… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Climate Crisis

  • Failing UK anti-pollution scheme needs ‘complete rethink’, experts say

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    Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    Government accused of ‘deliberately undermining’ green policies after slashing financial penalties for big polluters

    Scientists and campaigners have slammed the government’s decision to hand unexpectedly large subsidies to the biggest polluters – making it far cheaper to pollute in the UK than in the EU.

    The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) requires major polluters to have a ‘permit’ for each tonne of CO2 they emit. They are given some for free but have to buy more on the open market – receiving fewer free ones every year to encourage them to slash their emissions.

    But the government has quietly announced changes to the scheme that will see polluting industries given far more free permits than anticipated, according to a new report in the Financial Times.

    The move means emitting a tonne of carbon in the UK now costs big polluters just £47, compared to £75 in the EU. It comes weeks after openDemocracy revealed the government gave free permits to a controversial Russian cargo airline the day after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Leo Murray, an expert in emissions trading, told openDemocracy that the decision to slash the cost of polluting “should trigger a complete rethink of the entire scheme”, which he branded “the worst possible way to price carbon in our economy”.

    The ETS, which replaced a similar EU scheme after Brexit, has been beset with difficulties. openDemocracy’s previous investigations have found that some of the biggest polluters were handed vast de-facto subsidies under the scheme, while others – including highly polluting incineration firms and owners of private jets – were exempt entirely.

    Over-allocating permits can only be read as a deliberate move to undermine the shift away from fossil fuels

    Leo Murray, We Are Possible

    Murray, who is the director of the environmental campaign group We Are Possible, said: “It is so telling that the UK can’t even let the most market-friendly climate policy approach in the whole toolbox do its work without deliberately intervening to make sure it is totally ineffective at reducing emissions.

    “Over-allocation of permits was the biggest reason why the EU ETS, which our own scheme is a pale shadow of, failed to reduce emissions for most of the first phases of its existence, so repeating this mistake can only be read as a deliberate move to undermine the economy-wide shift away from fossil fuels.”

    Murray’s frustration was echoed by Natalie Bennett, a Green Party member of the House of Lords, who said: “We heard much talk, during the [Brexit] referendum campaign and subsequently, of a so-called ‘Green Brexit’… The hollowness of that claim, the reality that we could – and do – have far lower environmental and climate standards is today being driven home with great force.

    Bennett continued: “The EU is continuing to – if not quickly enough – advance in climate action and on the protection of nature and human health, while the UK falls further and further behind.”

    The EU is continuing to advance in climate action, while the UK falls further and further behind

    Natalie Bennett, Green Party

    Aaron Thierry, a climate expert at Cardiff University, added that the government’s decision to cut the cost of polluting shows that “the UK is continuing to backslide on its climate pledges”.

    He added: “That this is happening even as we see extreme temperatures around the world topple all-time records, with southern Europe’s grain harvest down 60%, India forced to ban rice exports and fires around the Mediterranean, is an absolute scandal. Rishi Sunak is a danger to us all.”

    Earlier this month, thousands of openDemocracy readers wrote to their MP to call on the government to stop giving away free pollution permits to big polluters. You can join them here, or sign our open letter to the government here.

    Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

  • World cannot meet climate targets relying on carbon capture and storage

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    [Hopefully globalwitness will not mind me quoting them at length. Rishi Sunak’s UK government has been promoting CCS recently.]

    https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/world-cannot-meet-climate-targets-relying-carbon-capture-and-storage/

    Fossil fuels

    United Kingdom

    Unable to ignore the catastrophic emissions produced by burning fossil fuels, the fossil fuel industry has turned to carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a solution that allows them to carry on business as usual.

    But with serious concerns about this unproven technology, Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland have commissioned world-renowned climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre in Manchester to assess the role of fossil fuel-based Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the energy system, and its ability to help to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5°C.

    This ground-breaking research finds that CCS cannot be relied on to deliver global 2030 emissions reductions, whilst the majority of CCS that exists is being used to extract more oil. It finds:

    Current status of fossil fuel-based CCS in the energy system

    • The scale of deployment of CCS to date is significantly less than proponents have predicted, with only 26 CCS plants currently in operation globally.
    • Global operational CCS capacity is currently 39MtCO2 per year, this is about 0.1% of annual global emissions from fossil fuels and less than Scotland’s territorial emissions in 2018.There is no operational CCS capacity in the UK or the EU at all.
    • 81% of carbon captured to date has been used to extract more oil via the process of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). This means CCS is being predominantly used for carbon-emitting oil extraction that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible.
    • Current CCS projects usually target 90% capture at peak capacity. The Petra Nova facility missed capture targets by around 17% between starting in 2017 and its mothballing in May 2020.

    Key implications for delivering Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5°C

    • Fossil fuel-based CCS is not capable of operating with zero emissions. Many projections assume a capture rate for CCS of 95%, however, capture rates at that level are unproven in practice.
    • Fossil fuel-based CCS will continue to entail residual, process and supply chain greenhouse gas emissions. There must be consideration of whether fossil fuel hydrogen with CCS is sufficiently low-carbon relative to remaining carbon budgets.
    • Even if the technology is to become economically and technically viable at scale, optimistic forecasts do not anticipate significant CCS capacity until at least the 2030s.
    • A focus on CCS will not help achieve 2030 CO2 emission reduction targets being adopted by Governments, which have to be met if we are to prevent a climate catastrophe. The research emphasises the real danger of reliance on CCS in energy for delivering these vital emission reductions, given they cannot be expected to any degree until at least 2030.

    On the basis of this research, Friends of the Earth Scotland and Global Witness believe the promotion of CCS in energy is a distraction from the rapid growth of renewable energy and energy efficiency required. We urge instead reliance on technologies that can deliver the emissions reductions required by 2030 if we are to deliver on the Paris Agreement goals.

    Download a summary brief of the report produced by Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland: Downloads

    The full report is available to download from the Tyndall Centre website and below.

    Full Report: A Review of the Role of Fossil Fuel Based Carbon Capture and Storage in the Energy System

    https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/world-cannot-meet-climate-targets-relying-carbon-capture-and-storage/

  • ‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president

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    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

    Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative president to gut environmental protections

    An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

    Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

    Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.

    The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

    Very rich US right-wing interests intent on destroying a transition to sustainable energy. UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and UK Labour leader Keir Starmer are aligned with and not in any way opposing these interests. There is little doubt that climate denier – I think that it’s just beyond his abilities to understand tbh – Trump will go along with this. Charles Koch is involved with this initiative.

  • North-east mayor slams Starmer’s green rollback after quitting Labour

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    Labour leader Keir Starmer (centre) with then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (R) and then US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, in London, 21 July 2020.
    Labour leader Keir Starmer (centre) with then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (R) and then US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, in London, 21 July 2020. Pompeo said in 2019 “we will do our level best” to stop Jeremy Corbyn getting elected. (Photo: US State Department)

    Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    Exclusive: Jamie Driscoll says some voters think Starmer is ‘a liar’ and backing ULEZ would win votes

    The ex-Labour mayor of the UK’s poorest region has slammed Keir Starmer for watering down the party’s environmental commitments.

    In an exclusive interview with openDemocracy in his office in Newcastle, North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll said: “There is no contradiction between protecting us from the climate emergency, and prosperity. In fact, if you fail to protect us from the climate emergency, you’re going to lose all prosperity in the future.”

    Labour’s leadership has blamed its failure to take Boris Johnson’s former constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election on London mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand the city’s ‘ultra-low emission zone’ (ULEZ) into the area. But Driscoll, who dramatically quit Labour last month, said the party would have won the seat if it had stood by the scheme and campaigned against Tory cuts to bus services in the capital.

    “Labour would have won the Uxbridge by-election if they had said: ‘Yes, it [ULEZ] is a problem, because the Tories have cut public transport in London – if we had better buses here, which we will do, you’ll be better off,’” he said. “That would have won them it… A lot of people who voted Green because they were outraged by Labour’s abandonment [of ULEZ] probably would have voted Labour.”

    Labour’s candidate in the by-election had publicly opposed the ULEZ expansion during the campaign; the Green candidate won 893 votes, more than the margin separating Labour from the Tories.

    Driscoll also argued that politicians’ failure to take climate breakdown seriously contributed to falling trust in politics: “We’ve got a climate juggernaut hurtling towards us, and [politicians] are saying ‘some people in outer London didn’t like ULEZ so let’s just burn the planet because we need their votes’. Almost any rational person, which is the majority of the electorate, I still believe, would say: ‘It doesn’t add up any more.’”

    Deselected by Labour

    Driscoll is currently mayor of the North of Tyne region, which extends northwards from Newcastle to the Scottish border. He has successfully negotiated an expansion of the region, meaning that when the post comes up for re-election next year, it will also cover areas of north-east England south of the Tyne, including Sunderland, Gateshead and County Durham.

    With an engineering background and his own software business, Driscoll was first elected as a councillor in Newcastle in 2018. He was quickly chosen by Labour members to be the party’s candidate for North of Tyne mayor when the post was created in 2019, beating the longstanding leader of Newcastle Council in the selection. Calling himself a “pragmatic socialist”, he is generally identified with the left of the party, and was supported by Momentum.

    But when Labour announced its shortlist of candidates for the mayor of the newly expanded North East seat, Driscoll’s name was notably absent. Party insiders briefed that he had been ‘purged’ because he once spoke at an event alongside the filmmaker Ken Loach, who was himself banned from Labour because of his prior support for the Left Unity party. While much of the media parroted this line, a simpler explanation is that he was binned because of his left-wing views, and as revenge for defeating one of the party’s big beasts.

    Driscoll’s deselection was slammed by politicians across the political spectrum, with Labour mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham praising his approach to the role. His interview with openDemocracy is the first time he has so clearly attacked the Labour leadership since standing down from the party.

    Speaking about Starmer’s recent equivocation on previous climate spending commitments, Driscoll characterised the Labour position as: “We might put £28bn into tackling the climate emergency at some point in the future if the fiscal rule allows it – a fiscal rule which we decided on, which is not real and has no legal basis in anything, on the basis that we just think it makes us look a bit more credible to some people.”

    If you do a vox pop and say ‘do you think Keir Starmer keeps his word?’ you would have no one say ‘yes’

    He added: “There is an underlying reality to people’s lives. Either your bus comes, or it doesn’t. Either you can get an operation, or you can’t. These are the things that are concrete and in the real world. The climate emergency is absolutely one of those.

    “The science is uncontroversial – we already now have enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that even if they remain stable at that level, global heating is going to continue and we will pass way beyond 1.5°C. Even if we live in a magic world where no tipping points kick in, that will lead to mass people movements and crop failures around the world.”

    For Labour’s leadership to respond to this reality by saying “yeah, but we need a fiscal rule” isn’t good enough, he argued. Criticising his former party for saying it won’t cancel oil and gas licences recently issued by the Tories, and for comments Starmer reportedly made to shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband that he “hates tree huggers” (which he denied) and isn’t “into hope and change”, Driscoll asked: “What are they there for?”

    ‘Dishonest’

    Speaking more broadly, Driscoll said some people perceive Starmer as a “liar”. He claimed: “If you would go out and do a vox pop and say ‘do you think Keir Starmer keeps his word?’ you would have no one say ‘yes’. Or some people think, ‘yes, he’s a liar but he’s not as much of a liar as the Tories’ – you know, lesser of two evils. But the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.”

    Referring to an event during Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign, Driscoll added: “I interviewed him in 2019. He said that you have to inspire people to party unity – you don’t discipline people to party unity.” Referring to Starmer’s promises at the time, Driscoll said: “Ten pledges, has he kept any of them? I don’t think he has. And the public know that.”

    He added: “Regardless of what people say in politics, regardless of their ideologies, there is an objective reality. And when politicians forget that, they find themselves unable to tell the truth. The reason they are unable to tell the truth is that what they propose does not tally with reality.”

    He also claimed Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting are unduly influenced by big business, pointing to Streeting’s donations from a hedge fund manager heavily invested in private healthcare and Starmer rowing back on commitments to tax Big Tech after a meeting with Google. “To abandon that,” he said, “shows you in whose interests they are operating.”

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    Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

  • Climate chaos – with the UK government wilfully looking the other way

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/climate-emergency-wilfully-looking-other-way

    Greenpeace cover Rishi Sunak's home in black oily fabric in protests at Sunak's intended huge expansion of North Sea fossil fuel exploration.
    Greenpeace cover Rishi Sunak’s home in black oily fabric in protests at Sunak’s intended huge expansion of North Sea fossil fuel exploration. Image © Greenpeace.

    The British government’s current policies are about as far from being consistent with Britain’s net zero plan as it is possible to be, argues RICHARD HEBBERT

    …

    Last week Sunak announced that his government is granting over 100 new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, claiming in a peculiarly Orwellian statement that to do so is “consistent with the UK’s net zero plan.”

    It isn’t. How could it possibly be?

    Nor should we forget that the Tory government has approved the opening of a new coalmine in Cumbria and effectively banned on-shore windfarms — one of the quickest, cheapest and cleanest forms of renewable energy.

    The British government cannot be ignorant of the manifest signs that the Earth’s climate is racing towards catastrophe, even quicker than has been previously forecast and yet it wilfully looks the other way.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/climate-emergency-wilfully-looking-other-way