city editor Jonathan Ford looks at an example of “questionable” green investments. He argues: “The confusion surrounding ethical investment is unlikely to be solved by more auditors and standards. Such steps will just drown investors in paper, while not getting the world much further along the desired ethical path. There is a only one way to achieve moral imperatives such as decarbonisation and diversity: establish laws and rules that deliver the outcomes you wish to achieve.”

This election isn't about the next four years. It's about the next four millennia
Bill McKibben, The Guardian Read Article

Writing in the Guardian, veteran environmentalist Bill McKibben says that a second Trump term “would be catastrophic” for efforts to tackle warming. He says that despite lasting only four years, a second term “may determine the flavour of the next four millennia – maybe the next 40”. McKibben explains: “If the world’s largest economy is acting as a brake on climate progress, rather than accelerator, progress will be lurching at best. There will be no way to put any kind of pressure on leaders like Russia’s Putin or Brazil’s Bolsonaro. The effective chance to halt the rise in temperature at anything like the targets envisioned in the Paris Accords will slip by forever. And the job of future presidents will increasingly involve responding to disasters that it’s no longer possible to prevent.”

Also writing in the Guardian, Richie Merzian of thinktank the Australia Institute says that Biden as president “will pursue countries seen as ‘cheating’ [in the words of his election platform] on climate action”. Merzian says “Australia may be a target of that pursuit”. Meanwhile, BusinessGreen editor James Murray writes: “The world stands at a crossroad: one path keeps the global 2C goal and net zero hopes within reach, the other could deal a perhaps mortal blow to global climate efforts.” For the Sydney Morning Herald, senior business columnist Stephen Bartholomeusz says a Biden victory could bring forward the moment of peak oil.

Science.

30 years of free‐air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE): What have we learned about future crop productivity and its potential for adaptation?
Global Change Biology Read Article

A new “invited research review” summarises 30 years of free‐air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE) experiments, which involve releasing CO2 into the air around an area of ecosystem or crop to study the impact of high atmospheric CO2. The researchers cover the results of almost 250 observations, spanning 14 sites and five continents. The authors add that “future FACE experiments have the potential to develop cultivars and management strategies for co‐promoting sustainability and productivity under future elevated CO2”. Carbon Brief has previously published a guest post about FACE experiments and CO2 fertilisation by Prof Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter.

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