Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop at the last year’s Lima climate talks, where nations agreed new transparency rules over climate targets.
DFAT
Countries that drag their feet on climate action have fewer places to hide these days. Rules brought in at the 2014 Lima talks require them not just to set targets, but to publicly justify them too.
Climate costs can seem scary, but it’s all in how you look at them.
Bills image from www.shutterstock.com
US President Barack Obama’s new climate plan aims to cut greenhouse emissions from the nation’s coal-dominated power sector by 32% by 2030. Will it get through, and how will it affect this year’s climate talks?
Replanting forests is one way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is a site in China.
CIFOR/Flickr
The term ‘carbon tax’ is a political poison in Australia, thanks to the previous carbon tax which was actually an emissions trading scheme. Yet ironically, many economists prefer a tax over an ETS anyway.
Tasmanian hydro power had a boom couple of years when the carbon price was in place.
CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
A year after the demise of the carbon tax, we might expect both coal and greenhouse emissions to have bounced back, at the expense of renewables like hydroelectricity. Sure enough, that’s what happened.
To get to zero emissions, we’ll have to reform our energy sector away from fossil fuels.
ccdoh1/Flickr
To avoid dangerous climate change there is a finite amount of greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2, that we can add to the atmosphere - our global carbon budget. If we use our budget wisely, we have until about 2050 to transition to zero net emissions. But how do we get there?
Worldwide, the livestock industry is a bigger source of greenhouse gases than transport.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
The recent Lancet Commission report rightly pointed out that climate change is a huge risk to global public health. But it shied away from one of the main issues: the world consumes far too much meat.
Digging in: China’s UN climate pledge shows it is serious about doing the heavy lifting in going green.
China’s formal climate target shows that the world’s largest greenhouse emitter is determined to green its economy on an unprecedented scale - and that it can bring the rest of the world along for the ride.
Business, environmental, trade union and social groups all see advantages in looking beyond high-emission industries such as coal-fired power.
Nick Pitsas/CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
The Australian Climate Roundtable unites business, environmental and social groups in calling for a strong climate policy. This unprecedented show of unity might even break down Canberra’s climate stalemate.
How to trim agriculture’s global warming footprint?
Neil Howard
About 10% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions come from farming. Researchers are working on ways to address this piece of the global warming puzzle.
US domestic carriers won’t face emissions curbs until the rest of the world’s airlines do too.
Lasse Fuss/Wikimedia Commons
Greenhouse emissions from the aviation industry are still largely unregulated. The prospect of regulations for US flights sounds like progress, but it won’t happen without an elusive international consensus.
Old people in many countries are less likely to own a car.
Anna Jurkovska/Shutterstock.com
Could developed countries’ ageing populations help clean up the climate? New research suggests that a 1% increase in the proportion of over-65s delivers a 1.5% cut in carbon dioxide emissions.
The Grattan Institute has reported that the costs of solar panels have outweighed the benefits by almost A$10 billion in Australia. But the real benefits of cutting greenhouse emissions are much larger.
You need to take a wider view to work out the true greenhouse emissions from nuclear power.
Teollisuuden Voima Oy/Wikimedia Commons
Nuclear power isn’t ‘zero-emission’, as many proponents claim. Factor in uranium mining, power plant construction, and other factors and it has similar emissions to wind power. But that’s still lower than fossil fuels.
The Fukushima disaster was a dark chapter for nuclear power - but high-profile accidents are far from the only downside.
EPA/KIMIMASA MAYAMA/AAP
Is nuclear power worth it? No, says Mark Diesendorf – it’s never been a major world energy force, it has caused huge accidents, and its greenhouse emissions are higher than many people realise.
The wrong track? The biggest emitters, such as power stations, were largely absent from the government’s first round of greenhouse reduction contracts.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
Federal environment minister Greg Hunt has hailed the first round of Emissions Reduction Fund auctions as a “stunning result”. But extrapolating the numbers puts Australia behind on its carbon targets.
Scaling back coalmining is one way Australia could make big progress towards its emissions targets.
CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
The Climate Change Authority has recommended Australia cut greenhouse gas emissions 30% below 2000 levels by 2025. While sensible, the government is unlikely to accept, and the target misses bigger opportunities to cut emissions.
Climate Change Authority chair Bernie Fraser says other wealthy nations have already pledged far deeper emissions cuts than Australia.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
A report from Australia’s Climate Change Authority recommends cutting greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2025 if the country is to be seen as a good global citizen in this year’s climate negotiations.