CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Climate Crisis
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Posted 2 years ago #
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Ambitious draft goals to halt biodiversity loss revealed, with proposed changes to food production expected to ‘raise eyebrows’
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Posted 2 years ago # -
Carlton Reid @carltonreid
U.K. Unveils “Revolutionary” Transport Decarbonization Plan But Still To Spend £27 Billion On Roads… No new money for cycling, walking, public transport. Mostly electric cars and trucks.
https://twitter.com/carltonreid/status/1415221765622616066
(Actually England, but apparently the ministry used UK in the press release).
Posted 2 years ago # -
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All of which matters in ways that go far beyond pandemic management; in that it raises issues about the future we all face, as we try to emerge into a world increasingly challenged by severe signs of climate breakdown.
This week, the UK government published its Transport Decarbonisation Strategy, aimed at making transport in Britain carbon neutral by 2050; but despite many statements of good intent in terms of reducing emissions by developing low-carbon technologies, at the political level its message is simply “don’t worry, we can all continue driving and flying about just as we did before, the government will continue to invest massively in road-building over all other forms of transport, and there will be technical fixes to make to all zero carbon within 30 years”.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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“I am surprised by how far it is above the previous record,” Dieter Gerten, professor of global change climatology and hydrology at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said. “We seem to be not just above normal but in domains we didn’t expect in terms of spatial extent and the speed it developed.”
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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The EU executive has been accused of “sacrificing forests” after it published proposals that would allow trees to continue to be burned for fuel.
The charges of “accelerating climate breakdown” through wood-burning were made on Friday as the European Commission unveiled its forest strategy, which includes a goal to plant 3bn trees across the EU by 2030.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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Regulate business to tackle climate crisis, urges Mark Carney
Former Bank chief says governments must act as free markets will not reduce emissions alone
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Despite criticism of companies “greenwashing” before Cop26, and despite his acknowledgment that “we have left it very late” to begin seriously cutting emissions, Carney believes that harnessing capitalism and the power of money will bring about the changes needed in time to avoid climate breakdown.
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Good luck with that.
Though if it doesn’t happen…
Posted 2 years ago # -
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‘Disastrous’ energy policies of China, Russia, Brazil and Australia could stoke 5C rise in temperatures if adopted by the rest of the world
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Posted 2 years ago # -
Kairin van Sweeden, from Dyce, Aberdeen, is one of three plaintiffs taking Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to court after the High Court ruled they could go ahead last week.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday National, the 54-year-old executive director at Modern Money Scotland told how she sees the UK government’s oil and gas strategy as “corrupt” and that their policies are “killing us”.
Alongside fellow plaintiffs Mikaela Loach, a 23-year-old climate justice activist, and Jeremy Cox, a former oil refinery worker, the trio want a declaration from the courts that the state-owned Oil and Gas Authority’s (OGUK) new strategy is unlawful. OGUK works under instruction from BEIS.
They say it encourages the production of oil and gas which is not economic for the UK and conflicts with its legal duty to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
And Van Sweeden has a personal investment in the issue. Her parents David Robertson, who sadly died in 2019, and mum Lorna, 76, were both heavily involved in the oil and gas industry in the 1970s and the creation of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, a trade union set up after 167 workers died on the Piper Alpha platform on July 6, 1988.
Van Sweeden said: “I was brought up in Aberdeen and my dad worked offshore and he was a shop steward, and he had to fight for the folk that he worked with and he was blacklisted for his troubles, you know, so I’ve got nae fondness for the UK Government in general and I think they’re very corrupted and they blacklisted my dad.
“If I can give them a punch to the stomach I’m really happy to do that. I really don’t like to see burning koalas and crispy kangaroos. I’m just at the stage where anything I can do to help this cause I’ll do it.
“When I was a child in the 70s I was watching John Craven’s newsround and they were saying then London will go under water, and here it’s happening right now.
“It’s not like they didn’t know, they knew, but we keep electing the wrong people, they keep doing the wrong things and this is the result. Now Kentish Town is under water.”
The court case has been backed by the Paid to Pollute campaign, and the campaigners argue that OGUK’s interpretation of its legal duty to “maximise economic recovery” of oil and gas doesn’t take into account the billions of public cash spent supporting the industry.
In 2020, Shell paid negative $99.1 million in tax to the UK, meaning that during the pandemic the UK Government paid out that amount to the firm. The UK was the only country where Shell operated and didn’t pay tax.
The company then paid their CEO $7m, and announced plans to cut 330 North Sea jobs.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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The company, which is one year into a plan to transform from an oil major to an “integrated energy company”, announced the shareholder sweeteners after raising its oil price forecasts for the rest of the decade and lowering them over the longer term as governments quicken the pace towards their climate targets.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/03/bp-buy-shares-oil-price-profits-forecasts
Posted 2 years ago # -
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REMOVING harmful emissions produced by plans to extend an oil field near Shetland would require an area of land one and a half times the size of Scotland, new analysis has revealed.
The Oxfam study adds further weight behind the case for the project by Shell and Siccar Point Energy to be rejected by UK ministers on climate grounds.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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Carbon emissions from transport have barely fallen in the past decade and pose a significant challenge for the UK in meeting its targets to combat the climate crisis. The government recently announced a 30% rise in funding to make cycling and walking easier. The report’s authors said the government should consider cutting the VAT rate on cargo bike deliveries and allow more powerful e-bikes to be used.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet
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Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and a lead reviewer for the IPCC, said methane reductions were probably the only way of staving off temperature rises of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which extreme weather will increase and “tipping points” could be reached. “Cutting methane is the biggest opportunity to slow warming between now and 2040,” he said. “We need to face this emergency.”
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Posted 2 years ago # -
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The fires, floods and extreme weather seen around the world in recent months are just a foretaste of what can be expected if global heating takes hold, scientists say, as the world’s leading authority on climate change prepares to warn of an imminent and dire risk to the global climate system.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will on Monday publish a landmark report, the most comprehensive assessment yet, less than three months before vital UN talks that will determine the future course of life on Earth.
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Posted 2 years ago #
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