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Courting Tiger, like air travel itself, is unsustainable
David Spratt, The Age
THE maths is simple and the catch 22 confounding. To reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to save Australia’s tourism icons from certain destruction, we must radically reduce air travel.
Here’s the quandary. The Great Barrier Reef faces functional extinction, along with up to 60,000 associated jobs. Loss of two-thirds of the world’s coral reefs is inevitable at today’s level of atmospheric greenhouse gases. If warming reaches two degrees, 95 per cent of reefs are unlikely to recover from annual thermal bleaching. The hotter it gets, the greater the destruction. ..
To be specific, by 2030, our average annual individual carbon use will need to be less than one-third of a tonne of carbon each. By comparison, a London return flight emits around a tonne of carbon per passenger. It’s simply not sustainable.
Of course, Australians love low-cost airlines. There is the opportunity to travel farther, more often, for less. The State Government, with the support of the Opposition, wants the low-cost Singapore airline, Tiger Airways, to base its Australian operations in Melbourne. ..
The choice is simple: a heroic effort to cut emissions radically, or the likelihood of drastic, irreversible impacts. In a sustainable world, mass tourism based on fossil fuel jet travel will become extinct. We court Tiger Airways at our peril.
David Spratt manages a Melbourne business and is a member of the Carbon Equity Project.
(17 Mar 2007)
The Carbon Equity Project does a good job arguing for Domestic Tradable Quota’s in their Avoiding Catastrophe report (2Mb pdf, possibly produced in time for ongoing federal Emissions Trading inquiry).-LJ
China’s Wen hedges on climate change response
Emma Graham-Harrison and Chris Buckley, Reuters
BEIJING, March 16 (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday promised a national plan to address climate change but avoided offering emissions caps, speaking after a parliament session where global warming barely scraped on to the agenda. ..
“Although we are a developing country, we have nonetheless formulated a response plan for Chinese climate change based on international treaties concerning greenhouse gas emissions,” Wen said. ..
But Wen’s guarded remarks and the topic’s absence from his keynote work report suggested China is wary of tackling the issue even as it moves into the international emissions spotlight. ..
(16 Mar 2007)
Canada’s Tories eliminate government climate policy group
Staff, Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Environment Canada has eliminated a working group that played a key role in shaping climate-change policy — a move that sources say is an example of the Conservative government’s zeal to wrest control from public servants over an increasingly politicized issue.
A memo obtained by The Canadian Press outlines a new organizational structure for the department — and it no longer includes the Climate Change Policy Directorate.
The memo came out March 1 just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper embarked on a national tour to announce a series of green initiatives that were largely prepared by the division now being dismantled.
The directorate consisted of a handful of experts responsible for implementing new policy, co-ordinating climate-change efforts among different government departments, and analyzing their potential impact. ..
(14 Mar 2007)
180 Towns Put Climate On The Agenda In New Hampshire
Katie Zezima, New York Times via Free Internet Press
As they do every March at the town meeting here in Bartlett, New Hampshire, residents debated and voted Thursday on items most local: whether to outfit the town fire truck with a new hose, buy a police cruiser and put a new drainpipe in the town garage.
But here and in schools and town halls throughout New Hampshire, between discussions about school boards and budgets, residents are also considering a state referendum on a global issue: climate change.
Of the 234 incorporated cities and towns in New Hampshire, 180 are voting on whether to support a resolution asking the federal government to address climate change and to develop research initiatives to create “innovative energy technologies.” The measure also calls for state residents to approve local solutions for combating climate change and for town selectmen to consider forming energy committees. ..
(19 Mar 2007)
Related from NY Times:
In New Hampshire, Towns Put Climate on the Agenda
Gore gets signatures for climate change
Erik Schelzig, Associated Press
Former Vice President Al Gore has collected nearly 300,000 electronic signatures asking Congress to take action on global warming, Gore said in an entry on his Web site Friday. Gore said the signatures demonstrate “that hundreds of thousands of people share my sense of urgency” on climate change. Gore is scheduled to testify before Congress about the issue Wednesday.
As of Friday morning, Gore‘s Web site had received 294,374 signatures. Gore called on supporters to urge friends and family to come up with enough new signatures for him to collect 350,000 by Wednesday.
(18 Mar 2007)
British Columbia Aligns With California to Create a Green Bloc Along Pacific
Doug Struck, Washington Post
The premier of British Columbia wanted to bring coal-burning plants and offshore oil rigs to this lush province, so environmental groups were ready for a fight as he prepared his government’s annual policy speech last month.
They were stunned when Premier Gordon Campbell delivered a list of green promises that surpassed their most ambitious dreams.
He would not only stop the growth in greenhouse gases in the province, he said, but also slash them by one-third. He would gut the coal plant plans. Embrace wind power. Lease hybrid cars for the government. Squelch environmental pollution by the powerful oil and gas industry. Toughen car emission regulations.
His plans would make British Columbia what the Globe and Mail newspaper called “the continent’s greenest spot.”
…The premier’s embrace of global warming action reflects the growing political potency of the issue and illustrates how some local governments are shunning the go-slow approach of federal administrations in Washington and Ottawa.
…Late last year, Campbell sought advice from [California governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger, who had reversed his own sagging political fortunes by championing some of the toughest environmental regulations in the United States. Schwarzenegger dispatched his chief environmental adviser, Terry Tamminen, to Victoria, B.C., where he worked quietly with Campbell’s staff to draft a far-reaching plan.
…Working together to create a unified regional attack on the problem can create “continental momentum,” he said.
“California has a population of 36 million. British Columbia has a population of 4 million,” Campbell said. “If we looked at tailpipe emission [regulations] by ourselves in British Columbia, we wouldn’t get very far. But when you start to create a marketplace with our two jurisdictions, add other states and some of the western provinces . . . you are up to 60 million people driving this agenda forward.”
Campbell is “a very smart politician. He’s reading the tea leaves very carefully,” said Michael Magee, a veteran political consultant in Vancouver. “There is a huge, green tidal wave in public opinion. No one wants to be swept away by that. They want to be on the crest of it.”
(18 March 2007)
It’s an eerie feeling to see the prophecies of Ernest Callenbach’s “Ecotopia” come true. This sf novel from the 70s told how the West Coast broke away from the United States, as that country became more polluted, corporate-dominated, and bogged down in foreign wars. -BA
Global Opinion Warming
Anna Fahey, Sightline
A new international poll finds worldwide agreement that climate change is a threat. Opinions are split, however on the nuts and bolts: in particular, whether to act immediately and whether countermeasures are worth the investment. Even so, a window of opportunity seems to have opened that would allow leaders with bold solutions to spark international cooperation and make real strides.
The poll included 17 countries, representing more than 55 percent of the world population (though not all the questions were asked in each of the countries). Western European countries and Canada* were not included.
While global opinion trends are encouraging, the United States – the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases – has some catching up to do. That is to say, an attitude adjustment is in order:
(16 March 2007)
