Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Reacting to Labour’s announcement on Great British Energy, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:
“We need real change if we are to meet the demands of the climate crisis. These Labour plans do not deliver it.
“Compared to Labour’s original commitment to spend £28bn a year on green investment, this announcement of just £8.3bn over the course of the parliament looks tiny and is nowhere near enough to deliver Labour’s promise of ‘clean electricity.’
“Labour’s targets focus on the electricity supply. However, to achieve net zero we need to see the electrification of home heating. This aim was ditched when Labour cancelled its £28 billion investment pledge.
“Domestic energy security is vital, but that must begin with energy efficiency. That means providing the national programme of home insulation delivered by local authorities that will ensure warm homes and cut bills. This was another victim of Labour’s ditching of its original £28 billion investment pledge.
“We want to see community owned assets and schemes that genuinely benefit people, not the private companies seeking to use public funds channeled through Great British Energy to continue profiteering while the planet burns and people’s bills remain too high.
“Where is the support for local area heat networks which would make a real change and offer great long-term investments ideal for community ownership?
“Labour has spent too long listening to the pleadings of energy companies for public investment in unproven technological solutions like carbon capture that simply won’t deliver the immediate real change we need.
“The Green Party is committed to democratically controlled community ownership for a greater share of the energy market and a faster transition to Net Zero over the next ten years.
“We would invest the money so that communities could take ownership and see less income in the hands of companies that have made excessive profits from fossil fuels or run our water companies into the ground.”
The paper is expected to reignite criticism of the UK’s Conservative government, which has promised hundreds of oil and gas exploration licenses to boost the North Sea industry. Photograph: Russ Bishop/Alamy
Researchers say world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet demand forecasts to 2050 if net zero is reached
The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.
If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.
The data offered what they said was “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.
By establishing a “clear and immediate demand” political leaders would be able to set a new norm around the future of fossil fuels, against which the industry could be held “immediately accountable”, the researchers said.
Published in the journal Science, the paper analysed global energy demand forecasts for oil and gas, as well as coal- and gas-fired electricity, using a broad range of scenarios compiled for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that limited global heating to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
It found that in addition to not needing new fossil fuel extraction, no new coal- and gas-fired power generation was needed in a net zero future.
The paper is expected to reignite criticism of the UK’s Conservative government, which has promised to offer hundreds of oil and gas exploration licenses to boost the North Sea industry, a policy that has emerged as a key dividing line with the opposition Labour party before the 4 July general election.
Labour has vowed to put an end to new North Sea licences if it comes to power, and also plans to increase taxes on the profits made by existing oil and gas fields to help fund investments in green energy projects through a new government-owned company, Great British Energy.
We’ve now had 11 record-breaking months of heat in a row and sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic have soared to their highest in at least 40 years.
So you can see why forecasts have warned that the continent could be in for another unusually hot summer – possibly even the hottest on record.
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Europe has been warming at twice the global average since 1991, according to recent data from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and EU climate agency Copernicus (C3S). The continent is “no exception” when it comes to the consequences of climate change with both agencies warning that Europe needs to do more to cut its emissions and transition away from fossil fuels.
dizzy: Moving away from fossil fuels is the appropriate way to address the climate crisis. Anything else is not addressing the problem.In the UK that’s no more oil or gas licences and stopping Rosebank i.e no new fossil fuels.
There is a 98% chance that one of next five years will be the warmest year on record for the globe.
That is the finding from the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest report: the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update published today.
The report, which has been produced by the Met Office for the WMO, also cites there is a two-in-three chance that global average temperature in at least one of the next five years (2023-2027) will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Dr Leon Hermanson is one of the Met Office scientists behind the report. He said: “Today’s report shows that the next five years are expected to bring new temperature records.
“These new highs will be fuelled almost completely by the rise of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but the anticipated development of the naturally-occurring El Nino event will also release heat from the tropical Pacific.”
Key findings at a glance
There is 66% chance that annual global surface temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years
There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest on record
El Niño and human-induced climate change will likely combine to fuel global temperature increase next year
Arctic heating is predicted to be more than three times higher than the global average
What does this mean for the Paris Agreement?
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
“Global temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us further and further away from the climate we are used to,” said the Met Office’s Dr Leon Hermanson.
Key points
The average global temperature in 2022 was about 1.15°C above the 1850-1900 average. The cooling influence of La Niña conditions over much of the past three years temporarily reined in the longer-term warming trend. However, La Niña ended in March 2023 and an El Niño is forecast to develop in the coming months. Typically, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year after it develops – in this case this would be 2024.
The annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the 1850-1900 average. This is used as a baseline to represent pre-industrial temperature before the emission of greenhouse gases from human and industrial activities.
There is a 98% chance of at least one in the next five years beating the temperature record set in 2016, when there was an exceptionally strong El Niño.
The chance of the five-year mean for 2023-2027 being higher than the last five years is also 98%.
Arctic warming is disproportionately high. Compared to the 1991-2020 average, the temperature anomaly is predicted to be more than three times as large as the global mean anomaly when averaged over the next five northern hemisphere extended winters.
Predicted precipitation patterns for the May to September 2023-2027 average, compared to the 1991-2020 average, suggest increased rainfall in the Sahel, northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and reduced rainfall for this season over the Amazon and parts of Australia.
Heat waves rise near a heat danger warning sign in Death Valley National Park, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
“These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves,” said one meteorologist.
Millions of people in the United States are facing the high likelihood of extreme heat in the coming weeks, with northern states that frequently have relatively temperate summers among those where higher-than-average temperatures are expected this summer, according to federal data.
As The Guardian reported Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) new predictions for the summer months state that most of New Mexico and Utah have a 60%-70% chance of hotter-than-normal weather, along with parts of Arizona, Texas, and Colorado.
Houston and the surrounding area has already experienced spiking temperatures that were tied to a heat dome that was positioned over Mexico for several weeks. The high atmospheric pressure drove record-breaking heat across Mexico and in Texas, as well as a powerful storm earlier this month that killed at least seven people and left hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston area without power.
NOAA’s Heat Risk tool showed that on Monday, a significant stretch of southern Texas was experiencing an “extreme” level of heat, defined as including “little to no overnight relief” and affecting the health and safety of “anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”
The new tool takes into consideration whether the heat is unusual for the time of the year, whether residents get relief with cooler temperatures in the evenings, and whether temperatures pose an elevated risk of health impacts like heat stroke or heat exhaustion.
NOAA found that the entire Northeast, from Maine to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has a 40%-50% chance of having above-average temperatures from June through August.
Too hot girl summer in a hot climate summer 🥵@noaa released their heat predictions for this summer and, you guessed it, it’s gonna be HOT, hotter than normal, as it has been for the last several years of record-breaking temperatures. #ClimateActionNowpic.twitter.com/NflVEdJINZ
“We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida,” Kristy Dahl, climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Guardian. “As we warm the planet, we are going to see climate disasters pile up and compound against each other because of the lack of resilience in our infrastructure and government systems.”
The predictions come days after the consumer advocacy group Public Citizenreleased a report, Scorched States, about state laws that protect outdoor workers from extreme heat—and those that don’t.
As many as 2,000 U.S. workers die every year from laboring in extreme heat, said Public Citizen, even though “every workplace illness, injury, and fatality caused by heat stress is avoidable, and relatively simple preventative measures—water, shade, and breaks—have proven extremely effective at protecting workers.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s forthcoming heat standard rules are not expected to be finalized until at least 2026, but states including Washington, Colorado, and Minnesota have issued their own labor laws to protect workers from heat-related injuries.
The Guardian pointed out that the extreme heat expected this summer will likely take hold as the Earth transitions away from El Niño—the natural phenomenon that causes ocean temperatures to rise—and toward La Niña.
“As we transition to La Niña, it still looks to be a potentially record-breaking year. That clearly suggests to me that the anthropogenic signal is there,” James Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, told The Guardian. “I am also worried about the ocean temperatures, which are very warm, particularly as we approach the Atlantic hurricane season.”
“Attribution studies are pretty decisive that heatwaves will continue to be more intense and frequent” as the planet warms, Shepherd said. “These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves.”
Last year, scientists found that neither the hot and dry conditions that led to destructive wildfires in Canada, nor extreme heatwaves that took hold in Europe and North America, would have been as likely to occur without the planetary heating that’s been linked to continued fossil fuel extraction.
