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Climate change featured heavily at the opening of the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) annual marine environment protection meeting in London today.
IMO Secretary General Kitack Lim called the Paris climate agreement a “landmark achievement” and said that the organisation – which sets shipping regulations, including environmental standards, for UN member states – has “a major role to play in ensuring the Paris agreement translates into a long lasting improvement in people’s lives.”
This is a change of pace for the international shipping industry which, along with aviation, continues to avoid coming under a sector-wide global emissions reduction target.
Contributions from the shipping and aviation industries were notable in their absence from the Paris deal.
This is despite shipping accounting for about three percent of total global carbon emissions (a carbon footprint equal to the size of Germany). And, according to IMO projections, emissions from shipping may increase by 50-250 percent by 2050 from 2012 levels.
But as Lim told the assembled delegates: “The absence of any mention of shipping in the text of the agreement will in no way diminish the strong commitment of the Organisation… to continue its work to address greenhouse gas emissions.”
Lim focused on the Paris agreement throughout his address and reiterated its aspirational goal of limiting global temperature rise below 1.5C.
Emissions Targets
At last year’s meeting, the IMO rejected a call by the Marshall Islands to set specific emissions targets.
Since taking over the secretariat in January of this year, however, Lim has appeared more amenable to setting concrete emissions limits. He told Climate Home that climate change was a “top priority.”
But the industry has its work cut out for it. A study at UCL last year found that the global shipping industry would have to cut its emissions by nearly half by 2030 to stay on track for a 1.5C warming limit.
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An astonishing 720 million people around the world face falling back into extreme poverty unless we tackle climate change immediately, warns a new report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
The report was published as world leaders gathered this week at the United Nations General Assembly and agreed the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), among which is the eradication of extreme poverty by 2030.
This goal is achievable, according to the ODI, but not without a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions peak in 2030, and a fall to near zero by 2100. “Climate change increases the probability that those who emerge from extreme poverty will be at risk of falling back into it,” it concludes.
Beyond 2030
Sustaining poverty reduction therefore relies on curbing climate change the report argues.“If the global community is serious about eradicating extreme poverty for good, it needs to think beyond 2030. Eradicating poverty by 2030 will be no great accomplishment if we are incapable of sustaining that achievement from 2030 onwards.”
It continues: “It is policy incoherent for big GHG emitting countries, especially industrialised ones, to support poverty eradication as a development priority, whether through domestic policy or international assistance, while failing to shift their own economy toward a zero net emissions pathway.”
As the report notes, progress on poverty eradication over the past two decades has reduced the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day in the developing world – defined as the extreme poor – from 43 percent in 1990 to about 17 percent as of 2011.
“In order to stop poverty, we must stop climate change.” – Jay Winter Nightwolf, Echota Cherokee nation. #ActOnClimate
Analysing data on the impact of climate change on food prices, the effects of childhood malnutrition and stunting, the productivity of primary sectors (such as agriculture or mining), and increased droughts, the ODI estimates that up to 720 million people are at risk of facing extreme poverty from 2030 to 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario.
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James Meadway, chief economist at the New Economics Foundation, explains the interrelated economics behind China’s ‘Black Monday’ stock market crash, Middle Eastern oil and US fracking.
The ‘fracking revolution’ has transformed the economics of oil production globally, with the US becoming a bigger producer than Saudi Arabia and – after decades of dependency on oil imports – even being able to export some of its surplus production.
US shale oil is unusual, too, in being privately owned: most of the world’s oil reserves (over 70 percent) are in state hands. Like the North Sea 30 years ago, in a world dominated by state-owned companies and publicly owned reserves, US shale could look like a new frontier for private operators on the search for fat profits.
New technology, high oil prices, and plentiful cheap credit have encouraged the boom. Some $200bn has been borrowed to invest in fracking in the last few years, accounting for 15 percent of the entire $1.3tr US junk bond market. Investors were, in effect, betting on continuing high oil prices making their investments profitable for years to come.
Price Slump
Last year’s slump in prices trashed that calculation. From a mid-year high of $115 per barrel, by the end of 2014 the price per barrel had fallen by more than 40 percent. More than half of US shale rigs have been laid up since October.
The driver, last year, was the behaviour of OPEC – the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC is a cartel agreement among major oil producers that seeks to manage the international market for oil. With oil prices already plunging over the summer, OPEC could be expected to ease off on production. Restricting supplies should, thanks to the magic of the market, produce a decent increase in the sale price of oil. Instead, with Saudi Arabia taking the lead, OPECdecided to continue production levels. No agreement on restricting output could be reached. Prices slumped.
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Lord Lawson asserts that his attack on climate change policy is motivated by deep concerns for the working classes – fears environmental measures will cost jobs and undermine prosperity.
Environmentalists claim that Lawson is acting in the interests of the oil industry even if he is not directly funded by any oil companies.
A secret government document published today after 34 years hidden in the archives provides new evidence that Lawson when a cabinet minister acted in the interests of the oil companies – but not their workers.
Lawson proposed his top secret LEADBURN plan to the Cabinet on 10 November 1981 which suggested declaring a national state of emergency within a week and confirmed 12,500 British troops had been placed on notice to move in order to keep fuel supplied and break a national strike.
The document – released for the first time by DeSmog UK – is marked “confidential” and is headlined, Cabinet, Oil Tanker Drivers: Contingency Measures, Memorandum of the Secretary of State for Energy.
Fuel Shortages
The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) had called for an “all-out strike” demanding an 11 percent pay rise for its members working for BP, Shell, Esso and Texaco.
A meeting of the Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU) was called on 4 November with ministers agreeing “preliminary steps to bring forward plans to protect essential services from fuel shortages.
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Last week, DeSmog UK revealed how David Cameron’s government snuck a new definition of fracking onto the statute books. Kyla Mandel investigates where this definition actually came from.
The definition of hydraulic fracturing adopted by theUK coalition government has all the hallmarks of industry influence, finds DeSmog UK.
The fracking definition was slipped into thecontroversial Infrastructure Act without a chance forMPs to vote on it. And it is almost identical to thatrecommended by the European Commission in January 2014.
However, both of these definitions are based solely on the volume of fluid used during fracking and are closely aligned with the shale gas industry’s specific definition of hydraulic fracturing.
‘Political Definition’
Antoine Simon, extractive industries campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “Long story short, this is a political definition of fracking, but surely not a scientific one.”
According to the EU Recommendation ‘high-volume hydraulic fracturing’ means: “injecting 1,000 m3 or more of water per fracturing stage or 10,000 m3 or more of water during the entire fracturing process into a well.”
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Just before Christmas, back in December 2010, the chancellor George Osborne (pictured) sat down to a sumptuous lunch with his successors, including Lord Lawson of the climate denial charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
At the time, Lawson was telling anyone who would listen that he advised Osborne to make savage cuts to public services as part of the Tory austerity drive designed to drag Britain out of recession following the 2008 banking crisis.
It seems very likely that Lawson would have regaled his luncheon companions with this latest obsession: climate change. The world, he would have inevitably argued, simply cannot afford to make the sacrifices needed to reduce our profligate use of fossil fuels.
The Treasury claims they have no minutes or agendas from what was primarily a party political meeting among old friends. And expensive lawyers working for the government department fought tooth and nail for three years to stop even the menu being published.
However, DeSmog UK can reveal for the first time the delightful meal that cost the taxpayer £355.99 and was wolfed down as the political heavyweights argued the merits of austerity for everyone else.
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