Another very negative view of COP 26
It's just a great excuse for the rich and powerful to have a satisfying get-together. It CANNOT achieve anything. Change is up to the national legislatures
By DAN WOOTTON
I don't know which image of unbridled hypocrisy, sickening privilege and total tone-deafness made me fume more.
The parade of 400 private jets parked up at Scottish airports as world leaders, royalty and billionaires gushed out more carbon within a 24-hour period than most of us will in a lifetime in order to arrive at Cop26 and preach that we must all change our lives forever more in order to reach Net Zero by 2050.
Or the dangerous Insulate Britain criminals splayed once more on the roads, this time in Manchester, to stop more hardworking Brits from going to work, taking their kids to school or getting to hospital when most of these eco-terrorists haven't even bothered to properly insulate their own homes.
And that's just the start of the maddening spectacle of Flop26 over the past 48 hours.
The parade of 400 private jets parked up at Scottish airports as world leaders, royalty and billionaires gushed out more carbon within a 24-hour period than most of us will in a lifetime +5
The parade of 400 private jets parked up at Scottish airports as world leaders, royalty and billionaires gushed out more carbon within a 24-hour period than most of us will in a lifetime
There have been hyperbolic statements about the end of the world designed to terrify our children from the great and the good; a sweary display from that omnipresent sulky teen Greta Thunberg; no shows from China and Russia; the Archbishop of Canterbury comparing the climate debate to Nazi appeasement; and Prince Charles blatantly wading into politics yet again by demanding a 'vast military-style campaign' to reduce emissions.
In fact, I'd go as far to say there's never been a bigger disconnect between everyday Brits and the political, business and media elite determined to tell us what we must do while not changing a thing about their own lovely lives.
And I say all of this as a passionate environmentalist.
I actually spent much of my own youth as some sort of 1980s Kiwi Thunberg wannabe, writing songs and campaigning about the hole in the Ozone Layer that, you might remember, was going to lead to our imminent demise.
Yup, I was one of those terrified youngsters back then who listened to the environmental doomsday merchants with complete terror.
But guess what? Moderate changes to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in spray cans and refrigerants over a period of time have meant that the Ozone hole has actually shrunk in recent years!
The world survived the warnings from the hysterical campaigners (again) and I learnt a big lesson that constant scare campaigns from people who jet around the globe in private jets is not the best way to tackle climate change or environmental issues.
This is where you would hope the so-called independent British broadcast media would step in to bring a degree of perspective to Cop26 proceedings.
Chance would be a fine thing.
Instead, we've had hysterical Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow tweeting on his way to the summit: 'En route to COP26 - trees and branches affected by climate change have slowed our rail journey - tho the branches have been cleared we are doen (sic) to 5mph - What an irony! What a message! We MUST change! Dare we hope that we shall?'
Er, is a so-called impartial broadcaster really trying to claim that branches never fell onto train lines thanks to storms before the so-called 'climate emergency'?
Sky News' craven coverage has been unsurprising, given they are an official sponsor of Cop26 and run a dire daily climate show.
But I'd like to see one of their journalists question the company's own chief executive Dana Strong, who spent the first half of the year commuting to her job in London from Philadelphia in the US via – you guessed it – private jet!
And, despite forcing its own TV dramas to start including characters driving electric cars and rejecting meat for vegan dishes, Sky had the audacity to defend the 3,500-mile transatlantic commute.
A spokesperson for the company said: 'Many CEOs leading multinational companies have schedules that mean it is appropriate to use different modes of transport. It is critical to counterbalance this, that is why we offset carbon emissions caused by the business travel of Sky employees.'
Translation: While we're telling our viewers to stop going on holiday and reduce meat consumption, if you're rich, you don't need to change a damn thing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10157499/I-want-save-planet-resent-told-it.html
*********************************************Europe's Energy Crisis Better Wake America Up
COP-26, the twenty-sixth massive climate control “conference of parties,” goes live in Glasgow, Scotland on Halloween. That’s certainly appropriate since its primary purpose is to further terrify humanity to “take action” to prevent the “existential threat” of “manmade climate cataclysms.”
Thousands of politicians and climate activists will take private jets and limos to the lecture and hector halls – to demand that “commoners” be restricted to one Basic Economy flight every three years, meatless diets, public transportation, and keeping 640-square-foot homes at 65 F all winter and 85 F all summer.
Otherwise, they say, countless people will die as our planet “overheats” by up to 4.1 degrees C (7.2 F) by 2100. Real-world science and data provide no support for temperature spikes of this magnitude. But just in time for COP-26, Columbia University concocted a “new study” and “new metric” on the “mortality cost of carbon,” based on these scary computer-modeled temperature forecasts.
Bloomberg News gave the death-by-global-warming fable prominent coverage.83 million people(equivalent to the entire population of Germany) “could be killed” this century by rising planetary temperatures caused by fossil fuel use, it asserted. Nonsense.
Modern housing and energy systems enable people to adapt to and survive even the most extreme heat and cold – even in Antarctica, which just experienced the coldest average winter temperatures ever recorded: -61 C (-78 F).
Survival becomes far less likely, however, if climate treaties and energy policies prohibit efficient air conditioning and heating, ration them, subject them to recurrent blackouts, or make them harder to afford amid rising oil, natural gas, coal and electricity prices.
Yet that is exactly what’s being advocated and implemented. Britain and various US cities and states want to ban natural gas heating and cooking– and replace them with expensive heat pumps and other electric appliances, powered by expensive, weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels. Meanwhile, energy prices have been skyrocketing in response to Covid recovery and anti-fossil-fuel policies.
Climate theory has long held that most 21st-century warming will occur in northern latitudes during winter months. But now we’re now told a warming Arctic could also be causing colder winters, which could endanger far more people than rising temperatures or more frequent heatwaves.
Actually,far more people die in cold weather than in hot weather or heat waves. In the United States and Canada, cold causes 45 times more deaths per year than heat: 113,000 from cold versus 2,500 from heat. Worldwide, where air conditioning is far less available, some 1,700,000 people die annually from cold versus 300,000 from heat – a ratio of almost 6:1.
Energy policies that favor wind and solar over fossil fuels beget “fuel poverty” that can make adequate heating impossible, causing numerous health problems and deaths. Poor, minority, elderly and fixed-income families are most severely and inequitably affected, it found.
Cold homes bring increased risks of respiratory and circulatory problems (including asthma, bronchitis, flu, cardiovascular disease and stroke) and exacerbate existing adverse health conditions. Cold household temperatures also increase depression, anxiety and other mental health problems. Already vulnerable groups – young children, older people and those with preexisting health issues – are especially susceptible to hypothermia, more illness and death.
Public Health Englandcalculated that one-tenth of all “excess winter deaths” in England and Wales are directly attributable to fuel poverty, and 21.5% of excess winter deaths are attributable to the coldest 25% of homes.30,000 to 40,000 people died each year in England and Wales since 1990 who would not have perished if their homes hadn’t been so cold, researchers estimated.
Adjusted for population, this is equivalent to 165,000 to 220,000 excessAmericanwinter deaths per year.
In 2017, Germany endured172,000 localized blackouts; in 2019,350,000 German families had their electricity cut off because they couldn’t pay their power bills.
Coal, oil, natural gas, electricity and home heating costs have risen significantly since those studies were prepared, likely increasing the excess winter death toll markedly. In fact, 2021 European gas prices skyrocketed nearly 600% over 2020 prices, and Rotterdam coal futures soared from $60/ton in October 2020 to $265/ton in September 2021. Energy prices are still rising, affecting jobs and living costs.
Global demand for gas and coal has surged as the world recovers from Covid. British gas production has plunged by 60 % since 2000; Britain and Europe have banned fracking;Putin is playing politics over how much gas it will deliver to Europe; and President Biden has stymied leasing, drilling, fracking, pipelines, and oil and gas exports. Many coal and nuclear power plants have been shut down. Meanwhile, Europe’s heavily subsidized wind turbines generated far less electricity in 2021 due to unfavorable winds.
This perfect storm of misinformed policies could bring unprecedented excess deaths as winter sets in.
Schools, hospitals and clinics could also be much chillier – and deadlier. At 11¢ per kilowatt-hour (average US business rate), a 650,000-square-foot hospital would pay about $2.2 million annually for electricity. At 25¢ per kWh (UK), the annual cost jumps to $5 million; at 35¢ per kWh (Germany), to $7 million! Those soaring costs would likely result in employee layoffs, higher medical bills, reduced patient care, colder conditions, and more deaths.
Adding to these woes, Citigroup says EU natural gas prices could hit $100 per mcf (per thousand cubic feet or million Btu) if this winter is particularly cold and moreGulf of Mexico hurricanes disrupt production. News outlets report that energy companies supplying six million UK homes face collapse, and several elder care homes have warned that crippling energy bills could force closures, leaving many old and infirm people homeless.
Britain’s energy minister has said a “very difficult winter” lies ahead, as gas prices soar amid fear of blackouts and food shortages. Many households “will not be able to cope.”
US energy prices remain well below Europe’s, but threats to American families are also rising. The average monthly Henry Hub spot price for natural gas has shot from $1.63 in June 2020 to $5.16 in September 2021. That’s well below the highest-ever price ($13.42 in October 2005) but still ominous.
One-third of American households already had difficulty six years ago adequately heating and cooling their homes – and one-fifth of households had to reduce or forgo food, medicine and other necessities to pay energy bills. Even before Covid, low-income, Black, Hispanic and Native American families were spending a greater portion of their incomes on energy than average US households.
Nearly half of US households that heat with natural gas will spend 22-50% more this winter than last year, depending on how cold it gets. Families that use electricity, propane or fuel oil to heat their homes will also pay significantly more. Energy-intensive factories may have to cut back hours and production, lay people off, and move operations overseas (where they will continue to burn fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases).
Americans are also being impacted by gasoline prices that haverisen more than a dollar a gallon for regular since the 2020 election and recently reached $5.00 per gallon in New York and $7.60 in one southern California town.
The overall effect of these anti-fossil-fuel policies on livelihoods, living standards, health and life spans will be profoundly negative. Countless people will perish, many of them cold and jobless in the dark.
Under Joe Biden, the United States is already on a trajectory to Europe’sreal climate crisis: unaffordable, unreliable energy. That crisis better wake America up. Otherwise, self-righteous activists and governing classes will destroy middle-class jobs, families – and lives.
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In Glasgow, the world moves to halt deforestation
I can get with that
Glasgow: Global deforestation would be halted by the end of the decade under a plan to be endorsed by over 100 world leaders on the second day of United Nations climate talks.
Leaders representing land which is home to over 85 per cent of the world’s forests are expected to commit to halting and reversing deforestation and land degradation by 2030.
Among the signers, countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have seen struggled with deforestation for decades. The nonprofit World Resources Institute calculates forests absorb roughly 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.
The deforestation announcement is not part of the formal COP26 negotiations, but reflects the efforts of the UK hosts of the climate talks to use the moment to drive forward a range of initiatives to help tackle climate change through side deals to the talks. Other signers of the pact are expected to be Australia, Canada, Colombia, Russia, and Norway.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made his mantra for action on “coal, cars, cash and trees” central to the Glasgow talks.
The British government’s determination to secure significant side deals is widely seen as part of an effort to ensure that COP26 can succeed in advancing efforts to control climate change even if world leaders gathered here do not commit to the headline emission reductions.
Those reductions are part of the 2015 Paris agreement targets of keeping warming to well below two degrees.
The plan to reverse deforestation is expected to include a commitment of US$12 billion ($16 billion) in public funds from 12 countries between 2021 and 2025 to protect and restore forests, as well as US$7.2 billion of newly-mobilised private investment.
This would include a new US$1.5 billion fund to protect the Congo Basin, which is home to the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world.
Although forests take the emissions out of the atmosphere, this natural climate buffer is rapidly disappearing.
Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil's space research centre INPE, as concerns grow over right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policy.
The world lost 258,000 square kilometres of forest in 2020, according to WRI’s deforestation tracking initiative Global Forest Watch, an area larger than the United Kingdom. The Geneva-based World Meteorological Organisation said that parts of the Amazon rainforest have gone from being a carbon “sink” that sucks carbon dioxide from the air to a source of CO2 due to deforestation and reduced humidity in the region.
Monday’s agreement vastly expands a similar commitment made by 40 countries as part of the 2014 New York Declaration of Forests and goes further than ever before in laying out the resources to reach that goal.
Alongside this more than 30 financial institutions with over US$8.7 trillion of global assets – including Aviva, Schroders and Axa – are expected to commit to eliminate investment in activities linked to deforestation.
“Today we celebrate - tomorrow we will start pressing for the deal to be delivered,” said Roberto Waack, a Brazilian business leader and biologist and Chatham House visiting fellow.
“The deal is a significant milestone on the road to protecting our precious forests and tackling the climate crisis.
Executive director of Trillion Trees, a joint venture between BirdLife International, Wildlife Conservation Society and WWF, John Lotspeich, said it was “fantastic” that leaders were “finally” addressing deforestation.
“Yes, we must restore forests and plant trees to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. “But at the same time, if forests continue to disappear at the current catastrophic rate, all this work will be to no avail. And frankly, the silence around the value of intact forests has been deafening.”
The United Nations climate office warned this week that the world remains off target for meeting its goal of cutting emissions as part of international efforts to curb global warming.
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Big business 'sniffs' the green dollar at COP26
Climate change conferences, such as today's COP26, were once the domain of scientists and bureaucrats.
Now, they are increasingly attended by big business delegations eyeing off the "green dollar" — former climate negotiator for Australia, Richie Merzian, calls it a "trade show" for climate change.
It's a sign that climate change is as much an economic challenge as it is a scientific one.
In fact, one of the four goals of Glasgow is "mobilising finance"; $90 trillion is needed for infrastructure to assist the economy to decarbonise by 2030, according to the World Bank.
One of Australia's biggest investors in renewables, Mike Cannon-Brookes, said "$90 trillion is probably an understatement".
"The challenge with Australia's commitments and the promises we are taking to COP26 in Glasgow is that they don't give our economy any stability," he told 7.30.
"There's no legislation, there's no planned interim targets, which means as an investor, you can't be sure what environment you're investing in, which means you're going to need a higher return because the risk is higher, which means the cost of doing business in Australia is going to go up."
COP26 will see an unprecedented showing of corporations, bringing the quality of their commitments — and motives — into sharp focus.
Polluters tackling emissions
Australia's largest independent fossil fuel supplier, Ampol, is switching some of their petrol stations to fast-charging electric vehicle stations, according to CEO Matt Halliday.
"We do view ourselves as a distributor of energy. Over time, we'll be distributing different forms of energy," Mr Halliday told 7.30.
"We're rolling out 121 stations across our network initially, in partnership with ARENA."
Despite Ampol's 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year, it is part of a business delegation called the Climate Leaders Coalition — which includes BHP, CBA and Coles — and has sent representatives to Glasgow.
"I don't think it's appropriate to rely on any one group, government or organisation. It's about a coalition working across value chains, working together on policy settings," he said.
The rise of 'greenwashing'
Increasingly, carbon-intensive businesses like Ampol — who pledge to deliver net zero on emissions by 2040 — will come under the microscope.
Critically, Ampol's plan will not deal with "scope 3" emissions — the emissions from customers burning their fuels — according to Richie Merzian.
"Companies will try and greenwash their way into only offsetting the emissions from scope 1 and 2, their domestic emissions," Mr Merzian told 7.30.
"And if you're a major fossil fuel producer, the majority of your emissions are when your goods are burnt.
"We're seeing a rise of greenwashing. We're seeing more junk credits being put on the market and purchased up by big polluters. We're seeing a lot more marketing, and not a lot of action. And that's the real risk."
In Australia, one in five carbon credits generated here could very well be hot air, according to new research by the Australian Conservation Foundation.
However, COP26 will see new commitments from some of the industries hardest to abate.
World's largest cement maker tackles scope 3
Holcim is the world's largest cement and building material producer. It's also a member of US climate envoy John Kerry's First Movers Coalition, a group of emissions intensive industries attending COP26.
Holcim's chief sustainability and innovation officer, Magali Anderson, told 7.30 that the new targets they were taking to COP26 meant they would now reduce their scope 3 emissions — emissions created down their supply chain by customers using their building products — by 90 per cent, a goal endorsed by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi).
"Scope 3 emissions represent 20 per cent of our total footprint," Ms Anderson said.
"[For] some companies, it represents 80 to 90 per cent.
"Which means 80 per cent of our emissions are actually under our control.
"Steel and cement are part of this famous 'hard to abate' sector. Myself, I hate this nomination; I love to call it [a] 'full of opportunities' sector, because whenever we reduce, the type of reduction we're going to make will have an enormous impact."
Mr Cannon-Brookes, whose software firm Atlassian also has endorsement from SBTi, said COP26 would bring new promises from the corporate sector, but transparency and governance was required.
"We need to call out and be clear about what people are actually committing to, whether it's an individual, whether it's a business or whether it's a government," he told 7.30.
"When people are making a net zero pledge, we should ask things like, is it legislated? As a government, that's laws, as a business, that's in some sort of actual policies, penalties, incentives, that sort of thing.
"We should ask, does it involve scope 3 emissions?
"None of Australia's policies involve scope 3. Very few of those large, generally fossil fuel-based businesses involves scope 3. That's a really important point."
Attempting to address the authenticity of green investments, the Climate Bonds Initiative is a not-for-profit that developed an accreditation system now adopted by the EU and China — and investors are hungry for ways to 'green up' their portfolios, according to CEO Sean Kidney.
"There is money pouring out of our ears looking for green," he told 7.30.
"In the recent auction, when the European Commission went to market seeking money for its green bond, they were 11 times oversubscribed.
"That means that they placed 12 billion euros a bond. They got 11 times the orders.
"This COP26 will be replete with corporations, with investors, with ministries of finance, not just ministers of climate change.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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