Developed Countries Reveal $100 Billion Climate Finance Plan Ahead of COP26 by Andrew Freedman
October 25, 2021
(Axios) After 12 years of fits and starts, industrialized nations on Monday put forward a detailed plan to provide at least $100 billion annually in climate aid to developing countries starting by 2023.
Why it matters: The plan, presented by representatives of Canada and Germany, is aimed at defusing one of the biggest sources of tension at COP26, which is the failure of industrialized nations to follow through on their financial commitments.
Yes, but: The original goal set in 2009 was for the countries most responsible for climate change to date, such as the U.S. and European Union, to pay developing countries to help them withstand climate impacts and develop renewable energy resources.
The $100 billion was supposed to be mobilized beginning in 2020, and climate vulnerable nations are seeking back payments for the shortfall from that year, as well as 2021 and 2022.
However, some developed nations, such as the U.S., are opposed to making up for such a shortfall.
(Axios) The economic downturn had no clear effect on either the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases in 2020 and 2021 or how quickly they climbed, a new UN report finds.
Why it matters: The findings of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin are another alarm bell ringing louder ahead of the COP26 summit.
Details: The official 2020 annual level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere was 413.2 parts per million, which is 149% of the preindustrial reading, the report found. This was a 2.5 ppm increase from 2019.
The year-over-year climb was faster than the 2011-2020 average annual rise of 2.4 ppm.
The findings also show that methane, another powerful global warming pollutant, is at 262% of preindustrial levels, and recently has been increasing at faster rates.
About half of the CO2 put into the atmosphere by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, is taken up each year by the land and oceans. The rest can stay in the air for hundreds of years.
There are mounting signs that so-called carbon sinks may become less effective as global warming's impacts mount, from droughts to warming and acidifying oceans, the report warns.
We might peak in the 2030s if we're lucky. Then a decline towards 2050, but with many countries overshooting their net zero targets. A few more years after that and we'll be into 3°C territory, and then it's pretty much game over.
We might peak in the 2030s if we're lucky. Then a decline towards 2050, but with many countries overshooting their net zero targets. A few more years after that and we'll be into 3°C territory, and then it's pretty much game over.
Yeah, let's hope we build a massive number of direct carbon capture plants before we reach the point of no return (we already are but we can at least avoid total devastation).
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
Greenhouse gas levels hit record; world struggles to curb damage
Source: Reuters
Greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record last year and the world is "way off track" on capping rising temperatures, the United Nations said on Monday, showing the task facing climate talks in Glasgow aimed at averting dangerous levels of warming.
A report by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed carbon dioxide levels surged to 413.2 parts per million in 2020, rising more than the average rate over the last decade despite a temporary dip in emissions during COVID-19 lockdowns.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the current rate of increase in heat-trapping gases would result in temperature rises "far in excess" of the 2015 Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average this century.
"We are way off track," he said. "We need to revisit our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life," he added, calling for a "dramatic increase" in commitments at the COP26 conference beginning on Sunday.
(Mother Jones) When politicians, scientists, and activists from 196 nations convene in Glasgow for the United Nations’ 26th annual climate summit, they’ll nosh on “‘plant-forward’ seasonal food sourced overwhelmingly from the U.K., with a focus on ingredients produced using environmentally friendly practices,” Bloomberg reports. What won’t be on the table at COP26, as the confab is known: a plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from food production, or for preparing the globe’s farms for the accelerating shocks of a fast-warming climate.
Hailed by its organizers as the “world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control,” COP26 is the place where the world’s nations come together to deliver their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It will devote not a single day of its 10-day schedule to food and agriculture, a sector that accounts nearly a quarter of emissions worldwide.
In an important sense, before the conference even started, it had already condemned the world to a highly uncertain food future. Days before the confab’s Oct. 31 start, the UN Environment Programme released its assessment of all the new national climate pledges nations are expected to make at COP26. The result: they “put the world on track for a global temperature rise of 2.7°C by the end of the century,” blowing past the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. (So far, the mean global temperature has risen about 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution.) That’s bad news for your kitchen table.
In an authoritative 2017 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a global team of researchers crunched data on the effect of rising temperature on yields of wheat, rice, corn, and soybean, which together provide about two-thirds of human caloric intake worldwide. They found that “each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0 percent, rice by 3.2 percent, maize by 7.4 percent, and soybean by 3.1 percent.”
Here in the United States, warmer temperatures are already decimating the snowpacks of Western mountain ranges that irrigate the great bulk of US fruit, vegetable, and nut production—and the additional heat embedded in the COP26 commitments will sap them even further.
(Yale Environment 360) For too long, the climate solutions conversation has been dominated by the supply-side view of the energy system: What will replace coal plants? Will natural gas be a bridge fuel? Can hydrogen power industry? These are all important questions, but, crucially, they miss half the equation. We must bring the demand side of our energy system to the heart of our climate debate.
The demand side is where humans, households, and voters live. It is where we use machines on a daily basis, and where the choices about what kind of machines we use — whether powered by fossil fuels or electricity — make our climate actions and climate solutions personal. We don’t have a lot of choice on the supply side, but we have all of the choice on the demand side. For the most part, we decide what we drive, how we heat our water, what heats our homes, what cooks our food, what dries our laundry, and even what cuts our grass. This constitutes our “personal infrastructure,” and it is swapping out that infrastructure that will be a key driver of the global transition from fossil fuels to green energy.
According to an analysis by Rewiring America, a nonprofit think tank I co-founded that focuses on electrifying our lives, if we redraw our emissions map around the activities of our households, we see that about 42 percent stem from the decisions we make around our kitchen tables. It gets close to 65 percent if we include the offices, buildings, and vehicles that are connected to the commercial sector and the decisions we make from our office desks.
(Common Dreams) As U.S. President Joe Biden prepares for a consequential United Nations climate summit in Scotland, the Supreme Court on Friday provoked widespread alarm by agreeing to review the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to limit planet-heating pollution.
"The Supreme Court could destroy the planet. Pass it on," tweeted Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in response to the decision.
Republican-led states and coal companies asked the justices to weigh in after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in January struck down the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule issued under former President Donald Trump.
The day before Biden took office, a divided three-judge panel said that the Trump-era rule—intended to replace former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which never took effect—"hinged on a fundamental misconstruction" of a key section of the Clean Air Act that resulted from a "tortured series of misreadings" of the law.
The justices will now consider whether that section of the Clean Air Act "clearly authorizes EPA to decide such matters of vast economic and political significance as whether and how to restructure the nation's energy system."
(Huffington Post) The lawsuits, filed by Republican-controlled states and a West Virginia oil company, aim to curb the federal government’s power to mandate a transition away from fossil-fueled power plants.
If the high court’s 6-3 conservative majority finds in favor of the plaintiffs, the ruling wouldn’t eliminate the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act, a legal determination known as the endangerment finding. It would, however, restrict the legal routes through the Clean Air Act for enacting such rules. That could make it harder for the United States to hit its goal to cut emissions in half by the end of this decade.
In an updated grant of certiorari, the Supreme Court said it plans to ask questions about a legal issue known as “non-delegation doctrine,” which Cornell Law School describes as the “principle in administrative law that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other entities.”
A ruling that explicitly requires Congress to pass new laws allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions could prove an even bigger setback.
…That would likely constitute a victory for the plaintiffs. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, Democrats need to vote in lockstep to pass a bill, giving unique power to lone senators like Manchin, whose opposition to climate regulations and personal family fortune tied up in a coal business have made him a magnet for fossil fuel industry donations throughout the past year. He’d be unlikely to vote for legislation granting the EPA new powers to regulate greenhouse gases. And Republicans are favored to win back at least one chamber of Congress in next year’s midterm election.
(The Conversation) With the United Nations’ climate conference in Scotland turning a spotlight on climate change policies and the impact of global warming, it’s useful to understand what the science shows.
I’m an atmospheric scientist who has worked on global climate science and assessments for most of my career. Here are six things you should know, in charts (see article linked above quote box to view the charts and read a brief discussion of the “things you should know”).
(Common Dreams) The richest people on the planet, representing a small sliver of the total population, are emitting carbon dioxide at a rate that's imperiling hopes of keeping global heating below 1.5°C, prompting fresh calls for government action to rein in "luxury" pollution and combat the intertwined crises of inequality and climate change.
New research by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) shows that by 2030, the carbon footprints of the wealthiest 1% of humanity are on track to be 30 times larger than the size compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, the Paris Agreement's more ambitious temperature target.
If current trends continue, the richest 1% will account for 16% of global CO2 emissions in 2030.
The carbon emissions of the poorest half of the global population, meanwhile, "are set to remain well below the 1.5°C-compatible level," according to the analysis, which was commissioned by Oxfam International and published Friday. The planet has already warmed by roughly 1.1°C, and scientists have said any heating beyond 1.5°C would have destructive consequences worldwide.
"The emissions from a single billionaire spaceflight would exceed the lifetime emissions of someone in the poorest billion people on Earth," Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam's climate policy lead, said in a statement. "A tiny elite appear to have a free pass to pollute. Their oversized emissions are fueling extreme weather around the world and jeopardizing the international goal of limiting global heating."
