Trump's aides abruptly postpone meeting on whether to stay in Paris climate deal, Snap election: Green economy braces for further delays to key policy plans, & more
News
Trump aides abruptly postpone meeting on whether to stay in Paris climate deal
Donald Trump’s aides on Tuesday postponed a meeting to determine whether the US should remain in the Paris climate agreement. According to a White House official meeting was canceled because some of the principals were traveling, Reuters reports. The meeting will be rescheduled, but no date has yet been set, the official said. The behind-closed-doors event was set to try to bridge a growing rift in the administration between officials who want Trump to exit the agreement and those who want him to keep the US in it, writes The Hill. Several of Trump’s most senior advisers are deeply divided on whether the United States should stay in the agreement, writes Politico Despite broad consensus in the administration for rolling back the Obama administration regulations aimed at sharply reducing the country’s greenhouse gas output. The administration has pledged to announce a decision on the Paris Agreement before the president heads to Sicily, Italy, in late May for a meeting of the Group of Seven major economies, reports Scientific American.
Snap election: Green economy braces for further delays to key policy plans
Several more months of policy uncertainty for the green economy is likely to follow Prime Minister Theresa May’s surprise announcement that she intends to call a general election for June 8, says BusinessGreen. Both the Clean Growth Plan and 25 Year Plan for Nature are likely to be delayed until after the election. with two-month Parliamentary recess following soon after. The Clean Growth Plan, intended to set out how the UK will meet its climate targets through to the early 2030s, was first promised by the end of 2016, but has been pushed back repeatedly. A further BusinessGreen article explores the key election issues likely to emerge for the green economy in the coming weeks.
Revealed: UK provides billions in credit to fossil fuel industry despite clean energy pledge
The UK government has provided fossil fuel companies with £6.9bn in financial support since 2000, according to a joint investigation by Energydesk and Private Eye. The support came from UK Export Finance, the government agency that underwrites loans and insurance for risky export deals as part of efforts to boost international trade. The vast majority of this support – £4.8bn – has been pledged since 2010, despite a government commitment to back clean technologies “instead of supporting investment in dirty fossil-fuel energy production”. In contrast, the total value of deals involving clean energy projects was just £39m – with the first deal for a renewable energy project being made in 2012.
Water companies warn parts of UK could see drought this summer after the driest winter in more than 20 years
Water companies have warned that parts of UK could see drought this summer after the driest winter in more than 20 years, reports the Telegraph. Lack of rain over the autumn, winter and early spring has left some rivers and reservoirs, particularly in the south and west, with dwindling levels, while weather experts warn there is little sign of rain to come. The six-month period between October and March is the driest since 1995 and 1996, according to the Met Office. Environment Agency officials have admitted that the dry weather could lead to drought management measures’ for some regions.
Comment
Scientists to take to the streets in global march for truth
Scientists and science supporters are set to take to the streets in a global March for Science on 22 April, writes Mark Lynas in an article for the Guardian, with marches in more than 500 locations around the world, from Seattle to Seoul.”It is great news that so many people are prepared to stand up and defend the need for evidence-based thinking and the scientific method. But it is also a sad comment on our times that a March for Science is needed at all… It is clear that the old days of scientists staying in the lab, publishing papers in scholarly journals, and otherwise letting the facts speak for themselves are over.” But perhaps the most inspiring aspect of the March for Science, and what may prove to be its most enduring legacy, is its truly global nature, he adds. “Science is not western; it is everywhere and for everyone.” An article in Nature meanwhile asks members of the scientific community whether or not they plan to attend the march, and why.
Is It O.K. to Tinker With the Environment to Fight Climate Change?
Jon Gertner, New York Times Magazine
Scientists are investigating whether releasing tons of particulates into the atmosphere might be good for the planet, writes Jon Gertner in a feature on Harvard professor David Keith and others’ work on geoengineering. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. “It’s not obvious to me that we can reduce the uncertainty to anywhere near a tolerable level — that is, to the level that there won’t be unintended consequences that are really serious,” says David Battisti, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington. However, as Tom Ackerman, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said at a recent discussion among policy makers in Washington: “We are doing an experiment now that we don’t understand.” “He was not talking about geoengineering,” writes Gertner; “he was observing that the uncertainty about the potential risks of geoengineering can obscure the fact that there is uncertainty, too, about the escalating disasters that may soon result from climate change.”
Environment will be one of the key election battlegrounds
The environment is likely to prove one of the key battlegrounds in the election, writes Tom Bawden in iNews, thanks to the more than 1,100 pieces of green European legislation needing to be transposed into UK law after Brexit the environment. Air pollution and climate change in particular will likely loom large in the environmental debate, due to the breach in EU air pollution across much of the country and Britain losing its leadership position on global warming. “Party leaders must set out their manifesto promises to safeguard the natural world, protect our health from poor air quality and to show leadership on climate change,” said James Thornton, chief executive of environmental law firm ClientEarth. In a BusinessGreen blog meanwhile, James Murray set out why, for green businesses and investors, “the upcoming Conservative manifesto is now the most important document in British politics”. “It will either reassert May’s commitment to ambitious domestic climate action, sketch out her vision for a modern industrial strategy, and recognise that an overwhelming majority of Conservative voters want strong environmental protections, bold climate measures, and clean technologies, or it will confirm the coup by the hard right, climate-sceptic wing of the Conservative Party has been completed.”
Climate change: surely the most important news story of our age?
Jonathan Watts, Guardian Environment
The Guardian’s new global environment editor Jonathan Watts explains why he believes the environment is the most important story on the planet right now. “We are all entering disconcerting new territory. Given demographic, economic and consumerist trends, the next 30 years will be difficult. But there is more than enough new knowledge and technology, as well as old philosophy and religion to make things much better. It is all about choices and action.”
Why Trump may stick with the Paris climate deal — and what it would mean if he did
With a final announcement expected from US President Donald Trump on the Paris Agreement by late May, many onlookers are betting he will stick with Paris, writes Brad Plumer in Vox – albeit while scaling back US promises to cut emissions. However it’s still far from certain Trump will stay, he adds, while even if he does questions remain over the role US climate negotiators might play in shaping how individual pledges will be strengthened other time. “The larger point here is that the Paris climate deal isn’t guaranteed to succeed just because Trump sticks with the agreement. These nuances of what happens to a process that’s already well underway really do matter, and there are lots of ways the US could potentially change the deal — or weaken it — from within.” A separate piece by American economist Jeffrey Sachs in CNN argues Trump “can’t pull the same stunt” as Bush did in 2001 when he pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions. “When the US pulled out of Kyoto, it could argue that most of the world was not obligated by the Kyoto Protocol. If Trump pulls out of Paris, it will be 195-to-1 against the United States.”
Science
Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape
Sea level rise could reshape the way the US population is distributed, a new study suggests, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared for coastal migrants – even after accounting for potential adaptation. The paper’s author merged projected populations at risk of sea level rise with migration systems simulations to project future destinations of migrants in the US. 1.8m of sea level rise could force millions of people from states such as Florida and Louisiana, the study finds, with Texas and Georgia the likely destinations.
Large near-term projected snowpack loss over the western United States
Recent decreases in the amount of mountain snow, or “snowpack”, in the western United States is due to a combination of natural variability and human-caused warming, a new study finds. Between the 1980s and 2000s, there was a 10–20% decline in the annual maximum water content of the region’s snowpack. Using climate models, the researchers show that the losses are consistent with model simulations that include both human and natural climate forcings, but are inconsistent with simulations forced by natural changes alone.
Other stories
- Doom and gloom won’t save the world (Nature News )
- General election 2017: The Conservatives and Prime Minister Theresa May should seize this chance to radically reshape Britain with domestic policy reform (City AM )
- A closer look at how rich countries “outsource” their CO2 emissions to poorer ones (Vox )
- When Rising Seas Transform Risk Into Certainty (New York Times )
- Brazilian MPs bid to cut protections for one million hectares of forest (Climate Home )
- The seven men who will decide US role in Paris climate deal (Climate Home )
- Solar deployment nosedives as Feed-in Tariff cuts begin to bite (BusinessGreen )
- Bill Gates urges Theresa May not to cut UK aid funding after Brexit vote (The Independent )