Highest ever CO2 emissions

This morning I posted my breakfast blog on the need for more urgent Government action to set higher recycling targets for English Councils as part of a sound environmental policy. Timely? Yes.

Now only hours later I have just opened my iPad to read the depressing front page story in today’s Guardian that unpublished data produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicates that global carbon emissions increased last year by 5.5% from 29 gigatonnes of CO2 to 30.6 Gt. And this despite a worldwide recession of great severity.

This will mean, according to the IEA chief economist, that the chances of keeping average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees celcius are now wishful thinking and unachievable. Above that we have to anticipate large scale climate change with massive effects on lands and populations across the globe. 

Sadly it is unlikely that this news will stir up sufficient concern for political  leaders to plan and agree actions to tackle global warming effectively.

Recycle now please – URGENT

Thanks to the writing on a recyclable cardboard soup carton, I learnt last week that there’s a great DEFRA website (www.recyclenow.com), with lots of information about recycling. 

This includes a searchable database. You can type in your postcode and find out more about local practice and the policies of your local authority for the recycling of different kinds of materials. This is useful because these are changing as new techniques of sorting enable more to be collected and saved.

Allerdale local authority had managed in 2009 to achieve a recycling rate of 45%, but last year the figure dropped to 44%. When I asked Stephanie Fleming, Allerdale’s recycling officer about this, she replied “the weather’s got to take the blame here”. 

With so much flooding in November, the Council was overwhelmed with the sheer task of getting areas cleared and houses habitable. Water was covering huge areas and recycling for a while had had to take second place. Hard to argue about that!

But there is a bigger question here we need to ask. The EU has set a 50% target by 2020 for household recycling for the UK as a whole, but both Scotland and Wales have set their own higher targets of 70% for 2025. With no targets set for English authorities does this mean, say Friends of the Earth that we’ll shelter under the skirts of the Scots and the Welsh and lag behind? 

We know this Government is averse to the ‘nanny state’, but let’s see a bit more forceful direction on this front! Surely we need this if we’re going to create a green economy, which Ministers tell us they want.

Two other good Government websites on green issues are worth looking at. A more technical waste data flow site, (http://www.wastedataflow.org/) provides additional information about waste management across the country.  You need to register to get access to the data.

The second is for the Department of Energy and Climate Control  (http://www. decc.gov.uk/). This includes information about the Government’s Green Deal programme, with more details due out soon.

The road to Cancún

Climate change forces us to recognise that we live in an indivisible world. Recycling, reuse of materials and developing green technologies all make sense because the planet’s resources are limited and diminishing and we need to reduce our carbon footprint. 

Are we doing enough though to create that inclusive world that recognises the needs of all, rich and poor alike? Recently retired UN climate negotiator Yvo de Boer thinks not. In an interview (24 November 2010) with the Guardian’s John Vidal, he argues that slow progress has been made with climate change negotiations because developing countries are suspicious that rich countries use the issue as a way of keeping them poor and are not sufficiently committed to green growth economies.

The follow-up international conference on climate change is to be held in Cancún, Mexico next week and already there’s a mood that the high hopes of last December’s Copenhagen conference have to be replaced with more modest objectives if anything is to be achieved.

In The Economist’s lead article this week “How to live with climate change”, there is the sobering conclusion that climate change ” . . . remains the craziest experiment mankind has ever conducted. Maybe in the long run it will be brought under control. For the foreseeable future, though . . . the human race must live with the problem as best it can.”  

Here comes winter

P1010664 And in the Lake District it’s early too – before we are even half way through the month! This week snow has blocked Kirkstone Pass for traffic and there’ve been flurries of snow-flakes in Keswick. Temperatures last night at The Larches were below freezing, but it was during the day that I realised that autumn was definitely on the way out.

Driving from Ambleside yesterday there was a biting cold wind, which was underscored by two fighter planes 100 feet above me that screeched straight lines down the road as I descended from Dunmail Raise. The photo above shows the approach to Helvellyn from Thirlspot, with the higher reaches covered in snow.

Today it has been sunny but the cold remains. The photo below, taken from Thornthwaite shows just how much snow has fallen on the central range from Clough Head to Helvellyn and Dollywagon Pike.

snow_ridge1

 

The art of the possible?

Nine months after the Copenhagen conference our 3 week visit to the US last month has given us some insights into how the climate change debate has affected thinking in a country, heavily dependent on oil and still with the largest economy in the world.

A New York Times article (18th February 2010) reported on the disappointment of many that progress in the US on green issues was too slow and concessions too numerous. But let’s acknowledge at the outset that some key developments have taken place. The Christian Science Monitor (17th April 2010) points to a number of significant moves taken at a federal level. These include:

P1010279 ● Formal recognition of the dangers to health from greenhouse gases, which has paved the way for regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
● Setting of a new clean car standard, which will promote future efficiency and innovation in the industry and bring substantial reductions in emissions
● Commitment of $90 billion Recovery Act monies to accelerate adoption of renewable energy sources – like the 30,000 acre solar energy scheme in San Joaquin Valley, California – and support high speed train developments.

Critically there still remains the task of persuading Congress to agree reduction targets and penalties – as there are in the UK – to ensure compliance. However as with the Health Bill changes, Obama is by no means assured of success and for similar reasons.

There are powerful US interests, willing to fund those opposed to the thrust of Obama’s environmental policies, even though they have been watered down to win wider support. The best current example is the Proposition 23 (P-23) campaign in California. Here Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has steered through the legislature a commitment by 2020 to reduce CO2 emissions to the levels of 1990. This target is part of Assembly Bill 32 (AB32) of the Global Warming Solutions Act, but is opposed by a variety of oil and other interests.

The P-23 campaign seeks to reverse the AB32 reductions commitment until unemployment levels in the State, now above 12%, have dropped below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters, a level only seen three times in the last three decades.

This month two brothers, David and Charles Koch, have come forward with a $1 million contribution to the P-23 campaign. A small step maybe but typical of the way that they and others with oil, energy and refining interests seek to influence public attitudes about climate change. Their Koch Industries conglomerate is the second largest privately owned company in the US with a $98 billion annual turnover; and has provided over $50 million to climate opposition groups.

A report in Grist (17 August 2010), a Seattle based NGO, describes this as a battle between clean new technology and old fossil fuel thinking and points to growing support from green entrepreneurs for California’s landmark global warming initiative.

With recognition from amongst the US military that existing global energy supplies have now reached a peak (Guardian report, 11th April 2010 ), – and will decline – the California AB32 programme could be seen by the P-23 campaigners as an initiative for making up the likely deficit in traditional fuel supplies, but the chances of this in a highly polarized debate are minimal.

In an excellent article in Global Dashboard (18th June 2010) Alex Evans argues that there are costs, inconvenience and limits involved in a transition to something positive on climate and that there will be clear (and noisier) losers. He makes this interesting point. “What will open the political space for comprehensive solutions – alas – will be impacts: impacts that are tough enough to frighten people badly, but not so bad as to overshoot irreversible tipping points.”

If he’s right, let’s hope that we can get there quickly enough.