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Lofty Pledge to Cut Emissions Comes With Caveat in Norway
Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times
Last year, as United Nations scientists were warning of the perils of man-made climate change, this small country of fjords and factories reacted with an extraordinary pledge: by 2050 Norway would be “carbon neutral,” generating no net greenhouse gases into the air.
Norway’s bold promise raised the bar for other nations, which were mostly still struggling to figure out how to reduce emissions, by even a fraction. Then, in January, the Norwegian government went a step further: Norway would be carbon neutral by 2030, it said.
But as the details of the plan have emerged, environmental groups and politicians – who applaud Norway’s impulse – say the feat relies too heavily on sleight-of-hand accounting and huge donations to environmental projects abroad, rather than meaningful emissions reductions.
That criticism has not only set off anguished soul-searching here, but may also come as a cold slap to the many countries, companies, cities and universities that have lined up to replicate Norway’s example of becoming carbon neutral – with an environmental balance sheet showing that they absorb as much carbon dioxide as they emit.
(22 March 2008)
Comment by NY Times environmental journalist Andrew Revkin: Norway’s Green Plans – and Carbon Reality.
Climate change ‘is accelerating’ : Aggreko study
David Parsley, Guardian
The growth of developing economies in Africa, Asia and South America has accelerated global warming far beyond official predictions and it is developed nations that must act to halt the potentially catastrophic consequences, according to a new study from the world’s leading temporary power supplier, Aggreko.
The warning, which has shocked environment campaigners, comes from Aggreko’s chief executive, Rupert Soames, who said: ‘The threat of global warming is far greater than people have previously thought. The consensus figure on the world’s power consumption going forward to 2015 is simply wrong.’
Soames is referring to the findings of a report Aggreko commissioned from Oxford Economics, the commercial arm of Oxford University’s business college. While the International Energy Authority (IEA), states the annual rate of growth in the planet’s power consumption will be 3.3 per cent until 2015, the Aggreko study, which studied the growth of developing economies in greater detail than the IEA, puts the figure at 5 per cent.
(23 March 2008)
Code Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency, Part II (transcription)
Jason Bradford, Global Public Media
This is the second of two interviews with Philip Sutton, coauthor with David Spratt of a recent report titled “Climate Cod Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency.” The first interview reviewed the latest scientific understanding of climate change and established an appropriate target for temperature change and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
To summarize our previous interview: the impacts from current levels of warming are already very dangerous and likely to spin out of control quickly unless corrective actions are taken. For example, the Arctic Ocean may be ice free within several years, which would lead to the loss of major ice sheets, rapid sea level rise, and further warming from permafrost melt and global ecosystem damage.
However, most climate change policies aim to limit the average global temperature rise to 2-3 degrees C, or about 3 times higher than what has occurred so far. Given that the Earth is already overheated, these goals are practically useless.
By contrast, Climate Code Red advocates:
- apply a risk management regime based on a ‘less than one-in-a-million’ chance of major breakdown in the earth system, which would damage or threaten the welfare of all people, all species, and all generations;
- reduce the current warming and keep it to less than 0.5ºC above the pre-industrial level;
- reduce the current level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and keep them to less than 320 ppm CO2e (total);
- make the massive structural adjustments necessary in as little time as humanly possible, with an unprecedented application of human creativity as well as all available economic and other resources; and
- restrict the rate of climate change to less than 0.1 ºC per decade.
Today’s interview will discuss how, with a shared sense of purpose and heroic leadership, humans have the technical and social capacity to go into “emergency” mode and design an economic and environmental turn-around in 10-20 years.
(24 March 2008)
Transcription of an Audio interview from March 6.
U.S. Utilities Carbon Emissions (video)
Scott Nance, Energy Policy TV
Eric Schaeffer, President, Environmental Integrity Project, is interviewed about an analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data, which finds carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants rose 2.9 percent in 2007, the biggest single-year increase since 1998.
(21 March 2008)
