Solutions for climate change

[seafoid]

https://www.ft.com/content/bde19efc-e35a-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc

Technology can help save the planet, but it is not enough To bet everything on future innovation is one heck of a gamble with our future JOHN THORNHILL The intellectual clash I once saw between an eminent neoclassical economist and a passionate environmentalist remains fixed in my memory, even though it took place at a conference in France more than a decade ago. With icy logic, the economist dismissed warnings about irreversible climate change. By definition, unsustainable development could not be sustained, he argued. If global warming became a big enough problem in the future, then demand for a solution would conjure up remedial supply. The market would magically produce an answer. Such blind-faith thinking still lies behind much of the laggardly response to the climate emergency that was on display at the UN summit in New York last week. Even if we cannot predict the exact forms they will take, the argument runs, market forces and technological innovation will surely conjure up a solution. Why stop poor countries from developing and throw coal miners out of jobs today when technological innovation can deal with the problem tomorrow? There is an outside chance that the free market ideologues may be right. Humanity has an extraordinary capacity for ingenuity. We may yet invent the mother of all decarbonisation machines in response to the greatest investment opportunity of our age.

But to bet everything on that happening soon is one heck of a gamble with the future of our planet. If, as the environmentalists argue, there were a 75 per cent chance of a huge asteroid slamming into Earth in 2050 then we would surely mobilise all our resources today to prevent such a catastrophe. Why do we not respond to global warming with similar urgency? Edward Perello, an investor at Deep Science Ventures, which backs promising environmental technologies, says the biggest challenge is to grow solutions fast enough to deal with the magnitude of the problem. "Does the market have the capability to deliver the technology when the demand arrives?" he asks. "Technology alone is not going to solve the problem, certainly not in the timeframe needed," is his answer. The Economist magazine agrees: "Unfortunately, technologies capable of delivering negative emissions of billions of tonnes a year for reasonable prices over decades do not exist." That is in no way to diminish the astonishing — and desperately needed — technological progress that has been made in many environmental fields over the years. Solar power costs have fallen more than 80 per cent in the past decade. The tech billionaire Elon Musk has helped to pioneer an electric car revolution by producing cool Tesla cars. In 2015, two dozen governments launched Mission Innovation, which has so far allocated $4.6bn to clean energy research. The Chinese government has invested massively in renewable energy.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, backed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and other private investors, is also exploring the potential of all kinds of environmental technologies, from next generation nuclear reactors, to carbon dioxide sequestration, to prevention of bovine flatulence. The EU is backing a related €100m venture fund. But Mr Gates accepts that a far bigger systemic change is needed in the way we run the global economy. "To stop the planet from getting substantially warmer, we need breakthroughs in how we make things, grow food and move people and goods — not just how we power our homes and cars," he wrote in a blog post. Fiona Cousins, a principal at Arup, an engineering company, says there is far more we can do with existing technologies to cut harmful gas emissions as long as we have the right incentives and sufficient will. For example, we use a huge amount of energy heating and cooling buildings. The answer is to electrify them and then decarbonise the electricity supply. Replacing belching boilers, installing insulation and deploying machine learning systems to regulate supply and demand makes a difference. The trouble is that in the race against physics, winning slowly is still losing, as the writer Bill McKibben has argued. In that sense, our environmental crisis represents the ultimate market failure. We cannot rely on the market alone to solve a problem it has helped fuel. The convening and mission-setting power of governments, the mobilising force of civil society and radical shifts in consumer behaviour are all still needed to help preserve our planet. "We have got to do everything if we want net emissions to fall to zero," says Ms Cousins. "We do not have much of a buffer left."

[five points]

The FT, whose columnists brag about jetting across the world, now panicking about climate change. Bless.

[Eamonnca1]

I would estimate fraudulent renewable schemes are as big if not a bigger industry than genuinely effective renewable technologies. Everyone knows the "cash for ash" scandal but I'm sure if any are aware of just how bad it is.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan

Posted on the internet, the outcome of several big government projects.

[Gmac]

I would estimate fraudulent renewable schemes are as big if not a bigger industry than genuinely effective renewable technologies. Everyone knows the "cash for ash" scandal but I'm sure if any are aware of just how bad it is.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan

Posted on the internet, the outcome of several big government projects.

solyndra

[Eamonnca1]

I would estimate fraudulent renewable schemes are as big if not a bigger industry than genuinely effective renewable technologies. Everyone knows the "cash for ash" scandal but I'm sure if any are aware of just how bad it is.

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan

Posted on the internet, the outcome of several big government projects.

solyndra

Squirrel!

[seafoid]

The tail end of a West Atlantic hurricane
Thanks to climate change
WTF
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/high-probability-storm-lorenzo-will-track-close-to-or-over-ireland-1.4036030

[seafoid]

   BP's chairman says world is on 'an unsustainable path'

https://www.ft.com/content/5cf6246a-7afe-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

   

BP's chairman said he recognised that the world's energy consumption was on "an unsustainable path" and the oil major's days of chasing ever higher output are coming to an end.

Writing in the Financial Times on Tuesday, Helge Lund acknowledged the need to repurpose BP's business for a lower-carbon future. However, he did not detail how it would do so and continued to reject investor calls to set hard emissions targets for the use of the fuels it produces.

"With the oil price above $70 a barrel for Brent crude, surely BP wants to keep producing and selling as much as it can for as long as it can? On the contrary," he said, timing his comments with the company's annual meeting in Aberdeen.

Two shareholder resolutions on climate change will be put to a vote at Tuesday's AGM in a sign of how BP, like other oil and gas majors, is under growing investor pressure to show it is taking action to prevent global temperatures rising.

One resolution proposed by Climate Action 100+, a coalition of some of the world's largest investors that manage $32tn in assets, has called on BP to detail how its business is aligned with the commitments of the Paris climate accord.

Mr Lund, whose statement is supported by chief executive Bob Dudley, maintained that BP's strategy is "consistent" with meeting the Paris goals to keep temperature rises to well below 2C from pre-industrial levels — an assertion that has been challenged by big shareholders and environmental activists.

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BP prepares for low carbon future
BP has "transformed many times over . . . and are in the process of doing so again", Mr Lund said, without spelling out how BP was shifting its business strategy or changing its spending plans.

"The evolution into broader energy companies would require new carbon-neutral businesses to be created at an unprecedented rate and existing businesses to be transformed," he said.

Mr Lund added that a faster transition would require "a huge re-engineering of the energy system" and would present a significant challenge for the world's biggest oil and gas companies. But "the world can't continue along its current path".

Investors are demanding that energy companies take greater responsibility for their role in enabling global warming, caused by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from activities including the burning of fossil fuels.

Climate activists such as Greenpeace, which blockaded BP's London headquarters on Monday, have called on oil and gas companies to stop investing in new oil and gas production altogether and to pivot their businesses towards renewables instead.

While BP has backed the CA100+ resolution, Mr Lund reiterated that the oil major does not support another by shareholder group FollowThis, asking for hard targets on its emissions including those of its customers who burn their diesel and petrol in cars.


While Norway's Equinor has also rejected this proposal, Royal Dutch Shell has pledged to introduce targets next year that will include these third-party emissions.

BP has instead committed to keeping emissions from its own operations flat until 2025.

Mr Lund said that while BP was committed to advancing the energy transition towards cleaner fuels it could not take the lead as it had in the past, under former chief executive John Browne.

"We invested heavily in renewables . . . But we also lost a lot of shareholder money," he said, illustrating the huge tensions roiling the oil and gas industry about how it can stay profitable.

He called for governments to "accelerate development" of a carbon tax or pricing mechanisms to help them in the transformation of their business.

[macdanger2]

Some interesting stuff on rte this week as part of their "climate action week"

Anyone changing their habits in the last while to become more sustainable?

I'd say we're pretty good on waste generation (have a compost heap, brown bin and good at recycling), water usage and minimising food waste. Okay on flights, maybe 1 short and 1 medium / year. Not great on transport (although seriously considering an EV when my diesel packs it in) and meat/dairy consumption which are both high.

[Eamonnca1]

We've always been pretty good at keep the car use to a minimum. Considered buying an EV but at the time we changed our last car we were living in a place where we wouldn't have been able to charge it, so we got a petrol car that we use a few times a week for errands, shopping and visiting family. For everything else we walk, cycle, scoot, or take the bus or train. We used to have a car each, but we tried cutting it down to one to see how it goes, and so far it's working fine.

Asking individuals to change their habits voluntarily is going to have limited results though. Only pricing and proper incentives is going to make a big dent in emissions.

[Farrandeelin]

Plant trees.

[JPGJOHNNYG]

Elephant in the room. Stop the population explosion. Everything else is window dressing

[Ambrose]

Elephant in the room. Stop the population explosion. Everything else is window dressing

Nail on the head.

Unfortunately no one wants to address this issue. Less people will use less resources.

[macdanger2]

Elephant in the room. Stop the population explosion. Everything else is window dressing

How though?

[BennyCake]

The elephant in the room is modern living. Man wasn't designed to live this way. Give us all a plot of land and a fishing rod and let us live self sufficiently, as we're supposed to.

[Eamonnca1]

The elephant in the room is modern living. Man wasn't designed to live this way. Give us all a plot of land and a fishing rod and let us live self sufficiently, as we're supposed to.

Go back to pre-industrial medieval style living? Not going to work for 7 billion people.