Massive methane leaks from rubbish dumps

From The Guardian

There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks.

Landfills emit methane when organic waste such as food scraps, wood, card, paper and garden waste decompose in the absence of oxygen. Methane, also called natural gas, traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making it a critical target for climate action. Scientists have said emissions from unmanaged landfills could double by 2050 as urban populations grow, blowing the chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.

A total of 1,256 methane super-emitter events occurred between January 2019 and June 2023, according to the new data. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh lead the list of nations with the most large leaks, followed by Argentina, Uzbekistan and Spain.

Landfill emissions can be reduced by creating less organic waste in the first place, diverting it away from landfill, or at least capturing some of the methane that is being released from the landfills. Action to stem methane leaks slows global heating faster than almost any other measure and is often low-cost, with some measures even paying for themselves when the captured gas is sold as fuel.

Methane emissions have accelerated since 2007 and cause a third of the global heating driving the climate crisis today. The acceleration has alarmed scientists, who fear it is the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and could trigger catastrophic climate tipping points. The rapid rise appears to be due to global heating driving more methane production in wetlands – a potential vicious circle that makes cuts of human-caused methane emissions even more urgent.

Decomposing waste is responsible for about 20% of human-caused methane emissions. Fossil fuel operations cause 40% of emissions, and the Guardian revealed there were more than 1,000 super-emitter events from oil, gas and coal sites in 2022 alone, many of which could be easily fixed. Cattle and paddy fields cause the other 40% of emissions.

Prof Euan Nisbet, a methane expert at Royal Holloway University of London, said: “Big landfills make a great deal of methane but it doesn’t cost much to bulldoze soil over a stinking, burning landfill. It’s not rocket science.”

Microbes in the soil convert methane into CO2. “Then it’s lost 97% of its greenhouse impact,” Nisbet said.

Carlos Silva Filho, president of the International Solid Waste Association, said the global methane pledge made by 150 countries to cut 30% of methane emissions by 2030 could not be achieved without tackling emissions from the waste industry. “Cutting methane is the only solution to meet the global 1.5C temperature target,” he said. “If we really focus on reducing methane emissions from the waste sector, it is a gamechanger.” About 40% of the world’s waste still goes to unmanaged dumps.

Antoine Halff, a co-founder of the company Kayrros, which provided the satellite image analysis to the Guardian, said: “Waste is a big source [of methane] and in countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh it’s not only a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions but it’s also a lost opportunity to tap a fuel resource that could help meet the country’s energy needs.”

The satellite that Kayrros uses orbits the planet 14 times a day and provides global coverage, giving the location of a leak to within about six miles. Higher-resolution satellites that orbit less frequently can pinpoint the waste facilities responsible.

[Read more here]

 

It's so infuriating.  The techniques we have to reduce emissions are cheap and effective.  They just require competence and determination to make them happen.  Wind & solar are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity almost everywhere.   I know that the transition will take time --- after all, we are making the greatest energy transition in the fastest time, ever.  Yet it still seems too slow to me.   If we subsidised EVs more heavily, they would quickly reach 100% of new cars sales, and a few years after that, close to 100% of the total car fleet.   We can massively reduce methane emissions, relatively cheaply.  Yet we don't. 

It seems simple: the costs of the climate catastrophe are already exceeding the costs of going green. Yet still we dither and phaff.  It's all doable, it's all technically feasible, and it's all relatively cheap.  The obstacles are not technological or economic.  They're administrative and political.  And that is shocking and disgraceful.

How press attitudes to climate change have shifted

 From a Twitter thread by Josh Gabbatiss, of Carbon Brief

I'm pleased to reveal a new @CarbonBrief  project that's been months in the making.

Using our database of 1364 UK newspaper editorials we have analysed how press attitudes to climate & energy have changed in a decade. The results may surprise you.

For years we have tracked how newspapers talk about climate change, renewables etc in their editorials – which serve as the "voice" of a publication. 

In doing this, we got the sense that a shift was underway...

Newspapers that had spent years dismissing “doom-laden” warnings and mocking green “zealots" were seemingly accepting the reality of climate change.

The Daily Express welcomed a “green Britain revolution”. The Sun called the UK “a world leader in the green movement”.

We teamed up with PhD researcher @sylviahayes98  to understand what was going on.

She helped us assess the language in 100s of editorials concerning climate change, renewables, fracking & nuclear. 

The results show a surge in editorials calling for climate action after 2018.

Editorials explicitly opposing climate action have been relatively rare, but concentrated in a handful of right-leaning publications - Mail, Sun, Express etc.

They are also the publications with by far the most readers - e.g. the Sun/Mail have 10x the readership of the Guardian.

However, a significant shift has occurred in recent years among these right-leaning titles. 

Bolstered by a Conservative net-zero pledge and COP26, they have gone from publishing editorials that mainly oppose climate action to - for the most part - embracing such action.

A similar trend can be seen for renewables. 

This chart shows that among all newspapers, editorials have gone from largely opposing wind turbines (dismissing them as expensive, ineffective and ugly) to supporting Boris Johnson’s vow to make the UK “the Saudi Arabia of wind”.

One of the most notable shifts is the complete disappearance of UK newspaper editorials questioning the existence of climate change, or the science behind it.

The last appearance of such explicitly sceptical sentiments appeared in a Daily Telegraph editorial 3 years ago.

A good news story then? Well, kind of. 

Besides looking at the broad positive/negative framing of each editorial, we analysed the more subtle language being used - including the ways in which newspapers are blocking progress while saying they support climate action.

While it's no longer as acceptable to deny climate science outright, instead editorials criticise the activists delivering the message or describe the UK's burden as unfair, asking why China isn't doing more. 

But most of all they complain about the high costs of climate action.

Concerns about cost are particularly relevant amid the current energy crisis and pushback against the UK net-zero target (although the cutoff point for this analysis was 2021).

The messaging also aligns with what some have dubbed "discourses of delay".

Australia's denialist government

The right-wing LNP  coalition government which is in office at the federal level in Australia is denialist and delayist, but pretends to be taking action on climate change.  It maintains Australia has cut emissions more than any other country, and plans to cut them more than any other country.  The truth is very different.

Emissions back at 2019 levels

 From a tweet by Glen Peters, research director at Cicero.

Our latest estimate for fossil CO₂ emissions in 2021 is for 5.5% growth, which puts 2021 emissions on par with 2019 emissions, given uncertainties.

Since oil demand remains will below 2019 levels, it is likely emissions will grow again in 2022.

The Paris Climate Agreement was in 2015.  Since then, emissions have risen instead of falling.  Some progress has been made, for example, the percentage of electricity from wind and solar has doubled.  EVs have gone from 1% of global car sales to 10%.  But it's not enough.  To avoid temeratures rising by more than 1.5 degrees C, we have to halve emissions over the next 10 years, which means they must fall by 5% a year --- and that's not happening.

Hallo, renewables sceptics

 From a Twitter thread  by Asaad Razouk

Hello renewables sceptics and oil, gas and coal lobbyists and mouthpieces spreading falsehoods about renewables: Wind and solar generated over 10.3% of global electricity for the first time in 2021, twice the share compared to 2015 [4.8%] when the Paris Agreement was signed.

The momentum is strong.

50 countries crossed the 10% wind and solar landmark, with 7 new countries in 2021 alone: China, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Argentina, Hungary and El Salvador.

3 countries - the Netherlands, Australia and Vietnam - shifted over 8% of their total electricity demand from fossil fuels to wind and solar in just the last 2 years

Another 3 countries generated more than 43% of their electricity from wind and solar in 2021: Denmark, Luxembourg and Uruguay achieved 52%, 43% and 47% respectively, leading the way on technology for high renewable grid integration

Combined, clean electricity sources generated 38% of the world’s electricity in 2021, more than coal (36%)

The growth in wind and solar is also up: wind generation rose by +14% in 2021 (the highest since 2017), and solar by +23% (the highest since 2018); combined, they rose by 17%

If we can carry through the 10-year average growth rate of 20% in solar and wind power deployment all the way to 2030, these will account for over 50% of total global electricity generation by the end of this decade (ceteris paribus) 

[29% of incremental growth in electricity demand was met by renewables.  The increase in electricity demand was exceptional, 5%,  as the world rebounded from the Covid Crash.  If demand growth slips to 3% this year, renewables will meet 50% of incremental demand.]

(Source: EMBER)

Source: EMBER

 

The climate shuffle dance

From Common Dreams

 While more than a half century ago the Twist was the craze in dance halls globally, today the Climate Change Shuffle is the craze in government halls and conference sites worldwide as officials dance around the dangers of climate change.

The first step in the Climate Change Shuffle is a straightforward maneuver: deny climate change. With feet solidly on the floor, confidently dismiss any scientific consensus on climate change and global warming, including it is caused by human activities. Deny that climate change is a threat to humanity and health of the planet as long as possible

The second step in the Climate Change Shuffle, which is highly popular and easily done, is the delay. With body swaying gently from left to right, emphasize that the true answers to environmental issues are economic growth, advanced technologies, and human ingenuity, all of which will need some time and resources. Lean forward proposing the establishment of commissions to produce lengthy technical reports and continue to delay as long as possible.

The third and final step in the Climate Change Shuffle, which should be performed effortlessly without movement, is to do nothing. Simply remain still, don't take any steps forward and let time slowly pass by as long as possible. Climate change will likely soon be forgotten, displaced by something more immediate, such as gas prices, a sex scandal, or a military invasion.

Mounting scientific evidence, including the recent Sixth Assessment Report of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), indicates that global warming is reshaping the world more rapidly and severely than was known several years ago. Nevertheless, governments, especially the major emitters of greenhouse gases, continue dancing the Climate Change Shuffle.

The top ten emitters of greenhouse gases account for two-thirds of the world's CO2 emissions. Far in first place is China, which is responsible for about 30 percent of the world's CO2 emissions. In a distant second place is the United States at 14 percent, followed by India at 7 percent and Russia at 5 percent (Figure 1).

Environmental scientists, naturalists, and concerned citizens, including young activists, worldwide have warned that human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people and calling for needed action. Ecosystems and populations least able to cope are expected to be hardest hit by the consequences of climate change.

Also, thousands of scientists have warned governments that the future habitability of planet earth depends on immediate, large-scale action in no less than six critical and interrelated areas: energy, short-lived pollutants, nature, food, economy, and population.

Their recommended actions include limiting the burning of fossil fuels, restoring ecosystems, moving to plant-based diets, curtailing consumption or degrowth, and stabilizing world population.

However, most of the recommended actions are largely unappealing to governments and their constituents. Transitioning from burning fossil fuels to renewable energy, for example, is considered a difficult task. Global greenhouse gas emissions are broadly from energy, agriculture, industry, and waste, with almost three-quarters from energy consumption.

The alternatives to fossil fuels are not readily available to meet the rising global demand for electricity. Fossil fuels account about two-thirds of global electricity generation, with coal, natural gas, and oil contributing 38, 28 and 3 percent, respectively versus renewables contributing 9 percent.

Some progress has recently been achieved moving from meat to a plant-based diet. However, curtailing consumption, or shrinking the economy, is not likely to be embraced by most populations any time soon.

Also, attempts to stabilize populations are anathema to most governments, businesses, and many others. They consider demographic growth essential for economic growth, political power, and national identity. Consequently, rather than stabilization, world population is expected to increase from 8 billion today to 10 billion by around mid-century.

When confronted by the overwhelming evidence of climate change, governments that have a major impact on global warming glide to the Shuffle's delay step. As witnessed at the disappointing Glasgow climate change summit (COP26) last November, many countries are simply not prepared to make firm commitments on needed actions with timetables.

An important reason why many governments perform the Climate Change Shuffle is the demand for electricity and the reliance on coal-fired power stations to meet that rising demand. The top four countries, namely, China, India, the United States, and Japan, were responsible for 76 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020 (Figure 2).

With its 1,110 coal-fired power stations, China alone accounted for approximately 53 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020 and those power stations provided 61 percent of China's electricity. Following China but at a considerably lower level is India, which is responsible for 14 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity with its coal-fired power stations providing 71 percent of India's electricity.

In third and fourth place are the United States and Japan, which accounted for 11 and 9 percent, respectively of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020. However, in contrast to China and India, the contributions of the coal-fired power stations to domestic electricity consumption in the U.S. and Japan are substantially less, 19 and 29 percent, respectively.

Another important reason why some governments continue doing the Shuffle is because climate change has become a highly partisan issue. With climate change becoming a contentious issue contributing to political paralysis, few elected governments are able to adopt the necessary legislation and implement the needed actions to address climate change.

In the United States, for example, 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress continue to deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. Also, Democratic and Republican voters in the U.S. are far apart in their views regarding climate change.

Whereas 78 percent of Democrats said climate change should be a top priority in 2020, 21 percent of Republicans said it should be. Moreover, the gap between them has widened over the past several years, with increasing proportions of Democrats saying climate change should be a top priority (Figure 3).

When faced with the unequivocal scientific evidence about climate change and the lack of needed actions, some observers, organizations, and funds have increased their efforts to urge governments to adopt the needed climate change policies.

However, others, including many students, have become incredibly worried by years of empty promises by political leaders and are pessimistic about the outlook for future.

They note that a quarter century ago when world population was nearly 6 billion, government leaders gathered in Kyoto, Japan, and agreed to curb greenhouse emissions. Seven years ago, when world population had reached more than 7 billion, governments adopted the Paris Agreement's vision of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees. And today with world population at 8 billion and expected to reach 9 billion in 15 years, few nations are living up to their commitments.

Also, others have become fatalistic about global warming as they witness a rapidly closing window to secure a livable future as governments dance the Climate Change Shuffle. Additional scientific studies, they feel, will make little difference in the near certain outcomes. They are convinced that governments will not be able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. With direct and clear language, many have simply concluded: "we're screwed."

In sum, whether one is optimistic, pessimistic, fatalistic, or indifferent regarding climate change and the responses of governments, three conclusions seem warranted.

First, the widely reported scientific evidence and findings of published reports on human-induced climate change and its far-reaching effects worldwide are clear, unequivocal, indisputable, and distressing.

Second, countries will continue to experience the consequences of climate change with serious disruptions to the planet's natural environment and severe adverse effects on human populations, including flooding, droughts, heat waves, shortages of water and food, warming oceans, storms, rising sea levels, wildfires, and melting glaciers and polar ice caps.

Third, until governments are fully committed to taking the needed actions to address climate change, which does not appear likely any time soon, government officials will continue to dance the Climate Change Shuffle, i.e., deny, delay, and do nothing.

A depressing analysis,   

The US is so divided thanks to the Murdoch media and the Republican Party that its commitment to fighting climate change is doubtful.  

China is not a wealthy country, and its government can't afford to alienate its citizens.  Unlike the US it has no right-wing denialist press and oil-soaked billionaires, but it also needs to ensure that rapidly growing electricity demand is satisfied.   China is the largest investor in renewables in the world, and it has mandated that its electricity generating companies must reach 50% installed capacity by 2025, as well as having strong EV targets.  Even with these steps, though, Chinese emissions are not going to start falling for another decade.  

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred Europe to accelerate the transition to net-zero because of the need to reduce imports  of oil and gas from  Russia.  But without the rest of the world following, the decline in total global emissions will be small.

Unless we push our governments to act on climate by voting them out of office if they don't, we are not going to avoid a 2 degree rise in global temperatures, with disastrous consequences.

The fossil fuel companies haven't given up ...

 .... they've embraced other tactics instead.

From a podcast by Michael E Mann on The Planet

Michael E Mann is one of the world's most influential climate scientists. The distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State is known for the hockey stick graphs and as a defender of climate science while being targeted by climate change deniers. He's also the writer of the excellent book The New Climate War. He joined me this week in The Planet podcast. The excerpt of the interview is in this newsletter. 

The New Climate War. For decades, you have been fighting a well-funded disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel companies. Your book is about the New Climate War. Did you and other scientists win the first one?

The old Climate War was an effort of polluters, the fossil fuel companies, and conservative groups representing their interests to discredit the basic science and the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. This war has essentially been won; we've reached the point where it just isn't credible anymore to deny that it's happening and deny that we can see the impacts because we're seeing them play out almost in real-time. 

But that doesn't mean that the fossil fuel industry has given up; they've turned to other tactics, which I detail in The New Climate War, in their effort to keep us addicted to fossil fuels. Because in the end, they don't care about the reason. They don't care about the path we take; they just care about the destination. So they want us disengaged, and they want us to remain reliant on fossil fuels. And so they lead us to deny that the problem exists or deflect our attention away from meaningful solutions, divide us, and get us fighting with each other; they want to make sure that we don't represent a United Front. 

They try to convince us that it's just about individual lifestyle choices so that we don't demand policy action and systemic changes. Or they can get us to believe that it's too late to do anything about the problem, which, ironically, potentially leads us to the same place of disengagement. 

So these are the tactics that we are now facing. And that's really what the book is about: helping people recognize these tactics and recognize how to push back on them because we can feel we are so close now to finally seeing the action that we worked for so hard and so long. But there are still these obstacles in our way. And we need to recognize those obstacles so we can finally act in a manner consistent with the challenge we face.

Do shorter showers help?  But are there behavioral changes we should take as individuals to reduce our carbon footprint? Like taking shorter showers or going on a biking holiday instead of flying to Tahiti? And I believe that you are, like me, a vegetarian?

I don't eat meat, but I guess I'm a pescetarian. So I'm not all the way to vegetarian yet. But indeed, I find that I'm happier, feel better, and feel healthier. So there are all of these things that we can do that decrease our environmental impact or our carbon footprint. They make us feel better, save us money, and set a good example for other people. 

So, of course, we should do all these things. But what we have to guard against is this argument that if we do these things, that solves the problem. And that that's all we need to do. Because that indeed does play into the agenda of polluters who would love to have us so focused on our individual carbon footprint that we fail to notice theirs. Seventy percent of our carbon emissions come from just one hundred polluters. And so, while we should do all these things that we can do to decrease our environmental impact, we also have to make sure that we hold polluters accountable. And we should also hold our policymakers or politicians accountable for acting on our behalf rather than acting in the interests of a small number of polluting interests.

In your book, you also mention the tactics used by the tobacco industry, or for instance, the gun lobby that promotes the line that "guns don't kill people, but people kill people." You also mentioned a "crying Indian" campaign?

If you grew up in the States in the 1970s, you remember this ad that profoundly impacted us. This tearful, Native American was canoeing down this river that's been polluted by all these strewn bottles and can liter, and it felt empowering. It felt like, yes, we need to clean up our environment. But it turns out it was a PR campaign that was hatched on Madison Avenue by Coca-Cola and the beverage industry. They wanted to convince us that we didn't need bottle bills. We didn't need systemic solutions. So they made it all about us to further their interests. Because the bottom line is that acting in a systemic way, a bottle bill, these regulations would solve this problem at its source, but it would cost them profits. And thanks to their very effective deflection campaign, we have one of our other great global environmental crises today: the plastic pollution crisis, thanks to the clever and effective use of a deflection campaign by the industry. We have to recognize they're doing that right now on carbon emissions and climate.

“The truth is bad enough”  On Twitter, I see examples of people who have given up all hope to stop climate change. They believe we have passed tipping points that make our future on this planet doomed anyway. They refer, for instance, to the methane escaping the thawing permafrost areas. I suppose that approach is not very motivating to take climate action?

I like to say that the truth is bad enough; we don't need to exaggerate. And you're absolutely right; you see a lot of this on social media, and some of this is authentic; a fair amount of these are good-hearted people, people who ironically would otherwise be on the front lines and demanding action. But they've been led astray by pretty clever manipulation. 

The people at the very top of this are not innocent. There are bad actors who want to convince us that it's too late because of simply the physical response of the climate system, as you alluded to this idea of runaway feedbacks. But that's not supported by science. There's no science that supports the idea that we are committed to some sort of runaway warming. The science pretty clearly now indicates that how much warming we get is a function of how much carbon we burn. And the flip side of that is if we bring our carbon emissions to zero, the warming, at least of the surface of our planet, stabilizes very quickly. 

Now there might be some longer timescale responses. And we worry about this; the destabilization of ice sheets, for example. But we basically stop the warming of the planet if we stop polluting the atmosphere with carbon. It's so important to recognize that. What has happened here is that the forces of inaction, I call them the "inactivists" in the book, have actually tried to convince many climate advocates that it is too late, either because of this idea of runaway warming methane and feedback loops.

 But the science doesn't support the idea that we're close to any sort of runaway methane sort of bomb response to the climate system. So only if we warm the planet enough, if we do nothing, then yes, we start to enter into that realm. But we're not anywhere close to it now. So if we act now, that's not going to happen.

The other part of their approach is convincing us that our politics are so broken that there's no way that we can achieve meaningful action. And we see this in the wake of the COP 26 Glasgow Summit. You saw well-known climate change deniers like Marc Morano quoting out of context some climate advocates. That made it sound like the entire process had collapsed, that it's unsalvageable, and that there is no reason to even continue with these multilateral negotiations. And indeed, the fossil fuel industry would love nothing more than for us to give up on any possibility of climate action. And we see that some of that messaging was weaponized, in this case, by the forces of inaction. 

There are other examples that I talked about in the book. Online, there are bad state actors. Russia, for example, has promoted climate change denial; they want to monetize all of those fossil fuels that are buried beneath Russian soil. And they have worked for years, using Black Ops social media campaigns to influence American politics, European politics, and Canadian politics in a way that stymies meaningful climate action. And we know that they have armies of bots and trolls that pollute the social media space and are intended to take in well-meaning bystanders. These people would otherwise be on the frontlines, but they convinced them it's too late to do anything and that there's no possibility of meaningful policy action. They want these people on the sidelines rather than on the frontlines.

Nuclear energy.  An issue that came up several times in recent podcasts was nuclear energy. I remember once speaking with Jim Hanson about it, and he said that we don't have the luxury to pick and choose; we all want solar and wind, but we might have to go down that nuclear road as well. So is nuclear safe enough, and is it economically efficient enough, or should we go for renewables like wind and solar and become much more efficient? 

I respect Jim greatly, and I also respect the point of view of Jim and all other people who think that nuclear is an important option in addressing the climate crisis. But I am not convinced it is. And I go through that in some detail in the book in the New Climate War. Renewable energy is cheaper, and nuclear comes with risks like radiation, nuclear proliferation, and conflict. It is also really expensive, and it requires huge government subsidies to be viable. So if you're a free-market conservative, it doesn't make sense for you to be arguing for nuclear energy because it's not viable in the market against cheaper sources of energy. 

One of the arguments has been that we just can't scale up renewable energy fast enough. And then there are storage issues, the sun isn't always shining, and the wind isn't always blowing. A lot of that has been solved. We now have significant new technology for energy storage with smart grid technology. We have the tools now to solve this problem with renewable energy. I am convinced that that's the case. There are experts in this field who've made a compelling argument that that's the case, like Mark Jacobson of Stanford. And so there is a cheaper solution, and it comes with less risk. 

The only obstacle here isn't technological at this point; it's political. We just need policies that speed up this transition that's already underway from fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy. We can do it. I'm convinced that we can, and we don't have to follow this riskier path of nuclear or geoengineering or some of these other technologies that can supposedly save us.

Michael E  Mann.  Photo by Joshua Yospynd

Going slow on net zero

 From a Twitter thread by Ketan Joshi, talking about Australia's net zero target.  But the conclusion apply broadly.

First up, net zero targets are like many climate things. They can be good, or they can be delaying PR, depending on deployment style.  At the moment, countries and companies that have set net zero targets have almost universally not implemented actual policies or allocated capital that would bring about that as a reality. 

**But** without the target, we'd have nothing to whack them with, for not acting.

Ideally, here's what would happen:

- Gov announces 'net zero by 2050'

- Journalist asks self, 'what immediate change would signify that this is sincere'

- Journalists asks if that immediate change is implemented

- If not, the policy is presented as insincere

Here's what is going to happen. 

Scott Morrison will announce a net zero target, but it will be filled with a bunch of *extremely* predictable loopholes. 

I have predicted all of them here, for you.

Some conservatives, centrists and a bunch of energy and climate professionals will sagely nod their heads and say 'yes, this surely is a Step In The Right Direction'.

But the next step - rapidly reducing emissions and winding down the fossil fuel industry - won't get mentioned.

Australia's government will not: 

- Ban new fossil mines

- Plan to wind down coal and gas extraction (a huge chunk of Aus' domestic emissions)

- Phase out coal power by 2030; all fossils by 2035

- Ban combustion engine sales by 2030

- Ban new gas connections in homes

What is happening now is really just a bargaining and lobbying process to place a protective shield around emissions-intensive profit. This could well **increase** future emissions more than if there wasn't a net zero target

The self-reinforcing story when Joyce was appointed leader of the Nationals was that he'd stonewall. It was obviously incorrect then, and it still is now. He's actively trying to win protections for fossil fuel and methane intensive industry.

Two other key functions of a net zero target, for the Aus gov't: 

- Trying (in vain, hopefully) to fend off international pressure on emissions

- Staff retention.  Same reason News Corp and fossil fuel companies do greenwashy climate plans filled with stock photos of wind turbines. MPs, middle-management, underlings with a flickering flame of social conscience want to be reassured they're not The Bad Guys.

So: will the gov't be held to account by Aus media institutions for setting a net zero target, but not taking any actions to realise it?

Well, Aus has been projected to miss its 2030 (badly insufficient) Paris targets since forever. 

But: the gov CONSTANTLY lies and says they are. This is really a proper lie. This should be the easiest thing to counter. 

But....nope. It just gets let through 99% of the time.

Remember something important: net zero is a concept that is a very fancy way of saying 'do not add any more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If you do that, the heating stops'

Why does such a simple concept turn into climate delay? There is a fight about three sub-components of that goal

- When that point is reached

- How rapid the transition to that point is

- What "net" means

None of this is surprising. Of *course* there was going to be bloody, wild and chaotic battle about this. We barely scraped through admitting the freaking **science** is real. Deployment and realisation - with all its political, corporate and cultural issues - is messier still

Scott Morrison and Oz's climate emergency

 Oz's PM (Prime Minister) is a born-again evangelical Xtian who leads the completely misnamed "Liberal" Party of Australia.  It is in coalition with the so-called "National" Party which used to be called the Country Party, but is really an agrarian socialist party, which wants protection for agriculture and lots of subsidies from the government when there are droughts, floods, etc.  They want to socialise the losses (of the bad years) and keep the profits (in the good years).  The "Liberal" Party is the party which favours the rich and companies, and is in favour of cutting taxes on the rich, cutting welfare for the poor, cutting minimum wages, and nobbling Oz's free health system.  The Liberal/National Party coalition (known for short as the LNP) is most infamous for its demented climate denialism and its passion for fossil fuels, reflecting its largest donors.  This denialism and delayism is also driven by the "National" Party which fears that country regions would suffer if Oz adopted a reasonable climate target.  

This image comes from the Twitter page of Scott Ludlam who was one of the Green Party's (Federal) senators for a couple of years.  The cretin in the picture is our PM.  He once brought a lump of coal into Parliament and said we don't have to be afraid of it.  The map of Australia behind the PM shows the temperatures in Oz on a heatwave day.  The BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) has had to create new colours to show the new high temperatures being reached on our continent.

NewsCorp: from denialism to delayism

 From RenewEconomy

Have you heard the good news? One of the key institutions holding back climate action in Australia – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – is suddenly on Team Climate Action! Today, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that the company’s Australian outlets are set to launch a campaign urging “the world’s leading economies” to embrace a target of net zero emissions by 2050; to be fronted by columnist Joe Hildebrand. The details aren’t out yet, but I contend that we can comfortably predict what it will look like.

It will be a centrist, pro-business approach to climate action. It will make a show of dismissing the “hysterics” of climate activists, while urging governments, including Australia’s, to set distant, meaningless and non-binding climate targets. It won’t allow any room for emissions reductions in line with the 1.5C goals or the Paris agreement; no short-term meaningful targets or actions such as those highlighted in the IEA’s recent ‘net zero’ report. It won’t argue for a coal phase-out by 2030, or the end of all new coal, gas and oil mines in Australia, or a ban on combustion engine sales by 2030-2035; all vital actions if Australia is to align with any net zero target.

It’ll champion controversial technologies like CCS and fossil hydrogen. It’ll highlight personal responsibility: tree planting, recycling and electric vehicle purchases. It will not propose or argue in favour of any new policies; at least none that might reduce the burning of fossil fuels.

How can we know all this before we’ve seen the actual campaign? It’s easy – let me explain.

Here’s a remarkable statistic for you. In the month of August this year, global media coverage of climate saw its highest volume since the December 2009 Copenhagen climate meetings. That’s partly down to the release of the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group one report into climate change, six years in the making.

That report reiterated something extremely important: every single tonne of carbon dioxide does damage. Actions must be immediate and aggressive to align with the most ambitious pathways. Delay is deadly.

During the Black summer bushfires of 2019-20, I did a few interviews about Australia with baffled and perplexed international reporters. “What is going on over there? Why did the people elect such a climate laggard?”. A key part of my response was to pin blame on Australia’s media industry. Mostly on News Corp, which dominates the country’s uniquely concentrated media landscape, and which is notorious for its heavily politicised climate views. In fact, a recent study quantified this in historical terms, analysing media coverage within Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia for its climate science accuracy.

By a comfortable margin, News Corp’s Daily Telegraph and the Courier Mail scored the second and fourth worst among every media outlet analysed between 2005 and 2019 (The Australian wasn’t included in the analysis). Australia has, in general, seen the least accurate climate science coverage from 2013 onwards, despite a general rising trend in scientific accuracy over the past decade. For a decade and a half, News Corp lied about climate science with the blatant aim of protecting the revenue streams of the fossil fuel industry, and protecting its political allies.

This is important as a historical study, but today, it’s increasingly irrelevant. As the study points out, the accuracy of climate science has essentially plateaued in media coverage, with outright denial consigned to the dustbin.

The authors highlight that “the terrain of climate debates has shifted in recent years away from strict denial of the scientific consensus on human causes of climate change toward ‘discourses of delay’ that focus on undermining support for specific policies meant to address climate change”. The fundamental goal is the same – staving off action – but the way it manifests is very different.

There are many substantial recent examples of this. A good one was the severe blackouts that spread across Texas in February this year, which were immediately blamed on wind power failures, alongside easily debunked claims that snows and ice were blocking solar panels and freezing up wind turbines in Texas and around the world.

This isn’t climate change denial: it’s “mitigation denial“. That is, a move away from denying the problem exists and towards decrying its solutions as utterly unacceptable. An important part of this performance is pretending to have a moment of having seen the light, but then continuing to commit the same acts of delay as before.

What might reasonably seem like a surprising change of heart in News Corp’s stance on climate is actually a long-term tactical shift that has been occurring for at least a few years. Whatever policies they failed to destroy through their earlier campaigns, they will try and reframe through racist, nationalistic, technocratic and pro-business frames.

Whatever policies they can delay or destroy, they’ll simply keep running scare campaigns about, insisting that ‘the balance isn’t right’, and that the threat of climate action is greater than the threat of climate change, as they always have (in Australia, News Corp’s partnerships with Google and Facebook mean these campaigns to destabilise climate action are growing more powerful and more harmful every day). When the next federal election comes around, the “COSTS OF NET ZERO” scare campaigns will ramp up in Australia as they are in the UK, and News Corp will be at the forefront, pleading that acting too fast will cause catastrophe. Absolutely mark my damn words: this is what will happen.

Net zero by 2050 isn’t enough. We’ll know that the denialism has truly ended when organisations like News Corp treat the IPCC’s latest report like it’s real. That is, when they acknowledge that every additional unit of greenhouse gases causes harm to life on Earth, and that actions to stop their release must be as fast as possible. That climate change is an emergency that requires rapid action to wind down the fossil fuel industry in a just and equitable way, and that its replacement must be grown to full size with just as much passion and urgency.

This campaign won’t look anything like that. We know what it will look like – and it won’t be anything surprising at all.

Big oil dumps billions into misleading ads

 From EarthRights International

A sprouting plant. A closeup on tree bark. A rolling field of green. Young scientists pipetting into a petri dish. A soothing voiceover that says:

“We’re part of the solution.”

No, this isn’t a futuristic movie or a lesson on plant biology. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen an advertisement from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP or another fossil fuel corporation. 

In the last decade, the fossil fuel industry has spent huge amounts of money to convince the public that flowering plant imagery means that the industry is committed to a healthy future for all. It’s spent billions to sway public opinion and situate itself as a necessary part of the worldwide way of life. 

In fact, the industry has spent $1.4 billion on advertising campaigns in the last 10 years to convince us that humans cannot and will not survive without fossil fuels.

The industry isn’t just embellishing what it does. When Big Oil says it’s committed to “green” causes, renewable energy, and actionable solutions to address the climate crisis, it is a completely false narrative. Oil and gas corporations are lying.

In reality, the bulk of what the fossil fuel industry is spending money on is fossil fuels. According to a report from the International Energy Association, Big Oil is investing 99% in fossil fuels, and 1% in renewable energy.

This is even more infuriating when you consider that oil companies like Exxon have known for decades about the threat of climate change. Instead of using this knowledge to shift business models or warn the public, Exxon wasted time and money to manipulate the information shared and stir up skepticism. Why? Per former employees, Exxon didn’t want to deal with policies that could potentially jeopardize its profits. 

The oil and gas industry is pouring money into sustainability buzzwords, green imagery, and catchy advertising copy. The cognitive dissonance between what the industry says it’s doing and what it actually does is enormous.

Recently, the Guardian announced it will no longer allow the oil and gas industry to advertise in the outlet. The Guardian is the first major newspaper in the world to ban oil company advertisements. 

In an interview with HEATED, the Guardian’s interim chief executive Ann Bateson said that as advertising makes up 40% of revenue at the Guardian, the decision wasn’t made lightly. 

The message that fossil fuel advertisements were sending became a bigger concern for the Guardian. 

“Promoting a product to consumers is qualitatively different from trying to change perceptions about what a company’s doing. [Fossil fuel companies] are essentially promoting an agenda—one often consistent with their lobbying,” Bateson said. 

And she’s right. Big Oil is trying to influence public perception, and it’s spending lots of money to do so on a lot of different platforms. Recently, Exxon spent $50,000 in one week on political Facebook ads. It’s not alone. Here are just some recent examples of top oil and gas companies running Facebook ad campaigns using the “we’re building a sustainable future” narrative.

The oil industry is digging into the war-chest to use a variety of tactics to sway public opinion. Big Oil isn’t just using advertisements to sow confusion, it’s also using front groups. 

Front groups are organizations created to mimic grassroots efforts. They’re funded by corporations to do corporate bidding by playing activist. They’ll use social media, advertising, the press and more to plant competing narratives into public discourse. Under the guise of a grassroots movement, these front groups create confusion and undermine actual activism.

With more climate litigation cases going to court over the last couple of years, more of these front groups are starting to pop up to persuade the public that climate litigation cases are bad for business, progress, and our way of life.

Front groups employ disingenuous advertising campaigns to persuade the public that oil and gas companies are good, and those that hold them accountable are bad.

It’s time to reject Big Oil’s billion-dollar green advertising campaign. The industry is spending billions to paint itself green, associate sustainability with extractive practices, and ultimately convince us that there is no future without Big Oil in it. Some will refer to what the industry is doing as “greenwashing.” We prefer to be more direct about it: Big Oil is lying.